Chapter 5 ― The Triumphant Return of Sherlock Holmes (Part 1)

I came to with a jolt.

―Where was I?

Gingerly I sat up and took stock of my surroundings.

The room reminded me of a ship’s hold, though the low eaves sloped sharply upward like a garret. It was provisioned with a simple cot, which reminded me of my days as an army surgeon, as well as an armchair, a little table, and an unembellished fireplace. Light shone faintly through a window in front of me. But the view through the soot-stained window did little to lift my spirits. There was a stone-paved courtyard, hemmed in on all sides by brick houses which formed a sullen, four-story-high wall. The sky was smothered by a featureless haze of grey smoke. On the desk in front of the window were scattered carelessly a thick sheaf of papers, an inkpot, a quill, blotting paper, an ashtray.

I must have fallen asleep at my desk again.

I let out a wide yawn, then re-read the last page of the draft.

Mary stared at me. The crackling firelight sparkled in her limpid eyes. Why must you go? they asked. You are his biographer, nothing more. Have you not suffered enough on his behalf? Why must you accompany him on another of his foolhardy adventures?

But those words were not what she said.

“Come back, my dear. Promise me you’ll come back.” said she, embracing me tightly.

“I promise, Mary,” I said, “I will come back to you.”

Thus did the fourth chapter of The Triumphant Return of Sherlock Holmes draw to a close. For a week now I had found myself stymied as to how to proceed. Part of my hesitation stemmed from my uncertainty as to how to develop the story, but another part of it was Mary. Every time I re-read it I felt a lump in my throat, for it reminded me of her warmth.

As I gazed at the words on the page, a knock on the door interrupted my thoughts.

“Dr. Watson?” came the gentle voice of the landlady. “Are you in there?”

I stood up and opened the door, and in peered Madame Richborough’s pale, broad face.

“I hope I’m not disturbing you.”

“No, not at all. Come in, Madame Richborough.”

“You’ll ruin your health if you keep working yourself so hard, Dr. Watson. Now, I don’t mean to stick my nose in where it doesn’t belong, but the last student who lived in these very quarters studied so much that he went a little funny in the head. You’d do well to take time for yourself now and again.”

“I was just thinking of going out to clear my head,” I replied. “Now what can I do for you?”

It turned out that Madame Richborough had come to invite me to a seance that would be held that night. The landlady was quite a serious believer in spiritualism. Now and again she would invite spirit mediums to hold court in her rooms on the first floor, which all of her tenants were also invited to join. I had heard rumours that she had turned to spiritualism after the untimely deaths of her husband and younger sister.

Other than her supernatural hobby she was a perfectly satisfactory landlady: gracious, meticulous, and quite reasonable on the matter of rent. I supposed by her invitations she only meant to spread a measure of solace to the wretched souls who lived in her rooms. There was no advantage in debating the matter, so I simply answered, “I will certainly attend.”

“I am looking forward to seeing you there. It will be marvelous!” said the landlady, beaming as she bustled back down the stairs.

I shut the door behind her, then walked back to my desk at the window. My joints ached, and my belly stridently alerted me to its vacancy. The continuation to “The Triumphant Return of Sherlock Holmes” would have to wait. As Madame Richborough had just pointedly reminded me, perhaps it was time to clear my head.

I put on my things, then went down the staircase and out of the building.

The neighbourhood children were kicking pebbles on the pavement in the courtyard, the echoing rattles bouncing off the yellow-tiled walls. From far away came the plaintive melody of a barrel organ.

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I arrived at my favourite haunt, a small tavern on a street corner near the British Museum.

The door swung shut on its hinges behind me, and immediately the noontime bustle was silenced. Aside from a few tradesmen discussing the state of the world in hushed tones in a corner booth, the dim interior was largely empty. I took my usual seat and ordered a coffee and mutton pie, and enjoyed my meal in peace and quiet.

