Red Leech

Chapter Six

Knowing that he had no choice, Sherlock pointed the rifle at the man’s chest and pulled the trigger, bracing himself for the resulting recoil.

Nothing happened. The rifle failed to fire.

Gilfillan grinned triumphantly. “Grit in the mechanism,” he said. “Got to treat them old rifles right. Smallest thing can stop ’em from firin’.” He reached into a trouser pocket and pulled out something small and dark. He flicked his hand, and suddenly there was a blade in it, a wickedly curved blade. “Not like a knife. Knives work under most circumstances, I find. Slower than a rifle, but a lot more fun.”

He stepped forward and slashed the knife sideways, aiming for Sherlock’s eyes. The boy stumbled back, feeling the cold breeze following in the wake of the blade as it brushed his eyelashes. The low rays of the sun, reflected from the sharp point at the end of the blade, traced a red line across Sherlock’s vision that persisted even when the knife had gone.

Gilfillan stepped forward, jerking the knife upward, trying to get it into Sherlock’s stomach, but Sherlock blocked it with the stock of the rifle. The impact knocked him backwards, but Gilfillan held his wrist and swore.

“That’s it,” he snarled. “I ain’t goin’ to treat you like an equal any more. I’m goin’ to slaughter you like cattle.”

He reached out and grabbed Sherlock by the ear, before the boy could get away, pulling him closer even as he raised the knife towards Sherlock’s throat. Instinctively, Sherlock bought the rifle up between them, trying to block the blade, but as the barrel passed his face he had a sudden inspiration and he jabbed it straight upward into Gilfillan’s right eye.

The American screamed and staggered backwards, clutching at his face. Blood streamed from between his fingers. Sherlock expected him to fall to the ground, incapacitated, but his intact eye fixed on Sherlock and he screamed again, a sound of pure rage that echoed through the woods and sent pigeons flying from the trees. Lurching forward, he held the knife extended, reaching out for Sherlock. Still holding the rifle, Sherlock swung it at the American’s head. It connected with the bandage, an impact that echoed all the way down the stock, through Sherlock’s hands and up into his shoulders. The American fell like a carelessly thrown sack of corn; gracelessly and shapelessly to the ground

Sherlock watched him for a few moments, half expecting him to climb back to his feet and try again, but he just lay there, unmoving apart from the laboured rise and fall of his chest. His right eye, from what Sherlock could see of it, was a crater of red flesh, while blood seeped through the bandage on his head, which was rising up as the flesh beneath it swelled even as Sherlock watched.

The man was like some supernatural force, impervious to pain and injuries that would fell a normal man. Sherlock felt his breath burning in his chest as he waited for Gilfillan to struggle to his feet again. Were all Americans like this, he wondered. Something to do with that frontier spirit that he had heard about? Part of him wanted to step forward and bring the rifle down several more times on the man’s head, making sure that he would never move again, but Sherlock wasn’t entirely sure whether that part of his brain was worried about Gilfillan regaining consciousness or whether he just wanted revenge for what the man had done to Amyus Crowe and tried to do to him. After a while he lowered the rifle. He wasn’t a murderer. Not a deliberate murderer, anyway.

When he was quite sure that Gilfillan wasn’t going to move for a while, he backed away, still watching, until he could hear Amyus Crowe’s horse whickering behind him. He turned.

Amyus Crowe lay in the dusty road. In the reddish light of evening, the blood on his forehead seemed almost to glow with a demonic intensity.

“Is he... ?” Sherlock started to ask, but he couldn’t bring himself to finish the question.

“He’s still breathin’,” Virginia answered breathlessly. Her accent had become more obvious.

She reached into a pocket and removed a scrap of linen — a handkerchief, Sherlock supposed. She was about to use it to wipe her father’s head, but Sherlock took it from her.

“I’ll wet it in the river,” he said.

She nodded gratefully.

