Becoming Holmes Read Online Free Page B

’ere scene, it is you who will be in grave danger in a wink.”
    “I am quivering in my hobnail boots.”
    “If you lays a finger upon me, you will be murdered before you reach your little apothecary shop.”
    “I don’t care what –”
    “And your apothecary with you. Perhaps I shall do that myself?”
    Sherlock hesitates. Mycroft arrives.
    “What is this about, Sherlock? My God, unhand him!”
    Sherlock releases Grimsby’s lapels.
    “No worries,” says Grimsby in his awkward new voice. “This is just a misunderstanding, a case of mistaken identity.” He smiles at Sherlock. “Isn’t it, sir?”
    Sherlock says nothing.
    “Well, Ronald, my brother is rather impulsive, shall we say, and not as serious-minded as those in our profession. You may see this by his dress. But he is a good lad, inside.”
    “I am sure. Pleased to make your acquaintance, sir.” Grimsby extends a hand. “Ronald Loveland, at your service!” He keeps his lips closed when he smiles, hiding his pointed, yellow teeth.
    Sherlock hesitates again. He looks down at the ugly little hand. The fingernails aren’t groomed as they should be. In fact, he sees dirt under them and wretched red cuticles that look as though they are still being gnawed, just as they were when the two first met.
    “Well, Sherlock, take his hand.”
    Sherlock shakes it as limply as possible. It feels wet and cold. The fingers are short and stubby. Grimsby is still smiling at him. “Good day,” he says, lifting his bowler and bowing slightly. He has used too much oil in his hair. He rushes up the steps to the Treasury.
    “Sherlock!” cries Mycroft as soon as Grimsby has gone. “You cannot do this to me!”
    “He is who I say he is. He has designs you cannot imagine. They will be enacted soon.”
    “I shall repeat: one must get over one’s personal squabbles. It is beneath even you to carry a grudge and to manifest it in such words as ‘thief’ and ‘scoundrel.’ ”
    “I know him to be, quite literally, what I say he is. Just a year or so ago he was upon the streets running with a gang, getting his living by criminal means, one of two lieutenants to the most heinous and successful young thug in London, a regrettably brilliant villain who has now left the sewers to further his career of crime by hiding his true intentions in a cloak of respectability. That leader, who calls himself Malefactor, has ambitions of a leviathan sort. He has the faculties and the passion to someday dominate this city’s, perhaps this country’s, perhaps this continent’s, criminal world. At this very moment, he is trying, via this ugly little man, to lay his hand upon the police.”
    “But this is preposterous. Ronald Loveland? You can’t be serious … can you?”
    “There is no doubt. Under that bowler hat, those spectacles and suit, he is an animal named Grimsby.”
    “Grimsby? But how could this happen?”
    “An excellent question.”
    “Perhaps he isn’t associated with this chap you mention anymore? Perhaps he has reformed?”
    “Grimsby does not reform. Had you heard what he said to me under his breath, you would know that to be true.”
    Mycroft pauses. “Well, we Holmeses may be many things, but we are not liars, not mendacious sorts.”
    “I am not lying.”
    “That is what I am saying. I believe you.”
    “Thank you.” Sherlock almost smiles.
    “Or at least I believe that
you
believe it to be true. And if you are right, even somewhat right, this must be looked into.”
    “A crime is being planned, Mycroft, and after that, there will be many more. If we do not put a stop to this, Grimsby will be just the first invisible germ – much like the kind the queen’s physician Dr. Snow speaks of and Sigerson Bell believes in too, that gets into people’s physical systems and destroys their health – that will infect not just our police force but our very government for many years to come. We must cure it now!”
    “Not
we
, my dear Sherlock; perhaps you,