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I fired my pistol in the air, startling the gull off the nest, squawking.
Basil darted in, counting under his breath, and only just missed being gobbled up by my second shot near the gull’s eye.
He scrambled back to me under the eave, heaving for breath, as the gull’s mate screamed and dashed its bill hard against the tiles. “Two eggs in the nest, Dawson!” He had to shout a bit over the screeching and hammering. “I was able to touch both, and get out, with your able assistance. Total time in the nest, seven seconds.”
“Touch the eggs,” I said. “Not move them.”
He grinned. “That’s for the next time.”
***
Once again I fired my pistol in the air (Bang!), driving the gull off the nest.
Alice dove in to seize an egg in her bill. Gertie grabbed at another one.
“No no, just one!” Basil shouted in vain, as the three gulls cawed and fought, two of them with eggs in their bills. “Gertie, put it down! Down!”
Gertie opened her beak to screech and peck at the other gull.
Down tumbled the egg she’d been holding, crashing against the tiles and smashing to bits in the alley below.
Alice squawked in horror and dismay – and down fell the egg she’d been holding in her bill. Tumble, crash, smash.
Basil and I fled for cover while the enraged gull and his returning mate gave the robbers what-for, guarding their last egg.
We headed home in silence – the failure of the attempt ameliorated just a little by the sight of the happy pauper-mice and rats living below the eaves-nest who scooped the smashed egg from the cobbles into their pots and pans for their supper. “Next time,” was all Basil said.
***
Bang. Up went the gull. In went Basil. Bang, bang. I flung a bit of rubbish at the other gull, shouted in panic, and dashed in to seize Basil’s tail – nearly all I could see of him disappearing down the angry hen’s throat – to pull like I was ringing in the New Year. Out he came, yelling with pain. We tumbled across the roof, scrabbling at the tiles, to jump off and into the rain-gutter’s downspout. “Mine! Mine! Mine!” the gull cock squawked into the opening too small for anything but his bill; the echoes pounded in our ears.
Back at Baker Street, Mrs. Judson gave us both a furious scolding whilst she mended both our torn clothing; Basil sat in the bath groaning at the pain in his wrenched tail while I stitched his beak-torn ear. My own peck-wounds had sent my bloodied linens for a good cold soak before laundering, and both our heads were still ringing from the amplified hunger-cries in our hiding place.
Finished with the minor repair, I handed my patient a brandy and joined him in the bath with my own snifter (groaning a bit with my own aches and pains). “Well?”
He blew out a long breath. “I’m afraid I lost count, old boy. And I’d barely laid paw to one of the eggs before she got me.”
I groaned and rested my forehead against the tub’s rim.
“Clearly brute force is the wrong way to go about this. Next time, perhaps you should –“
“No.” I fixed my bedraggled partner with a glare. “No ‘next time.’”
He looked down. Everything seemed to droop.
“Basil, when you say ‘next time,’ you mean ‘tomorrow.’” I pointed a finger. “We spend tomorrow convalescing. The day after that as well, possibly. Only then do we try again.”
He perked up at that.
“And the less work we make for either ourselves or our clients, the better. Simply grabbing the eggs won’t work – we saw what happened. We’ll need the help of Mrs. Judson on this one.”
It was worth the pecks – it was worth many pecks – to see that dumbfounded look on Basil’s face.
***
“Welcome, Mr. Basil, Dr. Dawson, welcome!” Mr. Mousekowitz called, bowing as we walked into his shop. “I have just the thing for you – the loveliest satin Paisley has just come in, and oh the waistcoat it’ll make!” The tailor kissed his fingers.
“Actually,” said Basil, “I need enough calico to make three mattress-ticks.”
After a frozen moment, Mousekowitz nodded. “For that, Mr. Basil, you’ll want the fabric shop down the way. Nice goods, good honest girls running the place.” He absently smoothed the cloth beneath his paw.
Basil turned and left without another word, his sore tail hobbling his steps just a touch.
