Mycroft Holmes

by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

  Then too, the four mercenaries had rifles pointed at Holmes, as well. It seemed excessively cautious, but if by some minuscule chance McGuire missed his shot, they would do the honors. And although McGuire’s two lamps did little more than cast long, grotesque shadows over the sand, they did enlighten one salient fact—it was Douglas’s revolver that McGuire held in his hand. The top-break, single-action Smith & Wesson Model 3.

  Holmes was about to be felled by the very implement that he’d hoped would keep them safe. His best friend’s gun.

  The four bureaucrats, dandies all, looked miserable. What had undoubtedly been described to them as a working man’s holiday had turned into a nightmare of violence, especially now that McGuire had marked yet another stranger for death—this one a British functionary, who was about to be butchered in front of them.

  They were so easy to read that Holmes felt almost guilty—it was tantamount to perusing a young girl’s diary. At the moment of impact, two would scrunch their faces like matching accordions and squint their eyes shut. Ellensberg—who was already gazing blankly, his head slightly forward—would quickly turn away to protect his delicate constitution. As for Beauchamp, he had already squared his jaw and planted his feet to prove he was impervious to bloodshed—which of course he was not.

  Not yet.

  But practice, Holmes thought bitterly, makes perfect.

  Of a truth, it made scant difference whether these four watched or did not. They were pawns. As a French journalist had written in the Père Duchesne nearly one hundred years before, theirs was “a new form of servitude,” however voluntary. They would trail whomever they perceived held the power, hoping that by doing so they could snag a piece of it for themselves.

  He was starting to comprehend who the real pawnbroker might be—though he would not live long enough to do a thing about it. He had played his finest hand and had been beaten, if not fairly, then thoroughly. With nothing more to be done, he was preparing to die.

  Rather wearily, he thought, for it is the second time this day.

  McGuire had his arm stretched out and was cocking the hammer when the clump upon the ground flipped into a handstand, pushed off from there, and propelled itself feet-first into the back of McGuire’s skull.

  * * *

  By what strange chemical occurrence does time, under excessive stress, manage to warp and to slow down?

  The question had always intrigued Holmes, and though he was not about to realize the answer at that moment, he found that he was fascinated by the process when it happened to him.

  It was a ferocious kick that would have undone most men. As McGuire tottered forward a few steps, Douglas reached down, wrenched the gun from his hand and turned it on him… while Holmes had the presence of mind to draw his own useless weapon.

  McGuire wobbled to his hands and knees and remained there, unmoving. Holmes waited for Douglas to take charge, but that impressive bit of gymnastics seemed to have sapped whatever strength his friend had mustered.

  He was struggling to stand on his feet.

  “Hands up!” Holmes commanded the bureaucrats.

  “Guns down!” he barked to the mercenaries, all the while praying that telltale seawater would not burble out of the barrel and drip down his arm. The dandies obeyed instantly, but the guards were not so easily cowed. Two kept their rifles trained on Holmes, while the other two trained theirs on Douglas.

  It was a standoff.

  Douglas was blinking hard to keep his swollen eyes focused on McGuire.

  “Take my offer,” Holmes called out to the men, “and we shall all live to fight another day!”

  “Holmes! You cannot do this!” Douglas protested in a weak but emphatic voice.

  This made Ellensberg flush crimson. “Do as you intend!” he said to Holmes. “For you are the only sane man here.

  “Um Gottes willen!” he screeched at the guards. “No more shooting! We leave this place now. Enough!”

  For a moment, the four stymied guards had the look of dogs attempting fractions. They glanced at the red-faced Ellensberg, then at their downed employer. Finally, they lowered their weapons and slowly backed away.

  “You may take one boat,” Holmes said. “Leave the other for us.”

  “We are too many,” Beauchamp protested. “It is engineered for eight.”

  “Do not fret, Beauchamp,” Holmes exclaimed. “McGuire shall remain with us. And keep your hands where I can see them!”

  The guards and the bureaucrats, hands raised, moved warily toward the boats.

