HEARING IS ONE OF THE STRANGEST AND MOST INTIMATE of human senses. There are a thousand sounds we know so well that we barely notice them anymore. They may be distasteful, or precious—the call of the local knife-grinder or the whistling of a kettle. Yet even these expected sounds can provide a rapturous wonderment when they occur in an unexpected place. Imagine exploring the depths of an unknown cave and hearing the sudden lowing of a cow in the darkness behind you. Or running for your life down the darkened streets of Whitechapel with a murderer at your heels, only to turn a corner and hear two dozen schoolchildren break clumsily into “Nearer, My God, to Thee”. That’s what it was like, the morning I began “The Adventure of the Lying Detective”. The day the imp assaulted my door.
Which was not to say it was the first intrusive sound of the morning. That honor went to Mary. One of the side-effects of having turned our house into a center for London’s second-rate artistic community was Mary’s increased frustration at her inability to play piano. She’d had lessons in the past, it seemed, but had never really taken to the instrument the way she’d hoped. Now that she was surrounded with the constant advice of London’s more mediocre breed of music-hall performer, she had become certain that their guidance would lift her to new heights of musical achievement.
It hadn’t. She was dreadful.
The worst part was that Mary knew perfectly well how wretched she sounded. This might cause a more demure artist to sequester themselves until they had improved. But no. With Mary this simply meant that anyone who chose to comment on the quality of her playing—or even acknowledge the fact that she was playing—was taking his very life into his hands.
I was in my overstuffed chair that morning, reading the paper, hating my existence, and doing my absolute utmost to ignore her latest musical onslaught. As I sat there, grinding my teeth to powder, a second noise broke forth. It might have easily been mistaken for a knock upon our door.
But it wasn’t. It was too strident. Too insistent. Too angry. Too close to the ground. Yet the most remarkable thing about it was the familiarity. Oh, how many times had I heard that exact sound, with that exact cadence? Never here, of course. No, I never expected to hear it here. I dropped my paper to my lap and spluttered, “Good Lord, that sounds exactly like Mrs. Hudson!”
“Raaaargh!” Mary replied, in response to my intrusion. An instant later, one of our heavy silver candlesticks came flying just past my face, spattering a few drops of tallow across my shoulder. I suppose I should have been furious, but I wasn’t. I was transfixed. Whatever could this well-known sound be doing so far from its proper place? Ignoring Mary’s latest attempt at casual mariticide, I rose as if from a dream and hastened towards our front door.
As I neared, I became evermore certain. This was not knocking. This was kicking. Just kicking and kicking and kicking! Oh, how I had dreaded that noise in my happy past. And yet, how many times had it heralded the beginning of an adventure, the like of which I craved so terribly? I raced forward with a hopeful heart. Chives was just arriving, a gruff expression on his gourd-y little face, as if he had a thing or two to say to whoever would treat my door in this indecorous manner. I reached him just in time and gently pushed him back, as if to say, “No, no. You mustn’t. This is not an indignity; it is a thing of wonder!”
Eagerly, and yet still disbelieving, I pulled the door open and asked, “Mrs. Hudson? Is that you?”
There she stood.
Her only concession to the idea of “going out” had been to don a little hat. Other than that, she stood in her usual dress—a battered pink dressing gown and house slippers. Oh, how happy she looked, that I had chosen to answer my door in person. After all, she was holding on to a message designed to hurt my feelings. Its force might be lessened if delivered secondhand, mightn’t it? And certainly she would miss her chance to enjoy the moment. Eyes twinkling with delight and malice, she released her arrow.
“He’s dying.”
* * *
What a strange journey it was to Baker Street. Strangely… hopeful. Yes, Mrs. Hudson was of the opinion that Holmes had only hours left upon this world. She gleefully opined that he must be in terrible pain and wondered what her life would be like when she was at last free of her burdensome lodger. She was glad Holmes had summoned me. Not because I could help, of course, but because I would be able to see the fruits of a life misspent in that peculiar fashion Holmes and I had pioneered.
I believed her for not one second. Because—well, you’ve read something of my adventures—what could possibly kill Holmes? The idea had become preposterous to me. How many times had I seen him drink mercury, strychnine, cyanide, lye or bleach? I’d seen him clawed by a demon. Dropped from a great height. Impaled through both legs. Grogsson-punched. Burned by demonic flame. Why, I myself had shot him twice through the heart, and what was the result?
