Snake Bite (26 page)

Captain Bryan turned to Sherlock. ‘Looks like you’ve been sold a pig in a poke, son,’ he said, not unsympathetically.

Sherlock felt his heart sink. He
knew
that his deductions were correct, but he couldn’t see how else the explosives had been hidden. But if he didn’t find them soon, the
signal would be given and the ship would be blown up!

‘I don’t suppose you would consider evacuating the ship?’ he asked.

Two of the officers laughed out loud.

‘Just on your say-so?’ Captain Bryan asked. ‘’Fraid not, son. That would be an insult to the Governor, who should be here any moment. Nice try, though.’

Sherlock wished that he could see the far bank, in case Arrhenius was out there, ready to give the signal. Perhaps seeing the man, and recognizing him from the dinner party, would be enough to
convince the Captain that
something
was going on. Then Sherlock realized that there was no porthole in the larder, despite the fact that by his reckoning they were right by the hull.

‘Does it strike you,’ he said, ‘that this larder is smaller than it should be?’

The officers and Captain Bryan looked around critically. They glanced at each other with puzzled expressions. ‘Now that you come to mention it . . .’ one of them said, and tailed
off, confused.

Sherlock indicated the far wall, against which the barrels had been stacked. ‘I think you’ll find that’s a false wall,’ he said. ‘I think the explosives are behind
it.’

The officers stared at each other, then set to work with the crowbars.

Sherlock was right. It took less than a minute to pull it down.

Behind the fake wall was a space about six feet deep. It was filled with barrels, and this time Sherlock didn’t think that the contents would be water, rum or salted meat. A cord led out
of each barrel. The cords all joined together into a braid which ran to a space on one side. Crouching in the space, below a porthole that let in a blaze of light from outside, was a Chinese man in
a chef’s uniform. He had the braid of fuses in his hand and a frightened expression on his face. Next to him, on the floor, was a box of matches.

‘Arrest that man!’ Captain Bryan barked. ‘And for heaven’s sake pull the fuses from those barrels before something disastrous happens!’

The Chinese cook tried to run for the door, but two of the officers grabbed him. They carried him out of the larder. Another officer scooped up the box of matches while the remainder went from
barrel to barrel pulling the fuses out.

‘How did he get in there by himself?’ Bryan mused in wonder. ‘And how did he intend escaping once he had lit the fuses? Surely he wasn’t going to sacrifice
himself?’

‘I doubt it,’ Sherlock replied. He indicated the corner of the hidden area where the man had been hiding. ‘I think there was a hidden door there. Remember, there was a space
there with no barrels in it. I think he was waiting for a signal to light the fuse, then he was going to escape into the larder, close the hidden door, jump into the water and swim away.’

‘And he built all this himself?’ Bryan asked, gazing at the fake wall.

‘It didn’t have to be convincing,’ Sherlock pointed out. ‘It was covered with barrels. He probably brought it on in sections.’

‘Son, I owe you a debt of gratitude. If not for you, this ship would be a pile of flaming wreckage and hundreds of men would be dead.’

‘And a war would be about to start,’ Sherlock said quietly. He crossed to the porthole and gazed out. He could see all the way to the far side of the Yangtze River . . . where a boat
with two lanterns on the mast was tied up to the bank, just next to the ruined fort.

‘Captain,’ he said quietly, ‘do you have a small rowing boat I can borrow?’

Ten minutes later Sherlock was climbing down a ladder attached to the side of the
Monocacy
and stepping into a boat that had been lowered down on ropes. Captain Bryan had wanted to send
someone with him, but the Governor of Jiangsu Province had just arrived with his retinue, and all hands were required on deck for an official inspection. So while an important visitor was coming up
the gangplank, Sherlock was secretly slipping away on the other side of the ship.

His arms still ached, and he found that rowing across the river pulled at his muscles in a way that sent spikes of pain across his chest and back. He was heading at right angles to the normal
flow of boats, and he had to keep on stopping to allow other vessels to go past. Even so, there were a lot of shouts and curses directed his way.

He kept looking out for Cameron and Wu Fung-Yi, but there was no sign of them. If they were still looking for Mr Arrhenius then they were looking in the wrong place.

Eventually Sherlock’s boat hit the bank on the other side of the river. He climbed out and secured it.

