Free The Innsmouth Heritage and Other Sequels by Brian Stableford

little finger, which told him that this was no casual visitation but a matter in which the Diogenes Club had an interest of its own.
Mycroft sighed, and hauled his overabundant flesh out of his armchair. The rules of the club forbade him to ask the Secretary what the import of the summons was, so he was mildly surprised to see his brother Sherlock waiting by the window in the Strangers’ Room, looking out over Pall Mall. Sherlock had brought him petty puzzles to solve on several occasions, but never yet a matter of significance to any of the Club’s hidden agendas. It was obvious from the rigidity of Sherlock’s stance that this was no trivial matter, and that it had gone badly thus far.
There was another man in the room, already seated. He seemed tired; his grey eyes—which were not dissimilar in hue to those of the Holmes brothers—were restless and haunted, but he was making every effort to maintain his composure. He was obviously a merchant seaman, perhaps a second mate. The unevenness of the faded tan that still marked his face—the lower part of which had long been protected by a beard—testified that he had returned England from the tropics less than a month ago. The odors clinging to his clothing revealed that he had recently visited Limehouse, where he had partaken of a generous pipe of opium. The bulge in his left-hand coat pocket was suggestive of a medicine bottle, but Mycroft was too scrupulous a man to leap to the conclusion that it must be laudanum. Mycroft judged that the seaman’s attitude was one of reluctant resignation: that of a man determined to conserve his dignity even though he had lost hope.
Mycroft greeted his brother with an appropriate appearance of warmth, and waited for an introduction.
“May I present John Chevaucheux, Mycroft,” Sherlock said, immediately abandoning his position by the window. “He was referred to me by Doctor Watson, who saw that his predicament was too desperate to be salvageable by medical treatment.”
“I’m pleased to meet you, sir,” the sailor said, coming briefly to his feet before sinking back into his chair. The stranger’s hand was cold, but its grip was firm.
“Doctor Watson is not here,” Mycroft observed. It was not his habit to state the obvious, but the doctor’s absence seemed to require explanation; Watson clung to Sherlock like a shadow nowadays, avid to leech yet another marketable tale from his reckless dabbling in the mercurial affairs of distressed individuals.
“The good doctor had a prior engagement,” Sherlock reported. His tone was neutral but Mycroft deduced that Sherlock had taken advantage of his friend’s enforced absence to carry this particular enquiry to its end. Apparently, this was one “adventure” Sherlock did not want to re-read in The Strand, no matter how much admiring literary embellishment might be added to it.
Given that Chevaucheux’s accent identified him as a Dorset man, and that his name suggested descent from Huguenot refugees, Mycroft thought it more likely that the seaman’s employers were based in Southampton than in London. If the man had come to consult Watson as a medical practitioner, rather than as Sherlock’s accomplice, he must have encountered him some time ago, probably in India—and must have known him well enough to be able to track him down in London despite his retirement. These inferences, though far less than certain, became more probable in combination with the ominous news—which was ominous news, although it had not been reported in the Post—of the sudden death, some seven days ago, of Captain Pye of the S.S. Goshen . The Goshen had dropped anchor in Southampton Water on the twelfth of June, having set out from Batavia six weeks before. Captain Pye was by no means clubbable, but he was known to more than one member of the Diogenes as a trustworthy agent.
“Do you know how Dan Pye died, Mr. Chevaucheux?” Mycroft asked, cutting right to the heart of the matter. Unlike Sherlock,