by Anna Elliott
Or so we had to hope, otherwise this entire plan was doomed to failure before it had even begun.
Holmes’s voice was abstracted as he answered Watson. “I rate the odds of success as being at least sixty-two percent in our favour. Uncertain, possibly, but not yet at a level which requires divine intervention.”
“The real miracle will be if Adolph Meyer allows you to come within fifty feet of him in that getup your wearing,” I said.
Holmes, never one to be accused of not committing himself fully to his part, was dressed in the manner one would expect from an unsavoury member of London’s criminal underworld. His trousers and jacket were tattered and stained with grease and dirt. Long, greasy hair hung from under the brim of his battered check-cloth cap, and everything—clothes, cap, and wig—smelled strongly of dirt and sweat. A mouthful of false yellowed teeth completed the disguise.
Holmes’s expression was thoughtful. “I am thinking of writing a monograph on the degree to which our olfactory senses influence perception. A long-buried memory, for example, may be suddenly brought to light by the introduction of a familiar smell. Likewise, the credibility of a disguise may be undermined in the unconscious mind of a target, if, for example, a man who presents himself as an underling of the Great Cesspool smells instead of Pears’ Soap.” He glanced down at his own attire. “It took me nearly a week to render these clothes sufficiently odious, and I am forced to keep them in one of my bolt-holes, since Mrs. Hudson persists in trying to send them to the laundry.”
“They’re certainly effective.”
I should probably just be thankful that my own disguise was significantly cleaner: a faded bonnet that shaded my face, a brown gingham dress, and a tray of wilted-looking bouquets—violets that I would present to passersby with the plea that they buy a flower.
“And if Meyer recognises you?” Watson asked.
“That is a side benefit of a sufficiently off-putting disguise: that one’s intended mark seldom wishes to come close enough to see through the layers of greasepaint and false whiskers.”
We had to hope that it would work in this instance, otherwise Adolph Meyer might simply shoot Holmes the moment he walked through the door.
Actually, there was a more than reasonable chance of that happening even if Meyer didn’t see through Holmes’s masquerade.
“Watson, I believe that you had better proceed to your lookout point at the British Museum,” Holmes added.
Watson still looked far from happy about the plan, but he nodded.
“You have your weapon, Lucy?”
“Yes, it’s right here.” Hidden under the wilted nosegays in my tray was my Ladysmith revolver.
That was my part in our scheme. Holmes couldn’t walk into his meeting with Meyer armed; a down-on-his-luck petty criminal would never own so costly an article as a firearm, and if Meyer insisted on searching Holmes, finding one in his possession would explode Holmes’s cover with a vengeance.
So I was here to act as a last line of defence.
Watson nodded and moved off, striding towards Great Russell Street and the museum.
Holmes rolled a cigarette from the papers and tobacco he carried loose in his coat pocket and clamped it between his teeth, slouching back against the wall of the lodging-house behind us.
At this hour of the morning, the pavement was thronged with people: labourers on their way to their places of work, with pickaxes and shovels carried over their shoulders. Women shoppers with their wicker baskets. Small children darting in and out and playing at ninepins—or looking for an opportune pocket to pick.
No one was paying Holmes or me the slightest mind.
“It seems as though Meyer’s contact must be one of the three: Phineas, Eric Brown, or Günter,” I said.
“Or Mrs. Arden, as an extremely outside chance.”
“True. I suppose she’s still in prison?”
“According to Lestrade, she is sitting in her cell, being entirely docile and polite to anyone who comes to attend her.”
“And Phineas is still in prison, as well. So if either of them is Meyer’s contact, he’s no chance of getting into communication with them.”
“While Eric Brown has been in hospital.”
“What if Meyer already knows where Günter has taken Clarissa, and instead of visiting this place, he goes straight there?” I asked.
