Mycroft Holmes (28 page)

In the corner bed, Emanuel chuckled and snorted in his sleep.

HOLMES WAS MORE THAN PRIMED TO RIDE BACK TO THE
governor’s office immediately.

“If we leave now,” he insisted, “we could easily make it to Port of Spain by early morning. They will have maps of nearby islands, indicating which are located in international waters, while still being close enough to Trinidad to be practical for exchanges. There we can also find ledgers of sale.”

Douglas—though every bit as anxious as Holmes—would not forsake Emanuel.

“I will not have him wake up alone,” he declared.

The two fashioned a compromise. They would set off at dawn the following day, to arrive at the governor’s office by mid-afternoon.

While Douglas stretched out on one of the little beds, Holmes declined to lie down at all, preferring to remain seated at the table, to smoke what was left of the rank tobacco, and to stare periodically at the window for any sign of light.

* * *

By the time they had deposited Emanuel safely in San Fernando, then made their circuitous way back to Port of Spain, the sun was beginning its unflagging drop from the sky.

Worse still, when Holmes dismounted, his tired nag missed her step and landed a front hoof neatly on his right foot. As pain shot through him, he cursed the horse, the toes, and “the whole bloody mess.” Then he dug Sherlock’s walking stick out of his bag and, while Douglas procured water for the horses, did his best to navigate the stairs to the governor’s front door, continuing the imprecations the entire way.

When he finally reached the top landing, he noticed three men standing guard outside the closed door. They were large, sullen, and pasty-white, like the professional fishermen he had seen on the Liverpool docks—the ones who sailed on Russian whaling ships.

Holmes approached them with as much gravitas as he could muster under the circumstances. When he announced himself, however, they seemed neither to care about his credentials, nor about any emergency that might involve the governor’s time and attention.

“
Nyet, nyet!
” they said when he insisted he be allowed inside—thus confirming their nationality. When he didn’t depart, the portliest of the lot balled up his fist and threatened him with it—specifically indicating that he would like nothing better than to leave its imprint on Holmes’s sole unmarked cheek.

He was further demoralized to note that the man’s substantial fingers were decorated with an array of cheap rings, and he worried that another scar might be in his very near future.

A second brute—this one with a door-knocker beard and a chewed-up toothpick which he bounced from one side of his mouth to the other—growled, “No more governor!” in a thick accent.

“No more governor?” Holmes repeated. “Surely you don’t mean he is deceased…?”

The man didn’t answer, and the three of them simply fingered the long pistols hanging at their thighs, drawing closer to him, making their resolve quite clear.

Holmes hobbled his way back down the stairs and intercepted a very surprised Douglas, who was making his way up. Quickly he explained the dilemma.

“As determined as we are to get in, they seem even more determined to keep us out,” Holmes concluded.

Douglas peered up at the men.

“Could this be a misunderstanding?” he asked.

“No misunderstanding at all,” Holmes said. They’ve simply been instructed to keep people out of the office, and that’s what they’ll bloody well do. The good news, I suppose, is that it’s not personal. They’ve not been warned about
us
, per se.”

“Whether personal or not,” Douglas interjected, “it would not do to waylay the governor’s guards. And in any case, we are in no condition to take them on.”

“Then what are our options?” Holmes asked, not really expecting an answer.

Douglas frowned again at the guards, then made his way back down the stairs, motioning for his friend to follow. He led Holmes around the back of the edifice, to the five-finger tree that they had seen from the governor’s window. It was rich and lush, with outstretched branches that grew up past the balcony. Its star fruit left a trail of sticky juice on the ground and the leaves, making them shimmer.

“You cannot be serious,” Holmes said. “I’ve two toes sprained to a fare-thee-well…”

“It is a dramatic approach, I grant you,” Douglas replied. “But at least no heads need be broken in the process.”

Holmes looked at the tree, then back at Douglas.

“Other than mine, you mean,” he muttered.

Without another word, Douglas began to climb.

Damning his weariness and his aches, Holmes followed suit, flinging himself onto the lowest branches. While Douglas’s greater reach gave him a distinct advantage, Holmes used Sherlock’s walking stick to good effect, hooking upper branches to propel himself ever higher.

In a matter of minutes, they climbed to the edge of the balcony. Douglas leapt across the railing, while Holmes more or less stumbled over it, but both results were the same, and they found themselves at the office’s balcony door.

It was unlocked.

The two brushed themselves off and were just praising their own cleverness when they realized that the room was occupied, but not with the governor. Inside, half a dozen Amerindian workers were in the midst of packing up what looked like the governor’s personal belongings.

They stopped their labors and stared.

Before Holmes or Douglas could utter a sound, the governor’s smug young aide, Beauchamp, strode in. He seemed taken aback to see them, but quickly recovered.

“May I
help
you?” he inquired contemptuously.

Holmes, still out of breath from the climb, took the lead.

“We are here to meet with Governor Hamilton-Gordon,” he said in his finest “official” tone.

Beauchamp just smiled thinly. “Sir Hamilton-Gordon has left for Mauritius.”

“I see,” Holmes said, trying to sound nonchalant. “And when is he scheduled to return?”