Reluctantly he trudged up the muddy riverbank and stood in front of the stone ruins of the fort. He really didn’t want to do this. Every muscle in his body felt like it was on the verge of
giving up, and the gashes across his chest, where the blood had coagulated, had pulled apart and started bleeding again while he had been rowing. His head ached where the girl had kicked it, and he
was getting a fluttery sensation at the edges of his vision. But he knew that he
had
to do this. If he didn’t, then Arrhenius would get away, and that wasn’t right. Not after the
murders of Sherlock’s friend Wu Chung and Cameron’s father.

Sometimes, he thought, doing the right thing was much harder than doing the wrong thing. Sometimes, doing the right thing was the hardest thing in the world.

Not looking forward to what he was going to find, he trudged around the half-ruined wall of the fort until he came to an archway that led inside.

Grass was growing up between the stones. There was no roof, and the remnants of the walls were barely higher than Sherlock’s head. There were gaps in many places, where time and weather
had caused the mortar holding the stones together to crumble.

Two Chinese soldiers were lying on the ground in the first room he came to – a large, hall-like area. Sherlock crouched by them. They were both unconscious; both had bleeding gashes in
their scalps. He suspected that they were guards who were assigned to the ruins, or perhaps they were part of a team stationed along the riverbank in preparation for the arrival of the Governor.
Whatever the reason for their presence, it was bad luck for them. Neither of them was armed, and that worried Sherlock. Presumably Arrhenius had taken their weapons after overpowering them.

Having made sure that the two unconscious soldiers were at least comfortable, he moved on through a doorway into another room.

This room was as large as the first one. Mr Arrhenius was there, standing by a glassless window that overlooked the river. He was holding a lamp, and he was patiently opening and closing its
shutter in a regular sequence, sending flashes of light across the river to the USS
Monocacy
.

Where nothing was happening.

‘I presume you have managed to alert the ship’s crew to the presence of the explosives,’ Arrhenius said in his high-pitched voice. He didn’t turn his head. ‘I
presume also that the crew have discovered the location of the explosives, despite the meticulous way they were hidden, and apprehended the agent who was waiting to light the fuse. I presume all of
this because of the obvious lack of any explosion, despite the fact that I can see the Governor’s entourage on deck and I have been signalling the agent for the past five minutes.’ He
set the lantern on the stone sill of the window and turned to face Sherlock. ‘The agent was told that the fuse burned for five minutes, giving him time to make his escape,’ he
continued. ‘In fact, it only burns for thirty seconds. In five minutes, someone might have discovered it and put it out.’

‘Not,’ Sherlock said, ‘a problem now, I am afraid.’

‘Apparently not.’ Arrhenius sighed. ‘You really are an impressive young man. You would not believe the amount of time, effort and cold, hard cash that has been expended on this
plan. Then you come along and sabotage it just by –’ he shrugged – ‘just by observation and deduction. Really very impressive.’ He reached behind him, to where
Sherlock saw something propped up against the wall. ‘Impressive, and troublesome. I think I will save the world the bother of dealing with you in the future by eliminating you now. That way,
I will at least have accomplished
something
today.’

He brought his hands out from behind his back. He was holding a long wooden staff, Sherlock saw, but it ended in a strangely shaped metal blade. It looked very sharp. He must have taken it from
one of the unconscious soldiers.

‘Please,’ Arrhenius said, ‘try to resist. Try to escape. That will make this process much more entertaining for me.’

‘What happened to the girl?’ Sherlock asked, stepping to one side. Distracting Arrhenius, delaying him from attacking, was, he decided, his best option.

His best option among a small group of very unsatisfactory options, his mind couldn’t help adding.

Arrhenius turned slowly to follow him, holding the bladed weapon in front of him like an executioner at rest. ‘My daughter? Oh, I presume she is still out there, somewhere back along the
river.’

‘And you don’t care?’

‘The older she grew, the more wilful she became. I was beginning to lose control of her. It was only a matter of time before she left me. The only question in my mind was whether she would
try to kill me first, or merely disappear. By abandoning her – at your instigation, of course – I merely anticipated and controlled an unavoidable outcome.’

Sherlock shook his head. ‘But . . . your own
daughter
?’

