Mycroft Holmes (15 page)

“Pikuliar, yes,” the older one intoned. “It’s women and children what go first, not hale men such as them two.”

“You saw them, then?” Holmes asked.

“Not me, guv’nor,” the older one admitted. Then he reluctantly ceded the attention to his fellow again, frowning as he said, “This one ’ere laid eyes on ’em.”

“I din’t see ’em in death as wuz…” the younger one clarified.

“Why, you rum creature!” the older one protested. “You sworn you cast your eye on ’im.”

“And so I did!” the other yelled in his own defense. “But he wan’t dead-dead when I did so, simply ailin’, as wuz.”

The older man objected with a cuff to the ear of the younger man—who then pled his case to Holmes:

“I
knows
one of ’em, guv’nor, and I knows it h’ain’t kind to speak ill of the dead, but
wicious
he wuz, ’im and ’is friends, what’s always itchin’ fer a brawl. Bright red hair, he had, and a gash here…”

He made a line with his pinky that cut his forehead in twain.

Holmes nodded. “And who takes care to wrap the corpses before burial?” he asked.

“Oh, the cap’n do that, sir,” the older man said. “He’s partickler about it, yer might say… then he has ’em brung out when they is wrapped tight about.”

Holmes thanked the men, then hurried off in his strange shuffle-step, Douglas hovering like a shadow behind him.

The younger man stared after them.

“Gadzo, talk about pikuliar…” he muttered, but his elder poked him deftly in the ribs once more.

THE NIGHT WAS STRANGELY QUIET. AFTER FIVE DAYS OF STORM,
the absence of a strong wind made it seem even more so. Fog blocked out the stars but amplified every sound, including the
Sultana
’s easy slices through water that was, for the moment, smooth as glass.

All told, quiet is preferable
, Holmes thought. Standing on the spar deck, he checked the direction of the wind, the better to hear. Then he and Douglas remained a respectful distance from the goings-on, and watched.

Two bodies lay on the gangplank.

Each was wrapped like a mummy and covered with a Union Jack. A young clergyman approached. He looked round wide-eyed, as if something untoward might be descending upon them at any moment. After that, he turned back to the corpses, and performed the funeral rites.

When he finished, the captain lifted one finger. The gangplank was lowered, the two bodies slid into the ocean and then the captain, the clergyman, and the little knot of deckhands went their way without so much as a look back.

“Did you hear it?” Holmes whispered to Douglas. “The bodies falling into the water?”

Douglas nodded, and Holmes went on.

“Too light for those large men, wouldn’t you say?” he opined. “They were under their original weight by a tod and a stone. Each.”

“The men died of dysentery, Holmes… ”

“Be sensible, Douglas!” Holmes snapped. “They could not have lost so much as that in a few days’ time.”

“Five,” Douglas corrected. “It has been five days since you were cut. Did the shrouds on the gangplank appear small to you?”

“Two mummies wrapped in Union Jacks, viewed at a distance, in the dark? Do you imagine that I am superhuman?”

Douglas almost laughed at that.

“No,” Holmes went on, ignoring his friend’s amused expression. “It was the
sound
they made upon entering the water that was instructive. The amount of water they displaced. Water never lies.

“I have no idea who was buried at sea just now, but it was not our assailants,” he concluded. “This was done for
our
benefit—the clue of the redheaded man, all of it. Someone is trying to frighten us into believing that our enemies will stop at nothing—not even murder. Though in truth they have not reached that waypoint yet.”

Douglas sighed, sounding exasperated. “Suppose, for a moment, that I accept your theory. Would ‘our enemies’—whomever
they
are—not need to dispose of
four
bodies, then, since it was four who attacked us?”

