Young Sherlock: Night Break

by Andrew Lane

  They stopped outside the large building on a small hill that Sherlock had seen from the train. Sherlock tried to pay using the Egyptian money he had picked up on the Princess Helena, but the driver shook his head regretfully.

  ‘Only company money,’ he said. ‘Nothing else can be used in this town.’

  ‘Company money?’ Sherlock questioned.

  Phillimore nodded. ‘It’s common in large construction projects like this,’ he explained. ‘The company print their own money and pay the workers with it. The company money is only usable in the company shops and in the company town, which means that the workers have to stay there and the company get their money back again.’

  ‘That ain’t fair,’ Matty said. ‘It’s like slavery, only you get paid for it.’

  ‘It’s the way of the world,’ Phillimore said. ‘Large projects such as this would not be completed on time and to budget otherwise.’

  Matty delved in his pocket and pulled out a handful of paper. He looked at it, nodded, then handed one of them to the driver. He in turn inspected it carefully and then tucked it inside his robe. With a nod to them, he drove off.

  ‘Where did you get that?’ Sherlock asked.

  ‘Don’t ask,’ Matty responded. At Sherlock’s dark glance he added: ‘Let’s say one of them blokes at the station is goin’ to get a shock when ’e tries to pay for somethin’ ’ere.’

  Matty started to head towards the building, but Sherlock caught his shoulder.

  ‘Wait a little bit,’ he said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because it’s not four o’clock yet.’

  Matty frowned. ‘We ain’t got an appointment, ’ave we? Don’t matter what time we turn up.’

  Sherlock checked his watch. ‘We know we haven’t got an appointment, but they don’t. If we turn up dead on four o’clock, then it looks like maybe we did have an appointment but they forgot, or maybe they didn’t write it down. If we turn up at thirteen minutes to four, then we’re just an unwelcome and unexpected nuisance.’

  They stood there for another ten minutes in the shade of a large tree. Nobody seemed to pay them any attention – Europeans were obviously a common sight in the area.

  The building was surrounded by a low metal fence, but had little other security. Sherlock, Phillimore and Matty walked up the paved pathway to the front door. Sherlock pulled the bell-pull, and deep inside the house something chimed sonorously.

  ‘Wipe your forehead in a minute or so,’ Sherlock said to Phillimore.

  ‘Actually,’ Phillimore replied, ‘the breeze and the shade here are very refreshing.’

  ‘Just do it – please.’

  The door opened, revealing a footman in full livery – tailcoat, tight trousers and waistcoat. He looked them over critically.

  ‘Oui?’

  ‘We have an appointment,’ Sherlock said confidently.

  The footman raised an eyebrow. ‘I do not think so,’ he said in heavily accented English.

  ‘Monsieur de Lesseps’s office in Alexandria arranged it.’ Sherlock made a show of looking annoyed. ‘They were very firm about the time. They said it had to be today, and that it had to be here in Ishmaili, because that’s where Monsieur de Lesseps was working. We have had a long train ride to get here.’

  Without making any demands that could be rejected, Sherlock left it to the footman to make a decision, but he did step back and stare at the man expectantly. The footman frowned, bit his lip, and glanced over his shoulder.

  Phillimore took a handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his brow theatrically.

  Eventually, as Sherlock had known he would, the footman gave in.

  ‘Please – come in. I will consult with Monsieur de Lesseps’s secretary.’

  He led them through a cool and shadowed hallway filled with potted plants, down a corridor lined with photographs of the construction of the canal to a room at the end that was obviously set aside for people to wait in. There were European newspapers and magazines lying around – all of them dating from before Sherlock and the others had left England.

  ‘How do we get past the secretary?’ Matty hissed.

  ‘We don’t – we go around him,’ Sherlock said. He waited until the footman’s footsteps had died away, then gestured to Matty and Phillimore to follow him back into the hall. He positioned the three of them behind a large potted palm, and waited.

  After a few minutes the footman came back again with a harried-looking, prematurely bald man in a dark suit – presumably de Lesseps’s secretary. They went down the corridor towards the waiting room. Quickly Sherlock led the way to the corridor from which the two men had emerged.

