The Curse Of The Diogenes Club (20 page)

Mycroft pulled back from the
sentimental embrace that did nothing to calm his agitation.
“Damery’s doll, is it?”

“Yes, sir. Our men found it
this afternoon while searching his townhouse. It was necessary to
create a diversion to get the servants out of the house. A small
gas explosion was staged in the attic. Several roof tiles blew off.
No one was injured.”

Mycroft used his napkin to
spread the stain on his trousers even further; it added to his
black mood. “Lock it away with the others, Nash, and first thing
tomorrow organize to have that wall-mounted telephonic device moved
away from the door. Did Mrs Klein accept the invitation to join us
at Longchamps?”

Major Nash continued to stand
stiffly by the door, sensing some tension between the lovers. “Yes,
sir, she did.”

“Pour yourself a drink. You’ve
earned it. You know where the extra glasses are kept. Did Mrs Klein
seem keen to accept?”

Major Nash ignored the
invitation to have a drink and continued to stand by the door as if
attending some sort of martial drill. “Not at first, sir, but when
I mentioned I heard the Countess say she would be pleased to see as
few ladies as possible at Longchamps Mrs Klein changed her
mind.”

“Mrs Klein will act as the draw
card for Prince Sergei. When he learns four eligible ladies will be
at Longchamps I think he will alter his grouse shooting plans.
Fetch a glass for the Countess while you are getting one for
yourself, Nash. That’s the second glass of my Romanee-Conti she has
drained.”

Major Nash returned with just
the one glass. He filled it and passed it to her without meeting
her gaze. “I won’t have a drink, sir. I think I will have an early
night for a change. Do you want me to escort the Countess home in
your carriage before I turn in? I see it is parked at the end of
the street and she is off-duty in thirty minutes.”

Major Nash was talking as if
she wasn’t even there and he still hadn’t met her gaze; in fact he
was deliberately avoiding it.

It didn’t take a genius to
understand why.

“No, you go to bed, Nash.
You’ve been burning the candle at both ends. I will see the
Countess home. I think we will need to stage a sprained ankle on
the stairs for the benefit of Pettigrew. I will tell him I am going
out to visit someone and I can drop Grimsby home at the same
time.”

“I will organize for one of our
crack shooters to sit alongside the coachman.”

Mycroft sighed heavily, trying
to downplay the two assassination attempts at his life; he hoped
the weekend might expose the enemy in their kingdom because this
business was distracting him from more important affairs of state.
“If you feel that is necessary.”

“Merely a precaution - in the
event of an incident may I ask where you will be going?”

“Number 6 Mayfair Mews and then
221B Baker Street.”

“Excellent! Excellent!” sang
Sherlock, his one good eye twinkling excitedly when Mycroft told
him the bomb man had been fished out of the lake. “Drowned?”

“Strangled first.”

Sherlock immediately ceased
playing the Stradivarius, folded his lanky frame into the padded
armchair by the fire, wrapped his faded dressing gown around his
bones, steepled his fingers, closed his eyes and retreated into his
mind palace.

It was up to Dr Watson to
explain to Mycroft about Mr Myles Trotter of Pimlico. “No doubt the
great detective will be in Battersea Park at first light scouring
the water’s edge for clues.”

Mycroft studied his younger
sibling in the low-burning gaslight – the ocular lens in his right
eye, the exo-skeleton contraption that supported his weak left arm,
the knee-high boot strapped to his left leg to make up for the fact
he had no left foot – and duly lowered his tone. “Walk me to the
door and tell me how he’s going?”

“Surprisingly well,” whispered
the doctor, looking back over his shoulder. “He has hardly touched
his supply of cocaine all day; just enough to allay the pain in his
leg from that heavy boot. And tonight he managed to keep down most
of his dinner. He is thrilled with this case. It’s like the old
days have come back. How did the Countess go at the Diogenes Club?
Did she pull it off?”

“I don’t know how she did it
but she managed the impossible. Major Nash saw through the disguise
but that’s his job and he’s good at what he does. I didn’t hire him
for his looks, though he has those as well. She overheard some
useful information. You can tell Sherlock that Damery, de Merville
and Freddy Cazenove each had a Matryoshka doll in their possession.
He will understand the significance. Major Nash has the dolls under
lock and key. Damery and de Merville will guess I’ve got them and
will be on their guard at Longchamps. The weekend could blow up in
our faces if we’re not careful.”

