Snake Bite

PROLOGUE

The corridors and rooms of the Diogenes Club are, perhaps, the quietest places in the whole of London. Nobody who enters is allowed to speak — except within the Strangers’ Room, and only then when the door is firmly closed. The staff who work there — the footmen and the waiters — have padded cloth attached to the soles of their shoes so that they can move silently, and the newspapers which the club members read are printed specially for the Diogenes on a paper that does not rustle when it is folded. Any member who clears his throat or blows his nose more than three times in a month is given a written warning. Three written warnings lead to expulsion from the club.

The members of the Diogenes Club value their silence.

When Amyus Crowe pushed past the footman in the lobby and strode through the club’s maze of corridors and reading rooms to where Mycroft Holmes waited for him, he didn’t say a word, but there was something about him that made everyone look up in disapproval, and then look away suddenly when he met their gaze. Although he was silent, although his clothes barely whispered as he moved, although the leather soles of his boots made little more than a scuffing noise against the floor tiles, he appeared to radiate an energy that crackled fiercely and loudly. He seemed to be broadcasting audible fury from every pore in his body.

He slammed the door of the Strangers’ Room behind him so hard that even the special pneumatic hinges failed to stop the bang!

‘What have you heard?’ he demanded.

Mycroft Holmes was standing to one side of the main table. He winced.

‘My agents have confirmed that Sherlock was kidnapped in Farnham and transported in a drugged state to London. There he was loaded on to a ship named the Gloria Scott.’

‘An’ what you are doin’ about rescuing your brother and my student?’

‘I am doing all I can,’ Mycroft said. ‘Which is not very much, I am afraid. The ship has sailed for China. I am attempting to track down a manifest so that I can anticipate when and where the ship will dock for supplies along the way, but that is proving problematic. The ship’s voyages are organized at the behest of its captain, who is notoriously eccentric, according to my agents. His starting and finishing points are fixed — London and Shanghai — but he might stop anywhere in between.’

‘An’ —’ Crowe paused — ‘and you are sure that Sherlock is alive?’

‘Why drug and kidnap him if the intention is to kill him? Why go to the trouble of transporting him to a ship when he could just be buried in the woods somewhere? No, logic tells me that he is still alive.’

‘Then what is the point of taking him?’

Mycroft paused for a moment. His face grew, if anything, more serious. ‘The answer to that question depends on who it was that took him.’

‘Ah think we both know the answer to that,’ Crowe growled.

Mycroft nodded. ‘Reluctant as I am to come to conclusions in the absence of evidence, I cannot think of any other possibility. The Paradol Chamber have him.’

‘There is some evidence,’ Crowe pointed out. ‘On his way up to Edinburgh he swore he saw that man Kyte, who turned out to be an agent of the Paradol Chamber, on a station platform at Newcastle. He mentioned it to Rufus Stone, an’ Stone mentioned it to me. We both suspected that the Paradol Chamber were keeping an eye on him, but we didn’t think they’d actually take any action.’

Mycroft nodded again. ‘And that explains your anger, which is not directed at me but at yourself. You are angry that you did not anticipate the danger that Sherlock was in.’

Crowe glanced away from Mycroft, his eyes glaring from beneath bushy white eyebrows. ‘You said that if we knew who’d taken him then we’d know why he was taken. So — we know it’s the Paradol Chamber. What do they want?’

‘The Paradol Chamber are — forgive me, would you care for a small dry sherry? No? Well, you don’t mind if I help myself then? Yes, as you already know, the Paradol Chamber are a group of politically motivated agitators who wish to change governments in order to achieve their own ends, which I presume are to make a great deal of money from dealing in stocks and shares and from armament sales, among other things. I have heard them described as being like a small nation without boundaries, territory or a capital city, which seems as good a description as any. In my limited experience they rarely have one reason for doing anything. Any action of theirs is predicated on that action helping them to progress on a series of fronts. If I were to venture a guess…’ He broke off, and shook his large head. ‘A pastime I find most abhorrent, by the way. But yes, if I were to venture a guess, then I would suggest that their reasons for abducting Sherlock are, firstly to punish him for his involvement in stopping several of their plots, secondly to prevent him from stopping any more of their plots, and thirdly to throw you and me into a state of confusion which would hamper our efforts to find out what their other plots actually are.’

