The Seventeenth Step - Cauldron: A Love Letter (Part II)

About the characters: they are far too good to be mine.

Rating:  PG-13




Our decision to leave the next morning was mutual, but I admit it required a measure of orchestration.  I handled it carefully, for Watson was observing me even more closely than was usual.  But he soon fell in with my plans.

The breeze on the undulating ridges and vales was cold, but the air bright with sun.  When the lad approached us with the message from Steiler regarding a sick Englishwoman at the hotel, I confess I had initial doubts as to the wisdom of allowing the scheme to play out.  The note was so perfectly tailored to appeal to Watson's good nature that I at first feared a trap for him rather than for me.  But I very soon realized that could not be the case.  For one, it would be known that I was at his side, and capable of seeing through any such ruses.  And more importantly, I was the important one.  I always had been.  To Moriarty, in any event.  He wanted a dramatic conclusion to the story, a duel to the death with a wildly tempestuous backdrop, a battle worthy of his ego.  Watson would figure nowhere in the picture.  And what is more, Moriarty was never a man for a fair fight.  With Watson gone, and Moran present, my chances were still slimmer.

So be it, I determined. 

Watson read the note through twice before looking up at me.  It was my decision.  When I took it from him, it was with a steady hand.  The village boy stood waiting at a distance.

"What do you think of it?" he asked.

"I think that, as a doctor, you can hardly say no," I replied. 

To this day I can hear myself saying it and to this day I do not know how I could have brought myself to say such an impossible thing.

"I am not entirely sure what to make of this," he stated slowly.

I nudged a rock from the path with the toe of my boot.  "It seems perfectly clear to me--some invalid Englishwoman who has been advised to take in as much Swiss air as is possible has taken a turn for the worse due to an overabundance of traveling.  Not a case worthy of your skills, my dear fellow, but for charity's sake I am willing to forfeit your company so long as you promise not to take more than two hours."

"The sacrifice is on your part, then?" he asked, no longer worried, only amused.

"Of course it is.  You are my doctor, not hers."

"You have never once accepted an iota of medical advice from me," he laughed.

"I did not mean to imply that you were my doctor.  Only that you are mine, and she will be keeping you from me.  I certainly have no intention of treating her, or of observing your admirable techniques."

"I suppose you will want to go on ahead and I will catch you up," he reflected.  "I do not pretend to be the master of deductive arts that you are, Holmes, nor do I profess any skills at single-stick, but will you be quite safe if I return to Meiringen?"

I drove my Alpine-stock into the earth with a smile.  "I have seen nothing but goats for these three days, and if they turn hostile, I promise you I shall seek out adequate cover."

"If deadly mountain creatures do manifest themselves, I would much prefer to be with you."

"Well, if any birds or jackrabbits give themselves away with suspicious behavior, I shall return at once to fetch you.  In any event, I believe I saw the lady in question's baggage arrive last night.  Either she is a particularly burdensome traveler or she is very ill indeed."

He shook his head at me indulgently.  "I will not be long.  I shall see you at Rosenlaui, and if you've already begun your supper by the time I arrive, I will be quite put out.  Very well, my boy!" he called out.  "I will go with you."

When he actually turned to walk away, something snapped which I had not known even existed.  I am a very unsentimental person.  But it could not be like that.  It could not be so casual.  Every part of me protested against what I had already done.  I could not go through with it without some sort of farewell.  But I could not say goodbye to him either.  I never had been able to do that with any success.

"Watson, wait a moment!" I called out.  "Go on, lad.  I require a moment of the doctor's time."

The child shrugged and disappeared over the hilltop.  He was not an agent, I knew.  Merely a pawn.

"What is it, Holmes?" Watson asked me when we were once more face to face.

Oh, the things I could have said.  But I sought safety in simplicity.

"I would have had a very bleak time of it if you had gone over that ridge without the knowledge that I regret the majority of my actions yesterday.  I have been searching my memory for a good turn or two, and they are nowhere to be found.  I would be very grateful if you would forgive me."

"Holmes," he said softly.  There was no one nearby and he grasped me by both arms.  "Of course I forgive you." 

"Thank Heaven," I sighed.  "I do not know that, in your position, I would be so generous.  I was altogether inexcusable."

"But you were only telling me the truth."

"Sometimes the truth is ugly," I said.  "And that is not the way I think of you.  Please understand that, my dear Watson.  You are never ugly."

I stared at him as I would stare at a specimen under a microscope.  I was seeking out anything I had missed.  A wisp of his hair, a quirk of expression.  But I had missed nothing.  I knew it all by heart.

"Dearest fellow, why ever are you studying me like that?" he asked.  "What is the matter?"

"Nothing," I said softly.  "I cannot believe you are here."

