Chapter 4 ― The Resolve of Mary Morstan (Part 4)

That night I took a cab to Teramachi Street. The air was frightfully chilly, and the clouds hid the stars from view. I expected it would start snowing directly.

The cab stopped in front of 221B, and I lit onto the frozen street. It appeared that Holmes was away, for the lights on the second floor were extinguished. But tonight he was not my aim. I crossed to the green door on the other side of the street and rang the bell.

“John Watson, here to see Miss Irene Adler,” I said, and was shown up to the sitting-room on the second floor. I had never seen her working quarters before, and yet it all was familiar to me, for it was very like Holmes’s room. The beakers and violin were absent, of course, and the room was scrupulously kept. But the armchair and settee before the fire; the writing-desk at the window; the cabinet filled with encyclopedias and biographies: it was almost as though I were peering into a mirror which reflected the room on the other side of the street, which I could see even now through the parted blinds.

Irene Adler was standing in front of the fireplace.

“How can I help you this evening?”

“I’ve come about Mary.”

She smiled, a tight, scornful grin.

“Did Mary ask you to come make amends?”

“No, it is entirely of my own accord that I am here.”

The estrangement between the two which had started the night of Holmes’s retirement had continued; Mary stubbornly refused my entreaties to speak with Irene. She seemed convinced that their friendship was over: she had broken her faith so deeply that Irene would never forgive what she had done.

“I was only a biographer, after all. Irene is still a first-rate detective, with or without me.”

But I was convinced that was not the case.

I faced Irene Adler squarely and said, “Will you not make things up with Mary?”

“That’s quite a bold thing to ask, Dr. Watson,” replied Irene in an even tone, which on the contrary only made her reply more intimidating. She was practically throwing off sparks of anger, like the wroth deity Fudō Myōō, and her unchanging gaze reminded me of the one that Mary had given me, when she had flown up to 221B Teramachi Street the morning after Professor Moriarty had led Holmes and I on that merry chase. It was as if the two women were connected by some fundamental mechanism, and the displeasure which I had once seen on the face of Mary now made itself visible in Irene Adler.

“Mary hated Sherlock Holmes. She could not bear the fact that her own husband was being led around by the nose on account of that man’s slump. But she could not drive Mr. Holmes away on her own. And so she enlisted me, and my powers, to aid her cause. It was treachery of the highest order.”

“It is true that Mary meant to bring Holmes to heel,” I began. “But whatever her original motive, she truly enjoyed her adventures with you. The enthusiasm with which she wrote *The Casebook of Irene Adler *is the proof. In the end she could not have cared less what happened with Holmes. And you were a beneficiary of Mary’s efforts as well. I hope you do not presume that your success was a product solely of your own talents.”

“Do you call me proud?”

“I mean that you need Mary. She regrets the hurt she has caused you, and is convinced that you will never forgive her. But you and she are not meant to part ways. You are to her as Holmes is to me. He and I came as far as we did because we are almost like two halves of one person. He needed me, and I needed him.”

"Without Watson, there would be no Holmes,” said Irene. She walked to the writing desk by the window, picked up a magazine which lay atop it, and thrust it at me accusingly. It was the latest issue of the Strand Magazine.

“I read your new stories,” said she. “Is this what you have stooped to?”

“Holmes is quite pleased with them.”

“I’ve never heard such nonsense! Holmes of London, indeed!” she said angrily, tossing the magazine into the fireplace. “You and Mary have succeeded in ruining the career of a very fine detective. I’ve never seen such teamwork, or a husband and wife so deranged! Holmes of London? I will never approve of such a travesty, never!”

Breathing heavily, she turned and looked outside the window. She seemed to have realized how ill-mannered her words had been, and in her profile I could see how helpless she felt. Through the window she must have been looking at Holmes’s window, which now must appear to her a dark, hollow place. I glanced sadly at the fireplaces, where the pages of the Strand Magazine were crimping and curling up in the flames.

At last Irene Adler said quietly, “I have a secret to show you, Dr. Watson.”

She showed me up to a small chamber on the third floor.

