A Study in Silks (75 page)

Holmes finally spoke, only the quickness of his words betraying his nerves. “If you believe that I have my brother’s complete confidence, you are sorely mistaken.”

“Putting a hole in your head might draw him out.”

A derisive smirk flickered over Holmes’s face. “I think not.”

Evelina raised the broom high above her head.

“I’ll give it a try anyhow. Unless you want to talk.” The man snatched up a calling card, read the name, and flicked it aside. Then he adjusted his aim a fraction, focussing completely on Holmes. “The council has heard the name Baskerville. They’d like to know something about that.”

Holmes lifted his brows slightly. “The steam barons have played you for a fool. Your only function here is to startle me into betraying my hand. It won’t work, and you won’t survive this.”

Evelina struck. There must have been a noise—a whistle of air through the bristles, perhaps—because the man turned at just the wrong moment. Rather than knocking him out, the broom handle glanced off his temple with a hollow crack, sending him stumbling into the basket chair next to the rug.

Then Holmes was on his feet, hammering the man in the jaw with a hard right hook. The gun went spinning away,
clattering under the table. The man dove for it, but so did Evelina, using her speed and smaller size to wriggle between the chairs first. For the second time that day, he grabbed her foot, this time trying to use it to drag her out of his way. Then Holmes was on him. That gave her enough time to grab the slick handle of the revolver. It was still warm from his hand.

Evelina kicked the man off and twisted around so that she was on her knees. Holmes hauled the man back and punched him again. This time the man stayed where he fell. Evelina felt a bit ridiculous, crawling out from under the table and trying not to get tangled in her petticoats, but she eventually got to her feet.

She pointed the gun at the writhing man’s belly. “Don’t move,” she said, squeezing the weapon so that it would not shake.

“You bloody hoyden.” The man’s face twisted as red streamed down his lip and chin, bubbling with his wheezing breaths. “I didn’t plan on killing you when I started, but I can see you’re an apple off the same tree.”

“Confine yourself to answering questions,” she said crisply.

He wiped his nose on his sleeve, staining the fabric crimson. Evelina winced in sympathy—there was little doubt Holmes had broken the man’s nose—but she kept the muzzle of the revolver squarely aimed. His eyes, red-rimmed and blurred with pain, were still bright with anger.

Holmes, with the air of one who is about to put out the trash, strode briskly toward them. He bent and, quickly and efficiently, searched the man for other weapons. He found a knife, a pocketbook—which he examined, taking out several papers and looking them over—a small flask—which he opened and sniffed—and a ticket stub from a music hall. Holmes set the items aside and took the gun from her. And however little she liked the idea of holding a man at gunpoint, Evelina felt oddly bereft as she surrendered it. A primitive instinct had already marked the intruder as her prey.

“My dear,” Holmes said, “would you please reassure the crowd outside that nothing is amiss?”

She suddenly became aware of the hubbub in the street. “What shall I tell them?”

“Whatever you like, but if you see a scruffy young lad named Wiggins, would you ask him to call for, um, just to call for our mutual friend?”

Evelina stared for a moment but knew better than to ask for details. Gingerly, she picked her way across the blasted room. Shards of glass framed the view of the brown brick building across Baker Street, with its neat white sashes and bay windows. Mrs. Hudson’s lace curtains lay in shreds.

Carefully, she put her head out the hole in the shattered pane. There was a crowd gathered below, their upturned faces all wearing identical looks of bald curiosity. Someone in the street shouted a halloo, and Evelina waved. “Nothing to worry about. Just an accident with the kettle. No need to concern yourself.”

A boy of about twelve, wearing ill-fitting clothes and ragged shoes, cupped his hands around his mouth to yell up at her. “That musta been some cuppa!”

“Yes, it was a very large kettle,” Evelina replied. “Are you Wiggins?”

“Indeed I am, miss.”

Evelina cast a glance over her shoulder, but her uncle hadn’t moved. She knew he employed street urchins from time to time as a kind of messenger service that not even the steam barons could infiltrate. Wiggins had to be one of them. She turned back to the boy. “Mr. Holmes wishes to speak to your mutual friend.”

