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"Out in the East End again last night, eh Holmes?"

He looked at me with an expression of mingled surprise and vexation. It was the winter of 1895, and, with the memory of his miraculous and dramatic return from what all the world (myself included) had believed was his certain death at the hands of Dr. Moriarty still fresh in the public mind, he was in constant demand from all quarters. I could not, of course, accompany him on all of his cases--unlike Holmes, I needed at least six hours' sleep and three meals a day to remain in working order--but I knew for certain that he was handling at least three inquiries, perhaps four. At that moment, he was sitting by the breakfast-table in the armchair into which he had thrown himself when he finally emerged from his bedroom.

"Indeed," he answered. "And, absurd as it seems, I suppose I must now ask you what observation led you to this inference."

Looking at his thin, drawn features and the shadows under his usually bright eyes, I could not help but relent. He was, once again, driving himself to the brink of exhaustion, and was heading toward one of those periodic collapses with which I was to become all too familiar in the coming years. It would be uncharitable to prolong his agony when he was clearly already suffering.

"Much as it would gratify me to explain the three-and-twenty separate steps by which I arrived at a knowledge of your last night's exploits from an inspection of the left cuff of your dressing-gown," I answered, "I am afraid I must confess that I owe this rare moment of triumph to pure chance. As I was coming in last night on the westbound line, I happened to observe you boarding the last eastbound train of the evening."

He fixed me with a gaze that looked for a moment like fear, but was, evidently, amusement, for he threw back his head with a laugh and drew his legs up, clasping his knees with long nervous fingers. "I am relieved to hear it, Watson; I should hate to think you had been wasting your life in the field of medicine while allowing your hitherto invisible deductive powers to lie dormant. It does sadden me, however, to discover that your poor friend Whitney has yet to cast off the yoke of opium."

In response to my rather sullen glare, he flashed one of his mischievous smiles. "Since you were so kind as to sacrifice your little practical joke to spare me, I shall in turn spare you the indignity of asking how I know. Given the hour and the part of town from which you were returning, it could hardly have been a social call. If you had acquired any new vices during my three years' absence I should have detected them already; therefore it is unlikely you visited that peculiarly iniquitous district intent upon satisfying your own depraved cravings. It must have been a professional call. You have sold your practice, and the few patients you do treat are culled from among the ranks of your personal friends. The small blot of darkened resinous material I observe still adhering to the upturned sole of your boot, which looks uncommonly similar to the residue left behind after opium is prepared for smoking, indicates the probable scene of your visit, and of course," he concluded, with a little sigh of self-satisfaction," it has been six or seven years but I do remember your mentioning, during the Neville St. Clair investigation, that you had concluded that the press was making too much of the opium craze, since amongst your acquaintance you knew of only one case of addiction and that was Whitney."

"I have been watching you for years," I began, with some warmth--

"--and yet I still have the power to surprise you," he answered merrily. "I am gratified to hear it; it gives me a reason to get out of bed in the morning. Or midafternoon, as the case may be." He turned his head toward the table, more to disguise a yawn than to inspect the breakfast.

"I confess that my deductive powers remain so feeble that even though I now know where you have been disappearing to these past few weeks I am at a loss to explain why."

He pushed the teacup from him impatiently. "My dear Watson, I would have availed myself of your invaluable assistance if I had thought you would take the slightest interest in the matter. Of the five cases I am looking into at the moment, it is the one most completely devoid of those bizarre details that most inspire your peculiar muse. A commonplace sordid little affair. Serious enough for the client, but of no interest to the specialist, or to the connoisseur of sensationalist fiction."

"Still," I said as he made a desultory effort at sampling one of the scones, "it seems to be consuming a fair amount of your time."

He dropped the knife onto the table with a clatter and stood up, the food still untasted. "Often the simplest and most tiresome cases require the most effort to clear up. Take my word for it, Watson--this is nothing worth inflicting upon your reading public."

And with that he had vanished again into his bedroom, whence he emerged some minutes later fully dressed and looking as fresh and energetic as ever. "Come, Watson!"

"Where are you going?"

"To the Friesland, of course."

I hastened to accompany him on what proved to be the final stages of an investigation that had already brought us more than its share of danger and intrigue, and which I may yet lay before the public if circumstances ever permit it. Despite the satisfaction I knew he took in his triumph, and despite the public acclamation that attended the three other matters he resolved soon after, however, I soon noticed a marked deterioration in his spirits and morale. His improvised violin performances became more frequent, and more mournful; his fits of inaction and torpor seemed to last longer, and he was more often in one than out of it; and, as he continued to make his nocturnal excursions, I gathered that his 'commonplace sordid little affair' remained unsolved. I shrank from pressing him to confide in me, as he was always more reluctant to divulge information if he observed that I particularly wanted it. I did attempt to puzzle out for myself what it was that kept him engaged out in the East End. As usual, I made little headway. He adopted no extraordinary disguise that might have given me a hint, and so successfully defeated my attempts to draw him out that I could glean nothing from his conversation.

Matters came to a head one morning when I entered the sitting room and found him upon the windowseat, still in his streetclothes, his chin sunk upon his breast and his eyes, usually so keen and piercing, staring unfixed at the carpet. From his red-rimmed eyes and unshaven face it was clear that he had not been to bed at all that night. Nor did he appear, as I squatted on the carpet before him, to take the least notice of me. But I was not to be put off.

"Holmes," I said.

He lifted his head slowly, finally meeting my eyes with a look of utter exhaustion and despair that went straight to my heart. Be his reasons for it never so sound, his silence was about to come to an end. "Holmes, you must tell me about it."

He fell back against the panes with a sigh, swollen lids dropping over his eyes as he passed one white hand over his high forehead. "Watson, I cannot discuss--"

"You can, you must and you shall. In all our long association I have never seen a case worry you to this extent. Your health is threatened. Your tobacco consumption has doubled and your meals are more irregular than ever. This cannot go on. If I cannot aid in your efforts at deduction at least let me serve as an audience. The mere act of narration may clear something up."

Holmes sat up, and fixed his eyes upon mine with an intensity I found both puzzling and troubling. "Ah, Watson," he said, "your cooperation might, indeed, be invaluable if only--"

"If only...?"

He appeared to be looking for some sign of comprehension, some flash of intuition that I could not provide. I was still in the dark, as must have been plain from my face. His quicker intellect, frustrated by my failure to perceive what was clear to him, revolted against his other instincts and he sprang from the windowseat in a fit of nervous irritation.

"I was going to say, if only I were permitted to request it. You see, Watson, it is a sensitive case--one of the more painful and delicate matters I have ever dealt with--and the fear of scandal is paramount. I gave my word that I would not reveal my client's identity to anyone, not even to you. I really cannot go back on it."

"So your description of it as a commonplace sordid little affair was mere prevarication."

"I am sorry, but I knew that it would hurt you to think I was keeping you from an adventure of any real significance. And yet for all that--it is commonplace, and sordid, and little. The identity of the client is the only thing elevating it from the realm of the tedious."

"If you cannot reveal your client's identity, can you not at least tell me the circumstances?"

