Locked rooms - Laurie R. King [96]
He wished he could be as certain about his other assistants, who were abundant if somewhat questionable. He was accustomed to working with Irregulars, to be used and discarded when their purpose was served. He was also well acquainted with the problems of finding reliable help, particularly as he was generally forced to draw from a pool of candidates consisting of society's dregs: One was less likely to find honour amongst thieves than simple thievery, and one developed the habit of not placing too much weight on any one helpmeet.
Take this Hammett fellow, for example. He appeared to be an ideal Irregular (apart from his chronic infirmity), a man whose ready knowledge of the ground, and especially the underground, could save an employer a great deal of superfluous footwork. However, the niggling question of whether he might be too good to be true had already cost Holmes a hurried trip cross-town Saturday morning, returning to the telegraphist's near the P. & O. offices to request that they retain any messages for him there, and not (as he had arranged earlier) have them delivered to the St Francis. A local ex-Pinkerton might well have as close an agreement with the Western Union boys as he had with the taxi drivers, and if Hammett was in fact currently under employment, that employer was likely to be the very subject of the telegrams from Mycroft and Watson. Better to keep them from leaving the telegraph office under any hands other than his own.
And then there was Tom Long, another convenient assistant dangling before his nose, tantalising in his intelligence, experience, and personal commitment to the cause. If, that is, Tom Long was what he appeared to be.
Or even the driver of this motor. Tyson, as with the motor, had been provided by the hotel manager, Auberon. Driver and vehicle made for an unlikely pair—the motor had been chosen to give an impression of an aged employer out for a sedate drive, but beneath the livery and cap he wore, its driver was a bright young man with carroty hair and a cheeky grin. Tyson's own motor, according to Auberon, was of a colour to match his hair, along with chrome-yellow seats and a throaty engine—ill suited for the sort of surveillance they were conducting today. Tyson appeared to be a simple young man with a passion for motorcars and a deplorable taste in literature; on the other hand, he could conceivably be an agent of the faceless enemy, planted on Holmes by yet another agent, Auberon.
Even Henry Norbert bore a question mark above his head, as the lawyer knew more than anyone else about Russell's business, whereabouts, and life in general. He had keys; he was in a position to manipulate the Russell fortunes; and he might indeed know more about the Russell past than he was saying.
The only person Holmes could be sure of was currently hors de combat, so distracted by her problems that she was effectively half-witted. She hadn't even noticed that morning that he did not actually say he was taking a ferry to Oakland, merely that there was a manuscript and there was a ferry-boat. In her right mind, she'd never have missed that.
So, here he was, Sherlock Holmes on his own again with the dubious assistance of an unlikely trio of Irregulars: a cadaverous Pinkerton who ought to be abed, a diminutive Chinese bookseller with a wide knowledge of arcane topics, and a red-headed modern-day barrow-boy trying out for a part in one of Conan Doyle's bits of airy nonsense. His most reassuring partner at the moment was good old Watson, halfway across the globe and launched on another desperate dash across Europe on the business of his longtime friend.
Holmes smiled around the stem of his pipe at the image of his erstwhile partner, thinner of hair and stouter of girth, limping with bulldog tenacity across a crowded German railway station. If anyone could intercept the Marguerite, it would be the doctor.
Soon, however, he would need another pair of hands and feet—very soon, if Watson had succeeded in catching the ship in Marseilles. Whom to trust? The storyteller, the bookseller, or some sturdy