Mike Ashley - The Mammoth Book of New Sherlock Holmes Adventures

My anxieties over the lurking seaman I had noticed by the house gate proved fully justified when the manservant called on me the day afterwards. He reported that he had encountered this very fellow in the garden at dusk the night before, and that he had given him a thorough beating before chasing him from the premises. I decided it would be as well to visit Holmes and report on the favourable turn to the situation. It ought, I believed, to assuage any fears he might have. Instead therefore of returning home to lunch I called in at my club, which lies between my house and Baker Street, to take some refreshment there.

It was while I was hastily consuming a boiled fowl and half a bottle of Montrachet that the place next to me at the table was taken by an old acquaintance, Maltravers Bressingham, the big-game hunter. I enquired whether he had been in Africa.

"Why, no, my dear fellow," he replied. "I have been shooting nearer home. In Illyria, in fact. There is excellent sport to be had in the wild boar forests there, you know."

"Indeed?" I answered. "And were you not disturbed by the state of the country? I understand the situation there is somewhat turbulent."

"Turbulent?" Bressingham said, in tones of considerable surprise. "My dear fellow, I assure you that there are positively no signs of unrest at all. I spent a week in the capital, you know, and society there is as calm and as full of enjoyment as one could wish."

"Is it indeed?" I said. "I believed otherwise, but it must be that I have been misinformed."

Sadly puzzled, I left the club and took a hansom for Baker Street. I found Holmes in bed. I was more dismayed at this than I can easily say. A fortnight before, when I had first called on him after a period of some weeks, he had been lying on the sitting room sofa certainly and in a condition I did not at all like to see. But his state now seemed a good deal more grave. Was that indomitable spirit at last to succumb totally to the sapping weakness which lay for ever ready to emerge when there was nothing to engage the powers of his unique mind? Was the world to be deprived of his services because it held nothing that seemed to him a worthy challenge?

"Holmes, my dear fellow," I said. "What symptoms affect you? Confide in me, pray, as a medical man."

In response I got at first no more than a deep groan. But I persisted, and at length Holmes answered, with a touch of asperity in his voice which I was not wholly displeased to hear.

"Nothing is wrong, Watson. Nothing. This is the merest passing indisposition. I do not require your professional services."

"Very well, my dear fellow. Then let me tell you of events down in Hertfordshire. I trust they will bring you not a little comfort."

But even as I spoke those words, my heart failed me. Certainly I had what had seemed glad tidings from Hertfordshire. But my news was of the foiling of an apparent attempt on the Count Palatine of Illyria, a ruler whom I had believed, on Holmes's authority, to be needed urgently in a country prey to severe unrest. Yet I had heard not half an hour before from an eye-witness of impeccable antecedents that there was no unrest whatsoever in Illyria, and if that were so was not the whole of Holmes's view of the situation a matter for doubt?

Yet I had broached the subject and must continue.

"I happened on my final visit to our friend, Mr Smith, the day before yesterday to notice lurking near the gates of the house a person dressed as a seaman," I said.

Holmes in answer gave a groan yet louder than any before. It caused me to pause a little before continuing once more, in an altogether less assured manner.

"I considered it my duty, Holmes, to warn Mr Smith's manservant of the presence of that individual, and to hint in general terms that the fellow might be some sort of burglar intent on the premises."

Another deep groan greeted this information. Yet more falteringly I resumed.

"This morning, my dear chap, the manservant called to collect from me a quantity of nerve tonic that I had prepared for his master, and he told me that he had surprised just such a mysterious seaman in the grounds of the house last evening and that he had – "

Here my hesitant account abruptly concluded. Holmes had given vent to yet another appalling groan, and I was able to see, too, that he was holding his body under the bedclothes in an altogether unnaturally stiff position.

A silence fell. In the quiet of the bedroom I could hear distinctly the buzzing of a bluebottle fly beating itself hopelessly against the window panes. At last I spoke again.

"Holmes. My dear old friend. Holmes. Tell me, am I right in my guess? Holmes, are you suffering from the effects of a thorough thrashing?"

Another silence. Once more I became aware of the useless buzzings of the fly upon the pane. Then Holmes answered. "Yes, Watson, it is as you supposed."

"But, my dear fellow, this is truly appalling. My action in warning that manservant resulted in your suffering injury. Can you forgive me?"

"The injury I can forgive," Holmes answered. "The insult I suffered at the hands of that fellow I can forgive you, Watson, as I can forgive the man his unwitting action. But those who were its cause I cannot forgive. They are dangerous men, my friend, and at all costs they must be prevented from wreaking the harm they intend."

I could not in the light of that answer bring myself to question

in the least whether the men to whom Holmes had pointed existed, however keenly I recalled Maltravers Bressingham's assertion that all was quiet in Illyria.

"Holmes," I asked instead, "have you then some plan to act against these people?"

"I would be sadly failing in my duty, Watson, had I not taken the most stringent precautions on behalf of the Count Palatine, and I hope you have never found me lacking in that."

"Indeed I have not."

"Very well then. During the hours of daylight I think we need not fear too much.They are hardly likely to make an attempt that might easily be thwarted by a handful of honest English passersby. And in any case I have telegraphed the Hertfordshire police and given them a proper warning. But it is tonight, Watson, that I fear."

"The Count's last night in England, Holmes, if indeed…"

I bit back the qualifying phrase it had been on the tip of my tongue to add. Common sense dictated that the terrible situation Holmes foresaw was one that could not occur. Yet on many occasions before I had doubted him and he had in the outcome been proved abundantly right. So now I held my peace.

Holmes with difficulty raised himself up in the bed.

"Watson," he said, "tonight as never before I shall require your active assistance. We must both keep watch. There is no other course open to me. But I fear I myself will be but a poor bruised champion should the affair come to blows. Will you assist me then? Will you bring that old Service revolver of yours and fight once more on the side of justice?"

"I will, Holmes, I will."

What else could I have said?

The hour of dusk that autumn evening found us taking up our watch in Hertfordshire in that same thick rhododendron shrubbery where Holmes had hidden in the disguise of an old, wrinkled, brown-faced fellow at the beginning of this singular adventure. But where he had from deep within that leafy place of concealment looked out at the mellow brightness of afternoon, we now needed to step only a foot or two in among the bushes to be quite concealed and we looked out at a scene soon bathed in serene moonlight.

All was quiet. No feet trod the path beyond the beech hedge. In the garden no bird hopped to and fro, no insect buzzed. Up at the house, which beneath the light of the full moon we had under perfect observation, two lighted windows only showed how things lay, one high up from behind the drawn curtains of the bedroom where I had visited my mysterious patient, another low down, coming from the partly sunken windows of the kitchen where doubtless the manservant was preparing the light evening repast I myself had recommended.