The Adventure of the Man of D.
IV: The Haunting Melody of the Musician
It is one of the queer little facts of London's summers, that the sun is well in the sky even as the clock approaches six when Holmes and I entered a charming little dive of a public house around six.
"Cool! Food!"
I froze, and slowly turned around to see Luffy grinning at me.
"How...?" Holmes faintly said. "I never saw you."
"Well, I got hungry and Usopp said that I've got to eat the cheese rations but that sucks, then Robin said I might as well follow you guys for a free meal and I never refuse a free meal and then-"
"No," Holmes put up an authoritative hand. "You are not eating with us. I have seen your idea of a light snack and I fear that I might not be able to pa off any tab you incur."
"Please?" The wobbling bottom lip might have worked on any other man, save for Sherlock Holmes the superhuman consulting detective. Myself, I am on the verge of agreeing.
I turned away to open the door, and barely had it creaked open that I was forced to dodge the oncoming missile I vaguely recognised as a human body that flew out of the door, clear across Euston Street and impacting on the building on the other side with a distinctive cracking of stone.
"And that's what you get for harassing a lady as the Dragon," a voice growled. "Shitty bastard."
Holmes squinted as said body embedded by blunt force into the wall. "I believe that is a shoe print on his face there."
"That it is," the man growled. I turned around to see a slightly shorter, slight of stature, blond with his hair covering his left eye, and in an immaculate dark suit that I noted was suited for greater movement. He was pounding the tip of one shoe into the ground, and I saw his lone visible eye flicking to me, to Holmes and to Luffy.
"Sanji!" Luffy cheered. "I found you!"
"Took you long enough, shitty captain," Sanji walked in. "Miss Nami, Luffy's here!"
"Luffy!" an orange-haired girl in a long black dress walked up to us.
"Nami!" Luffy enthusiastically tackled the woman in a hug. "So you were with Sanji, eh?"
"Yeah," Miss Nami shrugged as Luffy let go. "Sanji and I just got hired as cook and waitress. As you can see, Sanji's also a bouncer... and all the drunks are scared of him."
"Is that good?" I blinked.
"Of course it is," Nami smiled. "If people forget to leave a good tip, I call Sanji and they become much more charitable."
"That man must weigh sixteen stone," Holmes muttered under his breath. "And he was kicked across the road to be embedded into a solid brick wall..."
I whistled appreciatively. "A good steak-and-kidney pie and a pint would be nice about now."
"Coming right up," Mr Sanji drawled. "it's the least I could do after you've put up with the idiot captain."
"Sanji, this old uncle doctor is nice!" Luffy smiled. "He gave me food!"
"You'd trust your murderer if he gave you a pastry," Sanji drawled as he set for the kitchen.
There are no words to describe the quality of food coming from the cook. I am no gourmet, I cannot begin to summarise the delicacy of the steak-and-kidney pie served. Let it known that the pie was so good, that the crowd at the bar waiting for food was accounted for within the first bite, and that when we finally left with the chef and navigator of the Straw Hat Pirates, there was a near riot.
Highbury Cemetery was the type of place that people went on ghost-walks for in hopes to catch glimpses of the supernatural element. This was London, and every city had its stories. People who died in the Great Fire, lonely spectres haunting streets, all of that, and the metropolis was hardly an exception. However, when one called in England's foremost detective, then the ordinary ceased to be commonplace.
"So, why are we walking through a cemetery?" Mr Sanji growled, lighting another cigarette up. Miss Nami had been escorted aboard the Sunny, and she had elected Mr Sanji to follow us on suspicion of their musician hiding in Highbury Cemetery. What must have given our case away, we had no clue.
"Put that out, man, or we'll be spotted!" At least, that was what I thought Holmes had been trying to hiss. Half the words stuck in his throat as he beheld something right behind us.
"Yohohoho... yohohoho..."
My jaw slackened, my hand trembled, and I briefly considered just walking away first.
Click, clack, the sound of heels on cobblestones rang out starkly in the night, and I caught a glimpse of bone-white before...
"Yohohoho! Good evening! I am 'Just Dead Bones' Brook! It's wonderful weather we're having this summer, is it not? Would you like to sing together with me in celebration of beautiful summer?"
I could feel choking sounds coming from my throat, and from Holmes.
A black shoe hit the skeleton in the face, bringing it down to the ground.
"Found ya," Mr Sanji smirked. "Shitty musician."
"It makes you wonder," Holmes finally found his voice as we approached the Thousand Sunny to drop off our load of cook and musician. "If, perhaps, the sole remaining missing member of the Pirates could match up to the musician in... eccentricity."
"He's a skeleton," I sighed. "A skeleton who habitually requests to peek at women's underclothing. If there was anything on God's green earth that could top that, let me never see it in my lifetime. I am quite content with my mediocre experience."
"Agreed," Holmes nodded after a long moment. "Logicians would hate his very existence."
He would vehemently deny it to his dying day, but never again would he approach the musician without someone around during the remainder of our contact with the Straw Hat Pirates.
Still, the thought gave me pause. Where exactly was the elusive swordsman and, unofficially, first mate of that mischievous captain?
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