“Even Mary has not seen this place,” she told me as she unlocked the door. “It is my private laboratory.”

Swinging open the door she lit the gas lamp, and at her urging I warily stepped inside.

The first thing which I saw was a square rectangular table at the far wall, whose surface was littered with scribbled notes and journals. The wall itself was entirely covered in photographs and blueprints, and in pride of place above the table was a detailed map of Kyoto with various locations circled or marked with arrows in red ink. On the left wall was a window which faced the garden, and on the right was a fireplace; all the other space on the walls besides was taken up by shelves and shelves of reference books.

As I looked around, I quickly noticed that all of the material in the room was related to Sherlock Holmes.

Each of the locations marked on the map corresponded to the locations of one of his cases, and framed newspaper cuttings adorned the walls. The shelves were crammed full with my chronicles of Holmes’s cases, as well as old issues of the Strand Magazine, and scrapbooks filled with newspaper and magazine clippings. On the mantelpiece were dolls modelled on Holmes and I which had all the rage at Christmas time some years earlier, as well as one of Holmes’s favourite pipes and even a Persian slipper in which Holmes had once kept his tobacco.

It was as if I had stumbled into a museum dedicated to Sherlock Holmes.

Irene Adler lowered herself into the chair at the table.

“I have been studying Mr. Holmes’s technique since I was still an actress on the stage. Not only did I read your chronicles, I went to examine the location of each case myself, so that I could trace for myself the chain of logical sequences which led Mr. Holmes to his solutions. And in doing so I have learned much.”

She picked up a copy of a monograph. I had seen it before: “Upon the Distinction between the Ashes of the Various Tobaccos.” Discovering clues in various cigar, cigarette, and pipe ashes left behind at crime scenes had been one of Holmes’s particular specialties, and he was rather proud of the treatise he had written upon the subject. Aside from tobacco he had also contributed to the literature on codebreaking, tattoos, and footprints, and even had written a piece on the effects which various kinds of labour would elicit in the shape of one’s hand. Each of the copies which Irene Adler had in her possession had the traces of being thoroughly read and re-read.

“It has been twelve years,” remarked Irene Adler, “Twelve years since Mr. Holmes caught me at Hurlstone Manor. Not long afterward your first case study was published, and I have been following in Mr. Holmes’s footprints ever since. I have always sought to become a detective who could contend with him on equal footing.”

“Why didn’t you tell us any of this?”

“How could I? How mortifying it would have been,” she laughed. “Why, I never even told Mary.”

All of the adventures which Holmes and I had shared were contained in that room. Yet now that Holmes was retired those memoirs seemed less tokens of triumph than a few hoary and waterlogged relics saved from a sinking ship. I felt Miss Adler’s solitude and anxiety as if it were my own.

“Mr. Holmes was my bedrock,” said she. “Even in his slump.”

I was suddenly transported back to that night in Hurlstone. After our terrifying session in the Chamber of the East of the East, she and I had headed into the dark forest, looking for Holmes. Yet what use is all that experience? None, absolutely none at all! Her cry of despair rang in my ears, despair at her powerlessness in the face of the impenetrable mystery of the Musgraves.

It was then, I believe, that she felt the solitude of the great detective.

The denizens of Kyoto had once streamed from near and far to knock on the door of 221B Teramachi Street, bringing problems which they could not solve on their own. Holmes had unravelled those mysteries and restored order to the world. His presence was like an immovable fortress sheltering us from disorder and confusion. But now that he had cast aside the detective’s mantle, the responsibility now rested on Irene Adler alone.

“What does Mr. Holmes intend to do now?”

“He says he will travel to islands of the south Pacific.”

“But what about the Musgrave mystery?” interjected Irene Adler. “I have been able to think of nothing else since Mr. Holmes announced his retirement. You remember what Madame Richborough said, when we visited her mansion in the fall: ‘There can be no escape from the mystery of the Musgraves.’”

“And you take that charlatan at her word?” I said, agog. “Why, you were the one who exposed her!”

Madame Richborough’s trial was due to conclude and her sentence passed tomorrow.

