The Flying Scotsman (26 page)

He did not say
my
Miss Gatspy, and that caused me a moment of dismay. Whatever he needed to learn from her, it superseded his good-tempered gibes. “We will be dining with her shortly—surely the matter can wait.”

“Yes, but it is hardly an appropriate topic for table conversation.” He snapped his fingers. “We will go to Herr Schere’s compartment as soon as we are moving again.”

I coughed delicately. “That may not be for some time,” I said. “It would seem that Whitfield is missing, and apparently there is a search on for him.”

“Whitfield? Missing?” Mycroft Holmes slapped the seat of his bench. “How very irregular.”

“Does it worry you?” I wanted to hold my breath as I waited for his reply.

“I don’t know,” he answered slowly. “It depends on whether or not the drink he was pilfering is found. If it is and he is not, I shall be very worried indeed.”

“Pilfering drink?” I exclaimed, and at the same instant recalled the cartons of partially opened bottles behind the bar. “You are saying he—”

“Stole from the railroad? Yes, most certainly I am.” He smiled at me. “There are probably half a dozen publicans between London and Edinburgh who have a cozy arrangement with Whitfield. He saves an ounce or two at the bottom of every bottle and off-loads them to men along the way. Each makes a small profit in the process, and if it is not too greedily done, the North Eastern turns a blind eye to the enterprise. It is not uncommon, I assure you.” He put his hands together, the remaining telegrams held between them. “If it is Whitfield and not the drink that is truly missing, I fear our enterprising young barkeep may have stumbled upon a true villain, not a venal publican.”

I felt confusion mount within me. “But why should—” I stopped myself. “If the drink is still on the train and he is not, he has met with more than he bargained for.”

“Precisely,” said Mycroft Holmes as he opened the telegram from Tschersky. “Oh, poor operator,” he exclaimed in mock dismay as he held the flimsy sheet out to me.

Puzzled I took it, and glanced down to see ...
Ny pravda lhi? Vy
pruhvy ...
“In transliterated Russian and in coded phrases?” I recognized the first—“Isn’t it true?”—but I had not had enough time to manage the rest, and the smattering of Russian I had acquired in my travels was not sufficient to make reading such a message easy for me.

“How very like him,” said Holmes with a sigh of approval. He was silent as he read, occasionally pausing to study the words carefully. “Most illuminating.” He folded the telegram and put it in his inside waistcoat pocket; whatever Yvgeny Tschersky had said, Mycroft Holmes regarded it as singularly important. Looking up at me he went on. “He has answered my question, for which I am grateful, and it is now more imperative than ever that we speak with Miss Gatspy. Little as I like the idea, she may hold the key to our situation.”

As high a regard as I had for Miss Gatspy’s capabilities, I did not see that it followed that she held the solution to our quandary. “Why should she—”

“Guthrie,” Mycroft Holmes interrupted patiently, “I make full allowance for your enthrallment, but in this case you must permit me to do as I think necessary in regard to your Miss Gatspy.”

I could feel my cheeks grow red. “It isn’t like that at all,” I began, then saw his heavy bow arch and gave up. “You
will
have your joke, sir,” I said, and waited.

“Those fellows in the Golden Lodge have access to all sorts of material that you and I cannot readily obtain.” Mycroft Holmes tapped the telegram with his finger. “I hope she might be able to procure a few smidgens of information that will simplify our search for this would-be assassin—or assassins, if what Tschersky tells me is correct.”

“Assassins?” I repeated. “There
is
more than one?” The idea had seemed improbable when it was first proposed; but if Tschersky endorsed it, I had to reconsider the situation.

Holmes nodded heavily. “From what Tschersky tells me, there is a pair of them, working in tandem, one functioning as a decoy, the other as the killer. I had hoped this was not the case, but there can be no doubt. Tschersky has a great deal of information about them. They do not always take the same roles. They are said to be resourceful and capable of improvising if all is not as they expected. And they are quite ruthless. The Russians believe the pair have accounted for more than fifteen highly placed individuals in more than a dozen countries. If the Russians have such knowledge, I must suppose the Golden Lodge does, too. And it would explain Miss Gatspy’s presence on what should be ordinary escort duty.” He opened the third telegram from Commander Winslowe, reading it quickly and nodding once when he was finished. Then he opened the telegram from Superintendent Spencer and his expression darkened. “The bloody fool!” he exclaimed, and read through the telegram a second time. “Fool!” he reiterated.

