Young Sherlock Holmes_ Red Leech - Andrew Lane [36]
‘And if he doesn’t send a telegram, if one isn’t waiting for them when they get to the end of their journey, they will have to assume that we overcame him,’ Sherlock pointed out. ‘They will assume that we rendered him incapable of sending a telegram and that we are still chasing them, in which case their best option is to kill Matty because he’s not useful to them as a hostage any more.’
‘Oh no!’ Virginia whispered.
‘So where would he have sent the telegram?’ Sherlock asked. ‘I mean, it’s not as if the others were going to stay at a hotel until he arrived. They were heading straight for a ship, as far as we know’
Crowe and Mycroft looked at each other.
‘The boy has a point,’ Crowe said after a few moments. ‘They would need some way of getting a message back and forth. Maybe some agreed place near the ship – a local post office, or something, where any message he sent would be picked up.’
‘They would have had to agree it in the few seconds before he jumped out of the carriage,’ Sherlock pointed out. ‘What are the chances of him remembering in the stress of the moment—’
‘Unless one of the others wrote it down for him,’ Mycroft finished. ‘Sherlock, you have a fine mind on those bony shoulders of yours. We need to search that man’s pockets for an address.’
Crowe levered himself up from the chair. ‘I’ll go,’ he said. At Mycroft’s warning look, he added, ‘Don’t worry – I won’t try to wake him up if he’s unconscious, and if he’s already awake then I won’t do any more than ask him a polite question before riffling through his pockets.’ He raised an eyebrow enquiringly. ‘I take it that theft is acceptable, even if pressured questioning is not?’
‘We’ll make an exception,’ Mycroft said calmly. ‘In this case.’
Amyus headed off outside to search Gilfillan. Sherlock noticed that Virginia watched her father leave with a troubled expression on her face. He wanted to ask her about it, but Mycroft gestured him over with a flipperlike hand.
‘Sherlock . . .’ he said quietly, then hesitated. ‘Sherlock, I suspect that I am failing in my duty to look after you properly. I am sorry.’
Sherlock gazed into his face, trying to work out if he was serious or not. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Our father entrusted you into my care. He looked to me to ensure not only that your education continued, but that you were kept happy and safe. In the time since he left for India with his regiment I have abandoned you into the care of relatives whom you had never even met and then stood by while you became engaged first in the lunatic schemes of a mad Frenchman with delusions of grandeur and now in some bizarre attempt to return to America the man who killed its former President. During the past few months you have spent more time looking death in the eye than most men experience during the course of a lifetime. You have been knocked out, kidnapped, whipped, drugged, chased, shot at, burned and nearly stabbed, not to mention forced to survive unsupervised in the dangerous London metropolis, in a foreign country and in rough Channel waves at night. If I had known everything that would happen to you, I would—’
He stopped, apparently overcome with emotion. He turned his head away. Sherlock thought he saw the gleam of tears in his brother’s eyes. He reached out tentatively and put a hand on Mycroft’s broad shoulder.
‘Mycroft. . . you’ve always been the steadiest thing in my life. I’ve always come to you for advice, and you’ve always been more than generous with your time. You’ve never made me feel like I’m bothering you, even when you’ve had more important things to do.’
Mycroft tried to say something, but Sherlock kept going.
‘We’ve never been the kind of brothers who would climb trees together in the garden. You’ve never had the energy and I’ve never seen the point. That doesn’t matter. You are the person I’ve always looked to for guidance, and you’ve never let me down. I doubt that will ever change. You are what I want to be when I grow up – successful, important and self-reliant. You have never let me down, and you never will.’
Mycroft looked