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holmesticePart 1
~*~
Sherlock was standing, looking out the window as if he was trying to follow the progress of the milkman going up the street. He still had my old army blanket over his shoulders and looked around, as I entered as if he were about to say something. If he was, it was curtailed as he took in the glory of the particular quilted dressing gown I had on. I could hardly blame him; it was supposed to have replaced the paisley.
“It’s a popular colour,” was all I could say.
“Of course. ‘What else would it be’.” He parroted my words as if they were an aide-mémoir, “It’s the Mauve Decade.”
“That’s what the fashion writers are calling it,” I said.
How do you feel this morning?” I said. There were hollows under his eyes but, overall, his colour was better, less pasty. I considered that he was probably naturally quite pale. He had made use of my hot water and washbasin. “Up for breakfast?”
“You slipped me a mickey.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You drugged me!”
“Not exactly. I gave you a couple of drops of laudanum because you were overly excited.”
“And now, on top of the headache I already had, I have a blistering migraine. What do you have for that?”
“More laudanum. Or I can prepare a salicylic powder for you. I recommend breakfast first, however. I don’t know about you, but I could murder a lamb chop.”
“Oh, God! Don’t mention food!” he said. “I couldn’t commit GBH on a Weetabix, but if there’s more coffee…” He waved at the door. “Lay on MacDuff.”
“Kedgeree, eggs, streaky bacon, and lamb’s kidneys on toast…” Holmes caroled, as we entered the sitting room. He’d started on seconds. “There’s nothing like breakfast to make it worth getting up on a gloomy day, and Mrs. Hudson has outdone herself this time. I think she’s sweet on you.” I was glad to see that he had trousers on under the ratty paisley. “By the way, did you find what you were looking for going through Watson’s things?”
“No,” Sherlock said, without the least hint of embarrassment. “I was looking for an aspirin, or any evidence that this isn’t a lunatic asylum. Why are we playing it’s 1894.”
“What year do you imagine it is?” I said.
“My dear Sherlock.” Holmes helped himself to another kidney. “Life is infinitely stranger than anything you or I can invent. You may think it that cannot possibly be 1894, but I urge you to carry on, for the moment, as if you did. Try to believe, with all your heart, as if everything you see, touch, taste and hear is real.” Then he leaned over and whispered in Sherlock’s ear. “And, if you happen to discover any shred of evidence to the contrary, please mention it only to me.”
“Why only to you?” Sherlock whispered back to him, looking sideways at me.
“Because, I am prepared to deal as if you do come from another place in time, but Watson is dying to see you clapped in Bedlam.” Holmes sat up straight and smiled at me. “Aren’t you, old cock?”
“Pass the marmalade,” I said.
“Bedlam…? Oh.” Sherlock put his hand to the place on his head where I’d felt the hard lump the night before. He looked around the room. “I’ll go this far; if we invent our own hell, this is not even for one second mine.”
“You’re not in the diplomatic service, are you?” Holmes said.
“No. Where are my trousers?”
“I had Mrs. Hudson take them away to launder. She’ll have them back in a few hours.”
“In the meantime?
“The meantime?”
“What should I do in Illyria?” Sherlock looked annoyed.
“Work,” Sherlock said. “It is the only true panacea. Your business card confirms that you are a detective. Detect. I find that nothing clears up a case so much as stating it to another person, so you will tell me everything you can recall that led up to your finding yourself in Regent’s park. Leave nothing out. For example, it may be an accident of coincidence, but last night you mentioned a certain name…”
Sherlock had been reaching for the toast rack. He drew back. “Moriarty? He’s dead.”
“How did that come about?” Holmes’ brow was furled with interest.
“He built a perfect mousetrap. For me, or so he thought, but then he discovered that he’d trapped himself as well. The bugger blew his bloody brains out in front of me.”
“Tsk! Language,” said Holmes. “But I can see how that would be disconcerting. What happened then?”
“I fell four stories off of the top of a building.” Sherlock touched his head again. “And seem to have only got a bump on the head.”
“Please don’t equivocate.”
“Are you telling me I didn’t fall?”
“No. I’m suggesting that it’s more likely that you jumped.”
Sherlock stared at Holmes. “How do you know that?”
“Call it an educated guess and take it on trust that it’s easier to know than it is to explain. You said you were trapped; you keep looking at Watson as if you expected to see someone in his place; I conclude that you thought you were sacrificing your life to save a friend’s. I’d bet it was the most irrational thing you’ve ever done in your life.”
Sherlock clapped both hands over his mouth, and leaned against the table with his eyes closed.
“And the least selfish,” said Holmes, taking the last slice of toast.
“Unlike you,” I said.
Sherlock was breathing heavily and I was watching him for signs of hyperventilation. He looked over his hands at me. “He did the same for you. I saw the note he wrote to you!”
“You went through someone’s private papers…?” I went cold with fury. “You don’t care how you offend, or whom,” I said. “That is the most despicable behavior I’ve…” I don’t know what else my feelings would have betrayed me into saying if Rosie hadn’t chosen that moment to knock on the door.
“Come in,” said Holmes. “Quickly!”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Holmes.” She poked her around the door. “But Mrs. Hudson said to say the poor lad’s shirt didn’t survive the mangle.” The evidence was a sodden mess of purple rags in her hands.
“Tell Mrs. Hudson that it’s quite all right. Dr. Watson will loan him one of his.”
“I will not!”
“Don’t be petty. Of course you will. You can have one of mine. As for you,” Holmes turned to Sherlock, “I don’t know what you did to offend Rosie but for the sake of my wardrobe, try to pretend you know what civilized manners are. At least in theory.”
“I didn’t…”
“Every time you open your mouth. You present an interesting problem and I’ve promised to help you. But it doesn’t take much to infer that you’ve been allowed to get away with being an intolerable brat your whole life and if you try Watson’s patience too far, I will kick you down the front steps. Do I make myself clear?”
“Yes,” Sherlock, although he was white to the lip. Finally, as if he had to struggle to recall how the words went, said, “Dr. Watson, I apologize for reading your private papers.”
“Apology accepted,” I said. “And may I say—”
“No.” Holmes interrupted before I could add that it was almost worth it to hear him deliver a lecture on conduct, to anyone. “Now, where were you when you jumped?”
“Roof of the Pathology building in Giltspur Street.”
“There’s no Pathology building in Giltspur Street,” I said, looking at Holmes.
“Interesting,” he said. “Very interesting. Go on.”
“John had just arrived in the street…I…I don’t know what he thought he could do, but I had to keep him standing exactly where he was, or…it doesn’t matter…but he was going to move, whatever I said. Once I accepted that it was inevitable, everything became calm, almost surreal.”
“What do you mean by surreal?”
“You know…” Sherlock sighed. “No; I suppose you don’t. Dreamlike…unreal…as if I was looking through both ends of a telescope. I was standing on the parapet. Part of the aluminium flashing under my feet was broken. If I’d had a pencil I could have drawn the outlines of the every flake of feldspar and quartz crystal in the granite block under my feet and, at same time, my feet looked a mile away. I felt like the wind pick up. The clouds started boiling, as if there was an electrical storm coming, and I could feel my skin crawl. That was the moment that I realized that, in spite of everything I was saying, John was going to move.” He sighed. “I gave up, tossed my phone behind me and jumped. The whole way down, I couldn’t believe I had done it. Then everything went white.”
“Excellent,” said Holmes. “By the way, what did the air smell like?”
“Fresh laundry.” Sherlock looked sideways at the floor. “Since I woke up here, everything’s smelled like horseshit and sulfur.”
“There are very hard flint setts in the street at the bottom of the stairs,” Holmes said.
“Point taken,” said Sherlock.
“That’s enough for now,” Holmes said. “I need to think. Finish your breakfast, both of you. Don’t mind me.” Whereupon he disappeared into the alcove and shortly a cloud of fragrant blue smoke was wafting over the curtain rail. Impossible to ignore.
Sherlock stared at it hungrily. “Honestly,” he said. “I’d kill for a cigarette.”
“Help yourself,” I said. “The pear-wood box on the mantle.”
“Thank you, but I’m trying to quit.”
“Why?” I said.
~*~
That was a weary morning for me. I prepared the headache powder for Sherlock when he said he still needed it and, after showing him where the water closet existed under the stairs, made him free of the bookshelves.
Then I retreated to my office and spent the next few hours at my desk making notes. I find it helps to set down my impressions as early as possible in a case and I was quite convinced Sherlock was a criminal, or a lunatic, whom Holmes was humouring for reasons of his own. It was unfair of me, perhaps. I trusted Holmes, but what the object of his maneuvers was I could not conceive. Further, nothing could have set my hand against Sherlock more thoroughly than the knowledge that he had read the note that at the time I found it in a silver cigarette-case on that three-foot path in Switzerland…let me say, I thought it was the last word of affection I would ever have from my dearest friend and comrade.
Sherlock, after examining the contents of the bookshelves, picked out Kipling’s Phantom ‘Ricksha and Other Eerie Tales and settled in an armchair. He confined himself there, even when some noisy equipage in the street or a newsboy’s yell prompted him lift his head and look to the windows. In anyone else I would have suspected the lack of drawers made him timid; in Sherlock’s case, I believe he’d taken Holmes’s threat seriously and was considering what his next move should be.
I left my office door open in case Holmes needed something, but he called out for Maxwell’s Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field, and Sherlock was sitting by. It made sense for him to carry it and from then on he became Holmes’ mule when The Chronic Argonauts or some other esoteric volume was wanted. Shortly, they were going through the pile of newspapers together, circling articles. I could hear Holmes questioning Sherlock about the material of his buttons and Sherlock questioning Holmes about the cost of domestic gas lighting. Shortly they were twin Buddha sitting cross-legged. Each with a pipe and I had to close my doors; the doubled cloud of smoke making the sitting-room uninhabitable. Through the paneling point, at one point, I heard Nellie Melba singing “Comin’ Thro’ the Rye.”
