“Holmes!”
“Which worked wonders. Again. Really, Watson, you ought to extend them more credit. Then I took the dummy, stepped back through time to this morning—”
“Holmes!”
“Hush, Watson! I’m almost at the end and—I don’t know if you know this—the process of recounting one’s adventures is not aided by having one’s ex-living companion shout one’s name angrily at oneself, over and over. Now… where was I?”
“Paris. This morning. With a dummy.”
“Right! So, I teleported to London—don’t say ‘Holmes!’—stripped the toga off the thing, dressed it in a few of my own clothes, used some dark secrets man was not meant to know to give it life—”
“Holmes!”
“I just asked you not to do that, if you’ll recall—and began teaching him to be my perfect double! And voila! Here we are.”
“You are saying ‘voila’ quite a bit today, I note.”
“Well, I’ve just been to France.”
“I see,” I said, struggling to regain my composure. “And the curtains? How did you do them?”
“Hmmmm… I wonder how I should address that question…” said Holmes, tapping thoughtfully at his lips. “Should I give you the 12,000-word explanation you wouldn’t understand? Or should I just say ‘magic’?”
“Holmes!”
“Stop shouting that!”
“I’m trying to! I really am! But this is beyond acceptable, Holmes! Don’t you see? You need me!”
“Oh, no!” he said, throwing up his hands. “We’re not getting into that again!”
“No, we are. Look at all this, Holmes. Look how much magic you’ve been using and how many laws you’ve been breaking. You are utterly without governance. This is what Lestrade and Grogsson were talking about!”
“It doesn’t matter!” Holmes thundered. “This issue has been settled! You are in terrific—”
But he did not finish, for at that moment came a distinct poot! sound from the street outside, followed by the delicate kish of breaking glass and the solid smack of a hollow-head bullet ramming into the side of Steve’s head. He gave a forlorn “UUUUUUBUU!” and slumped forward in his chair. Billy jumped up and pointed both hands at his fallen brother, as if to say, “Are you kidding? He gets to get shot, too?” I think if there had been any moisture in his little wooden body, tears of jealousy would have been streaming down his face.
I tell you, it is funny how far instinct outweighs reason. I consider myself a fairly intelligent man; nevertheless, I was halfway to Steve, yanking open my adventuring bag as I elbowed aside invisible curtains, when Holmes caught my sleeve.
“Watson! What are you doing?”
“I have to help the—oh…”
“Yes. ‘Oh’ exactly,” said Holmes. “Spare no thought for him, Watson. He feels no pain and has no self-awareness. Let us instead turn our minds to more important matters. Namely…” Holmes balled up his fists and cried, “…one of my plans just worked! Yes! YES!”
I rolled my eyes. “All right, Holmes. Let us not give in to self-congratulation.”
“No. Let’s. Because this is great! This is rare! Oh, I’m so glad you got to see it, Watson! Tell everyone you know! It’s just like I hoped! Maybe I should get a dummy to soak up a bullet or two for me, I thought. And it was no small amount of trouble, let me tell you. Time travel! Teleportation! Three weeks of waiting about outside some Frenchie’s flat! But now, look! Who’s lying about with a hole in the side of his head? Bang! Steve! Not me!”
Yet Holmes’s cavalcade of compliments for himself was cut short by a loud crash. Someone, it seemed, had just elected to kick open the Baker Street door.
“He’s here!” cried Holmes in a petrified kind of whisper-gasp. “Quick, Watson! Quick!”
He grabbed me by the sleeve and dragged me over to the Baker Street wall to a small triangular partition formed by two curtains that hung between the two front windows, just in front of Steve’s chair. There was hardly enough room for me in there and my adventuring bag made a notable lump in one of the curtains. With a cluck of disapproval, Holmes stripped it from my grasp and threw it into the corner by Steve. It slid to a halt against the wall, after knocking Billy off his crude, envious little feet.
“Here! Stay right here, Watson! Make not the slightest sound, or it may mean your life!” Holmes urged, then battered his way through the curtains towards the hallway that led to his room and mine. Or… no. To his room and Count Negretto Sylvius’s, I realized with a sudden wave of sadness.
From the stairs outside came a gruff voice. “Careful. I don’t trust it. He went down weird.”
This was followed by a lightly accented Italian voice that said, “Bah! What do you know, Sam? Stay here. Guard the door. And look out for that landlady he’s got. Shoot her if you need to.”
“Hey!” I heard Holmes mutter. “That’s a bit offsides.” From outside came the sound of cautious steps, creeping up our stairs. When the third step from the top creaked, I heard the Italian voice give a little hiss of self-recrimination. Presently, the door to our chambers swung slowly open and a head peeped through. My view was partly occluded. Holmes’s curtains—though magnificent—were by no means perfect. From the front, they resembled black muslin. From the back, a thin, transparent gauze. From the diagonal I needed to see the entryway, it seemed as if several banks of thin, dark fog hung in front of me. The only thing I could tell for sure was that—yes—Count Negretto Sylvius had exactly the kind of sweeping black moustache his name implied. He jerked back in surprise when he beheld the strange labyrinth of curtains that had appeared since his last visit. Yet, he knew where his target lay. Slowly, silently, he began sneaking through the curtains towards me, seeking his fallen foe. He wore a garish suit and carried an over-ornamented walking stick with a gold-colored ball atop. Clearly not actual gold, for the color had worn off where his grip
