The Beekeeper's Apprentice - Laurie R. King [107]
I decided finally that the brandy was to blame for the dullness of my logical faculties, for though I was certain there was a basic fallacy in his reasoning, I could not put my finger on precisely the juncture. I shook my head and plunged on.
“Why not just disappear for a few days? It is really necessary to ...”
“Take flight?” he supplied. “Beat a hasty retreat? Run away? You’re quite right. This morning I should have agreed that a few days’ retreat to Mycroft’s flat or one of my bolt-holes was sufficient for regrouping.” (I shuddered here at the thought of being confined with Holmes in the Storage Room for any length of time.) “But today’s events have proven me wrong. Not the clothing parcel—that was a clever joke. Even the shoes, though sinister, could be got around. But—that bullet. It nearly hit you. I believe it was meant to,” he said, and although he did not look at me, the control in his voice and the small twitch in the right side of his mouth spoke volumes of the rage and apprehension this threat set off in him. To cover his gaffe he rose in a jerk and began to stride up and down, his hands behind him as if tucked beneath the tails of a frock coat, the smouldering pipe he still gripped endangering his clothing. Words tumbled out of him as he paced, spoken in his high voice as if berating himself.
“I begin to feel like a piece of driftwood tumbling about between waves and sand, snatched up and tossed from one place to another. It is a most disconcerting feeling. Were I alone I might almost be tempted to let myself be tumbled, just to see where I washed up. That, however, is not an option.
“What then are the options? Offensive—an all-out attack? On what? Beating a mist with a cricket bat. Defence? How does one de-fend against a mirror-image? She has read Watson’s tales, and my bee book, the monographs on soil and footprints—not available to the general public—and God knows what else. A woman! She has turned my own words against me, caused me considerable mental and physi-cal distress, kept me off my balance for five whole days, chased and harried me across my home territory until I am forced to go to ground—to sea. Do you know—” he broke off, and whirled around to shake an outraged pipe stem at me, “this ...person has even pene-trated into one of my bolt-holes! Yes, today, there were signs....I still cannot believe that a woman can have done this, deducing my deduc-tions, plotting my moves for me, and all the time giving the impres-sion that to her it is a deadly but effortless and highly amusing game. Even Moriarty did not go so far, and he was a master without parallel. The mind, capable of such coups de maître. Maîtresse.” He stopped, and straightened his shoulders with a jerk as if to settle his clothing back into place.
“A most gratifying challenging opponent, this,” he said in a calmer voice, and lit his pipe, which had gone out. When it was going again he continued in a completely different vein.
“Russell, I have been considering your words of this morning. I do occasionally take the thoughts of others into account, you know. Par-ticularly yours. I have to admit that you were completely justified in your protest. You are an adult, and by your very nature I was quite wrong to treat you as if you were Watson. I apologise.”
I was, as one might imagine, completely flabbergasted, and highly suspicious, but he went on as if discussing the weather.
“Today while I was on my distressingly fruitless quest for informa-tion through the human sewers of fair London town, it occurred to me that the matter of your future has come to a head.This peculiar ... present situation has forced it, but it should have come sooner or later. The question I am faced with is, what does one do with a student who has passed every examination laid before her? Eventually she must be removed from in statu pupularis and allowed to assume the rights