Foreword
In my time, like so many others, I have faced losses. As a young man, I lost my father to the evils of drink, and subsequently my mother as well, when her heart was broken because of him. My brother fell to the same demons, but fortunately I avoided that trap. I believed that my own destiny was to serve as a physician in the British Army, only to be grievously and surprisingly wounded and sent home, told that what I had to offer was no longer required.
Later, I carried the burden of the supposed loss of my friend, Sherlock Holmes, when he was believed to have been killed by the villainous Professor Moriarty back in ‘91. That, along with the death a couple of years later of my beloved wife, Mary, nearly broke me. Like the despair that I felt following my battle wounds in 1880, I think that I might well have eased slowly toward an early grave during that period, having lost both my wife and closest friend, if not for the reappearance of Holmes in 1894, whereupon subsequent involvement with his work saved me, as it had done before in 1881.
Many people are aware of how I first met Mary, occurring as it did during one of Holmes’s investigations that I later worked up into a published form, and how she and I later married. A year after that story had appeared publicly, I continued those tentative efforts as a writer by preparing a quantity of Holmes’s other adventures for the public, publishing them in a newly-formed and popular periodical. Soon I was faced with a vexatious dilemma, as I realized that quite a few of those events that I had shared with Holmes had taken place before my time with Mary, during my first marriage.
Many people are not aware of that first marriage. I was initially hesitant to write up those many cases that occurred then, referring as they occasionally do to my earlier wife, Constance. I did not want to bring any pain to Mary by reliving earlier days too often. However, it was through the urging of my literary agent, Conan Doyle (now Sir Arthur), that I was – shamefully, I see in hindsight – encouraged to gloss over the very fact of Constance’s existence. Doyle rationalized at the time that the narratives could be written in such a way that the casual reader would not realize that the marriage that I referred to in some of those earlier tales was not to Mary, and I went along with his plan.
Only now, many years later, do I realize that – while I did save Mary some initial melancholy because of reminders about my earlier wedded condition – I also did a grave disservice to Constance, whom I had also loved and lost far too quickly.
Recently, Holmes tried his hand at writing and publishing his own account of one of his past adventures, taking place not long after the turn of the century and carried out without my participation. He admitted how difficult he found writing it, after years of criticizing my own efforts. In that particular narrative, which took place back in ’03 and concerned the circumstances relating to an unfortunate veteran of the Second Boer War, Holmes happened to mention that, at the time of that case, I had deserted him for a wife, referring to it as “the only selfish action which I can recall in our association.” It is true that Holmes and my third wife did not mix well, at least at first, but there should be no implication or understanding that they were enemies. Yet, it was upon reading this comment of my friend’s that my mind was set on a reminiscent path, leading from my third wife, back to the other two.
Holmes and Mary were always friends, although he was admittedly at a loss when she and I married in 1889. It was during this time that certain bad habits threatened to overtake him, and my departure from Baker Street only seemed to exacerbate the stress that he faced. But Mary always thought of him as the brother that she never had, and I know that he felt the same affection as toward a sister for her. Through both our efforts, Mary and I were able to wean him of his addiction, if only for a time, although it was only several years later that he was able to finish the effort completely on his own.
With Constance, my first wife, Holmes had a somewhat different relationship. I had met her during a period when I was not living in Baker Street, so he only became aware of her rather after the fact. Circumstances sadly kept them from having much regular contact with one another during my marriage, but my friend was always supportive throughout those trying months as her condition worsened, and even though he did not know her as he would come to know Mary, he never failed me, proving yet again that he was more of a brother to me than that of my own blood.
As I recently brooded upon those long-ago days, I was reminded by the current events of one of Holmes’s long-ago investigations that took place at approximately the same time that my marriage to Constance came to a close. Those were dark days for me, but as usual, the distraction of participating in Holmes’s adventures served as the cure for my inner illness.