He kissed me then, and he meant it to be brief, but I returned it with absolutely everything I had.  At last, he broke away from me.  He still possessed a measure of calm caution, after all, while I had none left.

"Do you believe it now?" he asked me with a slight glimmer of humour.

"Be safe," I whispered.  "Please.  For me.  If there is a single hair on your head out of place when I see you again, I will call upon the highest resources of the British government to enact terrible and swift justice."

"Would you prefer to accompany me?"

"No," I said.  "Go on.  Someone needs you."

He turned to go for the second time.  When he had nearly reached the top of the hill, I turned around so that I could not see him any longer.  And then it was done.

Absurdly simple.

I did not die at the Falls.  But I did die a little on the hill above the path which led back down to them.




I have been accused by many parties of staging my own death.  I did nothing of the kind.  There is a difference between never intending to return and staging a death.  There is also a difference between walking into mortal peril with the intention of using the event as a way to disappear and walking into mortal peril not caring one way or the other who would survive it.

When I saw the Professor standing by the Falls, I registered no surprise whatever.  Presumably, my anticipation of his arrival did not startle him much either.  He stood there with a tight little smile upon his lips, his head slowly swiveling, his hands twitching ever so slightly with rage.

It all felt perfect, somehow.  Like an elegant parable or a Renaissance painting.

"Well done, Mr. Holmes," he hissed at me.  "Well done indeed."

"Thank you," I said.  "It was quite an effort, but I pride myself it was thoroughly done."

"One or two small loose ends may present themselves in time," he pointed out.  "For example, you are not very likely to survive this conversation."

"Danger is part of my trade," I said smoothly.  However, my muscles tensed in spite of myself.

"I almost believe you!" he cried.  "Can you truly be so careless with your own existence?  It is nearly at an end, you must realize.  In the unlikely event I do not kill you, Colonel Moran certainly shall.  And even apart from Moran, your destruction is inevitable.  Have you any idea how many connections I have made through many years of careful toil?  How many men long for the end of your career?  I have alerted every brother criminal organization in Europe of your appearance, your tactics, your measurements, your voice--and it may not surprise you to learn that these bodies of men were only too eager to offer me their wholehearted assistance.  Some of them even appeared to harbour a personal grudge against you.  It is almost as if it is in the best interests of every such company to end your life as swiftly as is possible."

The sound of the spray dashing against the rock walls in no way impaired my ability to understand this grim fact.  But perhaps it acted as a natural buffer of sorts.  In any event, I had deduced it all before.  Whatever his domestic entanglements, I do not honestly think myself man enough to have left the Doctor without the assurance I was about to be the death of him.  In any event, the setting was superb, and rendered aforementioned grim facts bearable.  The Falls of Reichenbach are elemental, extraordinary, the sort of Nature even I am unable to ignore.  It is a hellish cauldron hewn from bare rock with such violent force that one cannot imagine it.  From a single drop of its water I could, if a pure logician, have deduced its existence. 

It ought to be perfectly clear to all concerned by now that I am not a pure logician.

"I grow weary of this," I sighed. 

"Never fear, for it is nearly over.  Have you any other matters to settle?  Any instructions to leave behind?" he queried with an evil glint in his eye. 

"If I had, would you escort me back to the inn?"

"Do not imagine I don't appreciate your courage," he sneered.  "I do.  I admire many things about you, Mr. Holmes." 

"Not enough to preserve them, of course."

"Mr. Holmes, your aplomb in the face of certain death is very impressive indeed.  I might almost wish your friends could see it.  It verges on the unfeeling, for your star was still rising, after all.  You could have been a triumph, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, in many arenas.  You know that as well as I do.  It is a pity, undoubtedly.  But you, sir, will never set foot in London again."

"Be it so, then," I stated.  "I am ready."

Madly, he rushed at me, and I--well, I cannot say that I retained any conscious thought.

When he threw his long arms around me, clutching at me with ego-maniacal vengeance in his fingers, there was a moment when I could have fallen, indeed should have fallen.  But I discovered that the will to survive is not like a feeling or a decision or even a passion--it is something built into us, as simple as breathing, and before I quite knew what had happened, my superior knowledge of fighting meant that I was alone on a cliff edge with a horrifying scream ringing in my ears.

I stared into the Falls in shock.  There could be no surviving that dreadful descent.  The cauldron had taken him; my nemesis was dead.

I had done it, then.

But it would only be a matter of time before the air-guns presented themselves.

My hands were shaking and my breath coming in ragged gasps.  I took a moment to pull myself together.  I stood staring up at the cliff face for some time, judging my prospects.  They were just a shade better than hopeless.  I had already placed my hand on the wet stone when a queer sensation stopped me.

It could have been ego, or vanity, wanting to leave something behind for posterity.  It could have been a desire to comfort him.  It could simply have been the punctuation at the end of the sentence, the closing of the dramatic curtain which I have so often (justifiably) been accused of manipulating.  Perhaps Moriarty himself had put it into my head.

