"Baker Street 2: A Meeting in Piccadilly"
Watson meets someone surprising in Piccadilly.
Title: "Baker Street 2: A Meeting in Piccadilly"
Author: Gaedhal
Pairing/Characters: Sherlock Holmes/Dr. John H. Watson; Mick Wiggins.
Rating: R
Spoilers: None
Notes/Warnings: "Sherlock Holmes" (2009) Universe. Set before the Blackwood case.
Disclaimer: This is for fun, not profit. Enjoy.
Summary: Watson meets someone surprising.
By Gaedhal
"Baker Street 1: A Walk to Regent's Park" is here:
http://gaedhal.livejournal.com/367955.html
Part 2 is within:
I had been visiting Regent Street to pick up a pocketwatch that I had left at Carson's to be repaired -- the winding stem had become loose. After retrieving the timepiece, I thought I might while away an hour at the Criterion Bar; perhaps I would meet Stamford there -- it is his favorite place of refreshment -- and have the opportunity to apologize in person for bowing out of his dinner party of the previous week. I am not in the habit of accepting dinner engagements and then reneging upon them. That would be the height of poor manners and incivility. Unfortunately, my intimate friend, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, with whom I share a suite of rooms in Baker Street, was quite ill that evening.
Quite ill.
Yes, that was the excuse I made in my note to Stamford and his bride.
Now I am not by nature an untruthful man. Mendacity and falsehood are against my better nature. I no longer follow the religion of my youth, in which I was raised and trained from earliest childhood, nor do I follow any particular creed or belief, although, unlike my skeptical friend Holmes, I do not look down upon those who need the support of the supernatural over the logical in order to arrange their lives. However, I pride myself in following a strict moral and ethical code of my own making, one that has served me both as a soldier and a physician, as well as a subject of Her Majesty and a citizen of her Greater Empire. Much of that code involves honour. And honour assumes honesty.
And, in fact, I was being honest, being truthful, when I begged off Stamford's party. Holmes was ill. Acutely ill. Gravely ill.
I tell myself that, although the illness was -- and is -- of his own making.
And Holmes was much in my thoughts as I made my way down Regent Street towards Piccadilly.
Perhaps that's why I didn't notice him at first. My mind was preoccupied. The street and pavement were crowded, as they always are in midday in that part of London, especially on a brisk April day when the sun was still attempting to breach the morning fog.
"Doctor! I say!"
My ears perked up like a foxhound that hears the bugle, but I shook it off. I was not expecting to meet anyone in this part of town. Unless, of course Stamford might be on his way to the Criterion and thereby hail me. But this voice was nothing like Stamford's baritone. Instead, it was a high voice. Not feminine, but more a light tenor. And the inflection was decidedly of the lower orders. Even, perhaps, that accent from the vicinity of the Bow Bells that some term Cockney.
"Doctor! Doctor Watson!"
That stopped me. Surely I was being signaled. But by whom?
A young fellow came up beside me. He was dressed like a toff -- or how a young man with little fashion sense might imagine a toff would dress -- in a bowler hat, checked wool trousers, a coarse linen shirt, and a garish yellow waistcoat, over which was a worn tweed jacket that looked vaguely familiar.
I perused the tweed jacket again.
No wonder it looked familiar, for it was my own.
"Who the deuce are you? And whatever are you doing wearing my old Norfolk hacking jacket?" I demanded.
"Wot? This?" The young man tugged at the lapels and gave me a cheeky grin. "Looks nice, don't it? That's fine material, that is!"
"It ought to be!" I huffed. "I paid two pounds for it not three years ago!"
"You?" the lad frowned. "Didn't know it was yours, Doctor. The Guv'nor give it to me. Said I'd look a treat in it. 'Specially with me new weskit. Paid three shillings for it and worth every farthing."
"Listen, my good fellow, I don't know who you are, but..."
"Don't know? Why you know me, Doctor!" he cried. "You know me sure as the nose on your face! I'm Mick Wiggins!"
The name meant nothing to me. "Mick Wiggins?" I cast my mind back on numerous cases in which Holmes and I had taken part, many involving denizens of all strata of society, but the name Mick Wiggins did not figure in any of them.