He wavered on the brink of indecision.

"Surely it could not hurt to tell me what sort of crime it is. Murder? Robbery? Espionage?"

"Blackmail," he spat out, dropping into a chair with a sneer of distaste. "That far I am prepared to go. But no more, Watson. As you are a gentleman and as I have been privileged thus far to call you my friend, I beg that you will press me no further."

I should have been insulted at this apparent lack of trust in my discretion if his distress had been less extreme or less evident. "My dear Holmes, of course if that is how things stand we need say no more about it. I only wished to know so that you might at least have company in your misery."

There was a pause as he looked up at me from the depths of the armchair, and then he snapped suddenly into a state of quivering attention. "What time is it?"

"It's nearly ten o'clock," I answered.

He leapt into action, unfastening his collar and racing for the washbasin. As he performed his ablutions in a state of considerable agitation, I wordlessly removed the rumpled jacket that was still hanging off his shoulders, braved the chaos of his wardrobe and returned with a fresh one. This was not the first time he had nearly forgotten an appointment, although it was the first time I had seen him so upset by it.

"Thank you, Watson, I should be lost without you," he said, combing down his hair as he struggled into the jacket. "And now if you think you could find something to do out of doors for an hour or two--"

"Holmes--" The ring of the bell cut off my protest, and sent my friend into a paroxysm of anxiety. I felt his fingers clutch one of my shoulders in an iron grip, and discovered that I was being propelled toward the doorway.

"Your client?" I persisted.

"His blackmailer," Holmes hissed. "Watson, I cannot explain, but it is vital that you leave this instant and stay away for at least an hour. You will do that for me, won't you?"

His burning eyes bored into mine and, as so often before, my resolve melted under the influence of his masterful spirit.

"As you wish, Holmes," I said unwillingly.

He reached for the handle of the door. Before he could grasp it, it swung outward to admit a cleanshaven man of medium height and stocky build who I recognized immediately. I shot a glance at Holmes, who did not return it.

"Mr. Athanson," said Holmes, with more equanimity than I thought he would be able to muster. "Do come in, we can begin immediately. Dr. Watson was just leaving."

"Oh, I am sorry to hear that," said our visitor, stepping in and pulling the door to behind him. "It was my particular wish that he should be present at these negotiations."

"My client has very strong objections to his involvement."

"Ah, Mr. Holmes," said Athanson, with a self-satisfied sneer that made me long to strike him, "if your client were in a position to enforce his wishes on me, we need not have this meeting at all, need we?"

I hesitated on the threshold, glancing from one to the other. Holmes appeared outwardly collected, but to me, who knew his smallest gestures and tricks of expression through years of observation and intimacy, it was clear that he was in an agony of indecision. I thought it better to go, and was in the act of turning the handle when his voice suddenly rang out:

"No, Watson--stay." He fixed Athanson with a defiant gaze and pulled a third chair onto the hearth-rug. "It may serve my client's interests after all."

"If you think so, Holmes," I said, and took my seat. Athanson smiled and assumed his with that cool insolence I had learned to detest. He had once been a successful partner in one of the city's most respected firms, until an embezzlement attempt, brought to light by Holmes, cost him his place. It would have cost him considerably more if he had not had connections at the highest level in the British courts. But his acquittal had not lessened his bitterness, and he had vowed revenge. My friend had heard too many of those threats to attach any importance to it at the time.

"I believe I made my terms clear to you in my letter of the 14th," he began.

"And I remain convinced that they are too high," replied Holmes, with studied nonchalance. "I do not see that the danger averted outweighs the price demanded."

Athanson chuckled. "You know as well as I do what a scandal disclosure would make. It would be a lead article in every major newspaper in the city. The foreign press would undoubtedly take an interest. The consequences would be devastating."

"My client is unmarried and childless," Holmes answered. "Such a consideration carries less weight with him than it would with many another. He holds the world's approval lightly and can do without it if need be."

His opponent leaned back slightly in his chair with a cruel smile on his lips. "No man is an island, Mr. Holmes, as Donne tells us." Why he was turning his insinuating stare on me I could not imagine. "The world's opinion is one thing, and that of one's nearest and dearest quite another."

"I have advised my client to make a clean breast of it to the party to whom you rather clumsily allude," said Holmes with some impatience.

"And has he taken your advice?"

"He is still considering it. I hope he may, for it would leave you with no hold over him whatever."

"Ah, not so fast, Mr. Holmes," answered our visitor. "If there's nothing to fear from the home front, surely the prospect of a gaol term ought to make him think twice. It wouldn't be a hospitable place to a man of his upbringing, especially considering his occupation."

"My client is guilty of no legal breach," Holmes shot back, his color rising and eyes flashing. "He has merely violated--"

"--the Offences Against the Person Act," Athanson cut in. "Two of its provisions, and on more than one occasion. If you are not familiar with its terms, as you seem not to be--a shocking gap in your professional knowledge, it grieves me to say--I'm sure Dr. Watson is."

Wounded, Holmes turned to me. "There's no reason you should know it, my dear fellow, for it hardly ever comes up in the courts," I hastened to assure him. "It covers various forms of sexual misconduct, including the purchase of chemical or mechanical contraceptive agents or the performance of any procedure that might cause a woman to miscarry her child, which is how it happens to come within my province. But it is very seldom enforced."

"Seldom," Athanson said, "But not never. And in this case--given the identity of your client--I should think the authorities would be bound to pursue it, if only to avoid the charge of favoritism."

Although he was fighting to keep up the appearance of confidence, I knew from the slight change in his colour that this was a serious blow to him. It was a point of pride with him when discussing a case to have a solid grasp of all relevant information, and to have exposed his ignorance, even on such a small point, must have been acutely painful in this situation.

"Aside from the financial demand," said Holmes, "which my client might--I say might--be willing to consider, this second stipulation is quite out of the question."

"It is essential," the other answered. "He must quit public life forever. I'm doing your client a great favor, really. It is a nasty business, and he is well out of it."

There was a long pause in which I felt tension crackling in the air between them like an electric storm. Then Holmes was on his feet and holding the door open.

"I am afraid I can give you no answer today," he said in as neutral and dispassionate a tone as could be. "I must share this new information with my client and take his recommendation."

Athanson stood. "I will give you forty-eight hours from this moment," he said, sliding toward the door in his unctuous way. "After that, the evidence will be before the public eye, and what happens then--well, I really can't say. Good day, Doctor Watson, Mr. Holmes. Do let me hear from you."

Holmes pulled the door shut with more force than was necessary and strode into the middle of the room, where he thrust his hands violently into his pockets, extracted his matches and tobacco, and filled and lit his pipe while pacing nervously back and forth upon the carpet. I watched this performance for a few moments, then finally worked up the nerve to speak.

"Holmes, this is the last straw. You must tell me what this is all about."

He flung an arm out violently in my direction, as if to ward me off. "I tell you I cannot tell you more, without revealing the identity of my client, which I am not at liberty to do."

As he was about to resume pacing, I lost what little patience I had left, seized his narrow, taut wrist and brought him around to face me. "Very well," I said in answer to his astonished stare, "you cannot tell me who he is. Suppose I deduce his identity for myself?"

