Young Sherlock Holmes_ Death Cloud - Andrew Lane [45]
A few stalls selling fruit and cold cooked meat were located at the bottom of the High Street, along a waist-high wall that separated the town from the river. Matty was about to creep along the wall behind the stallholders, and look for food that had fallen off the stalls, but Sherlock just walked up and used some of the dwindling resources that Mycroft had sent him to buy them both some breakfast. Matty glanced at him suspiciously: Sherlock got the impression that Matty thought food somehow tasted better if he hadn’t had to pay for it. As far as Sherlock was concerned, food tasted better if it hadn’t been rolling in the dust or if you hadn’t had to fight a dog for possession of it.
Chaelis Road was halfway up the High Street, and both boys were out of breath by the time they got to the point where it started. The road curved sharply out of sight and Sherlock set off along it, but paused when he realized that Matty wasn’t following. He turned and gazed questioningly at the boy.
‘What’s the matter?’
Matty shook his head. ‘Not my kind of place,’ he said, eyeing the tall houses and well-kept gardens that lined the road. ‘You go ahead. I’ll wait here.’ He looked around. ‘Somewhere round here, anyway.’
Sherlock nodded. Matty was right – the presence of what Mrs Eglantine had described as a ‘scruffy street Arab’ would probably cause them problems. Brushing as much dust from his clothes as possible, he moved on.
The house he was looking for was just round the curve. He pushed the gate open and approached the door, which was protected by a Greek-style portico. A brass plate was screwed on to one of the pillars. Engraved on it were the words: ‘Professor Arthur Albery Winchcombe. Lecturer in Tropical Diseases’.
Before nerves could get the better of him, Sherlock tugged at the bell pull.
A man in a severe black suit and grey waistcoat opened the door. He stared down at Sherlock through tiny glasses that barely covered his eyes.
‘Is Professor Winchcombe at home?’ Sherlock asked.
The man – Sherlock assumed he was a butler – paused for a moment. ‘Whom shall I say is calling?’ he asked eventually.
Sherlock opened his mouth, about to introduce himself, then hesitated. Perhaps he would be better off invoking someone else’s name – someone that the Professor had heard of. Mycroft, perhaps? Or Amyus Crowe? Which one would be best?
In the end, he chose one at random. ‘Please tell the Professor that a student of Mr Amyus Crowe wishes to consult him,’ he said.
The butler nodded. ‘Would you care to wait in the sitting room?’ he asked, holding the door open. Treating Sherlock as if he was royalty rather than just a somewhat dishevelled and nervous boy, he gestured towards a door across the hall.
The wallpaper lining the room was covered in paintings of tall, thin plants that Sherlock didn’t recognize, like massive grasses. They seemed to have rings round their stalks, set at equal distances all the way up. He found himself fascinated by them, and he was still looking at them when the door opened and a man entered the room. He was small – smaller than Sherlock – and his stomach protruded as if he had a cushion shoved under his jacket. He wore a funny little red hat on his head with no brim or peak: just like a short, fat tower made of red silk.
‘Bamboo,’ he said.
‘Pardon?’
‘Those plants on the wallpaper. Bamboo. It’s a woody perennial evergreen of the grass family. I spent quite some time in China in my youth, and became very familiar with it. Bamboos are the fastest growing woody plants in the world, you know. The bigger ones can grow up to two feet a day, under certain conditions. The wallpaper itself is Chinese, by the way. Ricepaper.’
Sherlock wasn’t sure he understood. ‘Paper made from rice?’
‘A common misconception,’ the Professor replied. ‘In fact, ricepaper is made from the pith of a small tree, Tetrapanax papyrifer.’ He cocked his