Snake Bite (21 page)

Cameron breathed out slowly. ‘It’s going to be an interesting journey. I’ve been up the Yangtze before, but not very far. My father took me fishing a couple of
times.’

‘How do we travel?’ Sherlock asked. ‘Horseback?’

‘Too slow,’ Cameron said, shaking his head. ‘The ground is marshy along the banks of the river. To get to solid ground we would have to go a long way around. The
Monocacy
would make better time along the river than we would by road. No, the best thing would be boat. There are small sailboats that head up and down the river. They make pretty good
speed. The
Monocacy
is limited by its weight. I think we can catch up with it.’

‘Then we’d better start straight away.’ Sherlock hesitated. ‘What about your mother – what are you going to tell her?’

Cameron’s gaze flickered towards Sherlock, then away. There was a sad expression on his face. ‘The doctor has sedated her. He said she’ll be asleep for hours. Days,
maybe.’ There was a glint of tears in his eyes. ‘She loved my father desperately. Each time she wakes up and realizes once more that he’s dead, the doctor says he may have to
sedate her again . . .’

There was silence for a long time.

‘And what about you?’ Sherlock asked eventually. ‘How long will it take for you to come to terms with it?’

‘My father is dead. I know that, Sherlock. He’s not coming back. Staying here isn’t going to achieve anything. I want to do something! I want to catch the people who killed
him! I want to make a difference!’

‘I understand,’ Sherlock said.

‘You don’t,’ Cameron replied softly. ‘With the greatest respect, Sherlock, I’m not sure you ever will. You’re not like ordinary people. You don’t care
in the same way. But thank you for being here anyway, and thank you for listening to me . . . Now, are we going to head up the Yangtze River and stop that ship from exploding, or are we going to
stand here and talk?’

‘There’s one more thing we need,’ Sherlock pointed out.

‘What’s that?’

‘Wu Chung’s son – Wu Fung-Yi.’

Cameron stared back at him blankly. ‘What?’

‘We need someone local, someone who knows the river. By the time we locate and hire a boatman or whatever, it will be too late. The only person we know who can help is Wu Fung-Yi.’
Sherlock paused. ‘And remember – they killed his father as well. He has as much of a vested interest as we do.’

‘That’s a point,’ Cameron said. ‘How exactly did they get a snake into my father’s study and make it bite him? How did they get the same snake into Wu Chung’s
bedroom and make it bite him? That strikes me as a really chancy thing to do. There must be better ways of murdering someone.’

‘But they didn’t want it to be obvious that your father was murdered,’ Sherlock pointed out. ‘And they certainly didn’t want it to be obvious that Wu Chung was
murdered. That would make people suspicious straight away, and there might have been an investigation. They had to make both murders look like accidents – and, from what I can gather, in a
country like this, snake bites are a normal, everyday risk.’ He frowned. ‘I doubt that it was even a real snake. You’re right – that would be too chancy. Snakes are
unpredictable things, I believe. They couldn’t guarantee that it would cooperate. No, the more I think about it, the more I suspect that someone used some kind of device that injected poison.
They stuck it into Wu Chung’s back while he was asleep, and they stuck it into your father’s arm while he was distracted. It probably contained real venom that had been taken from a
snake some time earlier, but it was a more manageable weapon. Like a hypodermic syringe or something.’

‘That would explain how they got into the bedroom and the study,’ Cameron said thoughtfully, ‘but even so, it’s a bit of a risk, isn’t it? I mean, sneaking around
people’s houses?’

‘That depends on who is doing the sneaking. If it’s some hefty six-foot dock worker then yes, that might be noticed, but if it was someone smaller . . .’

‘Like that thing you saw in the garden, and then you saw following my father?’

Sherlock nodded. ‘Whatever that was, it was just the right size to slip into someone’s house and inject them while they weren’t looking.’ He clenched his fist. ‘If
only I could work out what it is.’

‘But what about the differences in the times it took Wu Chung and my father to die?’ Cameron asked. ‘If the same device was being used to inject poison, then it should have
worked in the same way.’

‘There could have been any number of differences. We don’t know.’ Sherlock shrugged. ‘Maybe the poison they used on Wu Chung was an old batch, but they managed to get
some newer poison to use on your father. Maybe it was a different snake with more powerful venom. We just don’t know – not yet, anyway.’

‘Are they going to try to stop us?’ Cameron’s face was determined. ‘I hope they are. I want to meet them.’