I could hardly have predicted the effect my suggestion had on him. In an instant his despair had lifted and his eyes lit with all the eager anticipation of a hound who has found the scent. "Of course, Watson! Of course!" By now he had led me over to the window seat and in his excitement pushed me down upon it rather violently, as he crouched before me looking up with a flushed face and brilliant eyes. "Deduce! Infer! Come, come, let me see for the second time in as many weeks those hitherto invisible deductive powers in action. Who do you suspect my client is?"

"Well..."

"Come on, man!" he fairly shouted. "Use the principles and methods you have seen my apply a hundred times now--from the evidence you have, what inferences can you make?"

"Your client is male, obviously," I began rather slowly. "He is a public figure, or else the national scandal Athanson threatened would never materialize."

"Good, good," said Holmes. "Continue."

"He is of good breeding, as Athanson alluded to his upbringing, and his profession is something that would make him a target for the violence of the other inmates. It is clear he has not committed any violent crime or burglary since you were not aware it might carry a legal penalty. In fact, if it comes under the Offences against the Person Act, it almost certainly involves a sexual indiscretion that would shock the nation if it were rumored abroad..." He nodded, hanging upon each of my words with a furious concentration that I found most unsettling. "Aha! I have it!"

"Excellent, Watson!" he cried, leaning forward and seizing me by the shoulders in his excitement. "Who is it?"

"Inspector Lestrade!" was my triumphant cry.

Holmes released me and sat back on his haunches with an expression of exquisite disappointment.

"Watson," he said, "do, please, take me through the unique logical process by which you arrived at this conclusion."

"I--well, aside from the sale of contraceptives and the inducement of miscarriage, the main thing the Act covers is prostitution. Athanson said your client had violated two of its provisions, on more than one occasion. It is not too great a leap, surely, to infer that he has been frequenting prostitutes--the repeat offense--and that, as a result, one of them has conceived his child. Hence his attempt to procure an artificial abortion, which accounts for the second violation. To do so, however, he would have had to put himself to considerable risk as well as expense, showing that he has a strong motive for preventing the birth of this illegitimate child. Lestrade certainly would, since to have London learn that he had been habitually violating the law would certainly ruin his career irreparably; and he could hardly afford to support an illegitimate child and a blackmailing mother on a police inspector's salary. His career would certainly make him unpopular there. And," I added, "while another client would not care if you told me his name, Lestrade would, since he knows me personally."

"Capital, Watson," said Holmes, with I thought more sarcasm than was warranted. "You have made a number of useful basic inferences from the facts at your disposal. The only drawback--and it is a great pity--is that every conclusion you have drawn from them is manifestly wrong."

I was naturally hurt by his tone. "Tell me, then--where did I go wrong?"

"My client is, as you astutely observed, male, and can lay some claim to the status of public figure. And, with your unfailing grasp of the obvious, you have also accurately determined that the offense involves sexual misconduct, albeit not the sort that would lead him into the particular difficulty you imagine. Perhaps you may yet find the right scent. Watson, please, make a second attempt. Much depends upon your success or failure."

With him crouching at my feet, looking up at me as a drowning man looks at a life preserver that he fears is just beyond his reach, and fresh from my first disappointment, my command of logic failed me. "I am sorry, Holmes, I cannot imagine who else it might be."

"Oh, think, Watson, think!" he cried, clenching both fists. "Does nothing suggest itself to you?"

It pained me inexpressibly to be unable to give him the answer he wanted. Never before or since have I felt my own shortcomings so keenly, or wished to desperately to be able see what he saw.

"No, Holmes. Nothing."

To my great surprise he sprang backward with a snarl, livid with rage of which I was the hapless object. "I cannot believe it," he exclaimed. "To think that a man of your age and education, having lived some two-score years upon this planet, cannot solve this simple a conundrum--is it conceivable, I ask you, that an adult member of this great British race who has lived among human beings in both the deserts of Afghanistan and this teeming metropolis, who has exercised the noble art of medicine for years, albeit with no very spectacular success, who has had I might add the not inconsiderable opportunity of observing first-hand for several years the world's leading practitioner of the science of deduction--it beggars belief that this man should, when presented with evidence that surely ought to be enough for any Scotland Yard bungler from Lestrade on downwards, still be incapable of making even the most elementary deduction! I tell you it strains human credulity to the limit. It's too bad, Watson, it really is too bad."

He had thrown himself into the armchair previously occupied by Athanson and his sharp, eager face was turned away from me, the eyes hard and the knifelike profile both dangerous and somehow fragile. I rose to my feet and slowly approached him. The breath rushed faster through his quivering nostrils but otherwise he betrayed no awareness of my presence.

"Holmes," I said, deliberately keeping my voice level, "because you are not well, because you have not slept to-night, and because you have occasionally, in the past, abused me in this manner without meaning anything by it, I will let this pass. I can only tell you that until you are willing to give me some further hint, I must remain as much in the dark as ever." He shook his head slightly with a sharp noise of contempt. "We have forty-eight hours," I said, opening the door. "I have one or two calls to make and I will return this evening. After you have had some time to sleep, and to talk to your client--" Here he involuntarily let out a short, bitter laugh. "--we shall see what can be done." I had wanted to be firm, but I could not help adding, "You know that you may always rely on me, and that I will do anything within my undeniably limited power to help you."

I have no very clear memory of how I filled up the rest of the day. It was always difficult for me to concentrate after one of my occasional battles with Holmes, and accustomed as I was to hear him mock my intellectual limitations the violence with which he had turned upon me, and the intensity of his passion, had rather stunned me. When I at length made my way home at dinner-time, Holmes was out; nor did he return later that evening. Not without misgivings, I finally gave up on him and went to bed, where I had vague and unpleasant dreams involving Inspector Lestrade administering my board exams, during which I could not demonstrate a grasp of the most basic knowledge of anatomy. I was therefore less annoyed than I might have been to find myself shaken awake by Holmes, who was standing in the dark at the head of my bed.

"Good heavens, Holmes, what has happened? What time is it?"

"Nothing, and slightly after midnight." He paused, and laid one pale hand gently on my arm. "I only wanted to apologize for my outburst this morning. You are in no way responsible for the nightmare I am presently inhabiting, and it was wrong of me to vent my frustration on the one human being who has never done me a wrong or had a complaint to make. I hope you will forgive me."

This really was becoming alarming. The last time he had apologized to me was for nearly killing both of us in an experiment intended to test the effects on humans of radix pedis diaboli. I sat bolt upright.

"Of course I forgive you. Please say no more about it. But for God's sake, Holmes, why cannot you just tell me what you want me to know? I am sure that if your client knew how much affected you have been by this case he would release you from this oppressive vow of silence."

A sad smile gleamed briefly in the darkness. He patted my arm once and withdrew his hand. "It is more complicated than you imagine," he said. "But I can promise you at least that by tomorrow morning it will all be over, for better or worse." He turned to go, and I saw another, more metallic gleam in the darkness.

"Holmes," I ejaculated, "is that my revolver in your pocket?"

