“I must agree with you, Watson,” said my friend Sherlock Holmes, breaking a half-hour’s silence. “General Gordon would not have shared such reservations. He would have been glad of anything that promoted present peace between the countries he loved, with the Future a secondary consideration.”

I sighed, and set aside my newspaper. “Holmes,” I replied, “I know perfectly well that I said nothing aloud, so how were you able to divine my inner thoughts and agree with them? No,” I added, holding up a hand as he prepared to speak, “I know your methods by now. Let me see whether I can reconstruct your reasoning.” Holmes smiled and gave a gracious wave of his pipe, granting permission.

We sat in our rooms at Baker Street on a warm Summer morning, the windows open to allow a breeze to pass. We had agreed between us to prefer the rich, if somewhat mixed, scent of the capital over the progressive closeness of a hot and stuffy room—in which, furthermore, Holmes had been trying out a new tobacco mixture of his own invention, that gave off a cloying rose-petal scent reminding me of Turkish Delight.

I had been reading The Times and had, I admit, fallen into something of a reverie, prompting Holmes into another display of the mind-reading trick he used as a form of entertainment, at times when he lacked any more consequential problem to stimulate his exceptional intellect.

“You read the paper earlier yourself, and so, I suppose, could see that I had reached the page with the piece about the expansion of our holdings in Hong Kong,” I said. The story reported that our diplomats had lately signed an agreement to lease new territories on the Chinese mainland that, it was promised, would secure an enclave for the precarious but precious colony throughout the coming century. It was not the most prominent item in the paper, being upstaged by the charges against a pair of soldiers accused of perjuring themselves in a recent court-martial, and the announcement of the sale through Boothby’s auction house of a supposed Shakespearean manuscript.

I continued, “I suppose, though I was not aware of it until you spoke, that I was gazing at the wall that holds the portrait of General Gordon, hanging opposite the one of Henry Ward Beecher which you so kindly had framed for my birthday.”

“You have Mrs Hudson to thank for that,” Holmes informed me, “for she was tactful enough to suggest the gift to me. The picture has been sitting unframed atop your bookcase for some years, and evidently dusting it has become a trial to her patience.”

This explained Holmes’ unusual consideration—he not being a man prone to the giving of thoughtful presents—but I was still attempting to follow his earlier insight. “Gordon’s connexions with China are as well known to you as anyone,” I continued, “so of course you would have realised that I was wondering what he would have made of this new arrangement. Such leases were unknown in his day, though I gather that they are now in favour with the Chinese government. What I cannot fathom is how you guessed that I was considering the question of reversion.”

Though I am neither a diplomat nor a student of China, I have travelled in Asia and am familiar with the dangers facing the brave men and their wives, military and civilian both, who maintain our presence there. I assumed that to the negotiators a ninety-nine-year lease seemed as good as a perpetual one, but who knew what view the Chinese Emperor of the year 1997 would take when it expired? If he insisted on bringing the territories back under Chinese control, our grasp on Hong Kong would be as slippery as before.

Holmes smiled lazily. “Merely by following the movement of your eyes, Watson, and your own movements this morning. A little after breakfast you opened the letter from your cousin in Melbourne, Mrs Deaver, and informed me that she was celebrating the birth of a male child, on which I dutifully congratulated you. The letters you wrote afterwards included a reply. As you and your relatives rarely correspond, it was natural to suppose that you took the opportunity to express hopes for good fortune in the infant’s life to come.”

“I see,” I said. “And I suppose I looked again at the letter, after I read the newspaper article?”

“Not at once,” he said. “After setting the newspaper down on your knees, you glanced first at the calendar, and then to the writing-desk where you composed the letter. Then you looked over to the table by the door, where it sits now with the others, addressed but awaiting its stamp. You glanced down at the paper again, and your eyes then wandered to Gordon’s portrait, and remained there in contemplation before eventually returning to The Times.