“Satin Paisley, you say?” I said sotto voce. “Once this business is done, I’ll come in for a fitting.”
Mousekowitz beamed – my clothing required more fabric than Basil’s and was a bigger profit for the shop. “Welcome as always, Doctor!”
***
“You want the girl to sew a mattress-tick?” Mrs Judson frowned at the sketch Basil had made.
“With this fabric.” Basil dumped his armload of folded calico into our landlady’s arms. “Three of them, actually. And have her leave one whole end open on each one. They are to be sacks – very big sacks.” He smiled his most charming smile. “Could she manage to get this done by, say, the end of the week?”
Mrs. Judson glared at her lodger over her spectacles. “If I help her, and if we hire another girl, then yes.”
“I’m sure Maisie has a friend or a sister who could do with a shilling or two for a sewing job, Mrs. Judson,” I added. “Especially if you sweeten the offer with a good reference from a respectable house-mouse such as yourself.”
She relented, smiling a little. “I’ll ask her at once, Doctor.” She headed to the scullery.
“The girl’s name is Maisie?” Basil whispered, leaning toward me.
“Yes. And stop scratching your ear, you’ll undo the stitches.”
“I am doing no such thing, Doctor,” Basil said with great dignity, whipping his paw into his coat pocket.
***
“Wrong division of labour, that last time.” Basil pored over his detailed map of London streets – marked with circles where Jennie Tilson and the rest of the Baker Street Whiskers had located nests of black-backed gulls on the roofs, and X’s within the circles to mark the sites we’d already struck. The youngsters had just trooped out after reporting more nests for us to add to the map, to make short work of Mrs. Judson’s cheese crumpets. “We need to convince our clients to let us… Halloa!” He bent over the map, staring at one new circle I’d just added. He smiled wide. “A newly-paired couple, very young. First clutch. If we can reach them in enough time…” He dashed into his room, where he kept a trunk with most of his disguises. “Dawson, here, quickly!”
I didn’t ask how he knew all that from looking at a bit of lead-pencil on a map. I followed to see him tossing gowns and robes and pea-coats to the floor. “Basil, what on earth –“
He straightened, holding an armload of assorted feathers. “Aha! Doctor, look for a cab heading to Char Street!”
***
He was insane. But he wasn’t doing this alone. Which reflected a good deal on my own sanity, didn’t it?
“Gut eefening, Herr Gull,” Basil intoned. He’d wrapped himself in the first completed calico sack, with a corona of feathers behind his head. I’d made a skirt of feathers and looked rather like a chap at a stag smoker who’d been played a colossal prank by his mates; but I made myself look as stern and dignified as my friend. “I vas told you had a young family zat reqvired a doktor’s care.”
No subterfuge, no assault. Basil had simply alit from the cab, clambered up to this precarious piping, and walked right up to the grey-feathered gull squatting on a small pile of sticks draped over the gutter.
The lad – he wasn’t even in the full white plumage of an adult – guffawed. “’Ear that, Dolores? ‘E’s from one o’ them foreign countries!” His mate, as grey-feathered as he, and rocking to keep her balance on the flimsy nest, giggled and tucked her head.
Basil continued, still as stern as if he were indeed a German specialist paying a call on a prosperous patient. “Your eggz haff, how you say, not coo-coobated, ja?”
Dolores giggled again. “Incubated, silly! Ooh, how’d you ever guess?”
“It’s plain bad luck, is what it is, Doctor,” the cockerel said. “No sooner have we had the first two when they just roll and crack. Third one’s going the same way.”
“And here we got this nice place all to ourselves, so cosy and remote!” Dolores shook her head sadly.
No wonder the eggs rolled and cracked – the nest was so unstable I didn’t know why the nesting gull didn’t simply fall out through the flimsy contraption onto the precarious jut of slippery tile. This was the work of amateurs, and if they were to have a viable brood they’d better learn how to build better, on stronger bases, and not on these steep, slippery… aha.
