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There are pockets of poverty in Soho – narrow, refuse-littered streets lined with mean dwellings, where I have recruited some of my best Irregulars – but the corner of Berwick Street was not one of them. Near the venerable market – I confess to stopping there for an apple, as I had left my bolt-hole early and neglected breakfast (I could imagine Mrs. Hudson’s voice chiding me) – it was dominated by a bookshop with double wine-coloured doors and large, time-rippled windows.
Scarce a day returned to London, after the rigours of two years hunting down Moriarty’s wide-flung network – two years during which even those closest to me, save Mycroft, imagined me dead – it might seem odd to pay my first call upon a bookshop. But it seemed an excellent place to browse for not only a book or seven, but a new identity.
The bell rang as I entered, startling the proprietor from his bespectacled focus on that morning’s Telegraph. A middle-aged man, still living in the era of his youth, I inferred from attire some decades out of date; of irregular habits, if one trusted the opening hours posted behind the glass of the door; likely of independent means, given the absence of customers and the dust settled undisturbed over nearly everything. I expected no less; Britain offers up many such examples, scions of well-to-do families who can afford to practise a hobby under the guise of an occupation.
I did not expect his startled, almost joyful look, nor the cry of “My dear fellow! Is it truly –” quickly interrupted as he snatched away his half-moon reading-glasses and rose from his desk. His manner became instantly more guarded. “Oh – my pardon, I mistook you for someone else, I fear. May I be of help?”
I admit to curiosity; it is, you might say, my vice, beyond even tobacco and my past enthusiasm for cocaine. Whom did I resemble, that my appearance might affect a reclusive bookseller so mightily? I reviewed my own dress and appearance. Long travel abroad, without access to Mrs. Hudson’s delicacies (I realised, reflecting on this, that I still held the apple), had left me lean enough that I found my own reflection alarming. My dress today was slightly dandyish – black worsted trousers and a cutaway jacket, both rather snug, over a crimson waistcoat. Most distinctively, I had donned a pair of tinted-glass eye protectors, such as are increasingly used in equatorial climes and by those who suffer certain eye conditions. Watson’s friend Doyle, an ophthalmologist, had years before displayed a pair to us during a pleasant dinner at Simpson’s: “Invaluable,” he said, “for those suffering abnormalities or injuries of the cornea, which can make strong light unbearable.” They also conceal the area surrounding the eyes, the most difficult part of the face to dissemble.
Perhaps the shopkeeper had a bibliophile friend whose sight had been marred by long poring over the printed page. Well, if I resembled a welcome associate, it could only work to my advantage. “Assuredly,” said I, “for I am an enthusiast of old volumes – Clementson is the name, Alfred Clementson.” I had visiting-cards made up in that name, and presented one. “I am obliged to be in town for several weeks to settle some family business, and had heard of the remarkable trove of antique books at A. Z. Fell’s; is it he to whom I speak?”
“Indeed.” He regarded me with the look of welcome that might be evoked by a tax-inspector.”What is your area of interest? I warn you, some volumes are for sale only to the collector, and some not at all –”
“I seek, at the moment, only to beguile an hour.” His relief was visible. “I am a hobbyist of music as well – I play the violin a little, when I have leisure. I have heard that the Scottish travel diaries of Mendelssohn were collected, with his drawings, in a limited edition and always begin my search of a new bookshop by inquiring. Might you –-?”
He possessed no such volume, but the resulting conversation about music was all that I could have wished; he fussed and pothered about the vagaries of cataloguing, and the likelihood of finding the publication in a private library, and a wealth of other useful details about his calling. For the notion, you see, had taken me to perfect an identity as a dealer in second-hand books, someone who could enter the homes of better society and spend time valuing family libraries, there to overhear or even participate in conversation about, for example, the recently deceased whose collections might be of less interest to their heirs than their late owners.
The Honourable Ronald Adair, for example.
It was the Adair murder which had summoned me back to London – the unlikely circumstances of his death, so similar to the methods of Moriarty’s confederates, only one of whom remained at large. I had learned that, while on the whole an uninteresting sample of our island’s moneyed fauna – at least before his body was discovered, head shattered by a bullet, in a room locked from the inside – his enthusiasms, in addition to whist, included a collection of antique atlases, about which he was prone to discourse at the smallest sign of interest. Perhaps this had some bearing on his broken engagement, which manifestly had nothing to do with his death.
