by Anna Elliott
He extracted a handful of coins from an inner pocket of his tattered cotton robe and dropped them into the decoy Holmes’s palm. He spoke a few words in Arabic to the elderly man, who bobbed his head, smiled, and then shuffled off with a reply in Arabic—probably a word of thanks for the new suit of clothes.
“Come,” Holmes said. “There is a convenient coffee house on the next street over, where we can speak in private and you can bring me up to date on what has occurred.”
CHAPTER 11: FLYNN
The house where Doctor Watson had been held prisoner was in Lavender Hill, just across from Clapham Common.
The house itself was clean and respectable enough from the outside. You’d never guess from the look of the place that a villain like Lord Sonnebourne owned it and used it for kidnapping and all sorts of other dirty business.
Beside him, Selim was eyeing the house, too.
This was a busy road, with carriages and wagons rolling past all the time, women shoppers out with baskets over their arms, and street vendors selling bunches of Christmas holly and mistletoe.
“The house looks deserted,” Selim murmured. “And surely the police have searched it before this?”
“Course they did. That’s why we’re here.” Flynn spoke with more confidence than he actually felt, hoping his theory was right. “Sonnebourne’s got a few places outside of London, and probably more than a couple inside the city, too. But Mr. Holmes—or Mr. Mycroft—have found them all and gone through them by now. Sonnebourne’s off in Egypt, now. He doesn’t have time to be buying new houses and helping his people set up shop in them. More likely he’d want to go back to a deserted place—someplace the police have already looked, and where he can be certain they wouldn’t look again.”
“I suppose.” Selim didn’t look as if he was convinced. “So what do we do?”
“We have a look around, of course.” Flynn was starting to wonder what exactly Selim had learned at his fancy university classes. “Quietly, though.”
The lock on the shutters that covered the window at the back of the house was an unusually tricky one; it took Flynn a couple of minutes of fiddling before he got it open. Selim, though, looked impressed.
“How did you learn to do that?”
“Practice,” Flynn said. “Now get inside before someone sees us.”
He’d picked out a window that was all the way around the other side of the house from the side that faced on the grey-haired neighbour’s property. But it was still even odds that someone—maybe even a copper—would walk by and spot them.
Selim ducked through the window, caught his heel on the sash, and went sprawling into the room. Flynn shook his head. If they both got through this operation without being arrested or worse, it was going to be a miracle.
Although on the other hand, they could be pretty certain the house was empty. The amount of noise Selim had just made falling on his face would have brought anyone inside the place running to see what the ruckus was.
Flynn scrambled over the sill, dropped to the floor, and pulled the window down behind him, pulling the curtains shut for good measure. The room was dim, but he could see they were in a small, narrow room. There were shelves along one wall filled with all sorts of bottles, but the only furniture was a kind of medical exam table—the kind Flynn and Selim had just slept on last night in Dr. Watson’s surgery—and a straight-backed wooden chair. The walls were bare white, except for a heavy portrait of an old man in a black suit and a neck-ruff, who was glaring out of the picture as if he’d been plotting to murder whoever was doing the painting.
Flynn’s heart sped up. He’d heard Dr. Watson talk about that portrait. He walked up, ran his fingers across the paint, then put his eye up to the spy hole he’d just found. He could see into the next room, just like Dr. Watson had said.
Selim asked, “What is it?”
“Not sure.”
The room next door wasn’t just an office anymore, the way it had been when Dr. Watson was held prisoner. There was a chemical apparatus set up on the desk—beakers and test tubes and a gas ring burner, the same as Mr. Holmes had in Baker Street.
“We need to go have a look at whatever’s in there, though,” Flynn said.
Somehow he didn’t think Farooq was just practicing chemical experiments from textbooks, the way Mr. Holmes did.
A painted black door led into the next room. Flynn stopped for a moment, listening, before heading over to the desk, but the house was still quiet.