He dashed across to the point where the falling American gunman had cut a swathe through the rushes with his body before emerging and shooting Amyus Crowe. Getting as close to the river as he could without falling in, Sherlock moistened the handkerchief, then returned to where Amyus Crowe lay. Virginia had straightened out his arms and legs so that he was lying more normally, not twisted up in the way he had landed. As Sherlock bent to join her, he noticed that Crowe’s chest was moving up and down and his eyelids were fluttering. It seemed like ages since Crowe had fallen from his horse, but Sherlock realized that it could only have been a handful of seconds, less than a minute at most. The fight with Gilfillan hadn’t been long, but it had been intense, and that had made it seem long.

Virginia was running her hands up and down her father’s arms and legs. “No broken bones, far as I can tell,” she said. “Don’t know about his ribs, although I’d be surprised if he hadn’t cracked a couple. He’s got a whole load of cuts and grazes, mind.”

“He was lucky,” Sherlock pointed out. “This close to the river, the ground is soft and muddy. If he’d come off the horse earlier, where the ground was baked hard, he might be dead by now.”

Virginia took the handkerchief from him and ran it across Crowe’s forehead. It came away bloody, revealing a long scratch which immediately began to bleed again.

“I think this is where the bullet hit,” she said.

“Another bit of luck. A couple of inches to the left and it would have gone through his temple.” Sherlock took a deep breath, and tried to stop his hands from shaking. “We ought to find a doctor.”

Virginia shook her head. “We need to get him back to the cottage. I can look after him there. As long as there’s no broken bones, what he needs is rest.” She sighed. “I’ve got a feeling he’s been through worse than this and survived.” She glanced at Sherlock, glanced away, then glanced back again, noticing his various bumps, scrapes, cuts and bruises. Are you OK?” she asked.

“I’ve had worse while playing rugby,” he said.

She frowned, and shook her head.

“It’s a game which I don’t like and which I don’t play very well. The point is, I’ll be all right.”

“Did you get him?” she asked angrily.

“I stopped him,” Sherlock replied, “but I think your father and my brother will want to talk to him, so I didn’t hurt him too much. Even though I could have done.”

“Maybe you should have,” she said darkly.

Thinking about head injuries, Sherlock asked: “What about concussion? The ball injured your father’s head, and he may have hit it as well.”

Virginia gazed at him. Her expression was fixed and angry, but her eyes told a different story. They were desperate.

“We’ll have to watch him,” she said. “Look for signs of dizziness, sickness, nausea or confusion.”

“I’ve suffered from all of them in my time,” Crowe said, faintly but distinctly. “Can’t say I enjoyed ’em much, but they were mainly self-inflicted. This time it wasn’t my fault.”

“Father!"

Eyes still closed, he reached up and patted her clumsily on the shoulder. “I rolled when I hit the ground. Technique was taught to me by a rodeo rider in Albuquerque. If a body relaxes all its muscles and rolls up like a porcupine, it can probably survive a fall worse than that.” He glanced at Sherlock, “I can see that you found out the same thing yourself He paused, closing his eyes momentarily and breathing slowly. “What happened to the coach?”

“They got away,” Sherlock said angrily. “With Matty.”

“An’ the man who stayed behind an’ shot me?”

“Alive but unconscious. We can take him back and question him, I suppose.”

“Yep,” Crowe said darkly, “I s’pose we can.”

Sherlock thought for a moment. “I can tie him up,” he said. “Then we can sling him over my horse. If you’re all right to ride, Virginia can ride Sandia and I’ll walk.”

“We need to move fast,” Virginia said. For some reason she was blushing, and she wouldn’t look at Sherlock. “Walking would take too long. You can ride behind me.”

“Are you sure?” Sherlock asked.

“Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth,” Crowe said, chuckling. “The ideas are good, but what are you goin’ to use to tie the man up?”

Sherlock thought for a moment. They didn’t have any ropes with them. He could use the reins from his horse, he supposed, but how would they make sure that it stayed with them when they rode off? Could he make some bindings from the reeds on the river bank? Too wet, and it would take too long. “My belt,” he said finally. “I can tie his hands behind his back with my belt.”

Crowe nodded. “Sounds good to me,” he said. “Or you can use the twine in my pocket.” He glanced up at Sherlock. “There’s some things a man should always travel with — a knife, wax matches an’ a ball of twine. There ain’t much you can’t do with a combination of knife, matches an’ twine.”