“She was every bit a fraud,” admitted Irene. “But the Chamber of the East of the East is not. My mind still struggles to comprehend what we saw that night. No, the Musgrave mystery remains alive and well.”

I was silent.

“I have been thinking,” she continued. “Twelve years ago, Rachel Musgrave disappeared inside that room. Mr. Holmes was unable to solve it. Hence, Robert Musgrave sealed the room, and the mystery was forgotten. Afterwards Mr. Holmes became acquainted with you and embarked upon his remarkable career. Two autumns ago he became tangled in that deep slump from which he never emerged. Don’t you think it odd, Doctor? If I am not mistaken, Reginald Musgrave also broke the seal on the Chamber of the East of the East that same autumn.”

“A mere coincidence. You think too deeply.”

But hardly had the words left my lips than I made an alarming realization―Professor Moriarty had also been stricken by his slump around that same time!

Irene Adler let herself slump down into a chair, hunched over and staring listlessly into space. I had seen a similar look on Miss Rachel’s face during her visit to Holmes some days ago.

“Every time I think about the Chamber of the East of the East I can hardly maintain my composure,” she sighed, burying her face in her hands. “What vexes me the most is that Holmes realized the truth behind that room, and yet he did nothing. His lesser cases he has all yielded to me, but the Musgrave mystery alone he will not relinquish. By all appearances, then, he intends to exit the stage, and take the secret with him.”

Unsure of what to say, I glanced at the wall, where there hung a framed photograph of a Sherlock Holmes wearing a black coat and top hat, gazing at the camera with a self-assured grin. That was Holmes at the height of his powers, and beside him was a younger John H. Watson, looking every bit as dauntless as his illustrious partner.

I noticed that Irene Adler had lifted her head to look at the same photograph. Through the veil of her dishevelled hair I saw the innocent look of the young schoolgirl.

“Are you simply going to let Mr. Holmes depart for the tropics?” she asked in a hoarse voice. “Is that really what you want, Dr. Watson?”

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After leaving Miss Adler’s residence an anxious vortex of thoughts swirled through my mind. I glanced up at the window on the other side of the street, which remained dark.

“Where has he wandered off to now?” I muttered to myself with a scowl.

I wasn’t ready to return to Shimogamo yet, so I hailed a passing cab and directed the driver to take me to the club by the Kōjin Bridge.

The wide, high-ceilinged parlour was mostly empty; few warmed themselves before the large fireplace tonight. Three members of our doctors’ society sat in armchairs by the window, imbibing leisurely. “Watson!” they cried in surprise when they saw my approach. Returning their greeting I settled myself in a chair. With all the hubbub of the new year I had not visited the club in some time. Through the broad window the sparse streetlights glowed on frozen trees by the slowly flowing Kamo.

“Why the long face?” asked one of my companions. “I hear ‘Holmes of London’ is a smashing success. I suppose you’ve been too busy writing to drop by the club.”

“My own patients have all been abuzz about it,” chimed in another.

“Mary must be quite pleased.”

“A toast, gentlemen! To the triumphant return of John Watson!”

And yet even the warm welcome I had received did not lift my spirits. Seeing that I was in a reticent mood my companions’ conversation soon tapered off.

As I looked out the window at the Kamo River, I could not help but think of Professor Moriarty. Even now he was trapped somewhere deep inside Hurlstone, in the belly of the Chamber of the East of the East. Holmes had dropped the matter, as if he sought to bury it, and I could not condemn Irene Adler for her censure of him. Yet I felt that there must be some reason for his silence. The Chamber of the East of the East is an enigma, beyond the ken of man, he had said, but that only made me more determined to know what it was.

After a while, a shadowy figure stood up from a chair in the corner of the parlour. It had succeeded in concealing itself so well that until that moment I had not realized there was a person there at all. The man crossed the room into the light, and his waistcoat and stiff bristles gleamed like obsidian in the feeble firelight.

“Fancy seeing you here, Watson. You’re just the man I wanted to see,” said the voice of Stamford, and immediately the other doctors’ expressions stiffened. In the uneasy silence that followed, one of them asked, “What do you want, Stamford?”