“Ja. Ja. Ferry pad luck. Let me consult mit mein freunde, vith your kind permission.” With a magnificent sweep, Basil disrobed from the sacking he used. “Take one end, Dawson, and for Providence’s sake keep a straight face,” he hissed.
“Ja ja, Herr Doktor,” I whispered back. Aloud I said “Ja, your eggs iz sick. Ve need to take ziss vun avay undt make her better, ja?”
“Ooh, that’s so kind of you!” Dolores shifted again. “Ooh, it’s slipping out!”
Basil and I held the sack open just as the egg rolled out of the flimsy nest and slid into the sack that halted its slide to the street. Fortunately it was a small egg, but even that weight wrenched at our arms.
“Oh, ja, she is ferry sick. Ve take guten care, Mrs. Gull.” Basil bowed.
Dolores cawed. “Mrs. Gull! That’s right, I’m a missus now! Ain’t that a pip, Henry!”
“Oh, bit of the nest slipped, Dolly!” Henry grabbed at a stick and poked it around Dolores’ seat.
Very slowly, very carefully, Basil and I edged our way down the gutter-pipe with our precious cargo, until we were out of sight of the young homesteaders. “The roofs in this block are too steep for good nests – that’s why those two are alone here,” Basil whispered. “The only circle in this area on the map, I perceived. The only nesting pair that would be here – and you saw that nest – would have to be very young and very ignorant. Their eggs would simply keep sliding out of the nest and breaking.”
I smiled, despite the warm heavy weight in the sacking. “In other words, they’d be so stupid we could simply walk up, pretend to be doctors, and take the egg right under their beaks, with their blessings.”
“Exactly, Dawson.”
“Brilliant job, Basil. So we can just keep visiting these two!” This would be easier than dash-and-grab.
“I’m afraid not, Doctor – these gulls rarely lay more than three eggs, and this is the last, precious third one that we carry.”
I sighed. Too good to be true, if it was all this easy. I handed the egg down to my colleague, now firm on the ground, and rejoined him to help carry the burden. “Well, now we know why they say folks who are easily fooled are ‘gullible.’”
He groaned.
Alice screeched in joy at the warm sack we held out to the pair.
“First one,” Basil said. “Take it to your nest.”
The sack was a good idea; it made it much easier for Gertie to simply clamp her beak around the bit of cloth at the mouth and fly off with the egg inside it, than to try to hold the egg in her beak.
But Basil did not look happy. “That egg was small, from an immature pair. I want to get at least two more. And we’re going after a bigger one next.”
***
A good nest, a decent space from her neighbours; five or six nests in this cluster of roofs, and she was the closest. Wait. Wait. “Not now,” Basil hissed to the mountain of white feathers behind us. “Wait.”
So we did. Until the one settled back on the nest and the other flew off to feed. We watched that one flap out of sight. “Now!” Basil called.
Gertie exploded from behind us and dove, screeching and flapping at the nesting hen. The hen screeched back, hopping up to engage the other gull.
Basil and I broke cover from under the eaves, and tumbled into the nest holding the sack between us. Three eggs, good good. Nearest one – we flung the sacking over it and wrestled the egg till it was in the bottom, lift, tug, push, tug. We left the mouth of the sack draped over the edge of the nest, and I whistled between my teeth. Basil and I tore out again. “Sack! Sack!” Basil shouted as we took cover under the eave again.
Gertie tried to grab the sack-mouth, but the hen had re-settled herself on the nest and pecked hard at Gertie. Gertie broke away, reached again, squawked in pain and anger as the hen dashed her bill again, settled down hard. It was maddening to see that sack-mouth sticking out under that bird, that nicely-bagged egg all ready for us. “Damn,” Basil spat.
One to distract, one to get the egg.
I leaped out and dashed across the roof – which was not the plan, as Basil’s cry of fear and anger emphasized – and into the very midst of that nesting throng, atop a wobbling tile. “Ooh, look at all the lovely eggs to steal!” I shouted.
Dead silence. Five or six gulls now focused on me. I grinned savagely as the rush of fear and danger hit me like a drug. “Mine!” I shouted.