Sherlock took the twine from Crowe and tentatively walked back down the road to where Gilfillan still lay. It was nearly dark by now, and for a terrifying moment Sherlock couldn’t locate the man in the shadows, but eventually he found where he was lying. He tied the man’s hands, wrist crossed over wrist, then left him and walked back to where his horse was cropping grass by the side of the road as if this kind of thing happened every day. Leading the horse back, he left it beside Gilfillan and bent down, trying to work out how to get the man up and on to the horse. Eventually he managed to manoeuvre the American to his knees, still unconscious, then slipped himself underneath the man as he slumped forward, taking the weight on to his upper back. He straightened, pushing with his knees and feeling his muscles protesting as he stood, head bowed forward, Gilfillan’s body balanced precariously across his shoulders. For a moment he panicked, unsure how he was going to get it on to his horse, but by that time Amyus Crowe was standing upright and Virginia could come across to help him. Between the two of them, they got Gilfillan slumped across the saddle of Sherlock’s uncomplaining horse. To stop him sliding off, Sherlock tied Gilfillan’s wrists to the stirrup on one side and his ankles to the stirrup on the other. Finished, he stepped back to admire his handiwork.

“I been meanin’ to ask,” Virginia said from beside him, “what did you end up callin’ your own horse?”

“I haven’t given it a name,” Sherlock replied.

She seemed surprised. “Why not?”

“Couldn’t see the point. Horses don’t know they have names.”

“Sandia knows her name.”

“No, she knows the sound of your voice. I doubt she understands words.”

“For a kid who knows so much,” she said critically, “you sure don’t know very much.”

The four of them made a sorry-looking bunch as they cantered back to Amyus Crowe’s cottage — Crowe slumped forward on his horse, Virginia on Sandia with Sherlock pressed close behind her and his own horse bringing up the rear with Gilfillan lying across it. The journey back seemed to take forever. Tiredness weighed Sherlock down like a heavy blanket. His scratches itched, and all he wanted to do was to roll into bed and sleep for as many hours as he could possibly cram in.

It was well and truly night when they arrived back, and Mycroft was standing in the doorway.

“Sherlock!" he called, “I was—" He stopped. His voice, it seemed to Sherlock, was higher pitched than normal. He seemed to be struggling with some great emotion.

“It’s all right,” Sherlock said tiredly. “We’re fine. I mean, Mr Crowe has been shot, we have a prisoner and we didn’t get Matty back, but we’re all still alive.”

“I had no way of knowing what had happened,” Mycroft said as Sherlock slipped off Sandia’s back. “There were several courses of action open to me, but I was not sure which one was best.”

“Shouldn’t you have caught your train by now?” Sherlock asked.

Mycroft shrugged. “If necessary, I can find a comfortable hotel for the night.”

“But won’t your superiors be annoyed when you don’t turn up to work tomorrow?”

Mycroft frowned, as if the concept of a “superior” was a curious concept. “Yes,” he said, drawing the word out. “I suppose so.” He brightened. “Although what is happening here may well have a direct impact on international relations, and so does fall within my ambit. If necessary, however, I can always charter a special train to take me back to London overnight.”

Sherlock gazed at him, wide-eyed. “You can do that?”

“I have never had to, so far, but I believe my Terms of Reference do permit me the occasional indulgence, yes. Now, tell me everything.”

While he and Virginia helped Amyus Crowe off his horse and the four of them went inside, leaving the American unconscious and strapped to Sherlock’s horse, he told his brother the events of the night since they had left the cottage earlier. Virginia filled in some details that he had missed, and when he was talking about the fight with the American he felt Virginia’s hand resting on his arm in concern. Mycroft too winced at how close Sherlock had come to death on several occasions.

“It is not clear what the best course of action is,” Mycroft said eventually, when they were all settled in chairs with drinks in front of them. “Until your prisoner wakes up, we seem to have made use of every bit of information we have. Time and resources are not on our side.”

“I could wake him up,” Crowe said quietly. And then have a quiet word with him. Civilized, like.”

