“Hey!”
“But then I thought, Watson and I were very different. What if my new Watson was more like me? So that is what I set out to find. You were not magical at all. The new Watson had to be as magical as I could manage. Like me! He had to have a brooding and mysterious nature, with just a hint of alluring darkness to him. Like me! And—since it was the thought that you might die that ruined our partnership—it would probably be best if the new Watson was enough of a threat to humanity that it might be quite a boon to everybody if he did happen to be killed. Like me!”
“Holmes! What a thing to say!”
“Bah! It’s only the truth, Watson; everybody knows it. The real problem was this: wherever could I find such a man? And yet, after weeks of tireless searching, voila! Count Negretto Sylvius!”
“Well, he certainly sounds the part,” I admitted.
“And looks it,” Holmes enthused. “Oh, you should see his moustache! Super dark and mysterious! Now… I will admit, the man is not as magical as I had hoped. He is a minor practitioner only. But as a security risk, he is ideal: more than enough of a criminal so that if the predictable should come to pass, nobody will miss him much at all. He’s perfect!”
I will not lie; the notion that Holmes was attempting to replace me was as painful as ever. Yet what could I do? The burden of gentility was on me, and the only course it left me was clear. I straightened my shirt and said, “Indeed. It seems as if you’ve found the ideal match, Holmes. From the bottom of my heart, I wish you more success with your quest for a living companion than you had in your quest for an arch-nemesis.”
“Well…” said Holmes, tapping the tips of his index fingers against each other.
“Oh! Right!” I said, with a start. “I forgot—you’ve said he’s already trying to kill you. I just… lost myself for a moment there.”
“No, that’s all right, Watson. In fact, until you mentioned it, I had overlooked the silver lining this situation presents: though I have failed in my quest for a new Watson, I may well have succeeded in my previous efforts to secure an enemy. He is wholly dedicated to my destruction, Watson. And, though he possesses all the graces of the Southern manner, he is the devil incarnate when the mood is on him.”
“But whatever set him against you, Holmes?”
“Oh, that’s the best part of all! He is in possession of the fabled Margarine Stone!”
Holmes raised both hands reverently to the sky as if praying to some unseen, cyclopean altar and stared with blissful fervor into the middle distance, prompting me to clear my throat and ask, “The… erm… the what now?”
“The Margarine Stone! Don’t you know what margarine is, John?”
“Not quite butter?”
“Exactly!”
“All right, but—and hear me out here, Holmes—also not quite a stone.”
“Ha! Do you know nothing of the origins of margarine?”
I shrugged. “I know that the French emperor Napoleon III set a prize for the invention of a less perishable, less expensive alternative to butter for the French soldiers and the French poor. Nobody told him, apparently, that those are the same people. A fellow named Hippolyte Mège-Mouriès came up with some abomination made from beef tallow and claimed the prize. In recent years, I hear the recipe for margarine has evolved to vegetable oils, water, salt and yellow dye, whipped into a froth and set to harden.”
“Ha!” Holmes scoffed. “That is what they wish you to believe!”
“Oh?”
“The truth is far more interesting! Fourteenth-century Carpathia! Nigh-mythical alchemist, Dragomir Hus! Nearly every detail of the man’s life is lost to the fog of history, Watson, save these two facts: his love of toast and his hatred of going out to the shops. So many trips to secure butter? For a man of his genius? Unacceptable! Instead, he labored in his laboratory—which I have just realized is a fine spot to labor in. Labor-a-tory. I get it now—for over two decades, combining vegetable oils, salt, yellow dyes and water until at last he reached the optimal derivation! A singularity of taste and convenience which crystalized—as divinity realized upon the mortal plane will often do—into a single jewel of perfect flavor: the Margarine Stone!”
“Which must have struck him as a bit of an inconvenience,” I noted. “Because—if it’s a rock—how does one spread it on toast?”
“Oh, not to worry, Watson. The stone continually oozes a flavorful discharge.”
“Eww.”
“It appears as a fist-sized diamond with a deep yellow luster—”
“Well, that makes sense, at least.”
“—an object of unquestionable beauty!”
“Constantly dripping grease? No, I think I’ll go ahead and question its beauty right now.”
But Holmes was not listening to me. He had a look of faraway wonder in his eye and I knew that as he’d told me the story of the stone it was... how should I say…? It was as much for his benefit as for mine. It was an act of devotion. Of worship. Holmes had his little fancies, to be sure, but it was rare for me to see him truly desire something.
Rare.
And disconcerting.
The greed… the pure, unhidden and unalloyed greed that showed in his eyes unnerved me. The question was: how far would he go in pursuit of his desire? I had the sinking feeling that now was a very poor time indeed for Holmes to be without a live-in governor.
“MOOOOOOOOOOOP!” said Steve.
“Quite,” I agreed.
Holmes shook his head. “Oh, can you picture it, Watson? Can you imagine what I
