“Holmes is most unwell,” I said. “I fear he is at death’s very door.”
Here Culverton Smith interrupted me to let loose an explosive, “Bwaaaaa-ha-ha!”
Pretending I hadn’t heard him, I continued, “He seems to be suffering from some exotic disease and I am only a humble general practitioner. It would probably take someone very smart to help him. I don’t suppose you’d be willing to take a look?”
“That depends,” said Smith, cagily. “Did he tell you where he happened to contract this disease?” He gave me a barely guarded squint of distrust, as if wondering how much I knew and whether I must be the next person to fall mysteriously ill.
I gave a little smile. “He thinks it is due to his repeated contact with tropical-Chinese sailors on one of his recent cases.”
“What? No, no, no! Doesn’t he understand? Damn him!”
“So, you’ll go?”
“Of course! I must drive right down and put him straight!”
“Do you need the address?”
Culverton Smith shook his head and brushed the question aside. “No, I don’t think so. Same as I sent the poison to?”
Staples gave a great sigh, hung his head, and shook it back and forth.
“The same,” I replied.
“I shall come directly.”
“No, no. You must wait twenty minutes.”
“But why?”
“Because… um… those are the rules.”
“Argh!” he fumed. “Very well!”
* * *
How it buoyed my heart to turn onto Baker Street and see that I could still perceive the door to 221B. I breezed up my familiar stairs, across the sitting room, and found Holmes much as I had left him.
“Did it work, Watson? Did you fool him?”
“I have every hope so. I have to say, Holmes, he seemed a perfect fiend!”
“Oh, you don’t know the half of it, Watson! Do you see that little box on the table by the side of my bed? Look carefully, but be sure you do not touch!”
“And why is that?”
“It contains two dozen disease-poisoned needles, designed to shoot straight towards the face of the man who opens it. And not just any disease, Watson! A deadly one! A magical one, I should think. I’m not sure how, but I suspect Culverton Smith may have some contact with the outside realms.”
I nodded. “You are correct, Holmes. I hadn’t mentioned it yet, but his butler was exactly the same sort of demon as Bannister. I have no idea where Britain’s semi-magical idiots keep coming across these creatures.”
“Ah, probably my fault,” said Holmes with a laugh. “In my youth, it came to my attention that an alarming number of humans were attempting congress with demons—a difficult proposition to be sure, but a highly dangerous one as well. My solution was simple: I created an adjacent pocket dimension that was quite easy to break into and peopled it with exceedingly disappointing demons who were made of something akin to biscuit dough and named after boring, everyday objects. That way, most sorcerers who broke through the barriers around our world were likely to encounter one of my rather crap demons and give up on the whole thing in disgust.”
“A very sound plan; I congratulate you on it,” I said.
“Hmm. Yes. I was smarter then. Or… less distracted, I think. I had two hundred years’ less information rattling around in the old noggin. But you know what they say: experience makes us stupid.”
“Er… do they?”
“Something like that,” said Holmes, with a shrug. “Of course, my plan did not keep all dangerous materials away. Case in point: Culverton Smith’s toxin. Why, I’m not sure that any art I know could save a man who’d felt the touch of those needles. Not even I could survive it, I think.”
I gave a low whistle. “Good thing you didn’t open that trapped box, then.”
Holmes nodded. “It was a close-run thing. I was just about to, when one of the thousand demons always babbling away inside my head asked me, ‘Ooh, ooh! Are you going to open the face-stabby box?’ and I said I was, and he said, ‘Why? It’s a face-stabby box!’ Luckily for me, I asked him what he meant by that.”
“Lucky, indeed.”
“Right. And it seems this may be the exact same toxin Smith used just a few weeks previously to kill his nephew, Victor Savage, for having a much manlier name than he had.”
“A dubious reason for murder, isn’t it?”
“Well, I told you: the man is a fiend!”
“Seems like he could have just gotten his name changed…”
“That’s what Lestrade said when we were on our way to arrest him. But there was just something about him… He seemed… so very distracting, you know? That is why I begged Lestrade to leave the case to me. Instead of arresting Smith, I began to nettle him with the knowledge that I had swept aside his shadowy mask and plumbed the depths of his crime!”
“Causing him to repeat said crime, with you as the target.”
“So it would seem, Watson. So it would—”
Holmes did not finish for the ringing of the bell cut him off. The two of us exchanged surprised looks.
“Smith! Early!” Holmes gasped.
“The little blighter!” I hissed. “I told him to wait twenty minutes.”
“Genius! Fiend!” cried Holmes, clenching vengeful fists towards his ceiling. Nevertheless, his delight was clear. “Quick, Watson, hide behind my headboard!”
“Erm…”
“What? Hide! Quickly!”
“Right, but I am a grown man, Holmes, and that gap seems to be somewhere in the neighborhood of one inch wide.”
“Do not let it concern you, Watson. Just hop in.”
“Except, I can’t.”
“No, I promise you, you can. There’s… well it’s not a proper smiff, you understand, but a failed little experiment of mine. Sort of a localized distortion is all. It should minimize you quite effectively. It’s painless, I swear. Quick, Watson, quick! Jump in!”
Giving Holmes a doubtful eyebrow, I attempted to wedge my foot into the one-inch gap between his headboard and the wall. To my surprise, my foot fit perfectly well. Even stranger, as I stepped down, I just… kept