“Potassium nitrate.” He read the label off of a small box. The box was empty, but there was a dusting of white powder inside. Flynn set it down, then turned to an empty bottle that also stood on the desk. “And sul—sulfuric acid? I don’t know what either of those do.”
“I do.” Selim looked like someone had just punched him in the stomach all over again. “I had a chemistry class last term at university. Potassium nitrate and sulfuric acid are the ingredients for making nitroglycerin, which is a highly powerful explosive. Farooq is manufacturing a bomb.”
For a second, Flynn’s breath went out like he’d just been struck, too. Then he pulled himself together and started to look around the room.
“What are you doing?” Selim’s voice sounded scared. “We need to get out of here. If Farooq comes back—”
“Then we’ll hear him coming and find someplace to hide—or get out through the window,” Flynn said. “But look—there’s no more potassium nitrate or sulfuric acid here, it’s all been used up. So where’s this nitro-glycerin stuff? If it’s here, we need to find it. What are we looking for, a liquid?”
“Yes. It is colourless, slightly oily.” Selim’s throat contracted as he swallowed. “But if you see anything of that kind, do not touch it, nitroglycerin is highly unstable. Even the slightest jolt can cause it to detonate.”
Flynn’s pulse skipped. This just got better and better. “No touching. Right.”
Working together, they went over the whole house, but they didn’t find any bottles or anything else the nitroglycerin could have been stored in.
At last Flynn straightened from where he’d been looking under the cast-iron stove in the kitchen and said, “The stuff’s not here.”
Selim tried to take a breath but turned green and clutched his middle. He’d probably got a couple of bruised ribs. Flynn knew from experience how much those hurt.
“What do we do now?”
“Get you some place where you can rest, for one thing.”
“Not Baker Street!” Selim looked scared. “I do not know for certain, but I think Farooq is having the place watched in case Mr. Holmes returns there.”
Flynn snorted. “As if Mr. Holmes would be that much of a mug. And no, we’re going to go to see a friend of mine.”
Becky had just barely agreed to let him come out tonight without her, since she’d grudgingly admitted that the two of them would stand out more than just Flynn on his own. But she’d still be awake, waiting to hear his report when he came back as he’d promised.
“Her brother’s a copper. We can tell him what we found here, and he’ll get the police searching for places where Farooq might have planted the bomb.”
Selim looked like he was hesitating, but finally he said, “All right. I will come.”
CHAPTER 12: WATSON
Holmes seemed to know the proprietor of the coffee shop, who escorted us to a back room concealed from the front of the establishment by a hanging beaded curtain. There, over tiny cups of a steaming dark brew, we gave Holmes an account of our meeting with Paul Archer.
Holmes listened in silence, his eyes half-lidded, and when we had finished, leaned back in his chair.
“So Dr. Olfrig is in Cairo.”
“Yes. His presence is unlikely to be for any innocent reason,” Watson said.
“Indeed. Especially when coupled with the fact that the German Foreign Minister is present in the city, as well.”
“Von Bulow is here?” I asked sharply.
“Suggestive, is
it not?” Holmes paused. “And you are to meet with Dr. Olfrig at the Cairo Museum this afternoon.”
“Unless you would have us do otherwise.”
“Not at all.” Holmes’s posture was still languid, but I detected a familiar gleam in his grey eyes. “I think a meeting with Dr. Olfrig—provided the conditions are right—could prove most instructive.”
“But you do not wish to accompany us?” Lucy asked.
“For the moment, I prefer to remain deceased in the eyes of the world, although I strongly suspect that the ruse will not have fooled Sonnebourne. Farooq may have been gulled with relative ease, but a man of Lord Sonnebourne’s intelligence must surely have doubts that our accident in London was genuine. However, he cannot be certain, nor is he aware of my exact location, and I would prefer that it remain so.”
