My fears of night terrors proved to be unfounded, and I slept like a proverbial babe, until the first rays of sunlight glimmered through the curtain. Mrs Watson was still fast asleep, but from the moment my eyes opened, my mind was buzzing with the thought of the strange bone in my study downstairs. So as not to wake my wife, I crept from our bedroom and dressed in the guest room. The sight of Holmes’s case standing still packed beside the wardrobe dampened my enthusiasm a little, but I was determined not to squander the day in morose contemplation. Holmes was relying on me to keep the investigation alive, so that once he had recuperated – and I was determined to focus on the when rather than the more worrying if – he would have the full facts at hand.
Leaving my sling neatly folded upstairs, I stepped out of the house, carefully closing the door behind me. The morning was thankfully free of rain, although the air was as heavy as the clouds that hung waiting to burst in the sky above. I considered taking the car, but, having enough sense to realise that driving after a blow to the head was never wise, hailed a cab.
With the bells of All Saints yet to strike seven o’clock, the streets of London were clear as we drove to my practice on Queen Anne Street. Sitting in the back seat, I stared out at the empty pavements and turned over the events of the last few days in my head. From nightclub to nightmare in the space of forty-eight hours, yet, grey as it was, this was a new day. I vowed there and then that I would find the monster that had hospitalised Sherlock Holmes and hold him to account. Whoever the brute was, he had a connection to that bloodbath in the deserted hospital. Solve the riddle of what had happened in that sorry place and we would find the man. He had been looking for something or someone; maybe the mysterious couple who had set up home in those dismal rooms by the light of a makeshift generator. Indeed, a thought struck me as we turned the corner into Queen Anne Street. Maybe our devil in the dark had been the Arsène Lupin fan whose discarded book we had found beneath the bed?
I paid the cabbie, and hurried up the stairs to my practice. I had spent many happy years living here before my second marriage, at the heart of London’s medical community and a short walk from Baker Street. It had been a wrench, when my wife insisted we move out of town to Chelsea, but I had kept the practice going, renting out my old chambers to a surgeon from the nearby Welbeck Hospital. Recently, Mrs Watson had started a fresh campaign, attempting to persuade me to sell up once and for all and retire, but I was determined to put off that inevitability for as long as possible. I prized these book-lined walls as highly as my study back on Cheyne Walk. There, surrounded by the memorabilia of my second career, I was John Watson, biographer and author. Here, surrounded by medical texts and behind the same wooden table that had sat in both my Paddington and Kensington practices, I was John Watson, MD.
Leaving my coat on the hat stand, I turned on the brass desk lamp and placed the puzzling clavicle on my blotter. To the relentless beat of the clock on the mantel, I turned it over, examining the macabre item in detail. It was utterly unlike anything I had seen before. As I had first suggested in the derelict hospital, the unnatural growths seemed to be made of bone. It was thick, like muscle that had turned to stone, solid to the touch and smooth, free of any discernible impurities.
Intrigued, I stood, crossing to the bookcase that housed my medical encyclopaedias. The mutation must have been some kind of medical disorder, a blight that would bring considerable distress to the sufferer, especially if it spread beyond the collarbone. Indeed, there was evidence of further growths along the medial end of the bone. If they continued on to the sternoclavicular joint, they might have restricted the movement of the arm itself. Of course, I could scarcely help but wonder why such a patient would be operated upon in the filth and grime of an abandoned hospital, but banished such thoughts as I searched for the correct book. This was a time for facts, not speculation.
My fingers fell upon the volume concerning skeletal abnormalities, but as I started to ease the book from between its neighbours, I heard the front door to the building open. I paused, the book half removed from the shelf, and turned to face the door to my consulting room, which I had left slightly ajar.
“Mr Stillwell?” I called out, thinking that it might have been my surgical lodger leaving for the day. “Is that you?”
There came no reply, save for the sound of the door shutting once again, more softly this time, not the carefree slam of a fellow heading off to work at all.
I listened intently, but there was no other sound, until the sudden creak of the loose floorboard in the hall.
“Hello? Who’s there?” I asked, fetching the cane I had left leaning against my desk and stepping into my waiting room. “I’m afraid that the surgery is closed until further—”
I broke off, as the door opened and two men entered. They both wore rounded collars beneath tweed jackets and waistcoats, dark stains on their cloth caps telling me that it had started to rain outside. The fellow to the right was short, with a thick moustache and piercing blue eyes. The other was clean-shaven with a noticeable scar on his top lip and eyes the colour of tar pits. A gold watch hung from his herringbone waistcoat, and, unlike his stockier companion, he wore a smart bow tie, expertly tied, and matched with a dandyish red carnation.
“I’m sorry, gentlemen,” I began, all too aware of the menace exuded by the newcomers, “but as I said, the practice is currently closed. If you need medical assistance then I can recommend a number of my colleagues.”
The stocky man sneered, his moustache bristling. “Oh, no one is in need of medical assistance yet, Doctor.”
“Then I must ask you to leave.”
“And that’s funny,” said his clean-shaven colleague, hooded eyes sparkling with amusement. “Because we’ve got something to ask you too, haven’t we, Mr Hartley?”
“That’s right, Mr Burns.”