“Nothing, from you. My business is solely with Watson.”

Exchanging glances, the other doctors stood up. “Be on your guard,” one of them whispered in my ear, before they left the room.

With a rueful grin Stamford sat down in the chair opposing mine. “I’ve become something of a black sheep,” he said with a self-deprecating tone, running his hand back and forth on the armrest.

“I can see that,” I replied. Since he had taken to styling himself a spiritualist physician, the rest of the profession had given him a wide berth.

“I’m quite busy these days,” said Stamford. “I’ll be at the courtroom tomorrow, for the verdict. I expect they’ll toss the madame into prison. Lord St. Simon is looking for a new personal medium, and he’s been quite unsparing in having me help with his search. But he’s done so much for me that I suppose I can’t complain.”

“Do you truly believe in spiritualism, Stamford?” I interjected.

He looked up at me with a questioning glance. “Do I believe in it? That’s an excellent question. Maybe it’s real, maybe it isn’t. It’s not like one of the cases in your detective novels which have incontrovertible solutions. But to be frank, it really doesn’t matter, as long as it is of profit to me.”

“You astound me. Where are your principles?”

“Now, Watson, what use do principles serve, in the end?” he grinned, leaning forward. “But enough of that. I’ve read your new stories. London! That’s a twist I never saw coming. The assistant to the great Sherlock Holmes, converting to the spiritualists!”

“What are you talking about?” I said in bewilderment. “I don’t recall doing anything of the sort!”

“Come now, Doctor! Ever since the ghost of Professor Moriarty appeared at Lord St. Simon’s seance, everyone has been whispering the word ‘London!’”

Seance? The ghost of Professor Moriarty?

Seeing my confusion, Stamford laid out the facts of the matter. It seemed that in the aftermath of Madame Richborough’s detention, Lord St. Simon had held a series of seances at his home, seeking to find a new spirit medium. Early in the new year, the ghost of Professor Moriarty had appeared at one such seance, and via spirit possession of the medium claimed that it had crossed into this world, via the Chamber of the East of the East, from a vast city on the other side called London. The name became synonymous with the other side across the spiritualist community straight away, and shortly afterward were published my stories of Holmes of London.

“I don’t see how you could have written those stories and yet be ignorant of the whole affair. You can’t imagine how overjoyed the spiritualists were to have such a celebrated author write of London!”

“Wait a moment. I can hardly make sense of it all.”

“Lord St. Simon says that he would like nothing more than to sit down for a talk with you,” Stamford blathered on. “He is burning to know what your aim was in writing these stories. The man is a charlatan, of course, doesn’t believe in spiritualism a whit. But so many curious things have happened lately that one cannot fault for him being a little anxious. I hear that Madame Richborough got her hands on a copy of your stories in her cell and was greatly moved.”

“This is ridiculous, Stamford,” I snapped, standing up. “They’re only stories.”

“Don’t be so coy,” he laughed. “Mere detective stories could never sell so prodigiously. You’re a resourceful one, Watson, I’ll give you that. No sooner has the great detective announced his retirement than you’ve moved on to your next , tales of spiritualism!”

He and I were alone now in the parlour.

“I’ll get to the point, Watson. Why don’t we join forces, you and I?”

I felt as though I was standing on a desolate moor. A crack had opened up in the world I had believed in, and something was peering through.

I know little of what happened after that. I must have fled the club in a delirium, for the next thing I knew I was wandering down Kawaramachi Street, the soot-stained houses closing in on either side like the walls of a tunnel. Spiritualists, seances, Professor Moriarty, London, spiritualist tales, the Chamber of the East of the East… those words rushed through my head like leaves scattered by the wind. You’re a resourceful one, Watson.

The elation I had felt at the success of my new stories had gone completely.

I stopped when I reached the banks of the Kamo, my breath crystallizing in the cold. In the darkness I heard the river flowing, and in the distance I saw the looming silhouette of Mt. Hiei. Something white fluttered before my eyes, and as I began to cross the Aoi Bridge I looked absentmindedly around.