“We know that Meyer has received no messages or visitors of any kind. Mycroft even saw to it that one of his agents at the telephone exchange would listen in on any calls Meyer might make or receive. But there have been none.” Beneath the scraggy locks of hair on his forehead, Holmes’s brows were etched in a frown. “Although I have yet to explain the logic behind Miss Lovejoy’s abduction—especially since there have been no demands for ransom—it appears to me that kidnapping her was a spontaneous decision on Mr. Richt’s part. Ah!”
He broke off speaking as the figure of a tall, broadly built man appeared at the end of the road, walking towards us.
“Our man, I believe.” He eyed the figure with professional appraisal. “For a man constrained by the limitations imposed on him by his size, the disguise is quite a good one.”
It was; if I had not spent time studying the photographs in Holmes’s file, I might not have recognised him. Meyer was dressed in the guise of a rat catcher: brown knee breeches, a brown velvet coat, and a brown bowler hat. A small terrier dog trotted at his heels, and he carried a wicker cage in one hand, containing a pair of black ferrets.
It was no wonder that Meyer felt confident that he had shaken off his observers.
“The ferrets are an especially convincing touch,” I murmured to Holmes. “I suppose he must have bought them from a genuine rat-catcher on the way here?”
“Presumably.” Holmes pushed off from the wall behind him and slouched languidly away from me, fetching up in front of a pawnbroker’s shop, where he appeared to be eyeing the goods of all kinds displayed in the window. Although his attention, like mine, was focused on Meyer, who strode along the street with his head up, stopped at number 39, and beat a solid tattoo of knocking on the front door.
Also clever. He was establishing himself in the eyes of any casual passers-by as having a legitimate reason for being there, behaving as though someone had hired him to deal with a rat infestation on the premises.
After knocking again and receiving no answer—hardly surprising, since the house was empty—he made a show of shrugging his shoulders and starting around the corner of the house towards the back, where there must be another entrance.
A minute or two dragged by—Holmes giving Meyer a chance to get inside the house—and then Holmes slouched after him, disappearing around the back as well.
My heart rate sped up. Holmes and I had seen no sign of anyone besides ourselves watching number 39, but there was always a chance that Meyer might have a lookout.
I drew the folds of my shawl more tightly around my shoulders and crossed the street as though looking for a more likely and more sheltered spot to sell my wares. Although the bouquets in my tray were too wilted to draw any actual customers; I had chosen them specifically on that account.
I wandered aimlessly up and down for a few moments, and finally fetched up directly outside the shuttered front window of number 39.
I strained to listen, but couldn’t hear anything at all from inside. Was that a good sign, or a bad one? Presumably if Meyer had decided to kill Holmes on sight, I would hear sounds of a struggle.
A man’s voice spoke from behind me. “Might I buy a bouquet of flowers, Miss?”
I turned, ready to curse the luck that had summoned an actual customer just now. Then I froze, shocked enough that I nearly forgot to stay in character.
Mycroft stood before me on the pavement, swathed against the chill air in an enormous fur-lined woollen overcoat, fur hat, and silk scarf.
I didn’t have to worry overly about Mycroft being recognised; he didn’t leave the narrowly restricted part of London that contained h
is Whitehall office, his rooms, and the Diogenes Club often enough for anyone to know him.
The fact that he was here now meant that either something disastrous or something of extreme importance had occurred.
Mycroft held out a halfpenny coin, waving it at me, and I snapped back to attention, taking the coin and handing over a bunch of violets in exchange.
“Thank you.”
Without overtly appearing to do so, Mycroft looked up and down the street, checking to be sure that we were not being observed.
Satisfied, he made a fuss of threading the flowers through his buttonhole while speaking in a low undertone.
“While there have been no further developments in the recovery of the anthrax, there has been one potential discovery of enough importance that I judged it prudent to come down here and give it to you and my brother in person. I take it that Holmes is currently vis-à-vis with Mr. Meyer?”
“Yes.”
“Then I shall impart the information to you alone. While Günter Richt, young assistant to Phineas Lovejoy, does not exist, the description of the man who has been playing that part matches that of a man wanted by the German government for the past two years.”
“Wanted? For what?”