Now I take pride not only in my memory, but also in the copious notes I keep on all the enterprises that Sherlock Holmes embarks upon. Many of these details are of a sensitive nature, involving both high and low. Some of Holmes' cases are so secret that I often worry for fear they should fall into the wrong hands. But Holmes seems to have no such fear. In fact, he encourages me in my literary endeavors, both the trifling adventure stories that I have offered to the public, as well as the accounts of his cases, which so far have remained private.
"One day, my dear Watson," he has said to me on more than one occasion. "One day you will reveal my techniques to the greater world, bringing me fame unlike any ever known by a modest consulting detective and resident genius. You shall be my Boswell, for every great man needs his official biographer."
You must discount Holmes' immense egotism, which can be disconcerting to people who have never observed his powers of deduction at first hand. But I have. And I can only conclude that although it is immodest to state it oneself, Holmes is in actuality a genius of the first order, perhaps the only one it will ever be my privilege to know.
"Wiggins!" the fellow repeated. "From the Irregulars!"
I stared at the lad. Wiggins of the Irregulars, Holmes' contingent of street arabs and urchins. His eyes and ears on the streets on London. When I first came to know Holmes, Wiggins was called his 'lieutenant': a filthy child with a sharp eye and a quick wit who was the chief of the Irregulars, the one who took orders from Holmes and sent the boys out to do his bidding. He also collected their fees and, I assume, distributed the same to the boys, according to their deeds.
But I remembered a lad of ten or twelve -- it's difficult to tell the ages of these boys who live in the shadows and are often the worst for nourishment -- not this ruddy-cheeked would-be fashion-plate. I tried to remember that last time I'd seen him, but alas, I could not. The boys came and went, but the Irregulars remained, always perpetually in early adolescence.
"Good heavens, Wiggins!" I exclaimed. "It's been an age since I've seen you. How old are you now?"
He shrugged. "Don't know, really, Doctor. Mebbe sixteen or thereabouts. I was born in the Workhouse and they didn't keep no records of that fatal day. Or if they did, they didn't tell me before I scarpered out of there."
"You seem to be doing well," I replied, looking him up and down. And he did seem well. Although not tall, he was robust and well-fed. And his clothes, including my hacking jacket, were fairly brushed, if not exactly clean.
"I am, Doctor," the fellow boasted. "I even got my own room over by Charing Cross. I works as a messenger for the telegraph office in Oxford Street. I get wages and I keeps all my tips!"
"Good chap!" I said, encouragingly.
"I'm right flush," Wiggins said. "I go to the music hall and have a pint any time I like. I even went down to Brighton the summer last with a bloke I know. I even bathed in the sea, I did! And I owe it all to the Guv'nor."
"The Governor?" I frowned.
"The Guv!" he stated, as if it was obvious. "Mr. Sherlock Holmes! Who else?"
"Holmes?" I said in surprise.
"He staked me and helped me get me situation," said Wiggins. "He's a capital bloke, is Mr. Holmes. A real gentleman!"
"I agree with you on that," I readily concurred.
So Sherlock Holmes was not only making use of these children of the streets for his crime-solving intelligence, but he was assisting them as well. He once told me that Wiggins was as bright a boy as any attending the finest public school in the land, Eton or Harrow or any of those. He only lacked the advantages of family and money that those boys had to make good in the world.
Unfortunately, such lads as Wiggins often fall into crime. A keen and active mind must be used, and when it is not employed for good then it must be employed for ill. It was heartening to know that my good friend Holmes was directing his Irregulars to the benefit of society and not the harm of it.
"Come and have a drink with me, Doctor," he said. And he was already pulling at my arm.
"Oh, no," I said. "I must beg off."
"Come on, Doctor!" Wiggins urged. "I've a friend who's the bar boy at the Salisbury. We'll be made welcome there." He grinned at me winningly. "I'll pay. I told you I was flush!"
And so I found myself being guided away from Piccadilly and towards Leicester Square. I recognized the Salisbury, which is on St. Martin's Lane, as a theatrical public house. I had never been there myself, but knew its reputation as a meeting ground for actors, producers, playwrights, and other types who populate that dramatic milieu.
Wiggins sauntered into the pub as if he owned the place and was greeted by another lad in an apron, carrying a tray. "'Allo, Mick!" the boy cried.
"Two pints of bitter for me and the doctor here," Wiggins called. "Sit yourself down, Doctor. Make yourself at home."
