A Case of High Treason – Part 2

Sherlock:

We arrived at our destination. Not the ministry but the Diogenes Club a couple of minutes later.

"It's more discrete here," Mycroft explained unnecessarily.

I had figure out as much myself without difficulty. A meeting at this time of day at the ministry would have aroused some suspicion, but here, where the shrewdest men of the empire assembled, at the oddest of times, no-one would think much of it. The club was not only famous for the unsociable habits of its members but also for the odd times they came and went as well as for its exclusiveness.

Mycroft's informal attire did rouse the butler's eyebrows, for sure, and I was certain had he been anybody else, he would not have been allowed to enter, but since he was, well Mycroft Holmes, it was the only indication of the man's disapproval.

We passed the visitors' room to enter a small parlour to the back, where we were already awaited by an indignant looking Lord Holthurst, and a man I assumed was said, Mr Palmer. The latter looked a cautious fellow, with sharp eyes and stern set lips, an impression that was increased as he was pressing them together in apparent anger.

"There you are at last!" he squeezed out from between his teeth, more a growl than actual words. "What on earth took you this long, Holmes? Baker Street is but a quarter of an hour at most at this time of day. You should've been back almost an hour ago."

"Yes, but Chiswick isn't," I remarked, irked at how he spoke to my brother.

"Chiswick? Well, nevermind, at long last you are here and that is all that matters," Holthurst anticipated his colleague's reply with a warning side-glance towards him. "Now, Palmer, the situation is bad enough without us quarrelling among ourselves! - I take it your brother has filled you in, Mr Holmes?"

"He has, though he couldn't say what steps have been taken in the meanwhile, only that you send someone out to track down Mr Morton but without any success."

"Well, that is an easy question to answer, we did nothing but wait for you to appear," Morton snapped, ignoring his superior's words of warning. "This is something that cannot become public and it was already a gamble to send out inquiries as to Morton's whereabouts. Unsuccessfully, I might add."

"How far have these inquiries extended? Did you contact the man's family?"

"Of course not!"

What was so 'of course' about that, I wondered. It would have been an obvious step even with all the secrecy required, there was always an excuse one could give. One didn't even have to be all that creative, perhaps a misunderstanding or whatever, I could probably come up with ten reasons to give to the family that would've explained such an inquiry if it weren't futile to ponder upon it just now.

"Have you been to his lodgings?" I instead asked, hoping that at least that had been taken care of.

"Only to see whether he was there or not. He wasn't there so we went on. We have been busy enough trying to track him all the way to Dover anyway. There was only so much we could do," Palmer remarked acidly.

Well, perhaps that was for the better. At least then the room would be undisturbed when I searched it for clues. - If there were any, that was...

"Which you obviously haven't since you've lost his track somewhere along the way," I pointed out trying to keep it even, though I was getting increasingly exasperated.

Did these men even want to find the papers?

Mycroft started to look irritated as well now. As important as the matter was, until now it had been handled incredibly poorly and stuporous. In my mind, I slotted down to both send a telegram to the missing man's parents to inquire whether they knew about his whereabouts and also search through his belongings. For all we knew, he might have gone simply back home, or taken another route. If there really was a leak in the ministry, it might have become necessary to make a change of plans without being able to inform his superiors about it. Well, it sounded logical. As yet it would fit all the facts we knew. But perhaps that was too easy. Though occasionally things could be surprisingly simple, in this instance, though I hoped for it to be so, I didn't dare rely on it.

"So, for how far could you track him then?"

"We spoke to his landlady and according to her he left his lodgings shortly after five to take the train from London Waterloo at six taking a hansom."

"Do you know whether he actually arrived at the station?"

"He must have, his ticket was picked up," Holthurst replied quickly. "But no-one remembered seeing him and he looks much like any other man of medium height, with brown hair and a clean-shaven face. There is nothing really remarkable about Morton, safe for him using yellow-tinted glasses when reading, that would make people remember him amongst so many others. - And those glasses are on his desk."

"You won't happen to have a photograph of the man?" I asked.

Many an initially inconspicuous man had the one or other trait that distinguished him from his fellows without them necessarily picking up on it. Especially not when seeing this man on a daily basis. There could be the tiny mole almost covered by an eyebrow, a slightly crooked nose, or a gap between the teeth. It was incredible what people often overlooked or had gotten so accustomed to that they no longer registered it. I had only recently been victim to the same phenomenon when Watson, who hadn't seen Hattie for a few weeks had remarked on how much she had increased while I, though seeing her middle swell, had not yet noticed how heavy with child she had become. - For me, she simply grew more and more beautiful as the days passed and the time of her confinement drew nearer.

But alas they had no photograph, so we had to make do without.

As no more was to be found out here, Mycroft and I left, for once working together and for once him being the messier looking one.

We stopped shortly at the post office down Pall Mall to send a telegram to the young man's family inquiring whether they knew where he might be since he had not reported into work and the office had not received word of him being ill. Naturally delaying for it to be sent on at a reasonable hour where this claim would go unquestioned. If the girl behind the counter was surprised at our request, she didn't show it but put the telegram form aside for the moment. And so we went on to Morton's lodgings which were literally just around the corner, a stone's throw away from my brother's own abode.

