Embassy Row

by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

  Holmes could see this cost the man some effort, so he appended a new observation. “I suppose you find our methods inelegant compared to your own tea ritual. I had the honor to witness an authentic tea ceremony some years ago, when I was a much younger man. I was deeply impressed with the aesthetics of the event.”

  “Ah. You know the tea ceremony,” said Ambassador Tochigi , with satisfaction.

  “Indeed. And I can see why our baskets of muffins and jars of compote and scones with clotted cream would look unsatisfactory to you, sir.” He indicated I should rise. “I have arranged for several varieties of tea to be made. That way we may sample many flavors, and remember the customs observed in other places.”

  As I rose, so did Messers Minato and Banadaichi. I saw how carefully both of them moved, and I felt the more inept because of my crutches. I laid my portfolio on my chair, as Holmes had instructed me to do, and waited while he placed his notes in his case. He left the case on his chair, as the Japanese had done with their various records. As we left the room, Andermatt appeared as if conjured from the air, and set a lock upon the door.

  “Your tea is being served in the White Salon. No one will disturb you there,” he informed us with an expression of supreme neutrality. “Enzo will escort you.” He indicated a liveried footman hovering at the head of the stairs.

  “Thank you, Andermatt,” said Holmes, and remarked to me over his shoulder, “Guthrie, you will want to come last, I think.”

  “Yes, thank you, sir,” I answered at once, knowing how inexpertly and slowly I had made my way down his stairs in Pall Mall that morning.

  “I am sorry your secretary suffered an injury,” said Ambassador Tochigi as he and Holmes descended in the wake of Andermatt and Enzo.

  “No more than I, I assure you,” Holmes said.

  I waited until they had turned down the lower corridor before making my precarious way down the stairs, only to find Mister Minato waiting for me.

  “You would like some help?” he offered.

  “Need is more the word,” I said churlishly, and relented. “Yes, you are right. I may have trouble making my way.”

  “I will go ahead of you, in case you require support.” He bowed slightly. “I ask you not to fall. That would not help either of us.”

  It took me a moment to realize he was making a joke. “Oh, Exactly. Quite right.”

  He showed his appreciation by managing a quick smile. “I understand you fought off the attackers.”

  “Yes. Mister Holmes and I were able to rout them.” I found it strange that he should make such an observation but I said nothing, not wishing to offend him accidentally.

  “Have a care, Mister Guthrie,” said Mister Minato, pointing to where I had placed my crutch. It was near the edge of the tread and could be precarious. Was that, I asked myself, the only thing intended in his warning?

  “If you take your time, you will arrive safely,” he said with confidence, once again leaving me with the uneasy feeling there was more to his warning than was at first apparent.

  When I reached the foot of the stairs he bowed to me and hurried off, I assumed to join the ambassador.

  Following him took longer than I had anticipated, and when I arrived at the foot of the stairs, I found myself in an empty corridor of blond wood paneling, hung with a number of lithographic prints of Swiss locales. Nonplussed, I stood for the greater part of a minute, my mind racing, in the hope that someone—perhaps the redoubtable Mr. Minato—would arrive to escort me to the White Salon, for surely I thought they would not want me to wander about the Swiss embassy wholly unattended. When this did not happen, and I remained unescorted, I made my way along the corridor, hoping that I would happen upon the White Salon on my own.

  At the end of the corridor there was a tall, open-shuttered window letting in the fading sunlight. It was flanked by two doors. One of them, I supposed, must be the chamber in question. I halted to consider my situation. Selecting on impulse, I rapped on the door on my right and opened it, thinking if it were the wrong room, it would be locked.

  I was in error. I stepped, not into the White Salon, but into the library, a chamber of wood paneling, trestle tables, and comfortable chairs, and nary a trace of white to mar the richness of the glossy woods. I saw the ranks of tall cases standing with their ranks of books in German, French, and Italian. And I saw Penelope Gatspy, dressed in the height of French fashion, her fair hair shining, seated at one of the reading tables, poring over an ancient atlas. I could not have been more shocked to find a Hindoo princess at the Albert Hall. What on earth was the Golden Lodge’s most successful assassin doing at the Swiss embassy? The answers that sprang to mind were unwelcome.