And their terrible killing cry echoed across the roof. “Mine! Mine! Mine! Mine!” as I was instantly surrounded by great white mouse-eating birds. Including our hen. “SACK!” I screamed, and ducked under the tile as their bills clashed down a dozen times. I heard Basil utter my name in a cry of anguish, and gave a piercing whistle to let him know that I was safe and not being pecked to pieces by the voracious birds. Which meant, I realised ruefully, that his terror for my life would be completely subsumed by anger when I could free myself and rejoin him. Well, I deserved it. But I didn’t regret it.
Within seconds the pecking and rattling on my hiding place ended in screeches of rage, and the gulls scattered to their nests once again.
I took a firm grip on my army pistol, and darted out to safety. One gull pecked at me but missed, and I was safe under an eave across the way from Basil. Another whistle – all clear, time to go home. I made my way down, and marched over to take my medicine from my furious commander.
During Basil’s tirade, I remained as stiff and as attention as if at my court-martial. He said nothing untrue, but it was painful. “And for your information – yes, Gertie did get the sack and fly off, and our second egg is secured,” Basil snapped, and my shoulders dropped a fraction. “Which does NOT excuse you from what you did! Did you leave your brains at Baker Street this morning, Doctor? What if Jennie or one of the Whiskers had done the same thing? You’d never forgive yourself for endangering those girls, and I’d rightfully forbid them to work with me ever again!”
So it went, until a cab showed and we caught a ride back in awful silence. The lowering clouds and heavy air matched my mood.
Only as we approached home did Basil speak again – level, and cool. “I have no wish to remember this case as the one I took on a whim, which wound up taking my Dawson from me.”
I nodded. “I’m sorry I frightened you, Basil. I – enjoyed that moment far too much.”
He exhaled – his old exasperated sigh, a comfort to hear. “We have one more egg to get, and then this is over.”
I peered round the undercarriage. “Ghastly weather. We’ll have to wait for the storm to blow over.”
“On the contrary, Dr. Dawson.” Basil grinned – very much the grin I’d had on my face when I’d faced down the gulls, the hypocrite. “I’ve worked this into our plan.”
***
Another roof, another nest in a cluster of nests. But now rain beat down, with flashes of lightning and thunderclaps. The gulls hunkered down hard onto their broods, bills sunk into their breast feathers. They looked more like white feathery boulders than birds.
Alice was with us this time – it was Gertie’s turn to sit on their nest of stolen eggs. “She won’t budge, neither!” Alice cawed happily, heedless of the rain cascading down her back. “Ooh, we do love turning those two, we can feel the difference already!”
“Splendid,” Basil said tersely, rain streaming down fore and aft from the flaps of his deerstalker. He looked as if he’d gained weight, he wore so many coats.
I huddled in my greatcoat and other coats beneath, little comfort against the bitter rain. Won’t budge. In this cold rain, the gulls in these rooftop nests would refuse to move, wouldn’t they? That would make this all the harder – no fight-and-grab this time.
Basil and I waited with a sack, as before – already wet through from the rain. I shivered just at the thought of a warm egg in this icy-cold wet bag being blown through the storm, even for the relatively short distance (as the gull flies) from this site to the pier piling where Gertie and Alice had built their home. But that, we had prepared for too.
He’d frightened and angered me by nearly getting swallowed; I’d done the same to him during my foolhardy rush the day before. Now? Now we each gripped an end of the heavy wet sack in that miserable weather and grinned like fools. I had a walking-stick tucked into my belt, and Basil had the same.
Basil looked around the roof. “That one. By the chimney with the one black brick in it.” My heart sank a little; of course it was furthest from our hiding-place. “Younger and more timid. He’ll be less stubborn.” He could have been asking if she wanted more tea. “When you’re ready, Alice.”
Alice rose up, cawing and flapping, and darted down at the nesting cock-gull.
“Now!” Basil cried, while Alice was still in the air, and we ran across the tiles of the roof dragging that heavy wet sack. We splashed through pockets of water that soaked our shoes in seconds. I skidded and righted myself. Run, don’t look behind you!