“For deserting his post with the Kaiserliche Marine, otherwise known as the Imperial German Navy. The young man’s name is Hans Wagner. He was a young officer assigned to an Imperial German cruiser squadron in East Asia. Wagner saw action in November 1897, when the murder of two German missionaries provided a convenient excuse for Rear Admiral Otto von Diederichs to land troops in the region of Kiautschou, which the Chinese had previously refused to sell to the German government.”
“Germany being anxious to annex a portion of the world equal to that of Great Britain.”
“Precisely. According to his military record, Hans Wagner conducted himself in combat with a high degree of courage. But in December of that same year, Wagner deserted his post and vanished.”
“But why would a man who deserted from his country’s navy be part of a plot to sell weapons of war to that same country?”
Mycroft pursed his lips. “Perhaps he wishes to get back into the German government’s good graces. Or perhaps we are wrong in assuming that he is or ever has been a confederate of Meyer’s.”
“He might be a competitor instead,” I said slowly. “Someone paid by another world power—Japan, possibly, or Italy, or even the United States—to acquire the anthrax. That would explain why he killed the man in the Lovejoy’s cellar. If the stranger was working for Meyer, he was a rival to be eliminated.”
And if any of this were true, it was far from good news for Clarissa. If Günter—or rather Hans Wagner—truly had no connection with Meyer, then our only potential lead towards finding her had just snapped off at the root.
Before Mycroft could answer, there came the sound of a splintering crash from inside the house behind us. A moment later, the door was flung open and Meyer—still wearing the brown velvet coat, but without his rat-catcher’s animals—came striding out.
Beneath his bowler hat, Meyer’s face appeared mottled and flushed with anger, and his hands were fisted at his sides. He passed by without a glance in Mycroft’s and my direction, setting so rapid a pace that he was almost running.
In an instant, Mycroft and I were mounting the front steps of number 39 and pushing through the door that was still reverberating with the force of Meyer’s slam.
Holmes lay atop a splintered pile of wood that must at one point have been a built-in cupboard on the wall and was now reduced to a heap of kindling.
Meyer must have flung him bodily across the room.
“Good heavens, Sherlock!”
I was afraid that Holmes was unconscious, but at Mycroft’s exclamation he rose to his feet and shook his head, appearing only slightly dizzy.
“I am quite well, Mycroft. Our friend Meyer chose to vent his frustration upon me, and I judged it advisable to let him. But apart from some probable bruising, I am unharmed.”
The ferrets Meyer had brought in were still in their wicker cage on the floor, while the small terrier was coming, ears flattened and the end of its lead dragging on the ground, to sniff cautiously at Holmes.
Holmes gave the dog an absent pat on the head, then brushed wood shavings from his clothes. “The key to surviving any collision is to make one’s muscles as slack as possible at the moment of impact. Thus, the improbably high rates of survival for young men who crash their racing carriages while roaring drunk.”
Mycroft opened his mouth and closed it again. “If you have quite finished lecturing, Sherlock, there is the matter of a stolen packet of anthrax?”
“Which I assure you that I have by no means forgotten. Moments ago, I informed Meyer that I had been sent here by his confederate, who was currently in possession of a certain package that Meyer wished to purchase. But that due to the complications that had arisen, the price would now be double the one originally agreed on.”
Mycroft clicked his tongue with disapproval. “That was taking a fearful risk, Sherlock. What if Meyer had demanded some sort of proof, confirming who had sent you? You do not even know the identity of the supposed messenger whose business you purported to be carrying out.”
“I have a theory. But there is no time to go into that now. What is of paramount importance is that Meyer did not say that he had no idea what I meant by ‘a certain package.’”
“Proof that he is indeed expecting the anthrax.”
“As you say. I further specified that he would receive a message if he went to the British Museum’s reading room, which also occasioned him no surprise.”
“And yet he threw you across the room?” I asked.
Holmes made a dismissive gesture. “The important point is that we now have further proof that one or all of our three suspects—Richt, Brown, or Lovejoy—are involved.”