“Oh, I am certain the other two will be accounted for soon enough. But they cannot simply pretend to kill four large men with dysentery. That would raise tremendous suspicion. No,” Holmes mused. “We are here for a reason, Douglas. Here on deck, I mean—I am not speaking metaphysically. Someone
knows
we are here, and they are taking great pains to—”

Suddenly he stopped speaking. He stared up at the smokestack, belching coal. Some smoke descended upon them, obscuring their view and causing them to cough.

“
There
it is,” he said happily. He wet his finger and held it up, again gauging what little wind there was. Then he hobbled over to an unobtrusive spot on deck that he declared was “proper for our needs,” removed a kerchief from his coat pocket, and laid it out.

“What now?” Douglas asked, watching him.

“Now we return to our room. Two hours hence, you shall kindly fetch my kerchief, and bring it to me.”

Douglas frowned, but said nothing.

* * *

Two hours later, in their cabin, Holmes inspected the handkerchief via a magnifier he had improvised using a broken piece of glass and a few drops of water. With his fountain pen as a pointer, he indicated bits of fabric that seemed to match a shirt one of their assailants had worn, along with ash that appeared—to Douglas’s naked eye—somewhat more elaborate than coal dust.

“You see there, Douglas, the gray and white, the dark gray, and this, yellow in color? That is unburnt trabecular bone with its internal latticework. Nearly impossible to destroy. Distinctly human.”

“I suppose it does no good to ask how you know that.”

“No, no, I am glad to oblige this time, as I feel a bit stronger, and to give credit where it is due. I spent a few summers assisting a physician friend of my father, in his laboratory. I was to serve as no more than an errand boy, but Dr. Joseph Bell took a liking to me, said I had ‘the gift.’ I assume he meant the gift of observation. And so he allowed me to attend whilst he conducted various experiments. He believed that nearly everything can be deduced on sight, as long as one knows what one is looking for, and that the rest can be broken down into mathematical equations.”

“Or taste,” Douglas added with a smile, recalling the carbolic acid.

“Yes. That, too. He was constantly placing all sorts of herbs and potions and chemicals on the tip of his tongue, then lifting his eyes as if he were dissecting a particularly fine wine.”

“What luck that we happened to be standing underneath the smokestack at the precise moment that bodies were being burnt down below,” Douglas parried. “Yet you will no doubt claim that it wasn’t luck at all…”

Holmes shrugged. “If bodies were indeed tossed into the burners, those smokestacks would be emitting miniscule quantities of human for a day and a half before they were done. But yes, we happened upon a good deal of it. With the average man rendering seven-point-four pounds of matter, two of them would be belching out fourteen-point-eight pounds, with the rest residual. How much comes out depends, of course, on when they were placed in the furnace, which is also a matter of simple mathematics.”

“So, two of our assailants were poisoned, two more tossed in with the coal?”

But Holmes did not respond. He was frowning down at the handkerchief.

“What is the matter?” Douglas asked. “Not enough detritus?”

“On the contrary. A great deal too much, I’d say.” Holmes looked over at Douglas with feverish eyes. “You must go to the furnace room. Now, Douglas, and on your own, as I would slow you down!”

“Nonsense,” Douglas protested. “I cannot be seen mucking about…”

“You must! For we cannot proceed further until you do.”

“And whatever shall I do when I get there?”

“Breathe,” Holmes commanded.

* * *

It was no small feat for a man of Douglas’s stature and color to make his way through the bowels of the
Sultana
without attracting attention of a negative sort. But he was a man of no small means. He had been more or less on his own since he was a child, and as he had learned to survive by making himself all but invisible to the rough-hewn men who would hurt him for sport, he managed to arrive at his destination with but one small incident in his wake.

He had almost reached the door of the furnace room when a deckhand spotted him. The man seemed quite put out that Douglas was in an area closed off to passengers. A strapping lad of twenty or so, wielding a mop, he didn’t even inquire as to what Douglas might be doing there. He simply grinned in a way that spelled trouble, held onto one end of the mop, and with the other moved to bash a hefty dent into Douglas’s skull.

Douglas watched the grin turn to shock when a blow from an upraised leg cracked the mop in half.