At one o’clock Mrs. Hudson brought a tray with a cold lunch to my office and informed me that Sherlock was upstairs getting dressed.
I took advantage of his absence to see what he and Holmes had gotten up to. “Watson,” he said, as I crouched down beside him. “I’ve learned the most remarkable things. ‘Plastics’ for instance. And, if you have the opportunity, buy stock in Cable and Wireless, and hold on to it. Oh, and never commit your forces to a ground war in Asia.”
“I could have told you that,” I said, extending my leg to ease the ache, “but what other kind is there?”
“So serious!” Holmes took the pipe out of his mouth, stuck the stem of his pipe in his ear and blew a smoke-ring. It was an old trick but I could never help laughing at. “That’s better,” he said. “Brush off your black frock, my dear. We are going out again tonight.”
“Where?”
“21 Albemarle Street.”
“The Royal Institution! What will we be doing?”
“Meeting a great man, I hope.” Holmes showed me a circled advertisement. “Nikola Tesla will be speaking on the wireless transmission of energy. I have sent Billy round with a note and with luck we will shortly have an invitation.” Holmes then pulled me close and rubbed his cheek against mine. “How are you holding up?”
“I’m disturbed,” I confessed.
“I know, it’s brought back memories, but try to bear up. That is not a man who will ever be at ease with his feelings, even at the best of times, and right now he is feels completely lost.”
“I’ll do my best,” I said.
“Of course you will.” Holmes brushed my lip with his thumb. “Now, as much as I appreciate it, you need to remove that scruff,” He rubbed the back of his knuckles over his own cheek. “So will I.”
“Perhaps a bath,” I said, rising to my feet. “I know I could use one.”
“That is an excellent suggestion. Take our friend off to Broad Street and I will meet you there.” Holmes settled back on the cushions and closed his eyes. Just before I closed the door, he said, “Watson.”
“Yes?”
“Am I as exhausting as that?”
“Worse,” I said.
“Don’t stint the Bay Rum,” he called after me. As I left, I could hear him singing:
“‘Gin a body meet a body
Flyin' through the air.
Gin a body hit a body,
Will it fly? And where?’”
***
The undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns…
Except on those occasions when they do.
“You’d think someone would have mentioned it if hats were required.”
“Pardon?”
“Nothing,” Sherlock said. Pointing out the obvious, that here—in what appeared to be this time and this place—everyone, men, women and children, all wore hats—would have sounded unbelievably naïve, and he was already up Watson’s nose after reading that letter. It hadn’t escaped him that, even knowing Sherlock had gone through his things, the only item the doctor had checked was the collar box in the bureau drawer where he kept the letter, his most cherished possession.
To tell the truth, he wished he hadn’t read it. Seeing those naked feelings written down made him wonder what—if he had had the luxury of time and of pen and paper—and of not having to disguise what he was doing—what would he have written that John could carry through all the empty years?
He could feel his eyes stinging and reached up to adjust the tilt of the dove-grey bowler and shield his face from the doctor’s prying eyes. It covered the hard hot bump on his head, but he rather fancied the way it looked, even if it did belong to the doctor (as did the shirt, collar and waistcoat he had on under his own jacket and coat—those could pass muster if they weren’t examined too closely).
Sherlock had been behaving himself, playing along, because Holmes’ threat to toss him out in the street had been serious and he needed a place to stand if he was going to navigate the insanity in which he found himself, and expose what could only be an extreme folie imposée.
At least, that was the intention with which he’d started.
Of course he’d questioned Holmes, challenging every detail he could think of. Holmes had finally informed him that he was being a bore and asked him where on earth he’d been educated if he thought there was no popular recorded music before 1905. Holmes had wound up the phonograph and set the cactus needle to a cylinder. Fortunately, that very sweet and very proper Mrs. Hudson had brought Sherlock his freshly pressed trousers before he had to listen to The Lost Chord.
Now he was stuck with the doctor in a horse-drawn taxi, feeling colder and, if he admitted it, more frightened the closer they were coming to New Broad Street.
The fog had dissipated, leaving pale yellow wisps in the afternoon sun. They rattled past street sweepers, bawling draymen, liveried omnibuses, long skirted ladies with muffs, and bewhiskered men. Bells. Without the endless background drone of automobiles and aircraft, he could hear church bells, and the different sounds that a horse’s shoes make striking brick, tarmacadam or flint. They clopped past a venerable park with cast iron railings. He knew the park. As a five-year-old he had kicked the stumps of the long-vanished rails with his trainers. That was the Freemason’s Hall. And there should have been a memorial to the Boer War on that triangle. They crossed Smithfields. Down the street he could see the bustling General Market and from the reek it was not a building that had been abandoned in 2005. There was Saint Bartholomew-the-Great and there was…Barts! He knew the place in his bones.
“What is it?” The doctor said.
“Where I met my best friend.”
John deserved more than a few ephemeral words over the phone.
“Introduced by a man named Stamford?”
“How did you…?” He saw the suspicion in the doctor’s blue eyes. “No. I did not read it in your letters, Doctor.”
“Why would you have to? Anyone with six pence to his name can discover where John Watson met Sherlock Holmes.”
“You don’t believe I’m a-a…a displaced Chronic Argonaut, do you.”
“No.” Watson shook his head. “I’ve a bet with Holmes—next month’s rent, in fact—that you’re on the swindle.”
“And yet you’re going along, because he asked you to, because you imagine that the problem of me will keep him distracted enough and then he won’t slip and start back using whatever drug he’s prone to abusing, which he manipulates you into providing.”
“What gave that away?”
“The old track marks on his arms. The hypodermic needle in the green morocco case on the mantle. I admire his fidelity to realism, because a jab with that has got to hurt. But, given the amount of dust on the case, he only uses it when he’s thoroughly bored. Morphine, I assume?”
“Cocaine,” Watson said. “Why should he need to manipulate me to obtain it?”
“How else does he get it?”
“From the Chemist on the corner.”
“Oh…” said Sherlock. “I forgot it’s legal. O tempora! O mores! Maybe I could learn to like it here.”
“No. The sooner you’re gone the better.”
“Sergeant Donovan down at the Yard would agree with you.”
“I’d like to meet Sergeant Donovan. He sounds like an intelligent officer.”
“She.”
“What?”
“Her. That one is thick as a short plank but there’ve been women police officers since 1919. They’ve had the vote since 1928.”
“And any man with all of his wits can see that women will get the vote sooner than later. I look forward to it.”
“First Female PM 1979. Don’t see that coming do you?”
“Now you’re going too far. Interesting, that neither of us is going to be alive to call you a liar.” The cab jerked to a halt. “We’ve arrived,” Watson said, pushing the door open and stepping out into a busy street. Sherlock followed him.
They were in front of a train station, a great red brick monstrosity that he couldn’t recall; although he recognized the small Moorish kiosk cattycorner across street that they were headed toward. It had an onion shaped cupola on top. He stopped dead to stare. That little building had survived time, the blitz, and urban renewal, to become a restaurant shadowed by the steel and blue glass Broadgate Tower. He and Mycroft had eaten lunch there two weeks ago.
He looked up and turned round and round. No building, anywhere, taller than St. Paul’s or Tower Bridge or…
“If you’re going to make a habit of getting knocked down in the street.” Watson took him by the arm and drew him out of the path of a private coach. “Do it when I’m not by. What’s the matter? Are you feeling dizzy?”
“What’s the opposite of déjà vu?”
“Jamais vu.”
“That.”
They entered the kiosk and descended a winding staircase, issuing into an ornate vestibule lined with tin-glazed blue and ivory tiles.
Watson paid for their tickets and two hours later he was lying on a lounge in the cooling room, listening to the gentle splashing of a fountain, and recovering from the most intimate bath he’d ever experienced.
~*~
Both Holmes and I have a weakness for Turkish baths. Although we incline toward Neville’s Northumberland location, at two-shillings-three the range of services at Broad Street is second to none; I hadn’t missed Holmes’ hint that we were to emerge shampooed, shaved, bathed and pomaded.
The first two were quickly accomplished. As for the bath, out of concern for Sherlock’s head wound, I prescribed a mild course of hydrotherapy for him, while I took a vapor bath to relieve the pain in my leg.
Afterward, we lay bundled like mummies under the stained glass dome in the cooling room. In an environment of oriental opulence, the full treatment of hot rooms and massage leaves one feeling limp and slightly exalted.
Holmes joined us there, as freshly barbered as we were but reeking of violets after a soap wash and plunge. I shoved him away when he attempted to sit beside me—I prefer Bay Rum, if I must—and he settled next to Sherlock.
“Hello in there,” Holmes said, whipping off the towel covering Sherlock’s face. “Still with us?”
“Noooo…” Sherlock fended him off and rolled over on his side, re-tucking his towel.
“Good Lord! What did you do to him Watson?”
“He’s had a double Scottish douche,” I said.
“Nothing in my life...” Sherlock’s voice came muffled through the towel, “ever done…so completely gay.”
“I’m glad you enjoyed it,” Holmes said.
“Enjoyed it?” Sherlock popped up, scowling. “Oh, God! All right…yes…I enjoyed it. They reamed my prepuce, I smell like a pineapple, but this…” He whipped the towel off of his head. “I look like a bloody ponce!”
Military experience left me with a taste for unfashionably short hair, but the barber had only parted Sherlock’s in the center, very gently, laid it flat and swept it back over his ears. “I think it suits you,” I said.