Holmes considered a moment, then extracted a pencil and paper from his beggar’s robe and wrote a few lines on it. “This is the name of a man who may be of help to you when you arrive at the museum. He has recently been appointed Inspector of Monuments for Upper Egypt in the Egyptian Antiquities Service, and as such makes his residence in Luxor. But he is visiting Cairo for the Christmas season. He is also an old acquaintance of mine. Ask for him, and give him the note I have written. I believe he will be willing to assist in your plans.”
Sometime later, Lucy and I were mounting the steps to the Cairo Museum. Once home to a large hareem for hundreds of young Egyptian women, the palace now housed selected Egyptian artifacts, on a temporary basis, while a new and improved edifice for the main Cairo museum was being constructed.
“What is the name of the man Holmes told us to contact?” Lucy asked.
I took the folded paper Holmes had given me from my pocket and read aloud. “Howard Carter. I confess that I’ve never heard of him. And I’ve no idea how Holmes knows him.”
“I suppose we neither of us should be surprised that Holmes has helpful acquaintances even here, in Egypt,” Lucy said.
Archer met us inside the doors. “Watson, delighted to see you again. Come with me, Dr. Olfrig was delighted to hear that you were in Cairo and looks forward to meeting you again.”
“Does he indeed.” I took firmer hold of my temper. “Thank you for arranging the meeting.”
“He’s waiting for us in one of the display rooms,” Archer went on. “There’s a fundraiser going on—one of his fellow countrymen, a German archaeologist is putting on an … ah, demonstration. Of a kind.” Archer seemed a trifle nervous, and he cast a dubious glance at Lucy. “I’m afraid, though, that you may find it rather, ah, unpleasant.”
“Perhaps. But I imagine that I’ve seen worse,” Lucy said. She smiled at Archer, though, to take away the sting of the words and said, “Lead the way, Mr. Archer, we’re quite ready.”
The display room was crowded with people, all of whom were ogling a bespectacled old German doctor who had set himself up on a dais at the head of the room.
He stood beside a mummy, its torso and head affixed to a hand-cranked axle, and was turning it as though it were a roast on a spit.
The mummy spun slowly, unwinding the strips of gauze that formed its wrappings. The lower extremities had been the first to come free, and they flopped, stiff and awkward, the joints making creaking and cracking noises as the tendons and sinews ruptured.
The dead tissue that had once been a living woman of high birth now resembled a grotesque clown attempting to rouse itself.
“See how our noble lady dances for us!” said the German. “Not too rapidly, of course, for that would damage the connective tissue.”
Beside me, Archer’s face was pinched with distaste, but he threaded a way through the crowd, approaching a man the sight of whom made my blood run cold.
Dr. Clovis Olfrig straightened and turned at our arrival. Small and grey-haired, his eyes glittered behind wire-rimmed spectacles.
“Doctor Watson!” He stretched out a hand. “It is a pleasure to see you again.”
I felt my temper rising again. I wondered if this was some residual effect of the drug he had used three years ago to interview me. More likely, I thought, it was the result of seeing him for the first time after those three years. Being face to face with him could very well have triggered a great deal of hitherto-suppressed but highly justified resentment.
But whatever the cause, I had the sudden urge to strike the man.
“Likewise,” I told him.
“I’m sorry.” Lucy put her hand up to her forehead. “It must be the heat—or the—” she gestured to the mummy, now bared up to the tops of the legs. “I feel quite faint. Mr. Archer, would you mind …”
Paul, ever gallant, sprang to offer her his arm and to escort her from the room.
Olfrig watched them go, his expression benevolent. “Ah, it is perhaps not a sight for the delicate sensibilities of the fairer sex. But an excellent means of procuring funds to further our excavations here in Egypt. You would be surprised at what your countrymen will pay to witness the desecration of an ancient noblewoman’s remains.”
I ignored the implied insult. “The German government is interested in archaeological research?” I asked.
“The Kaiser is interested in all sciences that advance mankind’s knowledge!”
And the presence of German teams of excavators here in Egypt, I thought, offered an excellent source of cover for spying on the British troops stationed here and at the nearby Suez Canal.
But I refrained from saying as much out loud.
