Footsteps echoed on the stairs. Watson entered the room.
“I was mistaken in my application of force,” Sherlock murmured, lifting up the poker. “Had I gripped it but three inches further to the left, I could have corrected the bend most precisely.”
“Mr. Ito was formerly your hero, I gather,” Watson responded lightly, as he began pouring the tea. “But however he might have disappointed you, surely there was no need for such abuse. Doubly so now, of course, if he regrets his former actions.”
Sherlock’s hand slipped, nearly dropping the poker. He quickly corrected himself, but not quickly enough to prevent Watson from snorting.
He did not care to think too deeply on the meaning of that snort. Tossing the poker aside, he retorted, “I spoke the truth when I said I am but a common detective. That does not alter the fact that I operate for the glory of Her Majesty and the great Empire of Britain.”
“Quite so,” said Watson, sipping at his cup, “but there is something to what the gentleman said. Might it not be true that the campaign in China was not waged for the sake of spreading civilization and order? Either mistaken notions have taken hold in the East, or Britain’s true motivation was profit. I wonder.”
Sherlock responded testily. “One might contest that the nation that has constructed a truly modern civilization is the one better equipped to make sound and objective judgments on such matters.”
“Yes, one might suppose.”
“What do you mean, Watson?”
Watson turned toward him with a somber expression. “I don’t mean anything in particular. But I am reminded of my time in Afghanistan. I cannot help but feel that I somewhat understand what the gentleman was driving at.”
It was true that Sherlock had no war experience. He fell silent.
Then he reached for the bottle on the corner of the mantelpiece, and removed a hypodermic needle from his Moroccan leather case. “Would you mind leaving me?” he muttered.
“Listen here now,” his friend took on a severe tone. “How many times have I warned you that the feeling of mental stimulation you get from cocaine is only illusory? I am a man of medicine. Must you do that in front of me?”
“That is precisely why I asked you to leave me,” Sherlock said blithely, adjusting the needle. He rolled up the sleeve of his left arm and peered at the numerous marks already there, searching for a new location in which to inject the needle.
Watson dashed his teacup back down with a sharp clatter. “Next I suppose you will take up opium. Perhaps it will give you better insight into the mysteries and occult of the East.”
His footsteps grew distant. He slammed the door shut behind him as he left.
Sherlock closed his eyes with a sigh. How much easier it would be if he could abandon his own tedious pride. Unfortunately it was not in his purview to change his own nature. His deep-honed powers of observation and his unflinching deductive acumen were rooted in such mild eccentricities. His abilities were supported by this disparity: It was impossible to be both exceptional and ordinary.
6
March 10, 1891, midnight. Heavy rains showered over Western Italy. On the outskirts of the Port of Livorno, abutting the Mediterranean Sea, tall waves battered the wharf and extended to the carriageways, soaking the roads. The ocean’s surface churned in ridges and hollows, and the beam of a faraway light blinked in and out in the night. Flashes of lightning split the pitch-black sky, followed by rolling thunder.
Wrapped in a blanket to ward off the cold, Sherlock Holmes sat on a wooden crate in a small cabin. He’d already been soaked to the bone by the time he made his way inside. He would have liked a fire, but was forced to content himself instead with the single candle that burned before him.
There were footsteps at the door. He rose from the crate. A man entered the cabin, folding his umbrella. He was massive—so massive that he nearly burst from the seams of his Ulster coat. His hairline fell far back along his head. Though he was even taller than Sherlock, his face was not as large as his frame. It was a long face, or would be if not for his heavy-set, portly cheeks. Their parents would have it that the two brothers shared the same grey eyes and hawk-like nose, but Sherlock himself begged to differ. He could see no similarity between his brother’s features and his own.
Mycroft, now 44 years of age, carried a thick, bulging leather case in one hand. He cast a quick glance at the trunk next to Sherlock. “You are supposed to be dead. You should not have been wandering around the canals in the middle of the afternoon. It was too exposed.”
Sherlock knew it was highly unlikely he had been followed throughout the day, but was unsurprised to see that his brother knew of his movements. “Indeed. One would only be able to pick up a secondhand trunk at a decent price without being remembered from Serge’s store, capriciously open from the hours of 1:00 to 3:00 in the afternoon. Your shrewdness has never been in question, Mycroft. You ought to have become a detective.”
“What is in the trunk then, a change of clothes?”
“The trunk contains those articles minimally necessary to present myself as a gentleman. It would not do to seek an audience with the Dalai Lama while dressed in rags.”
“You’ll hardly be meeting the Dalai Lama.”
“Why’s that, now?”
“Tibet is under an isolation policy. It is closed to foreigners. The country is also under Qing Dynasty rule. As Britain’s influence has seeped into China since the Opium Wars, you cannot be sure you will be safe.”
“But surely the Qing Dynasty’s lack of assertiveness has caused the Tibetan people to lose faith in their rulers.”
“Tibet is a landlocked country. In order to reach it you would have to take port in China or India. Britain keeps close watch over the ports of China, as you can perhaps imagine. And of course, India, too, is British territory. Surely you are not ignorant of the fact that Her Majesty Queen Victoria is likewise empress of the Indian Empire.”
“Naturally I would sneak in. I obviously do not intend to enter as pleasure tourist, saluting my presence like a fool.”
“If you endeavor to deceive anyone by means of the false nose and chin putty that you’ve placed in your trunk, I beg you to develop more worldly opinions. Sherlock, you and I are but fish in a small pond.”
Sherlock began to grow annoyed. “You may spend your days at a desk, Mycroft, but my cases have taken me across the sea many times already.”
“By sea you only mean the Straits of Dover. Just because you received an official request from the French government once, don’t pretend that you have a broad understanding of the world. Think, now, do you truly propose that an unidentified 37-year-old Englishman can stroll in and request a meeting with the Dalai Lama? They have long been awaiting your arrival, I’m sure.”
“We cannot know unless I try.”
“Nor should you underestimate Britannia. The empire on which the sun never sets has colonies scattered across the globe, and its influence extends even farther than its territories. There is no place left on Earth where a man who is by all rights dead would find safe harbor. The moment you seek food or shelter of anywhere, you would be taken into local custody and a wire will be dispatched to England. It will take less than a month for Scotland Yard to ascertain your identity using anthropometry.”
“I will live away from human notice.”
“You had best forget about the Dalai Lama, then. Or the Caliph in Khartoum. How do you propose to respond when they ask who you are? Tell them, ‘It is I, the great Sherlock Holmes, and I have only faked my death’? In Islam, the very act of faking one’s death is punishable by execution. These travel plans of yours are completely bosh.”