On that matter, I had my own theories. It remained to prove them. If only I had my Watson at my side, to channel the beam of insight as he had so many times! Soon I would behold him again – soon, when I had scotched this last threat to his safety and mine. I realised, as I passed the time of day with the fussy little bookseller, that I had not, since leaving London for Switzerland two years before, indulged in far-ranging conversation such as Watson and I enjoyed. The bookseller’s face, like Watson’s, was broad and guileless, instinct with a certain shrewdness which transcended mere intellect; his company was a piercing reminder of the society for which I so longed, yet which for caution's sake I dared not yet resume.
I left, at last, with a copy of British Birds under my arm (“books of little interest will turn up in auction lots”) and a promise to stop in again before I might leave London.
I assembled Alfred B. Clementson properly upon my return to my bolt-hole in Camden. A long, out-of-date frock-coat (I thought of Fell as I bought it from a secondhand stall); a wig from my collection, previously used in an identity as an old beggar woman, whose flyaway white locks descended to my shoulders; a harness that produced a sharp stoop and distorted my gait, but could be released by the touch of a buckle.
He would require props, would Mr. Clementson. To British Birds I had added, also from a street cart, Bunyan’s Holy War (I smiled wryly as I found myself superimposing that character upon my own crusade against Moriarty’s criminal empire) and, after some hesitation, the Oxford translation of Catullus. I had conned it at Eton, where some of the fellows delighted to snigger over the verses considered too shocking to translate faithfully. But it was the ninth, to the poet’s friend Veranius – reunited with him after long travels – to which I turned:
I shall see him alive – alive shall hear him, declaring
As his wont is; on him my neck reclining,
Kiss his flowery face, his eyes delightful.
Now, all men that have any mirth about you,
Know ye happier any, any blither?
What a world it had been, when a man could speak so of his friend! Could imagine embracing, nay kissing, the long lost fellow of his heart! Yet I knew that Watson fancied me but a thinking machine, and could scarce imagine his response were I to greet him thus.
Sleep eluded me for a long time that night. At last, taking up Fell’s discarded book of ornithology, I read about the courting-habits of piping plovers – the male, I learned, engages in an elaborate “display of agility and skill” – and woke in the small hours from a dream I cannot remember.
My first stop that day was at the Diogenes Club; I had been able to keep Mycroft informed of my fortunes, but had stayed on the move such that little news could safely reach me, other than through the English papers, which I sought out wherever possible. The death of Mary Watson, née Morstan, I had read of in my frequent attention to the obituaries, and I had scanned with grim amusement the paeans to the late academic luminary Professor James Moriarty. An hour’s time with my brother in the Stranger’s Room sufficed to replenish my knowledge of less public facts – a conference from which I left much sobered, though with my plans little changed.
I had, you see, scarce doubt as to the author of young Adair’s demise. The locked room which so baffled Scotland Yard was a blaring sennet to me; the air-gun adapted by the blind mechanic von Herder, suited for firing an expanding revolver bullet, could easily inflict such a wound from afar. Capable of reaching its target from a fantastic distance, it was the trademark weapon of Moriarty’s gang, all of whose significant members were now in custody, or dead through internal brawls of succession – all save one.
The Adair home was in Park Lane, near the Marble Arch. Mr. Clementson's call upon the family was a gamble; those still in the throes of grief often reveal matters they would otherwise keep to themselves, in their compulsion to speak of the lost loved one. I handed in my visiting-card to a servant with a mourning-band prominent upon his arm, and presently a young woman received me, dressed in a black moire frock, her features marred by the evidence of recent tears.
“Mr. Clementson. Had you business with my brother? For I am under the grievous necessity of informing you that he has been cruelly torn from us – it is in all the papers.”
“Madame, I apologise. I attend little to the news of the day, and had no intention of intruding on a house of mourning. I had corresponded with Mr. Adair, upon the subject of purchasing some of his collection of cartography. I see that this is hardly the occasion for such an errand – though I may say, should you wish to dispose of any of his library, I am at your service.”
“Well, sir – I cannot imagine Ronald relinquishing any of his treasured maps. He had no debts that I know of, despite what is noised in the press about gambling at cards. He played for small stakes, and rarely lost to my knowledge. But that is by the bye; it can do no harm to let you examine his collection, for which I fear I have no use -- it will only serve to remind me of his loss. If you will come through into the library, I may at least let you survey what is there, though I would ask that any transaction wait upon my mother’s permission. She attends her surgeon in Harley Street this morning, and that is all she can do to-day, I am sure; this calamity has all but broken her, and some days she scarce leaves her bed.”
