"We had a visitor," stated Sherlock Holmes. "A man attacked on the waterfront and fatally wounded who was intent on reaching 'Holmes.' But he was taken to the wrong one."
The sleuth crossed to the couch, gently removing the sheet part way to reveal the face of the dead man. Mycroft regarded the dark visage impassively though I noted that his lips pursed several times.
"How much do you know?" he queried.
"Very little."
"No message? No final word?"
"Yes. But before we go into that, what is the background of this matter? I have, by chance I will admit, become involved, and curiosity is the hallmark of our family."
Mycroft's mouth had a stubborn look about it. "It's a touchy matter, Sherlock."
"Oh come now, the cat's out in any case. When I noted that the man's hair might have been artificially treated to produce that kinky look, it took me but a moment to realize that the dark skin could well be the result of a dye. Jolly good job, that. I'd like to know the formula. With my suspicions aroused I made a test, and your supposed Nubian didn't pass."
Mycroft Holmes for the first time allowed the shadow of surprise to touch him.
"Cruthers was one of my top men. His native disguise has fooled the best for years."
"But not the very best," replied Holmes, who never ranked modesty as a virtue. "The moons on his fingernails are white. If he were Negroid, they would be blue. Not a fatal oversight," he added. "I doubt if anyone else would have thought of that."
"You relieve me," said Mycroft dryly, but I sensed his words were sincere. "This whole affair may reflect rather badly on my department. I had a hunch and risked one of the best of my people in the Egyptian-Sudan theatre to check it out. Losing Cruthers makes that a costly decision."
Sherlock Holmes viewed his brother's large and sober features for a long moment, then replaced the sheet over the dead man with a shrug.
"Your agent didn't die in vain. Here's the whole story." He paused for a moment to thumb shag into the briar that he favored on occasion. A wooden match ignited the pipe, and he continued through clouds of smoke. "One of my people discovered your agent under attack on the East India docks. Two of the assailants came to a bad end."
Mycroft made as though to speak but was forestalled by a gesture from his brother.
"I've dispatched a man to check on the third. Cruthers could barely utter the name of 'Holmes' and was brought here. He just made it, but before death, he left a singular message. The exact words were: 'They . . . they found it. Chu . . . it was Chu.'"
"So," said Mycroft after a considerable pause. "I was right. At least partially. By Chu, Cruthers must have meant Chu San Fu, your arch-enemy."
"And England's," responded the sleuth grimly. Placing his pipe on the mantel, he returned to the body on the couch. "Your agent brought some tangible evidence, or my fingers play me false." Taking one of the corpse's arms, he reached up the coat sleeve. "When I first became aware of this Watson and I were not alone, so I thought it was a matter we could wait upon."
Securing a gleaming object that must have been fastened to the dead man's forearm, Holmes crossed to display it to the seated Mycroft. Standing alongside the sleuth, I surveyed the object eagerly.
"By George, it's beautiful!"
No one disagreed with me. It was a dagger in a sheath of gleaming gold. Gently, Holmes extracted the ornamental blade, undamaged, pure in design, and seemingly produced that very day by the loving hands of a master craftsman. Yet I knew instinctively that it came from a time so ancient as to be shrouded in the mists of the past.
"Egyptian, of course," murmured Mycroft Holmes.
"Without a doubt. Note the sheath festooned with the jackal's-head design. God of the dead," Holmes added, sensing my puzzlement. "The blade is of hardened gold, and see the handle with the familiar cloisonne work of glass and semiprecious stones. At the end is a lapis lazuli scarab."
"I did not know you fancied Egyptology," said his brother.
"Do recall that I once had rooms in Montague Street, just around the corner from the British Museum, with much more time on my hands than now."
"What does the dagger suggest to you?"
"Ancient, indeed, and valuable. Originally, the possession of royalty. There is a thriving trade in Egyptian antiquities, though something as valuable as this would have been gobbled up by a museum or wealthy collector long ago."
"Deduction?" persisted Mycroft.
"There are flash floods in Egypt that sometimes reveal undiscovered tombs to local grave robbers. I seem to recall a whole village whose inhabitants have been robbing the dead for over three thousand years."
"Kurna."
"Surely a record for the trade of thievery, would you not say, Watson?" Holmes had made note of my expression of complete amazement. "Of course," he continued, "a tomb not rifled by grave robbers might have been found, though none has been to this date."
Holmes retrieved his pipe from the mantel and sat in the easy chair by the desk. "So much for deductions and our brief encounter with your man Cruthers. It is now your turn."
"I'm glad I don't have to explain this to the Cabinet," was Mycroft's surprisingly frank response. "In the field of geopolitics, I find that anticipation is of inestimable value. Gentlemen, there is a spirit of unrest in that potential cauldron that is the Middle East. My agents can't pin it down but it is there, and the specter of Mohammed Ahmed Ibn Seyyid Abdullah will not permit my ignoring it."
"Mohammed who?" I exclaimed.
"The Mahdi, ol' chap," answered Holmes. "As I recall, China Gordon was one of your heroes."
"General Gordon was but one of our great losses," said Mycroft.
"Then it is a holy war you fear."
"Considering the locale, it is more in the realm of the probable than the possible. The results of the last one were staggering. It was but in '83 that the Mahdi wiped out a ten-thousand-man Egyptian army under Billy Hicks. He took Khartoum, and his followers killed Gordon. If the Sudanese prophet hadn't died in '85, we might be still mired in that mess."
Holmes was regarding his brother with that sharpness of expression so evident when his mind was engrossed. "There's more to it than that, I'll wager."
"What alerted you?" responded Mycroft quickly.
"History will no doubt brand us for colonialism, but the thin red line of the British Army has prevented periodic outbursts of bloodletting and will again. A responsibility of the Empire. There has to be more."
Mycroft Holmes surveyed both of us for a long moment.
Then he sighed.
"General Kitchener is preparing for the reconquest of the Sudan."
I stifled an exclamation. So it was to be war. The death of Gordon, a boil under the saddle blanket of Britain, was to be avenged.
Holmes was eagerly leaning forward in his chair. "Of course. With Kitchener headed south, an outbreak of religious violence on his flanks and rear would be fatal. Bismarck was right. Never fight a war on two fronts."
A discussion between the offspring of the family Holmes could prove most frustrating to the listener. Their statements were clear enough, but each seemed capable of anticipating the other's meaning, at least in part, without words. It was as though there was another channel of communication open only to those two minds.
Holmes sprang to his feet with that nervous energy that indicated he was prepared to cross the Rubicon.
"Something has intrigued you about ancient Egypt," he said, indicating the ornate dagger resting on the desk.