I watched in some dismay at this dramatic change in demeanor that overcame my employer. I could not imagine what Winslowe had said that would so affect him. Finally I held out my hand for the telegram, hoping that if I read it, I might learn something to account for this change. “Sir?”

He thrust the telegram into my hand. “Go ahead. Read it.” He glowered at the page.

I held the sheet near the light:

HOLMES: MUST INSIST YOUR INQUIRIES GO NO FURTHER STOP POLICE ARE NOT TO BLAME STOP NO INVESTIGATION WOULD REVEAL CORRUPTION STOP PERSISTENCE WILL BE TREATED AS ATTACK STOP WINSLOWE.

“I’d expect something of this sort from Spencer, but Winslowe?”

Mycroft Holmes shrugged. “They work on each other’s behalf. I reckon they thought I would accept orders regarding the police more readily if they came from Commander Winslowe. Not a bad assumption, as far as it goes, but a trifle simplistic.”

“They’re closing ranks,” I said, somewhat unnecessarily.

“That they are, and at the worst possible moment.” He folded his arms. “If he had waited just a few hours before he sent this, our work would be easier. But no aid for the wicked, as my old French granmama used to say.”

“Are you going to comply with this ... ultimatum?” I asked, holding up the telegram.

“Of course not,” he said. “But we can no longer be assured of help from the police, not with such a shot across our bow.” He lowered his eyes. “I wish I knew how much he has been told and by whom.”

“Do you suspect Winslowe?” I wanted to be more shocked than I was. What better position for a man determined to corrupt the police than a Superintendent? He might do vast amounts of damage without serious risk of exposure and with the power to quash all but the highest reviews of his decisions.

“It is very tempting, and it would provide a degree of satisfaction that has eluded me in this mission, but it may be a bit too soon to cast that particular gauntlet,” said Mycroft Holmes, looking up as the sound of men climbing aboard our car came through the corridor. “And speaking of police, that will be the ones looking for Whitfield, I would think. I wish them luck with Sir Cameron.” This last was said with a wry smile.

A short while later there was a sharp rap on the door to this compartment. I opened the door, and held out our ticket stubs to the fresh-faced young constable who stood there. “Please come in. And you may search my compartment as well. I’m in the next along, number three. We are traveling in company with Herr Schere in compartment four; he is unwell.”

“Is he?” said the young constable, his accent placing him from the Yorkshire dales. “Well, we’ll not disturb him more than we must.”

Holmes and I waited patiently while the constable searched for Whitfield in a few unlikely places, then ushered him out of the compartment.

As soon as the constable was gone, Mycroft Holmes said, “Guthrie, we’ll be here for a short while, I fear. I’d like you to have a look around—you know, check the platforms and the baggage compartment to see if there are any indications of what happened to Whitfield. I can accept one set of criminals being aboard as coincidence, little as I may like it and inconvenient as they may be, but two such events pushes credulity beyond my limits. Whitfield being gone is a signal that strikes me as particularly ominous. At our next stop, I will have to find out who this Quest chappie is.”

“Then you think something may have become of Whitfield?” I shared his alarm.

“Dear Guthrie, do you not? I should have thought he would have bid us adieu when he left, if only on the hope of garnering another tip. I trust the avarice of men in his position far more than I trust these unplanned events. Do not tell me you haven’t had similar suspicions.”

I sighed. “Of course.”

“Cheer up. Think of this as earning your dinner,” Holmes suggested with a wink.

I handed him my portfolio. “You’d better keep hold of this,” I said, and went out of the compartment. I noticed the constable leaving Miss Gatspy’s compartment and so I waited, as if I was about to make my way to the lav or into the next car. As I began to walk, the constable raised his billy to me in a kind of salute or casual threat before he left the car. What on earth had he learned from Miss Gatspy that he should respond to me in this wise? I thrust my apprehensions from my thoughts and put the whole of my concentration to finding any signs that someone had been forced off the train.