  “You cannot let them go!” Douglas pleaded, but even he knew it was over. Until McGuire began to crawl forward and slightly to the side, as if trying to get away.

  “Turn around!” Douglas commanded.

  McGuire paid him no mind. He just kept crawling forward and to the side like a fiddler crab.

  Holmes had to keep his useless gun trained on the departing men. It would be up to Douglas to pursue their leader. But how could he do so, when he could not even walk?

  “Turn around!” Douglas repeated to no avail.

  “Shoot him!” Holmes vented. Then he realized that Douglas was incapable of it. He would never shoot a man in the back.

  Yet what his friend could not make out in the dark, with his tortured eyes, Holmes saw all too clearly.

  The crab-like motion had a purpose.

  McGuire was reaching for a holster at his ankle.

  “Douglas!” Holmes cried out. “He has a gun!”

  * * *

  It was a small two-bullet derringer. McGuire dipped down onto one elbow, turned to the side… and shot Douglas twice in the chest.

  Douglas collapsed.

  Holmes rushed at McGuire, his walking stick brandished above his head, and beat him with it while the guards flew back to his side. One grabbed Holmes’s upraised arm as the doughy-faced guard wrapped a beefy bicep about his neck and yanked him away.

  The two others helped a bleeding McGuire to his feet.

  His head lolling slightly, McGuire indicated the walking stick in Holmes’s upraised hand.

  “Bring it here,” he told the men who held Holmes. “I aim to beat him to death with it.”

  The guard on Holmes’s left tried to yank the walking stick out of his hand. It was a pathetically easy feat for Holmes to reach up with his right arm, pull the knife from its sheath, and fling it. The blade spun end over end, glinting like gold in the light before finding its mark in McGuire’s throat.

  He stared quizzically at Holmes, as if this were a chess move he had not yet contemplated. He opened his mouth to speak, but only blood came out. He fumbled for the handle, yet had no strength left to pull it out. His hand rested on it limply, almost as if he were posing for a portrait.

  McGuire jerked away from the guards, took a few enraged steps toward Holmes, collapsed to his knees, and fell face first upon the ground. The heel of the knife made contact with the hard earth and buried the blade further into his trachea, all the way up to the hilt.

  * * *

  That was when the shooting began.

  Holmes instantly recognized the sound. So did the mercenaries. They dropped to the ground and covered their heads. The startled businessmen did the same, though they fumbled their way down—Beauchamp did not duck at all.

  Losing did not appear to be a part of the destiny the young aide-de-camp had carved out for himself. He glanced crossly toward the brush from whence the shooting came—and was strafed by a dozen bullets. He lurched about like a marionette and was dead before he hit the sand.

  Holmes wasn’t the least concerned about the pings that were raising little whorls of dust all around him. He had but one goal—to get to Douglas. Keeping a straight path between himself and his mark, he bolted toward his fallen friend.

  As he did so, he drew the surprised attention of one of the guards—the one with the flinty eyes. The man had no notion as to who might be shooting at him, or why. He knew only that a designated enemy was running away. He dutiful
ly rose up on his elbows, took aim at Holmes’s back… and was terminated by a volley of metal.

  Holmes, in the meantime, reached Douglas and scooped him up in his arms.

  His eyes were closed. He was not breathing.

  Holmes frantically felt for a pulse at Douglas’s wrist, then at his neck.

  Nothing.

  “Help me!” he cried. “Someone help me, please!”

  45

  THE SHADOWS CAST BY THE LAMPLIGHTS SPRANG TO LIFE, OR SO it seemed. They danced and leapt through the hail of bullets. By the time the firing ceased, the shadows had the surviving bureaucrats and the guards surrounded, and were quickly bringing them into mute and awed compliance.

  Holmes absorbed these facts as he did everything around him—but opaquely. His focus was on Douglas. He had him in his arms and was rocking him back and forth. If imprecations to the skies could revive the dead, his friend surely would have risen there and then.

