Locked rooms - Laurie R. King [37]
“What about the water and gas?”
“I rang both companies from the watch-dog's telephone.”
“Was Miss Grimly reassured to find you were a respectable English gentleman?” I asked.
“She telephoned to Mr Norbert's offices before she would allow me past the threshold; her nephew stood at the ready with a baseball bat.”
“And did she have anything to offer on our intruders?”
A moment of silence served to remind me of our visitor, whose presence I had forgotten. To cover my mistake, I went on. “I took the photograph around Chinatown and must have asked a hundred or more citizens, none of whom recognised the two people. Or said they didn't. Although I had a very fine if somewhat recherché meal in a tiny cellar café haunted entirely by Orientals, and asked them to ring the hotel if they had any information for me.” My brain, slowly subsiding into its proper setting, finally emitted an original idea, and I opened my eyes to squint at Mr Long. “One of the people whom I questioned was this gentleman, who runs a bookshop that sells, among other things, volumes on the Chinese art of feng shui. I trust I am pronouncing it correctly?” I asked. Mr Long nodded fractionally, then stifled a wince at Holmes' ministrations; I continued. “However, he has yet to tell me what he is doing rescuing me from assassins on my doorstep.”
The bookseller stirred. “I have to say, Miss Russell, that your display of English—do they call it ‘phlegm'?—is most impressive. I would have thought most young ladies would display more of a reaction to such an attack. Unless you think, sir, that she is suffering from a concussion?”
Holmes snorted. “Her brain wouldn't dare. No, the only time Russell becomes upset is when those near and dear to her are threatened.”
“Is this—eh!” Long grunted.
“Sorry,” Holmes muttered, and pulled more gently at the shirt.
“Is this common among the English?”
“Russell is not common among anyone. Good, it's merely winged you in passing—no permanent damage, I shouldn't think. Do you suppose there are any bandages in the house, Russell?”
“They would be either in the cabinet in my parents' bath-room, or in the nursery. Do you want me to go?”
“You sit.”
So I sat, as his stride went up the stairs, and a few minutes later came down again. His search was successful, even to the presence of a bottle of Merthiolate. He sniffed it, then painted away at the bookseller's seeping upper arm, wrapping a length of gauze around the whole and tying it off in a neat bow. He handed Mr Long back his shirt, but carried the coat over to the sink, turning on the taps with an air of experiment. Nothing.
“I can't even offer to salvage your coat from the bloodstains,” he apologised.
“That is of no importance,” the bookseller said, gingerly inserting his arm into the ruined sleeve. Holmes moved to assist him, and between the two of them they got the man clothed without too much discomfort. The small man moved his shoulder experimentally, testing the limits of comfort, then turned to me.
“I am pleased that I could, as you say, rescue you from your assassins, but I cannot claim I came here with any such intention. No, I came to speak with you about your photograph, and as I paced the sidewalks in indecision, you came around the corner and the man with the gun showed himself. Pure felicitous accident. May I ask, are assassins a commonplace in your life?”
I might have returned his earlier question aimed at me, for his own demonstration of phlegmatic behaviour made me wonder if it was his own nature, Orientals in general, or a result of living in San Francisco, which after all was not so very far removed from its Wild West roots. But it was difficult to know how to answer his question, so I decided to consider it rhetorical rather than requiring an answer. Instead, I asked, “Why were you coming to speak with me?”
“The photograph you showed me. It is of my parents.”
“Ah,” Holmes said, and reached for his pipe.
“Mah and Micah were your mother and father?” I asked, with a dubious