Snake Bite (13 page)

‘It threw two stones,’ Cameron pointed out. ‘According to you, anyway.’

Sherlock put a hand up to his cheek. It came away sticky with blood, but the cut didn’t seemed to be too bad. ‘Maybe it was a monkey. They can throw stones. Do you have monkeys in
China?’

‘There’re certainly plenty of them around Shanghai. The sailors bring them, and leave them here.’

‘Let’s see if there are any tracks,’ Sherlock said.

He led the way back to the sand of the rock garden. If Sherlock was hoping for distinct claw-marks or shoeprints then he was disappointed. His own footprints had completely obliterated whatever
tracks the intruder had left.

‘I should tell Father,’ Cameron said after a while. He sounded uncertain. ‘He might want to call the local constables.’

Sherlock shook his head. ‘There’s no point,’ he said. ‘I can’t be sure exactly what I saw, and whatever it was it’s gone now. We’d be breaking up the
party for nothing. We’ll tell him in the morning, over breakfast.’

Sherlock checked his cheek again. The bleeding had almost stopped. He followed Cameron across the rest of the garden, keeping an eye out for any movements in the bushes.

‘You need to clean yourself up,’ Cameron pointed out. ‘I’ll get some water and a cloth.’

After washing the blood off his face and the dirt from his hands, Sherlock undressed and climbed into the low bed that had been set up for him. It took him a while to get to sleep, however. It
wasn’t just the lingering excitement and the tension of the chase. He had become used to a hammock slung between two hooks, rocking with the motion of the sea, and the sound of the waves
slapping against the hull. A flat bed, a comfortable mattress and complete silence apart from the sound of Cameron’s breathing were disturbing in a way that they wouldn’t have been a
few months ago. Eventually, though, he did fall asleep, and almost wished he hadn’t. On board the
Gloria Scott
he had always gone to sleep too tired to dream, or at least so tired that
he slept through his dreams and never remembered them in the morning. Here, in Cameron’s bedroom, in the Mackenzie household, he found himself dreaming about Virginia Crowe. She was standing
in a field, a few feet away from him, her red hair flaring in the light of the Farnham sun. Sherlock stepped towards her, but she seemed to drift backwards two steps for each step he took. She got
further and further away from him, and the faster he moved the faster she drifted away. Her lips moved, but whatever she was saying, whatever message she was trying to convey, was so faint that he
couldn’t understand it. Eventually she was merely a dark spot against the lush green of the fields, and then she was gone.

Sherlock woke up with tears on his cheeks, but he wasn’t even sure what he was crying about.

The boys washed and dressed quickly. Cameron had some spare Chinese clothes which Sherlock put on. He liked the idea of blending in.

Breakfast was just like the ones he was used to in England – bacon, scrambled eggs, sausages and plentiful toast. The sausages had a strange, spicy taste, and the bacon was cooked so crisp
that he could snap it in half with an audible
crack
, but it was the closest thing he’d had to the food he remembered for months. There was even coffee – strong and black, with
lots of sugar. He had forgotten how good coffee tasted.

Mr Mackenzie was sitting at the head of the table reading a newspaper. It didn’t look Chinese – Sherlock suspected that the USS
Monocacy
had brought a stack of newspapers from
America, and that Cameron’s father was catching up on the news of the past year or so. He seemed to be distracted. He kept turning the pages and then turning back, as if he had realized that
he hadn’t been taking the words in.

‘We thought we saw a burglar last night,’ Cameron announced suddenly.

Mr Mackenzie looked up. He stared at Cameron, frowning.

‘What do you mean, a burglar?’ Mrs Mackenzie asked, concerned, from the other side of the table.

‘In the garden,’ Cameron amplified. ‘As we were going to bed. Sherlock thought he saw something in the bushes. He went to take a look, but whoever it was threw stones at
him.’

‘Or
what
ever,’ Sherlock corrected. ‘We don’t know for sure it was a person.’

‘Dogs don’t throw stones,’ Cameron pointed out. ‘Neither do cats.’

‘But monkeys might, and I don’t know what other animals you have in China that could throw stones.’

‘The chances are,’ Mr Mackenzie said casually, ‘that it was a local child. I seriously doubt that burglars would throw stones. They would be more likely to throw knives, or
those metal stars with sharpened edges that I’ve seen them use. I think you’re overdramatizing. It was a long evening. Perhaps the excitement got to you.’