So it was that I found myself in the sunny library, making notes upon volumes representing everything from the work of the Ordnance Survey to reproductions of fanciful maps drawn by medieval mariners. In the process, I heard of young Adair’s passion for his card games, at which he often spent full days, both afternoon and evening, returning late from his club; of his usual companions, even so far as mentioning the name I had been certain I would hear; of his agitation when he returned that fateful night, and the initial police suspicions of suicide over gambling-debts, scotched so soon as the Yard found no weapon on the scene. “I fret myself, Mr. Clementson, though I know it is for professionals to discover the truth; he had locked the door from inside, and though the window was open, only a bird could have entered through it. I sometimes think I shall lose my wits. I do not know what my life will be now; I feel as if I shall always be reliving these days.”
I left with an agreement to call upon the morrow when her mother should be present, and much to think about, not all bearing upon the question of Adair’s demise.
(“You must know,” Mycroft had said that morning, “that the mourning-ring you will see upon his hand has been there these two years, since his return from Meiringen. His wife’s death, of which you will have heard, did not occasion its assumption, for the simple reason that she is not dead.”
“Not dead!” I am rarely surprised, and when I am, it is usually Mycroft who is responsible.
“Not even slightly; and I am complicit in the deception. You should know that he voyaged to the Continent, not once but repeatedly, seeking the facts of your demise – or, I suspect, some scrap of hope that you had survived. Time and again I thought to ease his grief; but I knew the stakes.”)
So many times, Watson had left his practice and even his wife’s side upon my slightest request; now I admitted to myself that my many calls upon him had been tests of his allegiance, tests perhaps to destruction.
(“Their union foundered upon his neglect, despite her sympathy for his state; until, upon the occasion of one of his absences, having bestowed her affections elsewhere, she took her small dowry of Agra pearls, which she retained after the rest of the treasure was lost, and embarked upon a new life. You may be sure I learned of it before he set foot again on British soil; with my quiet help, it was given out that she fell ill in the course of their travels and could not be saved, rather than incur the scandal of a divorce for desertion in Chancery.”)
Had Adair survived deadly peril of a different character – a fire, or shipwreck, say – yet for some reason concealed his survival for years on end: what account could he give of himself? How would he excuse to that young woman, or her mother, the distress I had seen and heard described? I had feared that if Watson learned of my survival, the slightest slip would place his life in the balance; yet where could I begin now, knowing the damage I had done?
(“I tell you all this, Sherlock, only to warn you that his welcome may not be all that you have wished. Will you wait till all London knows of your return, before you seek him out?”
“If all London knows of it, then I shall soon know from his own lips what welcome he has for me.”
Mycroft only looked at me narrowly. It is remarkable, how well a brother knows one, for good or ill.)
I thrust down these thoughts, telling myself that I could not afford the distraction; all things in their time. Meunier’s waxen bust of me, due that day on the boat from Paris, had to be signed for and delivery arranged, which meant informing Mrs. Hudson (I had already braced myself for her scolding); and I needs must follow up in person on the telegram I had sent Lestrade, securing his silence and asking him to wait upon my plan. At my bolt-hole I exchanged Mr. Clementson’s frock-coat for the previous day’s attire, and betook myself to Scotland Yard.
Lestrade – looking more ferret-like than ever – leapt up when I showed my face in the doorway, removing my tinted glasses with a flourish. “Good God, man, it is you! Though you’ve seen hard use, I’ll warrant, and where in the name of all that’s holy did you get that waistcoat?”
“Covent Garden,” said I, “but perhaps we should leave matters of dress to the side.”
“Dr. Watson seemed sure you did not survive. Has he deceived all London, then – indeed, the world?”
“No,” I said soberly, “I have deceived him. But not without cause.” I explained my mission.
“Well, that is a yarn for the ages, Mr. Holmes,” said he when I had finished, “and I hope we shall see it published in due time, all done up as only the doctor can tell a tale. For my part, I’ll see to it that our most trusty lads are on hand – shall we say to-morrow night? There are a few I can’t vouch for, and I don’t want to be too obvious. But you’ll want time to call on your doctor. I may say that since being widowed, poor man, he’s had a try at helping us on the odd case, and I won’t say it’s unwelcome, but he’s not looked well. This will be the saving of him.” His handclasp as we parted all but crushed my fingers, and I winced, but not from the pain; he could not know his words were like burning coals.
