Young Sherlock Holmes_ Red Leech - Andrew Lane [81]
‘Don’t bait him, Rubinek,’ Berle cautioned. ‘Duke still needs him.’
The man named Rubinek switched his glare to Sherlock. ‘What about him?’ he growled. ‘Duke don’t need him for nothin’, an’ he admitted he killed Ives.’ He bought his right hand from behind his back, the hand that wasn’t holding Matty, and let the revolver he was holding point towards Sherlock.
‘And what about Gilfillan?’ Berle asked. ‘Is he dead too? He sent us a telegram.’
‘He’s in police custody,’ Sherlock answered. He wasn’t sure if that was strictly true or not, but it should be, by now.
Berle closed his eyes for a moment. ‘This is going from bad to worse,’ he said quietly. ‘Duke isn’t going to be pleased, and I’ve heard about what happens when Duke isn’t pleased.’
‘We ain’t got much choice,’ Rubinek said practically. ‘The train’s gone, an’ we’re here. So let’s get rid of the kids an’ go see Duke.’
‘We’re not getting rid of the kids,’ Berle replied quietly, but with authority. With Ives gone he was obviously in charge. ‘Duke’ll want to question them – see how much they know. Then he’ll probably give them to his pets.’
‘I still want to kill them myself,’ Rubinek muttered, like a spoilt kid who had been denied a biscuit.
‘At least we’ve got Booth and this thing,’ Berle said, raising the box he held to eye level and staring at it bale-fully ‘Let’s hope that’s enough.’ He sighed. ‘OK, let’s get this over with.’
Berle led the way down the veranda to where Sherlock noticed a round table had been set up in front of a pair of French windows. A white tablecloth had been placed over it, and there was a decanter of what looked like orange juice, a plate of bread rolls and seven glasses sitting in the centre. Seven wrought-iron chairs, painted white, were arranged around the table. A white parasol had been stuck through a hole in its centre, providing shade from the burning sun.
‘Parasol’. The word stuck in Sherlock’s mind as they walked down the veranda towards the table. It reminded him of something, but he couldn’t remember what. That was the trouble with memory, he thought – it could only hold so much information. If only there was some way of deleting all the memories a person didn’t need and replacing them with the important ones. Perhaps he ought to just write down everything that might be important to him in a notebook, or a set of notebooks, listed alphabetically so he could find things quickly when he needed to.
He was just trying to distance himself from what was going on by thinking about something else, but his attempt was broken when Rubinek pushed him towards one of the chairs with the barrel of his revolver. ‘Sit,’ the man growled. Sherlock obeyed. Matty and Virginia were placed on either side of him, then Berle and John Wilkes Booth sat to Virginia’s left and Rubinek sat to Matty’s right.
That left one chair, Sherlock noticed. Presumably that was reserved for the mysterious Duke.
‘My father will track us down, if you don’t release us,’ Virginia said.
‘Your father’s the big guy in the white suit?’ Berle looked from Virginia to Matty and then to Sherlock. ‘He’s not father to all of you, is he? I’d not seen you all together before.’ He looked more closely at Matty. ‘We took you because we thought it would stop him from coming after us. Shows how much we knew. We should have taken the girl.’
‘He still would have come after you,’ Virginia said. ‘That’s what he does. He doesn’t take orders well.’
Berle was about to say something, but the French doors leading into the house from the veranda suddenly opened. Two servants in immaculate black tailcoated jackets held them open while another figure emerged into the sunlight.
The man was tall – over six feet, Sherlock estimated, and probably closer to seven – and painfully thin. Everything he was wearing was white – tailored suit, waistcoat, shirt, boots, broad-brimmed hat and gloves – with the exception of the band that encircled the crown of his hat and the bootlace tie that hung down