The paper was unceremoniously snatched out of my hands and Holmes was striding up and down the room devouring the story.
“Rabbits, rabbits … white rabbits. Of course …”
“Of course, what?” I asked testily.
“Alice, of course. Here, Watson, look at this …” He riffled through the cuttings on the floor until he found what he was looking for, a small piece of paper roughly torn around the edges. He threw it on the table in front of me, narrowly missing a soaking in my cup of tea.
“This was in this morning’s Daily Gazette.”
It was a typical item from the daily agony column. There was a single line of type that said …
“OH MY EARS AND WHISKERS, HOW LATE IT’S GETTING!”
… and beneath it a freehand drawing that looked like a smile. Below the drawing it was signed — “The Cat.”
The whole thing was quite incomprehensible to me. I handed the cutting back to Holmes with an interrogative glance.
“It looked good-natured, she thought: still it had very long claws and a great many teeth, so she felt that it ought to be treated with respect.”
He was talking to the piece of paper more than to me.
“The Cat, Watson. The Cheshire Cat in Alice. Don’t you see — it’s started. This is Moriarty throwing down the gauntlet. His strategy — whatever it is — is moving into high gear and he’s challenging me to try and stop him. He knows that I am the only man in London who is likely to connect a communication like this with the actual event Don’t you remember the conversation about Alice up at Loch Ness? He’s identifying himself.”
“But what on earth has this to do with yesterday’s debacle?”
“In Alice one of the characters is the White Rabbit and when Alice meets the Rabbit, she hears it say just those words. Moriarty wants me to know that it was he who organised what you call ‘yesterday’s debacle’ in the House and he’s also warning me that it’s getting late. Though late for what we have still to determine …
“The exercise on which I was engaged when you entered was my attempt to piece together a pattern of Moriarty’s recent activities and, as you can see, it is not without complexity.” He indicated with a casual movement of his foot a series of rough circles, one within the other, moving outwards like ripples on the surface of a pond. “Each of these incidents apparently unrelated but, in reality, deviously interconnected. Each of them contributing to a general picture of administrative corruption or governmental incompetence — or both — and most with a probability of financial gain for someone whose name I think we know by now.”
“So you already have our friend by the heels?”
“No, Watson. In all of these cases the trail ends in a cul-de-sac long before it can be traced to Moriarty. I have Lestrade looking into a handful of them but, candidly, old fellow, I am not optimistic about the outcome. Frankly, for the moment our best hope is that his obsession with our personal vendetta may lead him to become careless. That’s probably Lestrade at the door now.”
We had both heard the insistent clang of the front door bell and Mrs. Hudson’s footsteps hurrying to answer it. “Perhaps you’ll be good enough to perform the usual courtesies while I change into more suitable attire. We must not let the law find us less than prepared to greet them. Particularly after yesterday’s debacle. I would have given a great deal to have seen old …” And here he named an eminent Cabinet Minister — “chased by a white rabbit …”
Scooping the cuttings into a loose bundle, he dropped them casually behind his armchair, where Mrs. Hudson would sooner or later find them and agonise over whether or not to attempt to tidy them. He then hurried into his bedroom and shut the door firmly behind him — just as there was a knock on the door that led to the stairs.
“Come in, Lestrade,” I called out, thinking to surprise him with my powers of deduction. Instead, it was the head of our worthy housekeeper, Mrs. Hudson that appeared around the edge of the door.
“It isn’t Inspector Lestrade, Doctor Watson. It’s …”
“It’s Mycroft,” I heard a deep voice say and the next thing I knew the massive figure of Holmes’s elder brother was filling the portals of our sitting room.
“Good morning, Doctor, forgive me for bearding you in your den but I think you know I would not venture so far forth so early in the day — or at any time, come to that — were the occasion not of some significance?”
And indeed, I did know that the virtual giant now lowering himself carefully into Holmes’s chair — having first fastidiously brushed it with the pristine white handkerchief he took from his pocket — was not in the habit of venturing far from the musty confines of the Diogenes Club in Pall Mall, if he could possibly help it. Holmes was always joking that the club, of which his brother was a founder member, was the ‘club for the unclubable’ and one of London’s best kept secrets. Yet from his regular armchair immediately to the left of the fireplace Mycroft Holmes kept a hooded beady eye on the country’s affairs. Although without any official status that one was aware of, he appeared to be the junction of all governmental paths or, as Holmes once described him, “the central exchange, the clearing house” of problems and events. “Watson, if only my brother would bestir himself, he would demonstrate the greatest deductive brain the world has yet seen. His powers far exceed my own.”
This, then was the man sitting opposite me, perfectly relaxed in his chair, despite the weighty matter, whatever it might be, that had winkled him out of his preferred modus vivendi. As we sat there, with me making small talk, I reflected that this was only the third time in my long association with Holmes that I had met his brother. There had been — let me see — the affair of The Greek Interpreter and, only two or three years earlier, the infinitely more fraught case of the Bruce-Partington Plans, where the nation’s very security had been involved.
Nor could I forget — though I had long since forgiven — the fact that it had bee Mycroft and not I in whom my friend had confided the truth during the ‘Grand Hiatus’. If ever two brothers qualified for the term ‘distant relations’, it was these two. Still, there was undoubtedly something telepathic between them that more than compensated for the lack of corporeal contact. This was demonstrated admirably to me as Holmes emerged from his bedroom.
“Good heavens, Mycroft here? The planet has left its orbit …”
“Am I correct in my deduction, Sherlock?” Mycroft did not waste time with the usual fraternal niceties.
“As ever,” replied my friend.
“Loch Ness?”
“And White Rabbits.”
“A bad business.”
“The worst possible.”
It was like watching two people play verbal chess. The moves were stripped down to the bone. Then, as though they became aware of the presence of a third person in the room who must be allowed into the game …