The Problem of Threadneedle Street (The Assassination of Sherlock Holmes Book 2) by Craig Janacek Page A

concerned for their well-being, you could simply help them.”
    “Come now, Watson. Give a man a fish. When I pay my irregulars a guinea, I do more than fill their bellies for a day, I instruct them that hard work will invariably lead to greater things. Look at me.”
    I frowned. “Were your parents not country squires?”
    He snorted in derision. “A manorial lord can claim a fancy title, but also have not two farthings to rub together. My father may have given me two years at college, that is true, but it was only with many long years of hard training that I came by my especial techniques. Do you not recall the day we first met, when my purse was so under-full that I could not upon my own pay for a nice suite in Baker Street?”
    “Of course, Holmes. It’s not likely to slip my mind.”
    “Then you know of what I speak. I may have had a leg up on those poor lads, but my success I owe primarily to myself, with some assistance from my Boswell, of course. And you may be surprised to see how some of the old gang has turned out, Wiggins, for example.”
    “So, what are we to do? Just wait?”
    “Not exactly, Watson. You may sleep, if you wish. I, for one, plan to consume an unwholesome amount of shag. Perhaps by the first light of the rosy-fingered dawn, some new avenues may have occurred to me.”
    §
    The rays of faint winter’s sun were beginning to appear when I was awoken by sounds coming from the library of our host. A thick cloud of yellow smoke rolled down the hall, and made me think that either our rooms were on fire, or a window had been left open and allowed in the opalescent London reek. Instead, I found Holmes, sitting upon the floor like some strange Buddha, with crossed legs, and huge books all round him. One lay closed upon his knees, the slamming of which must have been the inciting noise. His face radiated unhappiness.
    “Have you been up all night, Holmes?”
    “I have.”
    “And are you any closer to a solution?”
    He shook his head irritably. “Data, data, Watson! I cannot make fire without wood.”
    “So what are you doing?”
    “I am taking advantage of Mycroft’s excellent selection of classical works. I have often said that the bell chimes the same note. Everything has been done before. It seems that our friend Mortlock has either consciously or unconsciously taken inspiration from the ancient past, so I decided that the most practical thing I could do now is to study the same. I have just finished Herodotus, and found him to be quite instructive.”
    “So what do you plan to do now?”
    “I have seven different lines of inquiry underway. It is to be hoped that one of them will draw blood.”
    But it was not to be. All that day and the next Holmes was in a mood which I would generously call reserved, and less generous people would call miserable. He ran out and ran in, smoked incessantly, and played snatches on his violin, which had been sent up from Fulworth by his old housekeeper. He sank into reveries, devoured sandwiches at irregular hours, and hardly answered the simple questions which I put to him. It was evident to me that things were not going well with his quest.
    Inspector MacDonald stopped in to see if Holmes would assist him with a robbery at the Lane Gas Plant on Horseferry Road in Westminster, but Holmes dismissed him with an ungracious snarl. Inspector Gregson dropped by at one point with a theory that the gold was being stashed in a warehouse in Wapping.
    Holmes, however, was derisive of this idea. “You are as likely to find your bars of gold in Wapping as you are to find an honest man in the Bar of Gold.”
    All day I turned over the case in my mind and found no explanation which appeared to me to be adequate. I finally ventured to inquire of Holmes what had come of the shed in the Lambeth Gardens.
    Holmes had been scratching a tune on his Stradivarius, which I thought might be a variation of Dvorak’s Indian Canzonetta, but he set this down with some asperity and