The Language of Bees - Laurie R. King [159]
“Miss Russell?” His accent was as Scots as his suit.
“Yes?”
“M' name's MacDougall. Ah've a message for yeh.”
“From?”
“Mr Mycroft Holmes.”
“Sit. Please. Tea?” For some reason, my tongue seemed limited to one-word sentences. But he sat, and the arrival of a second cup saved me the difficult decision of how to carry out my offer, so that was good. I watched him slip in and out of clear focus, and summoned my thoughts.
“He sent me a wire, askin' me t'watch for an aeroplane. Wi' the weather as it is, I'd gone home, but the man here rang me.”
“Mycroft. Yes. Good.”
“Er, are you altogether well, mum?”
My gaze slid towards the window, where the machine that had tried so hard to kill us sat, wet and complacent as men addressed themselves to its undercarriage. “It was a dilli—a difficult flight.”
The man's gaze followed mine. “Ah can imagine. Ah know three men who've bein kilt flyin'—ye'll never get me up in one a'them infernal machines.”
“Thank you,” I said coolly.
His eyes came back to mine. “Sorry. I'm sure they're ever so much safer now, and your pilot's sure ta—”
“You were saying,” I interrupted. “About Mycroft.”
“Yes. Well, Ah was the one took his orders Tuesday, to be looking for one and possibly two men and a bairn—and sorry to say we've seen nothing of them, although it was nobbut an hour after receivin' the first wire that Ah had men at Waverley, Princes Street, and Haymarket—for the trains, yeh know—and at Leith for the steamers.”
So it is Bergen after all, I thought, that mad-man with his knife at the throat of—
“But while they were watching, Ah myself made the roonds of the restaurants in the toon. And Ah found they may have been here on Monday.”
“No! Really?” I said, frankly astonished. “But you're not certain?”
“Not without a photograph. But two English men took luncheon at the hotel near Waverley Station on Monday, and the younger was tall and had a beard. And they had a bairn with them.”
“The child is with them?”
“So the waiter said.”
I felt like weeping with relief. “Waverley Station—where do trains from there go?”
“London, Glasgow, and the north of Scotland. But if you're going to ask me to question the ticket-sellers, there's little point, without a pho—”
I stood up fast, then grabbed at the table to keep from sprawling on my face. While the room spun around me, I said through gritted teeth, “Take me to that hotel.”
“Mum, I dinna think—”
“Do you have a motor?” I demanded.
“Yes, but—”
“I have photographs,” I told him, and began to hunt them out of my pocket when my eye was caught by a figure trotting across the tarmac towards us. I left my hand where it was; Javitz opened the door and stuck his head inside. Rain dripped from his hat.
“Miss Russell? We're set to go, as soon as she's fuelled up.”
I stood motionless, caught by indecision: I deeply mistrusted leaving a vital interrogation to others, even if the other was one of Mycroft's… The tableau might have lasted forever—one dripping, one with her hand in her pocket, one waiting in apprehension—had the waitress not decided this was a good time to present me with my meal.
The aroma of meat and roast potatoes reached me where the motion did not. I pulled my hand from my pocket, then looked at the plate, and at her.
“I don't think I'm going to have time to eat that. But if your cook could make me half a dozen bacon butties or fried-egg sandwiches to take with me, there'll be a gold guinea if it's here in four minutes. Mr Javitz, do you plan to stop again short of Thurso?”
“Inverness.”
“I'll be with you as soon as the food is ready.” The two left, in opposite directions. I turned to Mycroft's tweed-suited agent. “Mr…?”
“MacDougall,” he provided.
“Yes. Did you question the waiter about… anything?”
“Just if those men had been here.”
“Not about their behaviour, their temper?”
“Mr Holmes didna' ask for that.”
“Well, I am asking. I need you to go back to the hotel with these photographs, and confirm that this was the older