"Surely you don't mind my borrowing it, Watson," he answered. "I may need it. I'll have it back by morning."

I threw back the covers and sprang out of bed. "I'm coming with you."

"No!" His voice, commanding and imperative as always, froze me where I stood. "Watson, this one time, and this one time only, I categorically forbid you to come. If you attempt to follow me I shall know, and I warn you that if you do from that moment onward we are no longer friends. I tell you this for your own good," he said, relenting somewhat. "It is far too dangerous an expedition."

"Then it is too dangerous for you."

"I have no time for this," he retorted imperiously. "I will return before morning, and you will wait for me here. Sleep well." Before I could stop him he was out the door.

For several seconds, I considered actually honoring his request. Then I dressed as quickly as I could and slipped out the door no more than a minute after Holmes had passed through it. He had enjoined me to stay behind; but he had not asked for my explicit promise, and I had not given it. Whatever the reasons were behind this extraordinary secrecy, I was convinced that they could not justify the toll it had taken on him. Besides, if he was risking bodily harm or even death, as I had every reason to believe he was, my place was at his side. It was no light thing for me to thus flout his instructions and thwart his will, but the consequences would have to take care of themselves. In the name of loyalty if nothing else I owed it to him, and to myself, to disobey him.

I had learned enough about shadowing a suspect to track him easily. Ordinarily I have no doubt he would have detected me immediately, but he was too intent on his mission, and no doubt too confident in my unquestioning submission to his wishes, to take more than cursory precautions, which I was able to circumvent. We were headed for the East End, and we were in for a long walk. Tramping after him through the crusted snow and ice lining the curbs, avoiding the lit circles under the gas lamps and skulking in the shadows with the rats and derelicts, I began to feel as if I myself were the criminal whose track he was following, and that he was pursuing me instead of vice versa. It was an uncomfortable sensation to have among the reeking dens and squalid shanties of the East End, and one which did not appreciably abate as I saw him stop in an ill-lit doorway and ring the bell.

The house was actually better-built than most of its neighbours, and must once have been a respectable dwelling before the influx of immigrants from the outlying reaches of the Empire had claimed this part of London and sent the previous residents flying to more exclusive districts. From what little I could see by the gaslight the building had been kept in some sort of repair, and when the door was opened it was by a thin, stooping man with the respectable black clothes and deferential tones of a genteel butler.

"Good evening, Hastings," said Holmes.

"Why, Mr. S," replied the other figure, "we weren't expecting you tonight."

"I didn't think it would matter."

"We're always pleased to have your custom, of course," he said politely. "It's just that I'm afraid Tony is engaged right now."

"Dear me, that is unfortunate."

"But if you would care to wait in the drawing room--"

"Thank you, that will do nicely." He passed through the arch and the door slammed shut behind him.

Holmes might have had the luxury of waiting in a drawing room, albeit one not likely to be figured in the pages of the Illustrated London News. I, however, spent the interval crouched in the cold and damp between two rubbish bins in an alleyway that abutted the rear of the house, trying vainly to discern what sort of establishment this was. I thought first of the cocaine-bottle, but a habit I had known of for years could hardly necessitate this elaborate deception. He was here on a different errand altogether, one which required the participation of the Tony on whose leisure both of us were waiting. Surely Tony could not be his mysterious client? From where I hid I had a clear view of most of the rear windows, but those that were not unlit had heavy blinds drawn, and I could make out nothing save for a vague movement of blurred shadows on the other side. The windows had been closed and muffled against the winter draughts, so that no sound escaped to give me any hint of what was taking place behind them. I was beginning to lose heart when to my great relief I heard a sash fly up,and the clear, familiar voice of my friend proceeding from it.

"You don't mind if I open the window, do you? I prefer a bit of a draught."

"It's news to me," answered a second voice, in which an unmistakably working-class accent combined with an attempt at genteel intonation, "but if you don't mind I don't."

"Nor any objection to my turning up the gas?" Apparently not, for a light glowed in one of the windows, and the sharp outline of Holmes's aquiline nose and well-defined chin was silhouetted against it.

"You're in one of your moods tonight, aren't you?" was the good-humored reply. Behind Holmes's shadow, I could see another figure moving about in the room.

"Just a little," he answered with a light laugh. "I'm not a patient man, as you know."

"I'm sorry for the delay," responded the other. "If you had arranged in advance--" Holmes's hand waved in a gesture of dismissal. "It is tiresome. But," he continued, as his broader, squarer silhouette joined Holmes's as he stood looking out the window, "you must realize you're not the only man in London who wants to play Holmes and Watson."

It is still difficult for me to describe, even at a distance of several years, the effect those words pronounced by that voice and in that setting had on me. It was not that I exactly understood, in any intellectual sense, what was transpiring in that cheap upstairs room. A kind of physical apprehension, almost an animal sensation of danger and fear raised the hair on the back of my neck and icy fingers of dread closed around my heart. I knew that if I did not get up from that spot and flee this place of evil, some calamity would overtake me, and my life would be forever altered. But I also knew that for all his assumed levity and studied indifference, Holmes was in desperate danger. And I could not abandon him. Not even to save myself from whatever terrible fate was hovering in the darkness above me.

"No," said Holmes quietly. "I don't suppose I am."

The other man put a heavy hand on his shoulder. "You're tired, Holmes," he pronounced in a voice that had suddenly lost all trace of its accent and assumed the rounded vowels and careful consonants of a member of the professional classes.

"Yes," he answered, turning his head to face his companion. "You are right; I have been rather too hard on myself recently."

"Why don't you come to bed," replied the other, as the shadow of his moustached, square-jawed head hovered mere inches away from Holmes's, "and let me be hard on you for a change."

Holmes laughed and brought a hand up to stroke the other man's jaw.

"Rather simple," he responded, "and much too vulgar. But keep it up," he continued, moving closer and dropping his voice. "It reminds me of who you are not."

"You're a strange bird, Holmes," said the other, as the shadow of his head merged with that of my friend's.

Why should I go on? From my hiding-place and at that distance I could not see everything, but I saw, and moreover heard, enough. Crouching in that miserable alley, I heard my name--and his--called out in any number of tones of voice, interspersed with dialogue that ran like a grotesque parody of one of my own chronicles. Why should I describe the contortions of the shadows that the lamp still occasionally threw into the opening of the window, or the inarticulate sounds proceeding from it, or the sacrilegious uses to which both the vocabulary and the implements of my profession were put? It is enough to say that within moments it was quite clear to me with what purpose Holmes had repaired to this den, and why he had so adamantly insisted that I should not follow him.

And yet, despite all the horror and revulsion this spectacle held for me, I did not stir. For the better part of an hour I squatted there, rooted--by what? By the memory of his face in the darkness at my bedside, of the passion in his voice that morning--by the pain my ears could still detect even in these nocturnal cries. He was in danger. That I knew. And shivering in the mire and slush beneath that lighted window, I was beginning to know a number of other things.

