THOSE FIRST DAYS IN BAKER STREET WERE A PROFOUND comfort to me. It seemed as if all the perils that assailed me had dissolved into luxuries overnight. They hadn’t, of course. In point of fact, I had just moved in with one of the most dangerous creatures ever to walk the face of the earth—perhaps the most dangerous. Still, the threat that Holmes represented was slow to reveal itself.
His peculiarity, on the other hand, was apparent right from the start. Though he was kind almost to a fault, there were a thousand social niceties Holmes stood ignorant of. His every meal consisted of toast and soup. I never saw him eat anything else. I couldn’t even be certain the man slept. I never caught him at it.
He packed his tiny room with the most extraordinary quantity of books. He had a desk in the corner, upon which he kept a kit that resembled nothing so much as a sixteenth-century alchemical workshop (which, indeed, it was). He also had a bed. That was all. The remainder of his floor was covered in books. He had gigantic tomes and single-sheet leaflets. Some were ancient and some contemporary, but they were present in such numbers as to fill his room from floor to ceiling. Such was their weight that the floorboards frequently groaned when anybody stepped in Holmes’s room, or even in the hallway before it. They groaned with a strangely human voice—one might almost discern words. The only area not covered by these books was a cramped path that led from his door to the bed, with a minor spur that diverted to his desk.
This setup granted the impression that Holmes was living in an overfilled storage shed. I several times enjoined him to trade rooms with me, as my own possessions were few, but he refused. He loved his little hideaway. He was like a hermit crab that had found the perfect little seashell for itself. Often he would retreat there when he felt threatened or solitary. When his mood was foul, I could hear him in there, holding whispered debates with… well… with the walls, or nobody, I presumed.
Just as common as his depressions were periods of ecstatic mania, during which he would leap about the sitting room with strange vigor, stopping now and then to say how happy he was of my company. In these moments, he was apt to scoop up the battered accordion he kept on the mantelpiece and launch into some antique war shanty or other, singing along with such abandon that you would have thought he, himself, had won the battle in question.
One morning I woke to find him leaning over my bed.
“Watson,” he cried, “if anyone calls and says they are the physical embodiment of Amon-Ra, I am not in!” He then disappeared into the confines of his bedroom and slammed the door. I was sure I could hear him barricading himself in there, piling his innumerable books against the door. We had no callers.
Then again, on days when we did have visitors, they were strange ones. Holmes would often beg use of the sitting room, preferring to send me to a teashop or Regent’s Park, rather than allow me to sequester myself in my room. I would not have minded so much if these visits had not come at all hours and without warning. There was a little old lady from Dorset who came with the dawn one Saturday. A few dock workers stopped by over the next days. We had numerous visits from a peculiar little man named Lestrade—a Romanian fellow, judging by his accent. He was in his mid-fifties, beady of eye, pale and hunched. He was one of those who had a complaint for every occasion and seemed even less able to abide sunlight than Holmes.
My first overt clue as to Holmes’s true nature came two weeks after we’d moved in, the day he sprang from his room, interrupting me in the middle of my luncheon.
“Watson! What a fine day, don’t you think?”
I agreed that it was, despite the drizzle I could see through the window. He seemed not to hear me at all. Instead, he grabbed me by the arm and hauled me to my feet, suggesting, “How about a walk in the park?”
“What? Now?” I asked, as he dragged me towards the door.
“Gods, yes! Right now!”
“What about lunch?”
“It can wait,” he said, handing me my hat and walking stick. Only as he was pushing me out into the hallway did I realize that he had not dressed himself for an excursion.
“Are you not coming?” I stammered.
“Oh, I’ve seen the park before,” he answered, gazing distractedly over his shoulder. “You’ll tell me if anything has changed, won’t you?”
Suddenly the quiet was shattered by a beastly roar, from the direction of Holmes’s bedroom.
“Ah! Damn! Enjoy the park, Watson!” he cried and pushed me bodily into the hall. The door slammed behind me. I had no intention of allowing the situation to pass unexplained, so I reached for the door handle to let myself back in. It burned me! Somehow, it had been heated to the point where it was unbearable to touch, even with gloves. From behind the door, Holmes yelled, “Be gone! You are unwelcome here!”
“But… I live here!”
“Not you, Watson, obviously,” Holmes answered. “Best run along to the park though, eh? Don’t want to miss the… er… pigeons or whatever.”
Anything else he might have said was drowned out by a second hellish roar and the thud of heavy footfalls. Whatever company Holmes had, it possessed the voice of a lion and the grace of a rhinoceros. I banged upon the door and demanded to know what was going on in there, but was ignored. At last, lost for better options, I huffed my annoyance and left, ignoring the sounds of battle behind me. I allowed myself the expense of a paper from the boy at the corner and a cup of tea at a nearby café.
