Rebel Fire (12 page)

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—comes into your life, then embrace it 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 somberly, “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 scrawled 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 substitution 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 for 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 name of the ship, 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 are 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 replied. “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 expect to convince them to let me go away for a while.”

 

S
EVEN

The docks at Southampton were a bustling mass of men, women, and children dressed in their Sunday best. Some of them were streaming like ants up the gangplanks leading from the dockside up to the decks of ships, some of them were coming down the gangplanks from other ships and gazing around wide-eyed at the sight of a new country, while the rest were either saying goodbye to friends and relatives or greeting newcomers with open arms. And in and around them wove uniformed porters wheeling piles of luggage precariously mounded on trolleys and dockworkers in rough clothes and bandannas moving goods onto and from wooden pallets. Above it all towered the wooden cranes that were taking net-covered pallets from the dockside up to the decks of the ships or from the decks down to the dockside, as well as the cliff-like wooden or iron sides of the ships and the masts and funnels that rose like a forest all around.

And everywhere Sherlock looked he could see evidence of a hundred crimes being committed: pockets being picked, fixed card games being played, netted bales of goods being cut open so that small items could be removed, children being separated from their parents for heaven knew what reason, and newcomers paying in advance for transportation to boardinghouses and hotels that didn't exist or were nothing like the florid descriptions that were being given.

It was humanity at its best and at its worst.

The past twenty-four hours had been possibly the most hectic in Sherlock's life. Following the conference in Amyus Crowe's cottage and the unexpected decision that they would be going to America—a decision that Sherlock still couldn't quite believe had been made—he and Mycroft had returned to Holmes Manor, diverting to Farnham to send a carefully worded telegram to the post office at Southampton Docks persuading Ives and Berle that Gilfillan had succeeded in stopping them. Once at Holmes Manor, Mycroft had gone into the library to talk with Sherrinford Holmes while Sherlock had headed up to his bedroom to pack his meagre possessions into the battered trunk that had once belonged to his father. Sherlock had slept badly, disturbed partly by his memories of the fight with Gilfillan and the stinging of his wounds, but partly also by the excitement of being on the verge of leaving the country—for America! Breakfast was a strained affair, with neither Sherrinford nor Aunt Anna sure of what to say to him and with Mrs. Eglantine smiling coldly from behind them. And then Sherlock had climbed into a carriage with Mycroft, watching as his trunk was hauled up and strapped to the back, and then they had set off for the long drive to Southampton.