Mycroft Holmes (3 page)

Cyrus Douglas nodded.

“I do as I am told,” he replied.

“Oh, is that a fact!” Holmes said with a laugh. “And when, pray, did
that
commence? For I surely would like to be alive to see it.”

The strokes of the rowers’ blades were long, smooth, and steady, in spite of the pressure to win. Both teams were behaving to the last like gentlemen.

As the noise of the crowd swelled to a deafening roar, the Cambridge team performed exactly as Holmes had estimated, edging out its rival by a length and a half. Cries of dismay and exultation rose up so loudly that Holmes was convinced they could be heard all the way back to Putney Bridge.

In the tumult, Douglas dared to steal a sidelong glance at Holmes, and noted a smug little smile.

“So… you had a hand in this!”

“A small one,” Holmes replied, “though for my trouble I was cursed with Proverbs 16:18.”

“‘Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall?’” Douglas quoted.

Holmes laughed. “Imagine anyone thinking me proud.”

“Indeed,” Douglas said evenly. “But if you knew the remedy, why not use it before?”

“I’d never wagered before,” Holmes replied.

“I see.” Douglas cocked his head and smiled, as if privy to a secret. “A handsome topcoat. Is it new?”

“Well, of
course
it is new!” Holmes snapped. “Did you expect that I’d purchase it used?”

In truth, he wouldn’t have bought the wretched thing at all—it had cost more than his last two suits combined. But it had so pleased Georgiana that he felt he would break her heart if he let it go.

Douglas handed over the hat with no further comment. Holmes placed it once again upon his head, stood to leave, and motioned for his friend to follow. Douglas resumed his more servile demeanor, and the two pressed through the crowd to the place where a stout bookmaker with a scraggly black mustache stood behind his portable betting table. There was no rush to him, since most of the assembled had lost, and the few winners were anxious to watch their victorious team throw their beloved coxswain in the Thames, as tradition demanded.

The bookmaker, now a whole lot richer, counted out Holmes’s winnings, and Douglas’s, as well, all the while humming a merry tune.

“You bet handsomely, I see,” Holmes said to Douglas as he received his share. “Though I cannot begin to fathom the looks of pity you endured when you placed your wager. For what rube, what deluded fool, would dare to bet on Cambridge after all these long and losing years?”

He breathed deeply, looking quite content.

“Care to wager how I shall use a portion of my winnings?” he continued.

“Oh, I think I have a notion,” Douglas responded, clapping his friend on the shoulder.

That friendly act was an error in judgment that did not go unnoticed. A knot of Oxford fans stood nearby, well in their cups and aggrieved by the cash that would never line their pockets. In simpler words, they were itching for a fight. They had been glowering as the winnings were being counted out, so when one occasioned to see the familiarity between Holmes and Douglas, it provided them with the impetus they sought.

“That h’aint no valet!” one said.

“It’s like they’s
chums
,” another replied.

Douglas was too intent on pocketing his money to observe the half-dozen ill-kempt drunkards pushing through the crowd and spitting out insults. But Holmes did. They seemed to him large and porous, as if nursed from childhood by ale, and their grooming left much to be desired. Several had tufts of hair protruding from their ears. And one was gifted with an eyebrow that went from right temple to left without a break in between.

Then he noted something more alarming.

Their fleshy hands held sticks and bottles.

They’d come prepared.

“Did you bring your pistol by chance?” Holmes nervously asked his friend.

“It seemed excessive for a Cambridge–Oxford race,” Douglas replied, glancing at the men moving toward them. As Holmes stood his ground, ready to fight, Douglas waited another moment, as if trying to discern what to do.

Then he ran off as fast as his long legs could carry him.

This caught the Oxford fans by surprise. They slowed slightly, muttering in derision.

“All cowards, every last mother’s son of ’em,” one jeered.

“But his friend there,” the one with the eyebrow observed, “’e looks primed for a beatin’. And no good’ll come in wastin’ a perfectly good bottle!” With that, he sucked out the last drop of ale, and then held it like a cudgel in his hairy fingers.

“This otter improve ’is aspect somewhat!” he said, wiggling that long eyebrow up and down for emphasis.

Holmes dropped into a defensive stance.

“Take a look at that!” another guffawed. “That one fancies hisself a pugilist!”

Emboldened, they began to squeeze around him like a large and angry fist.

Suddenly, the unmistakable sound of hooves… and a moment later Douglas—astride Abie’s back—charged into their midst, scattering them long enough for him to extend a hand.

Holmes grasped it and swung up behind him.

The two galloped away.

The passel of drunks was momentarily stunned but quickly recovered. Dragging themselves up onto their own mounts, they kicked and whipped the horses into a lather and set off after their quarry.

* * *

The din of their pursuit grew louder. Holmes knew only too well that poor Abie, with two astride him, would never be able to maintain a lead.

“We’ll tan yer ugly hide, we will!” a lout shouted from behind.

“A real batty-fang, lads!” another called out.

Passersby and carriage horses became a blur as the chase went on. A few bottles crashed to the right and the left of them. One missed Holmes’s head by a centimeter, yet found its mark just as Douglas was turning to see how much the men had gained.

It shattered against his left temple. Blood spurted from the wound, dripped down Douglas’s cheek and neck, and stained his white collar a deep and ugly red. He lost consciousness upon impact, and began to list precariously portside.

The stomping of hooves grew in volume, as threats of a beating turned to promises of killing… and worse.

Steadying the unconscious Douglas with his knees, Holmes strained past him and grabbed hold of Abie’s reins. Startled by his master’s familiar touch, the beast mustered a burst of energy that bought them a moment’s respite. His left hand on the reins, his knees still clenching Douglas on either side, Holmes reached into his breast pocket with his right hand, and pulled out his pocket watch.