It was now clear, for instance, that his reluctance to visit me after my marriage had not derived from a personal dislike of poor Mary. I took comfort in that, at least. And a thousand other memories, trivial and momentous alike, were thronging into my mind, all taking on entirely new connotations. The longer I huddled there in the darkness, the more I was beginning to agree with Holmes's assessment of my intellectual abilities. I really had been remarkably dense. For a remarkably long time.

And if the truth be told, was it only Holmes who I had failed to understand? Why had I always been ready to neglect my practice, my health and--if I am honest--even my marriage for the chance to accompany him on one of his adventures? Why had I fainted dead away when he rose up miraculously alive on the other side of my desk that afternoon just a few months ago? And could the devotion of a friend, or even the admiration of a pupil, really explain why for those three long years of his absence one day in every spring had found me in Switzerland standing on that ledge of evil memory shedding tears into the Reichenbach Falls?

I was very much afraid that, dense as I was, I might now know the answers to some of these questions. But looking up at that window, and imagining the scene within, revulsion began once again to be my dominant emotion. I had always seen him as the purest example of intellectual prowess and analytical power--whatever my feelings for him were, I had never imagined him in anything like this fashion. That he should be driven to come to this sordid place to enact whatever twisted stories he was dreaming up about me with a hired professional--that he had been returning from this place to our rooms in Baker Street and facing me, with this in his memory, as if nothing out of the ordinary had taken place--it was too much. I knew I could never have resorted to so horrible an expedient, no matter how much--no matter how long...

It seemed like an eternity before I saw Holmes, once again dressed and silhouetted against the lamp, turn his angular bird like head to ask, "Shall we call it an hour? The rates haven't gone up, have they?"

"You can settle on Friday, same as always," was the response. The accent had melted as abruptly as it had been assumed.

"I don't think I should," Holmes answered, the strain telling in his high, nervous intonation. "I shan't be back."

"I'm sorry to hear that," said the other, with apparent sincerity.

"I'm sure you are," he answered with a rueful laugh. "I may not be your only repeat customer, but I've no doubt I'm the most reliable."

The light went out and the sash slammed to. I remained frozen to my spot, thinking over what I had seen and heard. It was some moments before I fully came to appreciate the vital importance of getting back to Baker Street before Holmes did.

Abandoning any attempt at concealment, I hurried up the street as quickly as I could, hoping that I would be able somehow to overtake him without his noticing. I was somewhat perturbed when after several minutes I had not yet seen him ahead of me. It was possible that I had taken a wrong turning. I was considering stopping and doubling back when the hiss and glare of a struck match caught my attention. Standing with his back to a gas lamp a few yards in front of me, holding a pipe in one hand and the match in the other, looking straight at me, was Sherlock Holmes.

"Well, Watson," he said. "What now?"

The brim of his cap threw a shadow that hid his eyes, and the voice was deliberately calm and steady. But the flame wavered erratically through the night as he tried, without success, to light his pipe with badly shaking hands. And suddenly it was all so absurdly simple.

"My dear Holmes," I cried, stretching my own hands out to steady his, "come home with me and you shall tell me all about it."

"God bless you, Watson," he said in a breaking voice.

Whether he had collapsed, or I had moved toward him, or both, the next moment found my arms around his shaking, weak form, and his head on my shoulder as a kind of high, over-wrought sigh shuddered from his lungs.

Supporting him on my arm, I set off up the street. By some miracle there was a cab passing through that quarter at this unholy hour, into which I bundled Holmes. As the wheels rattled over the uneven pavement he gradually returned to something approaching his usual demeanor.

"You knew I would follow you," I said.

"I thought you probably would." Despite everything he smiled wanly. "Of course I saw immediately that you had. You really must make more of an effort at concealment when--"

"Damn it, Holmes, I'm tired of it."

He sank back into the cushions. "Of course you are," he said dully. "You've every right to be."

"There was no client, of course," I continued.

Holmes chuckled dryly. "Everything I said to you was quite true, in its own way. I did have the strongest possible objections to your involvement."

"How long has this blackguard Athanson had his claws in you?"

"For the past eighteen days. I won't bore you with the details. You can appreciate my anxiety when he insisted you be present. Of course he only did so because he knew I would be in agony. Mr. Athanson is not a very successful thief but he has a genius for cruelty, in his own small way."

"But why did you not simply tell me?"

A short, bitter bark of laughter escaped him. "Watson, whatever your other shortcomings may be, no one could ever accuse you of wanting imagination. Put yourself, then, in my place." He fixed his eyes on the empty space before him with a deep sigh. "Since your earliest recollection you have been ill at ease in the company of most other human beings. Save for one brother who lives immersed in his own fantasy world, you have no family living that you care to acknowledge. Through one of those tremendous coincidences which contrive to make even an empiricist like yourself suspect the existence of a greater plan and a higher providence, you have stumbled across another man whose temperament is, while entirely dissimilar, congenial to yours and who, for reasons that remain a mystery, becomes fond of you."

His hands dangled listlessly from his wrists, swaying gently to and fro with the motion of the cab as he lost himself in his reverie. The sound of his voice, the lateness of the hour, and the reaction to the emotional strain I had been under combined to make me feel, too, as if I was dreaming, hovering suspended and bodiless in this strange dark space. "This friendship soon becomes the single most important element of your life. As you find yourself going to greater lengths to seek his company, you are more than ever touched by the warmth of his affection and the simplicity of his devotion. Then," he added, "you stare over a cliff with your mortal enemy's fingers about your throat, and in the moment before your final plunge into oblivion you think of him and are seized with a regret so intense and heartbreaking that you pray death does take you, and take you instantly. Unfortunately, you survive."

He heaved another of those troubled sighs. "Three haunted years later, you return to your previous life by the side of your old friend. But now your affection has taken a shape that in all his decent, upright life this man has never imagined was possible. You dare not speak to him and risk losing his regard. Yet to be with him, and not be with him, is driving you mad. You can find no solution to this problem. One evil night your criminal researches take you into a vicious part of town where you discover what, in your desperation, appears to be a palliative, if not a cure." He shook his head. "Now, imagine walking into the home you share and saying to the man whose good opinion means more to you than the hyperbolic accolades of the press, Parliament and the crowned heads of Europe--the kind, straightforward, loyal man upon whose open heart and generous nature you have been imposing for fourteen years, 'Watson, not only have I been dreaming for years of doing things to you that would shock your conscience, turn your stomach, and outrage your medical sensibilities, I have for the past month been paying a male prostitute to impersonate you while I do them to him.'"

Not knowing what to say, I laid a hand gently on his shoulder.

The cab jolted around a curb and flung both of us violently into one corner. The sudden movement broke the almost trance-like mood in which both of us had been wrapped. His eyes flew open and with sudden terror he shrank away from me to the opposite end of the seat. I remained planted where I was, not more than a foot distant from him, watching him struggle to regain his composure.

"Holmes ... I would have..."

He shook his head violently. "I could not do it, Watson."

"Yet you deliberately led me out here to witness this."

"I have always found it easier--and more effective--to show first, and tell afterward."

In spite of myself I smiled, remembering the effect of his demonstrations on Lestrade and the other baffled detectives who had been subjected to them. "Indeed," I said pointedly, "by using that method, as you have said, one can produce a startling, though possibly a meretricious, effect."

