Bill Pronzini - The Bughouse Affair

And of course he did.

He was a jovial companion until they were finishing an excellent rum cake dessert. Then, after a short interval during which his face turned cloudy again, he muttered, “He wouldn’t tell me when he plans to leave San Francisco.”

Sabina sighed. “I don’t suppose I need to ask who you mean.”

“The crackbrain, of course. He likes it here, he said. Finds the city stimulating. Might stay on awhile.”

“Well? That’s his privilege, isn’t it?”

“It is as long as he doesn’t bother me again with his infernal presence. Why doesn’t he go back to England? That’s where he belongs-an asylum in England.”

The imp in Sabina made her say, “Does he really? We could be wrong about him, you know.”

“What do you mean, wrong?”

“Suppose he isn’t an impostor. Suppose he really is Sherlock Holmes, the world-famous detective.”

John stared at her as if a fiddler crab had suddenly crawled out of the collar of her dress. “You’re not serious?”

“It’s possible, isn’t it?”

“No! The real Holmes is dead. It’s folly to think that scrawny, gibbering imitation presuming on Dr. Axminster’s hospitality is the genuine article. You know that as well as I do.”

“Perhaps. But I have a feeling that whoever he is, neither of us has seen the last of him-personally or professionally.”

“We’d better have,” John said in ominous tones. “If he tries to interfere in any more of our investigations, I may not be able to restrain myself from strangling, bludgeoning, stabbing, or shooting him.”

Sabina rolled her eyes and maintained an eloquent silence.