I don't know what it was.  I found I could not, however, take so much as another glance at that cliff wall without writing John Watson a note--slightly fictionalized, of course, and more detached in tone than I would have liked, as I had no idea who would find the object. 

But I signed it very carefully, so that he could not help but understand:

Believe me to be, my dear fellow,
Very sincerely yours,
Sherlock Holmes

I placed it under my cigarette box and leaned my stick against the rock.  And then I began to climb.

After I climbed, I ran.  The air-guns arrived in due course.  Along with falling rocks and other such pleasant traps.  But they were nothing to me. 

It is very difficult to kill a man who doesn't care if he lives or dies.


 
 
Initially, I felt a new being, as light and as elemental as the rawest newborn child first exposed to a breath of fresh air.  I was not myself anymore, but alone, and whole, and utterly free.  It was glorious there in the woods, even running from death, and it was still more ethereal as I made my way down the mountains, drinking from streams and stealing bread from deserted hostelry kitchens.  I had not been so happy in years, so purely at peace.  On the third day I determined I was a least far enough from Moran to justify the use of the few Swiss francs in my pockets to engage a room and so, endeavoring to be as presentable as I could make myself, I washed in a stream, smoothed back my hair, straightened my collar and set foot upon the streets of a minuscule town. 

My buoyant bliss lasted until the very moment I set eyes upon a fellow human being again (an aged cobbler by the looks of his hands and shoulders) and realized he was not the Doctor. 
 
Not only was he not the Doctor, but I would never see the Doctor again.  This was not a new realization, but it was enough to force me to catch my breath in an effort to keep my features free of the blinding, wrenching pain of it.
 
It is impossible for me to set down what it meant to lose him once more, and of my own choosing.  I am no poet.  But there was a part of me that only he had ever seen, and that I knew no one would ever lay eyes on again, for it belonged to him, and I acknowledged from that moment I could only ever be a stranger.  I was no one's lover, no one's brother or son or friend.  It would improve, I knew abstractly, but only by degrees.  The rift would never be breached.  I was, at last, alone.
 
 
 
 
It might have been completely intolerable, but I am an adaptable creature.  I have certain advantages which aid me in this--it is a simple trick for me to focus upon one thing so as not to focus upon another, for compartmentalization of mind has been a habit of mine for many years.  I can very easily distract myself, for there was still a good deal in the world which was of interest to me, even as a dead man.  Two weeks into my new life I purchased the first vial of cocaine.  It was six months before I resorted once more to the morphine.  But I treated it with care and it did me little harm.

What did I do? I have been asked.  I did a number of things.  Some of them were things I have been trained to do, such as musicianship or chemistry or studying ancient documents.  Others were less likely.  My time in Tibet, for example, was very unlikely indeed.  I solved seven crimes in three years, not because I desired to do so but because I could not help myself.  I explored mountains and deserts.  Most of the time, of course, what I was ostensibly doing was secondary to what I actually doing: that is, running for my life.

I slept with other men, of course.  I'd no intention of ever returning home, after all, and I could not quite accept the notion that my years of discovery at University and my years of passion with Watson would comprise the entire narrative of my love life.

Love life.  It was no such thing, of course.  In many respects, it was the very opposite.  But I am less a saint even than I am a poet, and no one was burning a torch for me back in England.  Mortals are not faithful to dead men, and he'd been unfaithful on countless occasions whilst I was still very vividly alive.  This was precisely the opposite way I ought to have labeled the situation, and I knew it, but no one was harmed by my own backward terminology.  When struck by such dour moods, I allowed myself to picture him, in London, and happy.  I never doubted he was happy.  When I visualized it, he was walking with those easy military strides down a cobbled street after seeing a client, his hat bulging with his stethoscope and his gallant face roughened by a brisk wind.  His shoulder wasn't troubling him, and his gaze was clear and expectant.  He was alone too, in my mind's eye.  I allowed myself that much.  But he was happy.
 
The other fellows were pleasant enough in their own way.  With my eye for detail, they were absurdly easy to spot, which made the task of conquest far safer than it ever is for most men.  There was a young brother-violinist when I was filling in for an orchestra of some note in Florence, an Italian musical savant with a taste for rough handling.  We were involved for two months before the web caught up with me and I at length fled to Tibet.  During my travels there, I had but scant time to see to such needs, but when I reached Norway and changed my name once again, there was a brilliant under-chemist whom I both amused and infuriated for a time.  And there were other men, in Montpellier, in Khartoum of all places, in every city I cared to find them.  Men for whom love meant nothing beyond a nod, a tilt of the head, an appointed time and place, and then a hasty coupling in a filthy hotel room or against a brick wall or behind a pile of warehouse crates, deeds which could leave one aching and sick at the ways of the world.
 