‘But they didn’t kill him,’ Crowe pointed out. ‘Why not?’

‘Killing Sherlock would have punished him for a few seconds, after which he would not care one way or the other what they did. Being stuck on a ship, separated from his friends, his family and any possibility of a decent meal — no, that kind of torture lasts for a long while, at no cost to them. And rather than hampering our efforts in discovering their plots, they must know enough about you and me to know that if Sherlock were to die then we would spend every waking moment and every guinea we could lay our hands on in tracking them down and bringing them to justice.’

‘Or metin’ out some justice of our own,’ Crowe rumbled. ‘The kind of justice that comes out of the barrel of a gun.’

‘For once,’ Mycroft conceded quietly, ‘I might just agree with you on that one.’

‘Can’t you send a Royal Navy ship to intercept this Gloria Scott?’

Mycroft shook his head. ‘I do not have the authority to dispatch a vessel for one boy, even if that boy is my brother. Even if I did, I would not. Those ships have more important duties, guarding our coasts against attack and enforcing the will of the Queen abroad. Against that, the life of one child weighs as nothing.’ He sighed, and clenched a fist helplessly. ‘All of this discussion leaves us better informed but no better off. We cannot help Sherlock. He is on his own.’

‘Sherlock on his own has better resources at his disposal than most people surrounded by friends and family.’ Crowe’s tone was calmer now, and the fierce energy that had appeared to radiate from his body had abated somewhat. ‘He’s brave, he’s strong and he knows his own mind. Oh, and he’s handy with his fists as well. Ah think he’ll work out that he’s got to make the best of it. He knows that the ship is comin’ back to London, eventually, an’ that gives him a guarantee of returnin’ that he doesn’t get if he tries to jump ship in mid-voyage and find a ship comin’ in the opposite direction. The Captain will be short-handed, because captains always are, and so he’ll set the youngster to work. It’ll be hard work, but he’ll come through it. An’ he’ll probably come through it stronger an’ more self-reliant as well.’

‘Hardly the kind of torture that the Paradol Chamber were thinking of,’ Mycroft pointed out drily.

Crowe smiled. ‘The people in charge of the Paradol Chamber, as far as ah can tell, live comfortable lives with servants tendin’ to their every whim. For them, splicin’ a mainbrace or haulin’ anchor would be torture. For young Sherlock it’ll be an adventure — if he chooses to make it so.’

‘I hope so. I really do hope so.’

‘Ah think ah’ll take advantage of that sherry now,’ Crowe said. ‘God knows ah can’t see the appeal of it mahself, but ah do feel in the need of some strong liquor.’

Mycroft busied himself with pouring a glass for Crowe from the decanter on the sideboard.

‘I will write letters,’ he said as he handed the glass across. It was almost lost in Crowe’s enormous and weather-beaten hand. ‘They can be transmitted by telegraph to various ports along his route. I can ensure that diplomatic staffs are on the lookout for the Gloria Scott. They can pass on our messages and report on how he is. He can write to us. There will be ships at every port he stops at which are heading to England. They can bring letters back.’

‘He’ll only be gone for a year or so,’ Crowe pointed out. ‘Maybe less, wind an’ weather permittin’. You’ll see him again.’

Mycroft nodded. ‘I know. I just… I feel so responsible. So helpless.’ He took a deep breath, steadying himself against some sudden storm of emotion. ‘I shall not tell Mother, of course. Her health would not stand it. And I will not write to Father until I have more news — and perhaps not even then. I will send a note to our aunt and uncle in Farnham, telling them that everything is all right. They do worry about him.’

‘And ah’ll find some way of tellin’ Virginia ’bout what’s happened,’ Crowe said. ‘An’, frankly, that conversation scares me more than anythin’. She’s really taken a fancy to that brother of yours.’

‘And he to her,’ Mycroft mused. ‘Let’s hope that the memories they have of each other are enough to keep them going…’