He squinted, damning the sunlight he had praised so assiduously just an hour before, and finally managed to read the time.

Twenty-nine past the hour
, he thought, abruptly changing course.
We have four minutes.

If only they could reach St. Giles in time.

THE ROOKERY OF ST. GILES WAS A DESTINATION CHOSEN BY NO
one—at least, no one with sense in their heads or a choice in the matter.

The sides of its looming old tenements had been patched and re-patched so often that it seemed that repairs alone held them up. The windows were so grimy with soot and dust that even spring had not yet made its mark, for the sun had been all but shut out. Accumulated piles of refuse stood in the center of the street, like stacks of hay left to rot, and the air smelled stale, as if even the breeze dared not venture therein.

It was the sort of place where smallpox and fevers took hold and never let go, where toothless hawkers extolled the virtues of flowers that proper housewives had discarded days before, while other hawkers—with no virtue left to extol—sold their own wilted bodies to any passing stranger.

Whatever else it was, St. Giles wasn’t fit for fine gentlemen with overpriced topcoats. Once a person found himself at St. Giles, it was best to tread lightly, and to hold onto his wits and his wallet with equal vigor.

As Cyrus Douglas began his slow ascent back to consciousness, the first thing he smelled was St. Giles in all its damnable glory—a stirring aroma of piss, dung, and rotting flesh. And the first thing he heard was the echoing sound of Abie’s hooves thundering down the broken, battered street as he and Holmes jostled violently from side to side at a pace that threatened to send them both tumbling arse over turkey.

What the bloody deuce are you
doing,
Holmes?
he tried to say aloud, though he still couldn’t find his voice.
Are you determined to get us killed?

Then he heard another sound—one that froze his blood. It was the pounding hoof beats of their pursuers, mingled with jeers and laughing.

Holmes must have taken a wrong and fatal turn
, Douglas thought. But rather than speed up, he was slowing Abie down to little more than a trot!

All the while, the sounds were coming closer.

Faster, Holmes
, he thought frantically, though he still could not speak.
Faster, for the love of all that is holy!
Perversely, he could feel his friend pulling back on the reins, actually
slowing
their pace. It was such a mad choice that even Abie seemed reluctant to comply.

“Easy, boy… easy…” Holmes repeated.

The thugs were so very near that Douglas was certain he could feel their breath at the back of his neck.

He dared to glance behind, and immediately wished he hadn’t. The villains had their sticks and whips and bottles raised high into the air. Those same mean weapons with which they beat their poor nags, they now planned to use on their unarmed quarry. And with the blow to his temple still so fresh and throbbing, Douglas was in no condition to fight. There would be little for him to do but roll up into a ball, take the blows, and hope that death came quickly.

A murder of crows, ragged and cawing, swooped down upon them. As if they were some celestial signal, Holmes suddenly prodded Abie into a full gallop, until the horse was flying over the gouges and ruts, the birds’ caws melding with the men’s laughter.

They approached a mews that led to nowhere, with carts and makeshift stands and garbage consuming every inch of the street. Yet Holmes continued on, prodding Abie so close to a tenement wall that it nearly scraped the poor thing’s side. The pursuers began to ride two by two, so as to allow no room for escape.

Douglas finally unlocked his jaw to speak.

“What the deuce are you
thinking
, Holmes!”

Suddenly, above their heads, a half-dozen windows burst open at the same time, and several large, chattering women leaned out, upending enormous buckets of slop onto the street below.

The filth missed Abie and his riders by less than a length, but the ruffians behind them barely had time to cry out when they were drenched in a pungent mix of offal, rotting vegetables, bone, gristle, piss, and shit. Their beasts skittered on the slime, and the ruts proved lethal.

The assailant in the lead, the one with one eyebrow, went hurtling over his nag like a projectile and landed head first in a fly-infested, maggot-encrusted dung heap. Others went down hither and thither until all were crawling about in the muck, trying to regain their footing only to slip into it again, all the while cursing loudly.

Pulling again on the reins, Holmes turned Abie and trotted him past a confusion of upended horses and men while the crows nonchalantly swooped over the lot of them, eager to ferret out their breakfast.

The sight gave Douglas new vigor, and he resumed the reins. Though they had to pass through a baptism of grime, it was a sprinkling, not the immersion their pursuers had endured. And though Holmes’s topcoat and his own were likely ruined, their bodies were more or less intact.

You are a lucky man, Holmes
, he mused.
Has there ever been an individual so blessed by fate as you?

They rode on out of St. Giles and into a more genteel section of town, neither man uttering so much as a syllable until they reached their destination—an inviting little tobacco shop on Regent Street.

* * *

Holmes and Douglas left poor exhausted Abie, his coat steaming from exertion, in a spot of shade, giving him fresh water and a pat on the flank for a job well done, which seemed a mean substitute, Holmes acknowledged to himself, for apples or oats.

As they hobbled up the stairs to the entry, he eyed the establishment as a pilgrim might eye Mecca. Over the front door hung a sign.

REGENT TOBACCOS

Some months before, Holmes had accompanied his beloved Georgiana to the London docks to pick up letters from her family back in Trinidad. The docks were a grimy affair, and occasionally a dangerous one—he had always insisted that she not go it alone.

As they passed a ship unloading its cargo, he had spotted several crates of the most elusive cigar of the year, that delectable Cuban the
Principe de Gales
. Owing to the never-ending skirmish between Cuba and Spain, the cigar manufacturer had relocated his factories to the United States, which was just recovering from its own civil war. All that shifting about had made it impossible for
Principes
to be found in London, even for ready money.