“Our own sources have been receiving the same signals for several months,” said Mycroft, and I noticed that, seated on opposite sides of the empty fireplace, the two brothers had instinctively adopted the identical pose. Sitting back in their chairs, their fingers steepled in front of their faces, each was gazing into the middle distance without ever making eye contact with the other. They looked for all the world like a pair of mismatched bookends. I had no need to ask who ‘our’ referred to but I couldn’t refrain from asking — “But what are ‘you’ going to do about it? Nobody knows better than we what Moriarty is capable of. Just what devilish plot do you believe he is hatching? Is he trying to bring down the Government — or what?”
Two pairs of piercing eyes turned my way and I was glad that their expression was friendly, for I should not have cared to be the object of hostile scrutiny. It was Mycroft who spoke.
“That, my dear Doctor, is the least of his ambitions, I fear. For some time now — and particularly at the last election — we have received reports of certain — shall I say, less ‘orthodox’ candidates receiving considerable financial support from anonymous sources. Many of them are now Members of Parliament, some as ‘Independents’, others creating friction on the back benches of the two main parties …”
“Steel,” I interrupted, “that Steel fellow. Shifty looking customer. I said to Holmes.”
“Just so, Doctor. Creighton Steel has emerged as their natural focus in the House and the country at large — helped immensely, I might add by the visibility given to his every utterance by John Moxton’s Clarion.”
“It would appear, old fellow,” Holmes picked up the thread, “that if it can be so arranged that public opinion can be so influenced as to believe that the country is ungovernable by the present conventional means, then an alternative and more disciplined force is waiting in the wings, ready and able to step in and do so.”
“Britain Needs A Touch Of Steel?” I quoted.
“Precisely, Watson. The plot in a nutshell.”
“But the British people will never fall for such a farfetched scenario, surely?”
“Don’t be too sure,” Mycroft interposed. “The heady days of Empire and Britannia ruling the waves by apparent divine right are over — almost certainly never to return. Her Majesty is ageing and her European cubs are already straining at the leash — the Germans in particular.”
“There is unrest around the Empire. War in South Africa seems to me to be inevitable within a year or so. The British people are not political animals but they have a sense of the way the wind of change is blowing and, whether they identify the source of their concern or not, they are beginning to find it blowing chill. And since solutions are infinitely more attractive to them than problems, it won’t take them long to gravitate to someone who seems to offer an articulate and painless way out of the dilemma. Which is why, Sherlock …” and here he looked Holmes in the eye for the first time — “my Cabinet Lords and Masters have delegated me to enlist your help in the national good. Will you help us cut out this worm in the bud?”
My friend, I could see, was enjoying himself. Reaching across, he tapped Mycroft on the knee.
“First of all, my dear brother, I don’t believe you have any ‘Lords and Masters’. What’s more, neither do you! In the second place — as I’m sure your sources have informed you — I have already committed myself to completing the task in which I so singularly failed at Reichenbach.”
“Forgive me for being obtuse,” I interjected, “but precisely how are a handful of rabbits, white, brown or spotted, likely to bring down the British Government?”
“In and of themselves, of course, they’re not, Watson. That was merely Moriarty’s private joke, designed to ensure he kept my attention. His true purpose is infinitely more sinister, I can promise you and I feel sure its expression is imminent.”
“Moriarty has come upon two tools that can be turned to infinitely deadlier effect than any mechanical device the mind of man could dream up,” Holmes continued. “Public opinion and propaganda. Neither of them new but by utilising the new technology the one can work on the other in a way never before possible. An event no longer needs to be true — it merely has to be seen to be so. The perception becomes the truth. I tell you, Watson, the day will come when he who has the biggest lie and the deepest pockets will have the means to turn the world on his axis. It is a grave commentary on the gullibility of human nature and the power of organised rumour. But that is precisely what our friend is about to assay.”
“You really mean one determined man can do that?”
“In fact and fiction men with sufficient nerve have been doing just that down the centuries — all they lacked were the means of sufficient influence,” My croft interceded. “Dickens, you will recall, had his Mr. Merdle and Trollope his Augustus Melmotte. Two more M’s. Swindlers and charlatans operating at the highest levels of society and leading that society by the nose until they were finally unmasked and ended up taking their own lives. I very much doubt that we can expect Moriarty to be quite so fictionally tidy.”
“I find it hard to believe that the British people will swallow this,” I said with more bravado than I truly felt. Sherlock and Mycroft’s logic had all too much of the ring of truth about it for me to feel as sure of my ground as I would have dearly liked.
Holmes, as ever, sensed my distress at the thought of the world I knew being turned upside down.
“We must take change and use it, old friend, or face the certainty that there are those who will eagerly use it for their own ends and invariably to our disadvantage. All of us cling to what we know or think we know. We may well grumble but we respect the need for a hierarchy, so that we know our place. People — and the British people more than most — need to have an underlying respect for those who lead them. And this is the fiendishly clever part of Moriarty’s plot. He realises full well that they will find it hard to sustain that respect when faced with the spectacle of leaders who seem unable to avoid the banana skins of life. What we are witnessing, however, is what I fear will prove to be something of a prologue to Moriarty’s real theme — a grim joke, no more.”
“And a brief one, too, I fancy,” Mycroft completed the thought. As he spoke, he pulled a large turnip watch from his waistcoat pocket. “And talking of time, I must be on my way. In my unofficial ‘official’ capacity I have been asked to attend a function that may interest you both. There is to be an unveiling of a new bust of the Foreign Secretary at Madame Tussaud’s this morning.”
“Ah, a waxwork of a waxwork?” I snorted, not being enamoured of the gentleman in question. Mycroft turned his massive head in my direction.
“Let us say that Her Majesty’s front bench has reverberated with greater animation than that often demonstrated by its present incumbent. And one might, indeed, wonder why an institution as populist as Madame Tussaud’s should choose the Right Honourable Member as a subject of special interest, were it not for one incidental factor …”
In a mere mortal I would have sworn that the eye had a distinct gleam in it. And here he took out a gilt-edged card from a capacious inside pocket and read aloud: “Great Britons. A Commemorative Series of Statues Commemorating Our Nation’s Leaders.” He paused for a beat and the effect was suitably dramatic. When these two brothers took to their respective chosen occupations the stage lost the peers of Irving and Tree.
“Sponsored by The John Moxton Trust and The Clarion …”
Holmes leaped to his feet, suddenly full of purpose. “Come along, Watson,” he cried, as though I were the habitual laggard. “Stir yourself. I have a distinct feeling that Act Two is about to begin …!”