Mycroft Holmes

by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

  During his years at sea, Douglas had seen seasickness in all its permutations, even masquerading as a bad influenza now and again. And with the ship still pressing through a mighty storm, this was no time to try to rally Holmes. All told, it was best to let him sleep on.

  Douglas himself did little besides read. He was grateful that he had packed Alexandre Dumas’s The Fencing Master, mostly to practice his French, as well as Oliver Twist, though he knew it nearly by heart. Every so often he would wet a rag and place it upon his friend’s burning forehead and quote Dickens’ immortal lines to himself.

  “The worm does not work more surely on the dead body, than does this slow creeping fire upon the living frame…”

  When Douglas did venture out, the decks were empty, and the sick were hidden behind locked doors. Everyone else aboard seemed to be as ill as Holmes, and this assuaged Douglas’s worries for his friend. Still, if the symptoms were to persist for another day, Douglas would be forced to call the ship’s physician, regardless of any feeble protestations to the contrary.

  * * *

  On day five, the Sultana at last hit a patch of good weather. The pitching finally ceased, the sun shone intermittently, and people began to venture out, gaunt and sallow, but alive.

  Yet Holmes was no better. The few sips of water he permitted Douglas to pour down his throat turned immediately to sweat. He mumbled incessantly and incoherently, and he snorted most unbecomingly, as if he were breathing underwater.

  Armed with a list of Holmes’s symptoms, Douglas went to pay a call on the physician. But when he got there, both the ship’s doctor and his assistant were otherwise engaged. He spoke with the former’s secretary, a hearty fellow of fifty or so.

  “They’re making the rounds,” the man said. “No telling when they’ll be back.” He had an accent that Douglas could not place. Possibly Australian. When Douglas gave him their room number, the fellow took it, staring down at it as if it were hieroglyphics.

  “I’ll pass it on,” he said dubiously, “but with nearly three-quarters of the passengers down, the doc may not get to ’im ’til the morrow.” He looked up at Douglas. “Please pass along my best to your employer, beg him be well!”

  Though it was said in good spirits and accompanied by a hearty slap on the back, Douglas was in no mood.

  If begging him to be well would do the trick, he thought crossly, I wouldn’t need a physician.

  On his way back, Douglas passed by a cook’s assistant and importuned him for some bread and a pat of butter, along with a cup of tea. For the bulk of the journey, Holmes had missed all five meals normally served on a ship—breakfast, luncheon, dinner, tea, and supper. Though breakfast had long passed, Douglas hoped it would tempt him into sitting up, at the very least.

  After a few moments, the scullion returned with a tray, garnished with a frilly serviette. The bread was stale, the tea was lukewarm and bitter, and the butter more than likely colored lard, but the man was kind, giving him what he had on hand.

  Douglas had nearly reached the companionway when he noticed a strange sensation, or possibly a lack thereof. The very few times he’d been out and about, he had fought unease, waiting for the inevitable moment when someone would confront him with a, “Say, who d’you think you are, wandering about like this?”

  But this morning, he did not feel that prickle at his back, that sourness in his gut. He’d finally found an answer for the challenge of “wandering about like this.” Looking down, he realized to his chagrin that it was the tray that did it. Carrying the tray marked him once and for all as a manservant.

  He continued on his way.

  As he crossed beyond the companionway, Douglas walked past the slats that separated the rest of the Sultana from the so-called ’tween decks. If the “above-ground” passengers looked bad, then the poor souls who’d had to endure these catacombs looked positively wretched. They were poking their heads up like so many scraggly, starving moles.

  Douglas handed a little boy a bit of Holmes’s bread. He was no more than five, and wearing what looked to be a collection of rags. He stared at Douglas with wide, suspicious eyes, snatched at the crumb with a tiny claw-like hand so tough it could have been made of leather, and then disappeared once again into his hole. Immediately ten other children took his place, and the resulting uproar forced Douglas to retreat.

  He had almost reached the long, narrow hall that led to his room when he overheard two deckhands discussing a burial at sea that was to take place within a half-hour’s time. Two passengers, it seemed, had succumbed to dysentery.