“I don’t fancy the Macassar oil myself,” Holmes said. “It’s too fruity.”
Sherlock turned livid.
“Did I miss something?” Holmes looked back and forth between us. “You know those handy little books of foreign phrases one purchases at railway book stalls? I feel as if we could all use one. But,” he held up his hands, “if we can focus for a moment, I have secured an invitation for us to meet with Tesla after his talk this evening. We will present our problem to him.”
“Then what?” I said. “We announce we’ve found a lost anachronic traveler and ask him to build us a time machine?”
“Unless he already has one lying about,” Holmes said.
“What’s with the aroma therapy?” Sherlock said.
“We—and I emphasize we—are going out of our way not to offend. Tesla has a horror of dirt, he is highly sensitive to sounds and smells and he is reclusive and disinclined to associate with strangers. But, on the other hand, he is as susceptible to flattery as any genius is—present company excepted. I hope through a subtle combination of charm and obsequious fawning to inveigle him into inviting us to his laboratory. Now, who’s for supper?”
***
After collecting their freshly cleaned boots from the boy—how many jobs vanished when automobiles replaced horses?—they’d repaired to the Strand.
Simpson’s was almost the place Sherlock remembered. The green and white tiled foyer was the same—without the display cases. It was certainly as popular. There were chess games actually being played in the Grand Divan, and the atmosphere of respectful hush was on that account, despite the trolley carts being wheeled around.
Holmes vanished upstairs before they were seated. When he finally slid into their divan he had a smug look on his face. “I’ve got him,” he said.
“You’ll never trap Mycroft,” Watson said.
“Mate. In three moves,” Holmes said. “You’ll see.”
“Mycroft…?” Sherlock looked around. “Where?”
“Oh, he’s not here. We reserve a chess board upstairs and he sends his moves round by messenger. I’ve got him this time, despite what Watson thinks.”
“You actually play chess with Mycroft?”
“I take it you don’t.”
“No. If there was a chance he’d lose, he’d rig my queen to explode and take my hand off.”
“So you stole his Barclaycard in revenge,” Holmes said.
“No, of course not. It’s just a piece of plastic.”
“I doubt it. Barclay, Bevan and Bening, bankers since 1776,” Holmes said. “The card gives you access to his bank account.”
“All right, it’s a fair cop,” Sherlock admitted. “But he makes more than I do.”
Just then a waiter pushing a trolley stopped by their divan, and lifted the silver dome to display the joint. None of them resisted. It was wonderful…the rich aroma of gravy, Yorkshire pudding and the tang of horseradish…
No delusion, however extreme, can enthrall an entire city.
“You’ve gone very quiet,” Holmes said.
“I see only two choices,” Sherlock said “This is real. It is the past. It is 1894. Or else my body is lying comatose in a hospital somewhere, and I’m dream—ouch!” Holmes had reached over and pricked him with the point of his knife. “That hurt!”
“Then it would seem to put paid to your dream theory,” Holmes said. “Anyone for pudding? No?”
Holmes pulled the large linen serviette out of his collar. People did that, Sherlock remembered, tucked them in their collars, even though Watson’s was lying neatly across his lap. Then he noticed his own. It was a crumpled in a ball next to his plate. With a sense of guilt he picked it up and tried to flatten it. Too many years of living alone, and then he and John together…
“I’m trapped in the past,” he said.
“Possibly not,” said Holmes. “I can’t help observe that how highly unlikely it is that there are be two men named Sherlock Holmes, each of them with a brother named Mycroft and a friend named Watson, who happens to be a doctor, living at the same address in Baker Street, 117 years apart. Please note that 117 is a number divisible by 3.”
“What has that got to do with it?”
“I don’t know yet. But please take note of it.”
~*~
From Simpson’s we proceeded to the Royal Institution. The RI sponsors a series of Christmas lectures, and the year before I had heard John Ambrose Fleming speak on The Work of the Electric Current. Fleming is a consultant for the Marconi Company so it was natural for him to confine his topic to the use of radio transmission. Tesla’s vision, more theoretical at this point, is inconceivably deeper. He foresees a future when power is free to all, and the possibilities of long distance power transmission will be put to such uses as the broadcast, not only of sound but of moving pictures, geophysical exploration, and space travel. If anyone can build a time machine, it’s Tesla.
He is persuaded that the space around us is filled with a layer of energized particles and that the earth is a conductor which responds to predetermined frequencies of electrical vibrations. Current propagated by associated electric field energy can be transmitted any distance through the space between the Earth's surface and these particle layers to operate all sorts of devices.
One thing in particular that he said stood out: “When wireless is perfectly applied the whole earth will be converted into a huge brain, which in fact it is, all things being particles of a real and rhythmic whole. We shall be able to communicate with one another instantly, irrespective of distance. Not only this, but through television and telephony we shall see and hear one another as perfectly as though we were face to face, despite intervening distances of thousands of miles; and the instruments through which we shall be able to do his will be amazingly simple compared with our present telephone. A man will be able to carry one in his vest pocket.”
I look forward to the day; Mrs. Hudson couldn’t object to a wireless telephone.
While Holmes and Sherlock, on either side of me, gave Tesla the attention that genius commands, I settled for studying the man. He is over six feet tall, has deep-set dark eyes under straight brows and speaks perfect English, albeit with a slight accent. I had the impression of great mental energy and his enthusiasm for his subject is infectious. That night he moved around the stage, causing bells to ring and glass tubes to glow, all without the aid of wires. I admit the theory is beyond me, but I was dazzled by the effects.
Toward the end, when he was demonstrating the prototype for a new generator which he said could be used to provide electrical power to a whole building, the thing began to whirr, and then it squealed and then it let off a bang and a brief shower of brilliant blue sparks. A woman gave a small scream but, as these lectures are always crowded, and the hall was stuffy, this signaled a general stampede out the back while Holmes, Sherlock and I made our way down to the stage.
Tesla, bending over his crippled motor, looked up as we approached. “Gentleman,” he sounded surprised, “You’re very brave.”
“How so brave?” said Holmes.
“Haven’t you heard how dangerous my inventions are?” Tesla nodded towards the only other remaining members of the audience, a group of reporters, scratching away assiduously in the front row. “If not, you can read about it in the newspapers tomorrow.”
Holmes raised his voice loud enough to attract the attention of the scribbling fraternity. “Mr. Tesla,” he said, “you have been the target of a whispering campaign by the supporters of Edison’s direct current system, ever since you arrived in London.”
“I believe that to be case. The police will not take me seriously, though.”
“Tomorrow, people will read that Sherlock Holmes has been called in to determine if you’ve been a victim of sabotage.” In a more normal tone, Holmes said, “You may find things go a little easier for you.”
“You—?!” Tesla’s brows went up. “You’re Sherlock Holmes!” He became animated and left his engine. “This is an honor. Are you saying you would…?”
“I am.” Holmes took the cordially proffered hand. “And I will.”
“I can’t tell you how great an admirer of yours I am, Mr. Holmes!”
“Allow me to return the compliment. May I introduce my friend and associate, Dr. John Watson?”
“Dr. Watson, of course.” Tesla offered his hand to me and I noticed how incredibly long his thumbs were. “I read all your accounts of Mr. Holmes’ cases. I would never have dreamed…”
“And this,” Holmes said, bringing Sherlock forward, “is also Sherlock Holmes.”
“Your nephew?” Tesla said, taking Sherlock’s hand, in turn. “How wonderful that there are three of you.”
“My brother will have some lively explaining to do, if that turns out to be the case,” said Holmes. “You said that you would be able to give us a few minutes of your time. Is there some place we can talk in private?”
“I have the use of a laboratory here in the building where we can be private.”
“Excellent,” said Holmes. “Please conduct us there, immediately.”
The laboratory to which Tesla conducted us was under the building’s great mansard roof, where the ceiling height could accommodate the needs of his experiments. The windows looked over the rooftops of London. I could see the chimney pots of Barts in the distance. While we three wandered around gaping at strange assemblies of steel ribs and cables and wires, Tesla sent a porter running for tea.
I recall engines, including one set up to be driven by steam, that was attached to a small mechanical oscillator. There were conical towers with toroid frames at the top of them. With their thick cables drooping down, they looked like prehistoric marine creatures.
“Are these the famous lightning generators?” Holmes said, looking up at them.
“They are,” said Tesla.
“Were you operating them last night, by any chance?”
“I was and, by all possible measurements, succeeded in creating electrical movements that surpass those of natural lightning discharges.” Tesla sounded justifiably pleased himself.
“I would like to see that,” said Holmes.
“Isn’t it dangerous?” I said.
“Not at all. I’d be more than happy to demonstrate it for you. The only reason you didn’t see it tonight was the Institution’s concern that there were saboteurs planted in the audience to disrupt my talk.”
“What’s this?” said Sherlock. He had been stepping back and forth through a large toroid frame that had been set on its side. It stood between two of the conical towers and had an opening large enough for a man to walk through.
“I’m working on a new form of energy transmission.”
The porter arrived with a tea cart and refreshments, and we adjourned to a part of the laboratory where there were chairs and a blackboard. I noticed there were 18 teaspoons on the cart and a pile of 18 napkins that had been crossed over each other in groups of threes. Tesla took tea but he polished his spoon 18 times with three napkins before stirring it.
It was Holmes who said, “Mr. Tesla, you said how wonderful it is that there are three of us.”
“Yes. It is a significant number. I believe if we only knew the magnificence of the numbers 3, 6 and 9, we would have the key to the universe.”
I trust he didn’t notice the glances Holmes, Sherlock and I passed between us.