When I returned, an hour and a half later, I found Holmes contrite and welcoming. He asked as to the state of the park and I told him I had elected to go to a café instead. He said that sounded pleasant. I could not help but notice that half his face was bruised and swollen and that he seemed to have developed a limp. Our dining table had fared little better; one leg was broken and had been clumsily glued back together. The wastepaper basket was full of the remains of my lunch and the shards of the plate that had held it. On the table lay an ineptly prepared replacement lunch at which Holmes fired occasional nervous glances, hoping, no doubt, that I would fail to realize this was not the original.
“Holmes, what has happened here?” I demanded.
Sheepishly, he mumbled, “Look now, Watson, I think both of us would be happier if you could develop the habit of ignoring these little occurrences, eh? I shall replace anything that is damaged. I shall make things right, I promise. These matters are… private.”
I hope you will not think less of me, dear reader, but I took his advice to heart. I buried myself in purposeful ignorance and did my utmost to ignore these oddities and outbursts. In this, I was merely displaying the common human reaction to unbelievable events, which is—just as the phrase implies—not to believe them. I did my best to carry on as if they had not occurred. And besides, was it not in my best interest to deny these perils? My clearest alternative to living at 221B Baker Street was to live in the gutter, just outside. My petty debts were almost cleared (notwithstanding the single sovereign I still owed Holmes) which engendered in me a love of this new situation, which no amount of domestic peculiarity could eradicate.
Indeed, my chief nemesis in those days was not Holmes, but our landlady, Mrs. Hudson. She was a tough old spinster, as advanced in age as she was regressed in height and interpersonal skills. She had the eyes of a weasel, the heart of a shrew and a scowl to rival any of the grand inquisitors who had so troubled Spain in the 1400s. She stood at about four foot nothing, in battered pink house slippers. Several times, as I prepared to leave our rooms, I would sweep the door open only to find her standing there, waiting to assault anybody who appeared with her disapproving stare, as if they had just done something unspeakable. What this crime against her sensibilities might be, I could not guess. Nor could I imagine how long she must have stood there, her nose all but touching the door, just waiting for someone to scowl at. Sometimes I feared she might have been there for days. I think she must have been a very lonely person. The only things she had for company were the hundreds—or perhaps thousands—of French romance novels she inexpertly concealed about the house. There was nothing romantic about them, merely biological. In fact, these books contained such a highly refined brand of smut as to render them illegal in each and every civilized country.
Such was our hatred and fear of this hovering dwarf that Holmes and I formed a silent accord to release Mrs. Hudson from her contractual obligation to provide us with meals. Instead—at my direction and Holmes’s expense—we built the little alcove beside the dining area into a proper pantry, jammed with cupboards, an icebox and a preparation table. The fireplace had a pivoting crane, from which we could hang a kettle, a pan, a pot, or even a grill, if needed. Usually though, Holmes’s toast racks had pride of place.
It was a damned inconvenient way to get sustenance, yet infinitely preferable to dealing with Mrs. Hudson. We limited our reliance on her to the washing-up of dirty dishes. We would pile our used settings on a tray and leave this on the landing, outside our door. Occasionally, we would peep out and find that they had disappeared, or that they had been returned to us washed and quite often broken, out of sheer spite.
Regardless of these precautions, the peculiarity of our eating habits did attract her notice. One Thursday, after surviving a particularly vicious Hudson-scowling, Holmes slunk into our sitting room and muttered, “I think our landlady takes it amiss that I survive on toast and soup, Watson.”
“I suspect she does,” I said. “It is a most unusual trait.”
“Well, damn! What am I supposed to do? Toast and soup quite suffice to provide all the nutrition I require!”
“Indeed.”
“Why are people so particular about what they eat? Where do they find the time to worry over such things?”
His expression was one of animal desperation. I made no answer except to shrug. He paced the room for a few moments, sparing me an occasional nervous glance until—having worked up his courage, I presume—he approached and asked, “I say, Watson, I don’t suppose… you’d help? That is… if you wouldn’t mind… you could go down to the grocer and furnish us with some more suitable food? You know what people are meant to eat, don’t you?”
“Of course I do.”
“Well then, go get some, won’t you? Have them deliver it here some time when old Mrs. Hudson is watching. Tell them they can present the bill to me. May I count upon you, Watson?”
“You may,” I replied.
Later that day, I set off. At first I approached our nearest greengrocer, but at the last moment, a cruel idea occurred to me and I resolved to carry it out.
You see, I still had no notion as to Holmes’s occupation or the source of his funds. Despite this, he seemed to have no concern over money, nor indeed did he place much value in it. When he needed me to go out so he could conduct his private business, he would often dispense a few shillings and encourage me to visit one of the local teashops. I don’t know which I resented more: the fact that he did this, or the fact that I always accepted. Thus, I decided to test the limits of his fiscal disregard.