They none of them touched me.  I was a ghost, to all of them.  How can you harm someone who isn't there?
 
 
 
 
I have never worked out through any system of logic the exact relationship between God and man, and as several far wiser men already failed in the task long before I was born, the admission holds scant shame.  But I have seen one miracle in my life.  It happened in 1894 in a bizarrely appointed garret room just beyond the busiest suburbs of Prague.  The universe may exhibit tendencies towards the chaotic, but these eddies are a means to an end, I am sure of it.  I must be sure of it.  There is simply no other explanation for an occurrence so infinitely improbable.

I must make clear that my brother was sent occasional instructions to wire me funds, but as I am capable of supporting myself in a number of fashions, such requests were very rare.  I never once gave him any means of contacting me.  These few and far-between notes, in which I had conscience enough to send him assurances of my good health, were a communion which moved only in one direction; I received no news of England and desired none.  Indeed, could not have stood it.  Mycroft could no doubt have traced me if he had set his mind to the task, but this would have required him leaving his lodgings and asking questions of living human beings, a venture to which he is very poorly adapted.  No doubt he also recognized that if anyone in London knew of my whereabouts, no matter if that person was my own brother, I could far more easily be killed.  When I asked for money, he sent it.  Such was my communication with mother England.  Then the miracle took place.
 
I was lying on a disheveled bed at the time, on my side, having tucked my lower body under a quilt in an effort to ward off the chill.  The gentleman sharing the bed with me was a typesetter, a penniless aristocrat, a bibliophile, and an artist to boot, whose lengthy poetic masterwork was unfinished, uninteresting, and unintelligible.  His walls were lined with stacks of newspapers from every country upon the globe, dates as arbitrary as their places of origin.  Eccentrically enough, he desired them solely for the typesetting, and for the details of the printer's trade.  He was very good looking in a blue-blooded, diminutive, active sort of way, at least a foot shorter than I, eager to please, having in fact already pleased me to the point that I had lost all interest in him.
 
"Are you all right?" he asked me, in Hungarian.
 
"Certainly," I told him. 

My Hungarian is not very fluent, but whenever I could not speak like a true native, I had developed the habit of drawing the French part of my brain to the surface and riding roughshod over the tongue of the realm in the Gallic fashion.  Thus my Danish, Flemish, Romanian, and Hungarian selves all spoke with decidedly French accents.  This was far safer, I had decided, and in any event, more amusing.  It had also--to my surprise--increased my success rate among my own gender by several degrees.  But I digress.
 
"I have not offended you in any way?"
 
"By no means.  What do you intend to do with these?" I asked him.  I rolled to the edge of the bed and gathered up a sack tied with twine.
 
"They are examples.  I look at them, I learn.  I could discard them, but they make excellent kindling."
 
"No doubt."  I opened the front page of the first newspaper, dated 1877.  It was German, and thus perfectly comprehensible to me.  I skimmed through it in a desultory fashion.  I adore newspapers.
 
"Are you cold?" he asked me.
 
"No."  The next edition was an Italian daily, 1882, smothered in violently black headlines.  I read the first article, then skipped ahead to the personal columns.  Several coded messages leapt to my eyes.  I smiled and threw the paper to the floor.
 
"You can read German and Italian?"  He sounded quite unduly impressed.
 
"Not well," I lied.  The next was an evening edition of a liberal Lucerne paper from 1892, executed in French.  It was amusing, in its own fashion. 
 
"You are a man of great talent," he said seriously.  "A man of hidden depths."
 
It flitted across my mind that perhaps I was being entirely uncouth in ignoring a fellow who had just very graciously put my cock in his mouth.  I decided, unfortunately, that I did not care.  I flipped to the marriage announcements in silence.  The would-be Casanova knew me as an itinerant fiddler.  Musical men may indeed have hidden depths, but I knew perfectly well the depths he desired to plumb.  I tossed the Swiss paper aside and picked up another.
 
"I am only a musician," I told him.  Then I drew in a quick breath, and slowly let it out again.
 
"What is wrong, dearest?"
 
I was holding an English newspaper.  I did not allow myself such objects, ever.  It was a copy of the Times, 1891, and it was like holding a piece of British soil, letting it sift through my fingers.  I knew the bloody typeset like I knew my own face in the mirror.  I could feel a hot surge of pain, there, of all places, in that horrible little room shared with a trite little man.  My anger at discovering a British newspaper could still wound me so was profound, but my chagrin at being caught in my distress was a far more immediate concern.
 
"It is nothing.  I am well," I said, my voice quite careless once more.
 
"You must tell me," he insisted.  "Do not shut me out."
 