‘I think they’re probably watching us,’ Sherlock confirmed. ‘So we need to be on our guard.’

Cameron hefted his father’s revolver. ‘I’m ready for them.’

‘Let’s be sure we’ve got the right people first.’ Sherlock looked around the study. ‘Let’s take the messages and the map with us. We might need to use them to
convince Captain Bryan. Do you need to tell anyone where you’re going?’

‘I’ll leave a message,’ Cameron said. ‘I’ll say that I need some time to myself. People will understand. It will be chaos around here for a while, anyway. I’d
be surprised if anyone noticed I had gone.’

Ten minutes later, the two boys were leaving the house. The evening sun was dipping down towards the horizon. Stallholders were beginning to pack up their wares ready to go home. Sherlock
realized that he was hungry. He would have to make sure that he and Cameron got something to eat. He suspected that Cameron wasn’t feeling hungry, but he had to keep his friend’s energy
up.

Cameron grabbed Sherlock’s arm as they crossed the road. ‘Wait,’ he said. ‘Look over there.’

Sherlock followed Cameron’s pointing finger. Standing in plain sight a few yards away was the small, dark-haired figure of Wu Fung-Yi. He was watching them. Once he saw that they had seen
him, he walked over. He nodded to Cameron. ‘I heard your bad news,’ he said sombrely. ‘I am sorry for your loss.’

‘Thanks. And . . . and I understand your loss now in a way that I didn’t before.’

‘Something is going on,’ Wu Fung-Yi said, smiling sadly. ‘Something strange. You already know about it. My father knew it, and I know it now.’

‘Is that why you’re here?’ Sherlock asked.

‘I wondered who I could talk to.’ Wu Fung-Yi shrugged awkwardly. ‘Not my mother. She believes that my father was killed by a snake, but I remember the things you said about how
difficult it would have been for a snake to get into the house. I know how hard I worked to fill up all the holes in the walls.’ His gaze flickered from Sherlock to Cameron and back again. It
was as if he wanted to trust them with something but he wasn’t sure how to phrase it. ‘I saw something, that night,’ he said, more quietly. ‘I didn’t tell you earlier,
because I thought that you might think I was mad. I didn’t tell my mother either.’ He took a deep breath, forcing himself to continue. ‘I was sleeping, but I got woken up by a
noise. I thought perhaps it was my father wandering around. I was not used to having him in the house – he snored, and turned over in his sleep, and made all kinds of new sounds. I remember
looking over to the doorway of my room, and . . .’ He hesitated. ‘And there was something there. A shadow. It was too small to be my mother or my father, and too still to be a cat or a
dog or a monkey. I couldn’t see its eyes, but I knew it was watching me, so I kept very still. After a while, it was not there any more.’ He shivered. ‘There was something evil
about it. I could feel its gaze on me, like hot coals. I thought it might be an evil spirit, but now I know that it was the thing that killed my father.’

‘We’ve seen it too,’ Sherlock confirmed. ‘We don’t know what it is, but it has something to do with what’s going on.’ Sherlock glanced at Cameron, then
back at Wu Fung-Yi. ‘Let’s talk while we move,’ he suggested. ‘We need to get hold of a boat, and we need to head upriver. Can you help?’

‘Will it help explain my father’s death?’

Sherlock nodded. ‘It will.’

‘Then talk.’

On the way through the town Sherlock and Cameron jointly explained to Wu Fung-Yi exactly what they thought was going on. As they walked, Sherlock realized that they were heading out of Shanghai
in a direction that he hadn’t been before.

‘I thought we were going to the harbour,’ he said. ‘Isn’t that where the Yangtze starts off? I mean, the river must flow into the sea, mustn’t it?’

‘That’s true,’ Wu Fung-Yi said over his shoulder. ‘But the river widens out considerably there, and the currents are treacherous. If you want to head upriver then it
makes more sense to cut across and meet it a little further up. Trust me, I know what I am doing.’

After a while Sherlock noticed that they were approaching the town wall. There was another gate here, but this one was guarded by only one soldier, and he was simply waving people in and out.
Presumably the risk of foreigners being around this side of the city was less than at the harbourside.

‘This is the “Gate of the Virtuous Phoenix”,’ Cameron said quietly as they approached. ‘If we get separated for any reason we’ll meet back here.’

They exited with no problems. Beyond the town a wide dirt road led away into the hilly Chinese countryside. The three boys started out towards the Yangtze River.

