The Language of Bees - Laurie R. King [124]
“You were looking for me?” I asked him. Had he been more obviously a policeman, I should have left through a back door.
“Mr Mycroft Holmes sent me to find you.”
“And the skinny little bureaucrat wants to drag me clear across town?” I responded.
The man looked at me oddly, then realised what I was doing. He reached up to tip his hat in acknowledgment. “I'd hardly call Mr Holmes skinny, even now,” he replied, “and Pall Mall is no distance at all.”
He knew Mycroft; it was safe to climb into the car with him.
I glanced down the street, found Millicent Dunworthy gone, and got into the passenger seat of the car belonging to Mycroft's operative.
Power (2): It takes a practiced mind and a purified heart
to discern the subtle patterns of the heavens, freeing
sources of Power to fuel the divine spark.
The manipulation of the Elements is a life-time's work.
Testimony, III:7
WHAT DOES HE WANT?” I ASKED.
“Mr Holmes is not in the habit of sharing that sort of information with his employees,” the man said, putting the motor into gear. “However, it may have to do with an arrival from Shanghai.”
At last!
We were on the street near Mycroft's back door in no time at all. I got out, then looked back at the driver. “You're not coming in?”
“I was only sent to find you. Good evening, Miss Russell.”
“Good night, Mr …?”
“Jones.”
“Another Jones brother,” I noted. “Good night then, Mr Jones.”
As way of proof that watched plots never come to a boil, my absence from Mycroft's home had opened the way for furious activity. For one thing, Holmes was back, looking sunburnt, footsore, and stiff, no doubt from sleeping on the ground. Also hungry, to judge by the ravaged platter of sandwiches on the table before him. He'd been there long enough to bath, and therefore long enough to be brought up to date by Mycroft—the files and papers relating to the investigation had been moved; Damian's redirected letter lay on the top.
I greeted him, with more reticence than I might have were Mycroft our only witness to affection. He nodded at me and returned his attention to the fourth person in the room.
Apart from his lack of sunburn, the newcomer looked even more worn than Holmes. The small man's now-damp linen suit was as wrinkled as a centenarian's face, and bore signs of any number of meals and at least one close acquaintance with oily machinery. He had not only slept in his clothing, he had lived in them for days, and for many, many miles.
The arrival from Shanghai was not a document.
“You have been in Shanghai, I perceive,” I blurted idiotically.
The three men stared at me as if I had pronounced on the state of cheese in the moon, so I smiled weakly and stepped forward, my hand out. The small man started to rise.
“Don't stand,” I ordered. “Mary Russell.”
He subsided obediently, clutching his plate with one hand; the other one took mine with a dapper formality that sat oddly with his state of disrepair.
“This is Mr Nicholas Lofte,” Mycroft said. “Recently, as you say, of Shanghai.”
“Pleased to meet you,” he said smoothly, with an accent as much American as his native Swiss.
One whiff of the air in his vicinity explained why Mycroft had left a space between himself and Lofte; it also meant that I retreated to Holmes' side rather than take the chair between them.
Mycroft circled the table with a bottle, playing host to the wine in the glasses as he told me, “From time to time, Mr Lofte takes commissions for me in the Eastern countries. He happened to be on hand in Shanghai, so my request for information was passed to him.”
Which did not explain why Mr Lofte himself occupied a chair in Mycroft's sitting room: Was the information he had compiled too inflammatory to be committed to print? As if I had voiced the speculation aloud, Mycroft said, “His dossier of information was rather lengthy for telegrams, and writing it up and presenting it to the Royal Mail would have delayed its arrival until