“Now what can I do for you, Mr. Holmes?” he said, after dropping three lumps of sugar into his cup and stirring it nine times. “Your note said that you had a question that was of of great concern to you and that I was the only man from whom you would trust an answer.”
“The question,” Holmes said, “and please believe me that I mean this in all seriousness, is could you build a machine that would enable a man to travel back and forth in time?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because time travel is impossible.”
“You know this for a fact?”
“Look at it this way, gentlemen, time is a river. It flows in one direction only. I am an engineer, not a mathematical logician; I cannot lay out a proof for you, but I will point out that if time travel were possible we would have evidence of it.”
“Such as…?” Holmes said.
“Time travelers. Time tourists, if you will. Empirical evidence of exact and verifiable facts of future events and technologies.”
I spared a glance sideways at the watch that was strapped around Sherlock’s wrist.
“But I have read,” Holmes said, “that time fills the universe like a rotating fluid. Anyone walking in the direction of flow would find himself at the starting point, but backwards in time.”
“Pardon me, but does anyone have that much time?” Tesla’s curious gaze travelled among the three of us, pausing on Sherlock. “And is backwards really the direction in which one wishes to go?”
Sherlock, his eyes brilliant with the intensity of concentration, entered the conversation. “You didn’t answer Holmes’ question,” he said.
“Which question was that?”
“That you know for a fact that time travel is impossible.”
“I would never make such a statement. I would expect to be disapproved in short order.” Tesla looked uncomfortable admitting it. “I am absolutely sure, however, that, if it were possible, it would take the energy of a small star to accomplish.”
“Oh, God,” Sherlock groaned. “Where is cold fusion when you need it?”
“Perhaps,” I said, “as it flows around planets and stars, the river of time becomes trapped in eddies and whirlpools or separates into streams.” It was a fanciful thought. I expected gentle mockery from Holmes, and more than that from Tesla.
Instead, he said, “Not streams of time but streams of reality.”
“What?!” both Holmes and Sherlock ejaculated at once.
“The doctor’s metaphor touches on a theory,” said Tesla, “that at its most fundament level our planet—our universe—our reality, if you will—responds to certain pre-described frequencies of electrical vibrations which exist and relate to each other in bundles of 3, 6 or 9 simultaneously. It is possible that if one of these bundles splits, like a stream going around a rock, that instead of flowing back together on the other side, separate realities flow onward from that point.”
“Are you saying,” said I, appalled, “That the world is nothing but a radio signal.”
“Not at all, I’m saying that it is a mass of charged electrons in a pre-determined relationship with each other. As we all are at our most fundamental level.”
“You’re saying reality is a musical chord.” From the frown on Tesla’s face that was too limited a metaphor, but Holmes looked delighted with it.
“What could split the chord?” Sherlock said.
“Potentially, something as minor as spark of static electricity as long as it was aimed in such a way that it ruptured the frequencies,” said Tesla.
“And from the point of rupture, do these…these new realities carry on at exactly the same rate?”
“No. There would be minor variations that would become magnified over time. At the extreme edges of the complex, there would be extreme differences.”
“I don’t like thinking of myself as a minor variation.” Sherlock narrowed his eyes at Holmes and shook his head. “I am not a minor variation.”
“No, you’re more like a flatted fifth.” Holmes took his pipe out of his mouth and returned Sherlock a full wide smile. “The question is how do we bring you back into harmony with the Lord?”
“Are you listening to yourselves?” I said.
“Actually, I’ve been experimenting with transferring bodies.”
You could have heard a pin drop in the silence after Tesla spoke.
“Isn’t it dangerous?” I finally said.
“One rat more or less can’t make any difference.” Tesla shrugged in a way to chill a physician’s soul “It’s annoying having to handle the creatures, but it doesn’t seem to bother them.”
“Are you saying you can send a rat to another plane of this existence and bring it back alive?” I said.
“Yes, of course.”
“How do you do it?”
“By means of a small harness with a telephone receiver attached. I’ve sent them out for as much as an hour. When they reappear, they’re often none the worse for the experience.”
Sherlock gave a short, sharp whistle. “Are you looking for a human volunteer?”
“Would you?” said Tesla, jumping up. “I was thinking of using a cat next, but it should be perfectly safe.”
“My God!” I said. “Do you hear yourselves?”
No one paid the least attention to me. Tesla and Sherlock were on their feet. They were serious about this insanity. I was on the verge of jumping up in protest, when Holmes put his hand on my knee.
“Holmes, it could be suicide! I can’t…” But, despite my convictions about Sherlock, I felt pity. There was now no doubt in my mind that he had thrown his life away to save a friend’s, and was now throwing himself into the unknown to find him again.
“Do you really want to stop him?”
“No,” I said. “I know too well the pain of losing the one person dearest to you in the world. Let him go.”
I felt the pressure of Holmes’ hand withdraw.
***
Sherlock been afraid that Watson would try to stop them. Then he’d seen Holmes lean over to place his hand on the doctor’s knee.
The thought passed through Sherlock’s mind. If I could have touched John at the last minute... He saw a few whispered words pass between the two men and Holmes’ hand withdrawn. Watson touched two fingers to his forehead in salute and stood down.
“Fifteen,” Tesla was saying as he threw the harness that he’d had ready and waiting for this moment over Sherlock’s head. “I will give you fifteen minutes only and then bring you back.”
“You said a rat could stay for an hour without harm.”
“If no harm comes to you, we will extend the time. Perhaps the other direction.”
“Other direction?”
“Three frequencies. Remember?”
“What do I do?”
“Stand here on this plate and I will charge the field.” Tesla was running around plugging in the last three cables. “It’s going to get very bright and very loud,” he said, closing the last circuit.
There was a snap and then a crack of thunder. “It is perfectly safe!” Tesla shouted as fingers of blue lightning reached into the space inside the toroid frame, which lit up and turned white. There was a smell Sherlock realized. It was just like fresh laundry. There was a perceptible tug drawing him forward, as well as a feeling that he was being pushed from behind, and…
Sherlock took a step, and then another, but he was moving too quickly and tripped over a kerbstone. He stumbled a few more steps and fell on his face.
Blast and dammit!
He spit out a mouthful of grass, rolled over to catch his breath.
Overhead was a 747 in British Air livery climbing out of Heathrow. It arced across his line of sight screaming thunder and he tracked it until it vanished in the distance. Only when there was nothing but a fading white contrail did he remember…
“Fifteen minutes,” Tesla had said. But if there was a spatial variance, there could be a time discrepancy, as well. He began to tug frantically on the harness buckles.
~*~
“Do you want it?” I asked Holmes later that night. I had picked up Sherlock’s wristlet-watch from the nightstand. As the stem doesn’t seem to wind it, I was wondering how long it will run.
“No,” Holmes said. “I would have gotten more use out of the knife and, after all, he did keep your best bowler.”
That was true. The harness had come back empty except for the watch band threaded in the buckle. Holmes and I took it as sign that Sherlock had survived and arrived at his destination. But Tesla had become stressed and had asked us to leave; more I think because our threesome had become a duo than because he’d lost a willing subject for his experiment.
Personally, I was more than happy to go, before it occurred to Holmes that it might be interesting to see what was on the other side of that glowing portal.
“Do you think he’ll be all right?” We were lying in a satisfied tangle of legs and sheets. It makes one reflect.
“Steady on, Watson, steady. Next you’ll be saying you liked him.”
“Not in the slightest, but I am man enough to admit he is at least as brave as you are. I think he deserves to find his John. Although, if he does, he’ll probably pop up behind him and give him a heart attack.”
“You should let that go,” Holmes said, his eyelids were drooping, “And right now you should put that thing away.” I put the watch in the drawer of the nightstand. He pulled me over to rest my head his shoulder and began to sing:
“‘Gin a body meet a body
Altogether free,
How they travel afterwards
We do not always see’.”
I knew. I also knew that although I am free to think and act alone the two of us are bound together like stars in the firmament with ties inseparable.
***
Sherlock lay in the grass, arms out-stretched, grinning up the blue sky and candy floss clouds. The wind was bringing him river smells, children’s screams, and the tinkling music of a round-a-bout in the park nearby. He was thinking of ice-cream.
“What’s wrong with that man, Mummy?” said a child’s treble.
“Don’t look at him!”
He got up on his elbows and watched the mother drag her child away from the strange man with the funny hat. She hustled her child out the gate and past the newsstand where the day’s headline read Fake Detective Jumps to Death.
That was going to be a problem—you can’t get far these days on £38 and a bit of change—but he did have Mycroft’s Visa safely tucked in his wallet. No doubt he could perform miracles with it.
Finis
29 May 2012
Sherlock was standing, looking out the window as if he was trying to follow the progress of the milkman going up the street. He still had my old army blanket over his shoulders and looked around, as I entered as if he were about to say something. If he was, it was curtailed as he took in the glory of the particular quilted dressing gown I had on. I could hardly blame him; it was supposed to have replaced the paisley.
“It’s a popular colour,” was all I could say.
“Of course. ‘What else would it be’.” He parroted my words as if they were an aide-mémoir, “It’s the Mauve Decade.”
“That’s what the fashion writers are calling it,” I said.
How do you feel this morning?” I said. There were hollows under his eyes but, overall, his colour was better, less pasty. I considered that he was probably naturally quite pale. He had made use of my hot water and washbasin. “Up for breakfast?”
“You slipped me a mickey.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You drugged me!”
“Not exactly. I gave you a couple of drops of laudanum because you were overly excited.”
“And now, on top of the headache I already had, I have a blistering migraine. What do you have for that?”
“More laudanum. Or I can prepare a salicylic powder for you. I recommend breakfast first, however. I don’t know about you, but I could murder a lamb chop.”