‘What’s the plan?’ Sherlock asked as they walked.

‘My uncle has several sailboats,’ Wu Fung-Yi said. ‘I’m sure he will lend one to us, if I ask.’ He sighed. ‘The news about my father will not have got to him
yet. I will have to tell him.’

The landscape outside the town wall was hilly, making it difficult to see very far. The road meandered, but Sherlock detected that as they got further and further away from Shanghai it led
gradually downhill. It was broad, and used by many people. Carts were heading in both directions – to the town and away from it. The carts were laden with hay, vegetables, wood and all manner
of things, including some that Sherlock didn’t recognize. There were other things on the road that took Sherlock by surprise. Some local farmers were pushing wheelbarrows, with a single wheel
at the front, but at the back of the wheelbarrow a mast rose up into the air, and on the mast was a red canvas sail. The farmers were taking advantage of the strong breezes that blew across the
countryside to help them push the wheelbarrows along. It was such an obvious idea that Sherlock couldn’t figure out why nobody in England had done it.

As they walked, the ground underfoot became soggier. The fields that lined the roads were planted with large grasses that grew to the height of a man. The soil was waterlogged, and Sherlock
could see arrangements of bamboo pipes bringing water from the river to the fields, and gates that could be opened and closed to flood them.

‘What’s growing here?’ he asked Wu Fung-Yi.

‘Rice,’ the boy said. ‘These are called “paddy fields”. We keep them flooded and grow more rice than anything else. It is what we eat the most.’

‘Like potatoes in England,’ Sherlock murmured.

Finally the road then curved around the side of one last hill, and there before them was a wide expanse of blue water flecked with white wave crests.

‘The Yangtze River,’ Wu Fung-Yi said. ‘Now the hard work
really
starts.’

Sherlock was amazed at how wide the Yangtze was, especially compared to the other rivers he had seen, like the Thames in London or the Hudson in New York. The far bank seemed
miles away. Mist wreathed it, rising up from the paddy fields and making it look like some mystical fantasy land. Hills rose up on either side of the river, leaving it to wind through gradual,
graceful curves which meant that it was impossible to see for more than a mile or so to either side.

‘Third longest river in the world,’ Cameron said proudly. ‘It starts off in the Tibetan highlands and flows for six and a half thousand miles before it gets to the
ocean.’ He glanced sideways at Sherlock. ‘What? I’m not supposed to be interested in the place where I live?’

Sherlock could see hundreds, maybe even thousands of boats on the river. Some of them were so small that they could take only one man with a paddle; others were so large that they had three or
four fan-like sails and carried a full crew.

Along the banks were hundreds of flat-bottomed boats that seemed to have houses on board. Or at least shacks. Sherlock realized these weren’t boats for travelling: they were boats for
living on. These were villages that had been built out into the river and then built up, bit by bit.

The boys scanned the river for the USS
Monocacy
, but there was no sign of it. Sherlock was sure that if it had been there then they would have spotted it.

‘There!’ Wu pointed off to their left, at a thin bamboo jetty that projected out into the river past the point where the boat village ended. Three boats were tied up to the jetty.
‘That is where my uncle lives.’

‘Then let’s get down there,’ Sherlock said.

The three of them headed downhill, the earth squishing underfoot. After a few minutes they passed the boat village and were at the jetty. Wu gestured them to stay by the bank and headed out to
where three Chinese men were working on a boat. The biggest man, who had an extravagantly long black moustache, grabbed Wu as he came close and gave him a huge hug. He was grinning, obviously
pleased to see his nephew.

Wu started to talk, and the men listened. Sherlock looked around. The riverbank plunged into the water pretty steeply just where he and Cameron were standing. Plants grew directly out of the
water all the way along the riverbank, some looking like wild rice and some looking like bamboo. There were even flowers floating on the water, and when Sherlock looked closer he could see webs of
stems supporting the flowers beneath the surface.

It all looked so beautiful, with the sun low in the sky and the misty hills across the other side of the river. It was difficult to reconcile the beauty with what Sherlock knew was going to
happen soon. Somewhere upriver was an American ship crewed by a few hundred American sailors. If the bomb on board went off then they would probably all die, and that would only be the start of it.
The US Government would send in the US Navy, there would be a blockade, the Chinese Emperor would probably order his ships to defend the country, and before anyone knew it America would be at war
with China, just so some businessmen could get a better price for their imports, and pay less for their exports!