Chapter Six
Holmes had better luck with the bookseller's name, and was soon addressing the small man as Mr Long, which when I heard it caused a somewhat light-headed giggle to try to surface. I suppressed it firmly—he wasn't that tiny, really, just far from Long—and focussed on the tasks at hand.
We were sitting in the kitchen, bright lights pulsating off the white walls, as Holmes methodically assisted our guest in removing enough of his upper garments to allow treatment. He seemed uncomfortable with my presence, so I closed my eyes against the glare.
“Clever of you to get the power on, Holmes.”
“It was simply a matter of locating the mains,” he said. “The power company had not shut it off, just the caretaker.”
“What about the water and gas?”
“I rang both companies from the watch-dog's telephone.”
“Was Miss Grimly reassured to find you were a respectable English gentleman?” I asked.
“She telephoned to Mr Norbert's offices before she would allow me past the threshold; her nephew stood at the ready with a baseball bat.”
“And did she have anything to offer on our intruders?”
A moment of silence served to remind me of our visitor, whose presence I had forgotten. To cover my mistake, I went on. “I took the photograph around Chinatown and must have asked a hundred or more citizens, none of whom recognised the two people. Or said they didn't. Although I had a very fine if somewhat
The bookseller stirred. “I have to say, Miss Russell, that your display of English—do they call it ‘phlegm'?—is most impressive. I would have thought most young ladies would display more of a reaction to such an attack. Unless you think, sir, that she is suffering from a concussion?”
Holmes snorted. “Her brain wouldn't dare. No, the only time Russell becomes upset is when those near and dear to her are threatened.”
“Is this—eh!” Long grunted.
“Sorry,” Holmes muttered, and pulled more gently at the shirt.
“Is this common among the English?”
“Russell is not common among anyone. Good, it's merely winged you in passing—no permanent damage, I shouldn't think. Do you suppose there are any bandages in the house, Russell?”
“They would be either in the cabinet in my parents' bath-room, or in the nursery. Do you want me to go?”
“You sit.”
So I sat, as his stride went up the stairs, and a few minutes later came down again. His search was successful, even to the presence of a bottle of Merthiolate. He sniffed it, then painted away at the bookseller's seeping upper arm, wrapping a length of gauze around the whole and tying it off in a neat bow. He handed Mr Long back his shirt, but carried the coat over to the sink, turning on the taps with an air of experiment. Nothing.
“I can't even offer to salvage your coat from the bloodstains,” he apologised.
“That is of no importance,” the bookseller said, gingerly inserting his arm into the ruined sleeve. Holmes moved to assist him, and between the two of them they got the man clothed without too much discomfort. The small man moved his shoulder experimentally, testing the limits of comfort, then turned to me.
“I am pleased that I could, as you say, rescue you from your assassins, but I cannot claim I came here with any such intention. No, I came to speak with you about your photograph, and as I paced the sidewalks in indecision, you came around the corner and the man with the gun showed himself. Pure felicitous accident. May I ask, are assassins a commonplace in your life?”
I might have returned his earlier question aimed at me, for his own demonstration of phlegmatic behaviour made me wonder if it was his own nature, Orientals in general, or a result of living in San Francisco, which after all was not so very far removed from its Wild West roots. But it was difficult to know how to answer his question, so I decided to consider it rhetorical rather than requiring an answer. Instead, I asked, “Why were you coming to speak with me?”
“The photograph you showed me. It is of my parents.”
“Ah,” Holmes said, and reached for his pipe.
“Mah and Micah were your mother and father?” I asked, with a dubious glance at the length of the man's legs.
“‘Mah and Micah,'” Mr Long repeated with a faraway look on his face. “I had forgotten that. They adopted me when I was seven years old, and my mother died. As it happened, I was their only child. Their actual names were Mai Long Kwo and Mah Long Wan. They worked for your parents as gardener and cook, beginning in 1902. I did not know your mother had a photograph of them on her bureau. I suppose I should not have been surprised, for this was one of the few things my mother saved from the Fire, and it resided near the place she had her house gods.” He drew from his inner coat pocket a portrait in a simple black wooden mounting, handing it to me. Smaller and set in a different frame, it was otherwise the same family portrait that lay buried in a drawer in Sussex: tall, blond American father, a secret smile under his trim moustaches; smaller, darker English mother, her eyes dancing as if she was about to burst into laughter; lanky blonde twelve-year-old with smudged spectacles, every inch of her shouting her impatience with the entire exercise; intense, dark-haired boy of perhaps seven, looking at the camera as if he intended to pull it apart to see how it worked.
I handed it back to him. “Where are your parents now?”
“They are dead.” He put the photograph into his pocket, seeming to spend considerable attention getting it settled, then raised his face to mine. “Murdered.”
A tingle of shock ran down my legs, and I was aware of Holmes coming to point, the pipe frozen in his hand.
“Tell us,” I said.
“It was during the New Year celebrations of 1915—our New Year, not that of the West, which is some weeks earlier. I was not here. I was at medical school in Chicago, and Western universities do not recognise the celebrations of other calendars. They were both in the store—but I should explain first.
“The previous spring, your parents had made them a loan of money to start a business. My father had begun to find the physical demands of gardening increasingly difficult, and when he admitted as much to your mother, instead of merely dismissing him as most people in her situation would have done, she asked him what he intended to do. He trusted her enough to tell her his dream of running a bookstore, although their savings would mean they would begin with little more than a cart on the street. Medical school is expensive. But your mother would not hear of it, and insisted that they find a space large enough for a proper store, and that they could repay her over time.”
He smiled in reminiscence. “Your mother was a most strong-willed woman. She would, as the saying goes, not take no for an answer, and even refused to sign formal loan papers, saying that if she were to drop dead suddenly, my father should consider it her thanks for the years of pleasure she had received from his work in the garden. And as it happened, my parents had recently seen a sign go up for a new shop-space, and eyed it wistfully.
“In the end, they accepted your mother's offer, and put up the money for the space that week. My father retired his aching knees from your garden to his shop, and began to order books and build shelves. He worked slowly, because he wanted the place to be perfectly balanced in itself. He wanted it beautiful.