And so, at last – after passing by once and again in disguise – I stood gazing up at the windows whence I had gazed down for so many years. I knew my rooms were watched, for Moriarty’s gang knew I still lived. There I should let myself be seen once more, coming and going, to bait the trap.
Billy had grown two inches and had the down of a beard, but cried shrilly for Mrs. Hudson like an excited urchin, precipitating a meeting that induced, first a fit of hysterics (sal volatile was obtained, and water brought) and then a succession of embarrassingly tearful embraces. But she agreed readily to my plan.
“Shall I send Billy for the doctor, sir?” she said. “Or has he already kenned his part? Don’t look at me that way, Mr. Holmes, I know how the two of you worked.”
“I am – not involving Watson this time. He has been in danger enough already.”
“Now Mr. Holmes, there’s poppycock and you know it. Why, he’d be right to give you the back of his hand if you leave him out of this – I’m minded to do it myself.”
“It is wiser this way, Mrs. Hudson.” For a moment I imagined explaining my deeper misgivings to her kind, homely face; but how to begin?
“Stuff and nonsense,” she muttered, rubbing her hands on her apron. “Well, get on then, have your waxwork brought in through the mews, and I’ll move it about and keep out of sight as you ask, though the Dear knows my knees will pay for it. Everything’s been left unchanged, just as your brother paid me to do, and now that I know why, it’s time I served you a proper meal again. I’ve a fine pullet the poulterers’ delivered this morning.”
“A sandwich only, Mrs. Hudson,” I said. “Celebrations must wait.”
I took my leave shortly after, summoning the first cab I saw to take me to the docks, where delivery of Meunier’s work was promised by to-morrow morning at the latest. Arrangements concluded there, nothing more remained to set in motion; only my feet, as if with a mind of their own, set me wandering amidst the throngs of London’s pavements, so long and sorely missed – lacking only the company of Watson by my side. Three times I turned in the direction where I knew lay his surgery; three times I circled away, as the sun dropped toward the chimney-pots of Hammersmith and Chelsea and the lamplighters went their rounds.
And so, finally, I found my steps turning towards A. Z. Fell’s.
“We are most definitely closed – can you not read – oh! Mr. Clementson!”
“If I do not inconvenience.”
“By no means. I find I have been, er, well, for once ill-content to be solitary today. Do come in; I have a bottle of claret breathing.”
Fell’s shop offered up the evidence of a man under some restless strain. A cup of cold tea sat on the blotter of a small pearwood desk, the line of its original meniscus circling the china a milli-metre above the level to which it had been allowed to evaporate; the half-moon spectacles lay neglected on one window sill, as if he had doffed them to look out into the distance and then forgotten them. Several half-filled blank books lay on a side table in a careless pile, suggesting he had been re-reading old diaries, though I could not discern the contents without rude intrusion.
“Pray make yourself comfortable on the Chesterfield,” he said. “This is a Bordeaux, rested ten years – glasses, here.” The decanter clinked, and once again I felt a pang of nostalgia for those many evenings in Baker Street when Watson and I had sat across from one another, like long-married folk, on either side of the coal-fire – he, perhaps, reading a yellow-backed novel, I gleaning the agony columns, each occupied with his own diversions yet never alone.
“I trust the business you mentioned has prospered?” he said, settling into his well-used armchair.
“Exceedingly; I had a long and productive day, and the book you gave me, though it may not have suited your needs, was of a sort to read oneself to needed sleep, lacking more potent sedatives.” I raised the glass.
For an hour or more, our conversation adventured through his passion for books – “such a towering invention of Humans, to capture and preserve the Word, with which God brought the world into being.” He spoke of clay tablets, and papyri, and illuminated manuscripts, all the while replenishing my glass generously; I of my travels in Tibet, feigning myself a student of all manner of religious scriptures, and within the sacred boundaries of Mecca (“I have somewhere here,” Fell said, “a signed edition of Mr. Burton’s Thousand Nights and One Night,” raising his eyebrows as if to indicate he knew that book had made the translator slightly infamous). At one point, I felt certain he had mentioned days spent in the Library of Alexandria, and at another was sure he had just spoken of monastic copying in the first person; clearly long sleeplessness and exertion were overtaking me. There was something in this dusty little warren that brought me home to London as I had not yet felt – far from the thin air of the Himalayas, the blazing sun of Arabia or the scirocco-scoured landscape of the Sudan; if I squinted I could imagine myself in Baker Street. At one point – for he seemed to have no end of curiosities to share with me – he extracted a volume from a locking cabinet, and my heart contracted at the remembrance of the many evenings when, pursuing a chain of thought yet too indolent to rise, I had bidden Watson reach a book down from the shelf for me.
