to be sincere. We have had our warning. Next time, I imagine it will be a question of whose throat is slit first.”
“And what is to be done?”
He lowered the paper again and spoke thoughtfully,
“It is possible that Brother Mycroft may know more than I do about these matters. It is sometimes the case. We shall endeavour to find out presently. Today is the first Thursday of the month, when the committee of the Diogenes Club meets at 11 A.M. That is where Mycroft will be this morning. Let us therefore put Mrs. Hudson’s Billy to the trouble of fetching the leather hatbox down from the attic—before he puts his best foot forward for the telegraph office.”
3
The Diogenes Club is a secret society. Yet it stands at the heart of the British Empire. Its windows look out on to the fashionable pillared buildings, the gentlemen’s clubs, and the carriages of Pall Mall. But you would more easily penetrate the secret rituals of the remotest tribes than the proceedings of its members. It is scarcely two minutes’ walk from the dark-brick façade of St. James’s Palace, the gilded clock, and the scarlet sentries. Yet the first rule of the Diogenes is that no member shall discuss its business with an outsider nor reveal its precise location. I shall say only that it stands somewhere between the intellectual elegance of the Athenaeum and the literary journalism of the Reform Club.
Mycroft Holmes was one of the six founder-members of this eccentric society. It had been whimsically named after that stoical philosopher of the ancient world who lived and died in a tub. Like him, the club professed an indifference to humankind and all its follies. When Alexander the Great came to ask Diogenes what favour he might bestow upon him, the ancient sage merely requested the Conqueror of the World to stand aside a little so that he no longer blocked the warmth of the sunlight. Holmes chuckled as he recalled this tale from Plutarch. He assured me that his elder brother would probably have made much the same reply.
As for Mycroft Holmes, I have no doubt that he will outlive us all, serving his Sovereign to the end of his days. As Her Majesty’s Permanent Secretary for Inter-Departmental Affairs, he regulates the formalities of the Prime Minister’s cabinet. He maintains the machinery of state in Whitehall and Westminster. From day to day, he advises the leaders of our government on every topic from Antarctica to the Zambesi. Indeed, as his younger brother Sherlock once remarked, he not only advises the British government, in many a crisis “he is the British government.” In other words, governments may come and go, but Sir Mycroft goes on for ever.
Within his weighty intelligence, the policies of cabinets and the decisions of great leaders are filed and memorised. Cornered once by departmental inquisitors who required to inspect and approve the records and methods of his office, Mycroft replied innocently:
“Gentlemen, I will be frank with you: I do not find it necessary to keep records, for I have an exceptionally retentive memory. At this moment, your names, your faces, and your presumptuous intrusion upon my valuable time have been noted there. That note shall be at the disposal of the Prime Minister and Her Majesty’s private advisers in deciding upon your future careers—in the event that you should still have future careers. To them alone I am answerable. Good morning to you, gentlemen.”
Behind Mr. Gladstone, or the Earl of Beaconsfield, or Lord Salisbury stands this majestic eminence grise. Sir William Mycroft Holmes, Knight of the Order of the British Empire, is there as surely and securely as Cardinal Richelieu or Father Joseph were behind King Louis XIII of France two centuries earlier. Yet you would search the newspapers of the day or the volumes of Who’s Who? in vain for a single mention of my friend’s elder brother. When his time comes, an unobtrusive obituary in The Times will remember him only as a fugitive and wayward intellect. The eulogist will tell us merely that he enriched the study of ancient Greek particles by his note on “The resolution of Enclytic δε” in the Classical Quarterly and revolutionised Algebraic Philosophy by six pages on “The Methodology of Pascal’s Wager” in the Journal of Higher Mathematics. Not a word will hint at the secrecy and power which he commanded at the heart of government.
Despite the value of his time, Mycroft knew that his younger brother would not have telegraphed