There was a knock at the door. A wet but triumphant Jaikie beckoned Tobias out under the Parthenon portico. “Wherever else he may be, Tobias, the evil Count is not at the Embassy. Take my word for it.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Well, there’s s some posh dinner up there this evening. I slipped into the kitchens later on – there’s always all sorts of people coming and going at those things – and I got a seating plan. See here!”

  Jaikie pulled a stiff card from his pocket. “There’s all sorts of wicked Huns parked in there this evening but there’s only one Von Stoltenburg and that’s the Ambassador bloke. I remembered a ruse that The Chief pulled for Chalky The Shotgun White when Chalky wanted to know if some criminal called McKendrick he needed to speak to was at a villains party down the East End, murderers, pimps, thieves, burglars, con men, a terrible party, Tobias, just terrible people. The Chief kept his hands in his pockets to hang onto his money and stuff even when he was ten foot outside the door. Anyway The Chief sends word in via a note from Chalky that he has a pile of money to deliver to this McKendrick. No reply, no takers. McKendrick not there.”

  “That’s all very interesting, Jaikie,” said Tobias who felt he had been through rather a long day. “But what’s it got to do with the Count?”

  “Well,” said the ragamuffin, brushing some rain off the shoulder of his bedraggled shirt, “on my travels in the last few days I have set free quite a lot of posh stationery that was confined to cupboards before. Headed notepaper, fancy envelopes, little slips with the bank’s names on them. So I popped a couple of blank sheets of paper into one of them classy envelopes and addressed it to Count Von Stoltenburg. I told the butler at the front door that I was a messenger from Millmans working for them during the rat crisis and I had this letter for the Count, the one staying there who wasn’t the Ambassador. ‘I fear Millmans are misinformed,” the butler geezer says, ‘there’s only one Count here and he’s the Ambassador. I’m sorry you’ve come all this way for nothing.’ He gave me a shilling, so he did. Decent of him, that.”

  “Well, that’s good to know. Tell me this, Jaikie, What would you have done if the Count, our Count, had been in the Embassy?”

  “Don’t you worry, Tobias, I’d worked that one out before. I was going to run away as fast as I could at my bestest speed. I was going to run all the way back to Du Cane Road!”

  Wee Robert materialised out of the night air of Pall Mall. He handed Tobias an envelope. “For you or Mr Holmes only. From the Governor of the Bank of England.”

  Tobias opened the letter. Mycroft was sitting in his chair, fiddling with his pen. “Dear Mr Auditor,” Tobias began. “I regret to have to inform you that I have had a trying and difficult day. On my best estimate I have assembled a little over one hundred and fifty thousand pounds for the cause from the smaller fry of the City. I trust you have had more success.”

  Mycroft closed his eyes. Tobias could almost see the calculating machines whirring round in his brain.

  “Damn and Blast!” he said finally. Tobias had never heard him swear before. “We’re short, Tobias. Quite a way short on these figures. There may be better news in the morning, who knows. I’m going to the Diogenes now to see if they can rustle me up a late supper. This is not advice I would often give to the young, Tobias, but I urge you to ask for God’s gracious favour and protection on the City of London in your prayers tonight.”

  Mycroft kept vigil for a long time that night at the first floor windows of his apartment in Pall Mall, staring out at the fog and the yellow light from the street lamps. Mrs Hudson sensed somehow that a great crisis was upon him. He told her that things were looking bad at half past one morning when she brought him a plate of cold chicken and pickles and a couple of slices of fruitcake. Shortly after three, he retired for the night.

  Young Tobias was fussed over as usual by his aunt when he returned home. She plied him with sandwiches and hot chocolate and her regular warning that Mr Holmes mustn’t work her favourite nephew too hard.

