The Prince Regnant reached the door. ‘Mr. Holmes, if you are to use your powers, it is essential you are taken to the scene of this abominable crime the moment you arrive. Even considering the case of the Bruce-Partington Plans, you will never have had so great a chance of serving your country.’
‘And the place where the Codex was concealed?’ I asked, glancing across at a shelf of Baedekers.
Our visitor’s eyes widened. He fell backwards in an exaggerated fashion, hands up. In a hushed tone he said, ‘Dr. Watson, I must beg your indulgence. I know that landladies are sometimes curious as to their master’s affairs. Can you guarantee that Mrs. Hudson is so rich she would refuse to divulge such information in the face of 500 grams of virgin Russian gold?’
At our silence he went on, ‘Of course you cannot! May I merely say it is a day or two’s journey from Sofia? I shall take you there myself. We shall slip away from my Palace unnoticed.’
Holmes had remained silent for some few minutes, his brows knitted and his eyes fixed upon the fire. At his quiet nod I stood up and went to our visitor, extending my hand. ‘Your Royal Highness, you may leave everything to us. The very least we can guarantee is our best effort in the recovery of such a national treasure.’
I held the door open. ‘One last question,’ I continued. ‘I have never heard of the International Sherlock Holmes Competition. How long has it been a tradition in your country?’
‘This will be the first,’ our visitor replied. ‘I have just invented it. We Balkan Princes can do that sort of thing.’
Concerned, I enquired, ‘But surely the whole point of our investigation will be our anonymity?’
‘Dr. Watson, would you prefer to come to my country disguised as Sufist missionaries? Better my enemies can’t see the wood from the trees. If there is a chance sighting of Mr. Holmes, they will not know if it really is the world’s greatest deductive reasoner, the most energetic agent in Europe, or one of a hundred personators putting themselves forward for a considerable prize.’
He pointed to the outside world where dawn was about to break.
‘Now, gentlemen, like the vampires which teem in my country, I must leave you lest your sunlight strikes me and Ego mortuus sum.’
With a further sweep of the blue cloak and a ring-bedizened hand, our visitor was gone, his exit as theatrical as his entry. Behind him lingered the faint aroma of Astrakhan lamb. We moved to our posts by the window to observe his departure down Baker Street in the spring dawn light. A single cab splashed its way past him from the Oxford Street end. A street-organ grinder loosened up for the morning rush with ‘Soldiers of the Queen’ and the swing-step of ‘The British Grenadiers’.
Holmes turned away from the window with a wry expression. ‘Well, Watson, what do you make of it all? Is my little practice degenerating into an agency for recovering ancient superstitious scribbles and giving advice to governesses?’
For a moment I feared he would back away. ‘Holmes,’ I replied quickly, ‘I remind you that the affair of the blue carbuncle and The Adventure of the Copper Beeches first appeared to be a mere whim yet developed into serious investigations.’
Holmes is not a man to lose time in idle preparations. In his more intense moments he will permit himself no food. He once confided that his principal diet before we entered Mrs. Hudson’s establishment was bread, potted meat and bacon cooked over a gas-ring. Before breakfast-time on the morning of our departure for Paris and the Gare de Strasbourg he took his hat and started off down the street.
With no intention of falling into this habit, I rang the bell for Mrs. Hudson and urged her to bring me one of her best breakfasts. I settled down to partake when my comrade’s voice commanding our landlady to order a cab came up the stairway. He entered the chamber and glanced at my plate. ‘Watson, you must abandon our virtuous landlady’s excellent devilled kidneys and kedgeree. We have an assignation with brother Mycroft at No. 10 Downing Street. Pack a box as quickly as you can. We must depart within the half-hour if we are to continue onward to catch the boat-train to France.’
I sprang to my feet.
‘Why does Mycroft wish to see us?’ I asked, ‘and why at No. 10? Why not the Diogenes Club or his home in Pall Mall?’
‘Mycroft is a valued member of the Prime Minister’s Kitchen Cabinet and the European Secretary’s most valuable confidante. We are to take a small gift for our Balkan prince together with a confidential message conveying our Government’s high regards. I ask you, Watson, are you at all averse to this trip? Would you like to give it a miss?
‘Not for worlds, Holmes!’
‘Excellent!’ came the reply.
I started towards my dressing-room. Unsure whether our investigation would stretch into the hot Balkan summer I continued on to the attic in search of tropical wear. I uncovered a set of clothing obtained from Gieves of Old Bond Street before I embarked for India - a now-elderly pig-sticking pith helmet with spine-pad, duck clothes and two palm beach suits. I returned the pith helmet to its tin topee case, the clothing to the Pukka wardrobe trunk, retaining a tropical suit in the form of tussore. When the original brownish colour of the strong coarse Indian silk turned to yellow it became the subject of considerable amusement at the Punjab Club, obliging me to stop wearing it. I decided it might look quite subdued in the Balkans among the Kurds, Druze, Jews, and Ismailis.
My comrade called up, ‘Watson, along with your tooth-brush and a half-pound box of honeydew tobacco, perhaps you would be good enough to bring those forceps you used in Kandahar to extract bullets from the living flesh. Mycroft worries that any shot intended for the Prince may well hit his travelling companions instead.’
Chapter III
ON HER MAJESTY’S SERVICE
I PULLED Rupert of Hentzau from my shelf of unread books. Given the lawlessness of eighteenth-century Scotland, when armed smugglers operated along the coast and thieves frequented the country roads, I decided to accompany it with a Walter Scott, Guy Mannering.
A goodbye to Mrs. Hudson and we were on our way. After a rainy night a fog had descended. The comfortable brougham edged us towards our destination via W.E. Hills of New Bond Street to drop off Holmes’s fiddle for restringing. My comrade’s careless scraping provided the proprietor with a regular client. From there we whirled around Trafalgar Square and down a cluttered Whitehall to Downing Street. A servant led us along a maze of corridors and up and down narrow uncarpeted stairways to a small chamber deep in the interior. Mycroft, portly as his brother was thin, rang for tea, welcoming us with the words, ‘Gentlemen, the Prime Minister himself asked me to invite you here.’
‘And why precisely has Salisbury taken this sudden interest in our humble lives?’ Holmes asked.
Mycroft was solemn.
‘He wishes me to tell you that Bulgaria looms high on his list of concerns. The disappearance of the Codex and your invitation to recover it are at the very least serendipitous. He begs you not to take this commission lightly.’
‘Why has Bulgaria toppled the Back-Veldt Boers in your list of preoccupations?’ I pursued.
‘Europe is an armed camp, Bulgaria the powder-magazine. The Tsar of Russia yearns to wrest the throne of Bulgaria from the Catholic Prince and replace him with an Orthodox ruler. The Tsar’s armies lie gleaming and glittering at the Bulgarian border. If just two of Ferdinand’s towns on the Danube declare for Russia, the Tsar will order his forces to attack.’