Young Sherlock Holmes_ Fire Storm - Andrew Lane [74]
‘Yes,’ Rufus admitted, ‘he did tell us that. But he didn’t tell us the lengths he went to in order to recover those criminals, and he didn’t tell us how many of them he managed to bring back to face trial and how many happened to die in shootouts before he could take them captive. Remember, Sherlock, the man is a bounty hunter. He hunts men for money.’ He sighed. ‘Except that in this case it would appear that men are hunting him, and not for money. They want payback.’
‘You don’t like him, do you?’
Rufus smiled. ‘Ah, you picked up on that, did you? No, he’s not the kind of man I would choose to sit with over a tavern table, with beer in our glasses and tobacco in our pipes. I don’t think we would have much to talk about, but I think we would have a lot to argue about. I have a strong respect for the sanctity of human life, whereas I think Mr Crowe would have no problems in taking another man’s life for little provocation. What’s worse, he doesn’t like music.’
Sherlock was quiet for a while, digesting what Rufus Stone had said. He couldn’t find fault in his logic or his description of Amyus Crowe, but neither could he square the harsh words with the genial smile that he had seen on Mr Crowe’s face or the way he had taken Sherlock under his wing and looked after him. Were all people like this – complicated, not easily understood? If that was the case, what about Rufus Stone himself? Or Mycroft?
Or himself.
He thrust the thought aside. He would rather believe that what people displayed on the surface was what they really were.
‘How many of these Americans do you think are over here in England, hunting Mr Crowe?’ he said eventually.
‘Impossible to say,’ Rufus mused. ‘There were three in the tenement room. Add that to the driver of the leader’s carriage – assuming he was part of the gang, and not just someone hired for the day – and we get two left that we know of. Trouble is, there might be others we don’t know of.’
‘There were two carrying me,’ Sherlock said.
‘And two carrying me,’ Matty added.
‘So that’s at least four people still at large. Problem is, if the man in charge came over here with money, then he could just hire whatever support he needed of any nationality. There’s people in every major town and city in the British Isles that would murder their own grandmothers for an evening’s drinking and gambling.’ He sighed. ‘There’s no end of bad men out there, and a precious shortage of good men to fight them.’
‘That’s all right,’ Sherlock said. ‘One good man is worth ten bad ones.’
Matty snorted, and Rufus eyed him sceptically. ‘If only the world worked that way, things would be a lot better.’
‘When I grow up,’ Sherlock murmured, ‘I’m going to make them better.’
‘You know,’ Rufus said, smiling at him strangely, ‘I think you just might. You and your brother between you, but in radically different ways.’
‘But I’m not going to work for the Government like Mycroft does.’
‘Why not?’ Matty asked.
‘I don’t like taking orders,’ Sherlock said darkly. ‘Not from anyone. I know that sometimes I have to, but I don’t like it.’
When they got back on the road there was nobody in sight. It looked as if they had got away from the city without being spotted.
The landscape was a mixture of rough patches of scrubland and outcroppings of rock. The terrain undulated such that they were never on a level road for more than a few minutes, and their path detoured to get around some of the bigger rocky areas.
Cramond was on the coast: a collection of granite cottages with thatched roofs. Virulently green moss erupted from between the stone blocks of the cottages, looking like some kind of seaweed that had been deposited on shore by a storm and was not only clinging on to life but thriving. The air smelled of salt, and seagulls cried out like abandoned babies.
As the cart rounded the side of a hill Sherlock suddenly saw the sea laid out beneath them. The sun caught the tops of the waves and made them glitter in a hypnotic pattern, points