As I grow older, and attempt to put my papers in some semblance of order, I know that I must not leave this tale untold. Even now, certain aspects and identities must be disguised. And forgive me, reader, if I find that Holmes’s monumental efforts cannot be untwisted from the personal concerns that were taking place at the same time in my own life. I would have told this, one of Holmes’s most important investigations, without involving my own pain if I could have found a way. And yet, perhaps telling it all as it happened will help to paint a truer picture than if I selectively and subjectively withdrew a thread here and there from the greater tapestry.
As always, I hope that this, like all of my efforts, serves in some additional way to illuminate my friend, Sherlock Holmes.
Dr. John H. Watson
4 June, 1927
“[L]ife is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent. We would not dare to conceive the things which are really mere commonplaces of existence. If we could fly out of that window hand in hand, hover over this great city, gently remove the roofs, and peep in at the queer things which are going on, the strange coincidences, the plannings, the cross-purposes, the wonderful chains of events, working through generations, and leading to the most outrè results, it would make all fiction with its conventionalities and foreseen conclusions most stale and unprofitable.”
– Sherlock Holmes 18 October, 1887
Chapter I
An Explosive Encounter
The sound of gunshots meant that something had gone very wrong indeed.
I strained to hear whether my name was really being called, as I suddenly thought, or if it was some trick of the fog, twisting the distant echoes and moving shouts into an illusion that resembled actual words. Cries grew both louder and softer, and running footsteps went by in the street, on the other side of the building from where I was concealed, but never approached my hiding spot. I involuntarily flinched when there was a muffled explosion, but quickly reasoned that it posed no danger to me. Then something, perhaps a piece of wood thrown by the blast, slammed into the wall not two feet from where I crouched in darkness.
There was an escalating panic to some of the voices that I could now hear more clearly, and I was reminded of the pleading I had heard on long-ago battlefields, when men alternately begged for their friends, their mothers, or for me, the doctor. The words blurred then in a different way than how I heard them now. Those cries were continually drowned out by the artillery fire and ricochets that spun around my head like bees from an overturned hive.
But I was long years and thousands of miles from that, my last battlefield on the plains of Maiwand. Instead, here in this dark London night, away from the tumult occurring in the next block, I could not be certain about any of the voices that I was hearing. My friend, Sherlock Holmes, had instructed me to maintain my position here, no matter what happened. But he had also been clear that the disruption of the gang’s activities would be accomplished peacefully, without violence. Something had gone very wrong indeed.
“Baron Meade is a coward at heart, Watson,” Holmes had said confidently as we approached the rendezvous in a hansom cab, not a quarter-of-an-hour before. “The surprise will be enough to force him to surrender.” It was hard to believe that things could have turned so suddenly in such a small amount of time.
We had abandoned the cab a couple of blocks away from the nondescript house off the Brixton Road. Inspector Lanner and his men were waiting in the agreed-upon spot, and it was to be a simple matter of surrounding the building and making our way inside. I knew that the fog was an unexpected complication, but Holmes didn’t seem to mind. However, he did surprise me when he suddenly insisted that I take a spot behind the narrow old house, in the mews that opened off the alley beside it, running on through to the next street. I had thought to go inside with the rest, but he gave me to understand that possibly he was not as confident as he had first appeared.
“Stay alert, Watson,” he had said as he plucked my sleeve. “And don’t leave your post, whatever happens.”
Then he and the others disappeared into the murk. I, along with a young constable assigned to accompany me, found our assigned spot. We reached a darker region of shadows away from the dim gaslight reflecting out of the adjacent streets, about thirty feet behind the building in question. Finding a hiding place, we settled in to wait. I could hear my companion’s breathing, ragged and nervous, and I smiled a bit at my apparent calm. Almost immediately, however, I heard the police whistles and the banging of doors. And then the gunshots began, followed by the unmistakable explosion, and I realized that my breathing had become as that of the young policeman.
Because of the dampening effect of the fog, I couldn’t tell from which direction the shots came, but common sense indicated that since they were occurring simultaneously with the raid on the Baron’s heinous operation, there must certainly be a connection. I struggled to understand what must have happened.