Mycroft nodded. “Speaking of Richt, Sherlock, I believe it would be as well if I conveyed the information I have just now imparted to Lucy. Time is I realise of the essence, but put briefly, the suspect we know as Günter Richt answers the description of a deserter from the German Navy.”
“Ah.” Holmes’s brows edged upwards. I could see him rapidly assimilating the news and adjusting his own ideas accordingly. “A disgraced war veteran. I had not fully anticipated that, but it does simplify matters. And now Lucy and I must be away. There is no time to be lost if we are to intercept Meyer’s meeting. Mycroft, you are to follow us in a cab of your own to the British Museum Library. I trust you will stand ready to ensure that none of us are placed under arrest when we are done with this affair.”
Mycroft’s brows crept up. “Really, Sherlock—”
“Ah yes, and it would be as well if you took charge of these, I think.” Holmes lifted the ferret’s cage and thrust it into his brother’s hands, then added the end of the terrier dog’s lead. “Young Becky would never forgive us if we abandoned the animals here.”
If I’d been in a mood to find humour in anything, I might have wished for a photograph to capture the expression on Mycroft’s face as he clutched the cage of wriggling ferrets.
After a moment’s struggle for speech, he said, “One day, Sherlock, even I may lose patience with the madness in your method. Fortunately for you, however, today is not that day. We will meet at the museum.”
CHAPTER 16: LUCY
A skinny, blond-haired figure dressed as a newspaper boy was waiting near the steps of the museum as Holmes and I alighted from our cab.
“Ah, Flynn.” Holmes didn’t appear surprised to see the leader of his Irregulars, but he did look satisfied, as though Flynn’s presence had confirmed a theory for him. “Our suspect has arrived, then?”
The suspect he was speaking of could not have been Meyer. Holmes had just sent Meyer to the museum, which meant there would have been no need for Flynn to tail him.
Flynn nodded, shifting the strap of the newspaper bag on his shoulder. “Right you are, Mr. Holmes
. Followed him here an hour or so ago.”
“Did you point him out to Watson?”
“Just like you told me.”
“Capital.” Holmes drew a coin out of his pocket and handed it to Flynn. “Well done. And Mr. Meyer?”
“Chap that big’s easy to spot. He got out of a cab and went inside maybe ten minutes ago.”
“Is Jack here?” I asked.
Flynn tipped his head in a nod. “Inside with Dr. Watson.”
I exhaled. That had been our plan, but it was still a relief to have it confirmed that he was here, safe. “Good.”
“And Inspector Lestrade?” Holmes asked.
Flynn grinned. “Oh, he’s here, all right. Looking like he’s been chewing on a mouthful of broken bottles on account of your telling him he had to wear a disguise. But he said to tell you he’d be hanging about by the entrance, waiting until you cared to inform him of exactly what was going to happen.”
Knowing Lestrade, I imagined that his message had been laced with some other choice words that Flynn was choosing not to repeat.
“The dark-haired chap turned up a few minutes ago, too,” Flynn added. “The one that works at the bookseller’s across the road? Got his arm all tied up in a sling, and looks like a dog’s dinner, but he’s here.”
“Mr. Brown must have been discharged from the hospital and bravely decided to come in to work, despite his injury,” Holmes said. “And Mr. Richt? Has he made an appearance?”
“The blond one?” Flynn shook his head. “Not a hair or a whisker of him.”
“Ah.”
There was little or no inflection in Holmes’s voice, but I caught another gleam of satisfaction at the back of his gaze.
“Do we go in separately, or together?” I asked him.
Holmes had discarded the grubby hat, wig, and jacket on the way here, and now wore the slightly shabby but eminently respectable morning coat, wire-rimmed spectacles, and white side whiskers of an elderly scholar.
He tilted his head to look up at the towering edifice of the museum.
I couldn’t read his thoughts, but the back of my neck was prickling with uneasy anticipation. In my mind, the museum was transformed into a powder keg that was just waiting for a lighted match.