The husky note in my voice was as much a surprise to me as it was to him.

"Watson," he breathed, shrinking if possible farther into the angle of the cab, "what can you mean?"

"You vain, arrogant, self-absorbed devil," I said, as gently as I could, "in all this time did you never pause to wonder whether it was possible--just possible--that I was not utterly transparent?" He blinked. "That there might be something in my character that you might not perceive? That perhaps my affections, too, might have developed ... complications?"

"You can't mean it," he burst out. "You--a married man--"

"A widower--"

"Nevertheless--"

"I loved Mary," I declared with all the fervor of my roused soul, "and she, God help her, loved me, and if she had been spared to me we should not now be having this conversation. But she knew from the beginning what I know now--that I belonged to you before I met her, and that happen what may I am and will be bound to you still." Holmes's hawklike features emerged slightly from the darkness of the corner, eyes shining with what looked like eagerness but also like fear. "Holmes," I cried, "I am, as usual, in the dark. I do not understand any of this. I do not understand myself anymore than I understand you. I understand one thing only."

"Then for pity's sake enlighten me," Holmes groaned, "I understand nothing."

Language and thought at this moment deserted me utterly, as I might have expected they would. But I am a man of action. I flung my arms about his slim, hard shoulders and crushed my mouth down upon his quivering lips.

I cannot describe my exact sensations. I am not sure that I remember them. I do remember having just time, just before the horses clattered to a halt outside our door, to remark to myself that I was probably one of only three or four human beings who had ever really surprised Sherlock Holmes.

I clambered out and stood stamping my still-numbed feet on the curb while Holmes paid the driver. I was aware that I was blushing furiously, and that other symptoms were liable to manifest themselves very shortly. As I was looking studiously up the street willing myself into quiescence, with no very great success, I felt his thin, eager hand grasp my arm.

"Come, Watson," he said.

I turned to look at him. The same fever that was heating my blood burned across his high, sharp cheekbones.

We rushed up the steps and into the entry with, I fear, little regard for the noise we made. There was an interminable moment of suspense while Holmes struggled to turn the key in the lock, and then we burst in and slammed the door shut behind us.

The sight of our familiar apartment, which we had shared for so long in perfect amity, had a chilling effect on both of us. While I stood stock-still with my back to the closed door, Holmes advanced slowly to the mantel and lifted his meerschaum off its stand with infinite care and tenderness.

"It will never be the same, Watson." There was a note of sadness, and more than a hint of apprehension, in his voice.

"So be it," was my vehement reply.

Holmes dropped the pipe to the floor and took two strides to the spot to which my terrified anticipation had momentarily fixed me. For the brief time he took to reach me I contemplated with horror the risk of ruin, disgrace and calamity that was approaching along with him. And then, relaxing in the powerful but tender grip of those eager, wiry arms, as those sensitive hands guided my face toward his waiting mouth, everything else faded to insignificance.

"Watson," he whispered, "think--be sure--don't let your loyalty lead you into pretending--"

"I have been waiting for this moment since 1882," I interrupted. "If you delay it for another instant I shall--"

I never formed the end of the sentence. For several minutes thereafter, in fact, conversation was impossible. I was busy discovering that my friend's fine, trembling fingers could be as articulate as his tongue, and I daresay he was adding a few notes to the mental casefile I knew he was keeping open on me. When next I was able to speak, I was lying half-naked on Holmes's narrow bed, looking up at him and suddenly feeling both nervous and vaguely ashamed of what I was about to say. And yet it was perfectly reasonable. "Holmes," I panted, "you mustn't think me callous--"

"What is it, Watson?"

"But--your associate in the East End--" It hurt him to hear me refer to it, and I ached for him when I saw it, but I had to go on. "Holmes, we don't know where he's been."

To my surprise he laughed. "Watson, I should think this late in the day you would have more respect for my intelligence. You don't seriously believe I would neglect to take precautions?"

"You are careless of your health in every other respect--"

"Oh, really, Watson. I am, I confess, a deviant, a cocaine fiend, and a freak of nature, but I am not yet a suicidal maniac. Even if I were I should choose a method other than syphilis with which to make away my life."

"Well then," I said, putting my arms around his long white neck, "you may as well pursue your investigation."

Dawn broke at some point during the next hour but I never noticed. Fourteen years of suppressed emotion and frustrated desire were rushing out of me like water through a dam, and I floated helplessly along in the current, awash in a sense of release unlike anything I could have imagined. When Holmes's face reappeared next to mine, flushed with triumph but at the same time wordlessly anxious, I could only look back at him in wonder.

"I know you have been rehearsing--" I began.

He shook his head. "Pray put that idea out of your mind. Nothing on earth could have prepared me for this."

"I believe you," I said, my breath finally beginning to be more regular.

"You look pensive, Watson," he said after a long pause.

"One thing is troubling me."

"My dear fellow--I suppose I could be wrong, but from the evidence you furnished I inferred that you found it--"

"And as always, your inference was correct," I hastened to assure him. "But I do feel I ought to reciprocate..."

With a smile he sat back on his heels, resting his quiet hands on my bare chest. "By all means."

I sat up awkwardly. "But Holmes ... I've never ... I have no idea how..."

"Never mind, Watson," he said softly. "Neither did I."

Holmes stroked my hair gently, but my anxiety mounted. He must have noticed, for he sat back expectantly as a wicked smile tweaked his reddened lips.

"Come, Watson," he said in his old abrupt and hectoring fashion. "Didn't they teach you anything in the British Army?"

Somehow hearing him taunting me again put me more at ease. "I'm afraid the other medical officers considered this sort of thing unhygienic."

"Well, Watson, no matter," he said in the most conversational and offhand manner, shrugging indifferently as he lay back upon the rumpled bedclothes. "You know my methods. Apply them."

Laughing--at first--I did my best. It was a challenge, as I had thought it might be, for even in these circumstances his compulsion to observe and to analyze threatened to overrule every other. After patiently putting up with his no doubt well-meant suggestions and directions, I was thus all the more gratified when his verbal commentary became more incoherent and disjointed, and finally disappeared altogether in a cacophony of inarticulate sounds that I had never heard him or any other human being make before, even from my hiding place outside that fateful window. Overcome, and more than a little frightened of what I had wrought, I sought his eyes again.

"Well, Holmes?"

In his reveries, those slow, languid moods that alternated with his spurts of activity, I had seen something like this blurred and satiated gaze, but nothing quite this extreme. For several long seconds we looked at each other. Finally I prompted him.

"What do you think, Holmes?"

"I can't think," he murmured, closing his eyes with a sigh of inexpressible contentment. "I mean that quite literally. I believe you have blown my mind." The eyes opened, their preternatural serenity now lightened with a spark of humor. "So to speak." And then, with a sincerity that brought tears to my eyes, "Thank you."

"You know it is my greatest pleasure to serve you," I said.

His eyes were bright with unshed tears and his lips parted as if he were going to say something. Then the veil of humor dropped over his eyes and he spoke softly, but quite distinctly, into my ear.

