If you seek a mysterious man, head for 221B Baker Street. If you seek a man of mystery, head for the Diogenes Club. The difference between the two of them might be as subtle as the rain dampening your hair on your way there, but assuming that is better left to ordinary people; to people who fail to take the precautions of a good coat, a short friend and a black umbrella.
We both know that the kinship shared between Mycroft and Sherlock Holmes is the worst possible stroke of hard luck, equivalent to that of nitrogen growing up next door to glycerine. But enough said of the sibling feud of which you are already so familiar with. What is interesting to us is how the little brother he so disdained proved to be the convenient answer to a laced problem that had gained the upper hand of the otherwise detached Mycroft Holmes. As Sherlock was summoned to Buckingham Palace, he was not brought forward to prevent a regal scandal from arising. Mycroft Holmes sent for his little brother in order for him to intervene before the former got scandalously attached to someone. He drove the junior detective into her path to pave his own escape. But sticking his heart back into his suit turned out to be infinitely more complex and painful than anticipated for Mycroft.
Few seemed to understand that silence spoke louder than shouts nowadays. If one wanted to make himself clear in a pickle, he should leave sufficient space for the subtext of his words to do its work. But silence had lost its appeal, it seemed. MOD-men, lamplighters, scalp hunters; they were developing a sad habit of extroversion in their work. Even Sherlock was starting to grow larger than life with that deerstalker and the public acclaim he was basking in as a proclaimed internet phenomenon. He ought to have been pleased about this tendency to throw caution to the wind. It would eventually provide him an invaluable advantage, as the world kept on talking in situations where only he knew to guard his tongue behind gritted teeth, but strangely enough, it merely served to annoy him this evening. With pouted lips, Mycroft bent slightly together to peek out over the armrest of the high-backed oxblood chair. There were more empty chairs in the lounge than ever before. And there was hardly any competition at the tea trolley anymore, he added remorsefully to himself, as he dignified himself again and sipped from a cup raised from its saucer. At least there was still comfort to be found in the warmth of the compulsory dashes of rum in the tea.
It was hardly like him to bother about his surroundings. He usually took great pride in distancing himself at every possible moment. It was a necessary precaution, being the man of power that he had become over the last couple of years. Of course, he could not just choose to play the part of the hermit; not if he wanted to have connections and a wide array of strings to play upon in emergencies and at leisure. Sherlock had always failed to understand this. He chose to present himself as being loftier than a cloud, yet still wondered why he was merited the worst of expressions from the not inconsiderable number of people who didn't muster readily into the Sherlock Holmes-fan vessel. Mycroft knew that society was but the lesser of two weevils. Yet when his duty to the world was done for the day, he much preferred to subscribe to his own company. He maintained a standard that was hard to follow for ordinary people. He was accomplished, he was eloquent, he was foresighted, he was attentive and he was realistic; five traits that rarely managed to merge into the frail shells that the human anatomy turned out to be at best. The ordinary fellow would have thought listing up one's qualities verged on sinful self-flattery; Mycroft considered it a statement of fact levelled to that of intelligence people being the most deceitful of all scoundrels. Mycroft had all sorts of useful connections and acquaintances, the former those whom he could heat to evaporation and the latter those whom he could chill to disintegration. But his innermost door was always locked from the inside. He could not afford to be betrayed like ordinary people could.