“Forceful questioning is not an option,” Mycroft said warningly. “The man may be a villain in at least two countries, but he has the right to be treated in a civilized manner until he is actually convicted of a crime, and even then he is not something that can be treated roughly at the behest of anyone in authority. As one of the oldest and one of the youngest civilized countries, Britain and America have an obligation to set an example to the rest of the world. If we act barbarically then we have no right to stop anyone else from acting barbarically and the world will slide into anarchy’

“Even if politeness leads to the injury or death of someone we should be protectin”?” Crowe asked.

“Even then,” Mycroft said. “We must maintain the moral high ground, no matter what tempts us down into the valleys of iniquity.”

“I have an idea,” Sherlock said, surprising himself. It was true, something was rolling around in his mind like a marble in a tin tray, but he hadn’t quite figured out the full implications of it yet.

“Go on,” Mycroft said. “If it can prevent Mr Crowe from pulling out our prisoner’s fingernails with a pair of pliers then I, for one, am all for it.”

“That man — the American — jumped out of the carriage to stop us when it looked like we might prevent the carriage getting them to the docks and out of England.”

“Correct,” Crowe rumbled.

“From what he said to me, he was prepared to send a telegram to the others telling them that he’d either succeeded or failed.”

“Accepted,” Mycroft said.

“And if he doesn’t send a telegram, if one isn’t waiting for them when they get to the end of their journey, they will have to assume that we overcame him,” Sherlock pointed out. “They will assume that we rendered him incapable of sending a telegram and that we are still chasing them, in which case their best option is to kill Matty because he’s not useful to them as a hostage any more.”

“Oh no!" Virginia whispered.

“So where would he have sent the telegram?” Sherlock asked. “I mean, it’s not as if the others were going to stay at a hotel until he arrived. They were heading straight for a ship, as far as we know’

Crowe and Mycroft looked at each other.

“The boy has a point,” Crowe said after a few moments. “They would need some way of getting a message back and forth. Maybe some agreed place near the ship — a local post office, or something, where any message he sent would be picked up.”

“They would have had to agree it in the few seconds before he jumped out of the carriage,” Sherlock pointed out. “What are the chances of him remembering in the stress of the moment—"

“Unless one of the others wrote it down for him,” Mycroft finished. “Sherlock, you have a fine mind on those bony shoulders of yours. We need to search that man’s pockets for an address.”

Crowe levered himself up from the chair. “I’ll go,” he said. At Mycroft’s warning look, he added, “Don’t worry — I won’t try to wake him up if he’s unconscious, and if he’s already awake then I won’t do any more than ask him a polite question before riffling through his pockets.” He raised an eyebrow enquiringly. “I take it that theft is acceptable, even if pressured questioning is not?”

“We’ll make an exception,” Mycroft said calmly. “In this case.”

Amyus headed off outside to search Gilfillan. Sherlock noticed that Virginia watched her father leave with a troubled expression on her face. He wanted to ask her about it, but Mycroft gestured him over with a flipperlike hand.

“Sherlock...” he said quietly, then hesitated. “Sherlock, I suspect that I am failing in my duty to look after you properly. I am sorry.”

Sherlock gazed into his face, trying to work out if he was serious or not. “What do you mean?”

“Our father entrusted you into my care. He looked to me to ensure not only that your education continued, but that you were kept happy and safe. In the time since he left for India with his regiment I have abandoned you into the care of relatives whom you had never even met and then stood by while you became engaged first in the lunatic schemes of a mad Frenchman with delusions of grandeur and now in some bizarre attempt to return to America the man who killed its former President. During the past few months you have spent more time looking death in the eye than most men experience during the course of a lifetime. You have been knocked out, kidnapped, whipped, drugged, chased, shot at, burned and nearly stabbed, not to mention forced to survive unsupervised in the dangerous London metropolis, in a foreign country and in rough Channel waves at night. If I had known everything that would happen to you, I would—"

He stopped, apparently overcome with emotion. He turned his head away. Sherlock thought he saw the gleam of tears in his brother’s eyes. He reached out tentatively and put a hand on Mycroft’s broad shoulder.

“Mycroft. . . you’ve always been the steadiest thing in my life. I’ve always come to you for advice, and you’ve always been more than generous with your time. You’ve never made me feel like I’m bothering you, even when you’ve had more important things to do.”

Mycroft tried to say something, but Sherlock kept going.