  She looked up at my entrance, and stared. “Guthrie,” she said in hushed excitement. “God in Heaven! What are you doing here?”

  FROM THE JOURNAL OF PHILIP TYERS

  No word yet from Baker Street.

  The Admiralty messenger has come and gone for the day, and I have secured the case he brought in the safe at the back of the pantry, for I cannot think it would be wise to place it even in a locked drawer. If our surveillance continues, they will discover nothing about what Holmes is doing, for the documents are too well-protected: This way, I may leave the flat in certainty that nothing short of destruction will bring the case to light.

  I have been watching the street as covertly as possible, and I fear I am beginning to think every figure a sinister one. Even a crocodile of girls from the French Academy in Regent Street appeared fraught with menace. This cannot continue if I am to acquit myself properly in my assignment. I must get better control of my imagination, or Sutton will decide I am as daft as one of those women in the plays he has performed.

  Sutton is thriving on his role. He has worked to make his impersonation flawless, and I must concede he has largely accomplished his goal I, who have seen him prepare, and who know M H of old, can detect few flaws in his characterization, and they are so minor that were I not in search of them, I would not know they were there. He will soon cross Pall Mall to M H’s club, remain there the appointed time and return here. At which point he will resume his study of the role of Sir Peter Teazle. I begin to think he is in his way as agile of brain as many men in government service claim to be.

  “WHAT AM I doing here?” I countered, hastily closing the door behind me. “What are you doing here?” A woman who was an accomplished assassin and operative for the mysterious Golden Lodge did not do many things by happenstance, and certainly not at the Swiss embassy during private meetings between the English and the Japanese. This encounter might well be one that was as much a product of manipulation as the attack on the cab had been.

  “My brother works at the English embassy in Switzerland,” she said primly.

  “So you claimed. Among other things,” I reminded her as I made my wary way toward her. The last time I had seen her, we had been in France, making a harrowing escape from members of the Brotherhood, a vast, occult organization dedicated to the ruin of Europe. “Some of them were not true.”

  If she was aware of my sarcasm she made no indication of it, but stared directly at me. “You have been in trouble again, haven’t you?” she said, indicating my crutches.

  “An accident,” I said, too quickly, for I could not admit to this woman what had actually taken place, for fear she and the Golden Lodge had some connection to the events.

  “Accidents are a hazard of our professions, aren’t they?” she asked with a winsome smile. “From the look of it, you were lucky.”

  “Yes,” I said, thinking feverishly for a credible explanation for my presence at the Swiss embassy, for surely she would be curious about it.

  “I must suppose,” she said, abandoning her atlas and coming toward me, “that you are here in regard to tomorrow’s gala. Mister Holmes is a demanding employer, is he not, sending you on such a task, given the circumstances.”

  “I do not find him so,” I said firmly, not wanting to have to endure any expressio
ns of false sympathy at this point. “I might say as much for the Golden Lodge, sending a woman like you alone to an occasion like this. Or should I assume there is some reason you are here, beyond the matter of your brother?”

  “You may assume what you wish, Mister Guthrie,” she said rather primly. She was a remarkably pretty girl in that pale, English way, and we had been in a few close scrapes together not so very long ago. She had lost a colleague to the Brotherhood, and Mycroft Holmes and I had come close to losing a valuable document and a courier. Still, I did not wholly trust her, nor she me. “I understand the son of the Emperor is to attend the gala. The one who’s at Dartmouth.”

  “So he is,” I said, feeling remarkably stupid. There was something about Miss Gatspy that made my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth and my thoughts to dither. “And what interest is that to you?” It was not a gentlemanly challenge, but I could not stop myself.

  “The Brotherhood’s designs reach as far as the Chrysanthemum Throne and the Vermilion Brush,” said Miss Gatspy abruptly. Her references to Japan and China shocked me.

