Holmes barely noticed the fading footsteps as his thoughts ran in circles. There had to be something he could use!
He had found no sign of hidden compartments in the ship, nor anything uncommon in the hold. The crew kept normal hours, and even the children on board had not talked of unusual goods, though they might not see something as strange when the ship carried a little of everything. The crew had been pleasant enough, and the captain was a perfect gentleman, never hesitating to let a stranger explore the entire ship alone when Holmes had gone in disguise.
That was odd for a ship, but it all had fit perfectly with the boisterous, affable gentleman who captained the Mary Sue. There was no reason to suspect them of smuggling.
Except that everything was too perfect. Captains did not typically give a stranger free reign. First mates did not generally have the time to spend talking with an artist. Ship crews did not prefer to stay aboard when shore leave was an option, and, most of all, no ship crew was so completely content as he had seen on that ship. No arguments. No tension. No one man set apart from the rest.
It could just be that the crew had resolved their differences over time, but he doubted it. He had shared rooms with Watson for nearly twenty years, and they still argued on occasion. Something was up.
But what?
Tendrils of smoke lifted from his pipe to collect at the ceiling as he paced. He could think of nothing. Perfection did not break the law, and a perfect shield left no mistake for him to use. The crew had to be keeping something quiet, doing their best to stay below notice, but he could hardly drag the captain to court on the charge of "acts too perfectly." He needed proof of wrongdoing.
Could they be smuggling something small enough for the crew to carry in pockets?
His steps paused briefly. That could be it, but what were they carrying? Their ports had reported no thefts, and the list of items available in each city in quantities sufficient to warrant smuggling were all far too large to hide in personal belongings.
So that was out. They would have to be hiding it somewhere in the ship—or else getting their wares between ports, but there were no other ports near their established routes. They could hardly be smuggling sea water!
This was getting him nowhere. He forced himself to start from the beginning.
A dockhand had come with suspicions of smuggling. The ship crew in question had a perfect record with the Yard and, apparently, with each other. The captain was—
The urge to cough snapped him out of his thoughts, and he found the room full of thick smoke. Watson's desk chair was empty, his newest manuscript set to one side. He must have taken his book upstairs.
Holmes set his pipe aside for the moment to open the windows. Mrs. Hudson would scold if he did not air the room before she brought supper, and she had already threatened to raise the rent twice this month. His pocketbook would hardly appreciate another rent increase—not after the last one.
The window above his own desk opened easily, but the one over Watson's was stuck. Holmes braced himself against the desk to shove harder. Mrs. Hudson needed to oil these hinges the next time she cleaned.
The glass abruptly swung open, squealing loudly, and he lost his balance, the inkwell overturning with a faint thump as he reflexively tried not to fall. Ink spilled out to soak several pages on Watson's desk despite Holmes' frantic grab for the papers, and he berated himself for the carelessness. Watson had probably spent all afternoon writing that, and now—wait.
He looked closer. Provided Watson had not started scribbling notes in the center of the page, the sheets were blank—or they had been before Holmes had spilled ink on them. He breathed a sigh of relief, glad he had not ruined several hours of work. He would never purposely damage Watson's manuscripts, and Watson knew it, but that knowledge had not calmed Watson's irritation the last time something had happened. As a rule, Holmes replaced anything he damaged, but he could not buy manuscript pages.
That sparked a new question, however. Where was Watson's newest manuscript? A glance in the desk drawer showed nothing new since the week before.
Unable to resist now, he flipped through the papers on Watson's desk. Watson had mentioned wanting to write up the Baskerville case next, and Holmes had been planning to wait until Watson finished the first draft before he told his friend to publish it. A case that old would do no harm now, and before Switzerland, Holmes had always enjoyed Watson's reaction to the fan mail the Strand forwarded after each installment. It had been far too long since Watson had been able to publish anything. The Baskerville case would make a good filler until a few of their other cases could be made public.
The other papers on the desktop were all blank, and none of the other drawers contained paper at all. Holmes had just decided Watson must have taken his manuscript upstairs with him when he noticed the pen.
It was clean. Perfectly clean. Watson had not written today, despite having sat at his desk for well over an hour before Holmes returned.
Amusement mixed with faint concern. Ships were not the only place where perfection was suspicious, but more importantly, why had Watson not started another manuscript?
