"You'd better stay with us," Holmes said, "until we're sure we get the craft."
The Water Witch was still at its mooring, and Captain Coster was only too happy to take them out. "Want to go out and watch the regatta, do you?" he asked. "I can get you in a good position for that, although I daren't get too close. They'll have my license for sure if I interfere with the race."
"We just want to stay in the harbor for now," Moriarty told him. "There's a particular boat we're looking for and we want to cruise around and see if we can find her." He swung around to Barnett. "We're settled here. You'd better go off to Miro. We'll be looking for your signal."
"Okay," Barnett said. He trotted off down the wharf.
Captain Coster built up a head of steam in the Water Witch and they headed across the harbor toward Gosport Town on the far side. There they gradually made their way around the curve of the shore, pulling alongside every wharf and jetty to peer into boathouses, hulks, sheltered moorings, and anything else that looked like a possible hiding-place for the forty-foot steel cigar.
After two hours' futile searching, they crossed back and resumed the hunt on the Portsmouth side. Dr. Watson kept his eyes on the tethered balloon, as they worked their way toward it and again away from it. Captain Coster pulled the Water Witch as close as he could to the various objects they wanted to examine, and Holmes and Moriarty took turns leaping aboard a variety of boats, barges, and assorted flotsam that graced the harbor and could provide shelter, however unlikely, for the Garrett-Harris. What Captain Coster thought of this, he didn't say. He was obviously used to the odd requests of his paying passengers.
It was five o'clock when the Victoria and Albert steamed into the harbor and stopped at its spot at one end of the finish line. Several small Navy steam cutters took positions around the Royal Yacht, presumably to fend off overenthusiastic sightseers. On the upper deck, a stout somber woman dressed in black sat alone under a canopy and wrote in her diary.
There was no sign of the submersible.
TWENTY-TWO — EARTH, AIR, FIRE, AND WATER
Speed bonnie boat, like a bird on the wing.
— Harold Edwin Boulton
Disgraceful," Captain Coster said, puffing away on the thin black rope he called a cigar.
"What's that?" Moriarty asked.
"Them barge captains. They have no regard for any of the rest of us. They're so used to being pushed about they can't even take the responsibility of properly mooring their barges. Look at that one now, come adrift. I'll have to notify the port director when we dock, and he'll have to send a tug to pick her up."
"Does it happen often?" Moriarty asked, staring speculatively at the drifting barge.
"All too," Captain Coster said. "Although usually only when the beggars are empty. This one has a full load of coal, I notice. Some colliery is going to be delighted if she smashes up on the Head or beaches herself."
Holmes, who had been considering the barge carefully, came over to Moriarty. "Look closely at that craft," he said. "Does anything strike you?"
"Yes," Moriarty said. "I've been thinking the same thing."
"That's it, then?"
"The probabilities would so indicate."
"What is it, Holmes?" Watson asked, staring at the barge.
"Captain Coster," Holmes said, "please look carefully at the barge. Does it seem to you that it is riding too high on the water? Compare it with those barges at the pier to our left, which are also fully loaded with coal."
"Why, yes," Coster said. "That had been bothering me, but as I couldn't think of anything to account for it, I decided I must be mistaken."
"Pull alongside that barge, Captain," Moriarty directed. "Carefully, very carefully, if you don't mind."
Slowly the Water Witch edged alongside the coal barge. Moriarty took a small self-loading pistol from his pocket and worked the slide to chamber a bullet. Dr. Watson pulled his old service revolver from his belt, and Sherlock Holmes produced a smaller, silver-plated revolver from an inside pocket of his traveling cape.
Captain Coster did his best to look calm and unconcerned at his passengers' odd behavior. "This person you're looking for," he said. "I take it he's not a friend of yours."
"Hush!" Holmes said, putting his finger to his lips. "Keep your ship alongside. We'll be back."
The three of them, Holmes in the lead, leaped across the two feet of water separating the two craft and scrambled up the rough wooden side of the barge. The craft was nothing more than a huge rectangle full of coal from front to rear. At the very stern was a small wooden superstructure resembling a shed with windows cut in it. Black curtains shielded the windows from the inside, and there was no sign of life.
Slowly they worked their way to the stern. "It seems unlikely that we haven't been seen — or perhaps heard," Moriarty whispered. "We had best be ready for a warm welcome."
Holmes smiled grimly. "It occurs to me," he said, "that if we're mistaken, some poor bargee is about to experience the shock of his life."
Holmes and Watson lay prone on a bed of coal, their weapons pointed at the door, while Moriarty snapped it open with a well-placed baritsu kick and ducked aside. It swung wildly back and forth with a clatter that echoed off the water. Still nothing moved.
After a cautious moment, Moriarty dropped to the deck and carefully peered around the doorway. Then he stood up and dusted himself off, looking disgusted. "Come here, gentlemen," he said, "Look at this."
Inside the cabin were three men. Two of them were sprawled opposite each other across a small table and the third was crumpled on the floor halfway to the door. The two men at the table each had a hole in his chest, a great, ugly gaping hole of the sort caused by a large-caliber handgun fired from close range. The man on the floor had three such holes in his back. He lay in a clotted pool of his own blood, his face turned up, eyes opened, wearing a surprised expression. On the table was a small mound of anarchist literature, now covered with dried blood.
Stepping gingerly to avoid the blood, Holmes bent down to examine the body on the floor. "Dead for some time, I should say," he said. "What do you think, Watson?"
Watson stooped over and pressed his fingernail into the flesh of the wrist and then opened the dead eye and peered at it. "Four or five hours, as a quick estimate," he said. "Nasty way to go — not that any death is pleasant. Still, the massive trauma of a half-inch piece of lead pushing its way through the human gut must rank as one of the less desirable ends."
"Well," Moriarty said. "Trepoff has his dead anarchists. Now what has he done with the submersible?" He knelt down and began tapping on the deck, to be rewarded almost immediately with a dull thumping. "Down here," he said. "There must be a trap door."
Holmes joined him and, together, they pried and tapped and examined and pushed and prodded at the boards of the cabin floor. It took them five minutes to find the catch, hidden between two floorboards. Moriarty pushed at it, and it dropped a pair of hinged doors to reveal a three-foot-square hole. Holmes went over to the table for a candle which stood between the two dead anarchists and lighted it.
"He's gone, of course," Moriarty said. "But we'd best check," Holmes said.
"Of course," Moriarty said. He swung himself over the side of the trap and climbed down the ladder affixed to the edge. When his head was level with the floor, Holmes handed him the candle, and then he disappeared below.
A few moments later he was back. "Come down here," he called to Holmes. "This is impressive. You should see it. Bring another candle or, by preference, one of the oil lamps."