Justice Hall - Laurie R. King [5]
“Six,” Holmes told him. “One of our neighbours is a retired surgeon. And in case you are concerned, he knows well how to keep a confidence.”
“Good. I . . . apologise for my state yesterday night. I do not remember too clearly, but I have the impression that my arrival was somewhat more . . . dramatic than I had intended.”
The drama of his arrival the previous evening, however, had been nowhere near as startling as the words he had just pronounced. And not only the words themselves (Ali Hazr, apologising?) but their delivery.
My first clear impression of Ali all those years before, seen by the light of a tiny oil lamp in a mud-brick hut near Jaffa, had been: Arab cut-throat. Glaring eyes and garish embroidery, knife as well as revolver decorating his belt, his very moustaches looking ferocious—from his flowered head-dress to his red leather boots, Ali Hazr had been in that first moment what he remained the entire time: a Bedouin male, proud member of a haughty race, fiercely indisposed to tolerate anyone but Mahmoud, his brother in the deepest sense of the word. Touchy and arrogant, his hand reaching for his knife at the slightest provocation, in his attitude towards us Ali had veered between mortal threat and withering contempt. Passing the tests he and Mahmoud had set us, becoming a companion worthy of their trust, had been a profound source of pride that I had never acknowledged, even to Holmes. I had, in truth, been a different person when Ali and Mahmoud Hazr finished with me.
I looked at the man in the chair, and other than the colours of the tie draped over the bedstead, I could perceive little of that vivid personality now. His erect spine, and perhaps the darkness in his eyes, but the flash was missing from their depths, the aura of simmering violence well and truly damped down. With the gap in his front teeth bridged, even his oddly ominous lisp was gone, his once-heavy accent no more than a faint thickening of gutturals and a subtly non-English placement of the words on the tongue. Had Holmes not trained my ear, I might have thought our intruder merely an ordinary, tame English gentleman. Ali Hazr had shaved away far more than facial hair in transforming himself into this.
As I studied him, those black eyes glanced up at me again, and in that brief moment of contact I felt a spark in them, and read in his half-familiar mouth a distinct grimace. He knew what I was seeing—or rather, not seeing—and it was a face he was not happy about showing. His current appearance was no mere disguise.
“I think I should introduce myself,” he said. I had the impression he spoke through gritted teeth. “My name is Alistair Hughenfort. Alistair Gordon St John Hughenfort. Although even as a child, my family called me Ali.”
Holmes’ head jerked up and I, frankly, stared. Hughenfort? He must be joking. The Hughenfort name was a thing to conjure with, a noble name in the fullest sense of the word, one of a thin handful of the nation’s families that had actually stepped onto England’s shores at the side of William the Conqueror. Half the European wars had a Hughenfort leading some vital charge—and half the rebellions had a younger Hughenfort somewhere in there as well. But as an assumed name, it would have been like disguising himself as the Prince of Wales. It could only be the truth. Holmes shook off the historical details and went for the main issue.
“And Mahmoud?”
Our guest sat up sharply, scarcely wincing as the urgency of his mission overrode his ailments. “He needs us. I need your help.”
This extraordinary confession passed straight over Holmes’ head. “I understood that to be so. My question was, what is Mahmoud’s name?”
The wounded ex-Arab braced himself, took a soft breath, then answered in an even voice. “The man you know as Mahmoud Hazr was born William Maurice Hughenfort.” He waited, his eyes on Holmes, to see what we would make of the statement.
It meant nothing to me, but Holmes’ eyes