Over the shadows of the roofs and chimneys, snow was falling over Kyoto.

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It snowed throughout the night, and in the morning the city found itself transformed.

Wan light fell from the cloudy sky over the snow-capped rooftops when I briefly looked out my front door that morning. Shimogamo Boulevard was swaddled in white as far as the eye could see, and a group of children shrieked as they hurled icy missiles at one another. From the Tadasu Forest across the road I heard the thump of snow falling from the branches.

Madame Richborough’s sentence was due to be handed out that afternoon. By the time Mary and I left our home later on, snow was swirling down from the sky again. We hailed a carriage and set off for the law courts on Marutamachi Street. The embankments of the Kamo were covered in snow, and Higashiyama looked as though it were dusted with powdered sugar. Beneath the clouded sky it appeared as though the colour had been sapped from the world.

The hansom crossed the Aoi Bridge and pulled down Kawaramachi Street.

“Is everything alright?” Mary murmured to me with a look of concern on her face. “You’ve been absentminded all day.”

“I could not sleep. The conversation last night at the club kept me up all night.”

I was turning over in my mind what Stamford had said to me. Holmes of London, a spiritualist fable! He must have been playing a cruel joke on me, envious of my success. What worth was there in taking seriously the babblings of such a man? Yet there was a sense of foreboding that would not leave my mind, like a splinter of bone lodged in the throat.

When the cab turned right at the Kawaramachi Marutamachi intersection, I noticed immediately the strange atmosphere about the law courts. A dark throng was gathered before the doors, overflowing into the street.

“What’s going on there?” wondered Mary.

As our cab got closer, I noted the presence of uniformed patrolmen. The scene was eerily calm despite the size of the huddled crowd, which was as meek as a flock of sheep.

“Inspector McFarlane!” I called out to a nearby policeman, after descending from the carriage. “What’s this all about?”

“Ah, Dr. Watson,” said McFarlane, tipping his cap. “These people are all spiritualists; they’ve been waiting all the morning and since for the madame’s verdict. They’re not allowed into the courtroom, of course, but they also refuse to leave. “

“That is their prerogative, I suppose, but then how are we to enter the courts ourselves?”

Our conversation had not gone unnoticed, and whispers rippled through the assembled spiritualists. “It’s Dr. Watson! “Dr. Watson is here!”

The crowd parted, leaving an orderly path for us to pass through. Mary and I exchanged astonished glances.

“This way, Dr. Watson,” urged a young man. The entire crowd was staring at us, every one with a curious expectation in their eyes.

Our confusion notwithstanding, we thanked them and proceeded into the court. As we passed through the crowd, I noticed a well-dressed man with a moustache and a top hat whom I vaguely remembered having seen before. I realized that it was the man from the bookstore, who had called my stories a masterpiece.

The courtroom was filled with a feverish excitement; winter it may have been, but the room was almost sultry. The gallery was so full that some were forced to stand. Lestrade beckoned us to the front, where he had reserved just enough room on a bench for Mary and I to squeeze into.

“What an incredible turnout!” I whispered into Lestrade’s air. “The crowd outside has already spilled onto the street.”

“They have their right to be there,” replied Lestrade crossly, “only I hope that it doesn’t turn into a riot. The patrolmen have been warned to be on their guard.”

I craned my neck to look around the gallery. Reginald Musgrave was not there, but sheerly by chance my gaze met that of Irene Adler. Her pale visage stood out among the crowd, and she gave me a curt nod.

“Irene is here,” I whispered to Mary.

“Is she?” said my wife with a frigid smile.

After a while, I noticed someone pushing his way toward us. It was Lord St. Simon. His dress was as impeccable as ever, but his expression was sour and his eyes bloodshot. He seemed greatly aged from the last time I had seen him in this courtroom.

“Dr. Watson, I presume?” he said warmly, though it was as though his face was a steel plate that he had to wrench into place, so forced and unnatural was his smile. I stood, and he thrust his hand at me to shake. “I read your Holmes of London stories.”

“I am honoured, Lord St. Simon.”

