Justice Hall - Laurie R. King [3]
I stared at him, moving to one side so the interior light might fall more brightly on his features. I knew that face: Beardless as it was, its missing front teeth restored, the hair at its sides conventionally trimmed, and framed by an incongruous suit and an impossible hat, it was nonetheless the face of a man with whom I had travelled in close proximity and uneasy intimacy for a number of weeks. I had worked with him, shed blood with him. I was, in fact, responsible for that narrow scar on his wrist.
“Ali?” I said in disbelief. “Ali Hazr?” His mouth came open as if to speak, but instead he stumbled, as if the door frame had abruptly given way; his right hand fluttered up towards his belt, but before his fingers could reach his waistcoat, his eyes rolled back in his head, his knees turned to water, and fourteen and a half stone of utterly limp intruder collapsed forward into my arms.
CHAPTER TWO
The man lying between the crisp white sheets of the guest bed was very like Ali Hazr, but also distinctly unlike the Arab ruffian Holmes and I had known. In fact, I had nearly convinced myself that our visitor was merely a stranger with a strong resemblance to the man—a brother, perhaps—when a jab from the doctor’s sewing needle brought him near to consciousness, and he growled a string of florid Arabic curses.
It was Ali, all right.
Before Holmes’ pet medical man had clipped the thread from his half-dozen stitches, the patient had lapsed back into the restless swoon that had gripped him from the moment he fell through our door. Seeing his tossing head and hearing the apparent gibberish from his lips, the doctor reached back into his satchel for an hypodermic needle. With that, Ali finally succumbed to oblivion.
I adjusted the pad of clean towelling underneath his bandaged scalp and followed the two men out of the room, leaving the door ajar.
Downstairs in the kitchen, Dr Amberley was scrubbing the blood from his hands and giving Holmes a set of unnecessary instructions.
“I’d say his concussion is a mild one, but you’d best keep an eye on him, and if his pupils become uneven, or if he seems over-lethargic, telephone to me immediately. The dose of morphia I gave him was small, because of the concussion—it ought to wear off in three or four hours, although he may well sleep longer than that. I suppose you wish me to say nothing about this visitor of yours?”
“I think not. At this point I have no idea why he’s here or what happened to him, and I’d not want to invite an attacker to join us. Although by the appearance of his overcoat, I should say this happened far from here.”
It was true. Ali’s incongruous city suit had been stiff with dried blood, his shirt collar saturated to the shoulders. Whatever had brought him here, desperation might well follow on his heels.
When the doctor had gone and Mrs Hudson was tut-tutting over the ruined clothing, Holmes picked up his hastily abandoned pipe, knocked it out, and began to tamp fresh tobacco into the bowl. I went through the house to secure the doors and windows and draw the curtains, just in case.
“It has to be something to do with Mahmoud,” I said when I came back. “Ali would not have come to England without him, and would not have come to us for help except if Mahmoud were in grave danger.”
“It is difficult to imagine the one Hazr without the other,” Holmes agreed. He got the pipe going, then resumed his three-week-old newspaper.
“But, shouldn’t we do something? He may sleep for hours.”
“What do you propose?”
“We could telephone to Mycroft.”
He did lower the paper a fraction to consider the proposition, then shook his head.
“My brother is in London, unless he’s left since this morning. If Ali wanted Mycroft, he’d have stopped there. He wanted us, which meant that either he thought we would not respond to a mere telegraph or telephone message, or secrecy was foremost. No, Ali came from Berkshire to see us, not to speak with Mycroft. We shall have to be patient.”
The unused portion of a return ticket in Ali’s pocket had revealed a journey