“How are you, Doctor? Well, I trust,” he said. The words were pleasant enough, but they were delivered without warmth or friendliness.
“I am well,” I responded in kind.
“And Mr Sherlock Holmes, is he well? How is his leg? You visited him this morning.”
I nodded. “I went to Baker Street to see him. He wasn’t there.” Scoular’s eyes narrowed as he repeated my words. “He wasn’t there?”
“He’s gone away.”
“Where to?”
“I don’t know. There was this note waiting for me.” I handed him an envelope that Holmes had given me.
Scoular took it roughly and extracted a note, which he read out loud: Watson: matters are too hot for me in London at present, so I’ve decided to move away for an indefinite period. You shall not see me for some time. Regards to Mrs Watson. I remain yours, Sherlock Holmes.
Scoular emitted a cry of disgust and almost screwed the note up. “This is some kind of trick,” he said.
I shook my head in ignorance. “Ever since my marriage, Holmes has confided in me less and less. I can only take this message at face value. I have no idea where he is or what his plans are.”
“Very well. I will keep this note. The Professor will no doubt find the contents most interesting. Remember, Watson, where your allegiance lies and on whom your life depends. If Sherlock Holmes gets in touch with you for any reason, you must contact us immediately. Is that understood?”
“Of course.”
“Good,” he said softly, and then stepped back, merging with the crowd of pedestrians on the pavement. Within seconds, he was lost from sight.
I removed my hat and with my handkerchief mopped my brow. Moriarty was clever enough to know that the note was a blind. He knew that Holmes would not desert the city at this crucial time. The Professor would set his hounds on my friend. Never had Sherlock Holmes been more vulnerable.
“You’ll take tea with me, Mr Scoular, won’t you?” Mrs Hudson placed the kettle on the gas ring in readiness, but her visitor shook his head.
“On some other occasion, maybe,” he said politely, but without warmth. “I just need to know — the Professor needs to know where Sherlock Holmes is.”
Mrs Hudson, wiping her hands on her apron, sat down in her favourite chair by the hearth and smiled. “I don’t know. As you know, he rarely confided in me in the old days, but just recently I reckon he could give a clam a few lessons or two.” She chuckled at her own conceit, but Scoular’s disapproving glance cut her merriment short.
“When did you last see him?”
“I can’t be sure, and that’s the truth. He’s taken to wearing an assortment of wigs, false noses and all kinds of costumes, so I’m never sure whether it’s him in disguise or one of his visitors. I haven’t served him any meals now for over a week.”
Scoular gave a sigh of impatience.
“Doctor Watson came round this morning,” she continued, “so I assumed he was home then, but Watson popped in to see me on his way out and said that he’d waited for his friend in vain. There was a note saying he’d gone away for a few weeks — but it didn’t say where to.”
“I’ve seen the note,” said Scoular. “Rather too convenient to be real, and most probably a dupe to make us think he has run away.”
Mrs Hudson shook her head. She didn’t know what Scoular meant. “You’re welcome to go up and look in his rooms, if you want.”
“I know that,” he rasped with impatience. “And I shall do so presently. In the mean time, if you see any trace of Holmes or anyone who might be Holmes, you must inform the Professor immediately. Immediately, is that clear?”
Mrs Hudson nodded. She knew this was an order, and it dismayed her. She had grown very fond of her eccentric and unpredictable lodger, and she didn’t want any harm to come to him. But she had no choice in the matter: he didn’t pay her wages.
“Good,” said Scoular, pulling on his gloves. “I will visit you again this evening after dark and search Holmes’ quarters, and then I’m afraid I shall be forced to start a little fire.”
“Oh, mercy me, no! You’re not going to burn down my lovely home?”
“Nothing as extravagant as that, I assure you. Merely a small conflagration in Holmes’ rooms which will destroy his files and records and render the place uninhabitable. Your quarters will be safe.”
“How can you be sure of that?” Mrs Hudson asked with asperity.
Scoular smiled for the first time since he had arrived. “I can’t.”
It took a great deal of persistence to persuade Mary to make a surprise visit to her aunt in Exeter. Instinctively, she knew something was wrong and that the matter was connected with Sherlock Holmes.
“Are you in any danger?” she asked, fixing me with her blue eyes.
After years of dissembling, lies came easily to me — but not when dealing with Mary. I hated telling her an untruth — but I had to. I don’t think she believed me when I told her there was nothing to worry about, but at the same time I felt she knew that what I had asked her to do was in her best interests.
That evening she packed, and I sent a telegram to Exeter to give Mary’s aunt notice of her arrival. Very early the following morning, I saw Mary off at Paddington Station. Not since my stay in the stinking cell in Candahar had I felt as miserable and alone as when the train chugged its noisy way out of the station, with Mary leaning out of a carriage window, waving goodbye. With Holmes in hiding and Mary gone, I had no one to turn to.
As I made my way back up the platform, a voice whispered in my ear.
“Going on a trip then, is she, the good lady wife?”
I turned to see a thin, rat-faced fellow in a loud brown-checked suit grinning back at me. With mock politeness, he raised his brown bowler.
“The Professor sends his compliments. No news of Mr Holmes, I presume?”
I shook my head. “No news,” is all I could find to say.
“And the wife?”
“Mary has gone to visit her aunt, who has not been well.”
“Left you all alone, has she? Well, never mind, Doctor Watson. We’re never far from your side. Do keep in touch.”
With an infuriating smirk, he raised his hat again and walked away. I stood rooted to the spot. I gazed unnervingly at the throng that passed by me. How many of them were the Professor’s men? What could I do? How could I act if I were under that fiend’s microscope all the time? Rather dejectedly, I continued on my way up the platform, brooding on what I considered to be a very dismal future.
It was then that I saw the newspaper billboard by the news kiosk. The headline ran: FIRE AT SHERLOCK HOLMES’ ROOMS.
Twenty-Seven
With practiced ease, Sherlock Holmes shinned up the drainpipe at the rear of 221B Baker Street, as he had done many times in the last month. Despite his wounded leg, he was still very agile, and without any trouble he was soon level with the window of his bedroom. Slipping up the sash, he managed to scramble inside. Immediately, acrid fumes assailed his nostrils and caught the back of his throat, causing him to stifle a cough.
The walls of the room, scorched by flames, were blackened by smoke, and the bed and mattress had been reduced to a heap of sooty debris. The floor was damp and slimy. Holmes had read in the papers how the fire brigade had arrived in time to arrest the spread of the fire and that there had only been internal damage to the upper floor. However, whatever the flames had failed to destroy, the water had completed the task.
Slowly Holmes moved into the sitting-room, and the sight before him made him gasp. This darkened shell was barely recognisable as his cosy old quarters. The furniture had been reduced to charred flakes, and no doubt his books, files and case-notes were those piles of damp ashes swept to the side of the room. Sherlock Holmes was a stranger to sentiment, but at this moment he felt an overpowering wave of sadness sweep over him. It wasn’t just the loss of the material things — his files and notes — that upset him; it was the destruction of what had been his own closeted world, and, if he was honest with himself, the warm memories created here, particularly those he shared with Watson.