  In his room Tobias checked through the figures once more. He too thought they were short. That night he had a terrible dream. Tobias was a refugee on The Raft of Medusa, Gericault’s terrifying and dramatic painting of a raft, all that was left afloat of a great shipwreck. There is a makeshift mast and a look out staring helplessly at the horizon. Four or five of the survivors are pointing at the heavens as if expecting divine intervention. All around are the bodies of the dead and the dying, half in and half out of the water, next to those who have just gone mad and those far advanced on their journey to insanity. An enormous wave threatens the raft ahead. Tobias could see that there were other things than corpses floating in the water. There were bank notes in huge numbers from every nation in Europe and some from countries whose currencies he could not recognise. The colours and the print on the notes were holding fast in the salt water. Tobias was leaning out over the edge of the raft desperately trying to salvage as much money as he could. But when he gathered a pile of them in, the wind would blow them back into the sea.

  There were thirty six hours left to save the City.

  *

  Shortly after eight o’clock the next morning Tobias, still exhausted from his dream, was checking the great pile of cables. Jaikie was kicking a can down the road outside, whistling Abide with Me. Mycroft arrived, demolishing another large slice of Mrs Hudson’s fruit cake, a final helping of his breakfast. Tobias was in his new suit, purchased for special occasions like family birthdays and weddings, released for duty on this day only when he told his aunt that he and Mycroft had to save the City of London and that he had to take notes at a meeting of all the greatest financiers in the land in the Bank of England. He picked out three cables addressed to Mycroft Holmes only and put them on Mycroft’s desk. Mycroft put them in his top pocket. A Parthenon porter knocked discreetly and handed over an envelope, also addressed to Mycroft Holmes.

  “What does it say, Tobias?”

  Tobias turned pale. “It’s very short, sir. It’s in Latin. Veni, Vidi, Vici. Parturiunt Montes et nascitur ridiculus mus. If my Latin serves, it means, I came I saw I conquered. That’s supposed to have been a message sent by Julius Caesar after his victory over Pharnaces The Second of Pontus, sir. The other bit comes from the poet Horace. The mountains have gone into labour and produced a ridiculous mouse. I presume that means that one of the cable eating mice is all we have to show for our efforts in trying to rescue Gorings.”

  “It’s the Count! He’s rubbing our noses in it! I wonder if he delivered it himself. Come, Tobias! We’d better check with the porter!” Mycroft almost ran, wobbling as fast as he could out to the front of building. Tobias spoke to the porter.

  “I didn’t see who delivered it, sir. It came in overnight, so it did. Sorry about that.”

  Mycroft put on his coat. “I am going to see the Prime Minister, Tobias. We are due at the Bank at eleven o’clock. I expect the Governor will serve us some tea.”

  The Prime Minister took Mycroft into the Cabinet Room. Here, round this long table successive Prime Ministers had led discussions on the issues of the day, peace or war abroad, retrenchment or expansion at home.

  “What news of Gorings, Mr Auditor?” The Prime Minister began.

  “Not good, I’m afraid, Prime Minister. The meeting to decide their fate is at the Bank of England in an hour’s time. Have you had the occasion to reconsider your position? Can you do anything to help?”

  “I fear my position has not changed, Mr Auditor. I wish there was something within my powers that would enable me to come to your assistance, but I fear there is not. I had a long discussion yesterday with the Chief Whip and he assures me that backbenchers of every stripe would be loud in their opposition. I’m so sorry, especially as it means, if I understand your own situation, that the Government will be deprived of your services.”

  “I am not going to make any comment on my own role until this matter is resolved, one way or the other. Could I make a suggestion to you, Prime Minister, about the Government’s position?”

  “Of course.”

  “My suggestion would not commit the Government to doing anything. But in these times of rumour and uncertainty men are in a febrile state. Confidence and stability are the two things required for life in the Square Mile to return to normal. My proposal is this, and it would only apply if the Rescue Mission was to succeed. If it failed there would be no need for it. All I would like the Government to do is to say that it supports the rescue and will help in every way it can to settle with the Argentines if required. The support would not be of a financial kind – in the circumstances I envisage that would not be necessary. The funds needed would be in place. And some diplomatic manoeuvres here and in Buenos Aires are not going to raise the tempers of the Carlton Club.”

