by Cavan Scott
With no one else to turn to, I knew there was at least one man I could rely on, one man who would never turn me away. Stepping into the road, I hailed a cab.
“Where to, guv?” the cabbie asked, scratching absently at well-established ginger whiskers.
There was only one destination left open to me. “The Diogenes Club,” I instructed. “And hurry.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THE STRANGER’S ROOM
It was almost noon when the car pulled onto Pall Mall. The drive across town had been erratic to say the least, my driver seeming to have very little understanding of road safety, or indeed the width of his car. Nevertheless, he had conveyed me to my destination and I felt a flutter of excitement to be back among familiar streets.
“There,” I said, leaning forward in my seat. “That door, near the Carlton.”
“Right you are, guv,” said the cabbie, pulling over. “Do you need me to wait?”
I exited the vehicle, pushing a handful of coins into the driver’s open hand. “That won’t be necessary. Here, keep the change.”
“Much obliged,” the cabbie said, driving off to leave me outside an anonymous building with a navy-blue door. Finding the door locked, I rang the bell, waiting for what seemed an eternity before it was opened.
The doorman was a gentleman of African descent, with three lines of ritualistic scars carved across his dark cheeks. If I had never visited this place before I might have been taken aback by the fellow’s aspect, but, while not a regular visitor, I had made enough jaunts to this particular establishment to find nothing out of the ordinary in his appearance.
“Dr Watson,” the doorman intoned, as if he had seen me only yesterday rather than the ten years it had actually been. The gatekeeper to the Diogenes prided himself on a photographic memory for names and faces.
“Sapani, thank heavens,” I exclaimed. “I have never been more pleased to see anyone in my life. Is he here?”
Sapani nodded and bade me enter. Without a word, he closed the door behind me, and gestured to take my hat and coat. I allowed him to do so, remaining absolutely silent myself, and was led along a long hallway lined with glass panels. Through the windows I could see men sitting in booths, their collective heads stuck in the pages of books and newspapers. No one spoke. No one even showed any inkling that others were present. Such was the way of this remarkable institution. Within its hallowed walls, members were required to remain completely and utterly silent. To speak but one word would bring a stinging rebuke from the committee. To speak again was unthinkable. To commit a third offence was to risk immediate and permanent expulsion. It was the perfect place for the antisocial and awkward, a sanctuary where human contact was discouraged and interaction illegal. If a chap had secrets, it was the perfect place to keep his lips tight, which was probably why the man I sought spent so much time within its chambers.
Sapani led me into a small room and, nodding once, exited, shutting the door behind him. I let out a sigh, relieved to find myself within the Stranger’s Room, the only chamber in the building where noise was permitted. While Holmes had told me time and time again that he considered the atmosphere of the Diogenes Club to be relaxing, I found the place positively stifling. I found it hard even to breathe while walking its corridors, and fought the urge to shout nonsense at the top of my voice simply to break the oppressive silence.
Whatever I thought of the club, at that moment, it had become my own personal haven. For the first time that day I had not been turned away, treated like an irritation or threatened with my life. What’s more, as I heard footsteps so heavy that not even the Diogenes’ thick carpets could soften them, I knew that help was, finally, at hand.
The door opened, and a corpulent figure strode in, wearing both an ill-fitting black suit and a look of great concern. “John, my dear fellow,” he said, crossing over to me and extending a vast hand. “I am so glad you have come. Please take a seat.”
He showed me to one of two severe chairs that rested beside an empty fireplace and lowered himself onto the nearest seat. This was a man who was designed for sitting down, although usually his chairs of choice were considerably more robust.
“Now tell me,” said Mycroft Holmes, ignoring the creak beneath his considerable bulk, “where the Dickens is my brother?”
“That is exactly what I hoped you could tell me,” I admitted, and proceeded to recount the entire sorry tale. Mycroft listened, his jowls quaking as he nodded at every twist and turn. Finally, after my account had reached my arrival in the Stranger’s Room, I fell silent, waiting for Mycroft to comment.
Instead, my friend’s older sibling merely sat and stared at me for longer than was strictly comfortable before reaching into his jacket pocket and drawing out a cigarette case. “Will you join me?” he asked, flipping open the case with large fingers.
I resisted the temptation, having turned my back on the habit a few years previously following a bout of bronchitis, and watched the elder Holmes go through the ritual of lighting a cigarette and drawing a thick plume of smoke into his lungs.
“I had rather hoped,” he eventually said, “that conversations such as these would have come to an end when Sherlock retired.”
I took the comment with more than a pinch of salt, knowing how much Mycroft had relied on his brother – especially during the war – since Holmes’s so-called retirement. Even after all this time, I was unsure exactly what position Mycroft held at Whitehall, but I knew enough not to ask. I was also aware that the two brothers corresponded regularly, Mycroft often employing his younger sibling’s unique talents in matters of national security.
“Something has happened to him, Mycroft. I know it has.” Mycroft sighed. “Very well. Leave it with me.”
“Thank you, Mycroft. They were hiding something, the people at Charing Cross Hospital, that much was obvious.”
