Tony Richards - The Astonishing Adventures of Sherlock Holmes in the Twenty-First Century

The lieutenant nodded.

“Then you’d best get on your mobile phone and appraise them of the situation. We will need another exit on the ground floor, and we’ll need it opened quickly.”

He was bending to the lock, when another busy crackling sound brought his gaze jerking up.

The creature was emerging from the broken doorway, and was fully formed by this stage. As on the CD recording, it was faint, but definitely had a human shape. Its surface glittered and then shifted as it began floating towards them.

Minoshi was yelling on her mobile phone. Holmes tried to blank his mind to the approaching danger, and attended to the lock. He could not get the tumblers to move at first. He cursed under his breath, and tried shifting the wire to a different angle. When he heard the bolt click back, he breathed out with relief.

But then Minoshi howled with fright, beside him.

The electric creature, it was practically upon them. One pale, glowing arm was reaching out. Holmes grabbed wildly at the Japanese lieutenant, trying to haul her away from its deadly touch. But he was momentarily too late, and its fingers brushed against her elbow.

Holmes felt a mild tingle running through his frame, but that was all. Next second, he and Minoshi were off, the pair of them pounding down the fire stairs. A heavy thumping noise below them told them that the uniformed men were breaking down the last door with an axe.

They were both panting heavily and shivering by the time they got outside. The night air felt very cool against Holmes’ dampened flesh. He waited for his breathing to return to normal, keeping his eye on the lobby of the Purple Cloud the entire time. But nothing more emerged from that direction. When he thought about it, he could see how unlikely it was that the strange creature could ever leave the building where it had been born.

Satisfied that they were safe, he turned to Lieutenant Minoshi again, with a smile of triumph on his face.

“ Now do you see why I insisted that we buy rubber galoshes? Had we not been wearing them, then we would quite literally be toast by this late stage.”

Haruko had gone very quiet, and nodded dumbly.

“As to the electric being inside that hotel, the Tokyo authorities have two clear choices: they can study it and attempt to learn more about it; or else, they can simply turn the power off. It is up to them, and I’ll have nothing more to do with it.”

So it ever was with Sherlock Holmes. Case closed.

On his final night in Tokyo, Minoshi took him back to the teahouse that they had visited at the start of their encounter. It was a calm and beautifully simple place, pleasing to the various senses.

As they sipped green tea around a low table, Holmes ventured to remark, “The way you broke that door in half, a person of your stature. It was most impressive.”

Haruko flushed gently. “It has nothing to do with size or muscles, Holmes-san. It is far more a matter of correctly executed technique. That, and strength of will.”

A waitress was approaching them, carrying a small white plate. And when she set it down in front of them, Holmes could see it contained several lumps of sushi. He’d already expressed distaste at the very idea of the stuff, and glanced at the lieutenant curiously, wondering what this was all about.

Haruko was smiling. “It is a test for you, Holmes-san. And there is a lesson to be learned.”

She was obviously daring him to take a bite. Only … what could possibly be learned from that? Holmes peered at her crossly, but then picked a portion up.

He held his breath and almost closed his eyes, then jammed the wretched thing inside his mouth. Surely it would not be too long before nausea overcame him and he spat the vile thing out?

Except that nothing like that happened. Holmes chewed down, and felt a broad smile stretching out across his face, his eyes opening wide.

“My word, it is utterly delicious! The taste … is nothing like I’d imagined it would be!”

He swallowed, reached across to take another piece, then paused.

“And the lesson, I suppose,” he murmured thoughtfully, “is that to be a great detective, you should keep your mind entirely open at all times, and never let blind prejudice deter you. It is a fine lesson, lieutenant. You have my thanks for that, and for a great deal more. Or perhaps there is a better way of putting it.”

Sherlock Holmes lowered his eyelids and ducked his head respectfully.

“Domo arigato, Minoshi-san.”

The sky over Tokyo’s Narita airport had darkened several hours earlier than it should have done, bleeding of its brightness as though evening were already there and turning the same colour as a sheet of lead. Shadow hung over the whole adjacent and sprawling metropolis, in fact – the streetlights had been switched on, and the major routes were filled up with the swift glitter of headlamps. There was a square of glowing yellow as well in numerous of the windows in apartment buildings and in office blocks, despite the fact that time had barely spooled round to the middle of the afternoon. A storm had closed in over Tokyo very rapidly, which often is the way the weather changes in the East.

Sherlock Holmes was headed back to Europe. The flight that he had booked was scheduled to take him non-stop to the hub airport at Frankfurt. And after that, who knew where he might go? He half had a fancy to venture eastwards again, not so far as this but to such former Iron Curtain capitals as Budapest and Warsaw. He had not travelled too much in those parts, but had been assured that they were genuinely quaint and fascinating places. And were there any mysteries to solve there? Well, he really had no doubts on that score. Crime was a constant all across the world, like taxes and like death. It was the dark side of the human – and the inhuman – condition, and could be relied upon to rear its head wherever on this globe he went.

He was comfortably ensconced in one of the bars in the departure lounge, a broadsheet newspaper spread open on his knees and a particularly delicious glass of pina colada on the small table beside him. And he was doing his best to concentrate his attention on the journalistic piece that he was reading – it was about the latest floundering attempts to save that curious and somewhat bogus modern currency that had been called the euro. It was, in his opinion, like trying to save the dodo: the wretched thing was already dead. But much of the financial wellbeing of the world depended upon this issue being resolved, he understood how important it was, and so he kept on reading.

Except that, being a deeply inquisitive man, and feeling impelled to be constantly aware of his immediate surroundings, Sherlock Holmes’ gaze kept on flickering up. He’d scan the airport swiftly for a brief handful of seconds, before dutifully returning to the article in question.

What he saw was what you always saw in places such as this: people standing under notice boards, waiting for their flight to be announced; eople heading quickly to their gates, or milling fairly casually round the numerous shops; people trying to control their smaller children. Others were sitting in various positions on the massive rows of chairs, a few of them sprawled out and practically asleep. But several more were perched there rather nervously, resembling caged birds who had detected the presence of a cat.

But finally, Holmes noticed something else – something that was not quite so familiar.

More of the passengers than was usual – and especially the oriental ones – had gathered at the massive plate-glass windows that looked out across the runways. And they were not staring at the parked and waiting planes. Their heads were tipped back, they were gazing at the churning, darkened bruise that was the overhanging sky.