“It was simple to deduce your train of thought. First you considered the passage of time: you and I shall not live to see the year 1997, and we have no descendants, though you and some future Mrs Watson may yet be blessed. Your new young relative’s children or grandchildren, however, may very well see changes in their part of the world, arising from this shortsighted decision on the part of Her Majesty’s colonial agents. You recollected your letter, and assured yourself that it would soon be on its way, but then your misgivings renewed themselves. You looked for reassurance to ‘Chinese’ Gordon—the saviour of Nanking and one of your own heroes—and after a little thought you realised that such concerns would not have troubled his spirit. Whereupon, I expressed my agreement with you.”

“I see,” I replied again. “Well, I am dismayed afresh to find myself so transparent.”

“Ah, don’t be downcast, Watson. The clearest waters are not always the shallowest, as any sailor could tell you who has had the opportunity to compare the South China Sea with the murk of the Thames. Besides, I admit that the ability to predict you arises in part from the closeness with which we are acquainted. Were you a stranger, the technique would be somewhat less reliable.”

“I suppose that’s something,” I conceded. Though, in truth, the idea that Holmes knew me well enough to reconstruct my mental processes continued to unnerve me. I imagined him engineering a clockwork Watson in his mind, and setting the homunculus on its mechanical way, to think and act and speak as I would. The image of Holmes as a toymaker, moving me and Mrs Hudson around a doll’s-house Number 221B, made me shudder slightly.

“But, Watson,” said Holmes superciliously, again in response to no words of mine, “do not we all do the same in some degree? Is that not what you were doing when you imagined the responses of the late General Gordon to the developments of the present day?”

Coming on the heels of his previous ostentatious display, this irked me, and I was on the verge of an angry retort which might have spoiled the morning. I kept my temper and my silence, however, and held my tongue along with the newspaper, which I commenced reading once more.

A moment later I was reprieved by a knock at the door. Mrs Hudson hurried in, bringing an urgent missive that had arrived with a messenger.

“Brother Mycroft’s writing, I declare!” exclaimed Holmes, tearing it open as our redoubtable landlady bustled away, taking the letters I had written earlier. “I have been expecting something of the kind. I have heard this morning of a death that is likely to interest him.”

He perused the message swiftly, then handed it to me. As he had predicted, it was from his brother. Mycroft Holmes requested—“demanded” would not be an unduly strong word— our presence at his club, with all dispatch. As he was a senior, though unacknowledged, official in the workings of Government, Mycroft’s summonses generally portended some crisis of state significance, and were not to be ignored even had we been so inclined. As it was, Holmes seized upon the distraction with relish, and we hailed a cab.

It was a journey of only a few minutes, down past Baker Street’s coffee-shops and newsagents, then through Mayfair and its grand garden squares, passing by the new Connaught Hotel, Pugin’s grandiose Gothic Church of the Immaculate Conception, and a particular house in Berkeley Square in whose supposedly haunted attic Holmes and I had once spent a trying night. From there our cab continued past Walsingham House and the Bath Hotel and into St James’, where the capital’s most prestigious gentlemen’s clubs are located.

A moment later we had alighted, and were passing into the hallway of one such, which Holmes had once described as the queerest in London. Glass panelling gave us a view of the reading room, in which the unsociable members of the Diogenes Club sat in their separate bays of books, newspapers and magazines, each with its single leather armchair, in absolute isolation from one another. With the glass between us, I was irresistibly reminded of fish skulking in their little caves in an aquarium.

Then Holmes knocked cheerfully on the window, eliciting a flurry of glares and shaken heads and the immediate attention of a plump attendant. Like all those at the Diogenes Club, he wore soft carpet slippers to muffle the sound of his footfalls. He ushered us with silent disapproval into the Stranger’s Room overlooking Pall Mall, the only room in the building where conversation was permitted. A moment later we were joined by the considerable presence of Mycroft Holmes, who gestured at the man to bring us tea.