  The Prime Minister did not hesitate. “Do it Mr Auditor! You have my full confidence! God speed!”

  There are two small alcoves under pillars at each end of the Court Room in the Bank of England. The room is tall with an elaborate ceiling. The Court Room’s other main feature is a compass that sits high in the wall looking down on the conference table. This is connected to a weather vane on the roof and is there so the bankers can see which way the wind is blowing – important information in the past, because a strong wind from the east meant that boats would be coming into the City along the Thames, so the Bank should get extra currency ready for the subsequent increase in trading. Tobias was placed at a small table in an alcove at one end of the room and a tall pretty girl with striking blonde hair, the Governor’s Assistant Private Secretary, at the other. Tobias resolved to try to talk to her after the meeting. Perhaps they could converse in shorthand if all else failed.

  One by one the Bank porters in their pink frock coats and top hats brought in the members of the Rescue Party. Seated at the great circular table, they would decide the fate of Gorings. At precisely eleven o’clock the Governor strode in with Mycroft Holmes for the Government at his side. They took their places at opposite sides of the table.

  “Gentlemen,” the Governor began, “the time for talking is past. Most of us here this morning spent the day and much of the night debating the problems of Gorings. I have summoned you all here this morning to give me the final contribution your firm is prepared to make to the rescue mission. I do not want any lectures on the folly of bankers or sermons on the need for imprudent financial behaviour to be punished with collapse and bankruptcy. All I want is the figure you propose to contribute. Lord Millman, I begin with you, sir.”

  “As I said to the Auditor yesterday, Governor, five hundred thousand pounds.”

  “Thank you, Mr Finch?”

  “Half a million also, sir.”

  “I am grateful to you. Mr Johnston?”

  “Six hundred thousand pounds. Same as yesterday.”

  “Much obliged, I’m sure. Mr Bucholdtz?”

  “Four hundred thousand pounds, sir.”

  Tobias reckoned the figure would have been half that amount without the knighthood.

  “Mr Willoughby?”

  “Three hundred thousand, Governor.”

  “Thank you, Mr Rowlandson?”

  “The same. Another three hundred thousand.”

  The roll call continued round the table. Tobias noticed that the compass high up on the wall was pointing to the north west. There would be no strong east wind today, bringing the ships up river. The stockbrokers and the insurance men made their contributions. The Governor announced that the Bank was placing six hundred thousand of its own reserves into the fund. Tobias was watching Mycroft’s face very closely. He had that poker playing look on again. He was fiddling with some papers in the top pocket of his jacket, bringing them out one at a time and placing them carefully in front of him.

  “Gentlemen,” The Governor was on his feet now, his face pale, a slight quiver in his voice. “I am most grateful to you all for coming here this morning and making your contributions. But I have to tell you that the funds are insufficient for the task in hand. We need five million pounds. We have pledges that amount to slightly under four million. The ship is not being lost for a ha’penny worth of tar but for a couple of barrels of it. I have to confess, gentlemen, that I am more upset than I can say. I have only dreamt of success for the last three days. Failure is a bitter taste. And I have to confess also that I do not know how to proceed.”

  The Governor sat down. A great silence fell over the room. Men began drawing lines in the notebooks they had brought to add up the figures. The Governor’s Assistant Private Secretary looked close to tears. If all present, Tobias thought, had contributed a hundred thousand more, Gorings could have been saved. A series of whispered conversations with one’s next door neighbours began. It was interrupted by a peremptory knock on the table.

  Mycroft Holmes rose slowly to his feet as if the effort of raising that much weight was almost too much for him. He looked round at his colleagues. He bent down and picked up the first of the cables addressed to him and him alone that had arrived that morning.

  “In my role as Government Auditor,” he began. Tobias was smiling to himself and rubbing his hands together with glee. Somehow, somewhere, Mycroft had found a rabbit and he was about to produce it.