But now I saw why Basil had chosen the storm. The other gulls cawed and cursed us as we ran past them – and stayed firm on their nests. The fierce rain kept them from joining in a feeding frenzy.
“Mine! Mine! Mine! Mine!” screamed the gull at Alice, wings out and half-standing over his brood; “Mine! Mine!” screeched our client, hopping and flapping over the nesting gull. “Mine!” he shouted, darting his bill at Basil.
Basil struck the bill hard on the side with his walking stick. I did the same from the other side, before the enraged bird could pierce my friend, and he turned on me. Whack! went Basil’s stick, and he turned again, cawing in fury as Alice hopped on his back, pecking his neck. Finally he hopped up in the air, still over his nest, flapping at Alice.
That was what we’d waited for, and into the nest Basil and I tumbled, soaking-wet sack and all. Over the nearest egg went the sack-mouth – and into that cold clammy wet sack we both went, pushing and shoving the egg with our paws and feet to settle it into the bottom. I shuddered at the icy cling of the cheap fabric, clung to the blissful warmth of the great round waist-high egg.
“Coats,” Basil hissed – and that was when a mountain of warmth sank down on us. Followed immediately by a scream of anger as the gull felt not a warm eggshell but a cold wet bag on his undercarriage, and he leaped up again. “Coats, Doctor, hurry!”
I ask my readers to imagine trying to pull off a heavy damp coat whilst one is enwrapped in a cold wet heavy curtain, and see how easy such a feat can be. Off went one coat, then the other I wore beneath it, whilst Basil did the same with his layers. The cold grew worse and worse with each layer I removed – until I shivered in my shirt-sleeves and Basil did the same.
Suddenly a great wrench flung us back, against each other and our cargo and the rain-soaked cloth. Then the egg grew heavier and squashed down on us as we were hoisted airward. Alice had driven the gull back long enough to grab the sack.
If I thought I’d been cold before, it was nothing to the icy blast of air as we were whipped through the storm air, rain still soaking into the calico sacking. But the egg was safe – swathed in all our coats against the cold and wet of the rain and the air.
If Alice let go, as she’d done with the first egg, we were both dead. If this flight lasted much longer Basil and I ran the risk of death by cold; even curled more tightly together than when we made love, we could barely conjure up a hint of warmth between us. This was the single maddest thing we’d ever done, and it could prove to be fatal.
It was vital that I say one thing. “W-w-wouldn’t have m-m-missed this f-f-for the world-d-d.”
Basil avoided chattering teeth by clamping his tightly shut. “My thoughtsh exshactly, Dawshon. Love you.”
“And I you.” I clamped my own teeth shut to stop their rattling. A pity we couldn’t kiss – right now we’d probably bite each other’s lips by accident.
I never knew that a gull-scream could sound like a call from Heaven, until I heard Gertie’s welcoming screech. The bill on the outside of the bag hit Basil’s paw and he yelped in pain, as egg and mice and sack and all were tumbled into the nest. One last thing… Out came our pocket-knives to slash open the sodden, icy calico clinging to us and the coat-wrapped egg, and Alice’s bill whisked it away – along with several of our coats.
“Ooh, it’s cool! In you go, love, Mummy’s got you now!” Gert tapped the egg next to the other two and settled in again, beaming even as rain bounced off her from beak to tail. “She’ll be right in no time.”
Which was more than Basil and I could say for ourselves, shaking in our wet shirts under the downpour. Fortunately a coat or two had survived the trip, and we dragged them on – of course both were Basil’s so I couldn’t close mine all the way.
“Oh, we can’t thank you two enough,” Alice craned her head down to look at us. “This is a dream come true for us. If there’s anything we can do for you–“
“Baker Street,” I whispered.
“Oh, right! I’ll expect you want to go home now.” The sea-bird looked around, heedless of the water bouncing off her back. “Looks like rain, don’t it?”
