artist?”
“Half the people in London regard themselves as artists,” she said dismissively. “Those that aren’t poets or playwrights.”
“Damian Adler is the real thing. He is, in fact, rather a well-known painter, among certain circles. A collective of artists is not an ideal place in which to keep him under wraps.”
“I see,” she said.
Holmes rubbed his face in self-disgust. When he was young, lack of sleep had only sharpened his faculties. Now, it only took two or three sleepless nights to turn his brains to cold porridge. He was soft, old and soft, and easily distracted by thoughts of bed and bath and how much he disliked this beard under his finger-nails.
Holland. What other choices were there? He had a colleague in Amsterdam-or not precisely a colleague: The man was a criminal who ran a series of illegal gambling establishments, but he had proved useful once or twice.
But trust the fellow? The temptation to sell Damian to the police might prove too great.
“We’ll have to keep Damian closeted, and avoid using his name,” he told the doctor. “As soon as he can be moved, we’ll be on our way.”
“I am sorry, I didn’t think to mention it.”
“The fault is mine,” he said in a tired voice, and went down to explain the situation to the patient.
Two hours later, they were nearing the mouth of a small bay. Holmes stood at the rail beside the doctor, watching the approach of a noble white house with several acres of lawn spreading down to the water and six small white cottages back among the trees. The whole resembled a plantation mansion, complete with slaves’ quarters, more at home in colonial Virginia than on the coast of Holland.
“That’s it. We can put in at the boat-house,” she said, and turned to call instructions to Gordon. That was something, at any rate: A boat-house would reduce their chances of being spotted, and of being asked inconvenient questions as to passports and permissions to dock.
When they had tied up, Henning stepped lightly to the boards and trotted off to the big house. When she was halfway across the lawn, a round man in a brilliant white suit came down the steps to greet her. She disappeared inside his embrace, then freed herself, straightening her hat as she gazed up at him. Explanations took but a moment before the man turned to the figures on the terrace behind him to wave orders. Three of the figures turned instantly away to the house, two of them returning with an object that, as they drew nearer, became a rolled-up Army stretcher.
Getting Damian up the boat’s tight companionway was tricky, but the servants managed. They marched away in the direction of the farthest white cottage, the doctor scurrying after.
Holmes, Gordon, and the second-cousin-twice-removed studied each other in bemusement. Holmes put out his hand. “Terribly sorry about this, we had a bit of an accident on this boat we’d hired, and your… Dr Henning said the best thing for it would be to inflict ourselves on you for a day or two, while the lad mends. Our good captain,” he continued, warming to the tale he was constructing-
However, the would-be plantation owner was not interested in the details of their presence. The rotund gentleman, who had been introduced as Eric VanderLowe, cut in, “Would you two mind posing for us?”
“Posing? As in, for drawing?”
“Precisely. I have a group coming in the morning. We’d arranged for two lads from the village, but they’ve been called away. It would help my artist friends a great deal.”
“Er, perhaps we might talk about it tomorrow,” Holmes suggested. “We’re all a bit tired.”
“Of course, tomorrow will do nicely.” And so saying, VanderLowe summoned a manservant to take their few possessions to the guest cottages.
That night, despite the prescribed quiet, Damian’s fever mounted. Holmes and the doctor stayed at the young man’s bed-side, applying wet cloths in an attempt to cool him. Damian thrashed and sweated, cursing in three languages and carrying on broken conversations, in Chinese with Yolanda and in French with his mother.
Finally, towards morning he grew quieter. Gentle snores arose from where the doctor sat, well bundled against the breeze pouring through the open windows. Holmes stood at the foot of the bed, studying his son’s resting face.
An hour later, Dr Henning stirred, then jerked upright at the silence. “He’s sleeping,” Holmes said in a low voice before she could react further.
She stood, to feel the pulse on Damian’s free wrist and tug his bed-clothes back up to his shoulders, then rolled her neck and shoulders with a grimace.
“You go and sleep,” Holmes told her. “I’ll fetch you if anything happens.”
She nodded, although she seemed in no hurry to move away from her patient. “Twenty days, you’ve known him?”
“Today being Monday, it is three weeks.”
“Who was his mother?”
“A woman who out-smarted me. More than once.”
“Does he resemble her? The way you look at him…”
“He does now.”
Monday was endless; Holmes had discovered early that there was not a copy of
Damian slept. Holmes turned the sick-room over to Dr Henning and took to his own bed at last, but in the afternoon he gave in to the pleas of his host and sat for ninety minutes while half a dozen oddly assorted artists- four men, one woman, and a person of indeterminate gender-bent over their drawing tablets. Gordon took his place for an hour, and when he escaped (outraged at their request to shed his clothing) he stalked away to scrub down the boat.
At five o’clock, Holmes leant against the cottage’s open doorway, listening to Damian’s steady breathing and feeling the inner seethe of frustration. Shadows inched across the lawn. He found himself wishing for soldiers of grey and blue, blasting at each other with antique firearms: Pickett’s Charge or the Battle of Antietam would provide a nice distraction. Instead, there was music coming from the house that made his fingers twitch for a violin; the tobacco in his pouch was running low; and the doctor’s bag sat on the table beside Damian’s bed, its open top an invitation, tugging at his attention every time he went through the room.
He had no intention of using the narcotic distraction it offered; he had long outgrown that habit. But the mere fact that he noticed the bag was irritating.
“You don’t need to stay in shouting distance,” the doctor’s voice came from behind him. “He’s sleeping nicely, and I have a book.”
He did not answer, but eyed the half-mile of lawn between the cottage and where Gordon was working, shirt off and head down over the boat’s decking.
“Go,” she urged. “Physical labour will help you to sleep tonight.”
He opened his mouth to ask why she imagined he might have trouble sleeping, then changed it to, “My friend Watson could tell you that I have never been good at following doctor’s orders.”
“Then think of it as a friendly suggestion.”
He glanced down at her, and had the disconcerting impression that the wee thing had overheard his inner dialogue with the black bag. Quite impossible. She must have picked up on his general agitation-although that was a bad enough sign in itself, that he was giving himself away to a near-stranger.
Still, she was right. There was nothing like hard labour to take one’s mind off of frustration.
He gave a glance back at the sleeping Damian, then set off across the lawn, rolling up his shirt-sleeves as he drew near the dock.
Work helped. But still, Monday was endless.
So it was that on Tuesday, shaking off the sensation of prison, Holmes trimmed his beard, changed some pounds to guilders at the house, put on his only suit (miraculous, that he had managed to retain his valise during the past week’s eccentric travels), and asked Dr Henning if, seeing as how he was taking the train to Amsterdam, there was any person to whom she might like a telegram sent.
Surely Wick would have noticed by now that their doctor was missing?