No, something else was occurring. I wasn’t sure what, but I was eager to discover it. Why, with an implicit invitation from Holmes and the accompaniment of Mrs. Hudson, I had every expectation of finally making it back into the mystically shrouded confines of 221B. By God, why hadn’t I thought of it before? The only times I had ever known Holmes’s magical defenses to be breached, the culprit had been in Hudson’s company. I should have lured her out before now and used her to effect an infiltration.
But never mind. I was there now. Oh, how my heart raced when we turned the corner on to Baker Street and I realized I could see my own familiar door! The moment the cab stopped, I sprang out with a cry of triumph and ran to the stoop. Mrs. Hudson seemed a bit taken aback by my eagerness to see my old friend die, but nevertheless came and opened the door and invited me in.
There were the stairs I knew so well. “Sqeee-er-kareeek!” went the third step from the top, as I bounded up. The door to my old rooms yielded as I turned the knob and the familiar smell of my old domicile greeted my nose.
Well…
Almost. It seems Holmes—who had never been fastidious as I in his personal habits—had left no small number of half-empty pots of soup about for a bit longer than he ought. If I was of a mind to quaff a cup of truly unappetizing, half-congealed broth, it seemed I would have no shortage of choices. But never mind that; I was home!
I think the sound of the opening door must have alerted Holmes, for from the depths of his room came an eager, “Watson, is that you?” followed by a plaintive and overly theatrical, “Ohhhh… aahhhhgh… fever! The fever!”
I was not three steps in and already I could tell Holmes was up to something. Squinting with skepticism, I stepped through the sitting room into the hallway, and looked into Holmes’s room. The first sign I was right lay just beneath his nose; Holmes had once again donned his “brilliant disguise” moustache—the grand two-footer he used whenever he was trying to pass himself off as a common Irish something-ing man. As was his habit whenever he adopted this ruse, he’d knocked three of his teeth out and placed them at the corner of his alchemical workstation, so he would not forget to put them back in later. I could see them sitting right there—in plain view—along with the bloodstained ink blotter, which was the tool he favored for such purpose. He had the gas light turned down very low so the tiniest little tongue of flame was all that lit his chamber. Nevertheless, I could see he had added a number of lumps to his face using modeling clay and had slicked himself with bacon grease to simulate great quantities of sweat.
Well…
I could smell he’d slicked himself with bacon grease to simulate great quantities of sweat.
I ventured a tentative, “Good morning, Warlock.”
“Oh! Ohhhh! Ah! Watson, is it you? I cannot see, because… the fever! Oh, the fever! And also these spots, and this sweat, and probably a sore throat or something. Plus, I am blabbering on about oysters, so you know my mind’s not right.”
“Oh? Blabbering on about oysters, are you?”
“Sure. Watch this: ‘Indeed, I cannot think why the entire bed of the ocean is not one solid mass of oysters, so prolific the creatures seem. And yet, if anyone asks you to name the most seductive, alluring animal you could think of, how unlikely I find it that you would reply, “The oyster, by all means! By god, the lithe and sexy oyster!”’”
“Well, I can certainly state your mind isn’t right,” I assured him.
“Good, remember that!” he instructed me. “Also, it is of paramount importance that you convey to anybody who asks that it is my opinion that whatever ails me is a tropical disease of Chinese provenance, contracted due to my proximity with dock workers.”
“Despite the fact that China is sub-tropical or temperate?”
“Hush, Watson! Anyone who asks must be told it’s an unknown dread disease of the Chinese tropics!”
“And we expect someone to ask, do we?”
“Oh, I’ve been so clever, Watson!”
“Indeed?”
“Indeed!”
He threw both hands up to his lips, fiddling his fingertips together and smiling in pleasure. He was lost in his own thoughts and delighted at his own cunning nature, so after a few moments’ silence, I mentioned, “Mrs. Hudson says you’re dying.”
“What? Oh! Yes, most probably.”
“I suppose I’d better examine you, then.”
Yet I’d made it no more than a step nearer to him before he threw up his arms and cried, “Hey! No, no, no! Keep away from me!”
“So… fearing that you may be dying, you summoned a doctor to not examine you?”
“Summon you? I did no such thing.”
“Then why do we suppose Mrs. Hudson showed up at my door?”
Holmes gave a wounded sniff. “Because one of her oldest and dearest friends lay at the very brink of death and she was naturally concerned.”
