Black Cat Weekly #76

Chapter 5-2

To that end, he said, “What might be helpful, Mycroft, is a document giving me permission to go through the records at the museum. Things to which the public doesn’t normally have ready access.”

Mycroft stroked his jaw in thought. “I take it you’d be looking to compile a list of researchers and their areas of study?”

Sherlock, not surprised that Mycroft could have deduced his intent so quickly, nodded. What he really wanted, though he scarcely admitted this even to himself, was to solve this mystery on his own.

“Possibly this can be arranged,” Mycroft said. “Come with me to work tomorrow, provide my colleagues with a description of the woman, and I’ll see what I can do.”

“Very well.”

The next morning, they left for Mycroft’s office, armed with the drawing they had made the previous night. Sherlock was questioned closely by intelligence agents but could add little more aside from his description of the young woman, which was well captured in the drawing.

In return for his cooperation, Mycroft, as promised, gave him a document signed by Mycroft and his superiors and bearing the seal of the government’s intelligence agency. Sherlock promptly headed for the British Museum. Though he badly wanted to return to the place where he had lost the trail of blood drops to continue searching for clues, he knew that the better course of action was to first see if he could dig up more information that would add to what Mycroft had told him. Lord knew he was absolutely baffled.

The entire situation smacked of the supernatural, in which Sherlock resolutely did not believe. Then again, not long ago he wouldn’t have believed that animals could communicate with humans, or that blood from one person could be transferred to another to facilitate the prolongation of life. But these things were facts, and he never argued with facts. Why, then, could a human being not be made capable of fantastic speeds or feats of strength? Because the fact was that such exceptional people existed.

notThe librarian gave him a narrow look when he presented himself at the desk in the museum’s special collections room.

“Aren’t you a little young to be in here, lad?” she inquired, looking down her nose at him.

Sherlock hated being called “lad.” Stiffly he handed her the document allowing him official access to the collection.

She read it over twice, eyes growing wider each time. Finally, she handed it back.

“Through there,” she muttered, pointing over her shoulder.

Not bothering to take time out to eat, Sherlock burrowed through the stacks of records until, not long before teatime, he unearthed something that he thought could surely help their investigation.

He scribbled some notes, followed more trails through the information, and came away with a promising—or so he thought—lead.

That evening he met Mycroft once more at the Diogenes Club, where he spread out his notes on a table in the Stranger’s Room. “Now here,” he said, handing a sheet of paper to Mycroft, “is a notice describing some experiments by an eccentric research chemist named Julius Gibberne. Apparently, he’s been delving into the action of stimulants and soporifics upon the nervous system.”

“Hmm, stimulants,” mused Mycroft as he studied Sherlock’s notes.

“Indeed. Now, he has among his known associates a few other young scientists who are concerned with things regarded as being outside the normal realm of concern, from what I can gather. There is a youth named Cavor, who is looking into the nature of gravity, and a Mr. Bensington and Professor Redwood who have been studying strength-inducing drugs.”

Mycroft perked up at this information. “All very interesting,” he said. “Very interesting indeed! I have not heard of any of these young men, though we’d be interested in talking to them. I wonder…to what end are these experiments of theirs being conducted?”

“If pressed,” Sherlock said, “I’d hazard the guess, given our speedy lady friend’s recent escapades, that illicit activities would be involved.”

“Mmm. I concur.” He gathered up Sherlock’s notes. “With your permission, I will take these to my superiors.”

“By all means. I will return to the museum tomorrow to continue my own research.”

But that was not at all what he meant to do.

The next morning, pleading a slight infirmity, Sherlock remained home after Mycroft left for work. No sooner had Mycroft departed than the younger Holmes hurried off to a poorhouse he had previously noticed not far away. There he judiciously handed out a few shillings, after which he returned to Mycroft’s rooms with his purchases.

Shortly thereafter a disheveled man, dirty of face and dressed in torn clothing, slouched down the steps of the building in which Mycroft Holmes lived, and hurried off down the street before anyone could challenge him.

He had decided to stake out the area where the running girl vanished, in the hope of seeing her again. To do this he adopted the guise of a rag-picker. He hadn’t bothered to consult his brother, who, he knew, would pooh-pooh the idea. But Sherlock enjoyed employing disguises and had successfully used them before. He spent the rest of the day haunting the locale, avoiding the more prosperous inhabitants, who gave him scarcely a glance. But by the late afternoon, he was forced to admit that the day had been fruitless. He returned to Mycroft’s rooms, where he cleaned himself up and hid away the garments he had been wearing.

Informing Mycroft his day’s efforts in the museum’s library had produced little more in the way of evidence on Gibberne and his associates, Sherlock said, “I’ll go back again tomorrow.”