“Here, for example – this is only one of many Bibles containing deliberate errata, of which I may say I have the finest collection in Britain. And – you said you were an amateur of the violin, did you not?”
“When I can lay hands upon one; though travel has put me out of practice.”
“Oh, I would not think of asking you to perform, but – I have only just taken delivery of one of these new Edison phonographs, that bind in time the sound of a concert performance as a book binds human speech. You mentioned Mendelssohn; there is a recording of the slow movement of his Violin Concerto, performed by Sarasate, if you would like to hear it.”
At my assent, he turned to a machine I had remarked before, which sat atop a low table, a hand-crank protruding from one side and a brass trumpet-shape from the top, and selected a series of wax cylinders from a drawer. I had seen these devices, and wondered if they had a future in the preservation of evidence or confessions, but never sought to use one for musical diversion.
A hiss, like the sound of Mrs. Hudson frying bangers in a skillet, preceded the well-remembered opening chords; a soft minor cadence resolving into a major key, like clouds slowly parting before a new sun. The volume was not steady, and it would not have mattered whether it was I or Sarasate playing for all the body of tone the recording conveyed; and yet it was indeed wizardry, and I wondered at what had gone through the mind of the inventor as he conceived it, and through the mind of the first ape-like creature to attempt preserving knowledge in a long-lost glyph – the beginning of the road that had led to these Bibles, even (I thought with a smile) to Watson’s fond scribblings.
Yes: we humans are miraculous, are we not? And yet how often debased, how futile in action! The world seemed to me both one of infinite possibility and infinite loss, and I fought down my emotion as Fell, standing by the machine, changed out the cylinders in succession. Two minutes of music were followed by another and another two, the suave legato of the three-quarter melody piercing the crackling surface noise. The swell of the orchestra was marred by the interruptions, but it mattered nothing, the composer’s voice penetrating all, like the heart’s steadfastness withstanding all that might obscure it, until the melody soared to a final celestial note and tumbled down again to rest.
“It is remarkable,” I said when the last sound had faded and Fell risen to put away the cylinders in their boxes. “I – “ and then I found myself overcome, remembering the many nights when I had played a somber or sprightly melody to Watson’s delight, and covered my ungovernable face with one hand.
“Forgive me,” I said, when I had mastered myself. “I have travelled long, and I fear become unused to drink.”
“And I fear I have been tiring you with my enthusiasms. I have been without companionship for some time.”
The wine must have loosened my tongue. “As have I,” I said. “Our conversation reminds me forcibly of one unfinished aspect of my business. I cannot go much longer without seeking out one with whom I once shared many such enlivening conversations; one whom I have wronged, though my intentions were only to protect him. I come to realise that I have used him cruelly, allowing him to grieve me as dead.” I rose and paced the carpet, gazing out upon the lamplit street through the time-rippled panes.
“As remarkable as that!”
“Yes, sometimes life forces strange choices upon us. I feared that ill-doers whom I had inconvenienced would trouble him, if they thought me living, until I knew them brought to heel; and I have been incommunicado abroad far longer than I expected. I told myself that he would endure my seeming loss, for he had already – turned from me, or so I thought. Now I learn that he has suffered gravely, and I dread his remonstrance, for he is a man of… quick passions.”
“You are quite a mysterious man – Mr. Clementson . I apologise, if our conversation has distressed you. I understand – perhaps more than you know.”
I shook my head, already ruing my outburst. “It is I who must apologise. Wats – my friend used to chide me about the reaction that would set in after long strain.”
Fell was silent a moment; then went on as I had not spoken.“You see,” he said, “I too took my leave of another, many years ago, in fear that our connexion imperiled his safety; we had associated - well, in ways that were not always lawful.”
I considered these words, coming from one who was, like myself, a single man of middle age. My outspoken animadversions upon love had sufficed to avoid anyone else – such as Watson – drawing conclusions. Events of recent years had shown how even the noblest love of man for man could end with being dragged through the mire. “I think I take your meaning,” I said.