I directed my steps south to Fortnum & Mason’s, on Piccadilly. I knew of no other place so aloof, elite and criminally overpriced. I bought everything I could think of: the finest Ceylon tea, cakes, crumpets, French cheese, Italian wine, German beer, cold meats, greens and a truly singular marmalade I had admired once while lunching with the dean of my medical school. These I ordered in unnecessary quantities and asked that they be brought round at about two that afternoon. I hardly made it back before that hour myself, my legs being still uncertain. I pulled one of our sitting-room armchairs closer to the front window into a suitable vantage point to observe the coming exchange, sat and waited.
Promptly at two, Mrs. Hudson ushered up a pair of porters who deposited two large hampers on our dining table. I had ordered even more than I realized. The quantity was such that the two of us could scarce eat it all before it spoiled, and the bill would have raised eyebrows at Buckingham Palace. Warlock did not mind in the slightest. He paid without complaint, smiling all the while, then as our landlady retreated grumpily down the stairs, he called out, “I say, Mrs. Hudson, you must come around some time and join us for one of our perfectly normal meals!”
He then spun on his heel, whistled a cheerful jig, stepped over to our fireplace and proceeded to make himself his usual: toast and soup. He seemed to have no desire to examine his newly acquired mountain of victuals or even remove it from the table. He may not have been tempted, but I certainly was and, I confess, I proceeded to eat him out of house and home.
Thus it was that, on that fateful Saturday, Holmes interrupted me in the middle of my fourth consecutive marmalade crumpet. I had been stuffing myself insensible for three days running. Holmes stepped out of his bedroom, gave me a nod and opened his mouth to mutter some pleasantry or other. Yet, it never came. All of a sudden, he stiffened as if stricken. His spine arched, his face contorted, he threw back his head and his eyes shone with such an intense brightness that I swear they illuminated a circle of the ceiling above him. In that strangely deep voice he had used the day we met, he intoned, “On the eleventh hour of the fifth day of the month of nine, thou shalt receive a dire messenger! The sea hath refused him—his sheep cast loose upon the waves to wander uncommanded. Fear him, for in his hand lies the mark of the reaper! Death brought him hither and discovery shall be thy fate, Holmes, if thou darest attend his challenge!”
At that moment, his spine lost all its rigor and he crumpled to the floor in a heap. Tossing the crumpet to my plate, I ran to attend him. I found him shaking, sweating, even more pallid than usual.
“What is wrong, Holmes? What has happened to you?”
“Oh… why… nothing, Watson…” he stammered, his voice weak and uncertain, “I was… I was practicing for a play, you see.”
“A play?” I demanded, incredulous.
“Yes. Yes. A play, that is all.”
“Much as I wish to believe you,” I said, “I cannot help but reflect that the only people who rehearse for plays are those people who are actually in a play. Which you are not, I think you will recall.”
“Ah… yes. Well, no,” he spluttered, “but I hope to be. I practice this play, every year, in case some theater mounts it. Then I shall be ready to audition.”
“What is the name of this play?” I pressed.
“Uh… The Dread Messenger, of course,” he answered, then changed the subject. “I say, Watson, what day is it?”
“November the fifth,” I said.
“And what time?” he asked.
“Ah… three minutes to eleven.”
“But… that makes no sense, does it?” Holmes wondered aloud. I was sure he hoped I’d failed to notice his fell prognostication, but such was his confusion with his own message that he could not help but stop to puzzle it out. “Month of nine? September?”
“There was some curious word choice, you know,” I reflected. “September may be the ninth month, but it is named for the Latin-derived term for seven: sept. Oct is eight; nov is nine; dec is ten. So, though the months are effectively named ‘Sevenmonth,’ ‘Eightmonth,’ ‘Ninemonth’ and ‘Tenmonth,’ their numbers no longer match their names.”
“Curious,” said Holmes. “So, if it means the ninth month, then this warning relates to something that happened two months ago or which will happen, nearly a year hence.”
“That is correct.”
“Yet, if it relates to the proper name ‘Month of Nine’ or ‘Ninemonth,’ then it references an event which will occur…”
As I could see he was having difficulty with the mathematics, I chose to inform him, “Roughly two minutes from now.”
“What? Oh! Wonderful! Wonderful! Thank you for the ample warning, Moriarty,” he howled, then, “Watson, help me up! I must reach the window.”
I pulled him to his feet and towards the armchair by our front window, thinking to deposit him in it, but he had no intention of resting. He propped himself on the windowsill and scanned the street below.
“There,” he said, pointing. “That man there.”
“That man?” I asked, peering at the large, hunch-shouldered figure he indicated. “Who is he?”
“He is a retired sergeant of the Royal Marines,” Holmes said. “He’s coming here.”
“Why?”
“There has been a murder, I think.”