The Classified Dossier: Sherlock Holmes and Count Dracula(101)

Curious, I retrieved the ticket off the floor. “Holmes,” I said, “this is a ticket for a steamer leaving tonight! This is Moriarty’s escape! Did he not tell you in the letter that he would quit England and take a steamer?”

“Oh yes,” Holmes said. “He did.”

Count Dracula took the ticket from my hand. “The Hecate? We shall have to move quickly if we are to intercept this before its departure.” He took a step toward the door, but Mina caught his arm and shook her head. She was looking curiously and with some indecision at Holmes, like a woman trying to solve a difficult problem.

“Is it possible that even now, you do not see?” Holmes said, still on his knees with the body. “This ticket was clearly a gambit, and not one Moriarty could have expected to work particularly well. Likely it was meant to fool this piteous underling with any possibility of it derailing us as a possible bonus. Yet you have all taken it for gospel. Moriarty has no intention of leaving England. Searching out this steamer would grant him valuable time by side-tracking our investigation.”

“How do you know this?” Mina said.

“Smell the coat!” Holmes said, holding up a fistful of the offending woollen material.

Mina did so, a sight more delicately than Holmes had. “Salt from the sea,” she said.

“And?” Holmes said.

“Soot, possibly from a train.”

“Do you not smell the machine oil used in locomotives, as well?” Holmes asked. “The tickets are a fairy tale, a ruse, possibly one that this sea captain believed, as well.”

“Sea captain?” I said.

“When a man has that much scarring on his hands,” Holmes said, “but little recent scarring, but still smells that much of the open sea, it is an even bet that he is still a sailor, but has a position that requires less of the manual labour – that makes a man very high up in the ship’s hierarchy the most likely, you see? Captain, I should say, or first mate. I should be very surprised if the man does not hail from the same ship that tried to sink your ship, Count. At least, I have that hope.”

The Count furrowed his brow. “Why do you hope this?”

“It would mean that he is running low on resources,” Holmes said, standing up. “Certainly Moriarty’s gambits are getting more and more desperate and the ruses more and more transparent. I do not believe everything in Moriarty’s letter…”

Dracula looked surprised. “Letter, you say?”

Holmes whipped out the letter in question and unfurled it with a snap of his wrist so that the Count could take it. He then sketched a very brief account of our recent excursion.

“I don’t believe Moriarty intends to cede London, or England, at all,” Holmes continued. “But I do believe that the horde underneath the warehouse represented a mutinous element that Moriarty needed to be rid of. There, he had little to lose, few precious resources to expend, for if we died and they lived, he would still have lost one group of enemies and reduced another. As it turned out, much the same happened even when we survived, for his mutineers are removed from the board and we are reduced.”

I closed my eyes briefly, seeing again poor Somersby dying and Kitty Winter’s stricken face. I could hear a touch of that pain in Holmes’s tone, as well, for all that he talked now like the pure, cold logician. Reduced was, indeed, the correct word.

“I have put certain forces into play to make certain that the ship that sank the King’s Ransom will, in turn, be sunk,” Holmes said. “Another gambit that Moriarty used resources on extravagantly and it is my hope, as I said, that he is running low. However, the scent of soot is an oversight. I had already formed a few theories as to Moriarty’s next action and considered a train escape out into one of the counties surrounding London to be a high probability. A falling back to regroup, but not yet conceding the game, which is, of course, England.”

“If you deem that the most likely,” Dracula said, “what do you propose?”

“We strike while the iron is hot!” Holmes said. “Your arrival has changed much, for Moriarty has to expect if not our deaths, at least an injury severe enough to take us out of commission for a few days, or possibly an exposure of Watson’s vampire nature, both of which we shall neatly avoid. We shall head to the train station, I think, to see what traces we can locate there of our quarry, if you are up for it.”

“Of course we are with you,” I said.

“Good old Watson,” Holmes said, with gratitude. He looked at the others.

Dracula and Mina exchanged a glance, then both nodded.

“We owe you a debt,” Dracula said. “If you believe this to be the correct next step, you shall have all our powers at your disposal.”

“Excellent!” Holmes said. “Now it only remains to give Mrs Hudson specific and direct instructions so she does not stumble onto a body, and we shall be off!”





Chapter 20





THE CHASE





We had a hasty word with Mrs Hudson and then Holmes had us into a four-wheeler carriage in short order and we were bouncing our way toward Kings Cross train station. This was a far cry from our previous trip which felt mired in defeat and Holmes was animated, practically quivering with pent-up energy. He had gone into his rooms before our departure and come out with a Gladstone bag, but would not reveal to any of us what was in it. He bore that bag with him into the carriage.