He could have taken the used pen with him, Holmes supposed, with the sitting room filling with smoke, but Holmes would ask anyway, on the chance it was something more. He had discovered years ago that it was better to ask and Watson be fine than to let it go and find out later that there was a problem.
The question could wait until Watson joined him for supper, though, and he resumed pacing in front of the fireplace, searching for something he could use to prove the Mary Sue's smuggling operation. He knew it was there, waiting for him, and it was probably incredibly obvious in its simplicity. The most frustrating solutions often were.
It remained elusive, however. Mrs. Hudson's footsteps on the stairs eventually broke him out of his thoughts.
Barely paying attention to the short conversation, he took a seat as he listened for Watson to join him, but silence reigned in the room above even after Mrs. Hudson had taken the tray back to the kitchen. Holmes frowned, eventually leaving the table to step out to the landing. Was Watson not upstairs after all?
"Watson, are you planning to eat?"
There was no answer, but Watson frequently did not answer when focused on his writing. Holmes climbed the stairs, listening for the scratching of a pen.
He heard nothing, and opening the door revealed why. Watson lay slumped against the headboard, a closed novel on the end table and his newest medical text unnoticed on his lap as he snored softly. Holmes started to close the door, intending to save some of supper's leavings on the chance Watson woke before morning, but Watson roused when the door squeaked. He slowly stretched and pulled himself upright.
"Supper is on the table," Holmes said quietly when Watson glanced around the room.
Watson started minutely, blearily focusing on where Holmes stood in the doorway, but he nodded a moment later. Holmes went back downstairs.
"I do not believe you have fallen asleep to a medical textbook before," Holmes said when Watson eventually joined him.
His friend huffed a tired laugh. "Your memory is faulty then."
Holmes smothered a smirk. Watson's love of reading did not stop him from falling asleep when he grew tired enough. His patient this morning must have knocked rather early.
Watson said nothing else, however, and a couple of minutes passed before Holmes tried again.
"I am afraid I ruined a few sheets of paper on your desk," he admitted, noting Watson's reaction. "The stopper fell out of the inkwell when I knocked it over."
Watson waved him off, swallowing before answering, "They were blank. Don't worry about it."
There was his opening. "You took your manuscript upstairs?" He pretended to think about it, then nodded. "The air would be cleaner up there."
Watson did not try to hide a smile. "Much cleaner," he agreed between bites, "without you filling it with smoke, but I did not take a manuscript upstairs. You know I prefer to leave those in this desk. I was trying to read before I fell asleep."
Holmes raised an eyebrow, and Watson rolled his eyes.
"Why does that surprise you? You have complained many times about how boring my textbooks are."
He could not suppress the twitched grin. "It does not. I just thought you were planning to write today."
"And you were hoping to read the manuscript as I wrote it again," Watson finished, glancing up.
Holmes' glass hit the table a touch harder than he had intended. "Again?" he repeated. He had not known Watson knew about that.
Watson grinned mischievously. "Did you really think I do not notice? You have put more than one page back in the drawer upside down."
Holmes huffed, irritated he had made such a simple mistake. "Merely checking that you included all the facts," he replied primly.
"Of course," Watson replied, his tone revealing he understood exactly why Holmes read each page as soon as Watson left the room. He knew it had nothing to do with fact checking. "Is that how you knocked over the inkwell, searching for my manuscript?"
Holmes affected a frown. "No. I was trying to open the windows."
His friend glanced at the window in question, noting where his inkwell currently sat as well as how the corner of the desk stood in the way of the window catch.
"It needs oiling," he remembered, "and it would have opened abruptly. You knocked over the inkwell trying not to fall, and it spilled on the papers. You checked to see what the ink had ruined, and, finding blank pages instead of the manuscript you expected to find, you would have started looking for the manuscript." Watson met Holmes' gaze, smiling again at his feigned frustration. "Did you come to my room to look there, too?"
"No," he answered shortly, unable to fully cover his amusement beneath irritation. Hiding things had been easier before Watson started learning to deduce. "I thought you had taken it with you to write upstairs. Why have you stopped writing?"
Watson shrugged away the question. "Writer's block. Wanting to write does not mean I have the words to begin." He paused to take another bite. "Besides, what does it matter if I write it now or in a month? It's not like I have a deadline. You and I both know these will never see print."
"Are you sure about that?"
Watson did not even glance up from his plate. "Why would I not be? You hate it when someone recognizes us because of my scribblings."