Entertaining the notion of throttling the creature managed to take the place of actually doing so.  Livid at myself, I threw open the edition and read it in defiance of the damage I knew it would cause.

There were financial reports, and a lurid murder in Cheapside.  I thumbed past the usual political posturing, the society gossip, the fashionable cant of three years previous.  It was dated mere months after I had been killed at the Falls.  A robbery had occurred.  Silver, coins, plate.  The Yard knew nothing, but felt assured of their future success.  An engagement had taken place between Lady Helena St. Stephens and a nobleman I knew slightly.  There was unrest in South Africa, and a dispute over tea prices.  There was work continuing on the underground.  The wretched fellow was speaking to me again.

"What?" I demanded.

"Nothing, dearest, nothing.  I only am gratified the paper interests you so.  I hope when you are through with it, I can interest you once more myself."  He ran a hand over my bare shoulder. 

I determined that if he employed one more repellent term of endearment, I would take a passionate French offense at nothing and storm out.  Then I saw it, and the paper fell from my hands as the world took a sickening revolution.

It was an obituary notice for one Mary Elizabeth Watson, formerly Morstan, who had died in childbirth along with her infant.  She was survived by her husband John Hamish Watson, a physician and the biographer of the late Mr. Sherlock Holmes.

"Oh, no.  No, please, not that," I said in perfect English, and then snatched up the column once more.  My hands were trembling violently.

"For Heaven's sake, what is going on?" my companion inquired, urgently this time.

I read the print three more times before I could convince myself it was true.

"She's dead.  And all this time.  He lost everything.  Dear God, I didn't know.  I never meant for--I must leave.  At once, this instant.  I didn't know, I didn't know."

When he stared at me in utter dismay, I realized first that I was babbling incoherently, and second that I continued to do so in English.  It was not my most phlegmatic moment.  I bounded out of the bed and into my clothing.

"What has happened to you?" he cried.  "Are you all right?  You are frightening me!  It is an old newspaper, a very old newspaper."

"Of course it is," I gasped, one more in Hungarian.

"You spoke English a moment ago," he accused me angrily.  "Just how many languages--"

"Six passably, and four fluently," I snapped.  "What is it to you, may I ask?"

"Did you learn something from the paper?  You have acquaintances there?"

"Yes, I have," I admitted.  He was not a paid informant, I knew, for I was very careful, but at that moment I would not have cared if he were.  No one could stop me from reaching London.  Not Moran, not his web of spies, not the agents of hell itself.

"Your family--or a friend? Perhaps a lover?"

"He is all of those things," I managed breathlessly as my fingers flew over buttons.  "I must leave you.  I am sorry."

"Do you need assistance?"  He seemed to be in earnest, and I spared him a grateful look.
 
"No.  Thank you."  I pulled on my boots, my mind wheeling to and fro.  How fast could I reach England?  What precautions need I take?  Would I live for longer than a week once I arrived?  None of it mattered.  I was going, and as quickly as steam could take me.  I draped my cravat around my neck and threw on my frock coat.

"Will I see you again?"

I stopped on my way to the door.  "No."  I managed to say it kindly.  "But thank you.  Thank you a thousand times.  I am very grateful."

I shook his hand as he gaped at me, and then I ran as fast as I could for the nearest train depot.
 
 
 
 
The journey home was a terrible blur.  I took precautions, but fewer than I ought to have.  I raced from train to train.  I caught an express from Berlin to Lille, but was delayed for two days at the coast due to viciously poor spring weather.  I would have shaken a baleful fist at the heavens, but I had only to recall the newspaper to still my impatience at Providence.  Nevertheless, every second I was not at home proved more excruciating than the last, for I happen to be blessed with a very vivid imagination where John Watson is concerned.  He had loved me.  I had never truly doubted it.  He had also loved her.  He would have loved his child, had it lived.   And he has the largest heart of any man I've ever known.

For such a man to have lost all three within a matter of six months could have been no less than the blackest pit of hell.

I maintained my urbane mannerisms with clerks and with ticket agents, but turned quickly away from them when they caught the haunted look in my eye.  I had never felt so open, so raw and scrutinized.  Once I had gained the ship, I could at least attribute my ghastly appearance to seasickness.  There was little I could do, in the absence of morphine.  And morphine I would not stoop to, no matter that I--like the coward I felt--longed to be a ghost again when my fear and regret seemed more than one man could bear.  I had cared for nothing and no one for three years, and suddenly the floodgates were open.  My mask cracked further every moment. 

It was a difficult journey.  But no more than I deserved, or less than I expected.  Men do not rise from the dead unscathed.

When I landed at Dover, I invested in a suitable disguise, for actually sighting the cliffs again had impressed upon me the difficulties I would encounter in staying alive.  I slept for an hour, fitfully.  And then, for the first time in three years, I boarded a train bound for London.