“Right you are.” The boy did an about-face and bolted down the street at a dead sprint. Apparently that mutual friend was well known.

She pulled her head back inside, her curiosity getting the better of her. “Who is your friend?”

“Someone equipped to take this charming specimen into custody,” her uncle said flatly.

The man swore.

Holmes gave him a freezing look. “Silence. There is a young lady present.”

The man shifted, his face sullen.

“Mrs. Hudson already went for the constables,” Evelina said.

“Won’t find any,” their prisoner put in. Perhaps he had friends who were keeping the local plods occupied. Evelina hoped it wasn’t anything worse than that.

Holmes looked unimpressed. “Even so, we dare not waste time.” Impatiently, he waved her over and handed her the gun again. “Keep him still.”

With that Holmes crossed to his collection of chemical supplies and surveyed the racks of bottles intently, clasping his hands behind his back as if to deliver a lecture on the laws of aether. He stood for so long that Evelina grew bored and longed to let her gaze roam around the room rather than keep her attention on the man on the floor. She’d caught glimpses of the soot-stained walls, the paintings hanging crooked. The explosion appeared to have emanated from a spot near the window.

“What blew up?” she asked.

“A brown paper package.” Holmes finally selected an amber glass bottle from the chemical supplies and then began rummaging in his desk. “It was badly placed and badly made, if the intent was to obliterate my rooms and everyone in them. Although this looks like a great deal of damage, an efficient bomb would have reduced 221B Baker Street to a smudge.” Eventually he took out a leather case and opened it, revealing a hypodermic needle. He took it out and began filling it from the vial of liquid.

Evelina’s stomach squirmed at the sight of the long, sharp instrument. “I hope that’s a sedative.”

Holmes gave a flicker of a smile, but otherwise ignored the question as he squirted a few drops out the needle. “This individual—Elias Jones by name, and his pocketbook concurs with that identification—entered the premises on the pretence of hiring my services. He brought with him a package wrapped in butcher’s paper and string, and proceeded to spin a tale about a mysterious Dresden figurine I would find
inside the box, and how it held the clue to the grisly murder of an elderly aunt and her fourteen cats, and how he had been cheated of his inheritance.”

“Fourteen cats?” Evelina echoed in surprise.

“It was not clear whether they were among the victims.”

Her throat tightened as he turned, hypodermic in hand. She tried to keep her voice light. “Perhaps the felines conspired to steal the old lady’s fortune?”

He gave her a dry look. “My would-be client’s laundry needed attention, and the box had a distinct chemical odor inconsistent with fine china. It was evident to me that he was attempting some sort of ruse. Accordingly, I refused his case and told him why. Then he became obstreperous and began demanding information. I summarily threw him out the door for his trouble, before he even had a chance to resist.”

“Or draw his gun,” Evelina observed, feeling more than a little queasy about what might have happened.

“Quite.” Holmes looked uncomfortable. “I apologize for tossing an armed man so close to where you were walking. That was unforgivably careless of me.”

“I’m sure you were quite occupied at the time.”

“I was annoyed,” Holmes replied. “Mr. Jones seems to be under the misapprehension that I know more than I do about Mycroft’s work, and that either of us has a connection to the rebels.”

That made Evelina’s breath catch. The rebellion against the Steam Council was growing and had been more and more in the papers over the summer. Anyone identified as a rebel automatically faced the gallows.

“What about it, Mr. Jones?” Holmes asked in a terrifying voice, holding the needle just where the man could see it. “Did your masters give you the order to insinuate yourself into my confidence in the guise of a client, and then search my quarters for evidence of treachery?”

Evelina swallowed hard. Uncle Mycroft worked for the government, but the Steam Council had so many politicians in their power, it was hard to know where the elected officials ended and the steam barons began. Loyalties were
nothing if not complicated—and it was far easier for her to concentrate on more immediate problems. “If he knew his cover story was blown, why run back inside?”

“Indeed, why?” Holmes asked, leaning yet closer.

Jones grunted, flinching away from the needle.