It was, in every respect not much different from most bachelor's residences that blotted this part of town, unsuitable for families due to the hustle and bustle of a busy night-life in so close a proximity to the Strand. It was so squeaky clean that even Mrs Hudson would be ashamed of herself and to my amusement, every single visitor was required to leave his shoes at the entrance and don a pair of excessively large felt slippers, that involuntarily made one glide across the polished wood of the hallway instead of actually walking. Even Mycroft couldn't suppress a grin.

"Reminds me of that one time we went ice-skating," he chuckled as we reached the stairs and started to climb up awkwardly, every now and then losing our footwear until exasperatedly we took it off altogether. "Do you remember?"

Thank goodness the landlady had turned her back or we would probably have received a scolding.

"You mean the one time I broke through the ice and had me hope I wouldn't need to go to school? Yes, I DO remember. It was hellishly cold."

"Now, that Sherlock, is an oxymoron if ever there was one..."

"Yes, and at any rate, it is completely irrelevant right now. There is room 14 – or rather 13, but the landlady seems to be superstitious as well as meticulously clean," I pointed at the door in question before putting the slippers back on and heading towards it.

Admittedly, despite the seriousness of the situation, it was difficult to keep a fairly straight face seeing that two grown men were basically making an utter fool of themselves by gliding across a landing in the least dignified manner possible. Was it a stretch to assume that visitors were but sparse? Probably not. The landlady could not have made it any clearer that she didn't appreciate having visitors in the house.

Morton's room was, as was to be expected just as tidy and clean, the bed was made so evenly that I would not have been surprised if the maid had to use a measuring tape in order to put the pillow in the exact right spot, three inches from the top and eight on either side. How any man could live like this was beyond me, truth be told. One dared wonder if the poor sod was even allowed to sleep in it for fear of wrinkling the sheets.

If cleanliness really was next to godliness, then the lady heading this house had to be considered divine.

One glance into Morton's drawers, however, revealed that at least she wasn't prone to snooping around, for they were delightfully messy. At least in comparison to the rest of the room. If I had hoped for something being out of place, I was disappointed at any rate. There was nothing that shouldn't be there, and little that told us anything about the man himself. Well, he seemingly was an avid reader of 'The Times' and 'The Evening Standard', he didn't smoke, seemed to have a taste for literature and obviously played snooker, but that was pretty much it. Judging from his clothes he was neither a dandy nor careless in his attire. He appeared to be, in every respect a boring kind of fellow.

"You don't happen to know whether he's a member of any club?" I asked my brother, who was busy flipping through the books on the shelf beside the bed, all arranged in alphabetical order safe for one single volume, that though it should have been placed together with the other works by authors starting with the letter 'D' had, presumably due to its larger size, been tucked away at the very bottom of the shelf and right at the side as to avoid for it being an 'eyesore'. Had I hoped for it to have some deeper meaning, I was disappointed. Except for the name of the owner, they were all equally devoid of any information relevant for our case.

"No," he replied wearily. "And as yet, I haven't come across anything that might give us a clue, Sherlock."

"Not I," I sighed, running my fingers through my hair in an imitation of my brother's gesture just now.

Our last hope was the man's Davenport. We had saved it for last since it was neatly locked and naturally would need the most attention anyway. Had we hoped to find the key to it somewhere hidden in the room, we were disappointed. Shame Hattie wasn't there! But alas, my penknife would have to do and though it was fiddly I eventually managed after much cursing and managing to cut my finger. In future, I would remember to carry a hairpin in my waistcoat pocket.

Once unlocked, the bureau revealed a stack of papers from the ministry, all of little importance, some personal correspondence, mainly from the man's mother that were eerily improper in their affection she declared for her son and which had me blush somewhat. However, the mystery was quickly solved when I found yet another stack of letters that also were headed 'my dear son' and in an altogether different handwriting, while the contents sounded much more like what a mother would write.

"He's got a secret lover," I informed my brother. "And the landlady seems to be nosy after all. Unless he has a very peculiar taste..."

I held out the missives for Mycroft to inspect. Personally, I could not imagine my wife calling me 'son' nor I her 'mother' when speaking of decidedly intimate matters.

"Well, all letters have been sent from the same post office, so both mother and lover are living close to each other," he came to the same conclusion than I.

Right at the Davenport's back, hidden underneath several unused envelopes, some of them crumpled, I found his address book still opened, as if it had been pushed aside in some haste. Odd! And the real first thing that was decidedly out of place in this overly tidy and organised chamber. With shaking hands, I reached for it and read the address he had been looking for last.

Bryson Howard
61 Rue de l'Éperon
Paris – Monnaie

It was our first real lead. Morton had been in a hurry to reach his train, and he was bound for Paris. If he had written to a friend there, it was fairly safe to assume that he had asked to stay with him there. Then it occurred to me, that if that was the case, he would have had to send a telegram in order for it being there before he himself was. Still, our next step was clear. We needed contact this man.

A.N.: I hope you like this case so far. I had actually thought it would be Watson helping Sherlock with this case, but then unexpectedly Mycroft offered his assistance... Well, as yet, this is only the beginning, so Watson might need to step in eventually. And at any rate, we see too little of Mycroft in the original stories anyway. Plus, as indicated, Sherlock and Watson are still solving cases together behind the scenes of this story. ;)

So, tell me what you think. Nicely, as always ;)

Love

Nic