“We’ve never been the kind of brothers who would climb trees together in the garden. You’ve never had the energy and I’ve never seen the point. That doesn’t matter. You are the person I’ve always looked to for guidance, and you’ve never let me down. I doubt that will ever change. You are what I want to be when I grow up — successful, important and self-reliant. You have never let me down, and you never will.”

Mycroft looked at him, and smiled. “When you grow up,” he said, “I suspect you will carve a path for yourself in the world that nobody else has ever carved. I can foresee a time when I will be coming to you for help and advice, not the other way round. But despite everything you have said, I have stood by while you have been in danger.”

Sherlock shook his head. “I think there’s always danger, wherever you go. You can either ignore it, or you can wrap yourself in blankets so it doesn’t hurt you or you can walk towards it and dare it to do its worst. If you do the first thing then the danger takes you by surprise. If you do the second thing then you spend all your time swaddled up in the dark, letting the world pass you by. The only logical course of action is to go towards the danger. The more you get used to it, the better you can deal with it.”

Mycroft smiled, and for a moment Sherlock could see, within the folds of fat that now encased his brother’s frame, the boy that he had once been. “I collect information, and amass knowledge,” he said softly. “But you — you have developed wisdom. There will be a day when everybody in the world knows your name.”

“And besides,” Sherlock said, trying to lighten the mood, “I’ve had the time of my life recently. If anyone had told me that by the end of the summer holidays I would have learned to ride a horse, fought in a boxing match, sailed across the Channel and fought a duel, I would have laughed. I’ll bet the most the other boys from school have done is flown a kite and had a picnic on the lawn. There’s still a part of me that thinks I’ll wake up to find out this has all been a dream.”

Mycroft’s gaze flickered across the room to where Virginia was still watching the door, waiting for her father to return. “And I suppose there are other compensating factors,” he said.

“What do you mean?” Sherlock asked, suddenly uncomfortable.

“I mean the attractions of companionship.” Mycroft’s face was suddenly pensive. “I am a... solitary... man,” he said. “I do not suffer fools gladly, and I prefer to spend my time alone with a book and a decanter of brandy. Do not let my example become your exemplar. If friendship — or, dare I say it, affection — come into your life then embrace them enthusiastically.

Sherlock’s spirits suddenly fell as Mycroft’s words reminded him of Matthew Arnatt, somewhere out there in the hands of kidnappers. “I don’t mind embracing the danger,” he said sombrely, “but I don’t want it to affect my friends.”

“They make their choices, as you make yours,” Mycroft pointed out. “The same arguments apply. They are not puppets, and you cannot keep them safe, just as I apparently cannot keep you safe. If they want to be with you, they will be. They accept the risk.” He raised an eyebrow. “Certainly, by now, young Matthew must have worked out that being around you is neither safe nor boring.”

“We will get him back, won’t we, Mycroft?”

“I will not let my heart write a cheque that life will not allow me to cash,” Mycroft said gently. “I cannot know the future for sure, but I can use my knowledge and experience to predict the shape of it. I believe there is a high probability that Matty will be returned to us unharmed, although what other events may transpire along the way is another question.”

The door opened and Amyus Crowe entered the room. He was holding a piece of crumpled paper.

“I found this in the prisoner’s pocket,” he said. “Looks like some kind of code. Not sure what it means.”

“Was he conscious?” Mycroft asked.

“He was either flat out or a good actor. I had a quick look at his clothes, though. The cut of the material and the labels inside are mainly American.”

“Let us have a look at that paper. It might give us a clue to where he had to send his message.”

Crowe spread the paper out on his desk. Mycroft and Sherlock crowded around him. Virginia stayed back, smiling now that her father had returned.

The paper had a series of letters and numbers scrawled across it in handwriting that had obviously been written in a moving carriage in a hurry. Sherlock read ten groups of five characters each:

“What does it mean?” Sherlock asked.

“It appears to be a simple subsititution cipher,” Crowe replied. “Substitution ciphers were used a lot during the War Between the States to keep messages from falling into the wrong hands. The idea is simple — instead of “a” you write somethin’ else, say “z”,” — he pronounced it “zee” — “an’ instead of “b” you maybe write “y”. As long as you an’ the person you’re sendin’ the message to both know which letters substitute for which other letters — what the “key” is — the message can be coded and decoded safely’

“But we don’t know what the key is, do we?” Sherlock said.