“Hmmm. Yes. Sounds exactly like her,” I said, rolling my eyes as hard as I could. “And yet, do you know something strange? I cannot recall ever giving her my new address. In fact, I quite recall purposely omitting to give her my new address.”
“Oh, I may have mentioned it to her,” Holmes scoffed.
“When you sent her out to fetch me?”
“Exactly. Damn!”
“What’s going on, Holmes?”
Yet the infuriating fellow refused to concede that I had caught him in a lie. He lay there silently, arms crossed over his chest with an expression of cold fury caused, no doubt, by the fact this encounter was not going as well as he’d planned.
“All right. I’m going to examine you.”
“No, I said!”
“Why not?”
“Because this malady is deadly contagious, Watson. By touch! Yes, by touch. Or even by looking too closely! So don’t!”
“That is a specious argument, Holmes. It would not stop me from rendering aid to a stranger, much less so old and dear a friend.”
For just a moment, his expression flickered, as if his resolve were softening. Yet, in the next instant his face hardened and he spat, “Well, facts are facts, Watson, and, after all, you are only a general practitioner with very limited experience and mediocre qualifications. It is painful for me to say such things, but you leave me no choice.”
“Oh?”
“No choice at all! So sorry to say it, old man, but I need specialized care!”
I smiled. “Fortunately for you, Holmes, I am acquainted with the famous Dr. Ainstree, the world’s foremost authority on tropical diseases. He is in town. I think I might persuade him to come to you.”
“What? No. I don’t want him.”
“You don’t want the world’s foremost authority?”
“No! The man I want is Mr. Culverton Smith!”
“Mr. Culverton Smith?” I asked him. “Not Dr. Culverton Smith?”
Holmes stomped his foot. Well… he would have, if he’d been standing. As he was lying in his sickbed, it just sort of whooshed down violently under the covers. “Look here, Watson: I know what I need! I need Mr. Culverton Smith to come here to minister to this sickness! I need you to go to him and express you are powerless to diagnose or to treat this rare disease from China! I need you to give him what he will know to be a false explanation of where I contracted it! And I need you to be utterly fooled by my ruse!”
“Why?”
“Because if you were not completely convinced that all these facts were true, he would see through you in an instant! I am playing a delicate game here. Culverton Smith is a man of dangerous intellect!”
“If that is true, Holmes, do you think you should face him unaided?”
Holmes gave me a withering look, which—I must confess—I deserved. It is always best to be direct with Holmes, but perhaps I’d been a bit too near the mark. I cleared my throat.
“I… er… I only meant…”
“Oh, I think we all know what you meant, Watson. You think I’m perfectly helpless without you.”
“What I intended to express is that I might perhaps aid—”
“It’s all very well and good for you now, isn’t it? With your grand new house and your grand new life!”
“Oh, grand, is it?”
“But what about me, eh? Here I sit! No best friend to go have adventures with. No Moriarty anymore. No Irene Adler, even—not that she was ever much of an arch-nemesis to me. Oh no. Never anything but kindness to me.”
I’ll admit his outburst had me quite taken aback. I stammered, “Are you…? Are you sad you don’t have an arch-nemesis?”
“No! I am glad to have found Mr. Culverton Smith! He’s perfect! He’s savage and cruel—a dual murderer, at least—and he’s not above trading blows with me. Why his very last attempt would have surely ended my life, Watson, but for the timely intervention of a demon or three. But I’ll show him! Ha! Wait ’til he sees what I’ve got cooked up for him!”
What a strange wave of emotions this harangue awoke in me. I had a moment of hurt when I found out that Holmes was trying to replace me—to fill the void I’d left in his life as casually as if I’d been a dead goldfish. Then doubt that a new arch-nemesis was not, perhaps, the best way to go about it. Then indignation that his plan was to rope me into supplying my own replacement. Yet, there was something else as well.
Guilt.
I suppose Holmes was right in a way. I had been rather focused on my own misfortunes. I had not taken the time to consider what effect our parting may have had on Holmes. Though, in my defense, the whole thing was rather his fault.
And yet still…
I was a gentleman, was I not? The proud British school tradition had taught me what good form demanded. A friend was suffering. Despite my own feelings, my duty was plain.
I cleared my throat. “You know, Holmes, given that—as you say—I am only a general practitioner, I am perhaps not the most suitable person to treat this sickness of yours.”