Arrhenius shrugged. ‘Oh, I have no fatherly feelings for the girl. Her mother died in childbirth. Her own development was affected by the large amounts of colloidal silver that I had
consumed, and that I fed to her as she was growing up. She was never normal, never like other children. She would never have grown up happy, I am afraid.’ He stepped forward, swinging the
blade at Sherlock’s legs. ‘Just as you will never grow up at all!’

Sherlock flung himself backwards on to the flagstones. The blade whistled through the air, missing him by an inch. He tried to struggle to his feet, pushing his body forward and upward on his
elbows, but Arrhenius rushed at him again, bringing the blade swishing down towards Sherlock’s head.

He rolled sideways. The blade slammed into the flagstone. Sparks and fragments of stone exploded upwards. Sherlock felt them pepper his face, drawing blood, as he rolled.

Arrhenius seemed momentarily shocked by the vibrations from the impact of the blade on the stone. His face twisted in pain. Sherlock took the chance to climb to his feet and stagger away.

Holding the staff like a spear, Arrhenius turned and lunged at Sherlock, with the blade aimed directly at the boy’s heart. With only a moment to work out what to do, Sherlock decided that
his best option was to dive at Arrhenius’s feet, tucking himself into a ball as he did so. Arrhenius tried to jump over Sherlock, but tripped and fell over the boy’s rolling body.
Sherlock sprang to his feet before Arrhenius could react and scrambled away on hands and knees.

He was by the wall now, the wall with the hole in it looking out on to the river. On the floor near where Arrhenius had been standing Sherlock could see a sword. Arrhenius must have taken it
from the second unconscious soldier. Sherlock scooped it up, hefting it experimentally in his hand. The blade was strangely shaped compared to the European swords that he was used to, but things
were desperate and he didn’t have much choice.

Sword in hand, heart thumping, Sherlock stepped forward.

Arrhenius suddenly reversed the staff and jabbed several times at Sherlock’s chest with the blunt end. Startled, Sherlock parried with his sword, carving chunks out of the wood, but one of
the jabs hit him right on his breastbone. He thought his heart had stopped, the impact was so hard. He staggered backwards, desperately trying to catch his breath.

Abruptly Arrhenius swung the staff around, bringing the sharp blade down at Sherlock’s forehead. Sherlock could hear the air hiss as the blade carved through it.

He brought the sword up, holding it two-handed, so that it intercepted the blade. The impact drove him to his knees.

Using every last ounce of his strength, he forced his way back to his feet, pushing Arrhenius’s blade up. For a long moment they both stood there, frozen like statues. Sherlock’s
muscles screamed at the exertion.

Gradually Arrhenius pushed his blade closer and closer to Sherlock’s face. Sherlock could see the liquid gleam of light on the sharp edge. Arrhenius’s face was contorted into a
snarl: blackened lips pulled back over teeth that glittered like metal. His irises were so dark they were almost black.

‘I think you’ve been driven mad by the silver you’ve drunk,’ Sherlock grunted. ‘I think it’s clogged your mind, like some kind of metallic sludge. You
don’t think like a human being any more. You don’t
care
about people, just like your daughter doesn’t care.’

‘I have news for you,’ Arrhenius hissed. ‘I never did. Emotion doesn’t pay the bills. Only silver does that.’

He stepped back abruptly, pulling his staff away and then swinging it around low, chopping at Sherlock’s knees. Sherlock parried. The
clang
as the blades met echoed back and forth
between the stone walls of the fort.

Arrhenius took two steps backwards. He didn’t seem to be breathing heavily – in fact his grey-black lips were twisted in something approximating a smile – but Sherlock’s
lungs were burning with the effort of taking in air.

‘Give it up, child,’ Arrhenius said calmly. ‘You can struggle, and then I will kill you, or you can lay down the sword now, and I will kill you. Either way you will be dead,
but you can save yourself a lot of pain and stress on the journey.’

‘You killed my friend,’ Sherlock said through clenched teeth. ‘And you killed my friend’s father.’

‘I didn’t kill either of them, not directly, although I will grant you that I did
organize
their deaths.’ He paused, considering. ‘I do not think that I have ever
killed anybody directly.’ He smiled. ‘Until now, that is. This will be my first. I must say that I am looking forward to it. It will be interesting to find out what it actually feels
like – taking another life. Thank you for giving me the opportunity.’