“Oh, God! Don’t mention food!” he said. “I couldn’t commit GBH on a Weetabix, but if there’s more coffee…” He waved at the door. “Lay on MacDuff.”
“Kedgeree, eggs, streaky bacon, and lamb’s kidneys on toast…” Holmes caroled, as we entered the sitting room. He’d started on seconds. “There’s nothing like breakfast to make it worth getting up on a gloomy day, and Mrs. Hudson has outdone herself this time. I think she’s sweet on you.” I was glad to see that he had trousers on under the ratty paisley. “By the way, did you find what you were looking for going through Watson’s things?”
“No,” Sherlock said, without the least hint of embarrassment. “I was looking for an aspirin, or any evidence that this isn’t a lunatic asylum. Why are we playing it’s 1894.”
“What year do you imagine it is?” I said.
“My dear Sherlock.” Holmes helped himself to another kidney. “Life is infinitely stranger than anything you or I can invent. You may think it that cannot possibly be 1894, but I urge you to carry on, for the moment, as if you did. Try to believe, with all your heart, as if everything you see, touch, taste and hear is real.” Then he leaned over and whispered in Sherlock’s ear. “And, if you happen to discover any shred of evidence to the contrary, please mention it only to me.”
“Why only to you?” Sherlock whispered back to him, looking sideways at me.
“Because, I am prepared to deal as if you do come from another place in time, but Watson is dying to see you clapped in Bedlam.” Holmes sat up straight and smiled at me. “Aren’t you, old cock?”
“Pass the marmalade,” I said.
“Bedlam…? Oh.” Sherlock put his hand to the place on his head where I’d felt the hard lump the night before. He looked around the room. “I’ll go this far; if we invent our own hell, this is not even for one second mine.”
“You’re not in the diplomatic service, are you?” Holmes said.
“No. Where are my trousers?”
“I had Mrs. Hudson take them away to launder. She’ll have them back in a few hours.”
“In the meantime?
“The meantime?”
“What should I do in Illyria?” Sherlock looked annoyed.
“Work,” Sherlock said. “It is the only true panacea. Your business card confirms that you are a detective. Detect. I find that nothing clears up a case so much as stating it to another person, so you will tell me everything you can recall that led up to your finding yourself in Regent’s park. Leave nothing out. For example, it may be an accident of coincidence, but last night you mentioned a certain name…”
Sherlock had been reaching for the toast rack. He drew back. “Moriarty? He’s dead.”
“How did that come about?” Holmes’ brow was furled with interest.
“He built a perfect mousetrap. For me, or so he thought, but then he discovered that he’d trapped himself as well. The bugger blew his bloody brains out in front of me.”
“Tsk! Language,” said Holmes. “But I can see how that would be disconcerting. What happened then?”
“I fell four stories off of the top of a building.” Sherlock touched his head again. “And seem to have only got a bump on the head.”
“Please don’t equivocate.”
“Are you telling me I didn’t fall?”
“No. I’m suggesting that it’s more likely that you jumped.”
Sherlock stared at Holmes. “How do you know that?”
“Call it an educated guess and take it on trust that it’s easier to know than it is to explain. You said you were trapped; you keep looking at Watson as if you expected to see someone in his place; I conclude that you thought you were sacrificing your life to save a friend’s. I’d bet it was the most irrational thing you’ve ever done in your life.”
Sherlock clapped both hands over his mouth, and leaned against the table with his eyes closed.
“And the least selfish,” said Holmes, taking the last slice of toast.
“Unlike you,” I said.
Sherlock was breathing heavily and I was watching him for signs of hyperventilation. He looked over his hands at me. “He did the same for you. I saw the note he wrote to you!”
“You went through someone’s private papers…?” I went cold with fury. “You don’t care how you offend, or whom,” I said. “That is the most despicable behavior I’ve…” I don’t know what else my feelings would have betrayed me into saying if Rosie hadn’t chosen that moment to knock on the door.
“Come in,” said Holmes. “Quickly!”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Holmes.” She poked her around the door. “But Mrs. Hudson said to say the poor lad’s shirt didn’t survive the mangle.” The evidence was a sodden mess of purple rags in her hands.
“Tell Mrs. Hudson that it’s quite all right. Dr. Watson will loan him one of his.”
“I will not!”
“Don’t be petty. Of course you will. You can have one of mine. As for you,” Holmes turned to Sherlock, “I don’t know what you did to offend Rosie but for the sake of my wardrobe, try to pretend you know what civilized manners are. At least in theory.”
“I didn’t…”
“Every time you open your mouth. You present an interesting problem and I’ve promised to help you. But it doesn’t take much to infer that you’ve been allowed to get away with being an intolerable brat your whole life and if you try Watson’s patience too far, I will kick you down the front steps. Do I make myself clear?”
“Yes,” Sherlock, although he was white to the lip. Finally, as if he had to struggle to recall how the words went, said, “Dr. Watson, I apologize for reading your private papers.”
“Apology accepted,” I said. “And may I say—”
“No.” Holmes interrupted before I could add that it was almost worth it to hear him deliver a lecture on conduct, to anyone. “Now, where were you when you jumped?”
“Roof of the Pathology building in Giltspur Street.”
“There’s no Pathology building in Giltspur Street,” I said, looking at Holmes.
“Interesting,” he said. “Very interesting. Go on.”
“John had just arrived in the street…I…I don’t know what he thought he could do, but I had to keep him standing exactly where he was, or…it doesn’t matter…but he was going to move, whatever I said. Once I accepted that it was inevitable, everything became calm, almost surreal.”
“What do you mean by surreal?”
“You know…” Sherlock sighed. “No; I suppose you don’t. Dreamlike…unreal…as if I was looking through both ends of a telescope. I was standing on the parapet. Part of the aluminium flashing under my feet was broken. If I’d had a pencil I could have drawn the outlines of the every flake of feldspar and quartz crystal in the granite block under my feet and, at same time, my feet looked a mile away. I felt like the wind pick up. The clouds started boiling, as if there was an electrical storm coming, and I could feel my skin crawl. That was the moment that I realized that, in spite of everything I was saying, John was going to move.” He sighed. “I gave up, tossed my phone behind me and jumped. The whole way down, I couldn’t believe I had done it. Then everything went white.”
“Excellent,” said Holmes. “By the way, what did the air smell like?”
“Fresh laundry.” Sherlock looked sideways at the floor. “Since I woke up here, everything’s smelled like horseshit and sulfur.”
“There are very hard flint setts in the street at the bottom of the stairs,” Holmes said.
“Point taken,” said Sherlock.
“That’s enough for now,” Holmes said. “I need to think. Finish your breakfast, both of you. Don’t mind me.” Whereupon he disappeared into the alcove and shortly a cloud of fragrant blue smoke was wafting over the curtain rail. Impossible to ignore.
Sherlock stared at it hungrily. “Honestly,” he said. “I’d kill for a cigarette.”
“Help yourself,” I said. “The pear-wood box on the mantle.”
“Thank you, but I’m trying to quit.”
“Why?” I said.
That was a weary morning for me. I prepared the headache powder for Sherlock when he said he still needed it and, after showing him where the water closet existed under the stairs, made him free of the bookshelves.
Then I retreated to my office and spent the next few hours at my desk making notes. I find it helps to set down my impressions as early as possible in a case and I was quite convinced Sherlock was a criminal, or a lunatic, whom Holmes was humouring for reasons of his own. It was unfair of me, perhaps. I trusted Holmes, but what the object of his maneuvers was I could not conceive. Further, nothing could have set my hand against Sherlock more thoroughly than the knowledge that he had read the note that at the time I found it in a silver cigarette-case on that three-foot path in Switzerland…let me say, I thought it was the last word of affection I would ever have from my dearest friend and comrade.
Sherlock, after examining the contents of the bookshelves, picked out Kipling’s Phantom ‘Ricksha and Other Eerie Tales and settled in an armchair. He confined himself there, even when some noisy equipage in the street or a newsboy’s yell prompted him lift his head and look to the windows. In anyone else I would have suspected the lack of drawers made him timid; in Sherlock’s case, I believe he’d taken Holmes’s threat seriously and was considering what his next move should be.
I left my office door open in case Holmes needed something, but he called out for Maxwell’s Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field, and Sherlock was sitting by. It made sense for him to carry it and from then on he became Holmes’ mule when The Chronic Argonauts or some other esoteric volume was wanted. Shortly, they were going through the pile of newspapers together, circling articles. I could hear Holmes questioning Sherlock about the material of his buttons and Sherlock questioning Holmes about the cost of domestic gas lighting. Shortly they were twin Buddha sitting cross-legged. Each with a pipe and I had to close my doors; the doubled cloud of smoke making the sitting-room uninhabitable. Through the paneling point, at one point, I heard Nellie Melba singing “Comin’ Thro’ the Rye.”
At one o’clock Mrs. Hudson brought a tray with a cold lunch to my office and informed me that Sherlock was upstairs getting dressed.
I took advantage of his absence to see what he and Holmes had gotten up to. “Watson,” he said, as I crouched down beside him. “I’ve learned the most remarkable things. ‘Plastics’ for instance. And, if you have the opportunity, buy stock in Cable and Wireless, and hold on to it. Oh, and never commit your forces to a ground war in Asia.”
“I could have told you that,” I said, extending my leg to ease the ache, “but what other kind is there?”
“So serious!” Holmes took the pipe out of his mouth, stuck the stem of his pipe in his ear and blew a smoke-ring. It was an old trick but I could never help laughing at. “That’s better,” he said. “Brush off your black frock, my dear. We are going out again tonight.”