  ‘How do you know that Monsieur de Lesseps is down here?’ Phillimore wanted to know. ‘His office might have been back near the waiting room, further up that corridor.’

  ‘Not so. De Lesseps is an important man. His office will be at the end of a corridor, not the middle. It will also be at the far side of the house, because that is where the best view of the canal occurs, and he will want to see it every day. Oh, and his secretary will be near him, not far away.’

  Sherlock went straight through the door at the end of the corridor. It led, as he had suspected, to the secretary’s office – small and cluttered with files. There was another door on the far side, lined with green leather. Sherlock knocked twice, opened the door and entered. Phillimore and Matty followed.

  The room was large and airy, with French windows at the back that gave out on to a surprisingly luxurious lawn, considering the blistering sun. As Sherlock had predicted, the verdant bank of the canal and the construction machines lined up along it were clearly visible. An enormous oak desk covered in papers and rolled-up maps dominated the room. Behind it sat a bulky man in his sixties with a bushy grey beard and very little hair. He was fussily dressed in a black suit and waistcoat. He looked up at them calmly as Sherlock quietly closed the door again.

  ‘Monsieur de Lesseps, my name is Sherlock Holmes. These are my friends, James Phillimore and Matthew Arnatt. We have something serious to which we need to alert you.’

  De Lesseps nodded slowly. He leaned back in his chair, revealing an expansive stomach pushing at the seams of a cotton shirt. ‘Phillimore,’ he said. ‘I know that name.’

  ‘My brother Jonathan is an engineer on your canal,’ Phillimore said, stepping forward. ‘He has disappeared, and I have come to find him.’

  De Lesseps reached forward and placed his hand on a piece of paper. ‘I have the report here,’ he said. ‘He was a good man. Difficult to replace.’

  Sherlock was about to mention the possibility of sabotage directed against the canal when the door opened and the secretary rushed in, wild-eyed. ‘Monsieur!’ he exclaimed, ‘Mon dieu! Est-ce que tout va bien?’

  Matty backed up to the desk in apparent surprise. He leaned back, hands on the desk’s leather surface, as if trying to get as far away from the secretary as possible.

  De Lesseps raised a calming hand. ‘In English, please, François, for our guests.’ He glanced at Sherlock and smiled. ‘I presume that you did not have an appointment. François here is very particular about my schedule, and he always knows who is visiting and why.’

  ‘I apologize,’ Sherlock said. ‘But this is important.’

  ‘So you said. Now, let me see if I can guess what it is that you want to tell me so urgently. There is a plot to sabotage my canal, and this engineer who disappeared – Mr Phillimore – had discovered it.’

  Sherlock winced. ‘You received a communication from Alexandria.’

  ‘I did – a telegram. We do have some amenities here. I was told of your visit.’ He leaned forward and retrieved a piece of paper from his desk. ‘I also received a telegram from England – from your Foreign Office, apparently. I have checked with your Consul here, and he assures me it is genuine.’ He pulled a pair of spectacles from his pocket and slipped them on. ‘If man and two boys appear with tales of plot to sabotage canal, please disregard,’ he read. ‘Th
ey are fantasists. Someone being sent to bring them home safely.’ Glancing up, he said, ‘The telegram was in English, of course. You English assume that everyone in the world speaks your language.’

  ‘Who sent the telegram?’ Sherlock asked, although the dull ache in his heart told him that he already knew the answer.

  ‘It is signed by a man named “Mycroft Holmes”. I have never heard of him.’ De Lesseps frowned. ‘You said that your name is Sherlock Holmes. Is this man a relative?’

  ‘My brother,’ Sherlock replied dully. So – Mycroft knew that he wasn’t in Oxford.

  ‘And he is working for the Foreign Office?’ De Lesseps nodded. ‘You have interesting relatives. Interesting also that he wished to warn me not to believe you.’ He sighed. ‘The constant attempts of you English to stop construction of the canal or to influence our investors to withdraw their money used to be amusing, and is now pathetic. You obviously want to raise concerns that the canal is not safe for ships so that our business will fail. It is –’ he sighed – ‘tiresome. Please leave. The opening of the Suez Canal will occur in just a few weeks, and I have an entire ceremony to prepare. There will be royalty and dignitaries from all corners of the globe. I do not have time for your . . . fantasies.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘Tout de suite, s’il vous plaît, before I call the authorities in.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘And please do not think that you can trick them as you have apparently tricked my secretary, or make them believe your ludicrous story. The police in this town are recruited by, and paid for by, the Suez Canal Company. They will do as I tell them.’