It had been a long time since I had last stood under the limelight. Who would ever suspect that John H. Watson―lauded biographer, author of the world-famous Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, partner to the famous detective―would be lodged in a little garret in Bloomsbury, living on greasy mutton pie? Even the tavernmaster, who occasionally struck me up in conversation, took me for a third-rate hack down on his luck.

Yet even that was a generous title for me now. For six months now I had been scribbling away fruitlessly at The Triumphant Return of Sherlock Holmes. What admirer of Sherlock Holmes would want to read such drivel? What publisher would be willing to release such a fantastic tale into the world? And what was more, I had written myself into a corner.

Watson, citizen of Victorian Kyoto, plunges into the depths of the Chamber of the East of the East to save Sherlock Holmes! But I had no idea what the secret of the Chamber of the East of the East should be, nor the nature of the spiritual realm which lay beyond. I was stuck. I couldn’t fathom what had possessed me to begin writing such a fable in the first place.

After finishing my meal I left the tavern and walked down the alley toward Tottenham Court Road. Above the sooty buildings, the sky was the same morose shade of grey. A gang of street urchins clung avariciously to the lighted window of a sweetshop; at my approach they shot me looks of fury and scattered.

Where the alley meets the great boulevard there is an antique bookshop, which fills me with a sense of nostalgia whenever I pass by. I stopped in front of it and perused a crate filled with novels. One of my few distractions from the travails of medical studies had been digging through the crate of discounted books for a book in whose pages I could get lost. I had not read so voraciously before or since, sometimes forgoing lunch and using the money instead on another book. It would not be much of an exaggeration to say that the little tidbits of knowledge without which I could not have written those chronicles of Sherlock Holmes, I owed entirely to that crate of books set in front of this bookstore.

As I glanced fondly at those novels, a voice hailed me.

“Pardon me; do I address by any chance Dr. John Watson?”

The voice belonged to a gentleman wrapped up in a black frock coat and top hat, his fair face adorned with a beard.

“Have we met before?” I asked him.

“At St. James’s Hall in Westminster,” replied the young man earnestly. “I had the privilege of meeting you at one of your public readings.”

“I see. You are very kind to say so.”

I tipped my head slightly, then walked promptly off towards Oxford Street.

But the youth followed me, his eyes sparkling with apparent joy.

“How honoured I am to meet you again! My entire family are admirers of your stories of Sherlock Holmes. We have read every tale that has been published in the Strand Magazine, have bought copies of ‘A Study in Scarlet’ and ‘The Sign of Four.’ May I be so bold as to ask when we may expect the next one to come out?”

“There will be no ‘next one’. I am Sherlock Holmes’s partner no more.”

It pained me to treat him in such a cold fashion, but I was sick of the question. Already a year had passed since Holmes and I had fallen out of company, and I was in no mood to be brought back into the fold. I quickened my pace, yet the ardent young fellow would not be put off so easily.

“But Dr. Watson,” he cried, speeding up to match me, “Have you not heard of the explosion yesterday?”

“Explosion?” I paused, and turned around. “What do you mean?”

Instead of answering my question the young man pointed towards Oxford Street, where a news-vendor stood on the corner, clanging his bell. His stand was plastered with news-sheets, all bearing the terrible headline:

MURDEROUS ATTACK ON SHERLOCK HOLMES

I ran over and bought one, then laid it out on the pavement.

“Baker Street has been the scene of an uproar since about two in the afternoon yesterday, for that was when an explosion ripped through the home of Mr. Sherlock Holmes, the famous consulting detective. Fortunately it is known that the landlady was spared, having been out at the time. Detective Lestrade of Scotland Yard informs us that the attack is believed to have been an attempt on the life of Mr. Holmes. The detective himself was not found at the site, either alive or dead, and his whereabouts remain unknown. All of London worries for his safety.”

As I glared at the broadsheet, the young man said with great emotion, “I’m sorry…I thought you ought to know.”

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At first glance Baker Street did not seem much changed since the last time I had visited it. There were the old tobacconist and barber shop, the whitewashed houses, and farther to the north the greenery of Regent’s Park. All seemed quiet.

