890. Chapter 890

After Law and Boarder

Episode 6.21

By

UCSBdad

Disclaimer: I lost at owning Castle. Rating: K Time: See above.

Gas lamps were being lit all over London as the hansom cab pulled up in front of the Diogenes Club. Dr. Rick Watson jumped down from the carriage and helped his wife, the beautiful and very brainy Kate Holmes, the world's first female consulting detective, down.

"Thank you, dear. But I am perfectly capable to getting down by myself, you know."

"Of course you are. You're abilities are endless." Watson waggled his eyebrows. "The more so when you use ice cubes."

Kate blushed slightly. "Really, Watson. Now we must hurry. If my older brother, Mycroft, says that something is important. It usually is. Sometimes it takes me ten or fifteen minutes to solve the problems he brings me."

"Of course." Watson said distractedly. The use of the terms "brother" and "he" referring to Mycroft always vexed him. Holmes' parents had so badly wanted a male child that when a redhead daughter had been born to them that they had raised her as a boy. But, now, except when advising Her Majesty's Government on matters of state, "Mycroft" lived as a young lady named Alexis.

Holmes and Watson were led through the silent club by one of the elderly servants. It was a rule at the Diogenes Club that there would be no talking or any other noise permitted except in the Strangers Room.

Arriving there, they found Alexis, or Mycroft, if you prefer, looking over some dispatches.

"Are you having trouble with the headwaters of the Nile again?" Kate asked, quietly.

"Not at all." Alexis replied. "The French, under Marchand, are headed east from their colonies in West Africa, the Belgians are headed north from the Congo, the Italians are moving an army from Somaliland, but Sir Herbert Kitchener has a large Anglo-Egyptian army at Khartoum now. The headwaters of the Nile will be British. I merely have to play our other rivals off against each other to they don't combine against us. Child's play, really."

"So why do you need my help?" Kate asked.

"Are you aware of the young hoodlums that have been terrorizing Londoners of late?"

"Terrorizing?" Kate said, raising an eyebrow. "What they do is usually more dangerous to themselves than to others. I can think of a half a dozen criminal gangs that pose more of a threat to the peace and tranquility of London than those children. Why, some of my own Baker Street Irregulars ride bicycles and those new skateboards. I've even ridden myself."

Alexis nodded. "Yes, you won the London Street Sports championship disguised as a rather posh young Oxford student called… Ned Lawrence. Do you actually know that young man?"

"Of course. He wasn't using his identity in London, so I borrowed it. He was doing a bit of research on Gilgamesh, the Sumerian demi-god. He discovered a number of errors in the previous translations of the cuneiform texts."

"I assumed he would." Alexis said, nodding while writing two separate letters with each hand. "However, when I speak of hoodlums terrorizing London, I do not mean the young men with which you have associated. There is a gang at work that is seemingly targeting the Royal Navy. Sir Adelbert Peussy-Whipt, the chief design engineer for the Admiralty was run down and seriously injured. A week later, Admiral Sir Peter Mal de Mer was similarly run down and died as a result. Just the other day the Permanent Under-Secretary of the Navy, Lord Albemarle Toots-Sweet was similarly killed and plans for a new type of all big gun battleship that he was carrying were stolen."

Kate nodded. "Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, but three times is enemy action."

"Precisely. Would you mind awfully much tracking these people down, bringing them to justice and retrieving the battleship plans? And if you could do it before this weekend? Mother and Father are expecting us for Sunday dinner."

"Oh! You'll have to dress as Mycroft again." Kate said, sympathetically.

Alexis sighed. "At least I won't have to wear a corset."

"Not that you need one." Kate said kindly.

The next morning Kate left her flat at 221A Baker Street disguised as an elderly Royal Naval captain, riding what appeared to be a rather dilapidated bicycle, but which was in fact an especially manufactured racing bike. She stopped at the Admiralty Building and went inside, coming out a bit later with a satchel containing a document stamped "Most Secret." Oddly, the satchel hadn't been closed properly so the red "Most Secret" Stamp was clearly visible.

As Kate drove down the street, she saw that she was being followed by a muscular young man on a bicycle. When Kate stopped for a tram to pass, the man grabbed her satchel and took off, no doubt thinking he could easily outrun an elderly man. He was greatly surprised to see that Kate was rapidly gaining on him, a smile on her face. The man quickly put his bicycle into high gear and peddled as rapidly as he could. When he looked around again, Kate was almost up to him.

Just as he turned around, he saw a tall, ruggedly handsome man pushing a dung cart in his way. Kate stopped in time, the man did not.

Kate took the man to Scotland Yard, where she used her famous interrogation techniques on him.

"You've been a very bad man. Now tell me all you know."

As everyone expected, the man broke down sobbing and began to talk. "I'm Henry Higgins, I was born in East Piddle-Wyre to a poor but honest family. I remember my third birthday as if it were yesterday. I only got a small chocolate cupcake and the wealthier children got a whole cake for their birthdays. I thought it was…. "

Kate stopped him. "Perhaps "tell me everything" was a bad choice of words. Just tell me who you work for."

"I don't know." Said the young man. "I've never seen his face or heard his voice. He shows me little notes and tells me where to look for Navy stuff."

"What are you supposed to do with the "Navy stuff" when you get it?" Kate demanded, sternly.

"I take it to the Henry VI Pub on Castle Street. I leave whatever I've gotten at the end of the bar."

Kate nodded and smiled. "A pub named after the King who lost all of the English possessions in France, save Calais, in the Hundred Years War. Could it be….The would-be Napoleon of Crime?"

Later that afternoon, Higgins took the satchel with the phony Most Secret documents to the pub and placed it by the end of the bar and quickly left. He was watched by Holmes and Watson who were disguised as a veterinarian and a sick dog. Holmes was giving Watson some mange medications that she had recently invented in her spare time. Watson put up with this, but kept his right paw on the Mauser automatic pistol he had secreted under his fur coat. Kate, as always, preferred to use her mind to defeat her foes.

Some ten minutes went by until a shabbily dressed elderly lady stumbled in asking for a tot of grog.

"There's our thief, Watson."

Watson was about to scoff when he saw the elderly lady move to the satchel and hide it under her voluminous skirts.

"That's far enough." Holmes said.

"Wot?" The old lady said, but then began to dance oddly. The satchel had been filled with an itching powder of great strength and a clever clockwork mechanism had begun blowing it onto the old lady's legs.

As the police poured into the pub, Holmes pulled off the old lady's wig to reveal the face of Henry Higgins. "Really, Higgins. I saw your Royal Navy tattoos and when I heard you order a rum drink made in the fashion of the Royal Navy, I knew who our criminal mastermind was."

"The bloody Royal Navy. I worked me arse off and just because I had a slight problem, with opium, young girls, counterfeit currency, the illegal sale of weapons and singing God Save the Queen off key, they tossed me out after nearly eight weeks of sterling service. I've had my revenge, though."

"Who did you sell the battleship plans to?" Watson demanded. "The French? The Germans? The Russians? Who?"

Higgins laughed. "I didn't sell them. I gave them away for free to the Royal Navy's greatest foe."

"Who?" Watson demanded.

"The Americans, of course. Oh, their navy isn't much right now, but one day they'll have the greatest navy on the planet and the Royal Navy will hardly exist."

Watson laughed at such nonsense, but Kate wasn't so sure. And that night the lights burned until quite late in the Whitehall offices of Mycroft Holmes.

The lights burned rather more dimly at 221A Baker Street, and if you listened for it, you could hear the subtle clink of ice cubes.