Sherlock Holmes: The Army of Doctor Moreau

CHAPTER SEVEN

If I hadn’t felt full after my meal, I certainly did after Johnson’s talk. He had a way of speaking that assaulted both the ears and brain. God knows how Holmes, a man who saw the strict delineation of facts as perfection itself, managed to filter what he needed out of it. Nonetheless he always seemed to manage.

“Plenty to be going on with there, I think,” he said. “I may well call on you again. This strikes me as a case where local knowledge —or perhaps just a strong right fist—will be frequently needed.”

“I’m here whenever you need me, Mr Holmes,” Johnson replied. “You know that.”

Holmes paid for our meal and announced that a short walk would do us both good.

“We must decide our next step, Watson,” he said. “And the cold air will energise us to do just that.”

Shinwell Johnson left us the minute we had stepped out of the restaurant, slipping away almost mid-sentence to return to the world he knew so well but which was alien to us. As we walked the streets of Belgravia, Holmes was mostly silent, digesting the facts of the case as well as our meal. Every now and then he would tap out a rhythm on the pavement slabs with his cane, or stop to stare in the window of a shop, the very figure of a relaxed man about town. I knew he was cogitating furiously beneath the surface, however—a swan with urgent, pedalling feet.

“There is nothing to be gained by observing from afar,” he announced after a while, gazing up at the hazy sky above us. “We must make an expedition into enemy territory.”

“A trip to Rotherhithe?”

“Certainly.” He smiled and looked at me. “Will you come?”

“It makes a change for you to ask.” Usually it was all I could do to find out where it was he vanished to in the small hours, leaping— so very unnecessarily—from his bedroom window leaving nothing but the trace of old tobacco and thickly applied spirit gum.

“I know how much you like wandering around the streets with a concealed weapon,” he replied, glancing at my jacket pocket, no doubt checking whether I was carrying it now. I wasn’t.

“In your company I have frequently had occasion to use it.”

“What a good thing it is that the police force owe us a certain latitude.”

“How else would their inspectors keep their reputations?” There could be little doubt that Holmes’ existence accounted for a fair proportion of the law courts’ business.

“It’s hardly that,” he replied, “what with you blowing the whistle on them every week in your stories. Frankly I’m surprised you’ll find a man in uniform to give you the time of day.”

“It’s you that patronises them, not me.”

“A contentious point—your pen …”

“Your words.”

“Sometimes.” Once again, I was being poked at by an editor.

“Always,” I insisted. “Just not necessarily quoted in the right context.”

“Misrepresentation.”

“Dramatic licence,” I sighed. “And my stories have made the entire English-speaking world regard you as a genius. So if you class that as misrepresentation, I’ll be happy to make you seem more idiotic next time.”

He laughed. “Why not? It might at least give our postal service a rest.”

“You couldn’t bear it.”

“Nonsense! The work is its own reward.”

“I believed that of you once,” I replied. “Then I noticed how often you liked to announce a man’s occupation just by looking at his trouser cuffs.”

“Observation.”

“Showing off,” I smiled.

“There is a difference between explaining method to those intellectually incapable of making their own conclusions, and ‘showing off’!” he shouted. And just like that, friendly banter had become earnest—one could never tell with Holmes.

“Indeed there is,” I asserted. “One employs humility.”

My friend was silenced, if only for a moment. “Very well,” he announced finally, his voice as petulant as that of a child, “I shall no longer explain myself and the responsibility falls on you to keep up!”

With that he marched into the road in search of a cab.