  “Big men they was, prime o’ life!” one rough-hewn hand confided to the other.

  The second man exuded an aura of confidence. He was smaller but somehow tougher, as if he had been constructed entirely of brown cables. He appeared more seasoned than his fellow.

  “Pikuliar ’ndeed! It’s usually women and children what go first,” he said knowingly. “You seen ’em then? The dead ’uns?”

  The first deckhand rubbed his nose by way of acknowledgment.

  “I thrown my eye over just one,” he said. “Ginger hair he had, a full head of it! And a cut acrost ’is fore’ead looked fresh shorn. Musta stung a mite when ’e got it.”

  “I’ll wager it don’t sting now!” the second man responded. And the two deckhands laughed as if it were the funniest joke they’d heard in their lives. They gave Douglas the evil eye, however, as he passed, to show the colored man who was who and what was what. Then they went on with their chortling.

  * * *

  Back in the room, Holmes wasn’t aware that Douglas had left. He wasn’t aware that the storm had abated. He was focused on one thing and one thing only—the vision in his mind’s eye.

  Through the roiling clouds of delirium, he saw Georgiana’s diamond ring. The delicate stone began to thicken and darken like a tumor until it morphed into a large red ruby on a fat pinkie. The vision was so terrifying that he forced himself awake—and found he was sitting bolt upright in bed.

  It was only a dream, he assured himself, and for a moment he felt relief.

  Then he touched the wound on his cheek.

  It was all too real.

  Hurting from his toes to his hair follicles, Holmes stared at the medicine box. His brain was trying to deduce something, though he couldn’t quite grasp it. His unfocused gaze settled upon three containers, although he was fairly certain that there was but one, and that the true one was in the center. He decided that, as long as he was already sitting up, he should probably attempt to stand.

  The box, no more than ten feet away, may as well have been on the moon. Nevertheless, he planted one foot, then the other, on the very cold floor, and shuffled toward his singular goal step by step.

  Wheezing, heart pounding, he reached it at last. He unscrewed the lid on the jar, silently chastising Douglas for having put it on so tightly. Then he wet his finger, dipped it into the carbolic acid crystals, brought them up to his face—and licked his finger.

  As soon as he did so, he knew.

  15

  UPON RE-ENTERING THE CABIN, DOUGLAS SAW BEFORE HIM A very odd sight indeed. Mycroft Holmes, flush with fever, was standing semi-naked at the medicine box, his index finger jammed into his mouth.

  All thoughts of burials at sea went right out of his head. He put down the tray.

  “Holmes!” he cried as he rushed toward him.

  Holmes, his red eyes wide, held up the jar in triumph.

  “Laudanum!” he announced, as if that said it all.

  Then he began to sway. Douglas caught him before he crumpled, and held him upright.

  “Here, let me help you to bed,” Douglas mumbled as Holmes regained his balance.

  “Laudanum, carbolic acid!” the latter exclaimed, while not allowing Douglas to steer him in the least.

  “What the deuce are you going on about?” Douglas demanded. “And we are getting you back into bed this instant.”

  “There is laudanum mixed in with the carboli
c acid,” Holmes explained. “It is seeping through the cut, directly into my bloodstream.”

  Douglas peered at him, then at the jar in Holmes’s hand.

  “Absurd,” he said.

  But Holmes persisted.

  “It is bitter like opium,” he explained. Then he looked uncertain. “Based, you understand, on what I have heard of opium…”

  Douglas snatched the jar away.

  “If this has been tampered with,” he said, “then kindly do not eat it.”

  “I am not eating it,” Holmes corrected. “I am tasting it.”

  Douglas stared at him silently. He was nearly certain that Holmes was hallucinating.

  But if he wasn’t?

  He bit his bottom lip. He could not believe what he was about to do. Wetting his own finger, Douglas put it in the jar, and tasted. His face registered both surprise and recognition.

  Holmes looked positively giddy.

  “There you are!” he said. “Laudanum.”

