by Anna Elliott
Since Dr. Olfrig was a known agent of the German ruler, the same terrible possibility had occurred to me. But I shook my head. “If Paul were in league with them, he would not have greeted us so openly. I think it far more likely that he is an unwitting dupe in whatever scheme Sonnebourne is planning.”
“That implies two things.” Lucy had gone a trifle pale, but she spoke steadily. “First, that Sonnebourne—working with Olfrig—knew that we would be arriving in Cairo, and deliberately brought Archer here to toy with us. And second, that they knew Archer to be a friend of yours, and chose him as a cat’s paw in their plan simply because he is our known associate. Because it amuses Sonnebourne to put people that we care about in peril.”
She was thinking of her mother as well as Archer, I was certain of it. “Yes.” I could feel the shock I’d felt at sight of Archer solidifying into hard, cold anger. “I am quite looking forward to meeting Dr. Olfrig again this afternoon and asking him for an explanation.”
“Asking? Are you sure you don’t mean demanding?” A very slight smile touched the corners of Lucy’s mouth, but vanished at once as she went on, “We will see Dr. Olfrig. But first the Khan Khaleel and Holmes. Because if what we surmise is true, then anyone—anyone at all—who has associated with us in any way may be in danger from Sonnebourne.”
CHAPTER 9: FLYNN
Flynn pulled the edges of his jacket closer together and watched the entrance to the alley—or rather, the spot where he knew the alley started. Like everything else in London, the street across from him was so covered with yellowish-green fog that he couldn’t see much of anything for sure.
Even the gin palace that stood next to the alleyway was blurry, the lamps above the door just blobs of light in the dark. From time to time, a customer came reeling out, clearly drunk, and was almost immediately swallowed up by the pea souper.
The fog made Flynn’s eyes sting and his throat burn, but in a way, it was still a piece of luck for anyone wanting to take on surveillance work. In this weather, he was pretty sure he could have had a whole team of trained circus monkeys with him, and the men inside the house he was watching wouldn’t have taken any notice.
More than an hour ago, he’d seen Selim go inside, along with a lot of other young men.
Flynn shifted his weight and wondered what was happening in the meeting that was taking so long. But then he heard voices, coming towards him through the fog. He pushed off from the building behind him and crossed the road.
The Sons of Ra left the meeting house mostly in groups of two and three. Flynn didn’t think he recognised Selim among them, but just to be sure, he darted forward, approaching the men as they came out of the alley.
“Buy a paper, gov?” He held out the bag of newspapers he had slung over his shoulder. “Paper?”
If any of the men had actually bought a paper from him, they’d have found out that these were yesterday’s editions, which Flynn had pinched off a rubbish heap. But he didn’t have any takers. The men all shook their heads, muttered something—sometimes in English, sometimes Arabic—and hurried past, shoulders hunched against the drizzle of rain that had started to fall.
Selim still hadn’t come out of the alley like the others, though.
Flynn took a breath, debated, then plunged towards the door he knew was halfway down the side of the meeting house building. If Selim had left some other way, he was going to have to admit that tonight had been a waste of time, and go back to watching the cache of weapons down by the river. But if Selim was still inside—
He’d almost reached the door when he heard voices.
“—but I only asked when we could expect to make our move!”
Flynn froze, his heart thudding against his rib cage. That was Selim talking.
The voice that answered him was lower pitched, and one Flynn had heard before, when he’d been crouching in amongst the crates holding guns.
“And why should you wish to know that?”
“How can you ask that? Because I desire liberty for our country, as we all do?”
“Is that so?” Farooq’s voice had a silky sound to it now. “Or is it because you wish to know our plans so that you can betray us?”
“I would never do such a thing! I am loyal! But surely the longer we leave the weapons where you have hidden them, the greater the risk that they may be discovered before it is time to act—”
“The guns and ammunition are all very well.” Farooq spoke brusquely. “But I have something even better—something that will make these dogs of Englishmen sit up and take notice. And it is in a safe place, where no one—not even the English police—will think of looking.”
