Mycroft Holmes (37 page)

He had them now. They were all leaning in, staring at the map—even the mercenaries.

“And so you see, it is only a matter of time until you shall be constrained to test Britain’s waterways, as well as her injunctions against slavery. And the moment you do, you
shall
be punished—Her Majesty will see to that. So while you might have a viable business—what you lack is viable transport!”

He let that settle, then he stared at the men with intent. He had one more move. It was extreme, and he was certain that Douglas not only would disapprove, but that it might well terminate their friendship. Nevertheless, to save them both, he had no other option.

“However,” he braved on, “if you cease this course of action immediately, and allow the two of us to leave this island unmolested, I shall stand down. And if you know anything about me, Mr. McGuire—and I know you do—then you know that I am a man of my word!”

In the stillness, a voice rang out.

“No, Holmes!”

It was Douglas, hazarding to rise. McGuire kicked him once in the gut, then a second time for good measure. He rolled into a fetal position on the sand and lay there, unmoving.

Holmes felt a white-hot rush of anger racing up his neck to the top of his skull.

Revenge!

But he kept it in check.

“You are not comporting yourself as a gentleman, McGuire,” he said through clenched teeth.

“Yes,” the rheumy-eyed businessman said mildly, albeit loudly enough for Holmes to hear. “This constant violence, it accomplishes nothing.” Holmes could place his accent immediately. The man was Swiss. And with that, another piece of the puzzle fell into place.

“You have my terms!” he called out to McGuire.

Then he turned to the men.

“You can tell your employers that the land they purchased, along with the steamship, shall continue as assets. And Mr. Ellensberg…” Holmes addressed the rheumy-eyed man, who stared at him in dismay. “You
are
Nestor Ellensberg, are you not?” he asked him pleasantly. “Were I you, I should inform my employer that while funds shall be lost in the short run, there is hardly a nascent business that does not encounter a few early snags. Perhaps
that
might quiet him.”

Ellensberg began to vibrate like a tuning fork, setting off a chain reaction among the group. McGuire noticed this, and again he sighed unhappily.

“Mr. Holmes,” he said, cocking his head to one side. “You are free to go, as I do not happily shoot my own kind. As I said, however, we must be allowed to conduct business in a manner—”

“And as
I
said, you shall release us both,” Holmes exclaimed coldly. “Or you may kill me now, and the devil take the hindmost!”

* * *

The diffused light that had been lurking behind rain clouds all afternoon had fled. Night was falling quickly. The mercenaries hadn’t moved from their armed vigil over Holmes. Douglas was still in a fetal position on the sand, too coiled into himself for Holmes to gauge whether or not he was still viable.

The functionaries had gathered in a tight little knot around McGuire and had remained there—from Holmes’s estimation—for a good quarter-hour. Though speaking too softly for him to hear, he assumed that they were debating their diminishing options. And though McGuire’s handsome face showed discomfort, he could tell the American was trying to regain the upper hand.

He was striving to turn the tables yet again.

Georgiana may have died an ideologue, Holmes knew, but McGuire was no such animal. He was an entrepreneur, although one who happened to believe in the superiority of the white race, and who was not above killing to make certain his goals were achieved.

He is Prichard’s theory of moral insanity come to life
, he mused.
A human being devoid of the common thread of human decency.

He wondered if McGuire was aware that Georgiana was dead, or if he cared.

“Blast that darkness!” McGuire exclaimed suddenly, glancing up at the sky as if it had chosen to plague him specifically. “Fetch the lanterns from out the boat!” he commanded gruffly. “Get two, bring ’em here now.”

A mercenary with flinty eyes hastened to the boat, then back with the lanterns, which he quickly lit.

“Hold the damned things up,” McGuire barked to the man. “I need to see who in hell I’m talkin’ to!”

The guard held up the lights like Diogenes searching for an upright man.

I can save you the trouble
, Holmes thought.
There is only one upright man here, and he is crumpled at your master’s feet
.

“Mr. Holmes?” McGuire inquired mildly. Holmes did not care at all for the tone of his voice, nor for the looks of unsettled fear that were at once too visible in the bureaucrats’ eyes.

“Though I assumed you to be a reasonable man, and true to your word, I cannot say the same for your… associate here. Negroes are emotional creatures, childish and irrational. If there is breath left in him, he will stop at nothing to get his pound of flesh, and I have worked too hard on this enterprise to allow a Negro with ties to the British government to plague me.

“And though I’ve given you ample opportunity to reverse your stance, still you insist on saving him. That, sir, is an irrational act on
your
part that makes me question the rest of my assumptions about you.”

“Be that as it may,” Holmes countered, “Edward Cardwell will still be fully apprised of the situation here, and as I am the only one who can assure him that nothing is amiss—”

“I realize that,” McGuire interrupted with a shrug, “and I agree that it is a powerful obstacle. Nevertheless, Mr. Holmes, if my only choice is to kill you, then that is the choice I’ll have to make.”

With that, he raised his gun and aimed it directly at Holmes’s head.

MYCROFT HOLMES COULD ASSESS ANY SITUATION IN THE TIME IT
took McGuire to lift the gun and aim. Unfortunately, there was little to assess.

McGuire was an expert shot. This, Holmes had determined by his gaze, his stance, and the ease with which he handled the weapon. He had grown up shooting small, quick game, Holmes surmised, like squirrel, and had parlayed that to his stint in the war, graduating to killing Union soldiers with the cool detachment of a sniper. Extinguishing a man some forty yards away would be child’s play.

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.