Doctor Who_ All-Consuming Fire - Andy Lane [60]
'I have commented before upon your pawky sense of humour, Watson. I shall have to do something about it. Some bromide in your tea, perhaps.'
He attracted the attention of a waiter and ordered a large breakfast.
'I awoke early,' he continued, helping himself to a cup of coffee, 'and decided to take a constitutional swim. I encountered the local fleet on the way out and took the opportunity to test my spoken Egyptian.'
The Doctor smiled slightly as he gazed at the table. He did not seem to take Holmes terribly seriously.
'Baggage day, today,' I observed as Holmes's breakfast was delivered and he fell upon it like a wolf upon the fold.
'Babbage day?'The Doctor frowned. 'I wasn't counting on that.'
'Baggage day. The crew will bring the trunks containing our tropical wear up from the hold and replace them with the ones currently in our cabins.
White drill suits replace black serge. Black cummerbunds oust waistcoats.
Topees take over from trilbies.'
'Very poetic.' The Doctor looked down at his lightweight tropical suit. 'No change here, I'm afraid.'
I thought for a moment. Had the Doctor brought any luggage at all on board? Had I ever seen him in anything apart from the clothes he stood up in? My memory was hazy: I was sure that I was missing something obvious, but for the life of me, I could not remember what.
'Well,' Holmes said from around a mouthful of food, 'let us hope that this momentous day marks an end to the boredom of the past two weeks and the beginning of the ennui of the next two.'
Boredom? I had not been bored, although I had been aware of Holmes pacing the deck and the Doctor sitting cross-legged in a deckchair for days on end, watching the waves. No, I had spent a large part of the journey chronicling the adventures which had taken place in London. The pages which you have already read were the result: written in longhand with a scratchy fountain pen in a ledger book brought with me for that purpose.
The exercise had served to sharpen in my mind the questions that still remained: who was the hooded figure with whom Baron Maupertuis had met, and how did Maupertuis smuggle the books out of the Library of St John the Beheaded? As I had come to the end of the narrative, however -
the section which detailed our discussions with Sherringford Holmes and his unusual guest in the Library - I found myself reluctant to write. I kept looking for excuses to leave my cabin. I would walk along the promenade, exchanging small-talk with the ladies and taking part in the daily lottery based upon the previous day's run. I would visit the bar and listen to the ribald talk of the men. I would sit out on deck with Holmes and the Doctor, trying to follow their abstruse discussions. I even attended the fancy-dress ball - the social high spot of the voyage although I would not normally be seen dead at such an event. I did not wish to write of that conversation.
Now, some years later, I have gained a little perspective. Perhaps so many stranger things have happened to me since that I can recall the scene in the Library with less disquiet than before. Or perhaps I have forgotten much of what made me shy away from it. Whatever the reason, I now find it easier to cast my mind back to the week before we left London, to that oak-lined room, deep in the heart of the Library of St John the Beheaded, and the moment when the alien creature stepped out from behind the curtain.
'Gentlemen,' it said in a hissy voice, 'we of Ry'leh need your help.'
Mycroft Holmes, as I recall, spilled his wine on the carpet. Holmes leaned forward eagerly, his eyes scanning over every inch of the creature's flesh.
Sherringford Holmes sat back smugly in his armchair and the Doctor, apart from raising his eyebrows, did nothing.
And I? The floor seemed to shift beneath my feet, swaying as if in an earthquake. I could hear a faint buzzing in my ears, and a small, still voice in the back of my mind kept repeating a snatch of poetry by the French writer Victor Hugo:
Every globe revolving round a star,