“What do you mean?”
Instead of answering the question, there was the sound of a footstep from inside, as though Farooq had just taken a step towards Selim. “As proof of this loyalty you swear, you claim to have successfully assassinated Mr. Sherlock Holmes,” he said. His voice had a growl to it that sent a shiver down Flynn’s spine.
“You know I did!” Selim’s voice rose. “You saw the body yourself!”
“So you would have me believe. However, I have friends who are able to make inquiries into such matters, and they have discovered something strange. On the afternoon in question, no victim of a street accident was brought into either St. George’s hospital or to the mortuary in Horseferry Road.”
“Why would they bring him to the hospital? He was already dead!” Selim wasn’t a very good liar, Flynn thought. He was probably trying to sound convincing, but his voice had a desperate ring to it. “As for the mortuary, perhaps he was taken to another. There must be many throughout the city—”
“You lie!” Farooq’s voice rose to a shout, and Flynn heard a meaty kind of thump.
He knew that noise. It was the sound someone’s fist made when it was driven hard into someone else’s gut.
“I did not lie! I swear it! Would I risk my own sister’s life—” Selim’s voice rose, too, then cut off with a half grunt, half groan. Farooq must have hit him again.
There were more thumps from inside. Flynn’s scalp crawled as he tried to decide whether there was anything he could do. He wouldn’t be much good against Farooq in a fight, but he couldn’t just stand here and let him beat Selim to death.
But then Farooq said, breathing hard now, “This conversation is far from over! You know what will happen, do you not, if I find out that Holmes is still alive? You know what I will do to you—and to your sister?”
There was another second’s worth of silence. Flynn pictured Selim on the floor, now, doubled over from all the blows Farooq had landed. Then he said, “I know.”
“Ma’a as-salaama, then,” Farooq said.
Flynn barely had time to jump aside and plaster himself against the wall before the door flew the rest of the way open and Farooq came out.
Luckily he wasn’t worrying about looking around, and the darkness and the fog hid Flynn enough that Farooq never spotted him, just strode off down the alley towards the lights of the gin palace.
Flynn waited another minute or so, then stepped in through the open door. “Selim Todros?”
Selim was just dragging himself painfully up off the bare wooden floorboards of the meeting room. At the sound of Flynn’s voice, he jumped and gave a half-strangled yell, clapping his hand to his heart. “Ya lahwy!” His eyes were so wide they were half starting out of his head as he stared at Flynn. “Who are you? How do you know my name?”
“Keep your voice down!” Flynn told him. “I’m from Mr. Holmes.”
“Mr. Holmes?” Selim kept on staring, wiping blood away from his mouth. He’d got a split lip and one of his eyes was swelling shut. “But you are nothing but a boy—a child.”
Flynn bristled. He heard plenty of that from the rest of the world, but he didn’t need to take it from a man who’d just got himself used as a human punching bag.
“That’s why I’m useful to Mr. Holmes. I can follow people, keep a watch on them, and no one notices I’
m there. No one pays any mind to just another kid on the streets.”
Selim got to his feet, wincing. “There is something in what you say,” he said cautiously. “But why have you come here tonight? Unless—” a flash of anxiety crossed his eyes. “Has Mr. Holmes sent word from Egypt? Is there news about Safiya?”
“Nothing like that. I came here tonight to talk to you—and I came inside because it sounded like you could use a hand.”
“Thank you, but I am quite well. I do not need any help.” He stopped and sucked in a quick breath as he tried to take a step.
Flynn shook his head. “Yeah, no one’s buying that bridge, mate.”
“Bridge?” Selim gave him a blank look. “What bridge?”
“I heard everything Farooq just said to you,” Flynn said patiently.
Flynn didn’t think Farooq actually knew for a fact that Selim was lying about Mr. Holmes’s death. He suspected, maybe, but he’d mostly made the accusation as an excuse for hitting Selim, just because he liked hitting people. Flynn knew Farooq’s type.