“An ambitious fellow,” Sherlock Holmes observed as the servant hastened away. “His parents may have been in service, but I’ll wager his child will not be.”

“Ah, so you noticed that,” Mycroft replied. He settled his enormous body into a freshly polished leather armchair, looking rather like a hot-air balloon that I had once seen descending to the Earth, and gestured to us to sit as well. “The skin above the ears, of course, and the squint.”

“Together with the left middle finger,” Sherlock agreed lazily.

“Naturally. Well,” said Mycroft, “thank you both for coming here so promptly. You are both well, I trust?”

As I understood it, Mycroft Holmes was the linchpin around which the British establishment revolved, the weighty and immobile foundation upon which everything else was built. Like everyone but himself, I could comprehend only a small portion of his function, but I knew his mind to be an entrepot of reports and memos, records and instructions that drove the flow of information across our global Empire. If there was a correspondence to be discovered between the declining output of a sawmill in Manchester and the failure of a military sortie in Bengal, or between the price of cattle in Adelaide and the fall of a sparrow in Putney, Mycroft was the man to spot it, to tell you what its consequences might be and how they might be avoided. He was as indispensable to Great Britain’s interests across the face of the globe as his brother was to the thwarting of her criminals.

“Quite well, brother, thank you,” Sherlock Holmes replied. “I have been occupied with a number of pretty problems recently, but as it happens you find me free this morning. May I assume that Her Majesty’s Government is in need of my services once again?” Though I knew the brothers respected one another, neither was a man to waste his time in idle chit-chat.

“That is putting it rather more grandly than I should myself,” Mycroft told him, “but your surmise is correct. Thank you, Jennings, that will be all.” He waved away the allegedly ambitious attendant, who had returned with a tea-tray. “You have heard, perhaps, of the death of the Honourable Christopher Bastion?”

“I believe I have encountered some intelligence to that effect,” his brother admitted. “Perhaps, though, for Watson’s benefit, you could summarise the salient details?”

Mycroft nodded cordially. “Very well. Bastion was found by his manservant in his study at home this morning. He had taken prussic acid, and had been dead for some hours. He was the middle son of the late Viscount Agincourt, and his older brother is the current holder of the title. The family is ancient and distinguished, and notable for its long history of service to the nation. Christopher Bastion was until last week a senior civil servant at the Foreign Office, and had been one of its chief assets for many years, thanks to his political incisiveness and expert knowledge of affairs in many parts of the world. He was trusted with the most sensitive matters of policy, in both the diplomatic and the military spheres. He had, however, a long and unfortunate susceptibility to the company and charms of women, and this had recently led him sadly astray.

“A few weeks ago, Scotland Yard arrested a foreign spy, known by the alias ‘Zimmerman’, on whom they had had their eye. Thanks to the speed and efficiency of the operation, the man had scant warning of his arrest, and was hurriedly burning papers when he was caught. Among those he had not yet destroyed, the police found a recent letter from none other than Christopher Bastion, implying in no uncertain terms that he would be willing to sell government secrets to Zimmerman’s masters for a high enough price. Hitherto Bastion’s probity had never been questioned, so I am sure you can imagine the shock and upset with which this news was received in Whitehall.”

“Had he a reason to want for money?” Holmes asked sharply. “Has the family fallen upon hard times?”

“Not the family,” said Mycroft, “but Bastion drew no allowance from the Agincourt estate, preferring to earn his own keep. His salary was not extravagant, and he was fond of the expensive things in life, including a young woman with whom he had recently formed a most unsuitable attachment. She had become a significant drain on his finances, as unsuitable young women are wont to be.”

“He admitted this?” asked Sherlock.

“Openly and without reservation, on being questioned. He was most insistent, however, that he had not written the letter to Zimmerman. In deference to his unblemished record, two experts in handwriting were consulted, independently of one another. Both confirmed the hand as his. Bastion was quite indignant when he learned that he was not believed, although he must have seen that we could not possibly take the risk of retaining his services. He was discreetly dismissed, and it seems the young lady, recognising that the wind had changed, left shortly thereafter. His valet attests that he has been in low spirits since then. It would seem that in view of his disgrace, his financial ruin and his romantic disappointment, Bastion had no interest in continuing his life.”