“Really, John?” asked Holmes, hopefully.
“Oh no. You heard me: I didn’t even realize China was tropical.”
“Silly fellow!”
“It seems this Mr. Culverton Smith may be your only hope. I don’t suppose you’ve got his address, have you?”
“It’s just on the corner of the desk, there, next to my teeth.”
“I shall fetch him at once,” I said. Then I leaned in and, in a gentler tone, asked, “You sure you’ll be all right, Holmes?”
“Ha! Don’t worry about me, Watson. This shall all turn out wonderfully. Oh, you should see! Do you want to see?”
A strange little pang struck me.
“I would like that very much.”
“Well…” said Holmes, and he hesitated a moment, as if he knew what he was about to offer was inadvisable. But then familiarity and his own fond feelings overwhelmed him and he suddenly burst forth, “All right! But you mustn’t come with him, John. He must think himself absolutely alone with me. Try and get back before him, all right?”
“I shall do my utmost.”
With that, I turned, marched out of Holmes’s room, down the steps to Baker Street, and off on another of Holmes’s strange adventures. Though, not in my usual capacity, to be sure.
* * *
Mr. Culverton Smith resided at 13 Lower Burke Street—a fine house in that vague no-man’s land between Notting Hill and Kensington. It looked less a den of evil than one of middle-class sensibilities slowly giving way to upper-class ones. Yet if the exterior seemed unpromising in the arch-nemesis department, one ring at the bell was all it took to dispel the illusion.
A demon answered the door.
Not a very good one, but a familiar one. The door swung open to reveal the doughy, shapeless face of Hilton Soames’s otherworldly butler—exactly the same fellow I’d seen explode into powder during “The Adventure of the Three Apprentices”. I’m sure if I’d had a moment to reflect on the situation, I’d have remembered he was dead, but I had no such chance. My voice burst forth of its own accord.
“Bannister?”
“What? No, sir,” the wobbly-armed demon replied. “Are you asking if my name is Bannister? Is that your meaning?”
I nodded.
“I’m afraid not, sir,” he said. “Nothing so exotic.”
“Well what is it, then?”
“My name is Staples.”
My eyebrow went up. Another wobbly demon named after an everyday object? No, the pattern was too clear. Indeed, he might almost be one of Bannister’s brothers, Railing or Low-Rising Safety Wall, if I had not had it on the best authority that Bannister had eaten them in order to sustain himself in our realm. I had thought the three brothers’ case to be unique, but if this was not one of that trio, I was apparently going to have to revise my thinking.
“I don’t suppose you came to this land in the company of your two brothers, did you?” I asked.
“Very astute, sir,” the demon confirmed. “But… er… nobody has heard from Paperclips or Bent-Metal Stationery-Fasteners for some time.”
“Right. Sure,” I said, eyeing him with growing suspicion. “But it’s a problem for another day. Is your master in? I come to him with grave news.”
“Oh dear! Do step inside and I shall see if he is fit to receive you. Who may I say is calling?”
“Dr. John Watson.”
“Just a moment, Dr. Watson.”
Say what you will, at least he was a vastly superior butler compared to Bannister. He disappeared into the interior of the house. I could hear his muted tones speaking to somebody in the next room. This was followed by a high-pitched, strident voice shouting, “How many times have I told you I must not be disturbed in my hours of study, Staples? Who is this fellow? What does he want?”
I heard Staples sigh, “I have just told you that, sir.”
“Well I won’t see him! I am not at home! Tell him that, why don’t you?”
“Erm… I am not confident that would now suffice, sir.”
“What? Why not?”
“Sir has been rather vociferous, I think, and the walls are not thick.”
“Vociferous? What does that even mean, ‘vociferous’? You made that word up.”
As the embattled butler strove to convince his employer he’d done no such thing, I rolled my eyes and set the matter to rest. I turned the handle, barged into the room and said, “Mr. Culverton Smith? How good to meet you. I am Dr. John Watson and I fear you are the only man who can aid me.”
“Eek! Who are you?” squealed a paunchy gentleman in his early forties. His hair was curly—a shade of unremarkable brown in the process of turning unremarkable gray. He had bushy mutton-chops that dipped down either cheek, shot forward along his lower jaw, then lunged up again to meet in the middle beneath his bulbous nose, as if to say, “Ha! I fooled you! I was a moustache all along!”