“Why were the two of you speaking English, anyway?” he asked Selim. It hadn’t occurred to him until now that he shouldn’t have been able to understand everything that Farooq and Selim said.
“Farooq insists on it for the meetings.” Selim dug out a handkerchief and pressed it against his bleeding lip. “He says that we must practise our English, the better to be prepared when the time comes for us to present our demands to the men who govern Britain. That is what he has always said,” Selim added. “But lately—lately I have begun to think that it is not the only reason. Mr. Holmes was certain that Farooq is not Egyptian, but Turkish. Perhaps he is afraid that his accent will give him away if he speaks to us in Arabic too often.”
“Either way, you’re going to be in trouble if Farooq finds out that he’s right, and Mr. Holmes isn’t really dead,” Flynn said.
“I know.” Apparently Selim had decided that talking to a kid about his troubles was better than nothing, because his shoulders slumped and he said, “But what can I do? Mr. Holmes is not dead. How can I hope to prove otherwise?”
“You can’t,” Flynn said. “Unless you can get hold of a dead body that looks exactly like Mr. Holmes, the best thing to do is find out what Farooq’s up to and get him locked up for it before he can hurt you or Mr. Holmes or anyone else.”
They’d have to go slowly and carefully. If word got back to Lord Sonnebourne that Farooq had been arrested and the weapons seized, he might hurt Miss Zoe or Safiya. But he and Selim could start the investigation, so that everything would be in place if Mr. Holmes managed to track down Sonnebourne.
When, Flynn corrected himself. Mr. Holmes wasn’t going to let a madman like Lord Sonnebourne win.
“We’d better get out of here before one of Farooq’s lot comes back,” Flynn said. “Any idea what Farooq meant when he said he’d got something better than the guns and ammunition?”
“No.” Selim looked like he was about to be sick, although that might have been just from being punched in the stomach. “I do not know—I cannot imagine. But he is planning something. At the meeting tonight, he spoke of how the streets of London would soon run red with blood.”
Now Flynn was the one who felt sick, but he said, “Then we’d better find Farooq’s hiding spot.”
“But where? It might be anywhere!”
“Not quite.” An idea had begun to take shape in his mind, though. Hazy as the fog outside, but getting clearer the more he thought. “I’ve got an idea about where we can start looking.”
CHAPTER 10: LUCY
Cairo was even more enchantingly picturesque than the guidebooks claimed. Everywhere I looked, every corner Watson and I turned seemed to lead to a scene that might have been straight out of a painting.
The houses were high and narrow, with windows of delicate turned latticework in old brown wood. Here and there were buildings with walls faced in old carved stone. The streets themselves were roofed in overhead with long rafters and pieces of matting to provide shade from the fierce noonday sun.
Dusty sunbeams struggled through here and there, casting patches of shadow upon the moving crowd, which was an even more dizzying mix of nationalities than a London street scene. There were barefoot Egyptian peasants, wearing ragged blue shirts and felt skull-caps, Greeks in stiff white tunics, Bedouins in flowing white robes and head-scarfs, and women of the poorer class in black veils that left only their eyes uncovered.
Mixed in among them were English and other Europeans in palm-leaf hats and knickerbockers, riding depressed looking donkeys so tiny that the riders’ legs almost touched the ground.
We passed by a Turkish vendor selling lemonade from a tin jar, an itinerant slipper-vendor with bright-coloured shoes dangling at the end of his long pole, and a train of supercilious-looking camels, laden with canvas-wrapped bundles.
And I couldn’t enjoy any of it.
I kept scanning the faces of every long-haired dervish we passed, and studying the movements of every porter who stopped to refill his goatskin bag with water from one of the tiled public fountains.
Holmes had assumed more outlandish disguises than those in the past. Every time a seller of bead necklaces or cheap scarabs approached us to offer his wares—although insistently wave them in our faces would have been a more accurate description—I found myself wondering whether one of them would prove to be Sherlock Holmes.
Keeping a watch for him at least served to distract me from thinking about Jack and Becky, back in London. Or partly distract me.
