Laurie King - The God of the Hive

“Two hours later, Richard Sosa arrived.”

I jerked upright in disbelief. “They sent your secretary to kill you?”

Mycroft returned my look of disbelief. “Kill me? What are you on about? Mr Sosa came to rescue me.”

Mycroft’s three o’clock meal-Wednesday? He was almost certain it was Wednesday-sat in the corner of the room, taunting him. He had seen the foreign matter in the cup, tasting it gingerly before pouring it onto the floor, and decided not to risk the solid food.

If death was finally coming for him, he wanted to meet it on his feet.

Ninety minutes later, he heard a noise, but it was not the noise he expected. It sounded like glass breaking.

After five minutes, it happened again, only closer. This time he moved to the far corner of the room, raising his eyes to the square of light overhead.

The next repetition came two minutes after the second; after another two-minute pause, his window proved to be the fourth. It began when the square developed a dark patch-ah, Mycroft thought: The breaker of windows had discovered that glass splashes back, and spent three minutes improvising a guard before his second attempt.

A sharp rap in the centre of the shadow split the glass. Palm-sized shards of glass rained down; the shadow was removed, and glass fell as the pipe jabbed at the widening hole. When the hole reached the window’s edge, the pipe withdrew. Seconds later, a torch beam hit the floor, searching the corners until it froze on Mycroft.

“Mr Holmes!” said a welcome voice that wavered upwards to a squeak.

“Mr Sosa,” Mycroft said in astonishment. “An unexpected pleasure.”

“Oh, sir, I am so glad to see you. I hope you are well?”

Mycroft’s lips quirked. “Much the better for seeing you, Blondel.”

“Er, quite. I am glad,” the secretary repeated, fervent with relief. “Shall I, that is, if you wish, I could go and fetch a locksmith?”

“Either that or a heavy sledge. The door is solid.”

“I do have… that is, I wasn’t certain if you… I have a ladder.”

“A ladder?” Mycroft had judged his prison on the top of a sizeable building: Summoning a ladder the height of the room would be a considerable project.

“Not a ladder as such, it’s rope. A rope-ladder. If you feel up to such a thing.”

“Is there sufficient anchor up there? I’d not care to get nearly to the top and have it come loose.”

“Oh no, no no, that wouldn’t do at all. Yes, there is a metal pipe nearby, and I have a rope as well. To fasten around the pipe, that is, and tie to the ladder.”

“Mr Sosa, I don’t know that I’ve ever had opportunity to enquire, but-your knowledge of knots. How comprehensive is it?”

“Quite sufficient, I assure you, sir,” he answered earnestly. “As a boy, I taught myself a full two dozen styles and their chief purposes. I propose a sheet bend rather than a reef knot. And to fasten it to the pipe, a double half-hitch should be quite sufficient. No, sir; my knots will hold.”

“Very well, let us make haste.”

“If you would just-”

“Stand back-I know. The quality of mercy is not strained, it droppeth down as the gentle glass from heaven. Bash away, Mr Sosa.”

Sosa bashed, until the frame was cleared of glass. He then disappeared, for a disarmingly long period, while Mycroft stood below, his hands working hard against each other.

A young eternity later, an object little smaller than the window leapt through the hole and plunged downwards. Mycroft stumbled back, seeing it as Sosa being thrown inside by the returned gaoler-but then the large darkness caught and rapidly unfurled, dancing its way all the way down to the floor: the ladder.

Mycroft rested his hand against his pounding heart for a moment. The torch-light hit him and he heard his name. He dropped his hand and picked his way over the glass to the ladder, tugging it with little conviction. It seemed sturdy.

He gave a last glance to his prison, and the formula scratched into the wall, then committed his stockinged foot to the first rung.

Five rungs up, the ladder dipped alarmingly, and he clung to the insecure rope as if it would do an iota of good. He waited, feeling motion on the line. Then came two sharp tremors, as if its tautness was being slapped.

“Mr Sosa, may I take it that the two raps were to indicate the rope is secure?”

Two tremors came down again; reluctantly, Mycroft inched up another rung, then another.

At the top, he saw the problem: The knots had held admirably; the pipe had been less secure. He gave up on gentle motions and threw himself over the frame onto the roof.

Sosa, red-faced and trembling from the effort of keeping the metal pipe from bending catastrophically, sank to the roof and put his head in his hands.

After a minute, not far from open tears, the secretary staggered to his feet and came over to pat his employer on the shoulder, back, and arm. Mycroft began to feel like a prize dog, and feared that in another minute, the man would embrace him.

“Remind me to increase your salary,” he said.

This distracted Sosa. “Sir, I did not do this for the salary,” he protested.

Mycroft laughed. He laughed for quite a while, finding it oddly difficult to regain control of his face, but eventually he forced levity to arm’s length and stood up.

“My afternoon meal was heavily drugged, with what appeared to be Veronal.”

“Did you eat it?” Sosa asked in alarm.

“Of course not. But my captor will assume I did, and will return before long so as to catch me unconscious. I believe, Mr Sosa, you have come only just in time.”

“Oh, dear. Perhaps not.”

Mycroft looked up in alarm, hearing the dread in his secretary’s voice, then moved over quickly to see what had attracted the man’s attention.

Down on the empty street below, a large figure got out from behind the wheel of a van that looked remarkably like those used by a mortuary to transport bodies.

“Fast, man,” Mycroft urged. “If we can get down the stairs and take him by surprise, I can use this stout pipe you most thoughtfully-sorry, what was that?”

“I said, wouldn’t you rather use your gun?” The revolver looked incongruous balanced in the secretary’s thin palm, but most welcome.

“Mr Sosa, you are a gem among men.”

They were an unlikely pair of avengers, a thin balding man in a high collar with dust on his knees and a look of resolute terror on his sweating face, following a shoeless, unshaven, once-fat man in a filthy suit belted by an aged Eton tie, rapidly tip-toeing down a rickety metal stairway and through a derelict hallway.

The muffled gunshots that followed, heard by two waking prostitutes, a nurse snatching a quick cigarette outside St Thomas’ hospital, six ex-Army madmen in Bedlam, and three members of the House of Lords in solemn conclave with a glass of sherry on the Terrace, were dismissed as a back-firing lorry.

Heavens, Sosa has been at my right hand for twenty-six years,” Mycroft told us indignantly. “I’m surprised that you imagine me such a poor judge of character.”

“I, well,” I said, biting my tongue to keep from saying, Nor had I imagined you an embezzler .

“The hypothesis was, Mr Sosa wished to inherit your position,” Holmes said. Mycroft looked at me askance, and did not deign to acknowledge such a ridiculous suspicion.

“Sosa came to me immediately the blackmailer approached him. He’d been ordered to turn over certain minor pieces of information, thus saving himself from scandal and earning a small sum as well. The photographs were of his sister and, shall we say, politically rather than socially embarrassing, while the information requested was indeed of little importance. The sort of thing that could be learnt elsewhere with a bit of digging.”