by Anna Elliott
She was right. If they’d wanted Mr. Mycroft dead, they wouldn’t have bothered having an ambulance ready to drive him here. So they must want him alive for something.
The soles of Flynn’s boots both had holes in them and the slush was coming in, freezing his toes. But he barely noticed it. He had a bad feeling that he knew why they’d want Mr. Mycroft alive.
The snow was picking up, making it hard to see. But he could make out bars on all the lower-level windows of the brick house, and a lot of the upper ones, as well.
“Look, there’s another gate here at the back—” Becky started to say, then stopped.
Flynn froze, too, momentarily forgetting about the snow and the cold. A carriage had just pulled up to the back gate, and a couple of men had hopped out.
One unlocked the gate and pushed it open, and the other one dragged the third passenger of the carriage out and started to push him towards the back entrance.
There was a lantern hanging over the back door, so that even through the swirling snow, Flynn got a look at the third man’s face.
It was Selim.
CHAPTER 23: FLYNN
One of Selim’s eyes was swollen and he had blood running down his chin. He was stumbling along, looking barely aware of where he was going—probably because of the beating he’d clearly gotten.
The two men shoved Selim through the back door and shut it behind them with a bang.
Flynn swallowed hard, feeling like his feet had just been glued to the pavement.
He might not have moved for who knew how long, but Becky grabbed hold of his arm, dragging him away at a run.
“Come on!”
It was several blocks before he realised that they weren’t heading in the direction of Scotland Yard, and that they’d just passed by the Savile Row.
“Where are we going? Why aren’t we telling the police about this?”
“Don’t you see?” Becky’s hair was wet, plastered to her face with melted snow, and her lips were starting to turn blue with cold. “We can’t go to the police! If they’ve got Selim, that means that something must have happened to Constable Polk. They got past him, and took Selim. Constable Polk is an experienced officer, and he was on the lookout for any trouble. How do you think anyone would manage to get past his guard and attack him?”
Flynn saw where she was heading, and he didn’t at all like it. But he could follow the line of reasoning just as well as she could. “He’d have trusted someone he knew—another police officer.”
“Exactly. We already know that Sonnebourne had police constables working for him—Dr. Watson was attacked by one in Lavender Hill. And Jack won’t be back at Scotland Yard, not yet. What happens if we go there, and we pick the wrong person to tell about all of this? Or if whoever we tell tells someone else, someone who’s in Sonnebourne’s pay?”
Flynn nodded. The cold feeling inside him was getting worse, and he would have loved to find someone else to take charge. Trying to rescue Mr. Mycroft and stop a bombing plot felt far too big a job to tackle on their own. But he could also see Becky’s point.
“So what do we do?”
Becky wiped melted snow from her eyes. “We rescue Mycroft ourselves. But first we have to send a telegram to Mr. Holmes. He gave me an address in Aswan where they’d pass any messages on to him. Just in case”—her voice wobbled a bit, but she firmed her chin and went on—“in case things go wrong and something happens to us, he needs to know what we’ve found out about Farooq mentioning Ahmed ʻUrabi.”
CHAPTER 24: ZOE
With her back propped up against a rough block of granite, Zoe tried not to fall asleep. What time was it? Two o’clock in the morning? Three?
She’d already made the discovery that however hot the climate of Egypt was during the day, the nights could turn cold. She shivered and wished she had a watch or some other way of telling time. No, strike that. If a convenient genie happened to pop up from the ancient ruins behind her, offering to grant wishes, she wouldn’t waste one of them on a wristwatch.
They were still on the island of Philae. She had watched Morgan and Sonnebourne depart, returning to the dahabeeyah on Reis Hassan’s skiff. She had held her breath, then, fear filling her entire body as she waited to see whether anyone would notice the missing rowboat that she and Safiya had taken.
But likely thanks to the dark and Sonnebourne’s probable insistence that they hurry, no one apparently had.
The dahabeeyah had pulled up its anchor and moved off, slipping quietly through the dark waters of the Nile and vanishing into the night.
Her absence and that of Safiya would be discovered eventually. That was a certainty. Zoe hoped they might have until morning, but she couldn’t count on it. And when their escape was discovered, she doubted Sonnebourne would have to think very hard about where to start his search.
Safiya, probably still suffering the lingering effects of all the opium, had fallen asleep and was huddled in the bottom of the rowboat. While she slept, Zoe had scrambled over a good deal of the island, exploring as best she could in the dark and trying to formulate some sort of plan.
They couldn’t stay here, although there were plenty of places amongst the ruins where they could hide. But a thorough search would doubtless reveal them. She could make out a few mud huts of a village on the east bank, amongst a grove of palm trees. But she doubted her own ability to row the boat that far, especially in the dark. The short trip from the dahabeeyah to the island had been enough to prove that rowing a boat against a strong current was a good deal harder than it looked.
Their best option so far as Zoe could see was to make for the nearby island on the western side of Philae—a rugged, mountainous shape barely visible in the dark, it was divided from Philae by a channel so narrow that she could hear the occasional bleat of a goat from the village there.
