“Good, remember that!” he instructed me. “Also, it is of paramount importance that you convey to anybody who asks that it is my opinion that whatever ails me is a tropical disease of Chinese provenance, contracted due to my proximity with dock workers.”
“Despite the fact that China is sub-tropical or temperate?”
“Hush, Watson! Anyone who asks must be told it’s an unknown dread disease of the Chinese tropics!”
“And we expect someone to ask, do we?”
“Oh, I’ve been so clever, Watson!”
“Indeed?”
“Indeed!”
He threw both hands up to his lips, fiddling his fingertips together and smiling in pleasure. He was lost in his own thoughts and delighted at his own cunning nature, so after a few moments’ silence, I mentioned, “Mrs. Hudson says you’re dying.”
“What? Oh! Yes, most probably.”
“I suppose I’d better examine you, then.”
Yet I’d made it no more than a step nearer to him before he threw up his arms and cried, “Hey! No, no, no! Keep away from me!”
“So… fearing that you may be dying, you summoned a doctor to not examine you?”
“Summon you? I did no such thing.”
“Then why do we suppose Mrs. Hudson showed up at my door?”
Holmes gave a wounded sniff. “Because one of her oldest and dearest friends lay at the very brink of death and she was naturally concerned.”
“Hmmm. Yes. Sounds exactly like her,” I said, rolling my eyes as hard as I could. “And yet, do you know something strange? I cannot recall ever giving her my new address. In fact, I quite recall purposely omitting to give her my new address.”
“Oh, I may have mentioned it to her,” Holmes scoffed.
“When you sent her out to fetch me?”
“Exactly. Damn!”
“What’s going on, Holmes?”
Yet the infuriating fellow refused to concede that I had caught him in a lie. He lay there silently, arms crossed over his chest with an expression of cold fury caused, no doubt, by the fact this encounter was not going as well as he’d planned.
“All right. I’m going to examine you.”
“No, I said!”
“Why not?”
“Because this malady is deadly contagious, Watson. By touch! Yes, by touch. Or even by looking too closely! So don’t!”
“That is a specious argument, Holmes. It would not stop me from rendering aid to a stranger, much less so old and dear a friend.”
For just a moment, his expression flickered, as if his resolve were softening. Yet, in the next instant his face hardened and he spat, “Well, facts are facts, Watson, and, after all, you are only a general practitioner with very limited experience and mediocre qualifications. It is painful for me to say such things, but you leave me no choice.”
“Oh?”
“No choice at all! So sorry to say it, old man, but I need specialized care!”
I smiled. “Fortunately for you, Holmes, I am acquainted with the famous Dr. Ainstree, the world’s foremost authority on tropical diseases. He is in town. I think I might persuade him to come to you.”
“What? No. I don’t want him.”
“You don’t want the world’s foremost authority?”
“No! The man I want is Mr. Culverton Smith!”
“Mr. Culverton Smith?” I asked him. “Not Dr. Culverton Smith?”
Holmes stomped his foot. Well… he would have, if he’d been standing. As he was lying in his sickbed, it just sort of whooshed down violently under the covers. “Look here, Watson: I know what I need! I need Mr. Culverton Smith to come here to minister to this sickness! I need you to go to him and express you are powerless to diagnose or to treat this rare disease from China! I need you to give him what he will know to be a false explanation of where I contracted it! And I need you to be utterly fooled by my ruse!”
“Why?”
“Because if you were not completely convinced that all these facts were true, he would see through you in an instant! I am playing a delicate game here. Culverton Smith is a man of dangerous intellect!”
“If that is true, Holmes, do you think you should face him unaided?”
Holmes gave me a withering look, which—I must confess—I deserved. It is always best to be direct with Holmes, but perhaps I’d been a bit too near the mark. I cleared my throat.
“I… er… I only meant…”
“Oh, I think we all know what you meant, Watson. You think I’m perfectly helpless without you.”
“What I intended to express is that I might perhaps aid—”
“It’s all very well and good for you now, isn’t it? With your grand new house and your grand new life!”
“Oh, grand, is it?”
“But what about me, eh? Here I sit! No best friend to go have adventures with. No Moriarty anymore. No Irene Adler, even—not that she was ever much of an arch-nemesis to me. Oh no. Never anything but kindness to me.”
I’ll admit his outburst had me quite taken aback. I stammered, “Are you…? Are you sad you don’t have an arch-nemesis?”
“No! I am glad to have found Mr. Culverton Smith! He’s perfect! He’s savage and cruel—a dual murderer, at least—and he’s not above trading blows with me. Why his very last attempt would have surely ended my life, Watson, but for the timely intervention of a demon or three. But I’ll show him! Ha! Wait ’til he sees what I’ve got cooked up for him!”
What a strange wave of emotions this harangue awoke in me. I had a moment of hurt when I found out that Holmes was trying to replace me—to fill the void I’d left in his life as casually as if I’d been a dead goldfish. Then doubt that a new arch-nemesis was not, perhaps, the best way to go about it. Then indignation that his plan was to rope me into supplying my own replacement. Yet, there was something else as well.
Guilt.
I suppose Holmes was right in a way. I had been rather focused on my own misfortunes. I had not taken the time to consider what effect our parting may have had on Holmes. Though, in my defense, the whole thing was rather his fault.
And yet still…
I was
