The God of the Hive - Laurie R. King [128]
“After that, I had Sosa drop me at the Angel Court entrance, and I ordered him to go to an hotel I knew near Maidenhead, and check in under an assumed name. I also ordered him to drink the remainder of the gin and go immediately to bed—he is a teetotaller, but I expected it might be a choice between alcohol and a complete breakdown, and thought the effect of drink would be simpler to deal with.”
With that, Mycroft picked up the final biscuit and sat back, as if his tale was at its end.
“So you’ve been here since Wednesday?” I prompted.
“I have a long-standing arrangement with Mrs Melas, that I might use her upstairs flat if ever I needed a retreat. She even came to see if I might be here, while I was in my prison—she left a note on the desk for me, asking that I get into touch. Fortunately, she hasn’t been back since.”
“She believed the reports of your death, as we did. I did,” I corrected myself, although Holmes’ claims to the contrary were not entirely convincing.
Mycroft winced. “Yes, I feared the report would trouble you. There was little I could do. Any public message-board such as the agony column was sure to be watched. As I said, my opponent has a remarkably subtle mind.”
That gave me pause, to think that the messages Holmes and I had posted to each other might have been not only noticed, but understood. However, one would also have had to know where the bolt-holes were to trace us to them, and there this faceless opponent had met his limits.
“I knew you would return to London, once you had dealt with Brothers. With luck, you would even find me before I began to eat Mrs Melas’ leather chair. But you say that Brothers is not dead. How do you intend to find him?”
Brothers be damned, I thought, and interrupted. “Did you send Mr Sosa away?”
“On Thursday, it must have been,” Holmes noted. “Once he’d brought you the morning papers.”
“And food. Yes, I sent him to the country with his mother, and had him get into touch with your Mrs Hudson and my own Mrs Cowper. We have a wide number of acquaintances at the moment who are taking in distant scenery.”
Poor Mrs Hudson, banished yet again for her own good. At least Dr Watson was out of it this time.
“We cannot afford any more hostages to fortune,” Holmes agreed.
“That was my thought. However, I had not suspected that Mr Sosa was made of such stern stuff. He returned to St James’s Square at mid-day on Thursday, where I had agreed to be available to him, were he to want me, and brought me a pair of Gladstone bags stuffed with edibles and the news. However, he was badly shaken: That morning he had decided that he could scarcely spend the day in the same shirt he had worn the day previous, and went home to pack a valise. There he found signs of a most expert break-in and the insinuation of several pieces of incriminating evidence amongst his things. He gathered his mother and fled; the two of them were in the mortuary van with her cat and canary. I gave him strict orders to abandon the stolen motor and take her away for at least two weeks. After the invasion of his home, I believe he will obey me. I only hope I can talk him into returning to my employ, once this is over.”
“Good,” Holmes said to his brother. “Tell me, what do you propose to do about your faceless opponent?”
“Now that I have you, I’d thought—”
“Wait,” I said. Damian was lodged in Holland somewhere and Javitz was protecting Estelle—but if our opponent was all-knowing, there remained one member of our party to consider: “Goodman.”
The man attached to that name gave a snort and sat upright on the divan, blinking against the light. I said, “That is your family’s estate, in Cumbria, where you live?”
“My … yes.”
“You could be traced from there?”
He shrugged, to indicate its remote possibility. I turned to Holmes.
“If our opponent has figured out who Goodman is, and if he’s desperate enough, he could use them—the family is away,