HOLMES WAS OUT, AS HAD BECOME HIS HABIT. IT WAS A habit I gave him, though quite by accident. In passing one day, I had shown him a penny dreadful that one of the nurses gave me to read during my recovery after my fever. I showed it to him only to recall the woman’s kindness, but Holmes seized it and devoured it with scholarly zeal. For two days thereafter he paced and fretted, wondering why there was so little “real literature” left in the world. When I informed him that the profusion of penny dreadfuls on the streets of London had reached near-epidemic proportions, he seized his coat and ran forth to buy up every one he could find. After reading this initial batch, he developed a regular patrol—visiting every cheap bookseller he could find, waking them at all hours to demand new novels.
I was glad to have a moment alone. I was deep in my thoughts—some happy, some not, and all of them uncertain. I sat at the dining table, playing with a lead soldier I had purchased the day my ship left port—supposedly for India. His uniform and kit were the perfect mirror of my own, done in a clever hand, down to the minutest detail.
In recent days, the thing had become a source of some dismay for me. His face was stern, his bearing soldierly, his uniform so straight and perfect that I felt the little leaden man had the better of me. I should have been more like him, by all accounts. It boggled me to think how different my life might have been if I had been listening when Murray shouted “duck”. If not for that bullet and that fever, who would I have become? Would I have extricated myself from thrice-cursed Afghanistan and made my way to Bombay? Would the daily practice of war have hardened me into the stiff-upper-lipped British medical officer my late father had so overtly hoped for?
Holmes stepped back in about half past ten and uttered what was becoming an ever more customary greeting for him. “This author, Watson! This Mary Bryce! She is some sort of sprite or fairy, you may count on it! I tell you, Eldar blood is in her veins, else how does she write them so exact?”
I had no heart to talk of fairies. “Holmes, I have something for you,” I said.
“Oh? And what is that?”
I held up a single sovereign. “The rent.”
I suppose I might have been taking my leave of him, settling our account like a gentleman before I went. Yet, I was not and he knew it. With a proper crow of triumph, he sprang across the room, swept the coin into his hands and cried, “Happy day, Watson! Gads, could this morning be better? A proper masterpiece concerning fairies, a Varney Vampire book that will anger Lestrade something wonderful, and now you have decided to stay? Ah! I am glad!”
“As am I,” I assured him.
“Well then,” he said, pulling out the chair opposite me and settling into it with a wide grin, “why don’t you look it?”
I sighed heavily. “As you probably realize, Holmes, I have developed a taste for these adventures you claim are so commonplace to you.”
“How could you not, Watson? The thrill of the chase, eh?”
“Indeed. Yet it is unsettling to me. I don’t expect you to understand, Holmes, but I was supposed to be very different than I am and… well… I understand what it was I should have become, but not what I have become. Do you see? I understand medicine. You and all your ‘peculiar’ friends I do not understand at all. In fact, you make me realize that the world—which I thought I knew so well—is a wider, wilder, scarier place than I had thought. I can’t figure out where I stand. Who am I? What are you? And how is this situation even to be maintained, for in spite of the lure of it all, I don’t see how all this intrigue earns us a single penny.”
Holmes’s mouth spread into a sympathetic grin. He reached over to give my wrist a reassuring shake and said, “Perhaps I may help. You are John Watson: a man of worth, possessed of a sharp mind and a true heart. As for the last two points…”
He swept the lead soldier from the table and regarded it for a moment. His features turned suddenly whimsical and sad. He cupped the soldier between his hands so I could not see it and continued, “Have you ever heard of the alchemists, Watson? Suppose one of those poor fellows had succeeded. Picture the unlucky fool who finally learned to turn base metal into gold, only to find that in the same moment, he had turned his own, golden self into… something base.”
He uncapped his hands and I gave a little cry of surprise, for from them issued a gout of sulfurous smoke and a surprising quantity of blood. I recoiled. I saw no wound upon his hands and his face registered no pain. Instead, he stood up resolutely and gave me a wan smile. “Welcome to the fight, Watson. We’re all very glad to have you on our side.”
He rose, leaving me to gawk and stare. There, in the middle of the table, dewed in blood and reeking of brimstone, stood my little soldier—once of simple dross, now gleaming gold.