Their voices were thickly accented, the unmistakable flatness of the Black Country. Holmes would have no doubt been able to tell me exactly what part of the Midlands they hailed from, but all I knew was that I wanted them out of my practice as soon as possible.
“I’m sure I’m not interested in anything you have to ask me,” I said, walking forward to show them to the door, trying to disguise the slight hobble in my step. It was never wise to show any sign of weakness with men such as these. “Now, if you do not leave, then I’m afraid I shall have no option other than to call for the police.”
“And that’s your problem right there, Dr Watson,” Hartley said, stepping forward to block my path. “Always running to the police, stopping them from getting on with their business.”
The ruffian had moved so close that I was forced to take a step back, if only to escape the reek of stale whisky on the man’s breath.
“You have something we want,” said Burns. “Something that should never have been found.”
The bone. He must be talking about the bone.
Burns’s wolfish smile widened. “Something which I reckon I’ll find in that room through there.” He pointed with tobacco-stained fingers to my consulting room.
“I don’t know what you are talking about.”
“I think you do, Doctor. You see, I’ve read some of your stories.
Oh, there’s no need to look so surprised. I can read, you know.”
“I wouldn’t presume to suggest otherwise—” I blustered.
“Picked up a few tricks, I have, from your pal Mr Holmes. Like how you went to look over your shoulder when I mentioned the bone. Because it is a bone, isn’t it, Doctor?”
I cursed myself, angry to have fallen for the same ruse that Holmes had used to ensnare Pritchard in the Mallard Club. It occurred to me once again what an old fool I had become.
“Now, this is what’s going to happen. I’m going to go in there, collect what we came for, and you’re not going to stop me. Is that clear?”
“You have no right—”
“No, but I’m going to do it anyway.”
Burns took a step forward, but I would be damned if I was going to let him simply stroll past me to steal valuable evidence. I went to step around Hartley, my cane already raised, when the thug of a man slapped a tattooed hand onto my bruised left shoulder. Waves of agony swept through my body and I sank to my knees, my cane clattering across the floor. The brute maintained his vice-like grip, rendering me near immobile with pain as his partner sauntered into my consulting room to reappear mere moments later, patting his jacket, the bone no doubt secreted in an inside pocket.
“You have what you came for,” I hissed through gritted teeth, fighting back nausea, “so I suggest you leave. Unless you’re also planning to finish the job on me.”
Burns paused, trying to look offended. “Finish the job? You must think us barbarians.”
“You have no qualms about torturing a helpless old man,” I gasped. “What am I supposed to think?”
The man laughed. “Old, yes, there’s no doubt about that. But harmless?” He gave another snort of derision. “I don’t think so. As I said, I’ve read your stories, unless they really are fiction.”
He nodded at his companion, who released his hold on my shoulder. I slumped forward, gasping for breath. Burns’s polished brogues stepped towards me and he crouched down.
“The thing is, Doctor, this is a story you should abandon, a case that does not concern you.”
I reached for my stick, aiming to stand and regain what little was left of my dignity. Instead, Burns denied me even that.
“Here, let us,” he said, standing and looping a hand beneath my arm. Before I could resist, he and his compatriot had hauled me painfully to my feet. I cried out again, and staggered back, Hartley manoeuvring me to land awkwardly in one of the waiting room chairs, breathing heavily. I glared at the two men, even as Burns bent to pick up my cane.
“Forget about what you saw, Doctor. Forget about what you found.”
“And if I don’t?” I panted in reply, straightening myself in the chair.
“Then a dodgy shoulder will be the least of your worries, and as for Mr Holmes…”
He left the words hanging in the air.
“What of him?” I asked, the insinuation of the pause too much to bear.
“He should return to his bees, that’s all I’m saying,” came the reply. “Keep eating that honey of his. Stay healthy, if you know what I mean.”
All the time, the lout was turning my cane over and over in his hands. He stopped, grinning again, showing a row of uneven yellowing teeth. “Do we understand each other?”
“Absolutely,” I spat.
“Good,” said he, throwing my cane towards me. Instinctively I snatched it out of the air, drawing another agonised gasp as my aggrieved shoulder burned in response.
“Then we’ll be off,” Burns said, touching the brim of his cap. “It was a pleasure meeting you, Doctor. Shame that I didn’t bring one of your books. You could have signed it for me.”
And then he strutted out, his hands thrust deep in his trouser pockets, his bulky companion falling in behind. I had neither the energy nor the inclination to try to stop them, not even when I heard the latch to the front door click open and that damned voice call out again.
“Of course, I could drop round and leave one with your wife. Sixty-seven Cheyne Walk, isn’t it?”
Growling with anger, I pushed myself from the seat, but they were already gone, slamming the door behind them. I struggled out into the hall, pulling the front door open and stepping out into the rain. I looked from right to left, but of the two invaders there was no sign. My shoulders sagging, I stepped back inside, shutting out the bad weather. My two visitors had left, but their threat remained. They knew where I worked and where I lived. That they had wanted to frighten me, there was no doubt. That they had succeeded was obvious, but if they thought that John Watson could be intimidated, they had made a grave error.
My heart still hammering in my chest, I limped into my consulting room to fetch my coat, pausing only to note that, as expected, the bone was gone.
It mattered not. I had overcome worse obstacles in my life, and had been threatened before, but with the Almighty as my witness, had never capitulated. Damned if I was going to start now.