THE STRONG BOX, THE TORCH AND THE WARDROBE
"Sherlock Holmes, if you don't get out of there at once, I'm coming in!"
"Go away, Mycroft!"
Redbeard, Sherlock's faithful old dog, watched the scene attentively and snarled under his breath.
"I'll be counting to three!"
"Can you do that?"
Mycroft once more hammered his fist against the wardrobe door in exasperation, then took a deep breath and cried, "One!"
"Good start, that," piped up his little brother on the inside of the wardrobe, but being him, made no sign of caving in. Redbeard edged a little closer and eyed Mycroft suspiciously.
"Two!"
"Just get lost, will you?"
Funny enough, the boy sounded just as vexed as Mycroft felt, which gave the latter no little pleasure. He was supposed to look after the nuisance because their parents had gone to the theatre and not love nor money could buy a babysitter for the little bugger, so consequently, it had been one of the worst evenings of Mycroft's entire life. His brother was nothing if not a pain in the back at the best of times, but tonight, he had taken things up a notch yet.
"Three!"
"Don't you touch the sodding door, Mycroft, I'm warning you!"
"You! Warning me! Oh, you cheeky little sod!"
He was so out of himself, he had some difficulties trying to force the lock open by means of a propelling pencil – he'd have used the screwdriver that their mother kept in one of the kitchen drawers for minor emergencies, but hadn't found the bloody thing – and all the while Sherlock on the inside kept on uttering absurd threats and Redbeard butted in, trying to push him aside.
"What do you even think you're doing there, eh?! You've got to come out of there eventually –"
"We shall see about that, shall we?"
"And if you'll allow me giving you a fair warning, you'll better be out of there before Mummy comes back! It's bad enough as it is!"
Sherlock gave no answer, but that didn't matter because Mycroft had finally succeeded with the stupid lock and yanked the door open. He gaped at what he was seeing there. Instead of fleeing into the wardrobe to simply hide from shame and play dead, Sherlock had removed two of the shelves and put them aside, and standing on a stool with a torch light scotch-taped to his head, was employing the missing screwdriver to disassemble the backside of the wardrobe and some other integral parts of the structure. He didn't even interrupt his labours when the light from the hallway fell in, but gnarled between gritted teeth that Mycroft should 'better close the door and now!'
Mycroft was too perplexed to wonder, and on a second look, he spotted something even worse – the top, too high for Sherlock to reach even on his stool, had come loose and was perilously close to dropping down on the kid, who still kept on unscrewing the back panel as if nothing had happened. The older boy snatched his brother's collar and jerked him out only a second before the heavy oak top came crashing down, and not five seconds later, the entire wardrobe, approximately four hundred years old, collapsed accompanied by furious barks from Redbeard.
Sherlock wasn't fazed by the wreckage, nor grateful for the rescue, but stared hard at the wall behind and made a very disappointed face. "There's nothing there," he muttered with a pout.
"What did you think would be there?!" shouted Mycroft, trying to regain his composure but really just craving to throttle the obstinate child. That wardrobe must have been a priceless antique, and he would be the one held responsible for its destruction!
"A passage," replied Sherlock smugly and shrugged his shoulders. "I guess my calculations weren't quite as exact as I'd thought they'd be."
"Calculations? Calculations! Oh, you idiotic little smartass, your calculations!" He grabbed Sherlock's arm and dragged him away. "What sort of passage did you mean to find there? The way to Narnia or what!"
"Don't be silly. Obviously, there must be a priest-hole in the house and I had figured out that it must be through the wardrobe, that's all."
The boy was speaking rather calmly, which was at odds with the fierce resistance he put up to his older brother's rough manhandling of him trying to get him upstairs and into his bed, a task even more difficult because Sherlock's dog tried to protect his master by biting the assailant, a thankfully fruitless pursuit because Redbeard had long lost his last tooth.
Their parents were due any minute now and if Sherlock wasn't at least locked up in his room by then... Somehow – Mycroft couldn't yet say how, but somehow he'd be blamed for everything that had gone wrong tonight, he was certain of so much. Being the older one, he was always the one who got the blame. In the hallway lay a ruined antique, Mr Holmes' strong box had been broken into with their mother's jewellery all over the place, a window had been smashed and a marble table top scratched (how that was even possible, Mycroft dared not thinking about), yet somehow the worst of it all seemed to him in this moment that he had promised their mother that he'd see to Sherlock going to bed by eight o'clock and now it was past eleven.
Incidentally, the child had no intention to go to his room now either. Instead he grabbed at every solid-looking object (and the not so solid ones too, unfortunately) on the way, the banister railings (each one individually), door knobs, side tables (speaking of not-very-solid objects and destruction), he even ripped a telephone cable out of the wall.
"Let go, damn it! Mummy will be so cross with you!"
