Free Victorian Villainy by Michael Kurland

for the Defense of the Realm, and Baron van Durm is General Manager of the Amsterdam branch of the House of van Durm.
    Although the name is not generally recognized outside of government or financial circles, the House of van Durm is one of the richest, most powerful, and most successful private banking houses in the world. With branches in every place you would imagine, and many that would not occur to you, the van Durms have supported governments in need, and brought about the ruin of governments whose policies offended them.
    Van Durm nodded his massive head slightly in our direction. Lord Fotheringham paused in his pacing long enough to glower at Sherlock Holmes, Lord Easthope growled a soft monosyllabic growl.
    “They know who you are,” Mycroft told us, “and we, collectively, have something to, ah, discuss with you of the utmost importance, delicacy, and secrecy. Before we continue, I must have your word that nothing we say here will be repeated outside this room.”
    I raised an eyebrow. Sherlock looked astonished. “You have my word,” I said.
    “You would trust that—” Holmes began, pointing a quavering finger at me. Then he paused as Mycroft glared at him, dropped the finger and sighed deeply. “Oh, very well,” he said. “You have my word also.”
    Mycroft sat down. Lord Fotheringham stopped pacing and stood facing us, arms behind his back. “Here is the situation, gentlemen,” said his lordship. “The enemies of Britain are hatching a devilish plot, and there is danger for the safety of this realm—perhaps of the entire world—lurking in every corner of Europe. Plainly put, there is a shadow growing over the British Empire.”
    “What is this devilish plot?” I asked.
    Lord Easthope focused his mild blue eyes on me. “There’s the heart of the problem,” he said, nodding approvingly, as though I’d said something clever. “We don’t know.”
    “A shadow?” Holmes’s eyes narrowed. The three noblemen might have thought that he was concentrating his attention on this growing shadow, but I—and probably his brother—knew that he was considering whether Lord Fotheringham should be forcibly restrained. I had some such motion myself.
    Holmes leaned back in his chair, his fingers laced over his waistcoat, his eyes almost closed. “You don’t know?”
    “Perhaps I should explain,” said Baron van Durm. “There are signs, subtle but distinct signs, all over Europe, that something of great import is going to happen soon, that it concerns Great Britain, and that it portends no good. Taken by themselves, each of these incidents—these signs—could be a random happening, meaning nothing, but when one looks at them all together a pattern emerges.”
    “We have a saying at the War Ministry, Lord Fotheringham interjected. “‘Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action.’”
    Sherlock Holmes leaned forward and laced his hands together beneath his chin, his elbows resting on the table. “What sort of incidents?” he asked.
    Lord Easthope began: “In various centers of Socialist and Anarchist thought throughout Europe; Paris, Vienna, Prague, speakers have begun warning against British imperialism and the ‘secret plans’ Britain has for world domination.”
    “I see,” I said. “‘The Secret Protocols of the Elders of Downing Street,’ eh? There is, I grant you, a school of thought that believes that the English are one of the Lost Tribes of Israel.”
    “By itself it would be amusing, and hardly sinister,” Easthope said. “But if you consider these speakers to be part of a plan to pave the way for—something—then they deserve to be looked at more seriously.”
    “Even so,” Lord Fotheringham agreed. “Most of those who listen to this nonsense now, even among the émigré Socialist communities must realize it to be nonsense, considering that Britain is one of the few countries that allows these groups freedom of movement and association without