As soon as it was light enough that the village inhabitants would be awake, she would rouse Safiya and help her across the channel—surely they could swim that far—and beg help from the villagers. It wasn’t perhaps the most comprehensive of plans, but at least Safiya spoke the language; she would be able to explain what they needed—
Zoe started in alarm, her heart skipping at a sound from somewhere close by: the roll of a pebble, dislodged by someone’s foot.
At least, she thought that was what she’d heard. She held her breath, feeling as though her insides had been scooped out and replaced with clumps of ice. Maybe it had only been a bird, or some other night animal …
No, they were human footsteps, and approaching the small rocky cove where she and Safiya were hidden.
Heart hammering, Zoe stooped, feeling about on the ground, and picked up a solid chunk of rock. Not much of a weapon, but the best she could do.
She held very still, nerves stretching as she listened to the footsteps come closer … closer still … and then stop.
A familiar voice spoke.
“While I generally approve of precautionary measures, it will delay our departure considerably if you club me over the head.”
For one wild moment, Zoe thought that the strain had been too much for her over-tired brain, and that she had gone from imagined conversations with Sherlock to actually hallucinating his presence here.
But then he stepped closer, near enough that a shaft of moonlight fell on the familiar outlines of his sharp, hawk-like features.
He glanced at Safiya, still asleep in the rowboat, and nodded. “Ah, she is with you. That is fortunate.”
What was also fortunate, Zoe thought, was that she hadn’t made the mistake of expecting any heartfelt declarations of relief at Holmes’s having found them. His expression, too, was familiar: the impenetrable calm, the gaze that gave rather less away than if he’d been wearing the smoked glasses favoured by scarlet fever victims.
Although she thought there was a faint—a very faint—tension about the edges of his mouth that might mean he was angry. He probably would be angry with her, she thought, even if he would never be hum
an enough to admit it. Angry that she’d let herself be taken captive. For demanding to take part in the investigation that had brought them all here.
She swallowed and managed to find her voice. “What are you doing here?”
Holmes’s brows hitched up a fraction of an inch at the question. “I credit your ingenuity enough that I assumed you would attempt an escape at some point in the journey. I have been following Sonnebourne’s route, attempting to catch up to you. Asking questions amongst the locals here produced the knowledge that lights had been seen on this island earlier tonight, which led me to assume that Sonnebourne must have scheduled an assignation here. Since those circumstances would have given you your best opportunity to escape, I concluded it probable that you would have seized the chance and attempted to get away. As I see you have done.”
Zoe opened her mouth, then closed it again, trying to decide whether to be relieved or offended that Holmes could predict her movements with enough accuracy that her every thought must be an open book to him.
He would undoubtedly say that particular debate was immaterial. Her own feelings about Holmes didn’t matter; what mattered was getting them all safely off this island before Sonnebourne returned.
“My only uncertainty was whether you would have been able to engineer Miss Todros’s escape along with your own,” Holmes went on. “But I see you have accomplished that, also. Well done.”
He evidently had his temper well under control again, and it was the final two words—uttered in the tone of voice he might have used for praising one of his irregulars—that made Zoe forget the resolve to ignore her own feelings.
“Having allowed yourself that incredibly effusive show of emotion, would you care to tell me what you think our next move should be?”
Holmes’s brows rose again, and she let out her breath. She should know that remarks like that where Holmes was concerned were a waste of energy.
“I would suggest first of all that we allow the current to carry the boat you purloined from Sonnebourne’s dahabeeyah away from here,” Holmes said. “If they find it several miles downriver, it may confuse their attempts to search. We can depart in the boat I used to come ashore, which is moored on the western side of the island.”
“Fine,” Zoe said.
She crouched down, taking hold of Safiya’s shoulder and gently shaking her awake.
“Safiya?”
The girl’s big dark eyes looked up at her, dazed.
“A … A friend of mine has found us,” Zoe said. “He’s going to help us get away from here, but you’ll need to get up and come with us to his boat.”
Whether it was the accumulated effects of the drugs given her or sheer, simple exhaustion, Zoe didn’t know, but Safiya didn’t argue or even ask any questions. With Zoe’s help, she obediently stood up and climbed out of the rowboat, though she sat down again almost at once on a boulder.
Holmes shoved the rowboat off the patch of rocky shoreline and then several feet more out into the current. It bobbed and bumped, then was carried away.
Holmes splashed back to them.
He was wearing Egyptian dress, Zoe noted: a long striped robe, belted at the waist by a length of camel-hair rope, and sandals.
“We had best make haste,” he said. “I would estimate that we have anywhere between one and four hours before your escape is discovered, and it would be as well to be as far away from here as possible when that discovery occurs.”
He still sounded as though he were commenting on the weather or asking Mrs. Hudson to bring him a second cup of tea.
Zoe opened her mouth, then closed it again.
She’d learned a long time ago that it was pointless to blame Holmes for the way his mind worked. Not only pointless, but unfair, even.
Sherlock Holmes had never represented himself to be anything like an ordinary man; he was simply not made that way. The famous Egyptian Sphynx was positively chatty and communicative compared to Holmes.