"Now that really is an appalling thing to hear," he said. "We must try and see if human existence, imperfect and ephemeral as it is, might not hold greater pleasures for you."

Two and a half hours later, I was quite certain that it did. My joy was nonetheless tempered when, as the morning sun shone in through the curtains of the sitting room where we lay sprawled prone upon the carpet, I saw the toll that our voyage of discovery had taken on our surroundings.

"Holmes," I said, "we have made a terrible mess of Mrs. Hudson's tea service."

"I'm sure she wouldn't begrudge it to us," he yawned.

"There is tobacco in your hair."

"Best place for it," he drawled, closing his eyes and wrapping his lean body around my stockier form.

"And--oh dear. Oh my goodness. Holmes, do you remember when you last saw your violin?"

In an instant he was on his feet and combing through the jumble of discarded clothing, displaced objects and spilled foodstuffs that seemed to constitute most of the sitting room. It was fully two minutes before he lifted his head and saw the violin resting safely on the mantel.

"Watson," he cried, advancing on me with a menacing grin, "you put it up there yourself, I distinctly remember it."

"Bless me! So I must have."

"I can see I shall have to be more careful around you from now on," he laughed, encircling my waist and bending his head over mine.

"Or less," I brought out, realizing with disbelief that my blood was once again rising.

"Holmes," I ventured, after another hour or so had elapsed.

"Mm?"

"We are forgetting something."

"If there's another position you'd--"

"Be serious for a moment, Holmes," I said, as he turned over on his back. "What are we to do about Athanson?"

"Let him publish and be damned." His arms tightened around me as he laid his head on my breast. "Now that you know he can do me no harm."

"Not in that sense," I said, "but really, Holmes, this is very dangerous. If he chooses to inform the police they will have to act. They convicted Oscar Wilde, and they could certainly--Holmes, do let my moustache alone, I'm trying to speak to you."

"I'm sorry, Watson," he said, withdrawing his hand with a look of highly insincere remorse. "I must control my depraved urges."

"You needn't do that. But we now have less than twenty-four hours to confound him and I can't see how it's to be done."

With a groan of annoyance he pushed his exhausted body into a seated position. "Watson, after last night's performance you really cannot expect energy from me. There are limits to even my stamina."

"What I don't understand is how he got this information in the first place."

"Oh, there are a hundred ways for a professional blackmailer to get his hands on this sort of thing. Every house like that has its informants. I shouldn't be surprised if Tony was one of them."

"But Athanson isn't a professional blackmailer. He's a banker."

"True enough. But even you, if you will recall, were able to determine that I was spending my nights in the East End without being a professional blackmailer."

"But that's only because I was in the area myself and happened to--good gracious, Holmes, what is the matter?"

His body had gone taut with some sudden comprehension and he was clutching his hair with a cry of vexation.

"I cannot believe I have been so blind," he shouted. "This is what comes of emotional excitement, Watson. It should have been obvious from the start. Naturally I always took steps to avoid anyone who might be following me. He could not have had me shadowed. But if he happened to be in the same place at the same time--"

"He must be a customer too."

"We have him, Watson, we have him!" he cried, leaping to his feet and dashing about the room in search of a pen and paper. "If he has been to the place only once or twice this may be no use but I fancy Mr. Athanson is the genuine, full-blown deviant personality. And he is married with two children, the fool!" He scribbled a note on a scrap of foolscap and rang the bell for Mrs. Hudson. "Once I send this note--"

"Holmes," I interjected as I heard the tread of approaching feet, "hadn't we better dress?"

It was a mark of how far we had both come, I suppose, that until that moment we had forgotten that we were both stark naked. Holmes hunted frantically for something to cover himself with, while I seized the nearest piece of clothing and threw it on, noticing just as the door opened to admit Mrs. Hudson that it was one of Holmes's dressing-gowns.

"Good morning, Doctor Watson," she said, taking in the state of the sitting room, and my own state of undress, without appearing to turn a hair. "Did you want breakfast?"

"Ah, no, Mrs. Hudson," said Holmes apologetically, who had leapt into a pair of my trousers a moment beforehand. "No, I just wondered if you might send the boy with this note, and ask him to bring back the reply as quickly as he can. Do you think you can spare him?"

"Why, of course, Mr. Holmes," she answered with her usual placid good-humor. "But what about the breakfast? Surely you don't intend to face the day with an empty stomach."

"Yes," I said, despite Holmes's silent objections, "I think we should like some, if it wouldn't put you out."

"Oh, it's no trouble, I was just putting the kettle on," she answered. "Back in a moment." And she was gone.

Holmes and I looked at each other. Then, simultaneously, we burst out laughing.

"She must have known," I said, wonderingly.

"My dear fellow," Holmes answered, collapsing weakly onto the settee as he shook with laughter, "it is obvious, is it not, that she has 'known' for years."

"I wish she'd told me," I muttered.

"Nevertheless," he replied, "we really had better dress before she comes back. Although you do look magnificent in that dressing-gown."

"I am sorry to say that you look utterly ridiculous in my trousers."

"Ah well," he shrugged, climbing out of them. "Any port in a storm, Watson."

By the time the boy came back with the reply, we had restored the sitting room and ourselves to our usual condition. Holmes gave the lad a sovereign, opened the note, and crumpled it again with a noise of satisfaction. "He says he'll be here shortly."

"Who will?"

"Tony."

I was not pleased with the prospect of confronting the other participant in last night's adventure. "Whatever for?"

"If Athanson is a client, Tony will know about it. And he will be able to get his hands on evidence. You mustn't be jealous, Watson," he went on, reading my unspoken thoughts with that infuriating accuracy of his, "he provides a service, which I have occasionally purchased in the past. That is the extent of our relationship."

Never once, from that first moment under the gas lamp onward, had either of us used the word love. Knowing him as I did that did not surprise me. I did not expect we ever would. But in his own way, he had just told me what I had been waiting to hear.

When we heard the knock at the door, it was Holmes who started from his chair and disappeared into one of the bedrooms without much in the way of explanation. I steadied my nerves and opened it myself.

"Good afternoon," said the young man on the other side of the doorway. "I'm looking for Mr. Sherlock Holmes."

"Do come in," I said. "He's expecting you. I am his friend and colleague Dr. Watson."

He was somewhat taller than I, but with the same square build, with a shock of dark brown hair and a rather overdone moustache. I saw with some amusement that he was looking me over with the same critical glance.

"I'm very pleased to meet you, sir," he said, shaking my hand with a firm grip that, like his accent, seemed rehearsed. "I'm a great admirer of yours. I've read all of your stories."

"Yes, I could tell," I murmured.

He cocked his head. "I'm sorry?"

"Nothing," I answered. "Let me just go see what's keeping Holmes."

Leaving him seated at the table in some bewilderment, I slipped into the bedroom.

"You invited him," I began.

"Don't be angry, Watson," he pleaded. "I simply can't--"

"Rubbish." I propelled him toward the door. "If I can face him, so can you."

