by Andrew Lane
“Shouldn’t you have caught your train by now?” Sherlock asked.
Mycroft shrugged. “If necessary, I can find a comfortable hotel for the night.”
“But won’t your superiors be annoyed when you don’t turn up to work tomorrow?”
Mycroft frowned, as if the concept of a “superior” was a curious concept. “Yes,” he said, drawing the word out. “I suppose so.” He brightened. “Although what is happening here may well have a direct impact on international relations, and so does fall within my ambit. If necessary, however, I can always charter a special train to take me back to London overnight.”
Sherlock gazed at him, wide-eyed. “You can do that?”
“I have never had to, so far, but I believe my Terms of Reference do permit me the occasional indulgence, yes. Now, tell me everything.”
While he and Virginia helped Amyus Crowe off his horse and the four of them went inside, leaving the American unconscious and strapped to Sherlock’s horse, he told his brother the events of the night since they had left the cottage earlier. Virginia filled in some details that he had missed, and when he was talking about the fight with the American he felt Virginia’s hand resting on his arm in concern. Mycroft too winced at how close Sherlock had come to death on several occasions.
“It is not clear what the best course of action is,” Mycroft said eventually, when they were all settled in chairs with drinks in front of them. “Until your prisoner wakes up, we seem to have made use of every bit of information we have. Time and resources are not on our side.”
“I could wake him up,” Crowe said quietly. And then have a quiet word with him. Civilized, like.”
“Forceful questioning is not an option,” Mycroft said warningly. “The man may be a villain in at least two countries, but he has the right to be treated in a civilized manner until he is actually convicted of a crime, and even then he is not something that can be treated roughly at the behest of anyone in authority. As one of the oldest and one of the youngest civilized countries, Britain and America have an obligation to set an example to the rest of the world. If we act barbarically then we have no right to stop anyone else from acting barbarically and the world will slide into anarchy’
“Even if politeness leads to the injury or death of someone we should be protectin”?” Crowe asked.
“Even then,” Mycroft said. “We must maintain the moral high ground, no matter what tempts us down into the valleys of iniquity.”
“I have an idea,” Sherlock said, surprising himself. It was true, something was rolling around in his mind like a marble in a tin tray, but he hadn’t quite figured out the full implications of it yet.
“Go on,” Mycroft said. “If it can prevent Mr Crowe from pulling out our prisoner’s fingernails with a pair of pliers then I, for one, am all for it.”
“That man — the American — jumped out of the carriage to stop us when it looked like we might prevent the carriage getting them to the docks and out of England.”
“Correct,” Crowe rumbled.
“From what he said to me, he was prepared to send a telegram to the others telling them that he’d either succeeded or failed.”
“Accepted,” Mycroft said.
“And if he doesn’t send a telegram, if one isn’t waiting for them when they get to the end of their journey, they will have to assume that we overcame him,” Sherlock pointed out. “They will assume that we rendered him incapable of sending a telegram and that we are still chasing them, in which case their best option is to kill Matty because he’s not useful to them as a hostage any more.”
“Oh no!" Virginia whispered.
“So where would he have sent the telegram?” Sherlock asked. “I mean, it’s not as if the others were going to stay at a hotel until he arrived. They were heading straight for a ship, as far as we know’
Crowe and Mycroft looked at each other.
“The boy has a point,” Crowe said after a few moments. “They would need some way of getting a message back and forth. Maybe some agreed place near the ship — a local post office, or something, where any message he sent would be picked up.”
“They would have had to agree it in the few seconds before he jumped out of the carriage,” Sherlock pointed out. “What are the chances of him remembering in the stress of the moment—"
“Unless one of the others wrote it down for him,” Mycroft finished. “Sherlock, you have a fine mind on those bony shoulders of yours. We need to search that man’s pockets for an address.”
Crowe levered himself up from the chair. “I’ll go,” he said. At Mycroft’s warning look, he added, “Don’t worry — I won’t try to wake him up if he’s unconscious, and if he’s already awake then I won’t do any more than ask him a polite question before riffling through his pockets.” He raised an eyebrow enquiringly. “I take it that theft is acceptable, even if pressured questioning is not?”
“We’ll make an exception,” Mycroft said calmly. “In this case.”
Amyus headed off outside to search Gilfillan. Sherlock noticed that Virginia watched her father leave with a troubled expression on her face. He wanted to ask her about it, but Mycroft gestured him over with a flipperlike hand.
“Sherlock...” he said quietly, then hesitated. “Sherlock, I suspect that I am failing in my duty to look after you properly. I am sorry.”
Sherlock gazed into his face, trying to work out if he was serious or not. “What do you mean?”
“Our father entrusted you into my care. He looked to me to ensure not only that your education continued, but that you were kept happy and safe. In the time since he left for India with his regiment I have abandoned you into the care of relatives whom you had never even met and then stood by while you became engaged first in the lunatic schemes of a mad Frenchman with delusions of grandeur and now in some bizarre attempt to return to America the man who killed its former President. During the past few months you have spent more time looking death in the eye than most men experience during the course of a lifetime. You have been knocked out, kidnapped, whipped, drugged, chased, shot at, burned and nearly stabbed, not to mention forced to survive unsupervised in the dangerous London metropolis, in a foreign country and in rough Channel waves at night. If I had known everything that would happen to you, I would—"
He stopped, apparently overcome with emotion. He turned his head away. Sherlock thought he saw the gleam of tears in his brother’s eyes. He reached out tentatively and put a hand on Mycroft’s broad shoulder.