  “They cannot want to bring down those empires, as well as all of Europe,” I said at once. “For one thing, they cannot infiltrate the governments of those places as handily as they can in Europe. China and Japan are chary with foreigners.”

  She gave me a hard look. “Did you suppose that their ambitions pertained only to Europe, or that their membership limited to Europeans only? Hardly that, Guthrie. Their influence is felt throughout the world, from Iceland to the Argentine, from Vladivostok to New Orleans.” If we had not been in this library, I reckoned she would have laughed aloud at me; as it was, her eyes glinted and the corners of her mouth curved. “How better to spread chaos than to set East and West at each other’s throats, or pit the New World against the Old? And how greater the vacuum would be that they could occupy in such an eventuality.” She glanced at the door. “You will be missed, won’t you?”

  I was taken aback at her familiarity with my work here. “Why would you think so?” I asked, hoping to cover my dismay with a sharpness of tone I did not feel. I thought my brusqueness would distract her.

  I did not succeed. “Well, making full allowances for your crutches, you and I have added several minutes to your journey, and the Swiss are more conscious of time than most. You have not arrived where you are expected, and this could be considered troublesome,” she said quietly, unwilling to meet my churlishness with her own. “You had better be about your work. I have things of my own to attend to. Tomorrow evening we will talk again, if circumstances permit.”

  “So many circumstances,” I said in a teasing way, so that she would know I did not think ill of her. “You are planning to attend the gala, then?”

  “Most certainly,” she said, the angle of her head showing her fine features most admirably. “We of the Golden Lodge take interest in everything that interests the Brotherhood. And this forthcoming gala had the Brotherhood in an uproar. They are eager to embarrass either the English or the Japanese, or barring that, the Swiss, so that the whole negotiations are caught in scandal. It doesn’t matter what subverts them so long as the negotiations end in failure.”

  “No doubt,” I said, preparing to withdraw.

  She stopped me with a polite phrase. “My regards to Mister Holmes, Guthrie. I am aware that much of the burden of these talks falls on his shoulders. I cannot imagine a more capable man to strive for a solution. And tell him he is more deserving of a knighthood than ever MacMillian was.” She offered a playful wave as I closed the door.

  In the hall I took a handful of seconds to gather my thoughts before presenting myself in the White Salon. It would not do for me to appear flustered. The Japanese might construe it to our disadvantage.

  “Guthrie, dear boy,” Mycroft Holmes hailed me from the buffet where he was selecting an array of French pastries. “I was beginning to worry about you. Not enough to call out the Saint Bernards, but perhaps to send a footman looking for you.”

  I smiled dutifully at his witticism and struggled with the door and my crutches, and happened to catch a glimpse of a man in dark clothing entering the library I had just left. Was Miss Gatspy so brazen that she met her associates within embassy walls? I closed the door before my hesitation could occasion any remark.

  The White Salon was certainly deserving of its name: From the lace curtains and linen draperies to the damask upholstery, the room glistened like a Swiss mountain-top, all brilliant with snow. The carpets were a pattern of silver-and-white roses, and the wallpaper was an embossed pattern of white-on-white stripes.

  “I took a wrong turn,” I said, which was not more than the truth. “And I have only just corrected my error.” I looked at Ambassador Tochigi, who was pouring Russian-style tea from a huge brass samovar. This surprised me a bit, and I was about to say something about it when the ambassador himself explained his selection.

  “When I was a secretary, like Minato and Banadaichi, I was posted to Russia with the mission there. I developed a taste for the strong, sweet tea the Russians drink. It is a luxury I indulge in whenever I can.” He was adding sugar to his cup as he spoke. Then he cut himself a section of Linzertorte, and topped it off with sweet brandied cherries. “How fortunate that Switzerland can choose among three such rich cuisines—French, German, and Italian.”

  “Yes, it is quite a recommendation,” agreed Holmes as he took his seat.