But once I stood on the doorstep of 221 Baker Street, the fresh scars of the bomb blast were immediately apparent. The blinds behind which the silhouette of Sherlock Holmes could be seen had been ripped asunder, and shards of broken glass littered the pavement below. Mrs. Hudson answered the door when I rang the bell.

“I’m glad to see you again, Mrs. Hudson.”

“Dr. Watson!” exclaimed the landlady, and for a moment she stared at me in stunned silence. Tears welled up in her eyes.

“I was heartbroken to hear about Mary,” she said. “Why didn’t you ever visit? Mr. Holmes was ever so worried about you.”

“I didn’t mean to worry you,” I said, taking her hand. “I read the papers. What a horrible shock that must have been.”

Holmes’s room had been torn apart. Cold air whistled through the broken window. The mangled furniture had been hurled to the corners of the room, the portraits and photographs had been blown off the walls, and the chemical bench and its vessels were reduced to a pile of scrap. It was hard to believe that this was the same room from which so many of our remarkable adventures had begun.

“I was just on my way back from my errands,” Mrs. Hudson told me. As she walked along Baker Street with groceries in hand, the afternoon had been rent by a tremendous boom, accompanied by a thick smoke pouring from the upper window of 221 Baker. Stunned pedestrians stopped in their tracks, yelling in terror. Poor Mrs. Hudson was stunned, but then she remembered Holmes, and began to stumble towards the scene of the crime. Bits of the ceiling were still falling when she threw open the front door, and upstairs the second floor was obscured by a thick cloud of white smoke.

“Mr. Holmes!” she shouted, beginning to run up the stairs, but she was restrained by the patrolmen who had been attracted by the sound of the explosion.

“It’s a lucky thing that Mr. Holmes wasn’t home at the time,” she said to me as I picked up Holmes’s much-loved Stradivarius from the charred carpet.

It was evident that the threat to Holmes was much greater than any that had previously threatened him. Behind this act I sensed a malevolent mind which would not rest until it had put Holmes’s existence to an end.

“I’m afraid Holmes has drawn the attention of a very dangerous enemy this time,” I murmured.

“I admit I have never been so terrified.”

“Do you know where he is?”

“He hasn’t come home for some time, I’m afraid,” said Mrs. Hudson with some apprehension. “I do hope that he is all right.”

This was hardly the place to have a cup of tea, so we instead retired to the landlady’s own private room on the first floor. Her tastes were simple and unembellished, and through the gauzy lace curtains we could see the traffic on Baker Street rushing by.

I sat on a flower-patterned armchair and accepted tea and scones.

“Surely you can’t stay here,” I remarked, suggesting that she leave Baker Street until the case was through, but Mrs. Hudson wouldn’t hear of it. She seemed to feel that it was her sacred duty to keep watch over 221 Baker until Holmes had returned safe and sound.

Mrs. Hudson always had been a strange sort of landlady. Few lodgers were as exasperating as Sherlock Holmes. He was a man of irregular habits, and his mood was prone to wild swings between elation and despair, and above all incorrigibly lazy. His visitors were constantly coming and going, among them ruffians and street urchins of the most dubious character. Most landladies would long ago have ripped up the lease and sent him packing, and if Mrs. Hudson had not been possessed of an uncommonly deep well of patience, the life and career of Sherlock Holmes would have languished in obscurity. Mrs. Hudson swelled with pride when I said this, but her expression remained clouded.

“Mr. Holmes is obsessed with the case,” she said.

“Case? What case?”

“I don’t know. But I can see that it is giving him a terrific time.”

Mrs. Hudson testified that in the past six months he had taken on fewer and fewer cases, and that for the last three he had turned virtually away all clients who knocked upon his door. Yet he seemed to work even harder than he had before. He hardly slept at all, and spent all his time deep in thought in his room, smoking enormous amounts of tobacco, before abruptly flinging the door open and departing for days on end. When he did return it was usually in a state of fatigue, dragging himself up the stairs and locking himself in his room once more to think. It was obvious even to Mrs. Hudson that whatever he was wrestling with was stretching his nerves to their very limit.