The interior of the Salisbury was ornate in a garish way, all mirrors and gold and mahogany fittings. I could see how a lad like Wiggins might be impressed with such a show, although it was not a place in which my simpler sensibilities would ever be comfortable. But the place was quite sociable. I recognized an actor I had seen play Laertes two season ago at the Royal, as well as a tenor with the D'Oyly Carte Company.
"Ain't this place a treat?" said Wiggins, sipping his pint. "I know most of the nobs here and say 'Howdya do?' to them just like that!" He snapped his fingers.
I let Wiggins pay for the pints -- a point of pride to him -- but I stood him the second round and also one for his friend. While we drank the young man chattered on about this and that, mostly theatrical gossip, but his talk was also peppered with praise of Sherlock Holmes.
"How did you come by my tweed jacket?" I finally asked, my curiosity getting the better of me.
"The Guv'nor give it to me. Told me it would bring me luck 'cause him wot wore it before was a good man who brought him luck, too." Wiggins raised an eyebrow. "Didn't know he meant you, Doctor. He holds you highly, does the Guv."
"Well, I am relieved to hear that," I replied in amusement. "For I hold him in equally high esteem."
Wiggins put down his pint and wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his jacket. Or my jacket. "Come and see me room, Doctor. I ain't half proud of it."
"Your room?" I frowned. Why would the fellow want me to see his room?
"You can tell the Guv'nor you saw how I was doin'," he said. "See that his consideration ain't gone to waste."
"Well..." I hesitated. But then I thought of Holmes. He would not begrudge the lad because he was not of his own class. No man looked at all his fellows, both high and low, as equals in quite the manner that Sherlock Holmes did. "Yes, Wiggins. I should be pleased to see your room."
I followed the lad out of the Salisbury, up St. Martin's Lane and then towards Charing Cross and the warren of alleys between that thoroughfare and nearby Covent Garden. We paused before a nondescript building and Wiggins pushed open the door and trotted up the stairway, beckoning me.
"I told you I had me own place," he said with real pride.
The room was shabby, but tidy. A tiny window overlooked a patch of yard behind the building. He had some pictures ripped out of the newspapers tacked up on the wall over his narrow bed: an elegant woman in an evening gown, a pugilist with fists raised, a racehorse, and other trifles. His extra clothes were neatly folded and stored on a shelf alongside a flat cap and a battered straw boater. He even had a small rag rug on the floor, on which he had set a pair of red carpet slippers. I had to admit that Young Wiggins was much more orderly in his personal surroundings than Holmes himself.
"You've done well for yourself, Wiggins," I said.
"And now I'll do well for you, Doctor," he said. And with that he put his arms around my neck and, standing on tiptoe, kissed me directly upon the lips.
"Good Lord, Wiggins!" I cried. "What are you on about?"
"My profession," he said, deftly discarding his clothes. "You don't think I makes all my crust delivering messages, do you? I usually charge five shillings for a toss-off and another five bob for a suck, but for you, Doctor, it's nothin'. I've always had a yen for you. Thought you was a handsome bloke. Different from the Guv. More smooth, like. Refined. But the genteel toffs is the best fucks, I finds. Once they give in, they give it all they got! I'll even let you brown me, if that's your fancy. And I don't bend over for just any man, believe me." He reached into my trousers and seized my member. "That's a beauty, Doctor! A real beauty!"
I stood there in an almost paralytic condition while the rascal performed upon me an act which I can scarcely bring myself to recall. But I did not stop him. And after a while I did not recoil. After a longer while I did other such things that it shames me to name, so I will not, except to say that Wiggins was a master of his profession.
And I found a kind of relief in that room that I sorely needed. I had known a long time that I needed it, but never in my life would I have acted upon it with anyone but...
I closed my eyes as Wiggins eased me back onto his thin bed.
I did not return to 221b until late that night.
Holmes was where I had left him earlier that day, lying on the sofa, staring upward.
"Been out, my dear Watson?" he asked, his eyes never wavering from the ceiling.
"Obviously," I said shortly. My face burned, as if he knew. As if he could tell where I had been and what I had been doing. And, being Sherlock Holmes, he did. He knew all. Knew at a single glance.
"Mycroft has offered us the use of his house in Sussex," he said. "If you can tear yourself away from your practice for a few days, I thought we could leave on Friday."
"Friday," I replied. "Yes. I think I could. Tear myself away, I mean."
"Splendid," said Holmes. "The air will do us both a world of good. And we'll bring the dog. It will do you good, too, won't it, Gladstone?"