“Don’t you worry about that. Don’t you worry about anything.”
“It’s just so damned frustrating that those ruffians took the bone. If I could only make a proper study—”
“John, let the matter rest.”
Mycroft’s tone gave me pause. There had been a change, almost imperceptible. The kindness that had been evident was gone, replaced by steel. He was no longer advising me, he was delivering a command.
“I can’t,” I insisted. “Inspector Tovey asked us to help him.”
“But as you say, Inspector Tovey is away on another investigation—”
“A damned convenient investigation. I can’t help but think—”
“And that is your problem, Doctor.” So, it was “doctor” now, not John. “You over-think matters. It’s an unfortunate by-product of spending so much time with my brother.”
I could hardly believe what I was hearing. “Mycroft, you’re talking as if I don’t know you, that I haven’t worked with you on numerous occasions.”
“Your services to King and Country are beyond reproach, Doctor. In fact, only the other day your name was mentioned at the highest level.”
“It was?”
“I shouldn’t say this, of course, but you’re to be offered a knighthood. Sir John Watson. How does that sound?”
It sounded like one thing, and one thing alone. I know what people say of me. Dr Watson is an idiot. A bumbling fool eclipsed by the genius that is Sherlock Holmes. Granted, it is a reputation that I have no doubt reinforced in my stories, reducing my own part in proceedings to that of a stooge for my friend’s great powers – but I knew what was happening here. So far today I had been warned off by devils and ignored by those who I had hoped were working on the side of the angels. Now, sitting in this small room on Pall Mall alongside a man whom I would have trusted with my life, I was being bribed. There was no warmth in Mycroft’s revelation, no joy. It was a statement of fact. Run along like a good boy and you’ll get a treat. Arise Sir John, neutered lapdog to the authorities. I had served my purpose, and for reasons that I could not begin to fathom, I was being dismissed.
> I felt sick to my stomach, but all the time Mycroft kept talking.
“Just because my brother continues to refuse the honour, there is no reason why His Majesty’s government should not recognise your part in the defence of the realm. Of course, officially the honour will be given for services to literature and medicine—”
“But we know the truth, eh, Mycroft,” I interrupted. “Secrets and scandals.”
For the first time in our interview, for that was what it had become, Mycroft looked uncomfortable, and it was not the chair that brought about his lack of ease.
“Quite so. Now, I am sure you will want to go home and tell Mrs Watson the good news. She will no doubt be after a new dress for the investiture. I hear good things about that Selfridges place, although I have never been there myself.”
“Yes, we shall want to look our best, won’t we? When I accept my thirty pieces of silver.”
“John?”
“And I’m John again. All friends together. No doubt you will be inviting me to join this august institution next. ‘Come in, come in. Now, pull up a chair, sit down and keep your mouth shut.’”
“Doctor, I would ask you to lower your voice.”
“You’re asking me to do more than that. No, not asking – instructing!” I stood, my chair scraping across the floor. “Go away, John. Keep quiet, John. Mind your own business, John.”
Now it was Mycroft’s turn to stand. His mouth was a thin line and, strangely, I realised that he looked more like his brother when he was angry than in repose.
“Doctor, that is enough!”
“Is it? I don’t think so. I came to you for help. I came to you because your brother – my friend – is missing. Yesterday, I thought he was dying. Today, for all I know, he is lying in a mortuary, and the worst thing of all is not that he may have died, although by God it breaks my heart even to say those words, but that I think you know where he is.”
“I assure you, I have no—”
“Liar.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I think you know what has happened to Holmes. You knew before you came into this room. Everyone I’ve talked to, Inspector Tovey, Dr Gibbs, even that nurse, they’ve all mysteriously disappeared. New cases in Cornwall, holidays to the coast. And now you want me to disappear too? To run home, so grateful that you have deigned to bestow an honour on me that I forget what I have seen and heard; that I forget who I am!”
The door opened and Sapani stepped in. I must have been shouting by the end of my diatribe, my voice carrying beyond the Stranger’s Room, but I cared not one iota. Let them all hear.
“Is everything as it should be, Mr Holmes?” the doorman asked.
“Unfortunately not,” I replied on Mycroft’s behalf.
The elder Holmes fixed me with another icy stare.
“You are tired, Doctor. Exhausted even. It is not surprising. You suffered a blow to the head—”
“Oh, so you are a doctor now, are you? And what do you prescribe?”
“That you go home and get some rest.”
“Or what, Mycroft? What will happen if I don’t? Do you know what the curious thing is? I should feel safe here with you. An old friend, an ally, and yet I would rather take my chances with those thugs who broke into my practice this morning. At least they were honest in their villainy. At least they didn’t try to sugar-coat the poison.”
“Dr Watson,” Sapani said, softly. “I think you should leave.”
“Don’t worry, I’m going,” I said, delivering one last glare in Mycroft’s direction before I thundered out of the room, Sapani stepping aside. “And thank you for your kind and generous offer, Mycroft,” I shouted over my shoulder, well aware that I would be attracting shocked glances from the members reading their newspapers on the other side of the glass. “But I would rather choke than accept any ‘honour’ from a man who obviously has none of his own.”
