“Ah, more’s the pity. I’d little enough hope as it was.” Holmes squinted at the murder site. “You’ve more important things on your minds than my pipe. The body was in front of those houses?”

“Yes, opposite Church Passage.”

“And what did the neighbours hear?”

“Unfortunately, the buildings are unoccupied.”

“Ah, that’s a shame, it is. Seems an empty enough place, to be sure.”

“Kearly and Tonge’s Warehouse yonder is guarded by night, and a police constable lives just there, but no one heard a thing.”

“Police just on the other side of the square?” Holmes whistled softly. “I might never ha’ lost my pipe if I’d known that.”

“Don’t see how you could have known—not unless you were Sherlock Holmes, that balmy cove.”

The men laughed heartily at this incomprehensible jest, and Holmes flashed a ready smile in return. “What, that unofficial ’tec? Don’t tell me you know him.”

His question provoked another bout of merriment. “Know him!” chuckled Mr. Levison. “That’s rich. I think Lusk, our president, knows him, but if he’s a careful man, he’ll steer clear of Sherlock Holmes. I know I would, if I were him.”

Torn between burning curiosity and the sight of a colourless Holmes leaning ever more urgently upon his stick, I ventured, “Hadn’t we best return home?”

“Yes indeed, see your friend home, my good man,” agreed Mr. Levison genially. “I’m right sorry about your pipe, sir, but you’re a good deal too peaked to be out of doors.”

“There’s days I’ve felt better, and that’s certain,” Holmes replied. “My thanks for your help, such as it was.”

We slowly, for my friend grew steadily more faint, passed back through the narrowest of the entrances. Holmes made no protestation when I took him firmly by the arm.

“What in the world could that fellow have meant?”

My companion shook his head. “I haven’t the first idea,” he answered, “but I fear that we shall soon enough find out.”

CHAPTER TWELVE Dark Writings

By the time I got Holmes up the stairs, he was so drained of all energy that I lost no time in administering a fresh injection of morphine before consigning him to his bed. Afterward I felt compelled to clear my thoughts and, with no immediate object in mind, ambled toward Regent’s Park where a hailstorm of brown leaves lay strewn over the spacious grounds.

Our visit to Mitre Square appeared only to have raised still more mystifying obstacles. Why should our quarry have killed again when he knew the alarm had been raised? Why should he have done so where at any moment he may have been interrupted from one of three directions? Above all, I dwelt upon the bizarre remarks the committee man had made about my friend. For all the Yard’s reticence to consult a self-labeled amateur, there was scarcely a more respected figure in the layman’s eye, and with each successive case Sherlock Holmes solved—in the rare instances he received full credit—he was compelled by his natural Bohemian reticence to turn down countless congratulatory invitations proffered by rich and poor alike. What extraordinary rumour could possibly have run him afoul of public opinion?

I must have wandered for an hour, lost in pointless speculation. I had just turned the corner, my steps leading back down Baker Street, when I observed from half a block’s distance an angry altercation taking place upon our doorstep.

“It is undoubtedly a sad circumstance which brings harm to the faultless health of the great Mr. Sherlock Holmes,” growled Mr. Rowland K. Vandervent, “but I will be damned, my good lady—and I use the word damned only in the presence of those it will affect—I will be damned if his condition prevents me from saving his character!”

“Good afternoon, Mr. Vandervent,” I said sternly. “I should like to have a word with you in private. Your gross disregard for both courtesy and Holmes’s frail state of health has been well noted, I warn you. Mrs. Hudson, I will deal with this person.”

Thanked with surreptitious glances of gratitude from both parties (neither of whom, providentially, observed the other), I proceeded with Mr. Vandervent up the stairs. I roused the coals into a blaze as he finished the few laboured steps required to propel him into our sitting room.

“I say, she isn’t a distant extraction of any of the Borgias, is she? I’ve never had such adjectives trowled in heaping mounds upon my person. What I mean to say is, Doctor,” continued Vandervent, suddenly lowering his raspy voice and glancing toward Holmes’s door, “the gawky fellow isn’t about to die on us, is he?”

“By no means!” called the detective’s piercing tenor from his bedroom.

“It is common enough knowledge,” declared Holmes when we had entered the room and Mr. Vandervent had cast himself into the armchair, “that spoken low tones, provided that the s consonant is disguised, are far more easily masked than a whisper.”

“So it’s true, then?” returned Vandervent, running his hand through his frenzied hair. “You were knocked about by Jack the Ripper?”

“I am at death’s door,” my friend replied acidly. “Therefore, I beg of you to come to the point.”

“I only mean to tell you that I am sorry about the late edition of the London Chronicle. I had nothing whatever to say about it.”

“How fascinating. I have barely finished the early morning editions. Look it up, would you, Watson?”

I cast about the chaotic room for some moments in search of the periodical in question, finally extracting it from the vortex of newsprint. The article was titled, in the usual gaudy capitals, “A MURDEROUS STRUGGLE,” and read as follows:

It has been brought to the attention of this publication that further circumstances pertaining to the infamous double event, which may enhance our knowledge of the killer whose savage acts have brought terror to our streets, have recently come to light. It was not well known before today that Mr. Sherlock Holmes, the eccentric and reclusive consulting detective, was in the area upon the night of the double murder. We have learned that his time was spent in dalliance with a number of ladies of questionable vocation, consorting in the dens of vice so prevalent in those dark streets. It is also evident that it was Mr. Holmes who “discovered” the murder in Dutfield’s Yard during its very execution, and that in pursuit of an unknown suspect, he then disappeared during the time the second victim met her own hideous demise. Whether those lost minutes point the finger of suspicion at one of London’s most cloistered characters remains to be seen, but it is an established fact that Mr. Holmes returned to the site of the first murder in a state of bloody disarray. In addition, Mr. Holmes arrived without prior summons by the police at the scene of Annie Chapman’s brutal slaying three weeks ago, and the peculiar gentleman offered no satisfactory explanation of his being there. To suggest that Mr. Holmes’s self-imposed mandate to combat crime in all its forms has taken a turn against the destitute would be the lowest form of conjecture; however, we can state with greater positivity that the unconventional vigilante must be questioned to the closest degree regarding his activities and his strange foreknowledge upon the nights in question.

To my immense surprise, at the conclusion of this trash, Sherlock Holmes threw his head back and laughed heartily in his inner, noiseless fashion until he had entirely exhausted himself.

“I fail to see the humour you have, in your greater wisdom perhaps, detected,” remarked Mr. Vandervent.

“As do I, Holmes.”

“Oh, come, Watson! Really! It is quite too preposterous.”

“It is libelous!”

“It is superb. It clears up a small mystery, for this piece was written by the enigmatic Leslie Tavistock. However, it presents a fresh one, for the article is factually irreproachable. Where could Tavistock have obtained these particulars? Before the press even learned of the first murder, I had been carted off like a sack of oranges and you had left the scene. Do you imagine Miss Monk was interviewed about the events of the evening?”