It was with no small quantity of surprise, then, that I woke from a stupor this afternoon to discover that notable lady sitting at the foot of my bed with a small wooden box before her. I struggled upright and asked Scheherazade what it was that had brought her to my chamber in so unorthodox a fashion.
Her reply, at first, was perhaps a little cryptic. “I see you,” she said. “And I know you also.”
“Whatever do you mean by that, my dear?”
“Only this: that you wish, do you not, to stay? Here in Bloomsbury? That there are depths for you to plumb? Blank spaces on the map still to be charted? Fabulous, fertile islands to be colonised and made your own?”
I swallowed deep and hard at this but made the inevitable protestation. “I am old, my dear, simply too old and too weak.”
“Truly,” she said, “it is not so. You are familiar, I know, with the contents of this box?”
I craned my neck forward to see what lay within, although I do believe I already knew what I would find there.
A set of full phials. A hypodermic already prepared.
The lady’s voice was gentle but firm. “I have continued my father’s work. The serum has been intensified and improved. You would surely appreciate the artistry of the thing. You will reap – oh, shall you reap – such benefits.”
“The side effects,” I stuttered. “The things before, the things it made me do…”
“All gone now. It has been improved upon. There is nothing that this could make you do that you did not wish to do. The serum would be to you a tyrant no longer but rather a most willing and most biddable accomplice.”
“I… dare not…”
“You?” Scheherazade opened her eyes improbably wide, in near-pantomimic shock. “How could you of all people use such a word? I thought you fearless, Professor. Fearless!”
I bowed my head to demonstrate that I felt appropriately shamed.
“Please,” she said. “This is my present to you. My final gift. And so I ask once more, Professor Presbury, sir, will you take this serum?”
And, of course, I nodded and I said that I would, and I reached out for the tools of vigour and strength and newfound youth. And I have begun – so I happily suppose – the final tranche of this, my most pleasurable damnation.
Sent: 9th January 1913
From: Scheherazade
To: Panjandrum
Study proceeds apace. Subject a willing participant. Earliest results expected within hours.
It is often said, at least by certain worthies, that it is the youth of our present time to whom we must look for demonstrations of dissolute and impious behaviour. The events that took place last night towards the southernmost end of Dean Street would seem to stand in ironical rebuke of so conventional a suggestion.
Shortly after midnight besides a nest of lodging-houses of the most disagreeable sort, a minor conflagration was seen to begin, as well as a great deal of commotion. In particular, a flurry of coarse and violent language was heard from he who was subsequently found to be the source of the blaze, a gentleman who was also in pursuit of a very young woman, busily engaged in chasing her along the avenue. The scene was said to resemble some antique woodcutting or portrait from some latter-day Rake’s Progress.
Bystanders reported this noisy malefactor to be crouched over and almost barking in the manner of an animal. It was to considerable surprise, when the culprit was eventually run to ground, that the gentleman in question was discovered to be aged indeed, more than seventy and at least the threefold senior of his young quarry. Police were summoned (here we may imagine the disquiet of several present) and the amateur arsonist arrested. In such unexpected ways are the commonplace assumptions of our society upended and overturned.
Sent: 10th January 1913
From: Panjandrum
To: Detective Inspector Arnold Blakely, Scotland Yard
Understand you have our man Presbury in custody. Professor part of larger design. Please release forthwith without charge. Your brother on the square, Panjandrum
Dear Professor Presbury,
I regret to inform you that certain recent conduct upon your part has been brought to our attention and that, in consequence, we must request your departure from this establishment by six o’clock tomorrow. You will understand that we have the reputation of this hotel to consider at all times and we cannot be seen to indulge or tolerate (let alone condone) such behaviour.
I understand, sir that you were once a gentleman and so I should be most grateful for your total and discreet acquiescence in this matter.
Yours, with regret,
There is much of the past few days which is now to me both murky and obscure. There are in that time elements which possess a quality of the oneiric, and others which I believe I can see in the crisp, cold light of day, to have been largely shameful. There is much that I have no desire to record here. That peculiar and unexpected incident which has just occurred, however, I surely have no choice but to set down.
Following a most unsatisfactory interview with the wearingly small-minded manager of this otherwise pleasant hotel in which he refused altogether to weaken his resolve or to consider any alternative course of action than that to which he is committed, I returned to my room in order to pack together my belongings and so prepare for my departure.
When I opened the door, however, it was to discover within a gentleman sat upon a chair, observing my entry with a look of something like watchful disapproval. We had met on only a handful of occasions, a decade past, during a period of my life much befogged and dimmed, yet did I recognise him at once, for this man’s fame precedes him as a mourner goes before a hearse.
As I crossed the floor he rose to his feet and extended his right hand. With his left, he smoothed his moustache, a brisk gesture which nonetheless, at least to the trained eye, betokened anxiety and even mild disquiet.
“Dr Watson?” I said. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”
“You remember me, then?” His voice was full of that bullish determination to state the obvious which typifies the military mind.
“How could I not?” I replied. “After you and Mr Holmes took so great and uninvited an interest in my affairs?”
“A wholly neutral observer,” began the doctor, “might rather be inclined to suggest that the encounter to which you allude ended with our saving your life.”
“That may be so,” I replied with a forbearance that was, I think, something of a marvel. “Yet our acquaintanceship was a fleeting thing. Might I ask how you have found me and what is the nature of your business here?”