“Mycroft. . . you’ve always been the steadiest thing in my life. I’ve always come to you for advice, and you’ve always been more than generous with your time. You’ve never made me feel like I’m bothering you, even when you’ve had more important things to do.”
Mycroft tried to say something, but Sherlock kept going.
“We’ve never been the kind of brothers who would climb trees together in the garden. You’ve never had the energy and I’ve never seen the point. That doesn’t matter. You are the person I’ve always looked to for guidance, and you’ve never let me down. I doubt that will ever change. You are what I want to be when I grow up — successful, important and self-reliant. You have never let me down, and you never will.”
Mycroft looked at him, and smiled. “When you grow up,” he said, “I suspect you will carve a path for yourself in the world that nobody else has ever carved. I can foresee a time when I will be coming to you for help and advice, not the other way round. But despite everything you have said, I have stood by while you have been in danger.”
Sherlock shook his head. “I think there’s always danger, wherever you go. You can either ignore it, or you can wrap yourself in blankets so it doesn’t hurt you or you can walk towards it and dare it to do its worst. If you do the first thing then the danger takes you by surprise. If you do the second thing then you spend all your time swaddled up in the dark, letting the world pass you by. The only logical course of action is to go towards the danger. The more you
get used to it, the better you can deal with it.”
Mycroft smiled, and for a moment Sherlock could see, within the folds of fat that now encased his brother’s frame, the boy that he had once been. “I collect information, and amass knowledge,” he said softly. “But you — you have developed wisdom. There will be a day when everybody in the world knows your name.”
“And besides,” Sherlock said, trying to lighten the mood, “I’ve had the time of my life recently. If anyone had told me that by the end of the summer holidays I would have learned to ride a horse, fought in a boxing match, sailed across the Channel and fought a duel, I would have laughed. I’ll bet the most the other boys from school have done is flown a kite and had a picnic on the lawn. There’s still a part of me that thinks I’ll wake up to find out this has all been a dream.”
Mycroft’s gaze flickered across the room to where Virginia was still watching the door, waiting for her father to return. “And I suppose there are other compensating factors,” he said.
“What do you mean?” Sherlock asked, suddenly uncomfortable.
“I mean the attractions of companionship.” Mycroft’s face was suddenly pensive. “I am a... solitary... man,” he said. “I do not suffer fools gladly, and I prefer to spend my time alone with a book and a decanter of brandy. Do not let my example become your exemplar. If friendship — or, dare I say it, affection — come into your life then embrace them enthusiastically.
Sherlock’s spirits suddenly fell as Mycroft’s words reminded him of Matthew Arnatt, somewhere out there in the hands of kidnappers. “I don’t mind embracing the danger,” he said sombrely, “but I don’t want it to affect my friends.”
“They make their choices, as you make yours,” Mycroft pointed out. “The same arguments apply. They are not puppets, and you cannot keep them safe, just as I apparently cannot keep you safe. If they want to be with you, they will be. They accept the risk.” He raised an eyebrow. “Certainly, by now, young Matthew must have worked out that being around you is neither safe nor boring.”
“We will get him back, won’t we, Mycroft?”
“I will not let my heart write a cheque that life will not allow me to cash,” Mycroft said gently. “I cannot know the future for sure, but I can use my knowledge and experience to predict the shape of it. I believe there is a high probability that Matty will be returned to us unharmed, although what other events may transpire along the way is another question.”
The door opened and Amyus Crowe entered the room. He was holding a piece of crumpled paper.
“I found this in the prisoner’s pocket,” he said. “Looks like some kind of code. Not sure what it means.”
“Was he conscious?” Mycroft asked.
“He was either flat out or a good actor. I had a quick look at his clothes, though. The cut of the material and the labels inside are mainly American.”
“Let us have a look at that paper. It might give us a clue to where he had to send his message.”
Crowe spread the paper out on his desk. Mycroft and Sherlock crowded around him. Virginia stayed back, smiling now that her father had returned.
The paper had a series of letters and numbers scrawled across it in handwriting that had obviously been written in a moving carriage in a hurry. Sherlock read ten groups of five characters each:
“What does it mean?” Sherlock asked.
“It appears to be a simple subsititution cipher,” Crowe replied. “Substitution ciphers were used a lot during the War Between the States to keep messages from falling into the wrong hands. The idea is simple — instead of “a” you write somethin’ else, say “z”,” — he pronounced it “zee” — “an’ instead of “b” you maybe write “y”. As long as you an’ the person you’re sendin’ the message to both know which letters substitute for which other letters — what the “key” is — the message can be coded and decoded safely’
“But we don’t know what the key is, do we?” Sherlock said.
