becoming her own executioner and almost the murderer of her own children. You see?”
Sherlock Holmes handed the portrait back. But Mycroft had not yet done. He pulled open another drawer and drew out a second folder. It contained bills of lading for consignments of goods to be shipped from Belgium, the port of Antwerp, to the capital of the Congo Free State at Leopoldville. As he turned the pages, I saw enough to understand that this was indeed the merchandise of death. Krupp 7.5-centimetre guns. Creuzot’s 7.5-centimetre. A consignment of 3.7-centimetre automatic Maxims. Eight four-inch Howitzers. Add to that Maxim-Nordenfelt field guns and Krupp 3.7-centimetre mountain guns.
Sherlock Holmes looked hard at his brother. “And where did these papers come from? A reliable source?”
Mycroft sighed.
“A good man risked his life for them—and lost it in the end.”
“Joshua Sellon?”
“Joshua Sellon. Since his return from the Transvaal, guns have been the trade of Rawdon Moran with that territory and with the moral leprosy of the Congo State. His old masters in Praetoria see themselves as the new Prussians of Southern Africa. The most brutal traders of Central Africa know that they are safe with Leopold of Belgium. He may be the most depraved monarch in Europe, but that did not prevent the others from giving him the state of the Congo and its people as his personal plaything.”
From one of the folders he drew out a page of a newspaper. I recognised the Berlin National Zeitung. He looked not at me but at my friend.
“The criminal confederation that you imagine, dear Brother, now proposes to extend itself into the dark continent, and Rawdon Moran is its agent. He prospered less than he hoped from all that was corrupt and tyrannical in the Transvaal. Yet the income of that republic from gold and diamond fields has increased a thousandfold in the last decade, from ten thousand pounds sterling to more than eleven million. Its power to make war upon the remaining British territories, or to blackmail them by threat of war, grows faster still. At first he directed armaments under the guise of importing agricultural machinery through the harbours of Portuguese East Africa. Now he prefers Belgium and her Congo Free State. The artillery has been armed; now it is the turn of the infantry. A shipment is pending via Antwerp of forty thousand Mauser rifles and twenty-five million rounds of ammunition.”
Sherlock Holmes relaxed his scowl, though I could not believe that this tale of blood-money was new to him. “And where is Colonel Moran now, if I may repeat my request?”
Mycroft paused and then shrugged.
“Keep on going as you are going, dear Brother, and you may find the answer to that question sooner than you suppose and perhaps to your very great regret. I beg of you—leave him to us.”
5
In dealing with my patients, I find that there is sometimes an interval during which a man or woman can worry no more about a particular threat to life or even the well-being of a loved one. I suppose it is nature’s temporary protection during a long period of strain. I felt something of the sort after our encounter with Mycroft Holmes. There were no further alarms, and the drama seemed to blow away like a bad dream. I felt like a hard-pressed rifleman in a long campaign—willing to continue the fight, but longing to be taken out of the front line for a few days’ respite.
A little while later, Sherlock Holmes and I found ourselves enjoying the pale sunshine of the pre-season race meeting on Epsom Downs. Holmes had come by long-standing arrangement; I was there to keep him company. I do not call myself a racing man, nor indeed was my friend, but this was something of a special occasion for him. A year or so previously, as my readers may recall, Holmes had been of service to Colonel Sheffield Ross. That gentleman’s racing stables were on a barren stretch of Dartmoor at King’s Pyland, two miles west of the market town of Tavistock.
Colonel Ross was still the owner of a four-year-old, Silver Blaze, so-called from the white “blaze” on his forehead. The previous spring, this horse had been tipped as favourite to win the Wessex Cup at the Winchester meeting. Indeed, the odds had shortened to 4–5 on. Just before the event, the animal was missed from its stable and the body of John Straker, a local man who lived close by, was found there. The blow that the man had