“What’s to be done, Holmes? How can we put it right?”
“I’m not convinced that we can, Watson. Think of floating in a boat with a thin iron hull and a cannonball hole in the side. You could patch the hole, if you could get some extra iron. But the only place to take it from is some other area of the ship. And even then, the patch would be rudimentary and not come up to the quality of the original hull—which you would have just holed again to attempt the repair. To say it is a zero-sum game would be over-optimistic. So far as I can tell, it is nothing but a losing gambit.”
“Oh. So, how should we proceed?”
“Well we at least ought to stop everybody mucking about with the smiff and using it for mischief. By the Twelve Gods, Watson, did you see what they were doing with that opium?”
I nodded. “I did not understand, but I certainly saw. Now that I know the whole story, it would seem they are thrusting the opium out the hatch in their back wall and into the smiff, letting it absorb demonic energies, then distributing it to hopeless drug-heads like Isa here and recording the prophetic observations they issue once they have smoked it.”
Holmes gave a sad sort of shrug to show he concurred, then wondered, “What should we do?”
I rubbed at my eyes. “Nothing tonight, I should think. No, you must give me time to reflect on this whole mess for a while. For now, I should get this idiot Isa back home and make sure our cab driver is not dead.”
Holmes nodded at the wisdom of this and called, “Best Horse, stop here, if you please.” Once the carriage halted, Holmes jumped down to the street and said, “Think on it, Watson. If you have any breakthroughs, you can reach me at 221B.”
“Actually I can’t, Holmes. It seems to have become invisible to me.”
“Well, send a telegram then. And now, good night; I can make my way home from here.”
“Holmes,” I said in my most warning tone, “no teleporting.”
He gave a wounded sniff. “You are no longer the boss of me, Watson.” He then took a moment to digest his own words and added, “I mean… and you never were.”
“No teleporting.”
“Fine,” he said, and turned on his heel. He headed off up the street in the direction of 221B or another cab, whichever should come first. This left me free to slap Isa Whitney in the face over and over, until he at last could be cajoled to tell me his address. Once this was duly related to Best Horse, I settled in for the ride and to reflect on the night’s events. How should I proceed on the morrow? How could I shed light onto the strange disappearance of Neville St. Clair, the one-time writer who had once rocked London with his exposé on profitable beggars and who had now, perhaps, been done in by one? I would start, of course, with the more bizarre aspects of the case. Most notably, the ladder Holmes had mentioned. Why would a man with legs as useless as Hugh Boone’s ever request a ladder be attached to his quarters?
Oops! Damn! The ladder!
I had it.
I’d solved it.
Strange, but in that moment of triumph I felt a profound disappointment. Was my return to adventure to be so brief? No back-and-forth with the forces of evil? No monsters to slay? No further exploration of the darker corners of the world, whence to shed my light?
No? I just solved it by myself sitting in a cab?
Ah, well… There was nothing for it now but to try and make it seem impressive to Holmes in the hopes he might find use for me again.
Nobody answered the bell at Isa Whitney’s house. Perhaps they were all abed. Or perhaps he’d slurred his words in his opium-induced stupor and I was ringing the bell of a perfect stranger. Whatever the case, I’d had quite enough of young Isa. I just left him in a bundle on what I hoped was his doorstep and hastened back to the cab. From there, I had Best Horse drop me at my own home. As we parted ways, I took the largest bill I had—a fifty-pound note—folded it, and tucked it into Best Horse’s harness. “That is for you, because you are amazing,” I told him, then jerked my head at his driver. “Don’t let him have any of it.”
I returned to my own quarters to find Mary gently snoring in our bed. (Try telling her that, though. No torture man has devised could ever drive Mary to admit she snores.) I dearly wished to join her—compelled not only by my own weariness, but the strange pull of Holmes’s matrimonial curse. But no. I had work to do.
I pulled my little side table up to Mary’s side of the bed, so I could be near her—or even reach out and touch her if my Mary-withdrawal symptoms became too acute. There I sat, drafting telegrams—one for Holmes, one for Bradstreet, one for Grogsson, and one for Mrs. St. Clair. When the light of day was sufficiently bright, I gave them to Joaquim and asked that he take them to the local telegraph office and send them.
Then, since I realized how well that was likely to turn out, I took them back and went to send them myself.
* * *
Four hours later, I stood leaning against a hired cab on Upper Swandham Lane with Warlock by my side. Lilly St. Clair sat hidden in the carriage behind us, with the door closed and the window curtains drawn.
“So you think you’ve got it, do you, Watson?”