He raised the newspaper again, hiding his face behind it, but Sherlock was concerned to see that his knuckles were white, as if he was clenching his fingers tightly on the paper. Something was
worrying him.

After breakfast, Sherlock and Cameron asked if they could head into town and look around.

‘Be careful,’ Mrs Mackenzie said, ‘and be back for lunch. Get me some oranges, if you can. Nice ones, not bruised.’ She turned to her husband. ‘What about you,
Malcolm? I was hoping we could go over the details for tomorrow’s cocktail party. Cook is getting into a state about it already.’

Mr Mackenzie lowered the newspaper again. His expression was brooding, thoughtful. ‘I’m afraid that I can’t – not this morning. I’ll be in my study – I have
some . . . some documents to attend to.’

‘Can’t they wait?’

‘No,’ Mr Mackenzie said, so sharply that his wife flinched. ‘I need to look at them today.’

For some reason, Sherlock remembered the package that Captain Tollaway had handed to Mr Mackenzie at the dinner party the night before. Was that the

‘documents’ he was referring to?

‘Oh,’ Mrs Mackenzie said in a small voice. ‘Well – perhaps I could come in later with a cup of coffee and a plate of biscuits for you, and we can talk about it
then.’

‘I’ll be locking my door,’ Mr Mackenzie said. His voice was harsh. ‘These documents are very sensitive. I can’t allow anyone to see them. I don’t mean to be
rude, my dear,’ he said in a calmer tone. ‘When I’ve finished with them, I’ll come and find you. We can talk then.’

‘Whatever you think best,’ Cameron’s mother said in a neutral voice, but her lips were pursed and here cheeks were flushed.

Sherlock looked over at Cameron. His new friend shrugged. He was frowning with concern. Obviously this was unusual behaviour for the breakfast table.

The rest of the meal was conducted in silence. Cameron’s father seemed embarrassed by his outburst, and his mother seemed not to want to start another conversation in case she provoked
more anger. Cameron spent most of the time looking nervously from one to the other, trying to work out what was going on. Sherlock was also trying to work out what was going on. In particular, he
was interested in why Cameron’s father wanted to explain away what had happened the night before. In Sherlock’s experience, most home owners who might have played unwitting host to a
burglar would be concerned about stopping it from happening again – not pretending that it hadn’t happened in the first place.

After breakfast, the two boys headed out into the town. The sky was blue and cloudless, and although there was a cold nip in the air it promised to be a good day.

‘What do you want to do?’ Cameron asked.

Sherlock remembered his thoughts at the dinner table the night before. ‘Actually,’ he said, ‘I want to go looking for a friend.’

‘I didn’t think you had any friends in Shanghai.’

‘It’s the cook from the
Gloria Scott
. He has family here.’ Sherlock tried to remember the address that Wu Chung had given him before leaving the ship. ‘He said I
could find him at Renmin Dong Lu. That’s East Renmin Street, isn’t it?’

Cameron nodded. ‘I know where that is. Not the nicest area in Shanghai. Are you sure you want to go and see this guy?’

‘I’d like to.’ Sherlock paused. ‘If you think it’s safe.’

‘If anything happens we can always fight, or run away.’

Together they walked through the streets of Shanghai. Like the day before, there were people everywhere: carrying baskets or pushing carts, leading horses or pushing sheep in front of them with
long sticks. Many of them wore broad straw hats to protect themselves from the heat of the sun. Unlike the hats Sherlock was used to back in England, these were all brim and no crown: shallow cones
that reminded Sherlock of the sloping roof of the Mackenzie house.

Cameron obviously knew the way. The route took them down narrow alleys and wide thoroughfares, around corners and past rows of shops and stalls.

A sudden booming sound, echoing across the town, made Sherlock stop dead in his tracks. Other people in the street had stopped as well, and were talking to each other in low voices.
‘What’s that?’ he asked.

Cameron frowned. ‘Sounds like a ship’s horn,’ he said. ‘I reckon that’s the USS
Monocacy
calling all its sailors back, ready to set out on its mission to map
the twists and turns of the Yangtze River.’

Sherlock noticed that the other people in the street weren’t looking too happy. ‘I’m not sure that the locals approve,’ he pointed out.