“It sounds an open-and-shut case,” I agreed, bracing myself for the pair of scathing contradictions that I invited in making such a statement in the presence of both Holmes brothers.

Mildly, Sherlock said, “Hardly, Watson. While prussic acid is best known as a method of suicide, its use as a weapon of assassination is not unknown. Furthermore, I count at least six possible motives for murder, the likeliest being romantic jealousy of Bastion, retribution for an unpaid debt and a wish to silence him for something he knew. Was he alone in the house?”

“Other than the servants, quite alone,” Mycroft confirmed. “As you will have gathered, he was unmarried, and he maintained a bachelor establishment near Piccadilly. His lady friend is no longer in the picture. His suicide is not in doubt, however,” he declared, to my surprise and his brother’s evident annoyance. “Bastion left a note. His death concerns me and Her Majesty’s Government only insofar as it is lamentable to see a trusted ally so fallen. Our interest is in how far he was compromised beforehand. Specifically, in what secrets he might already have divulged to Zimmerman, or to others with whom Zimmerman placed him in contact.”

“One assumes that, had he done so, his monetary difficulties at least would have been alleviated,” Sherlock pointed out sharply. “And with them his romantic ones, if your description of his young friend’s character is accurate. Are you certain that she is not herself a spy, incidentally?”

“It seems peculiarly unlikely,” said Mycroft. “She is a dancer with pretensions to becoming an actress. She was christened Gillian McGuire, but Bastion knew her by the ridiculous name of ‘Adorée Felice’. We have spoken to her, naturally, and are keeping her under observation, but we are satisfied that she had no knowledge of Zimmerman or his schemes. She appears to be a vulgar little creature from a humble Irish family, and in our estimation that is exactly what she is.”

“I see,” my friend said. “Zimmerman himself has been uncooperative, I suppose.”

“As the grave,” agreed Mycroft sombrely. “He essayed an escape from the police-wagon on the way to the station, and was trampled by a coach-and-four following close behind. He did not long survive the experience, and we got nothing from him before he died.”

Sherlock frowned. “How inconvenient. And Bastion’s finances?”

“We have spoken to his bank manager, and he was certainly in dire straits. There have been no unusual sums of money paid in recently, though Miss Felice had caused unprecedented outgoings. However, that in itself does not mean that Bastion took his secrets to the grave. If he handed them to a foreign power for promise of payment, there is no reason to assume that promise would have been honoured. Zimmerman’s possession of his letter would have been enough to secure his cooperation, if he wished to retain his reputation and position.”

“Indeed it would, before he lost them. But if he had already betrayed that trust, why did he not confess as much to his superiors when he admitted his unwise entanglement? If he was as astute as you say, he must have known that they could never keep him on, so he had nothing to lose. Yet why would such a man be so rash as to write such a letter in the first place? The criminal underworld has many channels of communication, and most do not involve signing a letter in one’s own hand.”

Mycroft sighed heavily. “This is where our approaches differ, Sherlock. Your interest in the workings of the criminal mind is admirable in its way, but sometimes excessively analytical. In my position, I am forced to be practical. It is clear that Bastion did write the letter, and that he did not confess the fact. Since his reasons for these decisions can form the basis of no future actions on his part, they have become immaterial. What we need to know presently is to whom Bastion has spoken recently, what he might have told them, and what their affiliations may be. If it appears that he may have divulged privileged information, I must act to limit the damage done. The success of many a diplomatic endeavour, not to mention the lives of certain of Her Majesty’s agents, may depend upon it.”

Sherlock Holmes inclined his head. “Very well. However …”

His brother raised a pudgy hand. “Oh, I know that you have your own methods, Sherlock. Your sources of information among the criminal classes of London are equal to my own among persons of influence, wealth and power across the globe. I would not dream of telling you how to conduct your investigation, provided only that it produces results. I shall require frequent reports to that effect.”