As he restored the cup to its realm, Mycroft couldn't help but notice a spread-eagled newspaper abandoned in the neighbouring chair. The newspaper itself was not of any interest, just any other tabloid; members of the club had access to an outright infinity of printed paper bundles, tasteful as well as less informative, and they could summon whatever copy they desired from the wardens with a small crack of the wrist – of course the proper precautions had to be taken to make sure that nobody spoke whilst being on the premises. And by the time he got to the club, Mycroft was usually too fed up with reading after the piles of intelligence and unintelligence in Whitehall to bother with another pile of letters. But a combination of names seemed to wave to him from the chair, as if they had been a family ashore beckoning with a handkerchief to the captain of an anchored vessel. Mycroft got to his feet, picked up his tea cup and bowed over the newspaper:
"MENAGE A TROIS WRENCHED DRY BY WOMAN WITH A WHIP. Prominent novelist Lyall Maskelyne, author of the acclaimed Trafalgar-trilogy, was earlier this morning exposed on Twitter in a most compromising picture of him and a whip-wielding woman at the Greenwich Royal Observatory. The thought of poetic justice crosses one's mind with the recollection of the similar infidelity of Mrs. Serena Maskelyne, the novelist's year-long spouse. Apparently both parties have unknowingly had an affair with the same woman simultaneously. Today's picture was like that of the spouse published by the Twitter-source known as 'TheWhipHand', who has now proven to be the penname of Ms. Irene Adler, the very woman seen with both Mr. and Mrs. Maskelyne in their respective pictures. Ms. Adler has not expressed any statement on the matter apart from the ambiguous 'Know when to be beaten', a motto also to be found in the masthead of her website, recreationalscolding."
A couple of discreet inquiries later, he found himself on the back seat of the compulsory black automobile, staring out at the numerous white mansions of Belgravia. The pristine facades looked positively pigeon-grey when seen through the tinted windows. With one eyebrow dubiously levelled with the strand of hair creasing his forehead, Mycroft averted his gaze past Anthea's shoulder and out the front screen. Puddles of water splashed up on the glass as they soared through the pools plastered on the road, yet he barely noticed the water parting on the glass. He barely noticed anything, to be honest. He had turned his eyes inwards; not to escape the oppressive silence kept between him and his subordinate, but to digest a most coarse meal before the unpredictability of any battle could upset his stomach even further.
From what he had gathered, this Adler-woman was more than just the odd tempest upsetting the urban ocean of scandals. She was infinitely more than just the common female exhibitionist whom he knew one could deal with at the right price. Irene Adler was a dominatrix, a cat-and-mouse artist with the physical grace of the feline and the mental agility of the rodent. She was intelligent and therefore not one he would be foolish enough to underestimate. She was a boatswain on dry land, executing 'punishments' to subjects more than willing to subject to whatever harshship she might have in store for them. She offered recreational scolding to those capable of paying the price for such a treat.
If Mycroft's memory served him right, the crucial difference between the dominatrix and the craftswoman whom he would label the exhibitionist was the distance they chose to keep to their customers. The dominatrix literally had the upper hand with her clients; the exhibitionist was bought to cater for the wishes of any man seeking her company, no matter how superior she might be to him in terms of mental capacity. On her homepage, she had proffered her customers to 'know when they were beaten'. He still did not know whether to interpret that choice of word as witty or disturbing. He was now on his way to a woman who would certainly beat him, given the chance. But he was in no respects akin to any of the customers she might have given such a treatment in the past. That was not just idle flattery; ever since he attained a position of power, he had made certain to keep a weather eye on every man posing a potential threat to his cloak and dagger-work in the government. One of these men were his younger brother Sherlock, but fortunately the fairer sex had as little appeal to him as rugby or gossip, for that matter.
A scarcely clothed woman arousing a scandal and a score of other things best left privy to the imagination would never attract the attention of Sherlock Holmes. Yet it could not be left untouched by his senior, Mycroft Holmes. A person, regardless of gender, who could use her body to her own advantage without the rest of the world taking advantage of it in return, was one to keep an eye out for. The anatomical facets of aforesaid body were of no interest to him. But if she was half as good as that article had sketched her out to be and the handling of both the novelist and his wife had conveyed her as, she had to be subdued, if not kept underneath the umbrella. Keeping her on a leash had crossed his mind and been duly dismissed, though with a thin smile of its aptness. The car keeled slightly to the right and paused next to the damp pavement outside yet another white mansion. Anthea stood sentry behind the door, as she swung it back. Mycroft regained his footing under the raindrops, before he sent her a curt nod and proceeded towards the marble stairs.
It was time for a social call. And when it came down to those, the dominatrix would have to see herself beaten by him. The tip of the umbrella touched the doorbell, and unwillingly, he intercepted his own reflection in the brass number attached to the doorframe. His moist visage conveyed little emotion. Perhaps it was tell-tale enough that his shoulders were littered with shadows of raindrops.