I rolled my eyes at the man. “I have just told you that. So has Staples. I am Dr. John Watson and I am here on an errand of the utmost importance. I have just come from the home of Mr. Warlock Holmes.”
The name caused an instant reaction. My host lunged forward and demanded, “Holmes? How is he? I mean… he’s probably fine, of course. Most people are, you know, and I certainly do not have any reason to suspect the contrary, but… how did he seem?”
Any concerns that Warlock had picked a quarrel with an intellectual giant he had no hope of besting were dissolving at a rapid rate. In fact—and oh, what a strange thing it was—I was beginning to feel as if Holmes had done rather well for himself. Yes, Culverton Smith was perhaps just the perfect foil for Holmes to tangle with, bereft of my help. Should I not do my utmost to bring them together? Yes, as a gift for my grieving friend, I must help these two bumblers cross swords.
“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!”
“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 going. Instead of descending a foot or so to the floor, my shoe kept going down and down and down. For hundreds of feet, it seemed, as the back of his headboard loomed taller and taller up above me. It’s not as if I were falling—my other foot never left the floor—it’s just that the rest of the world grew up past me. By the time I came to rest on the floor behind Holmes’s bed, I’m sure I could not have been even one quarter of an inch high.
“Oh, well done, Holmes!” I shouted in a squeaky, tiny voice. “How long has this been here?”
“Well, it worked, didn’t it?” he countered, then threw the covers up around his chin, turned to the wall and loudly moaned, “Oh! Oh! The fever! And also, something about oysters!”
I could hear Mrs. Hudson escorting Smith through our front door but, curious as I was about the day’s main adventure, I had other concerns. The realm I found myself in was utterly strange. Huge boulders of dust and hair lay everywhere. Holmes seemed to have dropped an impressive collection of dishes back here—none of them very clean. The shrinking effect had spared these inorganic components, leaving me in a strange forest of plates, which, from my diminished perspective seemed to be several hundred feet high and covered in precariously balanced crusts of discarded toast that might easily fall and crush me.
Oh, and apparently, we owned a cat. “We”, I say, because it was clear she’d been back here long enough to have gone feral. She seemed to be of proper cat size to me, which is to say she must have been absolutely itty-bitty. She had a gray coat, that muscular but uncared-for look of a stray that lived by what it could hunt, and the eyes of a killer. She regarded me with open distaste. I think she could have simply stepped from behind Holmes’s bed at any time and rejoined the world of reasonably sized creatures, but the fact I hadn’t seen her before testified that she never had. And why would she, really? It was clear she was queen of this strange domain. Though there was sufficient toast-and-soup waste to sustain her for many years, her main source of nutrition was plain: the shrinking magic seemed to have had no effect on the local dust mites. Several of their semi-translucent corpses lay all around—bigger than my foot and possessed of an alien countenance that horrified me to my core. Me, but clearly not the cat, for the shattered carapaces that lay on all sides testified that she must have slain thousands of them.
I decided I’d call her Dusty.
I was just about to make a peace overture of some kind, when she suddenly hissed and leapt up onto a discarded crust of bread. An instant later, I discovered why: as Hudson led Smith back through the hall, the floor bucked and pitched sickeningly. I had never considered what footsteps must feel like when you’re less than a quarter-inch tall, but it turns out they’re quite awful. I just caught an accusatory sneer on Dusty’s face, as if to say, “It’s normally your footsteps that do this, you know,” before she scrambled up the toast crust onto a pillow Holmes had dropped back there, and disappeared into a dark crevice.
That explains why she didn’t like me, I suppose.
No sooner had she gone than all the local dust mites came to meet their new neighbor. They scuttled forth in their hundreds, waving their little antennae as if to say, “Oh! Hello. What are you? You don’t have exoskeleton all over you. How interesting. You’re all soft. Say, are you made of protein? You look like you’re made of protein. That’s quite fortunate, really. Are you going to die back here? You should die back here. Then we’ll eat your soft protein body. Do you think it will take long? Maybe too long? Would it be easier if we just swarmed you and carried you off? We could do that, if you want. Look how many of us there are! Would that be easier? It would, wouldn’t it? Sure. Okay, new friend, here we come!”