They reached the bottom of the
stairs.

“Is Sherlock planning to come
to Longchamps?” asked Mycroft, glancing back up the stairwell to
make sure his brother wasn’t eavesdropping.

“Yes, he’s going to disguise
himself as an old stable-hand.”

“At least that will keep him
out of the house. If he confines himself to the stable he won’t get
underfoot and ruin things.”

Dr Watson bristled. The comment
sounded harsh. He wondered what Mycroft meant by it but he was
loath to ask. He unlocked the door and a blast of Arctic air
slapped his face, whooshed through the narrow hall, flew up the
stairs rattling picture frames and slammed the door at the top of
the landing.

“Where’s your carriage?” he
said, peering into the soot-soaked gloom.

Mycroft clung tightly to his
top hat to stop it blowing away. “Circling the block. According to
Major Nash a moving target is harder to keep track of. It will come
round in a minute or two. Go inside and close the door. No need for
you to freeze as well. Ah, here it comes now. I can hear the
clip-clop of equus. Goodnight, Dr Watson.”

Dr Watson waited till he saw
two yellow carriage lamps swimming toward him through the wild
swirl of wind and fog and smoke playing merry hell with the night
then closed the door and was in the process of bolting it when he
heard a series of terrifying sounds that curdled his blood – a
thunder clap, the sound of terrified horses, a runaway carriage,
the primal yowl of a ferocious beast, a massive crash that almost
took the front door off its hinges and a gunshot.

It was enough to wake the
dead.

Frightened out of his wits, he
couldn’t remember whether he had bolted the door or not. He then
bolted it. Realising his mistake, he tried to remedy it, but his
fingers, tangled at sixes and sevens, refused to obey his brain.
The faster he tried to free the bolt the more it jammed.

Sherlock came hurtling down the
stairs, taking them by twos and threes, no easy feat for a man with
one good leg and the other footless peg strapped into a heavy
boot.

“Watson!” he screamed. “Open
that door!”

Mrs Hudson, shaking like a
leaf, appeared at the end of the hall. “What’s going on?” she
cried, adding to the mayhem. “What’s going on?”

Dr Watson flung open the door
and Mycroft fell backwards onto the floor with a sickening thud,
landing on top of Sherlock. Dr Watson ran to render assistance. He
thought Mycroft had been shot but there didn’t seem to be any
blood.

Mrs Hudson kept crying. “Oh,
Lordy! Oh, Lordy! What’s happening now!”

The two Holmes boys found their
feet and neither was seriously injured, merely winded and stunned.
On the doorstep was a huge black dog - a Great Dane by the looks of
it. It had been shot dead and was lying on its side. Blood had
soaked into the doormat and was trickling down the step, along the
cracks in the footpath and into the gutter. The muzzle of the dog
was covered with hideous white foam, a sign the beast had been
rabid.

Standing to one side of the
door was Colonel Moriarty, a large package under his arm and a
smoking revolver in his hand. He was breathing hard as if he had
been running.

Sherlock turned back to the
distressed housekeeper. “It’s all right, Mrs Hudson. It’s just a
dog. It was run over by my brother’s carriage. I will clean up the
mess. Go back to bed. Nothing to worry about here. Just an
accident. Goodnight, Mrs Hudson.”

It took more than an hour for
the four men to locate a wheelbarrow, cart the dog and the bloody
doormat to the nearest waste-ground, build a bonfire, add some
paraffin, burn the remains, sluice the step, and clean themselves
up.

By then the carriage had
returned, having careered out of control for a good fifteen
minutes. The coachman having no idea where he was by the time he
regained control of the terrified horses took nearly an hour to
work his way back to Baker Street with the help of the crack
shooter still clinging to his seat, wondering what had happened.
All he could remember was the black beast from hell that came out
of the fog, growling and frothing as it leapt at the throat of Mr
Holmes. Someone fired a shot but it wasn’t him. His gun was still
cold. The horses bolted and the world turned black as pitch.

The coachman and his armed
sidekick enjoyed a cup of tea in the kitchen with Mrs Hudson who
was too rattled to sleep. She was happy to have company and brewing
a cuppa always helped to calm her nerves.