“Where?”
“21 Albemarle Street.”
“The Royal Institution! What will we be doing?”
“Meeting a great man, I hope.” Holmes showed me a circled advertisement. “Nikola Tesla will be speaking on the wireless transmission of energy. I have sent Billy round with a note and with luck we will shortly have an invitation.” Holmes then pulled me close and rubbed his cheek against mine. “How are you holding up?”
“I’m disturbed,” I confessed.
“I know, it’s brought back memories, but try to bear up. That is not a man who will ever be at ease with his feelings, even at the best of times, and right now he is feels completely lost.”
“I’ll do my best,” I said.
“Of course you will.” Holmes brushed my lip with his thumb. “Now, as much as I appreciate it, you need to remove that scruff,” He rubbed the back of his knuckles over his own cheek. “So will I.”
“Perhaps a bath,” I said, rising to my feet. “I know I could use one.”
“That is an excellent suggestion. Take our friend off to Broad Street and I will meet you there.” Holmes settled back on the cushions and closed his eyes. Just before I closed the door, he said, “Watson.”
“Yes?”
“Am I as exhausting as that?”
“Worse,” I said.
“Don’t stint the Bay Rum,” he called after me. As I left, I could hear him singing:
“‘Gin a body meet a body
Flyin' through the air.
Gin a body hit a body,
Will it fly? And where?’”
The undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns…
Except on those occasions when they do.
“You’d think someone would have mentioned it if hats were required.”
“Pardon?”
“Nothing,” Sherlock said. Pointing out the obvious, that here—in what appeared to be this time and this place—everyone, men, women and children, all wore hats—would have sounded unbelievably naïve, and he was already up Watson’s nose after reading that letter. It hadn’t escaped him that, even knowing Sherlock had gone through his things, the only item the doctor had checked was the collar box in the bureau drawer where he kept the letter, his most cherished possession.
To tell the truth, he wished he hadn’t read it. Seeing those naked feelings written down made him wonder what—if he had had the luxury of time and of pen and paper—and of not having to disguise what he was doing—what would he have written that John could carry through all the empty years?
He could feel his eyes stinging and reached up to adjust the tilt of the dove-grey bowler and shield his face from the doctor’s prying eyes. It covered the hard hot bump on his head, but he rather fancied the way it looked, even if it did belong to the doctor (as did the shirt, collar and waistcoat he had on under his own jacket and coat—those could pass muster if they weren’t examined too closely).
Sherlock had been behaving himself, playing along, because Holmes’ threat to toss him out in the street had been serious and he needed a place to stand if he was going to navigate the insanity in which he found himself, and expose what could only be an extreme folie imposée.
At least, that was the intention with which he’d started.
Of course he’d questioned Holmes, challenging every detail he could think of. Holmes had finally informed him that he was being a bore and asked him where on earth he’d been educated if he thought there was no popular recorded music before 1905. Holmes had wound up the phonograph and set the cactus needle to a cylinder. Fortunately, that very sweet and very proper Mrs. Hudson had brought Sherlock his freshly pressed trousers before he had to listen to The Lost Chord.
Now he was stuck with the doctor in a horse-drawn taxi, feeling colder and, if he admitted it, more frightened the closer they were coming to New Broad Street.
The fog had dissipated, leaving pale yellow wisps in the afternoon sun. They rattled past street sweepers, bawling draymen, liveried omnibuses, long skirted ladies with muffs, and bewhiskered men. Bells. Without the endless background drone of automobiles and aircraft, he could hear church bells, and the different sounds that a horse’s shoes make striking brick, tarmacadam or flint. They clopped past a venerable park with cast iron railings. He knew the park. As a five-year-old he had kicked the stumps of the long-vanished rails with his trainers. That was the Freemason’s Hall. And there should have been a memorial to the Boer War on that triangle. They crossed Smithfields. Down the street he could see the bustling General Market and from the reek it was not a building that had been abandoned in 2005. There was Saint Bartholomew-the-Great and there was…Barts! He knew the place in his bones.
“What is it?” The doctor said.
“Where I met my best friend.”
John deserved more than a few ephemeral words over the phone.
“Introduced by a man named Stamford?”
“How did you…?” He saw the suspicion in the doctor’s blue eyes. “No. I did not read it in your letters, Doctor.”
“Why would you have to? Anyone with six pence to his name can discover where John Watson met Sherlock Holmes.”
“You don’t believe I’m a-a…a displaced Chronic Argonaut, do you.”
“No.” Watson shook his head. “I’ve a bet with Holmes—next month’s rent, in fact—that you’re on the swindle.”
“And yet you’re going along, because he asked you to, because you imagine that the problem of me will keep him distracted enough and then he won’t slip and start back using whatever drug he’s prone to abusing, which he manipulates you into providing.”
“What gave that away?”
“The old track marks on his arms. The hypodermic needle in the green morocco case on the mantle. I admire his fidelity to realism, because a jab with that has got to hurt. But, given the amount of dust on the case, he only uses it when he’s thoroughly bored. Morphine, I assume?”
“Cocaine,” Watson said. “Why should he need to manipulate me to obtain it?”
“How else does he get it?”
“From the Chemist on the corner.”
“Oh…” said Sherlock. “I forgot it’s legal. O tempora! O mores! Maybe I could learn to like it here.”
“No. The sooner you’re gone the better.”
“Sergeant Donovan down at the Yard would agree with you.”
“I’d like to meet Sergeant Donovan. He sounds like an intelligent officer.”
“She.”
“What?”
“Her. That one is thick as a short plank but there’ve been women police officers since 1919. They’ve had the vote since 1928.”
“And any man with all of his wits can see that women will get the vote sooner than later. I look forward to it.”
“First Female PM 1979. Don’t see that coming do you?”
“Now you’re going too far. Interesting, that neither of us is going to be alive to call you a liar.” The cab jerked to a halt. “We’ve arrived,” Watson said, pushing the door open and stepping out into a busy street. Sherlock followed him.
They were in front of a train station, a great red brick monstrosity that he couldn’t recall; although he recognized the small Moorish kiosk cattycorner across street that they were headed toward. It had an onion shaped cupola on top. He stopped dead to stare. That little building had survived time, the blitz, and urban renewal, to become a restaurant shadowed by the steel and blue glass Broadgate Tower. He and Mycroft had eaten lunch there two weeks ago.
He looked up and turned round and round. No building, anywhere, taller than St. Paul’s or Tower Bridge or…
“If you’re going to make a habit of getting knocked down in the street.” Watson took him by the arm and drew him out of the path of a private coach. “Do it when I’m not by. What’s the matter? Are you feeling dizzy?”
“What’s the opposite of déjà vu?”
“Jamais vu.”
“That.”
They entered the kiosk and descended a winding staircase, issuing into an ornate vestibule lined with tin-glazed blue and ivory tiles.
Watson paid for their tickets and two hours later he was lying on a lounge in the cooling room, listening to the gentle splashing of a fountain, and recovering from the most intimate bath he’d ever experienced.
Both Holmes and I have a weakness for Turkish baths. Although we incline toward Neville’s Northumberland location, at two-shillings-three the range of services at Broad Street is second to none; I hadn’t missed Holmes’ hint that we were to emerge shampooed, shaved, bathed and pomaded.
The first two were quickly accomplished. As for the bath, out of concern for Sherlock’s head wound, I prescribed a mild course of hydrotherapy for him, while I took a vapor bath to relieve the pain in my leg.
Afterward, we lay bundled like mummies under the stained glass dome in the cooling room. In an environment of oriental opulence, the full treatment of hot rooms and massage leaves one feeling limp and slightly exalted.
Holmes joined us there, as freshly barbered as we were but reeking of violets after a soap wash and plunge. I shoved him away when he attempted to sit beside me—I prefer Bay Rum, if I must—and he settled next to Sherlock.
“Hello in there,” Holmes said, whipping off the towel covering Sherlock’s face. “Still with us?”
“Noooo…” Sherlock fended him off and rolled over on his side, re-tucking his towel.
“Good Lord! What did you do to him Watson?”
“He’s had a double Scottish douche,” I said.
“Nothing in my life...” Sherlock’s voice came muffled through the towel, “ever done…so completely gay.”
“I’m glad you enjoyed it,” Holmes said.
“Enjoyed it?” Sherlock popped up, scowling. “Oh, God! All right…yes…I enjoyed it. They reamed my prepuce, I smell like a pineapple, but this…” He whipped the towel off of his head. “I look like a bloody ponce!”
Military experience left me with a taste for unfashionably short hair, but the barber had only parted Sherlock’s in the center, very gently, laid it flat and swept it back over his ears. “I think it suits you,” I said.
“I don’t fancy the Macassar oil myself,” Holmes said. “It’s too fruity.”
Sherlock turned livid.
“Did I miss something?” Holmes looked back and forth between us. “You know those handy little books of foreign phrases one purchases at railway book stalls? I feel as if we could all use one. But,” he held up his hands, “if we can focus for a moment, I have secured an invitation for us to meet with Tesla after his talk this evening. We will present our problem to him.”
“Then what?” I said. “We announce we’ve found a lost anachronic traveler and ask him to build us a time machine?”
“Unless he already has one lying about,” Holmes said.
“What’s with the aroma therapy?” Sherlock said.
“We—and I emphasize we—are going out of our way not to offend. Tesla has a horror of dirt, he is highly sensitive to sounds and smells and he is reclusive and disinclined to associate with strangers. But, on the other hand, he is as susceptible to flattery as any genius is—present company excepted. I hope through a subtle combination of charm and obsequious fawning to inveigle him into inviting us to his laboratory. Now, who’s for supper?”
