Roly-Poly pulled some twine from his pocket and tied Sherlock’s legs together at the ankles with a prowess and speed that said he had done this before, while Moon Face gathered large handfuls of pebbles which he deposited none too gently into Sherlock’s trouser pockets.
Ideal or not, this was the place. Although Sherlock’s ankles were bound and his legs weighted, it was time to act. He bit the briny hand that had been pressed down upon his lips. This he executed with less finesse and more beastly force than was perhaps warranted, for Gin pulled away, shrieking, so that Sherlock was forced to spit out a small but noticeable chunk of the boy’s right palm.
On his left, Ned tried to tug him off his feet, but Sherlock was too firmly planted. Even with his ankles bound, Sherlock had enough ballast to take full advantage of Ned’s weak right flank, landing his knuckles square on the underside of his tormentor’s tender jaw. Ned went down, though by that time Gin was coming back at him, filled with a homicidal fury over his gnawed hand, but Moon Face and Roly-Poly had apparently had enough. They each took Sherlock by an armpit, as they had at The Water Monkey, and shoved him to his knees so that his face dangled over the edge of the quay, the water perilously close below.
Sherlock was not keen on this plan, so he lunged forward and hurled himself into the drink. But with his ankles tied and his pockets filled with rocks, he could not manage to swim off quickly enough. Moon Face hurled himself upon the dock, reached down and grabbed him by the hair as Roly-Poly knelt beside his fellow, and both on their knees laid a hand upon his head as if performing a baptism.
“Goodbye, Basil,” Sherlock heard Moon Face say just before his ears went under. He had but one escape route, and that was to use their expectations against them. Very nearly out of breath, he allowed a few little air bubbles to escape his lips and rise to the surface, and then he went limp.
His lungs were screaming for relief, but he held on until he felt their hands loosen their grip on his hair, testing to see if he would sink. At that exact instant he arched himself up, took one long breath, and as they cursed and forced him back down again, he used their momentum combined with the weight of the rocks in his pockets to propel himself deeper into the water and out of their reach.
As their hands flailed above him, trying to snatch him back, he struggled against the weight of his sodden clothes and propelled himself away from them.
There was no breath left in him to try to loosen his bonds underwater. In the murky depths, Sherlock discarded his shoes and looked around, trying to keep panic at bay. At two arms’ lengths, he spied a corroded old ladder, attached to a concrete block too deep in the water to be helpful. He hurled himself at the ladder, grabbed onto it and with excruciating effort pulled himself up one rung at a time, while his saturated clothes fought against him every step.
He managed to lift himself out of the water just enough to draw a cleansing breath when a wave hit him. It was small, but it was enough: water shot up his nose and he began to gasp, while more water filled his mouth.
Even with his nostrils a few inches above the waterline, he was drowning.
* * *
Mycroft’s rented carriage had barely arrived at the docks when Douglas and Huan opened the doors and bolted out. Mycroft attempted to follow but made it only as far as the street before his legs collapsed out from under him. If it had not been for Ahn Zhang supporting him, he would have fallen.
He saw Douglas look back almost by instinct. “Stay where you are!” he called. “We will get him back!”
For once—and given that he had absolutely no choice in the matter—Mycroft did as he was told, for he knew he would do naught but hinder a search for his brother.
Zhang helped him back into the carriage. On the journey Mycroft had learned that it was Zhang who had witnessed Sherlock’s kidnapping; Zhang who had run without stopping from St. Katharine Docks to Nickolus House, a distance of more than three miles. The same Ahn Zhang whom Sherlock had disparaged.
“Thank you for what you did for my brother,” Mycroft said. “Neither he nor I deserve such kindness from a stranger.”
“Do not thank,” Zhang said in a tone that was both conciliatory and practical, “for he most likely dead now.”
With a nod of commiseration and goodbye, Zhang closed the carriage door.
* * *
St. Katharine’s was as familiar to Douglas and Huan as their own sitting rooms. They well knew all the places where water was deep enough for a ship, and where those with bad intent could be sure that a weighted-down body would sink to the bottom.