And Gladstone, hearing his name, wagged his tail happily.
***
Title: "Baker Street 2: A Meeting in Piccadilly"
Author: Gaedhal
Pairing/Characters: Sherlock Holmes/Dr. John H. Watson; Mick Wiggins.
Rating: R
Spoilers: None
Notes/Warnings: "Sherlock Holmes" (2009) Universe. Set before the Blackwood case.
Disclaimer: This is for fun, not profit. Enjoy.
Summary: Watson meets someone surprising.
By Gaedhal
"Baker Street 1: A Walk to Regent's Park" is here:
http://gaedhal.livejournal.com/367955.html
Part 2 is within:
I had been visiting Regent Street to pick up a pocketwatch that I had left at Carson's to be repaired -- the winding stem had become loose. After retrieving the timepiece, I thought I might while away an hour at the Criterion Bar; perhaps I would meet Stamford there -- it is his favorite place of refreshment -- and have the opportunity to apologize in person for bowing out of his dinner party of the previous week. I am not in the habit of accepting dinner engagements and then reneging upon them. That would be the height of poor manners and incivility. Unfortunately, my intimate friend, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, with whom I share a suite of rooms in Baker Street, was quite ill that evening.
Quite ill.
Yes, that was the excuse I made in my note to Stamford and his bride.
Now I am not by nature an untruthful man. Mendacity and falsehood are against my better nature. I no longer follow the religion of my youth, in which I was raised and trained from earliest childhood, nor do I follow any particular creed or belief, although, unlike my skeptical friend Holmes, I do not look down upon those who need the support of the supernatural over the logical in order to arrange their lives. However, I pride myself in following a strict moral and ethical code of my own making, one that has served me both as a soldier and a physician, as well as a subject of Her Majesty and a citizen of her Greater Empire. Much of that code involves honour. And honour assumes honesty.
And, in fact, I was being honest, being truthful, when I begged off Stamford's party. Holmes was ill. Acutely ill. Gravely ill.
I tell myself that, although the illness was -- and is -- of his own making.
And Holmes was much in my thoughts as I made my way down Regent Street towards Piccadilly.
Perhaps that's why I didn't notice him at first. My mind was preoccupied. The street and pavement were crowded, as they always are in midday in that part of London, especially on a brisk April day when the sun was still attempting to breach the morning fog.
"Doctor! I say!"
My ears perked up like a foxhound that hears the bugle, but I shook it off. I was not expecting to meet anyone in this part of town. Unless, of course Stamford might be on his way to the Criterion and thereby hail me. But this voice was nothing like Stamford's baritone. Instead, it was a high voice. Not feminine, but more a light tenor. And the inflection was decidedly of the lower orders. Even, perhaps, that accent from the vicinity of the Bow Bells that some term Cockney.
"Doctor! Doctor Watson!"
That stopped me. Surely I was being signaled. But by whom?
A young fellow came up beside me. He was dressed like a toff -- or how a young man with little fashion sense might imagine a toff would dress -- in a bowler hat, checked wool trousers, a coarse linen shirt, and a garish yellow waistcoat, over which was a worn tweed jacket that looked vaguely familiar.
I perused the tweed jacket again.
No wonder it looked familiar, for it was my own.
"Who the deuce are you? And whatever are you doing wearing my old Norfolk hacking jacket?" I demanded.
"Wot? This?" The young man tugged at the lapels and gave me a cheeky grin. "Looks nice, don't it? That's fine material, that is!"
"It ought to be!" I huffed. "I paid two pounds for it not three years ago!"
"You?" the lad frowned. "Didn't know it was yours, Doctor. The Guv'nor give it to me. Said I'd look a treat in it. 'Specially with me new weskit. Paid three shillings for it and worth every farthing."
"Listen, my good fellow, I don't know who you are, but..."
"Don't know? Why you know me, Doctor!" he cried. "You know me sure as the nose on your face! I'm Mick Wiggins!"
The name meant nothing to me. "Mick Wiggins?" I cast my mind back on numerous cases in which Holmes and I had taken part, many involving denizens of all strata of society, but the name Mick Wiggins did not figure in any of them.
Now I take pride not only in my memory, but also in the copious notes I keep on all the enterprises that Sherlock Holmes embarks upon. Many of these details are of a sensitive nature, involving both high and low. Some of Holmes' cases are so secret that I often worry for fear they should fall into the wrong hands. But Holmes seems to have no such fear. In fact, he encourages me in my literary endeavors, both the trifling adventure stories that I have offered to the public, as well as the accounts of his cases, which so far have remained private.