Sherlock Holmes was the kind of man who would forsake the normal requirements of sleep and sustenance for the sake of an interesting case. His extraordinary powers of concentration, and his abnormal fascination with solving mysteries, had elevated him to his present status of the pre-eminent detective in the world. But this was the first time to Mrs. Hudson’s knowledge that he had persisted in such an anxious state for so many months. His extremely paucity of nourishment were apparent upon his emaciated features, and eventually Mrs. Hudson could hold back her comments no longer.

“I confronted him about two weeks ago,” she said.

She was awoken in the night by a thump, and came out of her room with lamp in hand to find Holmes on his hands and knees about midway up the stairs. He had only just come back, and his strength had given out before he could reach his room. Mrs. Hudson went up to assist him, but when she saw his face in the lamplight she was aghast. His bloodless, sunken cheeks made him look like he was on death’s door.

“Mrs. Hudson,” he whispered in a faint voice, “If you would provide me with bread and water I shall be infinitely obliged to you.”

Mrs. Hudson turned and ran downstairs, bringing up a cup brimming with water and a platter of cold meat and bread. A wave of pity came over Mrs. Hudson as she looked at him sitting on the stairs, gulping down the water and devouring the food like a starving beast. What would drive the well-known detective Sherlock Holmes to such a state? What could possibly be the subject of this dreadful case?

“You can’t continue on like this, Mr. Holmes,” said Mrs. Hudson firmly. “You need rest!”

“I’m afraid there isn’t time for rest,” said the detective in a weary voice. “Even as we speak the enemy is plotting his next move. Delay even a single day, and all of the efforts I have expended will go up in smoke. Listen to me, Mrs. Hudson. The enemy with whom I am engaged in this desperate struggle is the base and origin of many evils. If I were assured that at the end of my labours he would be destroyed, I tell you that my own life would be a price I would cheerfully pay.”

It took some exertion on the part of Mrs. Hudson to quell his protests and put him into bed, but no sooner had she arisen and gone up to check on him the next morning than she found his bed empty once more. Her fears were naturally heightened, and her suspicion that something dreadful was afoot was confirmed by the explosion of yesterday afternoon.

“I cannot help but feel that that was the last I will ever see of Mr. Holmes.”

“Don’t say that, Mrs. Hudson. This is not the first time Holmes has confronted danger, and it will not be the last.”

“I am afraid things are different this time,” she said sadly, as if she was privy to some secret that I did not possess. But she said nothing more, and rather than badger her for answers I finished my cold tea and glanced out the window at Baker Street. The placid scene was one that I had seen a thousand times before. But I knew that somewhere behind the humdrum monotony lay a labyrinth into which Holmes had plunged in pursuit of a deadly foe. All the while I had lain safe and sound in my hidden garret, Holmes had fought on alone.

“Why have you not come until now?” Mrs. Hudson suddenly spoke up accusingly. “I don’t know how many times I thought to myself, if only Dr. Watson were here!”

I stared measuredly down into the bottom of my teacup.

“I’m afraid that won’t do, Mrs. Hudson. To Holmes, the case is everything. All he requires is a mystery to solve. But I am different. I must have my own life to live. I will never get mixed up with his affairs again.”

“Then why did you come today?”

I had no answer for her question. If I did not want to become involved in Holmes’s affairs, all I had to do was stay away. Yet the instant I read about the bombing in the paper I had been overcome with an irresistible urge to rush to Baker Street.

Secretly, I was afraid―that I would lose not only Mary, but Holmes too.

“Mr. Holmes needs you,” said Mrs. Hudson. “Without Watson, there is no Holmes.”

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“You really will not leave Baker Street, then,” I inquired of Mrs. Hudson one last time as I was leaving. With a smile she shook her head.

“Someone must be here to greet Mr. Holmes when he returns”, she said. “Goodbye, Dr. Watson.”

“Goodbye, Mrs. Hudson. Take care of yourself.”