  Sherlock held his hands out in a gesture of apology and conciliation. ‘We will go,’ he said, ‘but please – check the canal for sabotage.’

  ‘How do you sabotage a body of water?’ de Lesseps asked. He waved away Sherlock’s attempt to say something. ‘No. Please – just go. Leave me.’

  The three of them were hustled out of the building and escorted down to the fence. ‘Do not,’ the secretary said, ‘pass this point. If you do you will be arrested, and you will never see the light of day again.’

  He turned on his heel and stalked off.

  ‘Did you get it?’ Sherlock asked.

  Matty nodded.

  ‘Get what?’ Phillimore asked, confused.

  ‘The report on your brother’s disappearance,’ Sherlock said. ‘It was on the table in front of Monsieur de Lesseps. I was hoping that Matty would take the opportunity to remove it when the secretary burst in, and he did.’

  Phillimore stared at Matty in horror. ‘But that is theft!’ he exclaimed.

  Matty frowned at him, then looked over at Sherlock. ‘’E does know that he shot a couple of blokes wiv a gun ’e smuggled through Customs?’

  ‘That,’ Phillimore said stiffly, ‘was a matter of self-defence.’

  ‘And this,’ Sherlock said, tapping Matty’s shirt and getting a papery, rustling sound from underneath, ‘is a matter of trying to save your brother’s life, if he is still alive.’ He looked around. ‘Now let’s find a cafe, or a restaurant or something, sit down and look at these papers.’

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  They found a French-style cafe in the centre of Ishmaili, near the station. It had metal tables shaded with umbrellas outside on the pavement of a wide and dusty street lined with palm trees. They sat, and ordered food and cups of tea, which came without milk but with slices of lemon. The sunlight on the sheets of paper in the thin file was almost blinding, and Sherlock had to squint to read them.

  The cafe was occupied almost entirely by Europeans, almost certainly associated with the Suez Canal Company, but several of them were smoking from long pipes which were connected by tubes to large metal flasks on ornate stands.

  ‘What’s that, then?’ Matty asked, pointing.

  ‘It’s a “hookah”,’ Sherlock replied. He smiled, remembering back to England, and Oxford. ‘It’s a device for smoking where the tobacco smoke passes through water to cool it down and change the taste. I remember that Charles Dodgson wrote about one in his book Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. The character of the Caterpillar was smoking a hookah.’

  ‘I never read novels,’ Phillimore said.

  Sherlock and Matty shared a long-suffering glance. Sherlock turned his attention back to the file.

  ‘Apparently the local police investigated your brother’s disappearance,’ he said. ‘He was living in rooms in the European side of town – not the area where Monsieur de Lesseps lives, but one a little less exclusive. He didn’t turn up for work one morning. By lunchtime his colleagues were worried, and they raised the alarm.’ He glanced up at James Phillimore, who was leaning across the table, listening intently. ‘He was, apparently, very punctual, very reliable.’

  ‘Of course he was. He was my brother.’

  ‘The police were called. They broke down his door, on the assumption that he might have fallen ill or . . . or had a heart attack, or something.’

  ‘But he wasn’t there.’

  Sherlock nodded. ‘That’s right. There was no indication of foul play, or anything untoward.’

  ‘Should we talk to the police?’ Phillimore asked.

  ‘I don’t think that would help,’ Sherlock replied. ‘All they know is in here, and the last thing we want to do is to cause trouble. They’ll tell the Suez Canal Company right away, and we would be removed from Ishmaili.’

  ‘Maybe that’s what ’appened to Jonathan Phillimore,’ Matty observed darkly. He was eating a meat-filled pasty from a plate that they had ordered. ‘Maybe he caused too much trouble, and got run out of town by the company.’