“Perhaps there is somewhere we might converse privately?” I asked.
Behind the lenses of his spectacles, Olfrig’s gaze was as hard and as speculative as that of a serpent. But he nodded. “By all means, Dr. Watson, by all means. The office of Herr von Bork”—he indicated the man in charge of unwrapping the mummy—“will be empty; we can go there.”
The office door was part way open. The little room was cluttered with broken bits of pottery and small stone statuary in the ancient Egyptian style. Shelves, a desk, and two visitor’s chairs were the only furniture.
“Now, Dr. Watson,” Olfrig said, seating himself behind the desk. “My condolences to you upon your loss of Mr. Holmes. I read about it in the papers.”
“A most unfortunate accident,” I said.
“And did you certify the death?” asked Olfrig. “As a man of science, I would have thought—”
I felt my emotions rise once again. But since that was precisely the response he was hoping to provoke in me, I allowed my anger to show this time. “Not appropriate,” I said. “Your question, I mean, is not appropriate. I will not discuss it.”
But the little grey-haired doctor was not to be put off so readily. “Of course, it would have been an emotional event for you to witness,” he said, “with you being his friend and close associate. I am merely curious as to whether you were able to put aside your natural feelings—”
“I am not here to gratify your curiosity,” I said.
“Ah.” Olfrig leaned back in his chair.
With the mummy unwrapping still going on downstairs, this area of the museum was entirely quiet, although I had failed to completely shut the door. Now I heard the sound of footsteps in the hall outside the office we were borrowing, but whoever it was passed by without coming in.
Olfrig put the tips of his fingers together. “That begs the question of why you are here? I should have thought that your memories of the time you spent in my care at my clinic in Bad Homburg would have, shall we say, deterred you from seeking out another meeting?”
I wanted to seize Olfrig by the lapels and haul him from his chair. I wanted to shatter that smug, officious confidence and turn it into fear.
But I said, evenly, “I met with Paul Archer at Shepheard’s Hotel this morning. He told me of your hopes for the antivenin venture.”
“And you wished to warn him against working with me?” Olfrig asked. “Or perhaps—now, here is a thought—you wish to offer your own services as a physician, so that you ma
y share in the profits? After all, with Mr. Holmes dead, you will have double your rent in Baker Street to pay.”
“You are deliberately trying to provoke me,” I said.
Olfrig’s face creased in a smile.
“Unfortunately for you,” I went on, “you have been so busy in attempting to goad me into losing my temper that you have neglected to notice that you are alone here with me. Or that my traveling companion has just joined us and is currently aiming a pistol directly at you from her vantage point outside in the hall.”
Lucy, having alerted me to her presence by walking past the office, had returned more silently and now pushed the door fully open. As I had stated, she had drawn her Ladysmith pistol and was aiming it directly at Dr. Olfrig’s heart.
I would not have been human if I had not felt satisfaction at the way the color ebbed from the doctor’s face, leaving it a sickly, mottled gray.
His hand made a jerky movement towards the pocket of his jacket, where I surmised he very likely had a weapon of his own.
“Oh, please do try it.” Lucy flicked the safety catch off her gun. “I will be delighted if you give me a reason to shoot you.”
Olfrig’s face blanched further and he moistened his lips with the tip of his tongue. “What is the meaning of this?”
“We want to know about Lord Sonnebourne,” I told him. “Why he is in Egypt, and where he is now.”
“I don’t know what you mean! I am here to conduct scientific research—”
“Spare me your lies,” I snapped. “You gave yourself away when you tried to provoke me by commiserating on Holmes’s death, which you had seen reported in the newspapers. There have been no such reports.”
The two days Lucy and I had spent in our required quarantine period upon arriving in Alexandria had given me ample opportunity of perusing the papers, looking for stories of Holmes’s death. There were none. Nor were there references to the Sons of Ra. The British papers seemed preoccupied with the growing unrest in South Africa, and the call in Parliament for a vast increase in the number of troops to be sent there to quell the Boers.