The newspaper under the Hungarian's bed in Prague was a miracle.  London is where Dr. Watson resides, so it is no miracle that I bumped into his very leg upon the street as I made for a suitably shabby hotel.  But it was a considerable surprise, nonetheless.

I had registered that I was being followed, and was in the act of taking the necessary steps to lose my shadow.  Then some clumsy fool knocked all the books out of my hands and I looked up in a fury.

He was thinner than I recalled, almost resembling himself when we had first met, when the fever had robbed him of all health.  His skin was pale but still darker than mine, his hair full and glinting nut-brown in the sunlight.  One glance into those blue eyes convinced me all my prevarications were in vain.

"I am terribly sorry," he said affably.  He bent down to pick up my books.

I was not prepared to believe he had not recognized me.  I soon remembered that when in disguise he almost never recognized me.  Then I recalled that I was dead.  If there was any piece of my heart left to shatter, it occurred there, watching him lean down to pick up a deformed old gentleman's books without knowing who I was.

He straightened and handed them to me.  "I ought to have looked where I was going," he added when I stood there dumb, "but I do not think any of your books have been harmed."  He smiled.  It was the same smile I had cursed for being branded upon my brain.

I hadn't the time to think.  In the supreme acting moment of my entire life, without question, I snarled something vicious at him.  Then I turned hastily away, limping at the top of my reduced speed down the street.

I hailed a hansom, escaped out the other side while tossing a coin to the driver and silently urging him onward, and was hidden behind a cart in time to observe my follower hail his own cab and take flight after the empty vehicle.  When I rushed back to the intersection, I could just make out the Doctor's back as he made for Park Lane.  I followed him.  No doubt I could have discovered where he lived in a medical directory.  But that would not have been my style.

He spent some time staring up at an unknown dwelling before heading for home.  He led me at last to Kensington.  When he entered his practice and shut the door behind him, I stood upon the pavement for some moments without the smallest semblance of a plan.  In fact, all I could register was feeling dreadfully ill.  I had returned to London to see he was all right.  I had seen him, and now must speak to him.  I attempted to visualize what I would say.  Each option seemed equally absurd.  While I was considering the problem, my feet began moving unconsciously, and in another moment I had rapped upon the door and communicated my desire to see the Doctor to the maid.

One must grasp the nettle, after all.

There he was, in his study, in a perfectly tailored brown tweed suit.  He was surprised to see me.

"You are surprised to see me, sir," I croaked.  I felt as if my heart would stop at any moment.  I was prepared to be very gratified if it held out longer than five minutes.

"I am indeed," he said with concern in his warm voice.  "Have I inadvertently damaged one of your books?"

I put it to the world whether there has ever been born a more superlative example of the British gentleman than Dr. John Watson. 

"Certainly not," I denied, stalling for time.  "But I've a conscience, sir, and I thought to tell you that if I was a bit gruff in my manner, there was not any harm meant, and I am very grateful you picked up my books."

A change came over his face--not a shadow, but the set, intent look he adopts when his interest has been arrested.  He regarded me more closely, and then drew back with a slightly pained expression.

"Are you all right, sir?" I whispered.

"Yes, I am sorry.  You reminded me of someone."  He shook his head and turned away toward his bookshelf.

I removed the wig.  It made no sound.  I stood up straight, my back aching, my breath arrested and contained tight within my chest.  I dropped the gloves and the scarf which had been muffled around my face, and they fell to the floor.

"Of who, may I ask?"

When he turned back to respond, I watched as a look of complete disbelief washed over his face.  And then it appears I must have fainted, regrettably not for the first time in my life.




When I awoke, I was lying upon the settee in my friend's consulting room.  My collar ends were undone, my shirt unbuttoned.  I could taste brandy, and see the whitewashed ceiling.  And once I was able to focus, I could see the Doctor.

He was sitting on a footstool next to my head, his face a chalky white.  I felt tears spring to my eyes, and did nothing to prevent them.  I opened my mouth to speak to him.

"Stop," he said hoarsely.  "Whatever you are, stop.  Do not speak to me."  He closed his eyes, opened them again, and continued.  "I have spent the last half an hour labouring under the profound delusion that a very great friend of mine fainted in my study and is lying on my sofa.  I know this cannot be true.  I know that when you speak to me, it will be with someone else's voice, the illusion will crumble, and he will be dead once more.  For heaven's sake, don't speak to me and prove that you are not Sherlock Holmes.  If I am mad, let me be mad a while longer."

The Doctor claims that I am eloquent, but this left me absolutely speechless.  I reached for his hand, and he took it, pressing it hard.

"If you are Sherlock Holmes, on the other hand," he added, "you have a very great deal to answer for."

He was not mistaken in this.  I still have a very great deal to answer for.

"You aren't mad," I told him.