"One day, my dear Watson," he has said to me on more than one occasion. "One day you will reveal my techniques to the greater world, bringing me fame unlike any ever known by a modest consulting detective and resident genius. You shall be my Boswell, for every great man needs his official biographer."
You must discount Holmes' immense egotism, which can be disconcerting to people who have never observed his powers of deduction at first hand. But I have. And I can only conclude that although it is immodest to state it oneself, Holmes is in actuality a genius of the first order, perhaps the only one it will ever be my privilege to know.
"Wiggins!" the fellow repeated. "From the Irregulars!"
I stared at the lad. Wiggins of the Irregulars, Holmes' contingent of street arabs and urchins. His eyes and ears on the streets on London. When I first came to know Holmes, Wiggins was called his 'lieutenant': a filthy child with a sharp eye and a quick wit who was the chief of the Irregulars, the one who took orders from Holmes and sent the boys out to do his bidding. He also collected their fees and, I assume, distributed the same to the boys, according to their deeds.
But I remembered a lad of ten or twelve -- it's difficult to tell the ages of these boys who live in the shadows and are often the worst for nourishment -- not this ruddy-cheeked would-be fashion-plate. I tried to remember that last time I'd seen him, but alas, I could not. The boys came and went, but the Irregulars remained, always perpetually in early adolescence.
"Good heavens, Wiggins!" I exclaimed. "It's been an age since I've seen you. How old are you now?"
He shrugged. "Don't know, really, Doctor. Mebbe sixteen or thereabouts. I was born in the Workhouse and they didn't keep no records of that fatal day. Or if they did, they didn't tell me before I scarpered out of there."
"You seem to be doing well," I replied, looking him up and down. And he did seem well. Although not tall, he was robust and well-fed. And his clothes, including my hacking jacket, were fairly brushed, if not exactly clean.
"I am, Doctor," the fellow boasted. "I even got my own room over by Charing Cross. I works as a messenger for the telegraph office in Oxford Street. I get wages and I keeps all my tips!"
"Good chap!" I said, encouragingly.
"I'm right flush," Wiggins said. "I go to the music hall and have a pint any time I like. I even went down to Brighton the summer last with a bloke I know. I even bathed in the sea, I did! And I owe it all to the Guv'nor."
"The Governor?" I frowned.
"The Guv!" he stated, as if it was obvious. "Mr. Sherlock Holmes! Who else?"
"Holmes?" I said in surprise.
"He staked me and helped me get me situation," said Wiggins. "He's a capital bloke, is Mr. Holmes. A real gentleman!"
"I agree with you on that," I readily concurred.
So Sherlock Holmes was not only making use of these children of the streets for his crime-solving intelligence, but he was assisting them as well. He once told me that Wiggins was as bright a boy as any attending the finest public school in the land, Eton or Harrow or any of those. He only lacked the advantages of family and money that those boys had to make good in the world.
Unfortunately, such lads as Wiggins often fall into crime. A keen and active mind must be used, and when it is not employed for good then it must be employed for ill. It was heartening to know that my good friend Holmes was directing his Irregulars to the benefit of society and not the harm of it.
"Come and have a drink with me, Doctor," he said. And he was already pulling at my arm.
"Oh, no," I said. "I must beg off."
"Come on, Doctor!" Wiggins urged. "I've a friend who's the bar boy at the Salisbury. We'll be made welcome there." He grinned at me winningly. "I'll pay. I told you I was flush!"
And so I found myself being guided away from Piccadilly and towards Leicester Square. I recognized the Salisbury, which is on St. Martin's Lane, as a theatrical public house. I had never been there myself, but knew its reputation as a meeting ground for actors, producers, playwrights, and other types who populate that dramatic milieu.
Wiggins sauntered into the pub as if he owned the place and was greeted by another lad in an apron, carrying a tray. "'Allo, Mick!" the boy cried.
"Two pints of bitter for me and the doctor here," Wiggins called. "Sit yourself down, Doctor. Make yourself at home."
The interior of the Salisbury was ornate in a garish way, all mirrors and gold and mahogany fittings. I could see how a lad like Wiggins might be impressed with such a show, although it was not a place in which my simpler sensibilities would ever be comfortable. But the place was quite sociable. I recognized an actor I had seen play Laertes two season ago at the Royal, as well as a tenor with the D'Oyly Carte Company.
