“Very apt,” I admitted. “And this effected your meeting?”
“Of course it did. He came ’round and had brunch. It was lovely,” Holmes insisted. “I mean… for a bit. He showed up, gave me the pound, said he’d heard of me, and inquired as to the situation I desired. I told him he’d have to live here—at least enough to be annoyed by occasional accordion outbursts and to keep me from being bored. In exchange, if he had any magical questions he wanted answered, I assured him he’d have regular access to the best magic guy ever: me! At which point, he gave a polite little cough and everything turned rotten. Have you noticed how often that happens, Watson? Things going rotten right after a polite cough?”
I sighed and nodded.
“He seemed to think that perhaps he might be the more magical partner in such a union,” said Holmes, “and began trying to impress me with his previous accomplishments. Now—and understand I never meant to do this, Watson—but I may have giggled a bit. This only made him try harder, so in no time I was laughing and laughing. Luckily for me, his boasting included much talk of his possessions. Notably, that he’s equipped his bodyguard, Sam Merton, with a genuine Straubenzee.”
“A genuine what?”
“Ah! A weapon favored by many of the more feared assassins of the age! A masterpiece of murder by the Dutch genius Straubenzee! Moriarty’s foot soldiers loved them. It is an easily concealable air-powered rifle. Utterly silent!”
“Really?”
“Yes, because it’s powered by air.”
“All right, but how would that be much quieter than—”
“Because,” said Holmes, stomping his foot, “it doesn’t work like a normal gun! It propels its bullet via a powerful explosion of expanding gases!”
“Right,” I sighed. “You know, sometimes when you speak, Holmes, I wonder if you and I hear the same words.”
“And I told him that was neat, but it wasn’t really magical, was it? And he said, oh yeah, well what had I done that was all that magical, eh? So, I brought Billy to life right in front of him with a wave of my hand.”
“You what?”
“Yes,” Holmes giggled. “It was great.”
“So… let me get this straight… you just happened to have a lifeless dummy with you? During brunch?”
“Of course, Watson. You see, I had constructed him, thinking to animate him to have someone moving about the house, to make me less lonely. But when I found out about Count Sylvius, I didn’t need to. So I just left him. But then came that happy moment when I realized I had a new use for him: to make Count Negretto Sylvius wet his trousers. Which he pretty much did. But then he said it was just a simple trick, not real magic. So, while he was trying to figure out how it was a simple trick, I tore a hole in reality, reached through into the vault at the Tower of London, grabbed one of the less important Crown Jewels, and threw it in his lap. Voila!”
“Holmes!”
“What? I put it back later. Anyway, I’m glad I did it, because that’s when he got desperate enough to tell me about the Margarine Stone.”
“Which seems to have made quite the impression,” I noted.
“Yes. Because it is impressive. He could see my interest growing as he spoke. At first, I think he was glad, because he’d finally found something I could not match, but it wasn’t long before he accused me of coveting the Margarine Stone.”
“Which you did,” I pointed out.
“Oh, absolutely! And he said I wanted to kill him and steal his treasures.”
“Which you did not.”
“No! I am not that sort of fellow. He, unfortunately, is. And he said I’d never get the chance to do that to him, because that’s what he was going to do to me. And we parted. Not on the best of terms, I fear.”
“I see. And when did all of this occur?” I wondered.
“Yesterday. About eleven o’clock.”
“What? Holmes!”
“Hmmm?”
“You invented one-way curtains, fortified 221B with them, obtained and then animated a life-size duplicate of yourself…”
“Well, yes. I rather hoped he might soak up a Straubenzee round or two that was meant for me.”
“…all in less than twenty-four hours? How?”
“It was no great feat,” said Holmes, with a shrug. “I went back in time two years and journeyed to Paris.”
“Damn it, Holmes! Magic!”
“I inquired as to the domicile of the famous artist Marie Tussaud. Turns out she’s dead. I would have had to go significantly farther back than two years, I’m afraid. But no matter. I was directed to Tavernier instead. I asked one of his admirers what his next figure would be and was told Pliny the Elder. From that point there was naught to do but wait near his door for a few days. Everybody who went in I asked, ‘What are you doing here?’ When one fellow said, ‘Oh, I’m going to be Pliny the Elder,’ all I had to do was crack him on the head with a walking stick—”
“Holmes!”
“Oh, I know you don’t approve of them as weapons, Watson, but I tell you this: the strange British opinion that walking sticks are dangerous melee devices was quite borne out. It worked like a charm; he went right down. I then hailed the nearest cab, gave the cabman three gold coins, stuffed the unconscious Pliny-looking gentleman inside and told the driver to go straight to Barcelona, no matter what his passenger might say.”
“Holmes!”
“From there, all I had to do was march into Tavernier’s and say, ‘Hello. I’m that fellow everybody says looks just like Pliny the Elder.’ I then sat for him for two days getting modeled, waited for two weeks while the model was finished, waited for two more days until they loaded it into a carriage to go to