Fortunately for me, Culverton Smith had reached Holmes’s bedside by then, and Mrs. Hudson had been dismissed. Now that the horrible footsteps no longer shook our world so badly, the Battle Queen of the Land Behind Holmes’s Bed was ready to reclaim her right. Like a furry lightning bolt, Dusty streaked over my shoulder, yowling a terrible war cry. What fools the mites had been, to show themselves so clearly and in such tight formation! She landed amongst them with the sickening crunch of breaking exoskeletons, her teeth and claws tearing into insectoid flesh. They gave forth a collective squeal of fear and pain, running this way and that. It took only a moment. There I stood with both hands clutched over my mouth, trying to keep from screaming, as the flood of see-through monsters fled back to the cracks between the floorboards. Finally, my heart still in my throat, I managed to softly croak, “Umm… yes… thank you, Dusty.”
She ignored me and crunched contentedly on a still-twitching, chitinous leg.
Nor was she the only individual in the room who was feeling rather pleased with themselves. Towering high above me, Culverton Smith touched his fingertips together and laughed, “Dear me, Mr. Holmes! Was it only three days ago we met? And look at you now. How changed I find you! Ha, ha! How changed!”
From the bed, Holmes moaned, “So hard on the outside, but on the inside: nothing but glop! Are they even creatures? Or just lazy engineering?”
“Oh dear, we’ve reached the oyster-muttering stage already, have we? Your symptoms are quite advanced, Mr. Holmes.”
“I tried to make soup out of them, but what is the point? To throw an oyster into salty water… you might as well just return him home.”
“And is that the bacon-sweats I smell? I fear it is! Oh, it cannot be long now. No, no, no.”
Suddenly Holmes rolled over in bed towards Smith and, in a moment of feigned clarity, pleaded, “Is it you? Culverton Smith? Please! You are the only one who understands this malady! Please, you must save me!”
“Save? You? Don’t be preposterous!” said Smith, with a laugh. “Perhaps you do not fully understand how things stand between us, eh?”
In response, Holmes made a terrible gasping noise. This seemed to worry Smith, who bounded across the room for Holmes’s water pitcher. He poured a glass, then returned. He paused over Holmes, a gloating expression on his face.
“I bet you’d like this, wouldn’t you?” Smith asked, tilting the glass of water back and forth, as if considering pouring it out. “Well… you may have it. Not because I’ve any special regard for you, you understand, but merely because I do not wish you to perish before you’ve heard what I have to say. Here you are. Careful now, you fool, don’t slop it about! Do you know why I don’t care for you, Mr. Holmes?”
Between feverish gulps of water—and I had to admit this was by far the most convincing acting I’d ever seen Holmes produce—he gasped, “Yes. Yes. Your nephew.”
“Hmm. Yes. Young Victor, poor fool. It wasn’t his fault, you know. He simply stood between myself and a property reversion.”
“Really?” said Holmes, momentarily forgetting to play sick. “I thought you were jealous of his name.”
“No! No!” cried Smith, slapping the drinking glass from Holmes’s hand. Huge drops of water spattered down all around as the gigantic glass careened to the floor where—fortunately for me—it did not shatter. “Why should I be jealous, eh? Just because his first name sounds victorious and his last, manfully savage? Because my mother had the misfortune to fall in love with someone named ‘Smith’? Because she then became convinced—God knows how—that ‘Culverton’ was a perfectly acceptable first name for the young child she supposedly loved? Is that why?”
“Erm…” said Holmes, “…sure?”
“Well, it was nothing like that! Nothing! The reversion! That’s why I killed him!”
“Ah, so you did kill him,” said Holmes.
“Oh, you already knew that, I am certain. You and those detective friends of yours. It was ungenerous of you, Mr. Holmes, to connect the rare Chinese tropical disease I had identified to the untimely death of my nephew. And most ungenerous of you to point out that three bottles were missing from my collection and that at least one of these had been poured all over Victor’s sandwich. Perhaps that is why you find yourself in your current state, eh?”
The words “current state” were, I think, sufficient to remind Holmes that he was meant to be pretending at being sick. He gave a few feeble little coughs and gasped, “What do you mean, Mr. Smith? I caught this disease from my dealings with Chinese dock workers.”
“No, you didn’t!” Smith scoffed. “Really now, did you fail to realize? Think, Holmes! Think! To contract a disease so similar to the one that felled Victor? So soon after crossing me? Can you think of no other cause for your suffering?”
Holmes held one hand to his brow, as if trying to focus his thoughts against the fever. Yet after only a moment’s “reflection” he surrendered with a shrug.
