Doctor Who_ All-Consuming Fire - Andy Lane [37]
'Telegram for you, Mr 'Olmes,' he shouted.
Holmes took the proffered slip. The lad scarpered off without a backward glance. Holmes smiled.
'A bright spark, that one. He'll bear watching.'
He slipped the envelope open and read the contents intently.
'A summons, Watson!'
He handed the slip over.
'Come at once', I read.
'Who on Earth can it be?' I asked.
'No mystery there,' Holmes replied. 'The identity of the sender is unquestionable.'
This time Holmes was going too far.
'How can you possibly know who it is?' I yelped. 'There is no name, no address, and the communication is neither handwritten nor torn letter by letter from a newspaper, so you are unable to deduce anything from the construction. Furthermore, the message is too short to contain any hidden message or code. You are bluffing, Holmes. I've caught you out!'
I sat back triumphantly.
'Who do you know that could send such a terse message and expect it to be obeyed?' Holmes asked me, reaching for his frock coat.
'Oh: I was crestfallen.
'Exactly,' Holmes replied. 'My brother Mycroft. Come along, Watson. Best bib and tucker.'
'But . . .!' I glanced down ruefully at my stained shirtfront.
'No time! Come on!'
I followed.
As the hansom headed towards Pall Mall, and the Diogenes Club, I recalled everything that I knew about Holmes's mysterious brother. I had first met the man upon the occasion that Holmes aided one of Mycroft's fellow lodgers - the plucky Greek interpreter Melas. Mycroft's mental powers exceeded Holmes's, but his gross obesity and his extreme laziness precluded any movement except that between bedchamber, office and dinner table. Holmes had originally told me that his brother audited the books in some Government department. He had unbuttoned enough since then to confide that Mycroft's position was more shadowy and far more influential than he had previously led me to believe. Certainly in my brief conversation with the man I had been amazed by his breadth of knowledge concerning world affairs and his profound insights into the secret pivots upon which they turned. How often had I read in the newspapers of some revolution in a distant country, or a war between two foreign states, only to remember that Mycroft had mentioned them casually in passing months before they happened?
We alighted from the hansom in front of the imposing facade of the Diogenes Club - the last refuge of the most unclubbable men in England. In a moment of refreshing candour, Holmes had once told me that he would not belong to any club that would have him as a member. The Diogenes was his exception. Not a word was to be spoken inside its walls, save in the distant, sound-proof, Visitors' Room. No social interaction of any kind was permitted. Even to glance for longer than a few seconds at a fellow member was a black-ball offence. There were men - members of the aristocracy, indeed - who maintained rooms at the Diogenes, ate in its restaurant, and had not passed out of its portals or spoken to another living soul for a decade or more. The Diogenes was so private that I had heard of men who had died whilst slumped in its massive leather chairs, and their deaths not noticed until they began to decay.
Holmes led the way inside. I was immediately struck by the vast silence, so profound that it seemed like a physical presence. The entrance hall, from which a marble staircase swept up into the club proper, smelled of beeswax polish and age. A bewigged footman led us up and along a corridor that was so deeply carpeted I could only just make out the tops of my shoes. I could hear nothing, save the swish of our clothes and a deep, regular thump that I eventually realized was my heartbeat.
We came to a doorway fully twice my height and flanked by twin statues of cherubs. They were armed with little stone bows. A strange choice for the Diogenes, I reflected, believing them to be representations