by Неизвестный
I opened the bundle. It was an assortment of clothes, most of them well-worn, by the looks of it. There was a pair of rough cut breeches, an open-throated white cotton shirt, and a short blue wool jacket.
“I believe I got your size about right,” Holmes remarked as he poured himself a cup of coffee.
“What’s this about, Holmes?”
“I have been studying shipboard life, Watson, and I have learned quite a few things that I found interesting and even surprising.”
“Such as — ?”
But my question was interrupted by the arrival of Mrs Hudson, who appeared at the door, carrying a steaming platter. The aroma of Canadian bacon wafted across the room.
“Your breakfast, gentlemen,” she announced rather triumphantly.
“Capital, Mrs Hudson!” Holmes barked. I had noticed that lack of sleep, rather than making him lethargic, often had the opposite effect — for a while, at any rate, until it caught up with him.
“We’re going incognito, Watson,” Holmes said after Mrs Hudson had left. “Into the belly of the beast, as it were.”
The meaning of his words dawned on me. “You mean we’re going to pose as sailors on the Andrea Morgan?”
“What else? The presence of an investigating detective and his colleague would drive our quarry further underground — hardly the way to solve our case, don’t you agree?”
“I suppose,” I answered dubiously, looking at the pile of clothing. The physician in me didn’t care even to speculate as to where they came from.
“Oh, come now, Watson,” Holmes said, seeing my glum face. “Where’s your sense of adventure?”
I shrugged. Right now I wished I were sitting inside a snug hotel in the Lake District, a bottle of single malt at my side.
“How are your shipboard skills?” Holmes inquired, plucking a muffin from the basket on the table.
“Well, I did spend some time on board a ship during my stint in the army, as you know. But that was a long time ago…”
“Well, Watson, are you game?”
I sighed. “I’ll do my best.”
Mrs Hudson returned moments later with fresh coffee. All throughout breakfast she did not attempt to conceal her surprise at seeing Holmes up and about at such an unusual hour; she muttered a bit to herself about “irregular habits” as she served us our oatmeal and eggs, and shook her head as she cleared the table. The good landlady had a touch of the dramatic about her, which perhaps was why she was able to tolerate my friend’s eccentricities. As we left she pressed a package of sandwiches into my hands.
“It’s a raw day out there, and God knows when he’ll remember to eat next, Dr Watson. Take these just in case.”
I thanked her and set out after Holmes, who was already down in the street hailing a cab. I hurried down the stairs after him and stepped out into the street. Steam swirled up from the damp streets; the storm had passed through in the night, making way for a cool, bright day, and now that the temperature of the ground was warmer than the air, a foggy mist rose from the cobblestones.
On the way to the docks Holmes filled me in as best he could as to the ways of shipboard life. Fortunately, I had some experience aboard transport chips as a soldier — still, I had no great confidence that I would be able to pull off our deception.
When we arrived at the docks it was just after nine o’clock. The tremendous deluge of the day before had done little to suppress the usual hustle and bustle in England’s most populous port. The piers were crawling with dock workers, sailors, deck hands, day labourers, scavengers, financiers and their servants. The scene reminded me of the activity in a bee hive or an ant hill — the constant comings and going, the incessant buzz and hum of activity seemed as instinctive and unconscious as a swarm of insects.
We soon found the Andrea Morgan. She was a mid-sized freighter, painted a rust-coloured red with blue trim. She looked to be in pretty good shape for a ship that had evidently seen some years of service.
Captain Crane was supervising the loading of cargo when we arrived, and as soon as he saw us he came over to greet us.
“Thank you for coming, Mr Holmes — Dr Watson,” he said, shaking both our hands vigorously.
In the morning light his face was no less handsome; in fact, he looked less care-worn than he had the previous night. Perhaps the knowledge that the great Sherlock Holmes was at his service had eased his mind. In the bright, hazy sunlight his eyes were a cloudy sea green.
“I hope we can be of some service, Captain,” Holmes replied, looking at a couple of sailors in starched white uniforms, fresh off their ship on leave, their caps set jauntily to one side on their heads. They strode by full of youth and adventure and expectation, leaning eagerly into their future as though nothing evil could befall them.
“Oh, I’d like you to meet my son.” Captain Crane said. “Andrew! Come over here a minute, will you?” he called to a tall, black haired youth of about eighteen, who was overseeing the loading of a stack of crates. The boy walked over to us, hands in his pockets, a sulky expression on his face. He clearly took after his father, with the same curly black hair and deep-set eyes, yet his face was more delicate, almost girlish, with full, chubby lips. One could sense his mother’s influence in the more compact build and delicate bone structure of his face.
“These are our two new deck hands, Watkins and Soames,” Captain Crane said, putting a hand on his son’s shoulder.
“How d’you do?” the boy said, without offering either of us his hand. He was clearly not pleased to see us, and I couldn’t help wondering why.
His father frowned, but before he could reprimand the boy, a red-haired man came over to greet us. He was short and powerfully built; his bare arms bulged with tattoos of mermaids, anchors and sea creatures. A large green sea serpent dominated his left bicep; its long, scaly tail wrapped around his sinuous wrist.