She put an arm around Safiya, helping the girl to stand. “You lead and we’ll follow,” she said.
With Holmes in the lead, they skirted their way around the edge of the island.
Philae’s history must have been a long and fascinating one. The moon’s silver light was enough to show the lotus columns and ruined bas-reliefs of Egyptian animal-headed gods, occasionally even with fragments of the original blue and green and yellow paint remaining—and among them, Zoe saw occasional inscriptions in Greek, and a carved Greek cross that made her think the temples here must have once been adopted and adapted into a place of Christian worship.
And maybe one day, when she wasn’t terrified, exhausted, and half frozen by the cold night breeze blowing off the river, she would come back in order to appreciate them.
Tonight, she hadn’t much attention to spare. She had to help Safiya, who kept stumbling, while also keeping her own footing on the broken and uneven ground—and she was so preoccupied that when Holmes stopped, she almost walked straight into him, and only caught herself about an inch from his back.
“What is it?” she whispered.
Holmes had stiffened, his head lifting as though he were listening, although Zoe heard nothing at all save the soft lap of the waves on the shore and the occasional trill of a night bird.
The crack of the gun was so sudden, so alien in the night stillness that it took a moment for Zoe to even process what it was—and by that time, Holmes had already been spun sideways by the bullet’s impact and collapsed on the ground.
CHAPTER 25: FLYNN
“I think it’s dark enough now,” Flynn said.
He and Becky were sitting at a corner table in a grubby fish and chips shop across the street from Hyde Park—the only place they’d been able to find where they could keep out of the cold and the snow and not attract too much attention.
They’d had to buy a couple of portions of fried fish and soggy chips, which they weren’t even pretending to eat anymore. But at least the owner of the place was willing to leave them alone, especially since there weren’t any other customers.
Becky turned to look through the shop’s window at the street outside. It was almost night, and Flynn’s skin was crawling with impatience to get back to the sanatorium. But they’d talked it over and agreed that they didn’t have much choice but to wait until nightfall.
Their odds of getting into the place without being caught weren’t any that Flynn would have put money on. But trying it during the daylight hours would have shrunk those odds down to nil.
“All right,” Becky said.
She got up, pushing away her newspaper wrapped parcel of food. Flynn folded his packet back up and stuffed it into his pocket.
“What?” He shrugged in answer to Becky’s look. “No sense letting it go to waste.”
There were lots of times he’d been hungry enough that cold fish and soggy chips would have sounded like a feast.
It was still snowing as they trudged back towards Hertford Street. Every carriage that rolled past splattered them with the freezing cold slush that sprayed off the wheels.
“Think Mr. Holmes got the telegram we sent him?” Flynn asked.
“I hope so.” Becky bit her lip. “Jack can’t have got the one I sent him, though, or he’d already be here.”
That had been Becky’s idea, to send a second telegram off to her brother at Scotland Yard. She’d written the message in code so that only Jack would be able to read it, and she’d told him where they were and what had happened.
“What’s this murder case he was called out on, anyway?” Flynn asked.
“I don’t know, Jack isn’t allowed to tell me any details. But I overheard him on the telephone, when the call came in, and the dispatcher on the other end said something about the dead man being one of the guards at the Palace of Westminster.”
Flynn frowned, because an idea was tugging at the back of his mind, and staying just out of reach when he tried to think about what it was.
They’d reached the big iro
n gates of the sanatorium, though.
“What do you think—around back?” he asked.
Becky looked up and down the street. There weren’t many pedestrians about, not in this kind of weather, but there were still carriages rolling past, carrying all the rich people who lived nearby to and from their fancy teas and dinner parties.
She nodded. “Good idea. What do we do when we get there?”
“Try to climb over?”
The iron railing was well over the top of Flynn’s head. But whoever had designed it hadn’t been trying very hard to keep out intruders, because it had curly bits all over it that would make for decent foot holds.
As soon as they’d rounded the corner behind the sanatorium, Flynn jumped and caught one of the bars near the top of the railing.
There was a big-ish square of lawn here, with some evergreen trees that would screen them from the view of anyone in the house.
He planted his boot on the fence and started to pull himself up.
Woof!
Behind the iron fence, a huge dog—even bigger than Becky’s Prince and a whole lot meaner—lunged at him, barking and snarling and showing a mouthful of yellow teeth that each looked the size of one of Flynn’s pinky fingers.
Flynn bit his tongue trying not to yell, let go of the railing, and sprang back, his heart hammering.
So that explained why they weren’t too worried about people climbing the fence.
At least no one else came out to investigate, and the dog had stopped barking now that Flynn was off the fence.
Flynn gulped down a shaky breath and pulled the packet of fish and chips he’d saved out from his pocket.
“Here, boy. Good dog.”
He took out one of the chips and crouched down, inching back towards the fence with his hand holding the food outstretched.
Becky stared at him. “What are you doing? You hate dogs!”
“Yeah, well, I’m not too keen on the idea of Selim and Mr. Mycroft being stuck in there, either, with whoever’s kidnapped them.”