Team Seven of Heroes Chapter 9

9.

“I came onto the task one afternoon when the then Inspector Lestrade come to visit me.” Sherlock recounted his meeting then with the dismayed Inspector who normally sought his advice.

“Come in, Lestrade. I was about to have tea by myself. Watson, well he is indisposed.” Sherlock offered the man a seat. “It comes with a new wife and the pleasures of it.”

“Why thank you, Holmes.” Lestrade took his seat and watched the other man poured him the afternoon tea. He did look out the window and then wished it was dark so he could take the whisky instead. “I am here….”

“The murders, I read about them. Tell me what the papers did not say.” Sherlock cut in before he took a sip of tea. He loathed the cookies but Mrs Hudson insisted they were for him who needed nutrition. He knew his need was in a syringe and the deep drag of the pipe plus less women in his life.

“I can’t tell much except it happens at night and random victims. The Ripper liked whores …I meant ladies of the night but this one was baffling. We do suspect it could be a creature for the body was mutilated with the head decapitated. There were traces of mucus and these.”

Lestrade handed over a small mechanical item.

“It was found in the last victim.” Lestrade tried to find his words for it. “My experts told me it’s a silver component used in some pioneer study for medical purposes.”

Sherlock examined with the magnifying glass the small piece and it did looked like a small bone but it was lighter. He took reached for the tea spoon to scrape at it much to the chagrin of the Inspector.

“I would assume your people had checked it for blood samples.” Sherlock asked.

“Yes, we did and it turned out to be an unknown one.” The test was then introduced in the recent years known as the ‘precipitin test’ which involved a serum that reacted to human blood. It was the level of protein that displayed the result. And further to that, others began categorizing blood groups of different creatures.

“Unknown or untested yet?” Sherlock asked. He then began scrapping the surface of the item before he replaced the spoon on the saucer. “We are still new to this, and there may be more we do not know.”

“Did they take the blood samples at the zoo?” The city held a zoo which housed a great variety of the beasts and kindler ones. Sherlock had once said to Watson, if there was to be another great flood, he will take the zoo creatures for his collection in the new Ark with the statement. “It beats searching them elsewhere. These were used to be fed than to feed onto me.”

“Never mind, my dear Lestrade. We will work with what he hold.” It was from that conversation, Sherlock was to be involved in the task which brought him to meet up with M later. The meeting was also in his sitting room at Baker’s Street.

“Surely Madam, you need not have twenty of your officers standing on my street and with another twenty on the adjacent street. I know they tried hard to blend in but honestly tell whose idea was to have a fish and chips stand there and a long list of customer for it. It’s absurd for no one queued for it when we have five more of the same nearby and they all were served by the same vendor on the next street with the supplies. And who ever watched the monkey turn the barrel anymore when we have wheelers rolling you over if you stayed too close to the kerbs.”

“Good observation, Mr Holmes but I am in need of protection.” M having seated there on the next available seat in the sitting room shifted her legs to cross it. “If you want to know, it’s named as strings and I like have it on than those cotton pants. You should try it.”

“Pardon me, Madam. I did try it but it sort of twang my scrotum once too often.” Sherlock had then uncrossed his legs and adjusted the lapels of his dressing gown to cover his knees. “Now back to the task on hand, you are obviously not here for my report which I had handed over. Yu may be here to question on my findings that this is more than any murder cases and I may require more assistance. I do then state my plea as guilty.”

“Admirable as you are, Mr Holmes I was here to query on why them? The associates that you had named with details on their expertise.” M took the folder form her bag leaned on the seat.  “Unfortunately for you, Mr Smith have retired and chosen a sedentary life in the hills of Scotland.”

“That is one short then but with the other six I can contend with.” Sherlock sighed in regret that the infamous Nayland was not able to join.

“Six? I don’t think the Ministry will approve six. You know that we are …fastidious to the numeral six. I am afraid it had to be seven or five. I will not reduce the numbers as you are already shorthanded. I will give the last member. His name is …”

“Mycroft Holmes. I am advised.” Sherlock Holmes once displayed his deduction skills. “I saw your best among the guards; the so named Black Guards which held a team of ten officers. One of them was Mycroft for his immense strength and a pugilist with a fine record.”

“And he is not among those you saw outside. I wondered myself how you knew them all when I find difficulty recognizing them at times.” M smiled. “Maybe I took my tasks too seriously that I don’t see the trees from the forest.”

“No, Madam. You are observant but your focus is on the bigger forest that needed your care. Now back to my list, I can work with Mycroft but he must not know I selected him. It has to be the other way.” Sherlock told M then. And it was how Mycroft thought that he was the leader until then.

Sherlock was shaken out of cocaine induced stupor when M knocked on the table. She motioned to the unidentified leader on the middle screen. He had brief the assembled with his mind in a daze recollecting the events that led to then. He stared at the madam who shook him then.

“Who is the leader, Mr. Holmes?”