“Well, Mr Honeywell is not altogether mistaken. May I offer you something to drink while we wait?” Holmes asked.

The two men settled into Charles Russell's library, waiting for Long and his feng shui divinator, smoking, drinking coffee with just a little whiskey in it to keep out the cold, and slowly easing into the shared talk of professionals concerning tricky investigations and foolish criminals. At four-thirty in the afternoon, they heard the front door come open and Holmes stepped into the hall-way, and in an instant, into the library swept Russell, looking magnificent and furious as she pulled a gun on the greying ex-Pinkerton, shouting at Holmes to stand away from the man who worked for those who had murdered her family.

Chapter Twenty-two

Chapter Twenty-two

An invalid Hammett might be, but the man had nerves of steel. His bony hands tightened over the arms of the chair when the weapon first appeared, then they relaxed, curled loosely over the leather. He did keep a close eye on the pistol while Holmes stepped forward to explain: It was a decorative object, but big enough to mean business.

“Russell, this is Mr Hammett. He was clambering around on those cliffs at my instigation. I've hired him as an Irregular in your absence; hope you don't mind?”

The silvery barrel wavered, as if it might decide to point at Holmes for a while, then sank towards the floor. “You hired him,” she said flatly.

“He knows the ground here better than I, and I needed an assistant.”

“When did you make this arrangement?”

“Saturday,” he admitted: an exaggeration, as it had been little more than Friday night.

“Saturday. And you didn't think to mention it to me that night, or even Sunday morning?”

“We had a great deal to get through on Saturday as it was. And in the morning, you were busy, I was busy. I'd have told you—it hardly mattered if you did not know.”

“It would have mattered just now if I'd shot the man,” she retorted.

Hammett gave a little snort of laughter, and her eyes went to him. In a moment, the gun went back into its hand-bag and she came up to him, hand out. “Mr Hammett, pleased to meet you. I apologise for my ill manners.”

“Miss Russell. Don't worry about it. You have remarkably steady hands on a gun.”

“For a girl, you mean?”

“For a hand. More people get shot by twitchy fingers than ever get aimed at.”

“I try to avoid manslaughter when I can. Mr Hammett, if you are working for Holmes and not our two opponents, then I take it you retrieved the brake rod of my father's Maxwell?”

“Safe and sou—” he started to reply.

“Two opponents,” Holmes broke in. “You say that as if you've identified them.”