"Yeah, but with you she'll be even crosser! Weren't you supposed to look after me?"
That was it. He'd had it. He slapped the child and pulled his hair and very successfully so one might add, for Sherlock let go of his latest sheet anchor. For a split second, Mycroft believed himself to be the winner of this little struggle, but then Sherlock started kicking and boxing him in return. He felt like a rugby player and puffed like a steam engine when he had finally managed his Herculean task and had thrown the kid onto his bed and jumped right after him to make sure he stayed where he was.
"Get off me!" Sherlock protested with a furious wail. "You're crushing me, you fat walrus!"
He still had the torch plastered to his head, and only now Mycroft realised he hadn't used scotch- but gaffer tape for this. Smartboy clearly hadn't taken the long view. His older brother put his tongue in his cheek, shrugged, and thought that he really shouldn't deny himself the pleasure. Then he ripped off torch and tape with one swift move, pulling out swatches of dark, curly hair and abrasing the skin, and making the child scream out loud. Served the little bugger right.
"You are so stupid, Sherlock, language fails me to describe how incredibly stupid you are!" the older brother snarled, staring a little aghast at the masses of dark hair still glued to the tape. "It's offensive, really! It's offensive to have a close relative being such a stupid little arse!"
"Deal with it! I've got to deal with having a pompous twit of a brother that looks like a whale, too!"
Mycroft raised his hand. "Want another?!" His weight was a very touchy subject with him. Sherlock knew that just as well, and changed his tactics in their ongoing struggle. He let go of Mycroft's wrists and pinched his midriff bulges instead, making good use of his fingernails.
"My, you've really put on weight again, haven't you!" he mocked with relish, and perfectly unconcerned by the fact that he didn't stand a chance. "Also, I'm not stupid!"
"I beg to differ!"
"Fatty!"
"You never ever plan ahead, Sherlock, and that's what's called 'stupidity', so face it, you are stupid. You plaster your hair with glue not thinking that it must come off again, you dismantle something not thinking ahead that it'll come down on you next. That's why you're such a loser at chess, too!"
"I beat you only the day before yesterday!"
"Only because you cheated!"
"I did not!"
Oh yes, he must have had, only that Mycroft couldn't prove it. Otherwise he could impossibly have beaten a thirteen-year-old, it just wasn't possible. Sitting on the skinny boy, Mycroft just snatched his hands and pinned them sideways, and they remained like this for a few minutes; the older brother needed to recover his breath, the younger looked like suffocating, too, but Mycroft didn't doubt that this was rather for frustration than actual breathing constraints. After all, he wasn't that fat.
He wondered, a tad defeatist, what he should do next. As soon as he'd let go of the child, he'd be out of his bed once more, surely, and would continue to wreak havoc. But he couldn't keep on sitting on top of him either. Should he tie the kid up? What would their parents think of that measure, contrasted to the possible hazards of letting him loose? Luckily – or not – he needn't worry any longer, because he heard a loud yell from downstairs, indicating Mr and Mrs Holmes had just returned home and discovered the wrecked wardrobe in the hallway.
"Mycroft Ebenezer Scott Holmes, come down here this instant!"
He groaned and let go of his brother. "Now what, silly? Don't you want to join me?"
"Didn't hear Mummy calling for me," Sherlock replied snidely and folded his arms across his chest.
"Suit yourself," Mycroft sighed, braced himself and trotted downstairs. His parents had not even taken their coats off, they were just staring at the demolition, in Mr Holmes' case helpless while Mrs Holmes' cheeks were paper-white. Never a good sign, he knew.
"What on earth..." gasped his father when spotting him on the stairs, but clearly couldn't go on.
"Mycroft, dear – what is this?" asked his mother in a constrained voice. She was on the brink of exploding, so much was certain, and Mycroft couldn't blame her. And she hadn't yet seen her husband's study yet!
"Sherlock was looking for a priest-hole," he replied matter-of-factly. "And before you start aggravating yourself because of this, I suggest you take a look at Daddy's safe."
"The... The safe?" gasped Mr Holmes and instantly rushed upstairs.
Mrs Holmes pursed her lips. "I don't suppose that we got burgled, no?"
"Not by ordinary burglars, if that's what you mean."
"Mind your attitude, young man!"
He couldn't but scowl at her. "Look, it's not as if I had done any of this! The little scumbag –"
"Mycroft!"
"What! He takes down the house, and yet you're giving me the lecture about it!"
"Because you were supposed to look after him! If you'd sent him to bed like I told you –"
"I did! I did send him to bed, but what do you suggest I should have done to make him stay there?! Camp out in the hallway in front of his door?!"
"That would have been one possibility."
"I had to study for my history class!"
Mrs Holmes gave a dry laugh. "Don't be ridiculous, darling."