“And you have my utmost admiration! Such wonderful stories as those I have seldom read.”

He suddenly squeezed my hand hard and pulled me towards him―nearly causing me to lose my balance―and hissed in my ear, “What’s your game? Why did you write those things?” There was a very definite note of venom in his voice, and with all the noise in the room neither Mary nor Lestrade seemed to hear him. I stared at him in astonishment, but the smile was back on his face as though it had never left.

“I hope we will have another chance to chat over things,” he said, before vanishing back into the crowd.

I sat down again, dumbfounded. Had Stamford been telling the truth?

“What’s the matter, my dear? You look pale,” said Mary.

“Last night I heard an interesting rumour from Stamford,” I admitted. “Apparently the spiritualists believe that London is actually the spiritual realm.”

“But you made London up!” she insisted with a frown. “Your stories are crime fiction. What connection do they have with the spiritualist realm?”

“They say that the ghost of Professor Moriarty appeared at a seance in Lord St. Simon’s mansion, and that he claimed that he was in London.”

“But Moriarty is―” Mary began, before looking around and continuing in a hushed tone. “He is trapped in the Chamber of the East of the East, isn’t he?”

“Only a few people know about that. In any case the spiritualists have made up their mind about London.”

“Does that mean that the sales of Holmes of London—”

“Are not coming from readers of detective fiction. The magazines are being bought up by the spiritualists.”

Now that I knew about the connections between my stories and the spiritualists, the actions of Lord St. Simon were easier to understand. He had not expected the appearance of a series of stories about London to rile up the spiritualists, and now his control over them was slipping.

There had been something strange in the reverence of the crowd assembled before the courts. Could it be that their eyes perceived not John Watson, the author of the Holmes stories, but John Watson, the author of the spiritualist texts?

“What can it mean?” Mary pondered.

“I know as much as you do,” I told her. “All I can say is that something very strange is going on.”

The bailiff announced that court was in session. The lawyers and jurors filed into the room, and shortly afterward Madame Richborough appeared in the dock, flanked on both sides by court officers. Once again I was astonished by her appearance, which, in contrast to the listless shell who had stood there during her first appearance in court, had regained much of her former vigour. Her poise was erect and calm as she surveyed the gallery, and many of the observers fell silent, as if cowed by her dignified gaze.

I, on the other hand, shivered, for to me she directed a beatific smile.

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“Members of the jury,” said the judge, “Over the preceding weeks you have heard the arguments and evidence presented by the prosecution and the defence. Before you enter deliberations, I will summarize the charges against the defendant.”

The judge proceeded to plainly and methodically explain the claims of both the prosecution and defence in regards to the crimes of which Madame Richborough was accused. All the members of the jury as well as those the observers in the gallery listened solemnly. I had followed the trial in the papers, but the judge’s explanation was clear and succinct, and though there was much which weighed against the madame, the judge treated all the facts in an even-handed manner.

“It falls to you now to decide the verdict. If you are not satisfied beyond any reasonable doubt that the prosecution has proven the defendant guilty, you must declare her not guilty. No matter your opinion of the defendant, she must not be declared guilty by speculation or without sufficient evidence. I must remind you that this court deals with facts, not superstitions. The defendant is well-known around Kyoto for her activity in spiritualism. But it is not the existence of the spiritual which is on trial today. The defendant is part of a human society, and she must abide by human laws as do we all. Keep that fact in mind as you sit in deliberation.”

As the jurors filed out, a stir broke out in the courtroom; as before, it was the supporters and detractors of spiritualism at each other’s throats.

“Not to worry,” said Lestrade, “Madame Richborough won’t escape this time. The jurors won’t dare let considerations of spiritualism taint their verdict. If they do, I will turn in my resignation on the spot and start a new career as a clairvoyant tomorrow!”

“I doubt the madame will be acquitted,” I agreed. “And yet…”

Lestrade frowned at me. “What do you mean?”