He winced as if I had struck him, and then emitted a sound that resembled both a laugh and a sob.  What had I been thinking, to shock him so?  I struggled to sit up, and quickly realized it was not yet possible.  I satisfied myself with regarding the Doctor.  If Alexander the Great had wandered into his consulting room, he could not have looked more staggered.

"Holmes," he said at last, "you are dead.  What are you doing here?"

"I've come home." 

"Never in my wildest..." he murmured.  "I prayed for so many things.  I prayed to find your body and bring it back to London.  But to see you again, and after--"

"I didn't know.  I swear to you I didn't know," I said, the words catching in my throat.

"What do you mean?"  He was clutching my hand as if it would disappear.

"Your family.  I did not know." 

"Wait.  Stop a moment," he pleaded.  "How did you come alive out of that awful abyss?"

"I never was in it," I confessed. 

As the terrible realization dawned upon his face, he leaned closer to me.  I took his hand in both of mine and pressed it against my chest in a medievally superstitious effort to keep the necessary life functions operating.  I don't know when I have felt so ill.

"I must understand this," he said slowly.  "You staged your own death."

"Not exactly, but that was the final result."  The tears were flowing silently now.  I wondered how long they had been there, waiting.  I have not wept since I was five.  I was close to it when the Doctor left me, and when he came back, but this was different.

"You allowed me to think you were dead, in order to leave me.  Because of the danger you were running.  Because I refused to be sent away."

"It was one thing when you were mine, when you were my friend, before I abandoned logic for senseless, futile devotion, before any of it, but I had to face facts, my dear fellow.  It was impossible, ludicrous.  I could not continue risking your life.  Not when you were to be a--"  I halted.

"Because of my child," he finished.  "Because we could not go on as before.  And in the all or nothing fashion I know so well in you, you left every part of your former life behind."

It had been so long since I had shared a moment with a man who knew me well that I choked back a new wave of feeling.  "I can do nothing by halves, as you have learned."

"And now you are here, because...."

"Because of a miracle."

"I beg your pardon?"

"A miracle in a Hungarian's lodgings."

"I am listening," he said patiently.  I tried to sit up again.  It was, once more, a losing battle.

"He had a newspaper," I managed.  "An English newspaper."

"I see.  What was the date?"

"September twentieth, 1891."

I have always been able to read Dr. Watson's thoughts upon his countenance.  But in this case, whether it was my own self-doubt or he himself did not know what he was feeling, I could discern nothing.  This was very disquieting, not to say disturbing.

"And so you returned, after reading the obituary column from nearly three years ago," he said softly.  He narrowed his eyes at me appraisingly.  "Why?"

"Because I could not bear to think of you alone."  I finally managed to sit up, and I swung my legs to the floor.  There was a short silence.

"You are here to pick up where you left off, then?  Now that she is dead?"

"No!" I exclaimed.  "My dear--no, never, I only thought that if you were not in fact leading the idyllic life I had pictured for you, that perhaps I...."  I stopped, for it would be better to begin afresh.  "I am not expecting anything.  You must believe me.  But not knowing whether you were all right was more than I could stand."

Dr. Watson stared back at me, his nobly formed features a perfect blank.

"You are still being hunted, aren't you?" he asked me, seeing no further avenues of the previous topic he cared to explore.  "I could do nothing against Moran on my return, for he was most often abroad.  You must know that I tried.  They were pathetic efforts, no doubt.  I had him hounded in every way I could think of, but to no avail.  He did nothing to stop me--he must have enjoyed it, knowing you were alive and that I was ignorant of it.  He was the only living soul I could hold responsible for your death.  I even threatened his life once, in one of my madder periods.  There were a number of those."

I waited for him to elaborate.  His temples were greying very slightly, and there were lines around his eyes from care and grief.  Absurdly, I held myself responsible for all of them.

"What are you staring at?" he asked evenly.

"Nothing.  At you.  You have changed."

"Three years is a long time," he replied.  "But you must know that as well as I do."

This prompted terrible new thoughts.  What if three years was sufficiently long for him not to need me at all?  It struck me that my former practice of thinking everything through meticulously before acting would have served me very well in this venture.  I had never intended to waltz back into his life and demand my former place in it, but I am forced to confess that neither had I ruled out he still might want me.  Now I reconsidered.  He could easily have found someone else.  I had been possessed with the desperate urge to ascertain that he was well, and there he sat before me, perfectly sound.  What if that was the end of it, and I had risen from the dead only to fade back into my ghost life again?  I wondered whether I would not prefer to throw myself off the nearest bridge.

"I had to know you were well," I said.  "And to express my condolences.  I would not wish on my worst enemy what my friend has suffered."  The tears were rising again and I rubbed at my eyes wearily.

"Are your expressing condolences for the loss of my wife and child?  Or of my dearest friend?"

