“I see.” Holmes sniffed. “In which case, that concludes the matter.” He made a move back to the door. “Thanks for your assistance. Please don’t let us trouble you any further—”
“Wait gentlemen, please,” Rohampton entreated. “It’s no trouble to have such lauded guests. Won’t you stop for a drop of sherry?”
Burgess had reappeared from the rear chambers, now carrying a tray on which sat a dark bottle and three crystal goblets.
“Well,” said Watson, eyeing the tipple thirstily . . .
“Thank you, no,” Holmes put in, quite firmly. “We have a lot of work ahead of us. It wouldn’t do to get too light-headed.”
Rohampton made an amiable gesture. “Whatever you wish. Good day to you, then.”
“Oh . . .” Holmes said, before leaving, “there is one minor thing. Would it be possible to speak to your associate . . . the gentleman who received the shipment, just to ensure the consignment was untampered with?”
“Surely,” said Rohampton. “His name is Marsh, Obed Marsh. Here, let me write it down for you. He’s a former sea captain turned botanist . . . interesting fellow.”
He took a pen from his upper breast pocket and, tearing a strip from the blotter on the clerk’s table, scratched out a quick address. His mouth curved in a rictal grin as he handed it over . . . again, that grin failed to travel to his eyes. “If anything is missing, you’ll let me know? Obviously it won’t do to be stolen from, and not realize it.”
“Of course,” said Holmes.
Five minutes later, they were seated in a cab and bound across the City for Liverpool Street. The piece of paper they had been given read 2 Sun Lane, which both knew as a small cul-de-sac directly behind the railway station.
“Curious chap,” said Watson as they rode. “Did you notice, his facial expression hardly changed once?”
“I also noticed that he is little given to work,” Holmes replied.
“How do you deduce that?”
“Come, Watson. There was minimal evidence in that office that any work is done there. And if that fellow Burgess is a clerk, then he’s recently made it his new calling in life. That limp of his suggests he’s more familiar with the ball and chain than the accounts book.”
“So what about Obed Marsh?”
Holmes rubbed his chin. “He, I am uncertain about. But I fancy Mr. Julian Rohampton was rather too ready to give us his address, wouldn’t you say?”
The cabbie let them down at the mouth of the court in question, took his fare, and drove off. For a moment, they stood and stared, and listened as well. Sun Lane was little more than a grubby access way. Various bins and sacks of rubbish were stacked along it. It was hemmed in by high brick walls, and at its far end, a single door connecting with some rear portion of the railway station stood locked and chained. Nothing moved down there, though it echoed to the racket of shunting locomotives and tooting whistles.
“And a botanist lives here?” said Holmes tightly. “I think not.”
He ushered Watson to one side, and they took shelter behind a clutter of old tea chests. Moments later, a curtained carriage appeared at the end of the street. The two men watched in silence as the coachman sat there, unmoving, a scarf about his face. A moment passed, then the curtain twitched and a sinister object poked out . . . something like a hefty gun barrel, though it consisted not of one muzzle, but nine or ten, all bound tightly together in a tubular steel bundle.
Watson seized Holmes by the wrist. “Good Lord,” he whispered. “Good Lord in Heaven . . . that’s a Gatling gun!”
“No doubt fresh from America with whatever else our cold-eyed friend imported,” said Holmes quietly. “Little wonder they lured us to a cul-de-sac.”
“Great Scott!” Watson breathed. Only now was the nature of those they confronted beginning to dawn on him. “What . . . what do we do?”
“I suggest we lay low for a moment.”
Both men held their ground and waited. Minutes passed, during which the team of horses became uneasy and began to paw the ground. The coachman himself stirred, and started to glance around as though confused. At long last, a pedestrian arrived, sloping along, hands in pockets. Holmes and Watson immediately recognized him as the bowler-hatted fellow who’d attempted to follow them on Pickle Herring Street. Rather conspicuously, he was still without his jacket. He shuffled about for a moment when he reached the carriage, then leaned back against the nearby wall. To Holmes’s eye, the fellow’s posture gave him away . . . he was tense, in fact alarmed.
“Yes,” mumbled the detective. “Something should have happened by now, shouldn’t it, my friend? Well . . . don’t let us disappoint you.” Calmly, he produced a police whistle from his pocket and blew three sharp blasts on it.
The effect was instantaneous. The coachman whipped his team away without hesitation, the carriage bouncing on the cobbles as it tore around the corner into Bishopsgate. It barely gave whoever was manning the machine gun time to flick the curtain back over it, let alone the bowler-hatted chap time to climb aboard. He now found himself entirely alone and in full view of anyone who happened along. In a panic, he turned and began to run in the opposite direction.
Holmes tapped Watson on the arm, and they rose and followed. Moments later, they were threading through the crowds on the forecourt of Liverpool Street station. Not twenty yards ahead, the bowler-hatted chap had stopped at one of the ticket barriers, where he handed over some change, then bullocked his way through, glancing once over his shoulder, his brutish face a stark purple red in color. If he’d spotted either Holmes or Watson, he didn’t betray it, but hurried off down a flight of steps toward the platforms.
“Where did that man just buy a ticket to?” Watson demanded of the clerk on the barrier.
The clerk shook his head. “Nowhere, sir. It was a platform ticket. Only cost tuppence.”
“Two platform tickets,” Holmes replied, handing over fourpence.
Moments later, they were hastening down the steps in pursuit. At the bottom, they gazed left and right. Thankfully, their prey was still distinctive in his hat and shirtsleeves. He was just in the process of descending another flight of steps.
“He’s going to the underground railway,” Watson said, surprised.
Holmes didn’t reply. A hideous idea had suddenly occurred to him, one which he instinctively wished to put aside, but now found that he couldn’t.
They followed the bowler-hatted man onto the westbound platform of the Metropolitan Line, and there, briefly, lost him in the gaggle of commuters. It was the end of the day, after all . . . the station was now at its busiest. They’d fought their way down to the first-class section before they caught sight of him again. To both their amazement, the fellow, having reached the very end of the platform, slipped down onto the rails directly behind the train, and vanished into the wall of wafting steam.
“What the devil . . . ,” Watson began.
“Hurry!” Holmes said.
They, too, jumped down, and a moment later found themselves stumbling along the rails, pressing on into the tunnel, which was smoky and hot and echoing and reechoing with the furious crashes and bangs of the underground railway system. Several yards farther on, just as Watson was about to call time on the pursuit, fearing that they were endangering their lives, they saw an open area to the left-hand side, with a dull glow filtering into it from a high skylight. They entered and stopped for a moment, breathing hard and surveying the ground. It was thick with dust and strewn with rags and litter. The fresh footprints of their quarry, however, led clear across it and ended beside a wide, rusty grating, which sat open against the wall. Below this, iron ladders dropped into darkness. The smell that exhaled from that forbidding aperture was as vile and as cloying as either man had ever known.