Refusing to admit defeat, the boy grabbed his broken mop and came at Douglas with the jagged end, intent to put out an eye. Douglas moved aside as efficiently as a cat, and as his assailant lunged past, he reached out and snagged the boy’s neck in the crook of his arm, increasing pressure until he went limp.

“Pray forgive the headache you shall have when you awaken,” he muttered as he laid the young deckhand gently on the floor.

Then he opened the door to the furnace room.

* * *

Inside, two dark-skinned coal workers were feeding flames that seemed too hot for any mortal to withstand. When they heard the door, they turned and stared in surprise, but made no move toward Douglas.

And so the latter did as instructed—he took a deep breath, inhaling through his nose. Then, feeling quite foolish, he nodded to the two gaping men.

“Right, then. Carry on,” he said before hastening out again.

* * *

Douglas returned to the room to find his weak and ailing friend lying comfortably upon his cot, legs crossed at the ankle, reading Douglas’s copy of Dickens. Holmes looked up from the book.

“So? What did you smell?” he asked mildly.

“A furnace room,” Douglas answered, annoyed.

Holmes put down the book and sat up. “And there you have it!” he said, as if he had been vindicated.

“Holmes,” Douglas said as equitably as he could manage, “I have neither eaten nor slept properly in five days. There are people trying to kill us, or possibly not. The least you can do is give me a decent explanation for your request.”

Holmes sighed patiently.

“We have already ascertained that the first two did not die as advertised,” he responded. “Now, thanks to you, we know that neither did the second two.”

“And how, pray, do we know that?”

“I shall not insult you by replying,” Holmes said.

“Insult me,” Douglas responded crossly, “and be quick about it.”

But Holmes remained mute. Although Douglas was in no mood, his curiosity forced him to play along. All he could do was state the obvious.

“Burning bodies have a foul odor, but I smelled nothing,” he said.

“Precisely!”

“But that is impossible! What of the bone and gristle on the kerchief?”

“Peculiar, I will admit,” Holmes conceded.

“You do not know how it came to be there?”

“Of course not, Douglas—how should I? And another thing, did you note the curious emotion the clergyman showed as he performed the funeral for those two corpses on deck?” Holmes asked. “He seemed more than green. He seemed positively unnerved. Perhaps he knew that whatever else might be wrapped in those shrouds, it was not two men recently dead of dysentery.”

“So we
don’t
have two corpses, much less four,” Douglas muttered. “Maddening.”

“Is that not what I have been saying? In the meanwhile, I—as it turns out—am rather famished,” Holmes said. “Might your hands survive another walk to the grand saloon?”

“If you are hungry at last, as it is a problem I am able to solve, I am glad to attempt it,” Douglas said. He helped Holmes to his feet, handed him his walking stick, took hold of the reins in his left hand this time, and opened the door.

They had just emerged when Douglas felt a large sack drop down from on high, covering him completely. It was damp burlap. He could smell it, and could see just enough through its loose weave to make out that Holmes was suffering the selfsame fate.

Then the blows began.

Sticks. Clubs. Fists.

All coming at him in rapid succession. Douglas thanked the heavens that his topcoat provided a bit of cushion, while his arms did their best to protect his face and skull.

The beatings went on and on until he was certain he could take no more. He was feeling himself slip into unconsciousness, falling into that pleasant netherworld where the pain is no more… when he realized that he was being dragged across the ground. It lasted only a moment.

He was just wondering where Holmes might be, when he felt the weight of another burlap bag against his, then heard a door slam shut.

And voices, growing fainter by the moment.

“That big black ’uns a tough old bird!” one said.

“Shut yer yap, Rickets!” another shot back.

* * *

Moments later, or perhaps hours, Holmes emerged from the burlap bag to find that he’d been dragged back into his room. Douglas, too, was struggling out of his sack like a huge butterfly from a dark and bloody cocoon.