I regretted it as soon as the words were said, but I could not very well take them back. 'Get some sleep, for God's sake, Holmes.'
'I say again, good night, Russell,' he bit off, struck a match with a violence that must have hurt his back, and applied it to the bowl. I looked at Mycroft, who shrugged minutely, threw my hands in the air, and went to bed.
It was very late, or very early, when the smell of tobacco no longer drifted under my door.
TEN: The problem of the empty house
The massacre of the males —
I was awakened by the shout of a street hawker in the grey morning, and as I lay there summoning the energy to find my watch, the gentle clatter of cup meeting saucer in the next room evoked certain possibilities. I dressed quickly in crumpled trousers and shirt from my knapsack and made my way to the sitting room.
'I hear I have not missed breakfast entirely,' I said as I entered, and stopped dead as I saw the third figure at the table. 'Uncle John! But how —?'
Holmes vacated a chair and took his cup over to the window, where the curtains were still tightly drawn. He moved with care and looked his age and more, but there was no pain in his face, and his shaven chin and combed hair bespoke a degree of back movement that would have been difficult the previous day.
'I fear my long-time chronicler has taken a few of my lessons to heart, Russell. We have been run to earth.'
His expression was of amusement and chagrin laid over something darker, worry, perhaps. He grimaced as Watson chuckled and buttered his toast.
'Elementary, my dear Holmes,' he said, and Holmes snorted. 'Where would Mary be, if you were both in danger, but with you, and where would you go but to your brother's? Have some tea, Mary,' he offered, and looked at me over his glasses. 'Though I should like an apology for your telling me an untruth.' He did not sound hurt, only resigned, and it occurred to me that Holmes was well accustomed to deceiving this man, because he was, as I had said, not gifted with the ability to lie, and thus quite simply could not be trusted to act a part. For the first time I became aware of how that knowledge must have pained him, how saddened he must have been over the years at his failure, as he would have seen it, his inability to serve his friend save by unwittingly being manipulated by Holmes' cleverer mind. And when I continued the pattern, he only looked a mild reproach at me and beheaded a second egg. I sat down in the chair Holmes had left and put a hand on his.
'I am sorry, Uncle John. Really very sorry. I was afraid for you, and afraid that if you came here they'd follow you. I wanted to keep you out of it.'
He harrumphed in embarrassment and patted my hand awkwardly, pink to his bushy grey eyebrows.
'Quite all right, my dear, quite all right. I do understand. Just remember that I've been watching out for myself for a long time now, I'm hardly a babe in the woods.'
And perhaps also, my mind continued, it was an unkind way to remind him that he had been displaced from Holmes' side by an active younger person — a female at that. I was struck anew by the size of this man's heart.
'I know that, Uncle John. I should have thought it out more carefully. But you — how did you get here? And when did you shave off your moustache?' Very recently, from the looks of the skin.
Holmes spoke from his position by the curtains, sounding for all the world like a parent both proud and exasperated at a child's clever but inconvenient new trick.
'Put on your alter ego, Watson,' he ordered.
Watson obligingly put down his spoon and went to the door, where he struggled into a much-repaired greatcoat cut for a man considerably taller than he, a warped bowler, knit wool gloves out at the fingers in three places, and a knit scarf with a distinctly loving-hands-at-home air about it.
'They belong to the doorman at the hotel,' he explained proudly. 'It was just like old times, Holmes, really it was. I left the hotel by the kitchen entrance, through three restaurants and Victoria Station, took two trams, a horse bus, and a cab. It took me half an hour to walk the last quarter mile, watching for loiterers from every doorway. I do not think even Holmes himself could have followed me without my seeing,' he winked at me.
'But, why, Uncle John? I told you that I'd ring you.'
The old man drew himself up proudly. 'I am a doctor, and I have a friend who is injured. It was my duty to come.'
Holmes muttered something from the window, where one of his long fingers pulled back one edge of the thick draperies. Watson did not hear it, but to me it sounded like, 'Goodness and mercy shall plague me all the days of my life.' I had once thought him to be nearly illiterate when it came to Scripture, but he was ever full of surprises, although he did tend to change quotes to suit the circumstances.
'Watson, why should I let you do further damage to my epidermis, what little Russell has left for me? It has already entertained two doctors and a number of nurses at my local hospital. Are you so needy of patients?'
'You will allow me to examine your injuries because I will not leave until I have done so,' Watson said with asperity. Holmes glared at him furiously, and at Mycroft and myself as we began to laugh. He jerked his hand from the drapes.
'Very well, Watson, let us get it over with. I have work to do.' Watson went with Mycroft to wash his hands, taking with him the black doctor's bag he had openly carried through the streets. I looked at Holmes despairingly. He closed his eyes and nodded, then gestured to the window. 'At the end of the street,' he said and went off after Watson.
I put one eye to the edge of the fabric and looked cautiously out. The snow had melted into yellow-grey drifts along the walls, and far down the street there sat a blind man selling pencils. Business was almost nonexistent at that hour, but I watched for several minutes, half hearing the raised voices in the next room. I was just about to turn away when a child came up to the well-swaddled figure and dropped something into the cup, receiving a pencil in return. I watched thoughtfully as the child ran off. A very ragged schoolboy, that one. The black figure reached into the cup, as if to feel the coin, but it had looked to me like a folded square of paper. We were discovered.
Mycroft came into the room then and poured himself a cup of tea dregs. There was a rustle outside the door, and I tensed, but he calmly said, 'The morning news.' He went to bring it in from his mat. Just then Watson's voice came from the next room asking for something, so he handed me the paper and went off. I unfolded it, and my breath stopped. A headline on the front page read:
I reread the short article, little more than a notice, with a feeling of drunken unreality. I quite literally could