On the platform I saw nothing indicative of a struggle—not scrapes nor scratches, nor patches of skin, nor blood, and no odor of strong drink. I continued on through the second-class car, where the constable was just beginning his search. At the end of that car I again inspected the platform with the same result as before. The dining car was in confusion as the waiters tried to ready it for the next seating while a pair of constables looked under the tables and through the kitchen in an effort to discover where Whitfield might be.

I reached the lounge and saw that the bar had been closed down while the police were at their tasks; Quest stood behind the bar, idly smoking a churchwarden’s pipe and gazing at some distant point known only to his memories. I nodded, and continued on a bit farther to the platform leading to the second-class car behind the lounge-and-baggage car. If I were to discover anything of significance, it would be here. Resolved to take greater care inspecting this site, I dropped down onto my knee, making the most of the light-spill from the platform.

On impulse I got down from the platform to look at the ties between the tracks, thinking that something might have fallen from Whitfield’s pocket if he had been thrown from the train. I peered into the dark, wishing I had a bull’s-eye lantern. I used my fingers, discovering a bent ha’penny and a small link of tarnished silver that had once been part of a heavy chain, but nothing that persuaded me that Whitfield had been harmed here. I moved back and peered under the shadow of the platform, trying to see if anything had been hidden there. The odor of oil and coal was so strong that I had to clench my jaw to keep from coughing, stopping the spasms in my chest, and making a dull sort of hacking sound.

Which may have been why I did not hear my assailant come up behind me until an instant before his truncheon struck me on the back of my head and I toppled into unconsciousness; as my eyes closed I had an impression of a bloody hand reaching out of the platform shadow, but it may have been nothing more than a response to the blow that knocked me out.

FROM THE PERSONAL JOURNAL OF PHILIP TYERS

Finally word from Leeds. I was beginning to fear for MH’s safety, but his report indicates that all is well at least superficially. HHPO is in no apparent danger; and aside from the demands of local police, the train has not been delayed beyond another half hour, which still means it will arrive in Edinburgh much later than was prepared for. As soon as I am finished with this entry I have half a dozen errands to run and a sheaf of instructions to hand to Hastings. It appears that Sutton’s notion about two assassins is not as far-fetched as I thought it had to be, and if certain telegrams confirm MH’s fears, there will be more work for all of us to do if HHPO is to arrive safely in his own land once again.

I have in the last ten minutes been handed a report brought by a fellow with a Russian accent, with a note—unsigned, of course—saying that the contents in the sealed envelope are private and must be destroyed as soon as they have been read. The Russians are the most leery folk on earth, always certain of spies and plots. Still, with their history, who can blame them?

Sutton is just back from the Diogenes Club and has sworn to disguise himself afresh and help me in my errands, and I am inclined to accept his help. He may be an actor, but his probity, at least in regard to his work for MH, is beyond question. He has a dozen personae he may adopt quickly and turn to advantage. A young man in the uniform of a foreign navy bringing a dispatch to the Admiralty would attract less notice than I would at this point, if anyone is monitoring the actions of Commander Winslowe. That will allow me to carry the messages MH has asked me to prepare to CI Somerford and Superintendent Spencer. Whatever has transpired in the last hour or so aboard the train has prompted MH to reassess his thinking in regard to this mission.

A constable came here not ten minutes since with news for MH that he will not like. Inquiries regarding the assassination attempt in front of St. Paul’s have been suspended on order from the PM, who has declared that this investigation is causing friction between Britain and the great countries of Scandinavia. He has ordered Scotland Yard to hand all material they have gathered to his Secret Service men, so that they may handle the matter less publicly. MH will have something to say about that when he learns of it. I must include a report of this development for my next telegram which should reach him at Carlisle.

I have much to do before I send that report and less than ninety minutes in which to do it all. Sutton is in the kitchen smearing his face with soot so he may leave by the back stairs as a chimney-sweep. His enthusiasm for verisimilitude is laudable, of course, but in this instance I am inclined to temper my praise. I must attend to getting him on his way before the flat is dusted in charcoal.