“That’s right. If we had a longer message we might be able to work it out through frequency analysis, but we don’t.”

“Frequency analysis?”

“This is hardly the time for a tutorial,” Mycroft sighed, but Crowe answered anyway.

“A clever man many years ago worked out that in messages written in English, certain letters occur with more frequency than others. “E” is used more often than anythin’. “T” comes next, then “a”, then “o” an’ then “n”. “Q” an’ “z” are, unsurprisin’ly, the least used. If you have a large block of text where the letters have been substituted by other letters, look for the most common. That’s prob’ly “e”. The next most common is prob’ly “t”. It’s a process of elimination. With a bit of luck you can decode enough of the message to work out the whole thing.” He looked at the message on the paper in front of them. “This one I’m not so sure about. We don’t have enough letters to do a frequency analysis, but I’m wonderin’ if they had enough time to work one out, or code up a message if they did. I reckon this is much simpler.”

“Simpler how?” Sherlock asked.

“Ten groups of five letters each. That makes me think of a grid, or a table.”

Crowe quickly scribbled down the letters again underneath the originals, but in a more ordered arrangement:

“Now there’s two ways a body can write a five-by-ten grid,” he mused, “this way, or the reverse.”

Quickly, he wrote another grid, this time longer across than it was wide:

“ 'Southampton Post Office' ”, Sherlock read breathlessly, “ 'SS Great Eastern Dock, 09.45, Tuesday '. That must be the place to send the message, the place the ship is leaving from and the time it leaves.”

“Not a particularly clever code,” Crowe mused, “but prob’ly the best they could manage in a speeding carriage.” He glanced at Mycroft. “I guess we both know what comes next, don’t we?”

Mycroft nodded. “I’ll get started.”

Sherlock looked from one to the other. “What comes next?” he demanded.

The two men stared at each other. It was Mycroft who eventually spoke.

“They’ve booked themselves on a ship leaving Southampton tomorrow at a quarter to ten. While we’re dealing with things here, they’ll be at Southampton. By the time I can get the local police roused, the ship will have sailed.”

“So they’ve got away,” Sherlock said.

“Not necessarily,” Mycroft pointed out. “There are ships sailing for America every day. Most of the ships take passengers, but their main function is carrying letters and parcels. That’s where the money can be made. If we can book tickets on a ship leaving tomorrow, or the day after, for the same destination, then we can get there shortly behind them. Or perhaps even ahead of them. Our ship may be lighter, or more powerful. They did not choose their own ship because they thought they would be chased, but because they wanted to get out of the country as fast as possible.”

“We?” Sherlock asked.

“Mr Crowe will have to go,” Mycroft replied, “because he has jurisdiction in his own country. He can call upon the assistance of the local police. He will obviously take his daughter because he would not leave her here unaccompanied. I, on the other hand, will stay, because I need to ensure that the British Government is apprised of events, and to provide Mr Crowe with any long-range diplomatic support he needs.”

“Can’t he just send a cable to the Pinkertons, telling them to intercept the Great Eastern when it arrives?”

Mycroft shook his head, his prominent jowls wobbling as he did so. “You forget,” he said, “that we have no clear descriptions of the men; certainly not enough to secure their arrest. Apart from John Wilkes Booth, they cannot be identified by anyone apart from you.”

“And what about me?” Sherlock asked, barely able to breathe.

“You are the only one of us who saw the other men,” Mycroft said gently. “I cannot tell you to do this, Sherlock. I cannot even in all conscience ask you. I can merely point out that Mr Crowe cannot apprehend the men if he cannot find them.”

“You want me to go to America?” Sherlock whispered.

“I can tell Uncle Sherrinford and Aunt Anna that I have arranged an educational trip,” Mycroft said. “Lasting perhaps a month or so. They will be against it, of course, but I think I can persuade them.”

“Actually,” Sherlock said, thinking about Mrs Eglantine and the strange power she seemed to exert in his aunt and uncle’s household, “I think you’ll find it a lot easier than you think to convince them to let me go away for a while.”