"But Watson--"

After a brief attempt at protest, he resigned himself, and walked out into the sitting room with his usual aplomb. Tony was seated with his back to the bedroom and looking out the window. Holmes cleared his throat. "Thank you for coming, Tony--"

He laughed and got to his feet. "If I had a shilling for every man who'd said that to--" he began, but stopped when he caught sight of Holmes. His jaw dropped and his hands gripped the back of the chair.

"I'll wager you do," said Holmes, perfectly at ease now that he had rendered our visitor speechless with astonishment. "If not more. They are not all very polite, your clients."

"My God," was his only response.

"Please take a chair," Holmes said, sitting down himself. "Watson and I would like a word with you."

"I--sir--you must know, I had no idea it was--that you were--really--"

"It's all right, Tony," he answered, making an effort to calm him now that he had recovered his own composure. "I am not interested in prosecuting you for solicitation, nor is my friend Dr. Watson planning to have the law on you for copyright infringement. We simply need some information, and I was hoping that, in return for all the business I have brought your way, you might see your way to providing it."

Tony looked once at each of us, let out a long, hearty laugh, and finally relaxed into his chair and his ordinary accent.

"By God, Mr. S, I'll do my best. Now that my heart's beating again I couldn't be prouder. To think all this time I've been servicing the genuine article." He glanced in my direction with a little more trepidation." Your friend there--"

"Is aware of your peculiar vocation and of our previous relationship."

"No hard feelings?"

"None, I can assure you," I answered, and to my surprise I meant it. Now that he was at ease, he was so unlike me, and so clearly uninterested in pressing any kind of a claim, that it would have been absurd to cherish a dislike for him.

"It's interesting work, and it pays extra," he explained. "Since the Return we've been doing a bang-up business, too."

"Really," said Holmes.

"Oh, yes. The only one more popular than Holmes and Watson is Tennyson and Hallam and thank God I'm the wrong body type for that. If I'm to be buggered by a casual stranger I'd just as soon it be to the strains of 'The game's afoot!' than have quatrains shouted at me. 'Descend, and touch, and enter,' my--"

"Tony," said Holmes gently, "you're frightening the doctor."

"Sorry," he said. "We do have this habit of talking shop. No, Mr. S., anything I can do for you--"

"I wanted to ask you about one of those casual strangers," Holmes said, taking a newspaper clipping out of his scrapbook. "Do you recognize this man?"

Tony looked for a moment at the daguerrotype and his features contorted in disgust. "Do you know him?"

"He's certainly not a friend, if that's what you mean," Holmes replied. "Is he a client of yours?"

"No, thank goodness," he answered. "A little play-acting, a little light discipline, some flogging, fine, it's a living, but when it comes to persecuting innocent dumb animals--"

Holmes's laugh rang out clear and sharp. "Indeed! This is most gratifying. Is he a small-animal man, or--"

"Really, Holmes--"

"Ah, I've got the accent all wrong," Tony exclaimed. "How embarrassing. You can't imagine how much I appreciate this opportunity, Dr. Watson."

"Well, Tony," Holmes broke in before I could respond, "suppose, in return for all our assistance with your professional development, I were to ask you to supply me with some form of physical evidence that would show that our man was one of your regular patrons, would that be possible?"

"Possible?" Tony laughed. "Nothing easier. Hastings has a ledger with all the real names, house names, days, times, and peculiar preferences. For this beaut he must have had to attach an extra sheet." Tony shook his head. "Usually poor Giancarlo gets stuck with him. Just because he's the last one they hired. It's not right."

"Well," Holmes said cheerfully, "if you can bring me the relevant portion of the ledger, I think it may be safe to say he will never darken your door again."

"Oh, Mr. S., if you can rid us of the pest you'll be the hero of the Malbreth Mews," he replied earnestly. "Not that you aren't already, in a way."

"Get me the document by five o'clock this evening and you will be quit of him forever by six," Holmes answered.

"Done." Tony rose, and we all shook hands. "It was a pleasure working with you, sir, and I mean that. You were always a gentleman." He turned to me. "And so considerate. Most of them never even think of using protection. As if just because we're paid for it we should have to take their infections along with their money. And God forbid one of us should suggest something that might interfere with a client's pleasure. Well, good afternoon, you'll hear from me soon."

Holmes stood in thought for several moments after the door shut.

"He seems an intelligent young man," I said.

"You know, Watson," he said heavily, "there has been so much talk about disease and epidemics spreading up from the lower classes ... to think I was so worried about catching something from him, and it never even occurred to me that disease might spread from the top down, and that the risk is much greater for him than for his clients."

"At least we can do them the favor of scaring off Athanson," I said, stroking the back of his tensed shoulders.

He raised his head. From the sound of his breath I thought he might be crying, but his eyes, though somber, were dry.

"It's a bleak world, Watson," he said. "And a cruel city, with a cold, dark heart. Queen Victoria is on the throne and Oscar Wilde is in Reading Gaol, and down in Malbreth Mews some poor wretch is inflicting all the pain of his thwarted, frustrated heart on some poor boy like Tony." He sighed. "And it will never again be me, thank God and you for that," he said, turning to me, "but it will always be someone." I passed my hand gently over his cold, furrowed brow. "Why does it happen, Watson? Whose evil purpose does it serve?"

"I don't know, Holmes," I said simply. "Perhaps one day you will find out. If you can discover the scheme, whatever it is, I will hunt the blackguard down."

"Come here, Watson," he said, and pulled me into his arms.

"Well, Watson," said Holmes, as he sat down on my bed to take off his boots, "I hear from Tony that Athanson continues to be a non-presence."

"Judging by the expression on his face when he left," I said, pulling off my collar, "I should be very surprised if he had the courage to leave the house in the morning, let alone return to his former haunts, for at least a year."

"I am glad to have resolved it," he replied as he hung his shirt on the bedpost. "It was, as I said, a commonplace sordid little affair--"

"But not without its points of interest," I continued. "Incidentally, Holmes, I received a request this morning from an actor who is founding his own theatre company. He wants my permission to produce dramatic adaptations of my stories."

Holmes snorted. "Soon I suppose we will be the subject of Christmas pantomimes and cartoons in Punch."

I had already seen several Punch cartoons featuring Holmes's easily-caricatured face, but forbore to mention it. "I wrote to give my consent. He will only pirate them illegally otherwise. We may as well not even give authors a copyright in this country, for all the good it does."

"Ah well," Holmes replied, slipping into bed. "Perhaps they'll be tastefully done."

"The actor himself wants to play you, naturally," I added, walking into the washroom and returning with my black bag, "but I took the liberty of suggesting an unknown who might be ideal in the part of Watson."

Holmes sat bolt upright. "You didn't."

"Of course I did."

"And why not?" he laughed. "It's a brilliant idea."

"Oh, my dear Holmes," I demurred. "It was elementary."

It was a moment before he realized. Then I felt the pillow strike me directly in the face.

"All right," he said after I had pummeled him with it for a minute or so, "all right, I deserve it." I climbed under the bedsheets with him. "And anything else you give me."

"Yes," I said quite seriously. "You do."

He would not say it, not then or, in all probability, ever. But he knew that I knew. He had been right, those many days ago. It was, always had been, absurdly simple.