  Sherlock shook his head. ‘If that’s all that had happened, then he would have found a way of contacting his brother. And I don’t think that Monsieur de Lesseps was keeping anything from us. He seemed to be reacting genuinely.’ He flicked through the papers in the file. One, at the end, caught his attention. ‘Oh, this is interesting.’

  ‘What?’ Phillimore asked.

  ‘Well, there’s a final statement appended to the file. Apparently a local cabbie turned up at the police station a few days later claiming that he took a customer somewhere, but the man disappeared without paying his fare. He’d asked for the cabbie to stay, so that he could make a return journey, but he never came back. When the cabbie went looking for him, he had vanished. He wanted to make a complaint, and get his fare paid.’

  ‘And that customer was my brother?’

  ‘The cabbie didn’t get a name, but his description sounded like your brother, so a copy of the report was attached to the file.’

  ‘Where did ’e get taken?’ Matty asked.

  ‘Either the cabbie didn’t say, or it wasn’t written down in the report. To be fair, someone only made the connection after the cabbie had left, which is why the copy was attached later. Nobody bothered following it up. Well, it was several days after the disappearance that the cabbie made his complaint.’

  ‘I fink,’ Matty observed, ‘that we need to ’ave a chat wiv this cabbie. ’As he got a name?’

  ‘Abdul Aziz. There’s an address here.’ Sherlock looked around. ‘Although I’m not sure that this place has many street signs – at least, not in the native quarters.’

  They hailed a passing native cab. Aware of the possibility of cosmic irony, Sherlock made sure he checked the cabbie’s name. It wasn’t ‘Abdul Aziz’, and neither did he know anybody of that name.

  The address turned out to be a kind of collective garage that the Egyptian carriages operated out of, rather than a man’s house. It was a long, low building with an open front and a corrugated iron roof that seemed to absorb the sunlight and re-radiate it in multiplied form. Many cabbies were operating out of it, or just sitting around outside it, drinking small cups of black coffee or smoking hookahs like the ones back in the cafe. They seemed to be ubiquitous around the town – perhaps the country. Their donkeys were corralled in stalls inside the building, seemingly sharing the space with the cabbies.r />
  Sherlock assumed that in a town that was at least half European, at least one of the cabbies would speak French. They were in luck – they found one who spoke English.

  ‘My name is Mohammed Al-Sharif,’ he announced proudly. ‘I learned English very well many years ago, when I was in the Egyptian Army.’

  ‘You fought with the British?’ Phillimore asked.

  He shook his head, smiling. ‘We fought with Ottomans against British,’ he replied, ‘but we took prisoners. I learned from them.’

  Al-Sharif took them to Abdul Aziz – an old man with a leathery brown skin and only a few teeth still left in his mouth. He seemed happy to talk.

  ‘Do you remember a complaint you made to the police about a man who didn’t pay you for a journey?’ Sherlock asked, through Al-Sharif.

  Aziz spoke at length, gesticulating and on one occasion spitting on the ground. Al-Sharif turned back to Sherlock after a while.

  ‘Yes, he remembers. He says that the man looked like him.’ He pointed to Phillimore. ‘He says that if this man is the brother of the man who did not pay his fare, then the debt falls to him. That is the way of the world.’

  ‘We will pay the fare if he can tell us where he took the man – where he disappeared.’

  A deal of discussion ensued back and forth between the two men.

  ‘He tried to inflate the price,’ Al-Sharif said eventually. ‘I forced him back down to the right amount.’ He smiled, revealing nearly as many gaps in his teeth as Aziz. ‘You pay me half the fare for translating, yes?’

  ‘Yes,’ Sherlock said quickly, aware that Phillimore was about to protest.

  ‘He says that he took the man to the tombs outside Ishmaili, near where the canal is being dug.’

  ‘Tombs?’ Matty asked cautiously.

  ‘Places where our people used to bury the dead, very many years ago. Like the pyramids, but smaller. If you were a pharaoh, you got a pyramid. If you were a rich man, you got a tomb. If you were a poor man –’ he shrugged, indicating himself modestly – ‘you were put in a hole in the sand and left there.’