‘It never got mentioned last night – at least, not while we were there – but you have to wonder why the American Government wants to have accurate maps of a Chinese river
thousands of miles from American waters. I doubt that they’re doing it out of the goodness of their hearts.’ Cameron shrugged. ‘The obvious suggestion is that they think they
might need accurate maps at some time in the future, and there’re only two reasons for that – possible military action or a whole load of American traders heading upriver.’ He
indicated the locals, who were still muttering to each other in low voices. ‘They’re debating which of the two options they would prefer.’

Eventually, as they turned a corner, Cameron slowed to a halt.

‘This is East Renmin Street.’

Sherlock nodded. ‘Then let’s ask someone where the Wu family live.’

Cameron smiled at a toothless old woman who was selling fruit at the side of the road. He said something in a burst of Cantonese too fast for Sherlock to pick out the words. She said something
in reply, and gestured to a particular house, no different from the rest, a little way away. As with the others he had seen, it was plain and anonymous from the outside: walls of white plaster,
roof of red tiles and a door painted green.

The two boys had taken a few steps towards the house when the front door opened and a woman ran out. She was crying.

‘He’s sick!’ she screamed in Cantonese, looking around desperately for help. ‘Someone help me! My husband – he’s sick! I think he is dying!’

The woman’s panic was obvious from her desperate expression. She clearly feared for her husband’s life.

Other people in the street detoured around her as she tried to catch their attention. Sherlock stepped forward. Despite the fact that he was European, not Chinese, she moved towards him.

‘My husband,’ she said again. ‘His name is Wu Chung. Please – can you help me?’

It felt to Sherlock as if his heart had suddenly frozen over, and that the slightest movement might cause it to shatter. ‘He’s sick?’ Sherlock repeated.
‘But – but he was fine yesterday. I saw him.’ Despite the icy paralysis of his heart, he found that his mind was racing. Facts and memories were spinning past his mental gaze. Wu
Chung hadn’t seemed ill on the
Gloria Scott
. When he had walked down the gangway and stepped on to dry land he had been fine – happy at the prospect of seeing his family, if
slightly nervous. If there was some disease that was striking down the sailors then surely it should have taken hold on board the ship while they were at sea – and Sherlock should have been
ill as well.
All
the sailors should have been ill – they had been together at sea for weeks on end. No, if he was ill then it was more likely that the cook had caught some local
disease the moment he had stepped on to the quayside. But could a disease act that quickly? Sherlock asked himself.

The woman plucked at his sleeve. ‘Please, you must help!’

Cameron took a step backwards. ‘Look, Sherlock, if there’s some illness here then we should stay away. I’ve seen diseases go from person to person so fast in this town you
would have to run to keep up.’

Sherlock looked around desperately, hoping someone else would interrupt with an offer of assistance, perhaps a passing doctor, but all of the locals were ignoring what was going on. They
wouldn’t even make eye contact.

‘Is anyone else ill?’ Sherlock asked, ignoring Cameron’s suggestion.

The woman shook her head. ‘Nobody.’ She stepped back, obviously hoping that Sherlock would follow her. ‘Not me, not our son, and none of the neighbours in the street as far as
I know.’ She glanced around bitterly. ‘Not that they are taking much notice now,’ she said, louder. ‘They’re frightened that Wu Chung has brought back some strange
disease from foreign places. Cowards!’

Sherlock turned to glance at Cameron. ‘Look,’ he said urgently to the American boy, ‘Wu Chung is a friend of mine. Probably the best friend I’ve made for a while, apart
from you. If he needs my help then I have to give it.’

‘If you want to do something to help,’ Cameron replied, shaking his head, ‘then you should get one of the local healers to take a look at him. You can’t do anything by
yourself.’

Sherlock’s gaze switched from Cameron’s implacable expression to the near-panic on the face of Wu Chung’s wife, and back. ‘Let’s at least take a look. It might be
something he ate.’

He gestured to the Chinese woman to lead the way into the house. She nodded, a flicker of gratitude momentarily displacing her worry.

‘And you can tell the difference between a stomach ache and a contagious illness
how
exactly?’ Cameron asked as Sherlock followed her into the darkened entrance.

Sherlock glanced over his shoulder. ‘I don’t know,’ he admitted, ‘but I have to do
something
to help. Even if it’s just to reassure him. Or her.’