“Wait, Watson! Wait…”
“What is it, Holmes?”
“What’s the horse’s name?”
“…”
“…”
“Are you serious?”
“I would just like to know the name of my rescuer, if that is not too much to ask!” he huffed.
“Well I don’t know it and I don’t care!” I shouted back. “Let’s just call him Best Horse, shall we?”
Holmes gave a satisfied nod. “Perfect.”
“Good, now get! In! The! Bloody! Cab!” Each of my last words was accompanied by a mighty shove. Or perhaps a kick. By the time I had Holmes stuffed in on top of Whitney, our horde of shambolic pursuers was hardly ten feet from me. I turned to the front of the cab and called, “Driver, take us to the…”
But there was no point. The man was completely insensible. So I turned to my only remaining source of hope and shouted, “Best Horse, get us out of here!”
He gave a whinny of agreement and I only just had time to leap onto the sideboard as he pulled away. One of the besotten men’s hands brushed against my coat tails as we went. Another had managed to grab onto the back of the cab and was dragged some ten or fifteen yards before he finally fell off, shrieking with rage and pain. Our driver gave a sleepy little “harrumph” as if to let us know that it was very rude to interrupt a fellow’s nap in such a manner.
By the time we were halfway down the street, I’d managed to pull myself into the cab. I flung myself into the seat across from Holmes, banged the door shut and demanded, “By the gods, Holmes! Whatever were you doing in such a place?”
Best Horse, get us out of here!
“I told you, Watson,” he replied, with a languorous sort of disinterest. “I was working on a case.”
“A case?”
“Yes, which you are not allowed to help with!” he insisted. “We all know what happens when you do. You get all doomed, remember? And then I am forced to bind your soul to the first woman I can find. Oh, speaking of which: how is Mary?”
I gave him a very hard look.
“Well you needn’t be snippy about it, John. I’m sure if I hadn’t done it you’d be dead by now, what with all the intravenous sorcerer bits you were injecting into yourself. And that is why you may not be involved in any further adventures with me. I mean… except maybe this one.”
My eyes flicked up to him, full of eagerness and hope.
“Hey! No! Don’t make that face! You can’t come along. Maybe… Maybe you could just give a bit of advice though, eh? I’m a bit stumped, if I tell the truth.”
Even that was enough to lift my spirits. The idea of solving a case with Holmes again was intoxicating. And he said he was stumped! Perhaps I could prove he needed me.
“Of course my powers are at your disposal,” I said, as nonchalantly as I could.
“Right, but no investigation of any dangerous areas!”
“Oh, no, no.”
“And no monster-fighting.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it.”
“Very well, then,” said Holmes, with a nod. “The facts of the case are these: I was approached by Lilly St. Clair, wife of Neville St. Clair. She was rather upset. Her husband had just disappeared, you see, and the police were at their wits’ end.”
“No surprise,” I mumbled.
“No, indeed,” laughed Holmes. “Especially when there are elements of the fantastic in a case, I often find the police’s wits’ end is rather near the police’s wits’ start. Though I confess I have not done much better. This past Monday morning, Mr. St. Clair bid his family adieu at his home near Lee, in Kent. He promised to bring his little boy a box of bricks when he came home. But he never did. It is thought he took the train into town as he did every day to do his job… whatever that is…”
“You didn’t inquire?”
“Oh, I did. But Lilly is unsure of the exact nature of her husband’s employment.”
“She doesn’t know her husband’s job?”
Holmes shrugged. “There’s some thought he may be a freelance journalist. That’s what he used to do. Two years ago, he wrote a major article on the life of a London beggar that garnered quite a bit of attention. It seems his investigations of London’s more wretched—and therefore more successful—beggars turned up evidence that they made significantly more than your average clerk. Since then, however, very little has appeared in any paper with Neville St. Clair’s name on it. Still, whatever his new job is, it’s fairly lucrative. The family’s fortunes have much improved over the last two years. Yet, whenever he speaks of his employment, he simply says he’s ‘in business’.”
“And in his defense,” I said, “there’s many a businessman whose job description is a bit vague. Why, I’ve known a few who have so much trouble explaining what it is they actually do that I’ve often suspected they don’t know themselves. Then again, he may have been up to something questionable. Perhaps I am getting a bit ahead of the story, but… given where I found you this evening… is there any chance his ‘business’ may have had something to do with the importation or distribution of heroin?”
“Very smart, Watson, for the last place he was seen alive was indeed The Bar of Gold.”
“Seen by whom?”
“His wife, of all people. And not too long after she’d said goodbye at breakfast. It seems that as soon as he’d left, Lilly turned her attention to the post. One of the letters informed her that a package she’d been awaiting had arrived at the Aberdeen Shipping Company on Fresno Street. Now, Fresno comes just off Upper Swandham Lane. As Lilly came down Swandham, she happened to glance up at one of the windows on the upper story of The Bar of Gold, and who should she happen to see?”
“Her husband?”
“Her husband! She gave a cry of surprise and called out