After collecting their freshly cleaned boots from the boy—how many jobs vanished when automobiles replaced horses?—they’d repaired to the Strand.
Simpson’s was almost the place Sherlock remembered. The green and white tiled foyer was the same—without the display cases. It was certainly as popular. There were chess games actually being played in the Grand Divan, and the atmosphere of respectful hush was on that account, despite the trolley carts being wheeled around.
Holmes vanished upstairs before they were seated. When he finally slid into their divan he had a smug look on his face. “I’ve got him,” he said.
“You’ll never trap Mycroft,” Watson said.
“Mate. In three moves,” Holmes said. “You’ll see.”
“Mycroft…?” Sherlock looked around. “Where?”
“Oh, he’s not here. We reserve a chess board upstairs and he sends his moves round by messenger. I’ve got him this time, despite what Watson thinks.”
“You actually play chess with Mycroft?”
“I take it you don’t.”
“No. If there was a chance he’d lose, he’d rig my queen to explode and take my hand off.”
“So you stole his Barclaycard in revenge,” Holmes said.
“No, of course not. It’s just a piece of plastic.”
“I doubt it. Barclay, Bevan and Bening, bankers since 1776,” Holmes said. “The card gives you access to his bank account.”
“All right, it’s a fair cop,” Sherlock admitted. “But he makes more than I do.”
Just then a waiter pushing a trolley stopped by their divan, and lifted the silver dome to display the joint. None of them resisted. It was wonderful…the rich aroma of gravy, Yorkshire pudding and the tang of horseradish…
No delusion, however extreme, can enthrall an entire city.
“You’ve gone very quiet,” Holmes said.
“I see only two choices,” Sherlock said “This is real. It is the past. It is 1894. Or else my body is lying comatose in a hospital somewhere, and I’m dream—ouch!” Holmes had reached over and pricked him with the point of his knife. “That hurt!”
“Then it would seem to put paid to your dream theory,” Holmes said. “Anyone for pudding? No?”
Holmes pulled the large linen serviette out of his collar. People did that, Sherlock remembered, tucked them in their collars, even though Watson’s was lying neatly across his lap. Then he noticed his own. It was a crumpled in a ball next to his plate. With a sense of guilt he picked it up and tried to flatten it. Too many years of living alone, and then he and John together…
“I’m trapped in the past,” he said.
“Possibly not,” said Holmes. “I can’t help observe that how highly unlikely it is that there are be two men named Sherlock Holmes, each of them with a brother named Mycroft and a friend named Watson, who happens to be a doctor, living at the same address in Baker Street, 117 years apart. Please note that 117 is a number divisible by 3.”
“What has that got to do with it?”
“I don’t know yet. But please take note of it.”
From Simpson’s we proceeded to the Royal Institution. The RI sponsors a series of Christmas lectures, and the year before I had heard John Ambrose Fleming speak on The Work of the Electric Current. Fleming is a consultant for the Marconi Company so it was natural for him to confine his topic to the use of radio transmission. Tesla’s vision, more theoretical at this point, is inconceivably deeper. He foresees a future when power is free to all, and the possibilities of long distance power transmission will be put to such uses as the broadcast, not only of sound but of moving pictures, geophysical exploration, and space travel. If anyone can build a time machine, it’s Tesla.
He is persuaded that the space around us is filled with a layer of energized particles and that the earth is a conductor which responds to predetermined frequencies of electrical vibrations. Current propagated by associated electric field energy can be transmitted any distance through the space between the Earth's surface and these particle layers to operate all sorts of devices.
One thing in particular that he said stood out: “When wireless is perfectly applied the whole earth will be converted into a huge brain, which in fact it is, all things being particles of a real and rhythmic whole. We shall be able to communicate with one another instantly, irrespective of distance. Not only this, but through television and telephony we shall see and hear one another as perfectly as though we were face to face, despite intervening distances of thousands of miles; and the instruments through which we shall be able to do his will be amazingly simple compared with our present telephone. A man will be able to carry one in his vest pocket.”
I look forward to the day; Mrs. Hudson couldn’t object to a wireless telephone.
While Holmes and Sherlock, on either side of me, gave Tesla the attention that genius commands, I settled for studying the man. He is over six feet tall, has deep-set dark eyes under straight brows and speaks perfect English, albeit with a slight accent. I had the impression of great mental energy and his enthusiasm for his subject is infectious. That night he moved around the stage, causing bells to ring and glass tubes to glow, all without the aid of wires. I admit the theory is beyond me, but I was dazzled by the effects.
Toward the end, when he was demonstrating the prototype for a new generator which he said could be used to provide electrical power to a whole building, the thing began to whirr, and then it squealed and then it let off a bang and a brief shower of brilliant blue sparks. A woman gave a small scream but, as these lectures are always crowded, and the hall was stuffy, this signaled a general stampede out the back while Holmes, Sherlock and I made our way down to the stage.
Tesla, bending over his crippled motor, looked up as we approached. “Gentleman,” he sounded surprised, “You’re very brave.”
“How so brave?” said Holmes.
“Haven’t you heard how dangerous my inventions are?” Tesla nodded towards the only other remaining members of the audience, a group of reporters, scratching away assiduously in the front row. “If not, you can read about it in the newspapers tomorrow.”
Holmes raised his voice loud enough to attract the attention of the scribbling fraternity. “Mr. Tesla,” he said, “you have been the target of a whispering campaign by the supporters of Edison’s direct current system, ever since you arrived in London.”
“I believe that to be case. The police will not take me seriously, though.”
“Tomorrow, people will read that Sherlock Holmes has been called in to determine if you’ve been a victim of sabotage.” In a more normal tone, Holmes said, “You may find things go a little easier for you.”
“You—?!” Tesla’s brows went up. “You’re Sherlock Holmes!” He became animated and left his engine. “This is an honor. Are you saying you would…?”
“I am.” Holmes took the cordially proffered hand. “And I will.”
“I can’t tell you how great an admirer of yours I am, Mr. Holmes!”
“Allow me to return the compliment. May I introduce my friend and associate, Dr. John Watson?”
“Dr. Watson, of course.” Tesla offered his hand to me and I noticed how incredibly long his thumbs were. “I read all your accounts of Mr. Holmes’ cases. I would never have dreamed…”
“And this,” Holmes said, bringing Sherlock forward, “is also Sherlock Holmes.”
“Your nephew?” Tesla said, taking Sherlock’s hand, in turn. “How wonderful that there are three of you.”
“My brother will have some lively explaining to do, if that turns out to be the case,” said Holmes. “You said that you would be able to give us a few minutes of your time. Is there some place we can talk in private?”
“I have the use of a laboratory here in the building where we can be private.”
“Excellent,” said Holmes. “Please conduct us there, immediately.”
The laboratory to which Tesla conducted us was under the building’s great mansard roof, where the ceiling height could accommodate the needs of his experiments. The windows looked over the rooftops of London. I could see the chimney pots of Barts in the distance. While we three wandered around gaping at strange assemblies of steel ribs and cables and wires, Tesla sent a porter running for tea.
I recall engines, including one set up to be driven by steam, that was attached to a small mechanical oscillator. There were conical towers with toroid frames at the top of them. With their thick cables drooping down, they looked like prehistoric marine creatures.
“Are these the famous lightning generators?” Holmes said, looking up at them.
“They are,” said Tesla.
“Were you operating them last night, by any chance?”
“I was and, by all possible measurements, succeeded in creating electrical movements that surpass those of natural lightning discharges.” Tesla sounded justifiably pleased himself.
“I would like to see that,” said Holmes.
“Isn’t it dangerous?” I said.
“Not at all. I’d be more than happy to demonstrate it for you. The only reason you didn’t see it tonight was the Institution’s concern that there were saboteurs planted in the audience to disrupt my talk.”
“What’s this?” said Sherlock. He had been stepping back and forth through a large toroid frame that had been set on its side. It stood between two of the conical towers and had an opening large enough for a man to walk through.
“I’m working on a new form of energy transmission.”
The porter arrived with a tea cart and refreshments, and we adjourned to a part of the laboratory where there were chairs and a blackboard. I noticed there were 18 teaspoons on the cart and a pile of 18 napkins that had been crossed over each other in groups of threes. Tesla took tea but he polished his spoon 18 times with three napkins before stirring it.
It was Holmes who said, “Mr. Tesla, you said how wonderful it is that there are three of us.”
“Yes. It is a significant number. I believe if we only knew the magnificence of the numbers 3, 6 and 9, we would have the key to the universe.”
I trust he didn’t notice the glances Holmes, Sherlock and I passed between us.
“Now what can I do for you, Mr. Holmes?” he said, after dropping three lumps of sugar into his cup and stirring it nine times. “Your note said that you had a question that was of of great concern to you and that I was the only man from whom you would trust an answer.”
“The question,” Holmes said, “and please believe me that I mean this in all seriousness, is could you build a machine that would enable a man to travel back and forth in time?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because time travel is impossible.”
“You know this for a fact?”
“Look at it this way, gentlemen, time is a river. It flows in one direction only. I am an engineer, not a mathematical logician; I cannot lay out a proof for you, but I will point out that if time travel were possible we would have evidence of it.”
“Such as…?” Holmes said.
“Time travelers. Time tourists, if you will. Empirical evidence of exact and verifiable facts of future events and technologies.”
I spared a glance sideways at the watch that was strapped around Sherlock’s wrist.
“But I have read,” Holmes said, “that time fills the universe like a rotating fluid. Anyone walking in the direction of flow would find himself at the starting point, but backwards in time.”
“Pardon me, but does anyone have that much time?” Tesla’s curious gaze travelled among the three of us, pausing on Sherlock. “And is backwards really the direction in which one wishes to go?”