“Good,” said Mycroft, opening his evening paper. “Keep at it.”

The next morning found Sherlock again masquerading as a mendicant, moving slowly along the streets, occasionally asking passing residents for alms or old clothes. By mid-afternoon he was growing discouraged. He had an armful of rags but no hints as to the identity or whereabouts of his mysterious quarry. It was now the third day since his encounter with her.

As he turned to retrace his route back to Mycroft’s rooms in Pall Mall, a blurry figure sped past him, seemingly ducking into a nearby alleyway. His every nerve tingling, Sherlock followed. But when he reached the mouth of the alley, he halted.

There was no sign of his quarry. It was a dead end. Tall, buildings rose all around. There was no way out apart from the way he’d come in, and he knew no speeding blur had passed him.

He looked around, examining the ground and the doorways along the alley’s length. Several doors opened on to the alley, but all were locked. She must live in one of these buildings, he thought. Come, this is encouraging! We’ll have you yet, my dear.

She must live in one of these buildings,Come, this is encouraging! We’ll have you yet, my dear.That evening in the Stranger’s Room at the Diogenes Club, Mycroft eyed Sherlock cannily. “You’re up to something,” he said. “What is it? I know you haven’t been at the library, because I sent someone there to check up on you.”

Sherlock sighed. “I might have known you’d get suspicious,” he said. “Let me keep it to myself for another day or two, will you? I promise I’ll have some information for you soon.”

“Very well, very well,” Mycroft said with a trace of impatience. “But we really do need to catch this minx and learn how she’s managed this speeding trick.”

Early the next morning, Sherlock, carrying a beat-up old Gladstone bag full of tools and dressed in the best of the rags he had gleaned, entered the foyer of one of the buildings overlooking the alley. One of the residents was there, preparing to take her dog for a walk. When she cast him a suspicious look, he smiled and said, “Stuck window on third floor.”

She shrugged and paid him no more mind. He climbed the stairs and let himself out onto the roof.

Once there, he took a rope out of the Gladstone, secured it around a chimney near the roof’s edge, then sat back against the chimney and settled in to wait. The ubiquitous London fog had not quite lifted, but visibility was more than adequate for him to watch the building directly across the way.

A short time later he spotted a young woman exit the building across from where he sat, leaning against the chimney, drowsing a little. The instant he saw her, he came fully alert. She wore a long skirt and ruffled blouse, typical for young women of the day. She could easily have been a seamstress or a secretary heading for work, but he knew from her luxuriant dark hair (now pinned up in a sensible bun) and her carriage that this was indeed the woman who had robbed the British Museum.

No sooner was she out of the alley than Sherlock, still dressed as a handyman, shinnied down the rope and trotted after her. True to her mundane clothes, she had not sped off, but was easily visible half a block or so down the street.

He followed her, careful to stay well back. Evidently, she did not suspect that she was being tailed, for she made no suspicious moves. She sashayed her way through the streets, crowded as they were with pedestrians and horse-drawn conveyances, stepping delicately over piles of horse manure in the gutter as she crossed from one street to another.

Several blocks later she turned onto an unprepossessing street. At the house on the corner of the next cross street she knocked thrice and was ushered in by a servant. Sherlock hurried up to the doorway. There was a nameplate on the wall next to it: S. CAVOR.

He frowned in thought, remembering Mycroft having mentioned a young man named Cavor, and something about gravity. He shook his head in puzzlement. What did gravity have to do with speed? And what was the nature of this Cavor fellow’s association with the accelerationist?

Sherlock loitered around for a while, but the young woman did not reappear. He had plenty of time to think, however, and an idea about how to capture the mystery woman took shape in his mind. He couldn’t be certain it would succeed, but surely Mycroft would be able to give him some good input.

After returning to the rooftop he’d been spying from and waiting a bit longer, he took his Gladstone bag and went to Mycroft’s rooms, where he had a bath and then sat waiting for his brother to return home.

Mycroft was intrigued about the woman’s apparent relationship to Cavor. “Our information of that property, this ‘S. Cavor,’ belongs to Samuel Cavor, the father of a young man named Roger. It’s Roger who is, apparently, mucking about with experiments concerning the nature of gravity. Perhaps it is where Roger is staying, or where he has set up a laboratory.” He shrugged. “We don’t yet know. Now, as to the girl, you said you had an idea about how to catch her?”

As Sherlock outlined his plan, Mycroft looked increasingly aghast.

“You’re mad,” Mycroft said after Sherlock was done. “Barking mad!”

“It will work, I tell you.”

“You’ll pardon me if I am…somewhat dubious.”

“Can you think of any scheme more appealing to her avarice?” Sherlock asked.

Mycroft snorted. “You put great faith in the willingness of the Crown to expose its most valuable treasures in this fashion.”