  “I have dealings with my equivalents and other international financiers all over the world. In my time I have been able to help them with apparently insuperable problems. I have called some of those favours in, gentlemen. This from the Bank of France, undertakes to make available immediately to the Governor of the Bank of England the equivalent of three million pounds in gold.” There was a gasp around the table. Mycroft wasn’t finished yet. He had more rabbits.

  “This from the firm of JP Morgan in New York, undertaking to make available to the Bank of England the equivalent of two million pounds.” Mycroft remembered as he spoke the sultry afternoon several years before when he had pledged a large portion of the British Government’s reserves as collateral, if required, for some Morgan transactions on Wall Street. The money had not been required at the end of the day, but Morgans were repaying the favour handsomely. There was a slight cheer at this point from the assembled bankers. They were home and dry.

  “Last but not least, from the Russian financial authorities in St Petersburg a further two million pounds. The terms of all three loans to be finalised as the details of the rescue are worked out. I can also reveal that the Prime Minister and the Government support the rescue and will do everything in their power to assist in any negotiations with the Argentines.”

  This was the icing on the cake. Mycroft sat down. There was an enormous cheer. The Head Porter himself poked his top hat and his head round the door to ensure nothing unseemly was taking place on his premises. Men rushed to congratulate Mycroft. He was singularly embarrassed by his reception, saying it was nothing, and could people please leave him alone, he was beginning to feel unwell.

  They moved away from him then and shuffled back to their own offices. Lord Millman had a brief word with Mycroft before he left.

  “It’s odd, really, I’ve never liked gratitude,” Mycroft said to Tobias, producing one of his pungent cigarettes back in their quarters in the Parthenon. “So embarrassing.”

  “Could I ask you a question, sir? Why did not you not release the information earlier, about the French and so on?”

  “I didn’t know what the final figures would be, Tobias. I’m sure, I’m still sure, that it would have been better if the men in that room had done all the work themselves and not had to be bailed out by a bunch of foreigners.”

  “There are two fresh messages for you, sir, come in while we were away at the Bank.”

  “Could you read them for me, Tobias? I may have to go and lie down in a moment.”

  Mycroft’s young assistant frowned as he opened the first envelope. “Just four words, sir. Vincero, Vincero. Von S.”

  “What the devil is Vincero, Tobias? Some new cocktail from New York?”

  “I think it comes from the aria Nessum Dorma in Puccini’s opera Turandot, sir. Vincero means I will win, I will overcome if you like. And the Count has put his initials at the end.”

  “That’s very considerate of him, I must say, Tobias. And the other message?”

  “This is from Inspector Lestrade, sir. His men have found no trace of the Count anywhere in London or the Home Counties, no bookings on trains or boats or anything else. Inspector Lestrade says he seems to have vanished into thin air.”

  “He’ll be back, Tobias, have no fear, the count will be back. Vincero indeed. There is one good thing, Tobias. Lord Millman has just informed me that share and bond prices will rise, rise quite a lot, when men realise that Gorings has been saved. The Count’s shorts, his bets on share prices going down, have all failed. Von Stoltenburg will have lost a great deal of money, damn his eyes.

  “Still, Tobias, this morning’s events show the ways in which banks and finance houses and governments can operate together in times of crisis.”

  “And what would those ways be, sir?”

  “Why, it’s perfectly clear. Their operations are complementary, my dear Tobias, complementary!”

  Mycroft Holmes and Murder at the Diogenes Club

  “What about this man coming our way with the umbrella?”

  “Very red in the face, sir. The man drinks too much.”

  “What else?”

  “Indian Civil Service, I fancy. A Collector in an Indian state possibly, maybe a Magistrate.”

  “And?”

  “He may have fallen on hard times, our man. Money not what it was, I fancy, sir.”

  “Any more?”

  “Lives in the country, sir. Probably up to London for the day.”