Sherlock, his eyes brilliant with the intensity of concentration, entered the conversation. “You didn’t answer Holmes’ question,” he said.
“Which question was that?”
“That you know for a fact that time travel is impossible.”
“I would never make such a statement. I would expect to be disapproved in short order.” Tesla looked uncomfortable admitting it. “I am absolutely sure, however, that, if it were possible, it would take the energy of a small star to accomplish.”
“Oh, God,” Sherlock groaned. “Where is cold fusion when you need it?”
“Perhaps,” I said, “as it flows around planets and stars, the river of time becomes trapped in eddies and whirlpools or separates into streams.” It was a fanciful thought. I expected gentle mockery from Holmes, and more than that from Tesla.
Instead, he said, “Not streams of time but streams of reality.”
“What?!” both Holmes and Sherlock ejaculated at once.
“The doctor’s metaphor touches on a theory,” said Tesla, “that at its most fundament level our planet—our universe—our reality, if you will—responds to certain pre-described frequencies of electrical vibrations which exist and relate to each other in bundles of 3, 6 or 9 simultaneously. It is possible that if one of these bundles splits, like a stream going around a rock, that instead of flowing back together on the other side, separate realities flow onward from that point.”
“Are you saying,” said I, appalled, “That the world is nothing but a radio signal.”
“Not at all, I’m saying that it is a mass of charged electrons in a pre-determined relationship with each other. As we all are at our most fundamental level.”
“You’re saying reality is a musical chord.” From the frown on Tesla’s face that was too limited a metaphor, but Holmes looked delighted with it.
“What could split the chord?” Sherlock said.
“Potentially, something as minor as spark of static electricity as long as it was aimed in such a way that it ruptured the frequencies,” said Tesla.
“And from the point of rupture, do these…these new realities carry on at exactly the same rate?”
“No. There would be minor variations that would become magnified over time. At the extreme edges of the complex, there would be extreme differences.”
“I don’t like thinking of myself as a minor variation.” Sherlock narrowed his eyes at Holmes and shook his head. “I am not a minor variation.”
“No, you’re more like a flatted fifth.” Holmes took his pipe out of his mouth and returned Sherlock a full wide smile. “The question is how do we bring you back into harmony with the Lord?”
“Are you listening to yourselves?” I said.
“Actually, I’ve been experimenting with transferring bodies.”
You could have heard a pin drop in the silence after Tesla spoke.
“Isn’t it dangerous?” I finally said.
“One rat more or less can’t make any difference.” Tesla shrugged in a way to chill a physician’s soul “It’s annoying having to handle the creatures, but it doesn’t seem to bother them.”
“Are you saying you can send a rat to another plane of this existence and bring it back alive?” I said.
“Yes, of course.”
“How do you do it?”
“By means of a small harness with a telephone receiver attached. I’ve sent them out for as much as an hour. When they reappear, they’re often none the worse for the experience.”
Sherlock gave a short, sharp whistle. “Are you looking for a human volunteer?”
“Would you?” said Tesla, jumping up. “I was thinking of using a cat next, but it should be perfectly safe.”
“My God!” I said. “Do you hear yourselves?”
No one paid the least attention to me. Tesla and Sherlock were on their feet. They were serious about this insanity. I was on the verge of jumping up in protest, when Holmes put his hand on my knee.
“Holmes, it could be suicide! I can’t…” But, despite my convictions about Sherlock, I felt pity. There was now no doubt in my mind that he had thrown his life away to save a friend’s, and was now throwing himself into the unknown to find him again.
“Do you really want to stop him?”
“No,” I said. “I know too well the pain of losing the one person dearest to you in the world. Let him go.”
I felt the pressure of Holmes’ hand withdraw.
Sherlock been afraid that Watson would try to stop them. Then he’d seen Holmes lean over to place his hand on the doctor’s knee.
The thought passed through Sherlock’s mind. If I could have touched John at the last minute... He saw a few whispered words pass between the two men and Holmes’ hand withdrawn. Watson touched two fingers to his forehead in salute and stood down.
“Fifteen,” Tesla was saying as he threw the harness that he’d had ready and waiting for this moment over Sherlock’s head. “I will give you fifteen minutes only and then bring you back.”
“You said a rat could stay for an hour without harm.”
“If no harm comes to you, we will extend the time. Perhaps the other direction.”
“Other direction?”
“Three frequencies. Remember?”
“What do I do?”
“Stand here on this plate and I will charge the field.” Tesla was running around plugging in the last three cables. “It’s going to get very bright and very loud,” he said, closing the last circuit.
There was a snap and then a crack of thunder. “It is perfectly safe!” Tesla shouted as fingers of blue lightning reached into the space inside the toroid frame, which lit up and turned white. There was a smell Sherlock realized. It was just like fresh laundry. There was a perceptible tug drawing him forward, as well as a feeling that he was being pushed from behind, and…
Sherlock took a step, and then another, but he was moving too quickly and tripped over a kerbstone. He stumbled a few more steps and fell on his face.
Blast and dammit!
He spit out a mouthful of grass, rolled over to catch his breath.
Overhead was a 747 in British Air livery climbing out of Heathrow. It arced across his line of sight screaming thunder and he tracked it until it vanished in the distance. Only when there was nothing but a fading white contrail did he remember…
“Fifteen minutes,” Tesla had said. But if there was a spatial variance, there could be a time discrepancy, as well. He began to tug frantically on the harness buckles.
“Do you want it?” I asked Holmes later that night. I had picked up Sherlock’s wristlet-watch from the nightstand. As the stem doesn’t seem to wind it, I was wondering how long it will run.
“No,” Holmes said. “I would have gotten more use out of the knife and, after all, he did keep your best bowler.”
That was true. The harness had come back empty except for the watch band threaded in the buckle. Holmes and I took it as sign that Sherlock had survived and arrived at his destination. But Tesla had become stressed and had asked us to leave; more I think because our threesome had become a duo than because he’d lost a willing subject for his experiment.
Personally, I was more than happy to go, before it occurred to Holmes that it might be interesting to see what was on the other side of that glowing portal.
“Do you think he’ll be all right?” We were lying in a satisfied tangle of legs and sheets. It makes one reflect.
“Steady on, Watson, steady. Next you’ll be saying you liked him.”
“Not in the slightest, but I am man enough to admit he is at least as brave as you are. I think he deserves to find his John. Although, if he does, he’ll probably pop up behind him and give him a heart attack.”
“You should let that go,” Holmes said, his eyelids were drooping, “And right now you should put that thing away.” I put the watch in the drawer of the nightstand. He pulled me over to rest my head his shoulder and began to sing:
“‘Gin a body meet a body
Altogether free,
How they travel afterwards
We do not always see’.”
I knew. I also knew that although I am free to think and act alone the two of us are bound together like stars in the firmament with ties inseparable.
Sherlock lay in the grass, arms out-stretched, grinning up the blue sky and candy floss clouds. The wind was bringing him river smells, children’s screams, and the tinkling music of a round-a-bout in the park nearby. He was thinking of ice-cream.
“What’s wrong with that man, Mummy?” said a child’s treble.
“Don’t look at him!”
He got up on his elbows and watched the mother drag her child away from the strange man with the funny hat. She hustled her child out the gate and past the newsstand where the day’s headline read Fake Detective Jumps to Death.
That was going to be a problem—you can’t get far these days on £38 and a bit of change—but he did have Mycroft’s Visa safely tucked in his wallet. No doubt he could perform miracles with it.
Finis
29 May 2012
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Date: 2012-06-19 01:20 am (UTC)Do you know that feeling you get from a fic obviously written by someone who really knows what they're talking about? I was ecstatic to feel like that throughout this piece. I enjoyed so much the minute attention to detail, especially with clothes and scientific fact and Victoriana. The care you took writing this is clear and paid off so well.
The connections and differences between the past and present were so interesting and well-drawn with clear expertise.
Holmes and the Visa! That had me rolling.
Watson asking Sherlock why he wanted to quit smoking was just perfect.
Love love love the bit about playing chess with Mycroft - ACD-canon Mycroft is so peculiar, something that doesn't really translate to the BBC series, and this chess bit was such a wonderful nod to that oddity.
Tesla! Tesla being a Holmes fanboy! Tesla helping Sherlock return to the 21st century!
Now we come to the point in a comment where nothing I can say will be more eloquent than what you wrote, so I will quote it back at you:
Oh, God! I’m trapped in an antique shop with a pair of Victorian re-enactors. Love, love, love this deduction!
I love this line of Watson's: “Now you’re going too far. Interesting, that neither of us is going to be alive to call you a liar.” He delivers it so blandly, but it's sharp, isn't it, his disbelief, his suspicion, and even his dislike of Sherlock? That tiny moment is so definitive of Watson's character here, and it's wonderfully, searingly subtle.
“Nothing in my life...” Sherlock’s voice came muffled through the towel, “ever done…so completely gay.”
“I’m glad you enjoyed it,” Holmes said. Amazing! Double Scottish douche! You're killing me over here!
And of course - "I knew. I also knew that although I am free to think and act alone the two of us are bound together like stars in the firmament with ties inseparable.". SIGH.
Love ending on Mycroft's card, love the promise of Sherlock's finding John, love, love, love.
Thank you so much for the time and care that went into this story. I had a ball reading and rereading it, and I'm sure I will again when I revisit it in the future. It's my opinion that there simply isn't enough ACD/BBC collision fic out there, and this was an amazing gift - exactly what I wanted. Thank you!
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Date: 2012-06-20 11:00 am (UTC)Wonderful job. I love it to bits and pieces.
Thank you so much for writing and sharing!
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