  The derringer that McGuire had used was a small caliber weapon, one more suited to hand-to-hand combat than to a shootout at greater distance. Were its bullets to have lodged in the thigh or the hip, they would have packed little more than a nasty sting. It was only McGuire’s expertise with firearms that elevated that miniscule piece of hot metal into something lethal.

  Holmes ripped open his friend’s shirt and with his thumb began to frantically measure the entry points.

  “Help me, please…” he repeated softly, not certain that he was finding what he sought. He measured again, and then again, just to be sure.

  The night was growing chilly. A persistent wind buffeted the clouds, revealing a moon as large and as round as the driving wheel of an old locomotive. The gunfire had ceased entirely. As the Harmonious Fists escorted their captives toward McGuire’s boats, Holmes saw the remaining slaves emerge from the brush. This was no surprise to him—he had realized from the first that the volleys were coming from two of three Gatling guns. None but the captives could have mounted them so quickly and efficiently. What did surprise him was how thoroughly their countenances had changed. Though they were no heartier than before—privation had reduced them too much for that—there was a gleam of hope in their eyes. They were at long last on the side of the angels.

  But the sense of vindication he felt on their behalf was subsumed by the imposing task before him. Douglas’s color was sallow, his jaw lax. Holmes packed the wounds with what he could find. Soft wet sand to cleanse, spider webs to stanch the flow of blood.

  Huan and Little Huan appeared by his side. Huan put a comforting hand on his shoulder, but Holmes shook it away.

  “Please, my friend,” Huan said. “You are torturing yourself…”

  Holmes would not hear it. He gave Huan a withering look.

  “And what of your healers?” he growled. “Capable of mending crushed toes with the touch of a needle—surely there is one among you who can work a small miracle!”

  “Only God can revive the dead,” Huan said.

  “Stay with him!” Holmes commanded as he rose to gather up seaweed.

  Huan lifted Douglas’s limp arm and felt perfunctorily for a pulse. He glanced at his son and shook his head. Little Huan bit his lip to hold back tears, stared for a moment at Douglas, then abruptly stood and walked off.

  Holmes returned with the seaweed and began to wrap it around Douglas’s torso, cursing the pieces that tore in twain before he could finish.

  Huan attempted to talk some sense into him.

  “He has no pulse,” he said.

  “Taking his pulse is all but useless!” Holmes snapped. “Trauma has forced his body into a systemic coma to prevent it from perishing in earnest, with breath so shallow that the movement of the chest is all but indiscernible. As for his heart… it is playing a similar trick of hide and go seek.”

  “Mycroft, we all loved Cyrus,” Huan responded. “But we have living folk to care for.”

  “Go and care for them, then,” Holmes said. “Did you not hear me? I will not leave him here!”

  The Harmonious Fists had pushed the two boats knee-deep into the water. Huan went to assist Little Huan, who was shepherding the freed slaves, the three surviving functionaries, and the three surviving guards, moving them into the vessels. They sat numbly side by side, black with white, at long last united under one common objective.

  To get off that cursed island.

  When the Harmonious Fists climbed aboard, the vessels dipped precariously low into the water.

  Holmes watched them, impassive.

  Twenty-three men had boarded: eleven in one boat, twelve in the other, on vessels built to carry eight apiece at most. As configured, he put their odds of reaching Trinidad at twenty-three to twenty-five percent.

  “Mycroft!” Huan waved and called out. “My brother, you must come aboard now!”

  Holmes stood up. Clasping Douglas underneath his arms, he began to drag the body inch by inch along the beach toward the boats.

  “Come help!” he called out to Huan.

  “We must save room for survivors!” Huan called back. “We will return with proper shovels and bury our dead!”

  “He is not dead!” Holmes insisted.

  Little Huan was just stepping into the vessel when he abruptly changed course and set foot on the beach again.

  “He has no heartbeat, he is not breathing,” Huan quietly admonished his son.

  Little Huan nodded. “I know,” he said, “but still we must return him to Trinidad. We must bring him home. If we drown, we drown together. ‘To fools,’ remember?”