The other four opted for
something stronger. Brandy was called for and the first round went
down without touching the sides. While Dr Watson refreshed the
glasses, Sherlock directed the first question at Colonel Moriarty,
who seemed to be studying his host with utmost curiosity.

“What were you doing in Baker
Street at eleven o’clock at night?”

“I came to return Dr Watson’s
kilt.” He indicated the package on the table by the window without
removing his gaze from Sherlock’s ocular device. “The woman who
does my laundry washed and ironed it. It is like new. I was
informed you and the doctor are night owls so I thought eleven
o’clock would be a suitable time to call.”

“You shot the dog?” continued
Sherlock interrogatively.

“Yes, I was approaching the
house when a large black dog came out of nowhere. It loped straight
past me, almost knocking me over, and leapt at Mr Holmes. He fell
back against the door and I put a bullet into the beast as it went
in for the kill.”

“I want to thank you,” said
Mycroft, voice still slightly shaky. “It was a terrifying sight and
I’m not ashamed to admit that mad dog will haunt my sleep for
several weeks.”

“I thought I heard a thunder
clap?” said Dr Watson. “It came at the start.”

“Yes,” agreed the colonel,
staring at Sherlock’s knee-high boot. “I heard it too. It was the
thing that caused the horses to take fright. It seemed to unnerve
the dog as well. He began to run toward Mr Holmes when it exploded.
I think it might have been a penny banger.”

“That suggests the dog was
trained to act on command of a sound,” said Dr Watson, recalling
the case of the horrible hound of the Baskervilles. “Did you
recently lose an item of clothing, Mycroft?”

“Yes, I misplaced my
herringbone wool scarf. It turned up a week later inside my
carriage. It’s the same one I’m wearing now.”

“That’s why the dog leapt at
your throat,” said Sherlock without a skerrick of emotion, “a
well-trained beast and deliberately infected with rabies too. That,
gentlemen, was the third attempt to kill my brother.”

A chill ran down every spine.
Another round of drinks did little to dispel the horror of what
they had recently experienced. If not for Colonel Moriarty, Mycroft
would have been the one bleeding on the doormat, his throat ripped
out, infected with rabies just in case he survived the vicious
mauling.

“It is more imperative than
ever to find the man behind this,” said Sherlock, reaching for his
briar pipe, filling it with shag and lighting it. “I will be at
Battersea Park first thing tomorrow morning. Whoever strangled the
photographer and dumped him in the lake may have left a vital
clue.”

Moriarty coughed to clear his
throat and because he wasn’t sure if he should speak up or not – oh
what the heck! “Major Nash and I met up by the lake the night after
the ball to discuss certain matters. We both got the impression
there was someone else in the wood. We also heard a dull splash, as
if something went into the lake. It could have been the body of the
photographer.”

“Hmm,” said Sherlock. “I find
it hard to believe he would risk returning to the scene of his
crime the night after the ball. However, I do not doubt what you
say is true. The facts must fit,” he muttered to himself. “The
facts must fit.”

Dr Watson wondered if his
friend had been injecting himself in secret; his mind seemed less
sharp. “I will come with you to Battersea. An extra pair of eyes
will not go astray.”

Sherlock withdrew his pipe and
rested his elbow on the mantelpiece. “No, Watson you must return to
the Turkish Baths. What you discovered today was of vital interest.
We have ground to cover. We cannot all keep to the same patch.”

“The Turkish Baths?” said
Moriarty. “The ones on Northumberland Avenue?”

“Yes,” replied the doctor. “The
Aga Hammam Baths. Do you sometimes go there?”

“Never – they are owned by Mrs
Isadora Klein.”

The three men seemed taken
aback.

“Are you sure?” questioned
Mycroft, wondering how such a fact had skipped his attention; he
really had allowed himself to become distracted by family business
– first his brother and now his niece.

“I heard it from Freddy
Cazenove. She bought out the previous owner when he went bankrupt.
The Roman Baths were a bit tired looking according to Freddy so she
set about renovating them, changing them into something more
exotic, like her – that’s what he said. He told me she is of
Spanish extraction and has the blood of Conquistadores in her
veins. Her late husband, the sugar baron, Mr Adolphus Klein, was
immensely wealthy but she is going through the fortune fairly
quickly and needs a regular income to supplement her investments
and her spending.”