  I realized I was at a serious disadvantage, for I could not use my crutches and carry a cup of tea, let alone a plate of pastry, to my seat. I went to Holmes’ side. “Sir, I do. not wish to offend you, but I would like to request that you permit me to sit at the buffet for tea. Otherwise . . .”

  Holmes waved me toward the table. “Have at it, dear boy. I’m certain no one will object.”

  Ambassador Tochigi looked stuffy at Holmes’ answer, and his secretaries carefully made no notice of this exchange whatsoever. I thanked Holmes, made my way across the room, turned a chair toward the buffet in such a place that I could easily watch the others in the room, sank into it and began to select items for my tea. First I filled a cup with good China black, and then bent my mind to choosing between French St. Honoré’s cake and Italian zabaglione.

  Holmes leaned back and resumed what he had been saying when I came into the room. “What is most pressing, given the potential for disaster in such an . . . association, from what you have said is to discover the woman the Prince has become . . . entangled with, and extricate him without a breath of scandal.”

  “That is correct,” said Ambassador Tochigi. “All other agreements are contingent upon that.”

  “Understandably,” said Holmes.

  Ambassador Tochigi took a long sip of his Russian tea. “Has any effort been made to identify the woman?”

  “Not successfully, no,” admitted Holmes. “If you will forgive me, Count, our hands would not be so completely tied if you were to authorize us to put men to watch the Prince. He would quickly lead us to her.”

  “That is not acceptable. We have our own men for that purpose.” He cleared his throat. “It is not fitting to have a member of the Emperor’s family followed by agents of another government. If you will excuse me for making so plain a statement.”

  “Certainly,” Holmes replied affably, “since it will allow me the chance to observe that you are being very short-sighted in this regard, for your men are restricted in their movements about England, and they cannot do the tasks you have assigned them with such restraints.”

  “Then lift the restraints,” said Ambassador Tochigi impatiently.

  “It isn’t so easily done, Ambassador, if you will forgive me for speaking of it.” He watched Ambassador Tochigi. “You would not welcome English guards given leave to make their way unchecked through Japan: No more would England be willing to provide carte blanche to your guards here. The most reasonable compromise would be for you to give permission to us to follow the Prince while he is here. We will not interfere with anyth
ing he does at the embassy or in his work with you, but if we are to discover the woman, it is far easier to begin with the man we know than try to settle on a woman we do not know.” He paused to enjoy his food.

  Ambassador Tochigi gave the matter some thought. “If it were up to me, I would do it, but I must answer to my superiors, as you must answer to yours, and they would not countenance such an act.”

  “You may underestimate your powers of persuasion, Count Tochigi,” said Holmes.

  But the ambassador was not willing to listen to flattery. “It would take months if it were to be done at all. And we have little more than a day in which to resolve this question. So I fear we will not be able to put your theory to the test. It is not possible for me to make the request you recommend.”

  Holmes tried another tack. “I must confess, Count, that I am astonished that given the misadventure of Prince Jiro, your government would want to place so many Japanese cadets at Dartmouth.”

  Ambassador Tochigi had an answer for him. “Then you have not given the matter much close consideration. It is thought that if there were more Japanese students at the Naval College, there would be greater camaraderie, and the impulse to become involved with foreigners as a balm to loneliness would be less a threat than has been the case with Prince Jiro.”

  So that was the agreed-upon tale: Prince Jiro had taken up with an Englishwoman because he was homesick for Japan, and could not resist the foreign woman in his loneliness. Therefore, if there had been more Japanese cadets, the Prince would not have strayed. There was an odd logic to the argument, if one accepted the premise that the Prince was seduced. I listened intently as I began on my piece of St. Honoré’s cake.

  Mister Minato went to the door and glanced out into the hall, then returned silently to his chair. He went on with his tea, and Ambassador Tochigi paid no attention to any of his actions.

  “Very well, another two or three would not be unreasonable. But more than that would be apt to lead to the kind of abrasive competition we have made efforts to avoid,” Holmes pointed out as calmly as he could.