“You shock me!”
“Depend on it, Watson. I know my man.”
“What can we do?”
The grin softened to a smile. “Good old Watson,” he said. “Where there is danger, you have no fear. Where courage is needed, you have no peer. It would be a good epitaph.”
The warmth I felt at the compliment quickly chilled at the vision of my own tomb. “Still,” I said, “what can be done?”
Within moments, I had my answer. I had been reading again, trying to piece together the disparate elements of this diabolical plot, when Holmes tapped my shoulder. I must have been deeply engrossed in my researches not to have noticed Holmes leave the room. But now he was back, dressed and bundled for an excursion.
“Get your coat, Watson. I think we should pay a visit to the Diogenes Club.”
The Diogenes was perhaps the strangest club in a city of strange clubs. Its members were the most private men in the City, and the charter and by-laws of the club colluded to keep them that way, since no one was allowed to speak within the club’s walls, the sole exception being in the Visitor’s Room. But even there, only whispering was permitted.
After a bitterly cold ride in a hansom, we found ourselves before the forbidding double doors of the building. Inside, Holmes passed his card to the doorman and we were ushered into the Visitor’s Room to await the arrival of Holmes’s brother, Mycroft.
Mycroft’s dour face and huge bulk surprised me anew, though I had met him once before during our adventure with the Greek interpreter. That episode had not ended happily, and I found myself praying that his intercession here would produce more positive results. He took me in at a glance, somehow included a welcoming nod and turned to his brother, twelve years younger than himself. According to Holmes, Mycroft was the smartest and most powerful man in England. I reflected that his position, however it was defined, might be one that Moriarty would covet. But there was no more time for reflection.
“Sherlock,” he whispered with affection, “what brings you to these hermit’s haunts?”
In a few words Holmes outlined the situation. Hearing him retell it in his logical and orderly fashion, I was horrified again by the boldness and grandeur of Moriarty’s twisted vision.
Could he actually pull it off? As I watched and listened to Mycroft and his brother formulate their own plan, I had no doubts at all that if Moriarty could be stopped, only one man living could do it, and that man was my friend Sherlock Holmes.
Eight days later, Holmes and I paced the deck of the HMS Birmingham, the twenty-eight-gun flagship of the Atlantic fleet. Earlier in the day we had passed the Canaries and now were beating farther south in African waters. Holmes had estimated that we would meet up with Colonel Moran’s ship somewhere near the latitude of Dakar, off the coast of French West Africa, and that would be another day or two’s hard sail.
The air was balmy, a far cry from the London winter. Some of the sailors had thought to bring a Christmas tree along — had tied it to the forward mast, decked it in red and green trimming and even placed a few wrapped boxes under it for the effect. I couldn’t help but admire the spirit of these men, facing Her Majesty’s sometimes terrible tasks with dignity, honor and even humor. This was an England worth fighting, even dying, for!
Of course, we were not alone. Twenty-six ships of the line were arrayed in a crescent pattern out to the sides and behind us. Mycroft had persuaded an outraged prime minister to assign the convoy to try to blockade the oncoming vessel. It was the largest armada to be assembled since the Fran co-Prussian War, and I hope it will be a long, long time before such a force is needed again.
To get the kind of commitment needed for an expedition of this magnitude, Holmes had had to go to the limits of his imagination and persuasiveness, convincing Scotland Yard that Dr. Culver-ton-Smith must be arrested and questioned. Though none of the serum had been found in his possession — what a boon to mankind that would have been! — his personal notes and laboratories provided enough evidence, and the potential danger was serious enough, that the reluctant PM had finally assigned the fleet. But he had made it clear that if Holmes were wrong, both his career and that of his brother would be finished. Even criminal charges against them would not be out of the question!
But these concerns were the last things on Holmes’s mind as we restlessly paced the deck, checking and rechecking the horizon for any sign of the hostile ship.
“It is too easy,” he said. “Even now, as we stalk the prey, I am filled with misgivings.”
“Whatever for, Holmes? Surely Colonel Moran is no match for Her Majesty’s Navy?”
“Moran, though formidable, is not the opponent I fear. No, Watson, I speak of Moriarty, the Napoleon of Crime. His net is worldwide, his contacts rival those of any government. Just when you think you have set your trap is when you must be on your closest guard.”
“But…”
“Mark my words! It has happened before. His brain is like a spider’s web — spirals within spirals. Moriarty lives to spin that web, and he feels the slightest tremor at its periphery. You may rest assured he knows we are on the seas, and that he is somehow…” Holmes paused, taking in a lungful of tobacco smoke and letting it out slowly. “Somehow, he is stalking us.”
“Come now, Holmes — stalking the Royal Navy?”
“You may laugh, Watson, but it is difficult to overestimate Moriarty’s determination.”
One of the crewmen appeared with a couple of cups of tea spiked with a tot of rum, saying that the bridge thought we might appreciate a little refreshment. We thanked him and continued pacing. The tin cups were hot to the touch, so we rested them against a coil of rope.
I looked out again at the calm sea, thinking that the tension of our voyage had affected Holmes’s judgment. His respect for his arch rival seemed exaggerated, bordering on the ludicrous. It occurred to me that, expecting a long ocean voyage with little outside stimulation, he might have brought along some of his cocaine, which he occasionally injects when his overactive mind needs surcease from boredom. The drug could have produced such paranoia. Lost in these thoughts, I absently took the cup of tea into my hand, blew on it and sipped.
“Spit it out, Watson! Spit it out!” Holmes was slapping me on the back, having dashed the cup to the deck. “Poison!” he said. “The tea has been poisoned! Are you all right?”
Shaking, my mouth already feeling a kind of dry numbness though I had obeyed Holmes’s command instantly, I turned to my friend. “Where is that mate?” I mumbled.
But the deck was filled with uniformed men, all indistinguishable from a distance. My legs seemed to be getting weaker, and it was becoming harder to focus, to recognize any of the men. Even Holmes appeared wavy and indistinct, as though I were looking at him from under water. Then all went dark.
I could feel strong fingers digging into my shoulder, pressing against the Jezail bullet that had lodged there when I had been wounded in Afghanistan. I opened my eyes, and an unfamiliar room swam before me.
There was a hoarse whisper. “Watson?” The fingers gripped harder. “Watson? Can you hear me?”
I tried to bring the towering figure into focus in the darkened room. “Holmes? Where am I?”
“You’re alive. That’s what’s important. You very nearly weren’t.” It began to come back to me — the mate, the tea, my last memories before losing consciousness. What a fool I had been to doubt Holmes! Once again he’d been right. Moriarty’s agents, it appeared, were with us even aboard this ship.