“It was me, you dummy!” Smith howled. “I poisoned you! Ha, ha! Think carefully, Holmes. Try and remember. Did you not receive a little wooden box in the post this week?”
Holmes gave another helpless shrug.
“Did you not open it? Were you not impaled in the face with two dozen tiny needles?”
“Ah!” Holmes gasped. “Why, yes! I think I recall it!”
“That was me, don’t you see? I sent the box! I loaded those needles! I coated them first in the bacterial samples I knew must lead to your wasting demise! Now, at last, you see the folly inherent in crossing Culverton Smith! Now, you know why death is upon you! Bwaah-ha-ha! So, may I perform any other services before you die in freakish misery?”
“There is one thing,” said Holmes, in a clear and confident voice. All pretense of sickness was gone from him. As Culverton Smith gaped in disbelief, Holmes sat up, smiled, and said, “I’d rather like a batch of toast and soup. I’ve been starving myself for three days in order to fool you.”
“What? No, no, no!” Smith spluttered. “I fooled you! I poisoned you!”
“I’m afraid not, my good fellow,” laughed Holmes. “I was never ill. I was never poisoned.”
“But… but… you opened the box!”
“No. I never did. I fooled you.”
“No, I fooled you. With the box.”
“But I never opened it.”
“But you did.”
“No. I didn’t. Look,” said Holmes, peeling off one of his false facial lumps and flicking it at Culverton Smith. “It’s all a clever ruse, you see? Disguised as a common Irish dying man—”
“But no, I fooled you! You opened my box and got stabbed in the face.”
“No that’s what I keep trying to tell you! I fooled you! Look: there’s your box right there. Unopened. See?”
Culverton Smith swept the little box off Holmes’s alchemical desk and stared at it incredulously, turning it over and over in his hands.
“But… but… how did you get it back together?” he demanded.
“I never took it apart! I told you!”
“Impossible! The very instant you moved this flap, it should have—”
“Wait! Don’t open it!” Holmes cried.
But it was too late. There was the swish of cardboard sliding over cardboard, then the twang of a spring and the gentle “fft- fft- fft- fft- fft- fft- fft- fft- fft- fft- fft- fft- fftfft- fft- fft- fft- fft- fft- fft- fft- fft- fft- fft-” of two dozen poisoned needles, imbedding themselves in Culverton Smith’s face.
We all froze, mouths agape. Of us, Smith himself was first to gather his wits, scrutinize the situation, and offer an observation. “WHAAAAAGHUAHUAH!”
“I told you not to open it!”
“EEEAAAAAAAAAH!”
“Well, screaming about it isn’t going to help.”
“AAAAAAAAAAUGHAAAAH!”
“But you’re going to persist anyway, I see,” said Holmes, voice heavy with exasperation. “Damn it all… after all that work to get an arch-nemesis… Oh! Watson! I say, Watson, are you there?”
Stepping from behind Holmes’s bed, I grew to full size and said, “Of course, old man.”
“Well, you’re a doctor. What do you think? Is there anything to be done?”
“Oh. No, I shouldn’t think so.”
“Are you sure?”
“Quite, I’m afraid.”
“MEEEEAAAAAHGHUAH!”
Hearing that no help was coming to him, Culverton Smith turned to run for aid—a process that would have gone better for him if he had not had several needles in each eyeball. He collided face first with Holmes’s wall with a tremendous bang.
“Well, now you’re just pushing them in deeper,” Holmes noted.
“HEEEEAAAAAHEEEEEEAH!” Culverton continued, as he scrabbled out Holmes’s door, across the sitting room, down our stairs, out onto Baker Street, and off across the city.
“Listen to him go,” Holmes said as the screaming faded into the distance. “Poor idiot—that’s not even the direction his house is in.”
Holmes gave a deep sigh and hung his head.
“I’m sorry it didn’t work out as you’d hoped,” I told him.
“He was perfect for me, Watson.”
“Do you know, I think he was.”
Holmes gave another sigh.
I cleared my throat. “I mean… I suppose I might come by from time to time. If you’re lonely.”
This was sufficient to jar Holmes from his reflections. “Out of the question, I fear. I’m firm on that, Watson.”
“Oh, very well.”
We sat in silence for a time. Finally, Holmes muttered, “I just don’t know what I’m going to do with myself.”
“You could always do what other elderly gentlemen who live alone do: cultivate a closer relationship with your cat.”
“Yes, I suppose. Wait… My what?”