“I can say nothing for certain, only I have a strange foreboding,” I replied, glancing at the front of the gallery. Lord St. Simon was standing there with his chest puffed out haughtily, staring with annoyance at the dock. In his fair profile I saw both apprehension and anger. His was the outraged face of a man whose dog has turned and bitten his hand. Madame Richborough, on the other hand, appeared unperturbed, and as she turned to leave I saw a presentiment of victory in her stately poise.

She does not care about the result of this trial, I realized, and I thought of the assembled supporters in front of the courtroom, huddled out there in the cold even now beneath the falling snow. It seemed to me that they were waiting for something else, something greater than the verdict of this case.

The jurors returned to the courtroom about half an hour later.

“Please read the verdict,” said the clerk, and the courtroom went still.

The foreman cleared his throat nervously.

“On the charges brought by the prosecution, we find the defendant, by majority verdict, guilty.”

The reaction spread gradually across the gallery. While the clerk recorded the verdict, the uproar grew louder and louder, until it was abruptly silenced by a shout of, “Your Honour!”

It was Madame Richborough, who came to her feet and turned to the judge as the echo reverberated through the room. “May I make a statement?”

“You may not.”

“I wish to declare that this trial is meaningless.”

“Silence!” the judge rebuked her. “The defendant will take her seat and remain silent!”

But the madame was in no mood to obey, and neither the lawyers nor the bailiffs who stood beside her were able to suppress her; they seemed strangely paralyzed by her authoritative demeanour.

“The end of the world is nigh!” Madame Richborough intoned. “The world we walk is but a dream, a flitting shadow of our true home. Soon the door to the other side will open, and we will return at last to London!”

Madame Richborough turned and looked squarely at me.

“Is this not so, Dr. Watson?”

I felt every gaze in the courtroom fixed upon me.

“Bailiffs!” bellowed the judge, attempting to end her monologue. But the bailiffs merely looked around in fear, for the courtroom had been seized by an otherworldly aura.

I felt the hairs on my body stand on end, as if I was standing on a plain watching storm clouds brooding on the horizon. The crowd murmured uneasily, and the judge shrank back on his dais, his face contorted with fear. Lord St. Simon and Irene Adler looked around anxiously, while Mary silently squeezed my hand.

A rumble like a giant’s sigh reverberated throughout the room, and we were enveloped by a blinding light.

It was like being in the Chamber of the East of the East again: the light was exactly like that which had issued forth from the full moon floating ominously in front of the mysterious staircase. Shrieks rose up all around me.

When I could see once more, I heard people shouting, “Who’s that!?” I sat up and looked in the middle of the courtroom, where there stood a person who had not been there before. It was a figure unlike any I had seen in a courtroom before, with dark bedraggled hair, and wearing a grey gown over its nightclothes.

It was Sherlock Holmes. His hands were hidden in the pockets of his nightgown, and he stared into nothingness with an intense glare which reminded me of a wild tiger readying itself to spring, as if he were face to face with his mortal enemy.

“I can spare you five minutes if you have anything to say, Professor Moriarty,” he said impatiently.

Immediately cries of astonishment rang throughout the courtroom, for Holmes had begun to deform like a melting candle. In the twinkling of an eye his figure had transformed into that of another person entirely: Professor Moriarty. He was swathed in a black cloak, and his pale face swayed through the air like a snake.

“You must stand clear, Holmes, or be trodden underfoot.”

The exchange between Holmes and Moriarty had taken place before the stunned eyes of the packed courtroom, and now before those same eyes the phantasm vanished just as quickly as it had arrived.

A great panic broke out. Many rushed for the exit, while a few of the more intrepid crept up to the location where the phantom had appeared, and the rest made a confused noise. There was no one there who could master the situation: the judge had swooned on his dais, and the lawyers and bailiffs were petrified with terror, as was the white-faced Lord St. Simon.

In the midst of the fearful din, Madame Richborough stood there with a smile on her face. It was almost as though she had predicted that this would occur.

A shout came from Irene Adler, bringing me back to my senses.

“Dr. Watson! Mary! We must leave at once!”

In the midst of the heaving crowd she was pointing at the exit.

I nodded at her and led Mary by the hand towards safety.