Justice Hall - Laurie R. King [132]
“You can write your paper on the boat,” Holmes told me. “You’re always complaining that you never have the leisure to work properly. You’ll be in New York by the middle of the week, take the train to Toronto Thursday or Friday, and be back on board by the Monday sailing. Two weeks, total, to solve our case. Maybe three.”
“You go.” I felt like a rat cornered by two determined terriers; I was not going down without a fight.
And I did not. Go without a fight, that is, although in the end, go I did, and on the Friday boat as Mycroft had said. With hastily packed trunks holding clothes scavenged from my flat and Mycroft’s guest-room cupboards, and bearing only the most rudimentary books to keep this fool’s journey from being an utter waste of time, I was flung onto the ship as by a tornado, the gang-way pulling back almost as soon as I had cleared it. I stood on the vibrating deck to watch England retreat into the fog, knowing that I should be very lucky if this exercise in futility were to cost me only three weeks. I put together a complicated Arabic curse worthy of Ali and gave it to the wind; feeling somewhat better, I went below to find my rooms.
As I was shaking my head at the peculiar selection of out-of-date and unseasonable clothing I had at my disposal, and wondering if I might slip beneath the ship’s social eye by keeping to my cabin at meal-times, a rapid-fire knock sounded at my door. If that was a purser bearing propitiatory flowers from Holmes, I swore under my breath, he’d be fortunate to escape with his head on his shoulders. I went back through the rooms, yanked open the door, and felt as if I’d walked into a solid wall.
It was not a purser, flowers or no. Nor a maid, nor a first officer welcoming me on board, nor a boy with a telegram, nor any of the dozen other likely candidates for disturbing me. It was not even Holmes, whose capacity for appearing where he could not possibly be was unparalleled in human experience.
Standing in the corridor was Iris Sutherland.
“Hallo, Mary. I see by your face that the news I was coming along did not reach you.”
“It most certainly did not.”
“Hardly surprising—I didn’t know myself until about six hours ago, and there was some question I’d actually make it. You going to invite me in?”
“Of course, please. Sorry—it just surprised me so. But it’s an absolute joy to see you.”
And it was. Suddenly this voyage, and the arduous land journey at the end of it, did not seem so much of a burden on my soul.
“My, my,” she was saying. “This is posh. They’ve stuck me into a broom closet seventeen levels below the water-line, said they’d try for something with air when they got sorted out.”
My own arrival was nearly as hastily arranged, but either Mycroft’s strings or my own cheque-book had kicked me upstairs.
“I’ll have a word with the captain,” I told her.
“Don’t bother, I already have. Using Marsh’s name,” Iris added, with a look of mischief. Yes: The knowledge that they had placed a Hughenfort in steerage would set the feathers flying, all right.
I laughed. “The next knock on the door will be some gentleman with a lot of gold braid telling me ever so apologetically that a mistake’s been made, that my room is a nice cosy broom closet, seventeen levels below the water-line.”
“That’s all right, then,” she said, gesturing towards the adjoining room. “We’ll make you up a bed on the sofa.”
“How is Marsh?”
“Spitting mad that the doctor and Ali won’t let him out of his bed.”
“I didn’t even know until yesterday that he’d taken a turn for the worse.”
“He nearly lost his arm.”
“Iris!”
“They couldn’t get the infection down. The doctor wanted to amputate—blood-thirsty idiot—but Ali wouldn’t let him. Threatened to amputate the doctor’s arm, in fact. That shut him up.”
“I can imagine.” Particularly if the threat had been accompanied by a blade and one of Ali’s patent glares.
“All it wanted was round-the-clock compresses. Ali and I took turns; the infection centralised and could be lanced after a couple of days. Marsh is weak, but he’ll be fine.”
“Holmes said he