The Language of Bees - Laurie R. King [78]
“The police traced her,” he whispered.
“My fault, I'm afraid. One of the neighbours I talked to last ni—”
“I thought to have more time,” he cut in urgently. My own pulse quickened.
“Time for what?”
“There is an object I must remove from the house before the police find it.”
“What is it?”
“Later, Russell. Come.” He dragged me to the gate, raised his head to look over, then went up on his toes and stretched his arm down; I heard the click of a latch.
The house had two doors that opened onto the garden: one near the sitting room, the other to the kitchen at the right. The kitchen door stood open, light spilling out, but at the moment there was no constable outside of the house. We slipped into the garden, closing the gate, and Holmes pointed to the stairway one could see through a window above the kitchen.
“In five minutes, anyone in the upper storeys will come down those stairs. One minute afterwards, I will go up them; I will need no more than three minutes, then I will come down again. If anyone starts up the stairs while I am still inside, you must create a diversion. Any diversion at all, I don't care, just so you are not caught. An arrest would be disastrous.”
“Holmes—”
“Russell, we have no time. I will meet you at Mycroft's later.”
“Fine, a diversion. Go.”
To my surprise, he headed not for the house, but back out of the gate into the alley-way. I patted through the soil at my feet and came up with soil, pebbles, some bits of bone, and a soft object that startled me until I decided it was a child's doll. Finally my fingers encountered a solid chunk of rock, then a fist-sized corner of brick. From next door came a faint sound of breaking glass, muffled perhaps by cloth. Two minutes after that, the sound of a telephone, ringing in the Adler house.
Two uniformed constables in the sitting room turned and looked across the room, but neither moved to answer the machine. It rang again, and another constable appeared. He said something, but the others hesitated. I was aware of movement off to my right, as of someone scrambling over a wall; at the same moment, I saw a figure in brown scurry across the half-landing window, fast descending the stairs. It was Lestrade, with two more constables at his heels; I caught a glimpse of the men as they went down the hallway behind the kitchen, then saw them enter the sitting room. Lestrade snatched up the telephone receiver, and in a flash, Holmes bounded up the kitchen steps and into the house, disappearing in the direction of the stairway. I began to count: at five, his form darted past the half-landing window and continued up the stairs.
Lestrade spoke into the telephone, frowned, spoke again, then reached down to rattle the hook: twenty-three seconds. After another sixty-four seconds, the exchange gave the Chief Inspector the information he needed. He dropped the instrument back on its rest, and stood for seven seconds, deep in thought.
He then spoke to one of the men in uniform: that took thirty seconds. The man left the room, no doubt heading for the empty house next door whence the call had come. Lestrade stayed where he was for another nineteen seconds, talking with the men, then went back to the door, and out.
I couldn't be certain he would return upstairs, but I moved onto the lawn, just in case. Sure enough, seconds later I saw a brown figure move past the doorway in the direction of the stairs—two and a half minutes were all Holmes was getting.
I trotted across the lawn, took aim, and heaved the rock through the exact centre of the sitting room window; an instant later, the brick punched a hole in the narrow window beside the garden door. Breaking glass makes a most satisfying noise, exploding through the night; the constables in the sitting room ducked down and I ran, out of the gate and down the service alley to the street beyond, where I dropped to a quick walk. I maintained the pace to the corner, then slowed to an amble until I was safely among the crowd in Burton Place.
When five minutes went by and Holmes was not dragged