Sprinting to the location where Ahn Zhang had seen Sherlock last, it did not take them long to follow the most obvious path to such a place, and then to spot unusual behavior in the midst of the usual business of the docks—two Chinese and two Caucasian men were standing stock still and peering over the quayside, seemingly at nothing.
Douglas did not know the others, but he instantly recognized one of the white men: the hulking, pockmarked lad he had seen scurrying out of Beeton’s abode, the lad he and Mycroft had assumed was the master chimney sweep’s son.
“Sherlock is down there!” he said to Huan, indicating the water.
“You go!” Huan replied. “I will take care of them!”
“All four?” Douglas wondered skeptically, all too aware of what they had been through the night before.
Huan snapped his fingers dismissively. “Two are boys! And I slept good last night, ate plenty of bread and dripping this morning. Go now! Go go!”
Douglas removed his jacket and shoes and dove into the water, while Huan strolled silently but purposefully towards four men whose backs were turned to him.
For he, like Douglas, was an avid believer in the element of surprise.
* * *
Douglas was a powerful swimmer. But by the time he’d reached Sherlock and wrapped an arm about his chest, the latter was very nearly unconscious—though what little consciousness remained was as stubborn as a mule. At first, Douglas assumed that Sherlock either did not recognize him, or that he did not comprehend that he was trying to help: for the more Douglas tried to extricate him from the rusty ladder, the harder Sherlock held on.
“Let go!” Douglas shouted, but Sherlock’s fingers were all but welded to it, so that Douglas was forced to pry them loose. The moment he did so, and in spite of Douglas’s sustaining arm, Sherlock began to sink, and Douglas realized that he weighed a third again what he should.
“Breathe!” he commanded, and this time Sherlock tentatively obeyed, though Douglas could see that he was afraid.
While keeping the boy slightly raised so that his nose and mouth remained above the waterline, Douglas eased himself down into the murky water. He began to undo the twine about Sherlock’s ankles and emptied handfuls of pebbles from his pockets. Then he swam with his much lighter charge towards the shore.
* * *
Douglas pulled Sherlock onto dry land and looked around for Huan. Three men were down but the fourth one, a moon-faced Chinese man, was giving Huan trouble. He seemed quite strong and, above all, precise, which made Douglas wonder if it had been he who had made all those barbarous cuts to the Savage Gardens bodies.
Huan went down, and Douglas felt desperate. Even if he’d had the energy to throw himself into the fray, which he doubted, he could not leave Sherlock alone.
Then he saw two men running towards the skirmish. A moment before he panicked, thinking Huan was really done for, he realized who they were.
Customs agents.
Good, honest men who knew him, and by extension his friend Huan, very well.
The moon-faced man began to fight them by instinct until he too realized who they were, at which point he tried to flee. But they grabbed him and held him fast while Huan rose to his feet with his usual grin, looked around, and then waved to Douglas who—mightily relieved—waved back.
* * *
From the window of the carriage, Mycroft saw a lovely sight: Huan and a sopping-wet Douglas escort
ing a sopping-wet Sherlock to safety. Energized by the sheer joy and relief of it, Mycroft stumbled out of the open door, removed his jacket and put it about his brother’s shoulders. By way of thanks, Sherlock gave him a look of recrimination: I do hope my kidnapping did not inconvenience you overly much, it said as clearly as if he had spoken it aloud.
“Who did this?” Mycroft asked as he and Douglas helped Sherlock back into the carriage.
“Cainborn,” Sherlock croaked. “It was Cainborn all along.”
56
DURING THE TWO DAYS OF HIS CONVALESCENCE, IN THE room at Nickolus House that was becoming his by default, Sherlock entertained a parade of visitors, including McPeel and Ducasse, who crept in to inquire about his health. So relieved were they that he was on the mend that they spread the news to the other boys. They arrived en masse to Mr. Capps’ office, beseeching him that Sherlock—please, sir!—teach them again.
“Not in my near lifetime!” was Sherlock’s only response.
