If – he was beginning to think hypothetically, not positively – if he ever got out of this, he was going to have to have the detective give him some lessons in lock-picking.
He stifled a hoarse cough in the pillow before settling back onto his knees, wearily scratching at the small key-hole again, his sleep-deprived mind wandering.
To be abducted from the streets was absurd enough, and to be used against Sherlock Holmes nothing new – but to be taken on a whim, a spur-of-the-moment idea, was no less than galling.
The leader had freely admitted, in some bizarre sense of fair-play, that he'd abducted him merely to send Mr. Sherlock Holmes on a string of red herrings all about London, so the gang could pack up their operation and move it without interference.
He had been taken merely because he was out alone on a dark night, they needed to get Holmes off the scent for a week or two, and because one of their own men had been shot in a police encounter and needed a physician.
His lips curled in a half-smirk, thinking of what a melodrama the thing would make for the Strand once he got free.
And then the smile faded, as the lock-pick slipped suddenly from the keyhole and clattered between the rails to the floor below.