Truth was that young Mycroft, after skipping two years of schooling already was even now at the head of all of his classes by a wide margin, and was as much in need of preparing for a test as he was in need of sprouting a pair of antlers.
"You could have locked him up, too. Usually works for me," she grimed, omitting to mention that her youngest had more than once climbed out of his window for her efforts.
"Oh, please, Mummy, give me credit for thinking of that myself. I don't know how he did it, but he got out regardless."
"You left the key in the keyhole, didn't you? Basic mistake. I guess I should have warned you. He just shoves a piece of paper underneath the door, pushes out the key from the inside and hauls it in with the paper then."
Mycroft opened and shut his mouth, speechless.
Mrs. Holmes shrugged. "Got that one from Wodehouse, I'm afraid. It's my own fault; I thought it was a safer bedtime lecture than his usual choices."
"Well, it seems a little late now. Both for regrets, and your friendly pointers," Mycroft said tersely. In his head, he calculated how long he'd have to endure his sibling's antics before he was allowed returning to school. He counted the days, really.
Mrs Holmes, angry as she was, gave him a strained little smile and dismissed him. "We'll talk about it tomorrow, Mycroft," she said and followed him upstairs to see after her youngest. On the way she registered the chaos, the broken little tables and vases, scratch marks on the wallpaper, the broken telephone on the landing, but entering her youngest's bedroom, the picture could hardly have been more peaceful. Sherlock was sitting on his bed, pouring over a heavy, leather-bound book, not even looking up when she entered. Redbeard was curled up at the foot of the bed.
"You broke into Daddy's safe, sweetheart?" she asked, straining to sound casual but not succeeding much.
He turned a page and kept on reading. "I didn't break into it; I simply opened it, that's different."
"How could you open it?"
"Easily. The combination was obvious. 1 – 8 – 3 – 0. The year in which Principles of Geology was first published."
Mrs Holmes frowned. The idea was simple enough, but how the boy should have guessed at this particular tome of all books was still beyond her. He warily explained that, as he had found out standing on a chair in front of the safe in order to imitate his father's approximate height, and looking at the bookshelf from there, he had been on eye-level with Mr Holmes's entire collection of and on Charles Lyell, and seeing that the Principles were that man's opus magnum, it had been abundantly clear.
"Very clever, darling."
"Elementary, Mummy."
"And why did you do it in the first place?"
"I knew that Daddy keeps all the keys in there and I needed the one for the hallway wardrobe," he explained with the same bored expression, and volunteered the story of the wardrobe as well.
"And it would have been alright," he ended with an annoyed little sigh, "if it hadn't been for Mycroft. The statics of the thing were in no danger as long as the door was closed to give it stability. That's why I had it locked from the inside –"
"How did you do that, by the way?"
"With pincers, of course."
"Oh, yes, of course."
He narrowed his eyes and examined her, sensing that she was somehow making fun of him, but she kept her face straight and he gave up. He was pretty good in reading clues such as the row of Lyell books indicating the safe combination, but hardly ever succeeded in reading any kind of emotion in other people's expression, with the exception of anger. He came to see that particular expression too often to miss it.
"Your father is quite upset, darling, because of the wardrobe. And the safe."
"Hmm."
"This would be the opportune moment for you to say you're sorry, Sherlock! It's the least you can do."
"I'm sorry," he muttered automatically, incensing her even more.
"Don't say it if you don't mean it!"
"That's why I didn't say it at first."
Like her older son before her, Mrs Holmes seriously struggled with the impulse to strangle the stubborn child, prevailed, inwardly counted to ten and forced herself to smile. "I suggest you stay in bed now and don't make any more trouble for tonight, hm?"
He nodded reluctantly and only now, she saw the red streaks on his temples, and the unmistakable imprints of a much bigger hand on his cheek.
She gently stroke over the bruises and asked, "What is this, Sherlock? What happened there?"
"Nothing."
"But..."
"The tape wouldn't come off."
She knew that he was lying; the traces of his older brother's hand were right there on his pale face, yet he looked at her so frank and sanguine as if he were saying nothing but the truth. She bent down to kiss him on the forehead. "Good night, darling. Sleep tight."
"I'm not tired yet."
She loudly exhaled. "You know, I could not care less right now, Sherlock. Keep on reading, then, if you like, but know that if you put one foot out of this bed again before tomorrow morning, you will be really sorry, I promise."
"Hmm."
He had already returned to the heavy book on his knees. Less seasoned mothers than Mrs Holmes might have taken that as a sign of obstinacy, but she knew him well enough that for him, the conversation was simply over and his book engrossing him so much more than anything his mother could tell him.
"Good night, darling," she repeated once more as she left the room.
He didn't look up, but she saw him smile. "Good night, Mummy."