Chapter 3:"All at Sea"
All at Sea: Nautical term for a state of confusion and disorder.
Watson:
I slept well that night, the combination of such a wonderful evening at the operetta and then the coming home to a new case putting me in an admirably pleasant frame of mind, and I slept straight through the night, waking to a glorious burst of golden sunshine peeking in through the blinds of my window.
It was promising to be a very lovely day, and I was in a particularly cheerful mood as I dressed, the songs from that operetta continuing to go through my mind as I readied myself for the day.
I was still humming as I fairly bounced down the stairs to the sitting room – I could smell coffee and knew that Holmes must already be up. Of course he was; he had a new case, only the third since his return!
"Good morning, Holmes," I cried, opening the door to the sitting room with a bright smile, "it is going to be a – oh dear heavens!"
My jaw dropped as I saw the tornado that had struck our sitting room overnight. Holmes was standing in the middle of the room by the table, surrounded by a white paper carpet that blanketed the floor in every direction.
Why he felt the need to toss about every document and paper we owned in searching for the always elusive one he wanted was a mystery I for one would never be able to solve.
"Holmes, what in heaven's name!" I gasped, taking a long jump over a strewn pile of scrapbooks that blocked my path for three feet.
He was staring fixedly at a long map of the eastern hemisphere that he had fixed to the wall with – I winced at the thought of what Mrs. Hudson would say – his pocketknife and several sharp tacks, completely ignoring me.
I tripped over a stack of books – why had he thrown them on the floor instead of placing them on the desks? – and nearly made a crash landing on the couch, only to see that it too was covered with papers. I barely kept my balance and turned to look at what else he had destroyed during the night.
Two other maps, one of the Indonesian islands and one obviously a nautical chart of wind and current patterns, were affixed – I did not wish to know how – to my desk and to the side of the file cabinet.
Holmes was scrutinizing the one in front of him, carefully and meticulously tracing a path on it in pencil and then going back over it with a large red felt pen.
"What the devil are you doing, Holmes!" I asked at last, not believing the mess one man could have made in one night.
"Not now, Watson," he said impatiently, "I am engaged at the moment!"
"So I see," I replied tiredly, shoving aside a stack of files – 1882? What had he been doing going through twelve-year-old case records?
Even as I bent to pick up a leather portfolio that was dangerously close to the fireplace, Holmes suddenly stabbed the map rather viciously with a large colored stick-pin and turned to a sheaf of papers that had somehow made their way to comparative safety on the sideboard.
I heard a violent curse as he began to riffle through the stack at such a speed I was sure he would tear the pages, and when I voiced a mild protest as he flung the discarded ones over his shoulder instead of restacking them, I was met only with a growl.
I dodged a flying envelope, catching it and a large manila folder before they went into the grate, and somehow managed to make Holmes's desk by the window before being sliced to ribbons by the documents sailing through the air.
"Holmes, what in heaven's name are you searching for?" I asked, pouring myself a cup of coffee.
There was a very loud crash behind me, and I closed my eyes, praying for patience. Then, and only then, did I turn round.
"Oh, Holmes…" I moaned, seeing that he had torn down the map from my desk, taking several dictionaries and journals with him to the floor.
I poured milk into my coffee and watched as he again ignored me, sitting cross-legged on the floor with the map across his knees and two papers in his hand, copying notes from the documents onto the Indonesian map, his thin face furrowed with intense concentration.
There was a knock on the door, and we both started rather guiltily and looked at each other.
"Um, Watson?"
"I am already on it, Holmes," I said hastily, jumping over the closest pile of files, trying to get to the door before our landlady opened it and saw what Holmes had done to the sitting room.
"Thank you!" my companion called after me as I tripped over those confounded scrapbooks, frantically groping for the doorknob. Even Sherlock Holmes was not over-eager to push his luck with our good landlady.
But the estimable woman opened the door just as I reached it, nearly hitting me in the face.
"Oh, Doctor! I am sorry!"
"It – it's quite all right, Mrs. Hudson," I gasped, rubbing my head and hastily taking the breakfast tray from her hands. I endeavored to move so that I was blocking her from seeing the room's condition.
"Will you and Mr. Holmes be wanting anything else just now, Doctor?" she asked, peering past me suspiciously.
There was a crash of breaking china behind us in the room, and the good woman's eyes grew round as she sent me a pointed look.
"Do you really think I can stop it, Mrs. Hudson?" I asked meaningfully as Holmes erupted into a bout of colorful swearing amidst another smaller crash.
She relinquished the tray to me with surprising alacrity. "Just see that he doesn't destroy the new curtains, Doctor, if you please," the woman warned me sternly, "or tomorrow there will be no breakfast!"
"Yes, Mrs. Hudson," I replied meekly, shutting the door hastily after she had regally swept back to the stairs.
"Hah! There you are!" Holmes cried with a dry laugh, pouncing like a cat on his largest magnifying lens, which had either fallen or been thrown halfway across the room to land under his chemical table.
I shook my head and then tackled the problem of where I was going to eat breakfast, for the table, my desk, the chemical table, the chairs, and the couch were all buried under a blizzard of paperwork.
With my legs I shuffled a tiny path through the debris and went back to Holmes's desk, where the coffee pot stood, and after a bit of debate and realizing there was nowhere else to go, hopped up and sat upon it, balancing the breakfast tray upon my knees.