Sitting on her back was out of the question – we were rapidly losing coordination – but by wrapping the coat-sleeves tightly around and tying a knot, Basil and I were each able to attach ourselves to one of Alice’s legs for the freezing flight that was likely a good deal shorter than it felt.
Not even saying goodbye to our client as she flapped back to her family, Basil and I staggered in through the doorway that led to our Baker Street rooms. I opened my mouth to call for tea, but nothing came out. Laryngitis.
***
Basil recovered a good deal quicker than I did, thanks to my old wartime illness damaging my health; he was up and playing his accursed violin whilst I was still bedridden. Three weeks after that dreadful storm I was finally able to rise, dress myself, and eat a substantial breakfast.
Basil chuckled over a note one of the Whiskers had left him.
“Another case?” My health felt fragile. “You may have to do this one alone, old boy.”
“By no means, Doctor. But I’m glad you’re mobile. We have someplace to go today.”
I frowned and tried to think. “Do we have an appointment?”
“It is a social call.” Basil smiled and kissed my cheek. “Don’t worry, my dear, this will be a very short visit.”
It’s quite true that familiarity breeds contempt. For when I saw Gertie outside our door – the sight of which would have terrified me two months ago – all I did was groan. I had no great desire to see another gull or gull’s egg as long as I lived. If anything, the great bird looked even more bedraggled and haggard than she’d looked the night of the storm – oddly incongruous with her cheery demeanour.
But Basil smiled ear to ear. “Parenthood agrees with you,” he remarked as he approached the gull. “You have lost nearly a full half-pound.”
Gertie clacked her bill. “Ooh, ain’t that the truth! All that back-and-forth, catching this and swallowing that – all for someone else to eat! Reckon I ain’t had a proper sleep in three days!”
Realisation dawned. I smiled nearly as wide as Basil, and readily accepted his help in climbing onto the gull’s back. I knew where we were going – and this time I was able to enjoy the sensation of flight and the sight of London from the air as we headed to the dock.
The chicks looked like enormous hassocks of speckled fur, black-beaked and bright-eyed. Basil and I stayed on Gertie, who stood on a piling next to the nest whilst Alice moved back to show them off – also looking as bedraggled and happy as her mate. One chick was smaller than the others – no doubt our first egg – but all of them were fat and sleepy.
“Elsie. Bennie. Charlie. See who’s here?” Alice coaxed her chicks.
One lifted his head and blinked, staring at us. “Mine,” he peeped.
“Mine, mine.” “Mine!” “Mine.” The fat little balls of fluff opened and closed their beaks, clearly wanting to eat us.
“They’re lovely, all of them,” I said, and the gull mothers fluffed out their neck-feathers at the praise. “Congratulations.”
“We meant it,” Alice said, gazing proudly at her murderous little children, now greedily hopping up and down trying to reach up Gertie’s neck and pull Basil and me down. “What we said that night. We’re in your debt forever.”
“We will take that as your pledge,” Basil responded. “Now, much as we’d love to stay and admire your charming children,” (one of whom had nearly managed to seize one of Basil’s shoelaces) “I fear the Doctor’s health will not permit a prolonged visit, and we must return to Baker Street at once. Thank you for letting us see the end result of all that hard work.”
I managed something like the same, and once again we were airborne. We alit at home, bade farewell to Gertie, and were soon behind snug doors and in front of a fire in our chairs while our former client happily headed off to feed her growing brood.
“And that, was the reason we did everything.” I sipped my tea.
Basil nodded. “Horrid-looking things, weren’t they?”
“Ghastly,” I choked, and then both of us were laughing as if our sides would split.
“Still," Basil said when we had recovered ourselves somewhat, "I have no regrets about this case.” He took up his own tea. “It was a challenge to both our abilities, and we successfully concluded it, to the satisfaction of our clients. And who can say where this new alliance may lead in the future? However, it will be good to return to confining our clientele to the Rodentia order once again, and dealing with those problems that affect only our own little corner of Mousedom. If you would be so good as to hand me my pipe, Doctor.”