“He is not,” the aide said.

“Is that a fact?” Holmes said, not yet quite believing it. “And just what is he doing in Mauritius?”

“Oh, did he not inform you, then?” Beauchamp responded. “On the twenty-fifth of June, the governorship is to be turned over to one Sir James Robert Longden. I am afraid that whatever…
plans
you made with the governor, you shall have to revisit with his successor.”

“But the governor said he would help us,” Douglas interjected, brushing aside Holmes’s small attempts to quell him. “He gave us his solemn word.”

“Did he?” The aide allowed himself a condescending grin. “Well then, were I you, I would board the first boat to Mauritius to inquire if you heard correctly.”

The workers tittered at this last, before resuming their packing.

“Mr. Holmes,” the aide said as he pointedly turned away from Douglas, “though you did not ask my advice, I shall now offer it. Your issue, as I understand it, is with a few missing Negroes. But you must understand that Caribbean society has complex, overlapping divisions of castes and classes. Frankly, the Negro is the last thing in the world anyone cares about.”

Beauchamp opened the door. His expression was cold, his intent clear. With no other options, the two men started out. Just as he passed, Douglas turned and cold-cocked the little aide in the jaw, dropping him neatly to the ground.

The workers said not a word, but continued their efforts.

As Douglas shook out his fist, he and Holmes strode out of the office and down the stairs to where the Russians still stood guard.

* * *

When the sentries saw Holmes and Douglas again, their laconic expressions gave way to puzzlement, as if the two had simply materialized out of thin air. One muttered something to another in Russian, but they showed no signs of making a move.

They simply watched Holmes and Douglas walk past.

As the two friends untied their nags, Douglas whispered to Holmes.

“I
infer
by this that you were correct—that they were hired specifically to guard against strangers entering through the front door. Since we did not, in fact, enter through the front door, it seems as if we did not fall within their purview.”

Holmes nodded.

“Next time,” he said as he began to mount, “they should be paid enough to guard the perimeter, as well.” He clicked his tongue at his nag. As the barn-sour horses began their plodding way toward the road, Holmes sighed deeply.

“In any case, we must return and scout around,” he said. “Somehow I doubt that these men will be quite so accommodating when they see us again.” He grimaced as pain shot through his foot.

“Huan,” Douglas said, eyeing his friend, “can have someone take a look at your toes. They most likely can be persuaded back into service.”

“You mean through some sort of Chinese mumbo-jumbo?” Holmes asked, not in the mood. “No, thank you.”

“Perhaps I should venture back here alone, then,” Douglas replied, “as your limping about might impede our progress.”

“No one knows their way around an office better than I, Douglas,” Holmes replied. “It would be like keeping a duck from water. Though if you insist on utilizing your Chinese friends, I wouldn’t mind it if a handful stood sentry for us.”

Douglas shook his head.

“They are tenuous residents here in Port of Spain,” he said, “with families and livelihoods. They don’t need any problems with the governor’s office, though I am sure they would be glad to help in other ways.”

Holmes nodded unhappily.

Finally out of the path of pedestrians, the men tapped the horses’ flanks and headed back to the Chinese quarter, to wait out what Holmes hoped would be an uneventful evening, before they returned to the governor’s office.

HOLMES LAY ON HIS BACK, STARING AT THE WOODEN SLATS OF
his hovel and waiting for one a.m., the assigned hour that he and Douglas were to venture back to the governor’s office. He hoped that their opposition remained unaware of their goal—the land claims—and had not already spirited away pertinent documents.

And what an opposition they are
, he thought with chagrin.
People so vile that they would whistle away someone’s life, simply for their own gain.

And Georgiana is among their ranks.

She had ceased, in his mind, to be Georgiana. She had fully become some other creature entirely. She had become Anabel Lynch.

Or perhaps he had separated the two so as to keep a bit of his sanity.

In any event, Georgiana was the lovely, caring creature with whom he had fallen in love back in England, when the most exotic thing in his life was the jumbie bead bracelet she wore on her right wrist. Anabel Lynch was another sort of creature entirely—frightening and unpredictable, who had made certain that he and Douglas would survive the journey to Trinidad, though not precisely in one piece.

She was the one who had lied repeatedly, who had been at least partway responsible for heaven-only-knew how many deaths—while at the same time had felt qualms enough to hide Douglas’s letters so that her fellow conspirators might be found out.

He stretched out on the hard, prickly straw, testing both his emotions and his physicality as one might test an unfamiliar object that held some interest, though was not particularly dear.

It no longer felt as if wolves were tearing at his throat each time he thought of her; and although his toes were certainly smarting, physical discomfort did not seem to matter as much as it once had. Aches and pains had become a part of him.

Though at three and twenty
, he mused wryly,
I should not be feeling quite so many.

Something else was occurring, as well, something that seemed foreign to anything he had assumed about himself to this point. He recalled the nightmares he’d had on the ship, and before that the chills he’d felt up his spine at the sight of that false sailor, spitting out of the wrong side of his mouth, and the mutes guarding the house of death.

What would Sherlock say
, he wondered suddenly,
if he knew his older brother had given himself over to phantoms and premonitions?