Fell’s fingers worked at the hem of his waistcoat, a tell of nervous distress. “One day, he had a request I could not grant; we quarreled, and I… have so often felt regret. Your appearance yesterday put me in mind of him, and I cannot chase away the thought that it is past time I rendered an apology. Yet I fear to be met with anger, as you do.”
“I observed,” I said quietly, turning from the window at last, “that when I entered, you sprang up as if greeting one long lost.”
“Yes. You – resemble him. I, too, miss long evenings of conversation, of – fellowship.” A sad smile played upon his lips, “My friend – I fear I failed ever to acknowledge him so…”
No more had I told Watson all he meant to me, I thought – from cowardice, or vanity – and I squeezed my eyes shut against rebellious tears.
There was the sound of a soft footfall; then, unexpectedly, the pressure of a hand on my arm, a comforting voice.
“All will be well, Mr. Holmes.”
“What!”
I opened my eyes into candid blue ones, which seemed to – it is fanciful, I know – see into my soul.
“I was all but sure before your slip of the tongue,” he said. “All of London, sir, knows of your disappearance into the falls of the Reichenbach. You spoke of being taken for dead, and of enemies whom you had inconvenienced – I do read The Strand – and travels abroad, and an enduring friendship.” A smile quirked his lips. “You are not the only one who can make deductions, you know.”
As I stared, he resumed his chair, and his glass, which seemed not to affect him at all.
“I am only guessing now, but perhaps it is the Adair matter which has brought you home at last?”
I could only nod, finally croaking, “You must speak of this to no one.”
“Oh, you need not worry. Mr. Holmes. I assure you, I have kept secrets for longer than the span of many human lives.” An odd frisson travelled through me, as if something far stranger lay behind the plump features, the shabby out-of-date attire. Perhaps it was, indeed, only the drink.
“Many?” I retorted, regaining my composure a little. “Upon average, or laid end to end? “
“That would be telling,” he said blandly. “But am I to understand that you have been on these shores, even for a day, and not sought out your Boswell, your Conductor of Light, as we read you have called him?”
“I would still endanger him. I have done so, so many times before – without thought, without care. I cannot risk – ”
“What will he think, if you solve this case, and he not by your side?” interrupted Fell. He held my gaze as I gave myself to this thought. “You cannot do this without him.”
I had no words, for the truth of this pressed down upon me.
“London is a great city,” he went on, “in which any – man may be lost to any other. Time passes, and resolve dwindles; loneliness becomes habit, hesitation becomes fear, and the heart grows empty, until nothing is left but the affairs of the day, and the moment is lost. I speak from bitter knowledge.” He turned his glass in his hand, gazing into the ruby reflections in the claret as if seeing some past scene there. “We were speaking of the Thousand and One Nights, were we not? Do you know the tale of the Djinn held captive by sorcery, who swore for the first hundred years that he would grant any wish to the one who released him, but after a thousand vowed that the only reward for whoever ended his captivity should be instant death?”
“Surely you do not fear death,” I said – though I reflected that even under the Labouchere Amendment, which limits the punishment for connexions between men to hard labour, the ensuing privation has no doubt shortened some lives. But I sensed that was not what he meant.
“Only the death of hope,” he replied. “I have long feared that the moment for apology is past, that there will be no forgiveness. Do not hesitate as I have, Mr. Holmes, deceived by the notion that I had infinite time.”
In the silence a great grandfather clock ticked, and began to sound the hour – midnight, to my surprise.
“No one has infinite time,” I said. “You greeted me upon my first entry to this shop as one who has had a prayer answered. The Almighty has done stranger things.”
“Oh, assuredly,” he replied offhandedly, and again I felt that faint prickling of the hairs on the back of my neck, as if I were in the presence of something uncanny.
“Then will you seek out your – friend?”
After a long pause, he nodded. “Perhaps I shall, after all,” he said. He rested his hand on a stack of periodicals by his chair. “And you, Mr. Holmes, lose not another day. I shall watch the papers.”
The tones of the grandfather clock faded into the stillness of the shop, and I took my leave.