Mr. and Mrs. P. arrived with sausages, sweetmeats and other delicacies, while Parfitt and his aunt Mrs. Hudson brought baked goods and all the latest newspapers, freshly pressed. The twins, Asa and Eli Quince, brought nothing and said less, but stood like two sentinels at the foot of his bed, staring, until Sherlock shooed them away with a rather brusque, “Thank you for coming.”
Little George Fowler arrived with a statement he had prepared himself and delivered like a proclamation, so that Mycroft half expected it to lead with a hearty Hear ye, Hear ye! and end with a So Say We All.
“Thank you for wot you done for myself an’ for my bruvver Charles,” he declared, his somber little face nearly crushed with the weight of it. “If you ever needs anythin’ from me, alls you gots to do is ask.”
Even Mr. Capps came to wish Sherlock well, doffing his cap while his hair stood at attention.
* * *
Meanwhile Mycroft, aided by Douglas and a good pair of binoculars, had witnessed from a promontory the seizure of Orion’s Belt and all her cargo, along with the arrest of Ju-long Chen, known as Juju. Customs officers—acquaintances of Douglas—had then allowed him and Mycroft to board the Orion, where they found nearly a million pounds’ worth of Australian sovereigns, all dated 1857, and fifteen bisque dolls stuffed with “a narcotic of unknown compound.”
There would be no shortage of witnesses against the accused. The moment the head of the snake was cut off, they came scurrying out of their burrows like so many grateful rodents.
That same day, a message from an equerry to the Queen informed Mycroft that Professor John Cainborn had been arrested at his pied-à-terre, in the act of packing for a voyage to Sydney. Unfortunately for the good professor, ‘banksia’ sovereigns from 1857 had been found on his person.
That evening, Ai Lin sent a note, brought to Mycroft at Nickolus House by none other than William Angel:
You have restored the dignity of our family, and our love and devotion for one another.
My gratitude, Mr. Holmes, is boundless.
A.L.
Angel informed him that Ai Lin and her brother were on their way to Canton, there to remain with family until after Deshi Hai Lin had testified and their tormenters were put away once and for all.
It was for the best, Mycroft decided. He would not mourn. He would simply continue to be relieved for her, and grateful that he had been able to come to her aid.
* * *
Sherlock revealed his portion of the story at the close of those two days of respite. He was seated on the bed, appearing to Mycroft as if he dreaded even speaking of it, while Mycroft sat on the chair, feeling that perhaps he dreaded it more.
The year before, Sherlock had passed a rather brutal summer at home in the country with their parents, which was where he began his story: “Mother was weeping because of her terrible headaches, Father and I were not getting a wink of sleep; we were at the end of our tethers—”
“What about her laudanum?” Mycroft interrupted. “Was she not using it? And did you not tell me she had escalated to morphine?”
Again, he thought but did not say.
“Yes,” Sherlock replied, “but the relief was short-lived, and the headaches were of a potency and duration that not even morphine could touch. She was not pretending. She truly was in agony. After all this time, I can tell the difference.”
Mycroft sighed. He well knew the scenario. He heard in his head a child’s plaintive voice: Mama, do not die! Please, Mama! Do not die!
How long ago that had been.
Mycroft could not have been more than six years of age, as Sherlock had not yet been born. He could still see in his mind’s eye his mother’s nightdress lifted most unbecomingly.
Her stomach, filled to bursting with his future sibling, was the color of monkfish, as was her staring face. She lay on the floor, bubbles of spit forming in one corner of her lips, one of his father’s cravats wound tightly about her left arm, a rivulet of blood trailing from the crook of her elbow.
Papa! Papa!
It was nearly impossible for Mycroft to recall for certain if he had cried out, or if his father had simply appeared in the doorway, his face a mask of grief, one that would be chiseled in Mycroft’s memory, and then mirrored in his own face and that of his brother, for as long as they all drew breath.