“Hello there!” he said cheerfully, pushing back the knitted wool cap he wore over his closely cropped hair, which was the colour of ripened winter wheat. His beard, also neatly clipped, was a brighter shade of red, almost orange. With his ruddy, sunburnt skin and pale blue eyes, he cut a striking figure, even among the collection of colourful characters swarming all around us.
“This is my first mate, Samuel Snead,” Captain Crane said. “You’ll be working under him. Snead, these are the men I told you about — Watkins and Soames.”
Snead reached out to shake our hands, and I noticed that part of his thumb and index finger was missing on his right hand. From the scar tissue that had formed over the stumps, I surmised that his deformity was the result of an accident rather than a birth defect. He appeared entirely unselfconscious about it, however, and began chattering cheerfully with us.
“Done much work on freighters, have you?” he asked, sizing us up with a practiced eye.
“Not much,” Holmes replied. “But Captain Crane was kind enough to give us a try, and here we are.”
“You’ll not find a more capable skipper this side of the Channel,” Snead said. “Come along, lads, and I’ll show you around.” Then, noticing that I was looking at his mangled hand, he winked at me. “Barracuda, off the coast of Saint Thomas. Ever been to the West Indies?”
“No, I can’t say that I have,” I replied.
“Most beautiful beaches I ever seen. The sea there is turquoise, warm and clear as crystal. But watch out for the barracuda. They’ll just as soon take a chunk out of you as look at you. Ugly buggers, too,” he added with a grin. “Teeth like razors. Well, come on, let’s go — we’re burnin’ daylight standing around runnin’ our mouths!”
Later, after we had received a tour of the ship, Holmes and I stood together on the deck watching Snead supervise the dock workers as they loaded freight onto the ship.
“I’ll wager he’s done time, Watson,” Holmes murmu
red.
“Really?”
“I have seen that sea serpent design before on the arms of inmates of Braxton Prison.”
“Indeed. I wonder if Captain Crane knows about his first mate’s past?”
Holmes shook his head. “I doubt that someone like the captain would be entirely innocent of the matter. After all, probably half of the men who serve on shipboard are former convicts.”
By half past eleven the cargo had been loaded and we set off for Portsmouth. I was assigned to the engine room, which suited me just fine. The head mechanic, Gubbins, was an affable giant who spoke little but laughed easily. With his shiny bullet-shaped head and enormous torso set on rather spindly legs, he resembled a bulldog; luckily for me, he also had the open, friendly nature of that breed. My duties were not demanding; mostly I was required to see that the ship’s furnace remained stoked with coal, but that the temperature did not exceed a safe level.
Holmes, on the other hand, was to act as ship’s navigator. As long as we were still cruising along the Thames, this presented little challenge, I supposed, though I had no idea what he planned to do once we hit open water. He had gained a working knowledge of the constellations during his work on “The Case of the Star-Struck Astronomer,” but it was one thing to know the positions of the stars and quite another to navigate by them. I had no doubt Captain Crane knew much of the route by heart; the important thing was that Holmes convince the rest of the crew of his abilities.
Besides the ship’s cook, the only other crewman aboard was Crane’s son, Andrew. As far as I could tell, he was in charge of the paper-work; he also looked after the cargo and filled in at any of the dozen odd jobs that come up aboard a freighter. The boy’s surly manner did not disappear entirely, but he now nodded to me civilly when we passed in the corridor. Except for the captain and the cook, we all took turns swabbing the deck and performing other routine cleaning tasks, which I thought very democratic of our skipper.
The first day passed without incident, and by that night I was so exhausted from the unaccustomed manual labour that my head barely touched the pillow before I sank into a deep sleep. The night shift in the engine room was to be shared between Gubbins and Andrew, and the steering of the vessel was broken into three shifts: the captain, Snead and Holmes would each take their turn at the wheel while the others slept.
Holmes had specifically requested a night shift — to keep an eye on things, I supposed — and the schedule no doubt suited his nocturnal nature; many a time I had known him to sit up smoking his Haverstraw pipe all night, only to retire to bed at the first rays of morning light.
Lulled by the gentle rolling motion of the ship, I slept like the dead on the first night, awakening to the smell of coffee drifting up from the galley. The fresh sea air and exercise had given me a terrific appetite, and I ate enough for two men. After a hearty breakfast of sausage and slap jacks, I headed off to my post in the engine room.
As I headed for the steep steps that led down to the engine room, Holmes caught up with me and pulled me aside.
“Within a day’s journey we will be in open sea,” he said in a low voice, glancing down the corridor to make sure we were alone. “Therefore, I believe that tonight he will make his move. After that, weather conditions and rough water will make it more difficult.”
“Really?” I whispered. “What do you intend to do?”
“This is my plan: you will take the place of Captain Crane in his bed tonight, and he will take your bed. No one will know of this except for us, and we will make the switch at midnight, the beginning of the second watch.”
“What am I to do?”
“Just pretend to be asleep. Don’t worry — I will be nearby, in case anything does happen.”
“Very well,” I said.