Only when he was trying to pass unnoticed, which was why he had created so many new disguises in addition to improving his old ones.
"What does that matter?"
His friend merely rolled his eyes. "That recognition has interfered with our cases more than once, such as the one in Ireland. As soon as I release another case, more people will start to recognize us. The recognition that brings us more cases is the same recognition that sees through the occasional disguise."
"So we improve the disguises. That does not mean you will never publish."
Watson made no immediate reply, and his attention remained focused on his plate. "Have you found anything more on the case?"
Holmes could not cover a scowl. "Why do you think you will never publish again?" he asked, refusing to let Watson change the topic.
A sigh carried across the table. "I know you enjoy it, Holmes, but I am not awake enough to argue, especially about this."
"Fine." This was hardly the kind of argument he enjoyed, but he would return to this later. Watson should not think so lowly of his writing. "No, I have found nothing to indicate they are carrying anything besides their normal, varied cargo."
Watson thought for a moment. "Describe the ship." Holmes did not answer, and Watson glanced up. "Come on, Holmes. We both know you saw the pivotal clue while you were there, and voicing the facts has helped reveal it before. Describe the ship to me."
Holmes hesitated, readjusting in his chair, but Watson was right. Verbalizing the facts of the case often helped him organize them and many times had illuminated the one key element he had been overlooking.
"The Mary Sue is a former sloop-of-war," he said between bites, "that was converted to a three-masted cargo ship with four decks. The hold is the largest, where they store the bulk of their wares, but there is also what was originally the gun deck. They converted the area to store some extra supplies as well as their more non-perishable goods, and now it resembles the hold more than anything else. The berth deck is lined with hammocks, with a few officer rooms at the stern and a medical bay at the bow, and the main deck is surrounded by a waist-high rail. She sits low in the water, and the lower two decks are completely dark.
"A search of the hold revealed cloth, spices, a small case of jewelry, and a few other common trade items. The medical bay had nothing too different than what I have seen in your bag, though when asked, the mate answered that some of the unfamiliar items were newer medical equipment. The galley carried the normal rations and cookware, and there was no room for any hidden compartments.
"There have been no incidents dealing with the crew since the ship docked ten days ago, nor have there been any the last three times they have docked here. The captain displayed a relaxed relationship with his crew, but as soon as he said to do something, they did it, and there were no signs of strife between any of the crew themselves.
"The ship is kept cleaner than most cargo ships I have seen, and aside from the typical scattering of a few personal belongings near each hammock, everything was put away as if ready for an inspection. None of the officer rooms had anything lying about, and even the hold had everything organized to the point of extremes."
"A clean, well-ordered ship," Watson murmured, obviously thinking. "What did they carry in the way of supplies?"
Holmes pictured the neatly sectioned area of the hold. "Hardtack, water, rum, oats, dried meat, dried vegetables, tea, and signs of fresh fruits from the last port."
"What about spares?"
Holmes frowned. "They had at least one of everything, sometimes two. Sails, well over a thousand feet of rope, knives, various metal parts that matched those I saw on the mast and elsewhere, and other things."
A thought crossed Watson's face as he nudged his depleted plate aside. "What 'newer equipment' did they have in the medical bay?"
"Two small tanks, tubing, something he called a 'sphygmomanometer,' and metal pieces that apparently comprised a device to help with seasickness."
Wait. Why would a cargo ship need air tanks in the medical bay? Unless…
He pictured the rest of the ship. Had there been another out-of-place piece of equipment somewhere?
An image came of a full body suit drying with the captain's personal belongings. Holmes had barely noticed it at the time, but why would a cargo ship captain need a diving suit?
Watson smiled, seeing the realization bloom. "There is no device to help with seasickness," he confirmed, "and a sphygmomanometer measures blood pressure."
Which decompression sickness raises, Holmes finished. He quickly pushed himself away from the table, grabbing one of last week's newspapers from where it had fallen when the dockhand came with this case. A quick search revealed the article he remembered reading.
"There have been four cargo ships wrecked in storms in the last five months," he announced. "All of them carried jewels and precious metals, and three of them sank within a day's journey from the Mary Sue's route. Well done, Watson! Come!"
Pausing only just long enough for Watson to gain his feet, he hurried out the door. The ship was due to leave with the morning tide. They would have to set this trap tonight.
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Thanks to MCH1987, Corynutz, J3rs3yG1rl, and Guest for the feedback on the last chapter :)