“Then we are in accord,” said my friend. “Has Zimmerman’s headquarters been preserved?”

“If you can call it a headquarters. It’s a rather dismal room in Hackney. But yes, it has been kept under police guard. His effects are now at Scotland Yard, where they have been inventoried and examined thoroughly.”

“And the scene of Bastion’s suicide?”

“The police are in attendance still. I expect you will find a friend of yours there. I have given instructions that the body must not be moved until you have examined it. I knew that the lure of a recent corpse would exert more power over you than any less sensational avenue you might pursue.”

“Since the evidence there will be fresher,” Sherlock said, “I would be remiss not to attend directly. Indifferent to Bastion’s death Her Majesty’s Government may be, but you must see that his state of mind in his last hours could have a crucial bearing on his relations with these foreign operatives.”

Mycroft inclined his massive head, his chins rippling in waves. “Very well, Sherlock, you must tackle the case in your own métier. I have let the police know that you have absolute authority to investigate the matter.”

Given the confidential position Mycroft held, I could not help wondering how the constabulary could be assured of this, but doubtless there were channels through which the elder Holmes made his wishes known.

Certainly Sherlock seemed in no doubt. “Come then, Watson,” he said. “We are to view the aftermath of a most tragic suicide—unless it proves yet to be a most clandestine murder. We shall apprise you of our progress,” he assured his brother.

“You always know where to find me,” Mycroft acknowledged as we left.

Holmes led me out of the Stranger’s Room, past a still disapproving Jennings, and away from the Diogenes Club. I paid off the cabman, who had been waiting for us, while Holmes lit a cigarette.

“Holmes, that attendant,” I asked, reminded of his earlier conversation with Mycroft. “Jennings. However did you—”

My friend sighed as he shook out his match. “Dear Watson,” he said, “your inability to perceive what is perfectly apparent never ceases to confound me. Jennings has shallow grooves above his ears, symmetrical on each side. What does that tell you?”

I frowned. “Has he been keeping pencils there?”

Holmes laughed. “Oh, my dear fellow, no. Marks such as those are seen when a plump man wears ill-fitting spectacles. He does not need them for his work, so we may assume that they are reading-glasses. The shallowness of the marks shows that he has not been wearing them for very long, yet he has the squint of one who has been short-sighted for many years. I have not seen him at the Diogenes Club before, and while I would not expect to recognise all their employees on sight, I could not fail to observe that his livery and especially his slippers showed little sign of wear. He has the bearing of a lifelong servant, yet he has evidently been well fed for some time, suggesting employment in a well-off household. Given his age and current duties, he was most likely a footman.

“The Diogenes pays its staff unusually well for their discretion and tolerance, but spectacles and books do not come cheaply, and are not bought on a whim. Nor is a myopic footman likely to have acquired the habit of reading for pleasure. His family has recently expanded, so his household expenses have not become any lesser of late. The obvious conclusion is that Jennings, having recently secured a position with an increased income, is taking advantage of it to better himself and his young family through education.”

“I see.” I cast my mind back to the brothers’ observations. The squint and the skin above the ears were explained, at least. “And his middle finger?”

“Small bite-marks,” Holmes replied, “undoubtedly left there by a teething infant. Really, Watson, this is trivial stuff.”

We had set off by now, walking the short distance to the Piccadilly address that Mycroft had given us. Holmes was ever a brisk pedestrian, and I had to hurry to keep up with him. He fell silent, seeming distracted, but soon I heard him mutter, “But—a case. A case from brother Mycroft!”

He had an exultant gleam in his eye which seemed to me out of proportion to the sad and sordid circumstances of Bastion’s death, whatever had occasioned it. “Oh,” he added aloud, “he loves to have me dance to his tune, Watson, but how invigorating the measure is!”