“That’s right. If we had a longer message we might be able to work it out through frequency analysis, but we don’t.”
“Frequency analysis?”
“This is hardly the time for a tutorial,” Mycroft sighed, but Crowe answered anyway.
“A clever man many years ago worked out that in messages written in English, certain letters occur with more frequency than others. “E” is used more often than anythin’. “T” comes next, then “a”, then “o” an’ then “n”. “Q” an’ “z” are, unsurprisin’ly, the least used. If you have a large block of text where the letters have been substituted by other letters, look for the most common. That’s prob’ly “e”. The next most common is prob’ly “t”. It’s a process of elimination. With a bit of luck you can decode enough of the message to work out the whole thing.” He looked at the message on the paper in front of them. “This one I’m not so sure about. We don’t have enough letters to do a frequency analysis, but I’m wonderin’ if they had enough time to work one out, or code up a message if they did. I reckon this is much simpler.”
“Simpler how?” Sherlock asked.
“Ten groups of five letters each. That makes me think of a grid, or a table.”
Crowe quickly scribbled down the letters again underneath the originals, but in a more ordered arrangement:
“Now there’s two ways a body can write a five-by-ten grid,” he mused, “this way, or the reverse.”
Quickly, he wrote another grid, this time longer across than it was wide:
“ 'Southampton Post Office' ”, Sherlock read breathlessly, “ 'SS Great Eastern Dock, 09.45, Tuesday '. That must be the place to send the message, the place the ship is leaving from and the time it leaves.”
“Not a particularly clever code,” Crowe mused, “but prob’ly the best they could manage in a speeding carriage.” He glanced at Mycroft. “I guess we both know what comes next, don’t we?”
Mycroft nodded. “I’ll get started.”
Sherlock looked from one to the other. “What comes next?” he demanded.
The two men stared at each other. It was Mycroft who eventually spoke.
“They’ve booked themselves on a ship leaving Southampton tomorrow at a quarter to ten. While we’re dealing with things here, they’ll be at Southampton. By the time I can get the local police roused, the ship will have sailed.”
“So they’ve got away,” Sherlock said.
“Not necessarily,” Mycroft pointed out. “There are ships sailing for America every day. Most of the ships take passengers, but their main function is carrying letters and parcels. That’s where the money can be made. If we can book tickets on a ship leaving tomorrow, or the day after, for the same destination, then we can get there shortly behind them. Or perhaps even ahead of them. Our ship may be lighter, or more powerful. They did not choose their own ship because they thought they would be chased, but because they wanted to get out of the country as fast as possible.”
“We?” Sherlock asked.
“Mr Crowe will have to go,” Mycroft replied, “because he has jurisdiction in his own country. He can call upon the assistance of the local police. He will obviously take his daughter because he would not leave her here unaccompanied. I, on the other hand, will stay, because I need to ensure that the British Government is apprised of events, and to provide Mr Crowe with any long-range diplomatic support he needs.”
“Can’t he just send a cable to the Pinkertons, telling them to intercept the Great Eastern when it arrives?”
Mycroft shook his head, his prominent jowls wobbling as he did so. “You forget,” he said, “that we have no clear descriptions of the men; certainly not enough to secure their arrest. Apart from John Wilkes Booth, they cannot be identified by anyone apart from you.”
“And what about me?” Sherlock asked, barely able to breathe.
“You are the only one of us who saw the other men,” Mycroft said gently. “I cannot tell you to do this, Sherlock. I cannot even in all conscience ask you. I can merely po
int out that Mr Crowe cannot apprehend the men if he cannot find them.”
“You want me to go to America?” Sherlock whispered.
“I can tell Uncle Sherrinford and Aunt Anna that I have arranged an educational trip,” Mycroft said. “Lasting perhaps a month or so. They will be against it, of course, but I think I can persuade them.”
“Actually,” Sherlock said, thinking about Mrs Eglantine and the strange power she seemed to exert in his aunt and uncle’s household, “I think you’ll find it a lot easier than you think to convince them to let me go away for a while.”
Chapter Seven
The docks at Southampton were a bustling mass of men, women and children dressed in their Sunday best clothes. Some of them were streaming like ants up the gangplanks leading from the dockside up to the decks of ships, some of them were coming down the gangplanks from other ships and gazing around, wide-eyed at the sight of a new country, while the rest were either saying goodbye to friends and relatives or greeting newcomers with open arms. And in and around them wove uniformed porters wheeling piles of luggage precariously piled on to trolleys and dock workers in rough clothes and bandannas moving goods on to and from wooden pallets. Above it all towered the wooden cranes that were taking net-covered pallets from the dockside up to the decks of the ships or from the decks down to the dockside, as well as the cliff-like wooden or iron sides of the ships and the masts and funnels that rose like a mathematical forest all around.
And everywhere Sherlock looked he could see evidence of a hundred crimes being committed: pockets being picked, fixed card games being played, netted bales of goods being cut open so that small items could be removed, children being separated from their parents for heaven knew what reason, and newcomers paying in advance for transportation to boarding houses and hotels that didn’t exist or were nothing like the florid descriptions that were being given.
It was humanity at its best and at its worst.