He encouraged Sherlock with a nod to go on. “I was already experimenting on my own with concoctions and so forth,” Sherlock explained, “but there was so much I could not do, simply because I did not have the proper equipment. So by the autumn I took full advantage of the Cambridge laboratories, which were Cainborn’s domain. I can only say in my defense that I did not yet understand the complexities of addiction. I was simply attempting to cure Mother’s migraines and was rather enjoying the experiments.”
“Of what did they consist?”
“Oh, this and that, mixing morphine with various acids,” Sherlock hedged.
“Sherlock…” Mycroft said, his tone a warning.
“Very well, but you will not approve,” his brother said with stunning understatement. “I tried all sorts of combinations,” he explained. “And then at last I boiled acetic anhydride with anhydrous morphine alkaloid for several hours. It produced a more potent, acetylated form of morphine.”
“How do you know?” Mycroft asked.
“Because I injected it into my own arm,” Sherlock replied quietly. “No need for that face, Mycroft. I am given neither to morphine, nor to opium. And I would prefer that my using myself as a laboratory specimen remain between the two of us. But an experiment is an experiment, after all…”
Sherlock had no name for the resulting compound, but he knew it by look, taste and effect. More importantly, he was certain he could replicate it.
“It cured Mother’s headaches instantaneously. It had a much faster absorption rate and lasted nearly twice as long as the morphine. I was beside myself with relief: for her, for me, for Father, even for you, if you were ever to come around to visit…”
“And you shared your discovery with Cainborn,” Mycroft interrupted.
“Yes. But then very quickly, things at home deteriorated. Father was nearly mad with worry, for Mother had become hopelessly addicted. And I knew I had done that to her, I had made her worse. I told Cainborn of my findings, of course. I gave him the formula, thinking that he and I could attempt to come up with a concoction that would have the same efficacy but not be so addictive. When he said he would work on it, I believed him.
“Then at The Water Monkey, when I was forcibly injected, I thought I recognized the sensation, but I dismissed it. Perhaps someone had done what I had done, spent weeks and weeks in a laboratory, attempting all sorts of combinations until they hit upon the right one. I simply did not wish to believe I had been so betrayed. For here I was, hunting for a formula that would prove as powerful but less addictive, only to realize that for Cainborn, strength was but half the equation. The other half was the addiction! In any event, on Friday 22 November, I thought I had foun
d the key. I did not wish to have more signs of usage on my arms, for I had already scarred myself in the former experiments, so I injected between my toes. It was then that I realized I had succeeded only in formulating an even stronger concoction. I was heartsick. I sent a note to Cainborn, informing him of my desire to destroy the experiment and any traces thereof. But he insisted on meeting me the following day at the laboratory. He persuaded me to take him through the steps of the newest compound. That is why he did not leave for Sydney that day! He knew I’d made something even more powerful, and he wished to possess it!”
“You were experimenting on one of the twins…” Mycroft said.
“I assumed you would notice,” Sherlock replied. “Asa was already addicted to morphine. I was simply trying to provide him the same effect while lowering the addiction and symptoms of withdrawal. I was unsuccessful. Alas, Mycroft, much as I would wish it, I am no scientist.”
“I am not certain at the moment what you are, Sherlock,” Mycroft said softly. “I do know you have a rather careless way with human beings.”
“As do you, brother,” Sherlock said in a tone that was almost gentle. Then suddenly his eyes were swimming in tears. “Why did you not come to my aid, Mycroft? You are the strongest swimmer I know. Why send Douglas to do what you could have so easily done?”
Mycroft’s heart was beginning to pound again, so loudly that he was afraid Sherlock would hear it. Say nothing! Mycroft warned himself. If you tell him, you are simply adding to his burden!
“Sherlock,” he said. “You are going to have to believe that I love you. Most often in the absence of concrete proof.”
With that, he rose from the chair and left the room.
As he closed the door, he could hear Sherlock beginning to sob, a rare sound indeed.
Mycroft made his slow but steady way down the stairs to the kitchen of Nickolus House. Douglas was already abed, a well-deserved rest—as was Huan, and the boys and the servants, all asleep.
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