"Eggs, Holmes?" I asked serenely, as if sitting on his desk were the most normal thing in the world – indeed, in Baker Street, I doubted if the word 'normal' could ever describe our activities.
Holmes was inspecting another map, tapping his pen thoughtfully against his lower lip. Then he began to rummage through yet another stack of papers from the floor.
I lifted up my feet as he came close to smacking his head into my shoe.
"Toast, Holmes?"
He threw a leather-bound volume across the room, where it slammed into the wall with a thud. I cringed, hoping Mrs. Hudson could not hear.
"Coffee, Holmes?"
"I cannot for the life of me figure it out, Watson," he muttered.
"The map, or breakfast?"
He started out of his reverie and glanced at me, perched on his desk, trying to balance a coffee cup in one hand and a slice of toast in the other. For a moment Holmes just stared at me, and then he began to laugh out loud.
"Watson, what are you doing?"
"Eating breakfast," I stated the obvious, "won't you have some?"
"Why are you sitting on my desk?" he asked, laughing once again at my odd position.
"Probably because every other article of furniture in here has been destroyed in your search for whatever it was you were looking for," I replied, cautiously setting down the cup and reaching for the kippers.
But I leaned too far forward and the tray started to slip. I tried to grab it with a startled yelp as it slid off my knees, and Holmes dove for the thing before it tipped completely off my legs, catching the edge of it and bringing it upright once more.
For a moment we both looked at each other in silence, and then we burst into a joint fit of laughter at the absurdity of the situation.
Holmes was still laughing a moment later as he shoved a load of papers off one half of the table and hopped up across from me. I grinned and handed him a cup of coffee and a plate.
"This is ridiculous," he muttered, stirring sugar into his coffee.
"What exactly were you trying to accomplish here, Holmes?" I asked, holding out the plate of toast.
"First, I was charting the disappearing ships' courses, for one thing, and marking where they were reported to have been lost with all hands. As Lachlan said, all three of the ones he mentioned disappeared off the Indonesian islands," my companion replied, crunching down on his toast.
"And those are just the three that he knows of personally," I added, "who knows how many more are being taken the same way and re-sold to shipping lines."
"The oddest part of the business is two-fold," Holmes went on, sipping his coffee, "because I cannot for the life of me see any motive for the actions. These three ships are from three different rivaling lines. If they were all from the same line, that would be highly suspicious of sabotage from a rival or else simple piracy of rival ships."
"But three different lines – that does not make any sense," I agreed, passing him the kippers.
Holmes speared one and tossed it onto his plate, then tapped the fork thoughtfully against his thin lips.
"You said it was two-fold, Holmes?"
"Yes, Watson. The other odd issue is that, although these three steamships were freighters, there have been no less than three dozen ships that supposedly disappeared in that same vicinity in the last five years, and many of those were passenger vessels."
"But ships go down on a fairly regular basis," I protested, balancing the tray while I poured myself more coffee.
"Yes, but not all from the same line," Holmes said, pointing his fork at me for emphasis.
I stopped, staring at him over the rim of my cup.
"They're all from the Langsing line?"
"Nearly all of them. Langsing is a cargo shipping line but they also own many passenger vessels that make voyages to India, Indonesia, and Australia," said he, absently finishing off his breakfast.
"Then that is rather odd," I agreed, "were you up all night figuring all this out, Holmes?"
"No, no, I was just up early, old chap," he said, hopping off the table and leaving the dishes upon it, "but now we must be getting on."
"On where?" I asked, sliding off the desk, holding the tray aloft so as not to spill anything.
"I need to find Lachlan again," my friend replied, shrugging out of his dressing gown on his way to his bedroom. He tripped over a stack of books, sending them sliding all over the floor, and growled something unintelligible before vanishing into his bedroom.
"Find him for what?" I called, trying to clear a path to the door.
"I need more information about the shipping lines, the boats, and also I need to find some other contacts from sailors that might recognize ships in port," Holmes bellowed back.
"Shall we be going to Portsmouth afterwards?" I called, stacking up a large sheaf of papers and placing them on my desk.
"I have no idea," he replied, coming back into the sitting room, tripping over the same stack of books he had on his way out, kicking one of them impatiently away to crash into the leg of the couch.
I stuffed my journal into my pocket and then grabbed my black medical case – I rarely left the flat without it, knowing Sherlock Holmes, and never if there were a chance that we would not be returning for several hours. Just as a precaution, I pulled my revolver from the desk and put it into the bag, for I was taking no chances on anything happening.
Holmes snatched his cigarette case and matches from the mantel, shoved them and his lens into his pockets, and then bulldozed a path from the fireplace to the door, sending clutter scooting across the floor to every remote part of the room.
I sighed, thinking of the mess I in all probability would be the one to clean up later upon our return, and followed him out the door.
I tried to shut the sitting room door behind me, and when it stuck on one of Holmes's precious scrapbooks, I glanced ahead of me to see that he was already out of sight down the stairs; then I booted it away from the door and closed it forcefully, wishing sometimes that Holmes were as neat and precise in his filing as he was in his solving of cases.
But the game was afoot, and I was eager to leave the mess behind and participate in it – I hurried down the stairs to catch up with my friend.