  Huan shook his head, exasperated. “We are certainly that,” he muttered under his breath as he followed his son down the beach.

  “Take his other arm,” Holmes commanded the moment they joined him. “Gentle! Move more slowly—keep his torso upraised.”

  The pockmarked guard shook his big head as he watched the men drag Douglas’s body along, inch by torturous inch.

  “McGuire, he do not miss,” he said in a thick Russian accent. “If your friend is alive, it is… stikhiynoye bedstviye.”

  The two guards in the other boat nodded solemnly.

  * * *

  Besides Douglas, the passengers aboard Holmes’s boat were Huan and Little Huan, two Harmonious Fists, the three surviving bureaucrats, the pockmarked guard, and three ex-slaves. The latter were so thin that the outlines of their bones were visible through their threadbare clothes, casting shadows in the lamplight. They were shivering in the night air, but there was no more clothing to be had, so Huan gave them the burlap tarp that covered the boat when it was moored. They gratefully huddled together and wrapped themselves in it.

  Holmes, at the prow, arranged Douglas as best he could, his head resting against a seat, his long legs stretched out before him.

  As they prepared to shove off, he stared at the third-quarter moon. He gauged that detail, along with the temper of the ocean.

  A fair fight was what he needed.

  A fair fight, he told himself by rote, is the essence of competition.

  He turned to Huan.

  “If we are to stand a chance against the waves all the way to Port of Spain,” he said, “we must balance the vessels.”

  “To Port of Spain?” Huan said. “We cannot go so far. We must touch down in Moruga.”

  “There are no proper physicians in Moruga,” Holmes objected.

  Huan shook his head. “Mycroft…”

  “Huan. With the way you have arranged things, your odds of drowning are seventy-five percent. If you let me help, even sailing further, you greatly decrease those odds.”

  “Are you saying you will not help, and increase our odds, if we go only to Moruga?”

  “I appreciate that there are lives aboard, and I am quite fond of you and your son. But I must also say that your lives, to me, are not worth his, and, since everything has a price…”

  Huan hesitated only a moment. Then he gave him leave. Holmes calculated individual and combined mass and rearranged the passenge
rs accordingly. And although they all did as they were told, minutes still flew by—precious minutes that he knew were of the essence for Douglas.

  The tiny vessels shoved off. Holmes could have done better if he had had more time, but their odds of survival had increased by some fifty percent.

  It would have to do.

  And still he could not rest.

  “Mycroft,” Huan whispered as the latter began to systematically massage Douglas’s hands and feet. “My brother!” he insisted when Holmes appeared not to be listening. “That devil pierced his heart. Even a heart as big as Douglas’s must cease when two bullets enter in.”

  Holmes did not reply but kept up his toil and silent vigil.

  * * *

  The wind was blowing in their favor, the moon creating a passable light by which to see. The four designated rowers on Holmes’s boat—Little Huan, his father, and two Harmonious Fists—were moving the vessel away from the coastline at no contemptible speed, considering the added weight.

  When they reached open ocean, though conditions were still favorable, Holmes’s vessel began to take on water. Not enough to drown them all, but enough to be of alarm. It was no easy feat to bail her out while attempting to keep her steady. Passengers passed the buckets back and forth as delicately as could be managed.

  Only Holmes abstained, continuing to work on Douglas.

  The pockmarked guard glanced over at him.

  “Why you not help?” he asked in his thick Russian accent, indicating the buckets.

  “His blood is not circulating properly,” Holmes muttered. “This is the only way to preserve his extremities. You understand?”

  The guard looked at him cynically.

  “Nyet. If he lives… stikhiynoye bedstviye!” he exclaimed.

  Holmes had had enough.

  “I have no notion what you mean by that,” he snapped.

  A voice beside him rasped out the translation.

  “Act… of… God…”

  * * *

  Within minutes, Douglas’s breath had grown discernible. His chest was rising and falling—if not altogether smoothly, then at least consistently. The other passengers’ initial shock and elation aboard gave way to puzzlement.