Our discovery of Paul Archer’s presence here in Cairo was a graphic reminder of just how extensively Sonnebourne’s web of intrigue reached. And if he found it amusing to involve a man who had simply been one of Watson’s old school friends, he would be even more motivated to endanger—
Watson’s thoughts appeared to be running along the same lines as mine, because he interrupted my unpleasant reverie to say, “Becky would have loved to have seen all of this.”
He was watching an Egyptian lady who was passing by. She rode a large grey donkey led by a servant in a red turban with a gleaming sabre thrust through the sash of his robe.
The lady wore a rose-coloured silk dress and white veil, and purple velvet slippers. Her arms were jangling with massive gold bracelets.
“Yes, she would.”
Jack hadn’t been able to leave Scotland Yard to come along, and Becky had consented to stay in London with far less argument than I would have expected.
But now I wished overwhelmingly that both of them could be here, just so that I would know that they were safe. If anything happened to them, it might be days before word reached us here—
I trampled on that thought.
The donkey and rider passed us by. The animal was just as elaborately dressed as his rider, his legs and hindquarters painted in yellow and blue and white zigzags. His saddle was covered with velvet embroidered in silver and gold thread, and his headgear was decorated with gold tassels and fringes.
“Perhaps it’s lucky that Becky isn’t here to see,” Watson said. “She would probably be inspired to outfit Prince with a similar rig.”
“Probably.” I glanced up at him. “Are you certain that you wish to confront Dr. Olfrig personally?”
“I am certain of two things.” Watson’s voice hardened as he spoke. “First, that his purpose here in Cairo is unlikely to be innocent, and second, that I have a score to settle with him.”
We had passed by bazaars selling slippers and carpets, and were entering the Khan Khaleel. The alleys were so narrow that Watson and I could scarcely walk side by side. He had to draw ahead a little and say, over his shoulder,
“And yes, I am fully aware that Holmes would not want me to let my resentment of Olfrig interfere with the case.”
“He would very likely say that, yes.”
In this case, though, I wasn’t entirely sure that my father would be correct.
Holmes might disdain them, but ange
r and the desire to protect loved ones were both powerful motivators. At the moment, thinking about Jack and Becky back at home—and my mother, a prisoner—I felt fully capable of dragging Lord Sonnebourne off to prison myself, if only I’d known where to find him.
“I only meant that we ought to formulate some sort of plan,” I said. “So that we can best induce Dr. Olfrig to give us as much information about Sonnebourne as possible.”
Watson opened his mouth to reply, then stopped.
The shops that lined the street were tiny, barely more than cupboards with tiers of little drawers and pigeon-holes. Customers sat on stone benches in front of the cupboards, while the merchants squatted, cross-legged, inside, and took out gold and silver ornaments from the drawers: chains and earrings, anklets, bangles, necklaces strung with coins or tusk-shaped pendants.
The bench in front of the shop nearest to us was occupied by a man in European dress, and I saw at once what had given Watson pause: tall and thin, the man wore a solar topee that shaded his face and the back of his neck, and a grey hounds-tooth suit that I recognised immediately as one of Holmes’s.
“I say, Holmes—” Watson began, striding forward.
The man turned and glanced up incuriously at our approach, revealing an ebony-black face, lined with age, rheumy dark eyes, and a nearly toothless mouth.
Watson stopped short, and I stared.
“He’s definitely not—” I began.
A ragged beggar with matted grey hair and an equally matted beard that reached nearly to his waist shuffled up and took hold of Watson’s sleeve.
“Baksheesh, kind sir? Spare a coin for a poor old—”
“Not now!” Watson tried to shake the man off, but the beggar only clung more tightly, lowering his voice.
“Come, Watson, not a word of greeting for your old friend?”
Watson’s jaw dropped open, and even though I had been expecting something of the kind, I couldn’t help but stare.
“I judged it expedient to hire a decoy, just in case anyone else observed my message in the hotel registry and tried to attend today’s meeting,” Holmes said.