The detective gave a thin smile. “Very well, keep your confessions for now. I spoiled your plan when I saw through your nonsense and tossed you to the street. There was no means of gaining information from the curb, so you had to get back inside if you wanted to earn your pay. At that point, direct questioning at gunpoint had to do. Not very subtle, but what does one expect from someone who is little more than hired muscle?”

“I still don’t understand the bomb,” said Evelina. “Why blow up the very person or place that can provide information?”

Holmes waited, giving Jones a chance to answer for himself, but the man remained mute, holding his hand to his bloody nose.

“That is rather less clear to me,” the detective mused. “He was carrying a small amount of a strong sedative, which suggests that he might have attempted to drug me. That would allow him to search my rooms at leisure, find a list of rebel names or whatever else he dreamed would be among my possessions, leave, and set off the incendiary device. Effective, since it delivers a supposed blow to the rebels and covers his deception in the same stroke.”

Something didn’t seem quite right about that. “But what if you asked to see the figurine in the box?”

“The box might have been constructed to accommodate both a bomb and a prop for his masquerade.”

Jones made a noise that might have been agreement, but Evelina couldn’t tell. “Perhaps, though why risk setting a timer when there was no way to tell when his search would be over? It would have made more sense to set it once his search was done.”

She knew her uncle well enough to read the confusion under his insouciant mask. He didn’t know the answer to that question any more than she did. “Accident? Stupidity?
You overreached yourself when you went up against me, Jones.”

Jones squeezed his eyes shut.

Perhaps he bit off more than he could swallow, but even fools kill people
. Evelina’s skin pebbled with horror at what might have happened, and she looked down, thinking how easy it would be to pull the trigger on Jones right then and there.

And then, with a look of vague distaste, Holmes pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and tossed it to Jones to stanch the blood dribbling from his nose. As the man grabbed it from the air, Evelina noticed the smudges on his cuffs and understood the laundry comment her uncle had made earlier. “Gunpowder.”

“Precisely. Careless inattention to detail.”

Jones visibly cringed as he pressed the handkerchief to his face, but then he caught sight of Holmes advancing with the needle, obviously meaning to use it now. He made a low noise and tried to squirm backward. “Please, guv’nor, don’t kill me.”

Holmes was impassive. “You should have considered the consequences before you walked through my door with violence in mind.”

Evelina’s shoulders were in knots, the gun shaking in her hands. Elias Jones had tried to kill her uncle and had nearly blown her up in the bargain, but her insides still turned to ice. “Uncle?”

Wordlessly, Holmes caught Jones’s arm and began unbuttoning the filthy cuff and pushing up his sleeve. The man struggled furiously, making a choking sound of disgust and fear as Holmes jabbed the needle into his arm. Her uncle’s jaw twitched as he depressed the plunger, and Jones quieted at once, his eyes rolling back in their sockets. His silence disturbed Evelina almost more than his fear.

“Did you, uh …” she whispered, letting the gun droop.

“No.” Holmes narrowed his eyes. “Although that might be his preference by the end.”

Her mouth went dry.
What the devil is going on?

There was a scamper of young feet on the stairs, followed
by a heavier tread. A moment later, Wiggins burst into the room, followed by a man. He was about thirty, tall and lean, with curling, sandy hair and small wire-rimmed glasses tinted a pale green. As he surveyed the room, he wore the look of someone who was perpetually amused and slightly dangerous.

“Allow me to introduce the Schoolmaster,” Holmes said cordially, stepping away from Jones’s still form as if drugging a man senseless were an everyday event.

The Schoolmaster?
Evelina had never met a man with a code name before, but in her uncle’s line of work she supposed such things occurred—and she would fall on her own parasol before letting on she was anything but au courant in the detecting game.

Holmes gave a brisk nod to the boy and tossed him a shilling. “Well done, Wiggins.” The lad caught it and was out the door again in a flash.

Then Holmes turned to the Schoolmaster. “Look what my niece has caught for you.”

“Indeed,” The Schoolmaster grinned appreciatively at Evelina.

His easy smile brought heat to her cheeks and irritated her all at once. She wasn’t in the mood for flirtation. “May I put this gun down now?”

Her uncle laughed. “And deprive my friend here of the spectacle of my lovely niece holding one of the prime villains of London at bay?”