“Dr Watson, please,” Sapani implored, but I marched ahead, reckless of the club’s rules and regulations. I stood seething as the doorman returned my hat and coat. I snatched them, making sure I bade a loud farewell to Mycroft who was standing at the other end of the corridor, his usually ashen face flushed with fury.
“Goodbye, Mycroft,” I shouted, my chest puffed out with indignation. “Enjoy your silence and communal solitude. I hope it will give you the opportunity to think about what you have done!”
Sapani opened the door of the Diogenes Club and I exited gladly, in desperate need of fresh air, no matter how inclement the weather. As the door closed gently behind me, a sound somehow as deafening as if it had been slammed, I stood on the pavement, leaning on my cane, my breast heaving with short, angry breaths.
So that was the way of it. I understood now. I was alone, but I knew what I must do.
I stepped forward, hailing a cab. One pulled over to the kerb immediately, the driver cheerfully asking my destination.
“Where to, guv?”
My blood ran cold. It was the same smiling face as before, the same thick ginger beard. It was the cabbie who had brought me from Charing Cross not an hour before. A coincidence? I would have said so yesterday, maybe even a few hours ago. Now, suspicions raged in my mind. Mycroft had known what was going on, I was sure of it. His eyes had told me that, even if his words had not. What if Sapani really had expected to greet me when he opened the door? What if Mycroft had known I was coming all along, what if he had been tipped off? Had I stumbled into a web of lies? Holmes and I had seen enough conspiracies in our time to recognise one as it closed around us. Around me.
“No thank you,” I said to the driver with forced jocularity. “The rain is easing. I think I shall walk.”
“All the way home, sir?”
Yes, because that was where they wanted me to go. Home. To share my good fortune with my wife.
I touched the brim of my hat.
“That will be all. Thank you.”
“Please yourself,” the driver sniffed. “You wouldn’t catch me walking the streets today. It’ll be the death of you.”
I watched him drive off. Did his parting comment contain another threat? It was hard to tell – and if it did, where had it originated? From the thugs who invaded my rooms, or the government man behind the anonymous blue door? There was very little between them at present.
Glancing around myself, I pulled up the collar of my coat and set out.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THE SCENE OF THE CRIME
When I finally reached Wapping High Street, having trudged along the streets for nearly an hour and a half, I was cursing my stubbornness. I could have hailed another cab along the way, but there was no way of knowing whom I could trust, not today. Better that they thought I was walking home.
The thought of home brought with it a pang of guilt. Perhaps I should have tried to contact my wife, but what could I have done? Should I have stopped at a random door, hoping that the occupants would let me use their telephone? I could have sent a telegram, but what would it say? And she would have no way to reply, no means of letting me know that she was safe. No, I would continue on the path I had chosen and, I hoped, return to her before evening. No good would come of worrying her unduly.
“Come now, John,” I muttered to myself as I took the alleyway beside the Hoop and Grapes. “You’re just a man taking a stroll.”
The ludicrousness of the statement made me chuckle as I carefully descended to the river’s edge. All pretence of humour evaporated, however, as I set eyes on Abberton Hospital. I had hoped never to set foot in the building again, but I knew what I had to do.
Glancing at the boats that chugged by on the water, I walked purposely towards the accursed place, my right hand deep in my coat pocket, clutching the torch I had purchased en route as if it were a lucky charm.
This time there was no need to jemmy the lock. The front door to the hospital swung open easily and, clicking on the torch, I stepped into the lobby. Nothing had changed. I am unsure why I thought it might have.
The same dust and litter on the floor greeted me, although there were more footprints now, most probably those of the police officers whom Tovey had called to whisk us to Charing Cross following our altercation with the monstrous man on the second floor. I sent the beam of light up the stairs. That was where I was heading, back to where the nightmare had taken place.
I was steeling myself to make the ascent when the front door slammed shut behind me. I spun around, illuminating the door with the torch’s beam. I waited, expecting a creak on the step, or maybe for the handle to turn, but when neither came, I strode forward to fling the door open again.
No one was there.
“Nervous old fool,” I murmured, heading back in. “Must have been the wind.”
This time I didn’t wait but marched up the stairs, swallowing any trepidation I felt. I had survived much in my life, both on the battlefield and in the streets of London. What had I to fear from a forgotten building?
Repeating this mantra, I climbed to the second floor and, not stopping to think, pushed through the swing doors, into the corridor where we had attempted to trap a monster and tasted its wrath. Yet things had changed.
I swept the torch around. The light bulbs and cables were gone. I hurried to the room where the curious dynamo had been stored. It too was missing. I inspected the two bedrooms that had been occupied. The sheets were gone from the woman’s bed, as was the novel from the chamber opposite. In fact, the floors were free of dust. I bent closer to see. Yes, they had been swept clean, the rusting bed-frames and the overturned chairs pushed neatly against the walls.
Had it been the police, gathering evidence? Since when had His Majesty’s constabulary tidied up after themselves so meticulously?