The rest of the Adair business went, broadly, as Watson tells it – that is, that I was to be found in Park Lane the next day; that I endeavoured to push my way through a crowd of idlers, only to find myself jostled by Watson himself, of all people. That I turned away with a snarl, taken by surprise, but sought him out at his surgery; and that shock took his legs from under him, so that I feared for a moment Fell’s parable of the Djinn had come to pass in a backhanded way.
The trap I laid for Moran, Moriarty’s last surviving lieutenant, using the wax bust – masterfully manipulated, I may say, by Mrs. Hudson, whose knees were quite equal to the task – to lure him into an attempt on my life; my own desperate leap as the old tiger-hunter found himself the hunted, and Watson’s stout assistance, without which I would have been hard pressed – Watson has written of it all. All was as of old, and my blood sang in my veins; Fell had been right. What was I without – not my Boswell, but my soul, my other half? My Watson, who tells of the arrest, our return to Baker Street, my expounding of the reasoning by which I connected Moran to Adair’s death: the public is in possession of those facts.
And there he set down his pen.
He does not tell of the moments after I turned to the collation Mrs. Hudson had set out for us, striving to maintain the breezy manner with which I had commended the malefactor to Lestrade and set out my reasoning. It was so soon, and there were words I did not know how to say, and it was easier to remark on the jellied beef laid on the table, and the decanter of sherry, and the peppery chutney I knew so well; but Watson made no approach to the repast, and when I met his eyes, they were full of wonder and dread, fixed only upon me.
“Holmes,” he said unsteadily, and I recognised the tones of reaction. “Without me there, he might still have got the better of you before Lestrade’s men could reach you. For the love of God, never keep me from your side again.”
I replied on the heels of his words, astonished to hear my own. “I judged you left my side, when you married.”
“Yes," he said, "and what folly it was to do so. I thought to do as the world expected of me, and only stole several years of a young woman's life for the sake of little more than a mariage blanc. Holmes, you and I – we have always been the saving of each other. This arrangement – or whatever it is we have between us – I will not give it up again.”
His voice trembled as he pressed on. “So many nights” – he caught a shaky breath – “so many nights I raged at you in my heart. I cursed you, thinking you had dismissed me too easily; I wished that I had fallen into that chasm with you. Nothing mattered but – but the loss of you, and my need to eke out every possible fact about it – I sat up late, knowing my revolver was in my drawer, but loath to give in to despair till I had proven your death to myself, beyond all doubt.”
“I am to blame,” I said quietly. “I misjudged you gravely.”
“You did,” he said. “And yet – yet now I feel only exultation. To see you – weary from your travels, thin as a lath, yet you fell on him as quickly as a panther. I cannot express…”
My heart was full to bursting. The piping plover courts his mate with a display of agility and skill…
We would speak later – as often as need be, I promised myself, till the last sting be drawn – of what he had borne for me, and what I owed him. Now I knew only that I had somehow crossed the room; only that I found my neck pressed against his in our tight embrace [on him my neck reclining], that I took his face – lined and weary, but no less beloved – between my hands and kissed it; that I wept for joy, and said “No man’s happiness is as mine. Ō quantum est hominum beātiōrum, quid mē laetius est beātiusve? ”
Then I kissed his dear face again; and he did not pull away.
I sent a letter as Alfred Clementson, pleading a reverse in my affairs, and commending the establishment of A. Z. Fell to the Adair family, should they wish to dispose of any part of their late scion’s library. I heard no more of the matter; nor of Fell, till we attended a performance of Sarasate himself, late in the autumn. At the interval, sipping champagne as I spoke of bowing technique – relishing the knowledge that at the end of the evening we should retire together to Baker Street – I spotted the unmistakable fawn-coloured, old-fashioned frock coat near one of the stairs to the balconies. At Fell’s left, bending close in easy conversation, stood a tall, lean man dressed all in black, a fashionable crimson cravat about his wing collar, his face half concealed by a pair of tinted-glass eye protectors.
Perhaps, by some magnetic sympathy, Fell sensed my eyes upon him. He turned to meet my glance, saw me look from his companion back to him; smiled, and gave me a brief nod.
“Someone you know, Holmes?” queried Watson, following my gaze; but the throng had already obscured vision.
I shook my head. “A case of mistaken identity only, my dear Watson,” I said. “For a moment I thought it might be Stillson, the forger, who fled to France after I exposed his activities with respect to the British Museum; I will tell you the particulars of the case upon our return. Come, I do not want to miss the opening of the Bruch Fantasy; there is the bell now. Let us go in.”