Even after I had begun to walk away Mrs. Hudson stood motionless on the stone pavement in front of 221 Baker Street, watching me go. I suppose she hoped, like a mother hopes when her children are engaged in a quarrel, that Holmes and I would bury the hatchet and resume our old partnership once more, and then everything would work itself out.

As for me, I strolled around and around in Hyde Park until the sun went down. Lush copses of elms and chestnuts stood like weird islands in a sea of green. All around me people enjoyed the last few minutes of dusk.

After taking Mary as my wife and opening my practice in Kensington, I would still receive the odd telegram from Holmes, and whenever I was in a hurry to get to Baker Street to help Holmes with some new case I would pass through this park. What an ebullient figure I must have cut. Just the mere thought of embarking on another adventure with Holmes set my heart thrilling within me, for in those days I believed that I had found my life’s purpose.

I did not tell Mrs. Hudson, but just once, Holmes had asked me to return to live at Baker Street.

That had been about half a year ago, on the occasion of Mary’s funeral.

After my poor wife was laid to her final rest in the earth and the few mourners dispersed, Holmes and I took a walk around the graveyard. I had not visited Baker Street since the diagnosis of the Harley Street specialist, and thus he and I had not spoken for six months. I recall that it was an extraordinarily chilly day late in autumn. A misty rain fogged our surroundings, and the bare trees lurked around the cemetery like shadow puppets.

“I don’t expect a decision right away,” he said by way of preamble, before launching into his proposal.

But with the loss of Mary my life had taken on a new aspect, and at the center of this aspect was a gaping hole. Moving back to 221B Baker Street would do nothing to fill it. It was anathema to me to even consider the notion.

In the first place, it was my enthusiastic career as biographer of Sherlock Holmes which silently aggravated the malady that had taken root in Mary’s heart. All that I had once found so fascinating was now loathsome to me: deduction, adventure, crime fiction, and above all, Sherlock Holmes himself.

“I am your partner no longer, Holmes,” I told him there in the graveyard, before turning and making my way through the rain back to the church.

“Forgive me, Watson!” Holmes’s lament followed me. “I only wish I knew how to save you.”

Since that day our paths had not crossed.

Without Watson, there is no Holmes―surely only Mrs. Hudson could believe such a thing.

Even after our parting of ways Holmes’s career continued to flourish. I had heard that he had traveled to the Continent late last year on behalf of the French government. He may have lost his partner in John Watson, but that did not seem to have had much effect on his work as a detective. It was true enough that he now contended with a powerful enemy, and yet it was precisely these kinds of situations in which he found his life’s meaning.

In his battle against mental stagnation Sherlock Holmes was always seeking out cases which required his full array of skills as a detective to solve against foes worthy of his time, involving mysteries beautiful and intricate. Long and impatiently had he waited to meet a rival who was his intellectual equal. The ordinary man could never hope to understand Holmes’s passion, but that passion was what set him above the common herd.

“Holmes will get through it. He does not need my help,” I told myself, watching the shadows grow long in the park. I made a circuit around the Serpentine, and by the time I returned to Oxford Street the sun was sinking over the horizon in the west. The lawns, the trees, the tall apartments on Park Lane were stained a bloody red by the setting sun.

Oxford Street was choked with pedestrians and carriages alike, heading home after a long day of labour. I trudged through the throng with a dark cloud lingering over my thoughts. In my distraction I bumped into more than a few people, and once as I walked north across a street I heard a yelled collection of oaths as a cab only just avoided running me down. I tottered to a half on the pavement and stared at random at the other side of the street, when a figure caught my eye. It stood motionless in front of Bradley’s, looking straight at me. The evening sun cut its face cleanly in two halves of light and dark. It was the young man who had called out to me in front of the bookshop.

At that moment a carriage passed between us, and when it had gone so had the young man.

What had I just seen? I seriously doubted I had witnessed a ghost, and yet it was too queer to put from my mind.

I turned off the main street into a narrow alley. The noise of the thoroughfare was quickly swallowed up by the buildings, and the light was a moody indigo.