"Watson," I exclaimed, horrified.

"It was not easy," he admitted quietly.  "I was responsible, indirectly of course, for both of your deaths."

"How can you think that?" I cried.

"The madder periods were difficult," was his vague yet very sensible answer.

"You did not deserve this.  Any of it," I told him fervently.

"I know that now," he said with a small smile.  "I took some convincing, but I have come to feel the same way."

If I am a prideful fellow, and I have been told more than once that I am, it is because I possess certain finely honed skills which others do not, the result not only of natural aptitude but of arduous study.  I here admit that, regrettably, pride does not disturb me so much as it ought.  I have never counted humility among the virtues, in any event.  But there are consequence for such indulgences.  I had allowed myself, on the boat, to picture what it would be like to see Dr. Watson once more, and in those daydreams I had comported myself with more poise than the scene which I have just set down.  In other words, I had not arrived, promptly lost consciousness, and then allowed three years of pent-up emotion to be released at once.  I had retained control of both my wits and my headlong feelings.  As I slowly regained my strength, the difference between the daydream and the reality grew rather mortifying.

"I should not have interrupted you this way.  I ought to be going," I said.

"Where do you intend to go?" he inquired.  He looked quite touchingly curious, but he hadn't contradicted me.

"I've a hotel."

"What would you need with a hotel?" he asked.  It was not an invitation, I knew at once, merely a question, and it struck me as a vicious question.  But I was swiftly gaining the upper hand of myself, in spite of the circumstances.

"I can see to it no one knows I've been here, and I will not be observed when I leave, that I can assure you.  I've no doubt I can make it to my lodgings unmolested.  And then I shall...." 

I stopped, for I hadn't the faintest notion how to end the sentence, and placed my face in my hands so as to prevent my caring what was displayed upon it.

"My God," the Doctor whispered.  "It can't be true."

"What is it?" I asked, startled enough to look back up at him.  Something had shocked him as badly as my ill-conceived reappearance, yet we remained the only ones in the room.

"I don't believe it," he muttered, as if to himself.  "You really haven't any plans, have you?"

"You have observed already the pitiable extent of my plans," I snapped, wondering what cause he had to needle me thus.

"When I saw you," he said, growing more and more agitated, "as I told you, I thought myself mad.  Afterward, a number of things fell into place."

"You will have to elucidate them for me over oysters some day when we can find the time," I returned bitingly, but he appeared not even to hear me.  He had regained his colour, indeed far more of it than was usual for him, for he was blushing furiously and his closely cropped military moustache fairly twitched with urgency.

"I tell you, Holmes, I assumed I understood.  I imagined I knew what you were after.  I am sorry.  But to think that you truly did return, at great personal risk, on the mere chance that I was unhappy...."

"Forgive the element of self-flattery, my dear fellow, but I did imagine the odds you were unhappy to be fairly high for a number of reasons," I pointed out bitterly.  I made a motion as if to stand.  He grasped me by the wrist and continued passionately.

"Holmes, please listen to me!  You are not here to reclaim your old life, and to move back into Baker Street.  It's still furnished--exactly as it was.  But not at your behest.  I can see you knew nothing of your brother's optimistic fancy.  It was not part of your designs.  So you are not here to begin your practice anew--to take revenge on Moran, who has likewise only recently returned to London.  To solve the murder of Ronald Adair.  That is all a complete coincidence.  It isn't opportunistic at all.  You were telling me the truth.  You are here only because of a newspaper you read in Prague."

"Who the devil is Ronald Adair?" I asked, standing up at last.  Then I stumbled and would have fallen again if Watson had not reached out and steadied me.  Suddenly I was leaning nearly half my weight against his body, my forearms resting on his shoulders, and my head quite naturally fell forward until it came to rest against his.  Surely there was something severely wrong with me at this point, for I found myself once more forcing back the lump in my throat.  I discovered that if I shut my eyes hard enough, I could retain some semblance of dignity.

"When did you last eat something, Holmes?"

I considered for several seconds.  "I think I was in Prague."

"What about water?"

"I don't know."

His arms were around my waist, preventing me from swaying.  I imagine our faces were inches apart, but I kept my eyes tenaciously closed that I might sense his form against mine all the better.  For that reason, and so that I might not fall to pieces again like some gin-soaked half-wit.

"It feels wonderful to pose that question again," he said at last. 

"Does it?" I asked desperately. 

"Yes," he told me.  "It does."

"Watson?"

"Yes?"

"Will you do something for me, please?"

He had reached up to cradle my face in his hand.  "I am at your service, Holmes."

"Tell me not to go.  Whatever the danger, which you clearly are better apprised of than I, we can manage it, can we not?  I deserve nothing, and I know it.  Only please tell me not to go."

"Do not go," he said. 

I was only too happy to do as he asked.