  But Douglas shook his head and stared down at the jar in wonder.

  “Not laudanum,” he said. “Abrus precatorius. A vine native to Trinidad.”

  “Not laudanum?” Holmes repeated, in a tone that suggested that being wrong was something with which he was thoroughly unfamiliar.

  “Its jumbie seeds carry a toxin—” Douglas went on, when Holmes interrupted him tersely.

  “Jumbie seeds? Just what do you mean, Douglas, by jumbie seeds? What the deuce are you implying?”

  Douglas realized that Holmes was referring to Georgiana’s bracelet.

  “No, no,” he said. “Do not hasten to a conclusion. Jumbie seeds, from which the beaded bracelets are made, are as common as dirt on the island. It just so happens that, in powder form, they make a walloping good poison.”

  But Holmes was no longer listening.

  “What a fool I am!” he berated himself. “She’s had that bracelet for as long as I’ve known her… I simply assumed they were pretty beads!”

  “And why on earth would you assume otherwise?” Douglas protested.

  Holmes groaned from the strain of standing after such a long time in bed. His legs gave way. He found himself on his knees on the floor.

  Douglas helped him to his feet again.

  “Tell me all you know about them,” Holmes demanded. “Leave nothing out.”

  Douglas sighed.

  “Their toxin is deadly. The dosage in the jar is by necessity small, as it has to blend with the carbolic acid. Had you kept applying it, however, it certainly would have killed you. And in large enough quantities, it would have done so within twenty-four hours.”

  “And why would you be familiar with the taste?” Holmes asked.

  Douglas raised an eyebrow.

  “It is essential knowledge in my profession,” he said. “Witch doctors on the islands sometimes use it to… let us say, dispose of some poor wretches their clients are not fond of. And I am in a business that occasionally makes enemies. But the taste is distinct, and hard to hide.”

  Holmes reached for the jar.

  The latter held it at bay.

  “What are you doing?” Holmes protested. “I merely wish to taste it again.”

  “I realize that,” Douglas responded. “But surely you have enough in your system.”

  Yet Holmes would not be deterred. “I may not know the taste of abrus,” he replied, “but I know carbolic acid. Based on that, I can deduce what percentage of abrus was used. Which is something we must know, and something you cannot do.”

  Douglas was astonished.

  “You know the taste of carbolic acid?” he asked. “Whatever for? Your personality cannot be so egregious that you expect to be poisoned at any moment.”

  “I worked one summer for a physician… Douglas, please. I have no energy for stories at the moment.” He insisted with his open palm that Douglas hand over the jar.

  A reluctant Douglas did so.

  Holmes tasted the contents, and frowned.

  “I would say two… perhaps three percent foreign substance.” He tasted again. “Closer to three,” he said. “My guess is that this was meant to keep me more or less unconscious throughout the trip. But not to kill me.”

  Douglas shook his head, trying to make sense of it all.

  “So the carbolic acid was placed in the medicine box,” he said, “in advance. Possibly at the same time as the used strop and razor, to make certain nothing looked amiss…”

  Holmes nodded and finished the thought.

  “Then I was cut,” he said. “And whoever hired that man to cut me knew that the first place I would seek aid was the medicine box, a natural conclusion…”

  He staggered a bit.

  “…and now, might you help me to sit?”

  Douglas did so. Then he emptied the salve into the chamber pot, reiterating the point he’d been attempting to make at first.

  “Well, whatever else you may think, Holmes, Georgiana is not the only one who keeps a jumbie bead bracelet.”

  “No,” Holmes admitted. “But she is the only one in my life who does.”

  “And why would she want you hurt?” Douglas pressed. “Or murdered? It makes no sense.”

  “No, it does not,” Holmes agreed. “In no way, shape, or form does it make sense—yet, there it is.”

  * * *

  A series of thoughts occurred to Holmes.

  Georgiana has been taken.

  She has been brutalized.

  She has been killed!

  Her bracelet is the only thing left of her… now someone is using it, making her out to be a murderess.

  He said as much to Douglas.