"Ain't this place a treat?" said Wiggins, sipping his pint. "I know most of the nobs here and say 'Howdya do?' to them just like that!" He snapped his fingers.
I let Wiggins pay for the pints -- a point of pride to him -- but I stood him the second round and also one for his friend. While we drank the young man chattered on about this and that, mostly theatrical gossip, but his talk was also peppered with praise of Sherlock Holmes.
"How did you come by my tweed jacket?" I finally asked, my curiosity getting the better of me.
"The Guv'nor give it to me. Told me it would bring me luck 'cause him wot wore it before was a good man who brought him luck, too." Wiggins raised an eyebrow. "Didn't know he meant you, Doctor. He holds you highly, does the Guv."
"Well, I am relieved to hear that," I replied in amusement. "For I hold him in equally high esteem."
Wiggins put down his pint and wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his jacket. Or my jacket. "Come and see me room, Doctor. I ain't half proud of it."
"Your room?" I frowned. Why would the fellow want me to see his room?
"You can tell the Guv'nor you saw how I was doin'," he said. "See that his consideration ain't gone to waste."
"Well..." I hesitated. But then I thought of Holmes. He would not begrudge the lad because he was not of his own class. No man looked at all his fellows, both high and low, as equals in quite the manner that Sherlock Holmes did. "Yes, Wiggins. I should be pleased to see your room."
I followed the lad out of the Salisbury, up St. Martin's Lane and then towards Charing Cross and the warren of alleys between that thoroughfare and nearby Covent Garden. We paused before a nondescript building and Wiggins pushed open the door and trotted up the stairway, beckoning me.
"I told you I had me own place," he said with real pride.
The room was shabby, but tidy. A tiny window overlooked a patch of yard behind the building. He had some pictures ripped out of the newspapers tacked up on the wall over his narrow bed: an elegant woman in an evening gown, a pugilist with fists raised, a racehorse, and other trifles. His extra clothes were neatly folded and stored on a shelf alongside a flat cap and a battered straw boater. He even had a small rag rug on the floor, on which he had set a pair of red carpet slippers. I had to admit that Young Wiggins was much more orderly in his personal surroundings than Holmes himself.
"You've done well for yourself, Wiggins," I said.
"And now I'll do well for you, Doctor," he said. And with that he put his arms around my neck and, standing on tiptoe, kissed me directly upon the lips.
"Good Lord, Wiggins!" I cried. "What are you on about?"
"My profession," he said, deftly discarding his clothes. "You don't think I makes all my crust delivering messages, do you? I usually charge five shillings for a toss-off and another five bob for a suck, but for you, Doctor, it's nothin'. I've always had a yen for you. Thought you was a handsome bloke. Different from the Guv. More smooth, like. Refined. But the genteel toffs is the best fucks, I finds. Once they give in, they give it all they got! I'll even let you brown me, if that's your fancy. And I don't bend over for just any man, believe me." He reached into my trousers and seized my member. "That's a beauty, Doctor! A real beauty!"
I stood there in an almost paralytic condition while the rascal performed upon me an act which I can scarcely bring myself to recall. But I did not stop him. And after a while I did not recoil. After a longer while I did other such things that it shames me to name, so I will not, except to say that Wiggins was a master of his profession.
And I found a kind of relief in that room that I sorely needed. I had known a long time that I needed it, but never in my life would I have acted upon it with anyone but...
I closed my eyes as Wiggins eased me back onto his thin bed.
I did not return to 221b until late that night.
Holmes was where I had left him earlier that day, lying on the sofa, staring upward.
"Been out, my dear Watson?" he asked, his eyes never wavering from the ceiling.
"Obviously," I said shortly. My face burned, as if he knew. As if he could tell where I had been and what I had been doing. And, being Sherlock Holmes, he did. He knew all. Knew at a single glance.
"Mycroft has offered us the use of his house in Sussex," he said. "If you can tear yourself away from your practice for a few days, I thought we could leave on Friday."
"Friday," I replied. "Yes. I think I could. Tear myself away, I mean."
"Splendid," said Holmes. "The air will do us both a world of good. And we'll bring the dog. It will do you good, too, won't it, Gladstone?"
And Gladstone, hearing his name, wagged his tail happily.
***