“There is something else of interest I’d like you to see.”
“Really? What’s that?”
“This way,” he replied, and led me down the stairs past the engine room to the aft hull where the cargo was stored. It was a low-ceilinged, dingy room, and smelled of moss and mildew. It was stacked wall to wall with crates and crates of tea.
“Here,” he said, lighting a torch he had brought for the purpose. “What do you see?” he said, holding the torch low over the rows of crates stacked upon the floor.
I bent down to examine them. The first thing that struck me was that, along with the smell of tea and mildew, was another smell — a sweet, sickly odour.
I stood up. “There is something in these crates other than tea, isn’t there?”
He nodded. “Just so, Watson — as I suspected, we have come upon the reason for all the deception and skullduggery. Unless I am mistaken, there is opium in these crates.”
“Smuggling!”
“Precisely.”
“But who? Clearly the captain is unaware, or he would — ?”
Holmes shook his head. “I don’t know. And for the present, I can’t entirely leave the captain out of the equation. These are deep waters, Watson, and I suspect there is another player whose hand is visible — but who lurks in the shadows, as usual.”
I stared at him in dim light. “Not — ?”
He nodded. “I can’t be certain, but I suspect that my old enemy Moriarty is behind this. I know that he has been steadily infiltrating the shipping business in and out of London; I believe it is his master plan to maintain a stranglehold on the docks, so that he can smuggle drugs in and out at his leisure. This has the mark of his hand.”
My skin went cold, and I felt my heart beating in my throat at the mention of Moriarty’s name. “That would mean one of his agents is aboard this ship.”
Holmes nodded. “Just so, Watson. Which is why we cannot consider anyone above suspicion, and that is why we must maintain a constant vigilance.”
Just then I heard footsteps approaching the cargo storage area. Holmes hurried along the corridor in the opposite direction as I tried to duck into the stairwell just as the first mate came around the corner. He saw me, though, and stopped to talk with me.
“Hello there, Watkins,” he said, looking me up and down.
His red hair glinted in the sun, the early morning rays bringing out the copper highlights. His eyes were of the palest blue, so that they were almost translucent. I was suddenly reminded of a pair of favourite marbles I’d had as a child, light blue and glassy as the irises of his eyes. He stood in front of me, his muscular arms flexed, so that the tattoos on his biceps bulged. The tale of the sea serpent on his left arm waved at me, and the beast’s grin widened into a lascivious smirk.
“How are you farin’ on board the Andrea Morgan, then?” Snead asked. His voice was friendly enough, but there was an edge behind it, a suggestion of a threat, the hint of barely repressed violence.
“Oh, very well, thank you,” I replied. I felt the sweat prickle on the back of my neck. The man’s voice and manner unsettled me, and I hoped I was hiding it successfully.
“That’s good,” he said. “You know it’s funny, but you and yer friend don’t talk much like sailors.”
“No, I suppose not, “I answered, attempting a laugh, which came out rather poorly, as if I were suffering from indigestion or something. “But then, neither does Captain Crane,” I added quickly, as the thought struck me.
“Yes, he’s quite the educated fellow, ain’t he?” the mate replied, cocking his head to one side and sucking on a bit of toothpick sticking out of the left side of his mouth. He plucked the toothpick from his lips with his mangled hand, grasping it deftly between the remaining fingers. I was struck by how quickly Nature adapts to catastrophe and loss; I had noticed him at work around the ship, and the dexterity of his crippled hand was no less than that of many able-bodied men I have seen. His total lack of self-consciousness about the disfigurement was impressive, too — he seemed almost to enjoy the effe
ct it had on people. I tried to make of a point of not staring at the hand, but he saw me glance at it and winked at me. There was something unpleasant and vulgar about that wink, a suggestion of familiarity that I would not have sought with someone such as him.
“At least there are no barracudas in the Thames, eh, Watkins?” he said, grinning broadly, displaying strong white teeth, no doubt bleached from years of sun and salt water. “But,” he added, “you never know what you’ll find lurkin’ under the waves, so it’s best to be watchful, eh?”
“Yes, I suppose so,” I murmured. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must get on with my duties.”
There passed a frightening moment when I thought he would not move out of the way, but then his face relaxed and he stepped aside.
“Right you are,” he said cheerfully, letting me pass. I hurried down the stairs to the engine room, glad to be rid of his company.
Later that day, as I was heading up to the galley for a cup of a tea, I overheard raised voices coming from the captain’s cabin. I recognized the first voice as belonging to Captain Crane, and I couldn’t be sure, but I thought the other one belonged to his son, Andrew. I lingered outside of the door for a few moments, and I was able to overhear some of the conversation.
“What has gotten into you?” the captain said. I could hear him pacing about the cabin, obviously agitated.
“Just say it! Just tell me!”
“There’s nothing to tell!”
“I don’t believe you!”
Just then I heard someone else coming, and I ducked around the corner before I could be spotted. I resolved to tell Holmes what I had overheard as soon as I could.
That night we ate in shifts; the captain dined alone with Holmes and myself, as the others attended to their various duties.
“How is your head, Captain?” I inquired.