  Douglas listened, deeply concerned. Holmes’s words were spilling out in a way that seemed frenetic and unfocused. He wondered if the poison had affected his reasoning, as well as his body. Nevertheless, he decided he must tell Holmes his own news, whether he was of a mind to hear it or not.

  “At least one of our assailants is dead,” he said. “Of dysentery. The redhead who cut you.”

  Holmes looked surprised. Then he let out a skeptical laugh.

  “That fireplug, dead of dysentery? Not bloody likely! Perhaps our assailants are being disposed of.”

  Douglas admitted to the same thought.

  “Yet by whom?” he said. “Why would we have assailants at all, much less a mastermind behind the assailants, doing them in? In any event,” he added, “the redhead’s burial at sea, along with another man’s, is to take place in half an hour’s time.”

  “Well then, that is where we shall be,” Holmes announced.

  “But you can barely walk!” he protested. “And surely I cannot be seen traipsing about by myself. Even here in international waters, I will attract undue attention.”

  “Naturally,” Holmes sniffed. “We cannot have some mental dullard, acting under cover of darkness, toss you overboard for sport. No,” he declared. “You shall drag me along. With this.”

  With a grunt of exertion, Holmes reached into the bag at the foot of his bed and held up his cravat.

  * * *

  A bird’s-eye view of Holmes and Douglas that evening would have been a sight indeed. In the foreground stood a handsome young man with a shock of blond hair and a strange, shuffling gait, as if he were performing an ungainly but slow-moving jig, while leaning upon an ornate walking stick.

  Behind him, uncomfortably close, was an elegant black man with one hand tucked inside his waistcoat, à la Napoleon Bonaparte. That hand was the sole reason that the blond young man could stand at all.

  Holmes had undone several inches of stitching from the back hem of his topcoat. He’d wrapped his waist with his cravat, and then pulled the ends through the newly made hole. Behind him, Douglas held both ends of the dark blue silk. By lifting the ends upward like a leash, he could keep Holmes more or less upright.

  “Surely we could have come up with something more efficient,” Douglas growled as he took the reins.

  “Not in five minutes’
time,” Holmes countered, “and with my brains so addled.”

  As it turned out, the solution was not half bad. In the daytime, the cravat would have been clearly visible. But under cover of night, in the tight quarters of the ship, and wearing topcoats, they managed well enough—as long as no one attempted to step in between them. That would not have been likely, as few people were keen on wandering about in the dark after a storm. Fewer still to approach a tall Negro whose shooting hand was hidden inside his vest.

  “My knees are giving way,” Holmes hissed as they crossed the deck, and he lurched about like a marionette with a new handler. “Can you not sustain me a bit more?”

  “Not with one hand,” Douglas shot back. “As it is, I shall end up with a right forearm that is thrice as large as my left.”

  * * *

  The two deckhands were approximately where Douglas had last seen them. They turned out to be as pleasant to Holmes as they had been boorish to Douglas. And after Holmes introduced himself as secretary to the Secretary of State for War, they became positively deferential—though Douglas guessed they had never heard of Cardwell, nor known that such a position existed at all.

  “Poor unfortunates, they was,” the more seasoned of the two opined with dramatic nods and tilts of the head. “Come out o’ steerage. We holds they services at night so’s as not to disturb the uppers.”

  He pointed somberly to heaven, but in fact was referring to the upper decks, to the genteel folk who might be discomfited to realize there were dead people aboard—especially ones who’d succumbed to dysentery.

  “Big men, they wuz, prime o’ life!” the younger one said. “Pikuliar they wuz…” he began, when the older man interrupted by stepping in front of him while at the same time elbowing him deftly in the ribs to quiet him down.

  “Pikuliar, yes,” the older one intoned. “It’s women and children what go first, not hale men such as them two.”

  “You saw them, then?” Holmes asked.

  “Not me, guv’nor,” the older one admitted. Then he reluctantly ceded the attention to his fellow again, frowning as he said, “This one ’ere laid eyes on ’em.”

  “I din’t see ’em in death as wuz…” the younger one clarified.