The gunfire stopped. It had never been close enough to leave me with a ringing in my ears, so I immediately began to hear the other sounds that I might have missed otherwise. Dogs barking, police whistles, more running footsteps. It was all happening on the next street over, while I was still crouched here in the alley behind the house, wondering if I should break my orders and join the fray. Even now, after the battle appeared to be over, I felt the need to step across and see if my assistance as a doctor was required, should the confrontation have produced a casualty or two.
I heard a noise and saw my companion, the constable, rise from his hiding place and trot away without a word or backward glance down the alley toward the front street. I had almost talked myself into stepping out of my own carefully chosen shadow when a curious thing happened.
The back of the house that had been the focus of our attention was a blank-faced thing, looming in the blackness, its high edges a penumbra in the gaslight haloing it from the street beyond. As my eyes had adjusted, I had seen the outline of the sole door, reached by a short flight of wooden steps, and the four shuttered windows looking out toward the back alley. But there had been no indication of the other door, a secret door, in the wall along the ground until I glimpsed a deeper darkness begin to widen near the building’s foundation.
It opened ever so slowly, at first no more than a thin vertical bar of deeper Stygian night, infinitesimally emptier than its surroundings. Initially I thought that my eyes were seeing an illusion. I shifted my gaze to one side of the crack, knowing that peripheral vision is stronger in the absence of light. I found that I was holding my breath, threatening to cause spots to appear in my vision before me, and I released it slowly, forcing myself to breathe in even regularity. I was not mistaken – the crack had widened in a place where I had been certain that no door existed.
Perhaps in daylight it would have been more obvious with an extensive examination. Possibly Holmes had spotted it earlier, and this was why he placed me here. Still, an explanation beforehand as to what to expect would have been useful. But none of that mattered now, as I realized it was only I who stood between whomever was slipping away and his freedom. And I was quite certain as to whom that man was.
I don’t know how wide the hidden door was built to open, but after an aperture of only a foot or so was achieved, an arm and shoulder began to slip through. This was quickly followed by the rest of the man as he ducked and wiggled down to pass his head. I could see that the secret door was little more than four feet in height, a fact that had been hidden until then due to the odd lack of perspective in the lightless alley. The man was wearing a dark coat and had a cap pulled low on his head. I couldn’t identify him, but I knew that it was certainly he who had visited our rooms that morning, in a futile attempt to decoy Holmes in the wrong direction.
The man paused to pull the door shut, no doubt to prevent any indication from showing inside how he had made his escape, thus keeping pursuers from getting on his trail any sooner than necessary. There was a small click, barely heard in the muffled alley, as he snicked the door shut. Then he stood to his full height and turned my way.
He pulled up short when he saw me standing there, having emerged from my makeshift hunting blind. Holding my faithful service revolver, I said unnecessarily, and feeling slightly foolish, “Stop.”
With my left hand, I patted my coat for a moment, before cursing silently to myself as I realized that I had forgotten my police whistle. Possibly I was out of the habit, or more likely the events of recent weeks had distracted me, in spite of Holmes’s efforts to help acclimate me to my recent loss. Regardless of all that, I was alone with a desperate criminal, and had to find some way to herd him down the alley toward the street and the authorities.
“Holmes!” I called, although it sounded weak and uselessly muffled in the mist. “Holmes!” Then, without waiting for an answer, I gestured with the pistol toward the passage that led around the side of the house and toward the sounds of the police. “That way,” I said, my voice softer now, feeling and sounding unpleasant to me.
He turned, but I should have noticed that there was no sign of defeat about him. It was too easy, and it was my own fault for not spotting it. He had only gone four or five hesitant steps as I carelessly closed the distance between us when he seemed to pivot on one foot, and before I knew it, he was slamming into my left side, forcing the gun in my right hand in the opposite direction. A chop across my forearm, and it spun away into the darkness.
I think that was all he planned to do. He certainly didn’t want to stay and fight me. Rather, he only wished to run like a rabbit into the warren of streets stretching away to the south. But I instinctively reached out and grabbed his coat, twisting the fabric around with a grip that surprised me. He tried to shrug out of it, but it was buttoned, and the angle with which I held the fabric didn’t give his arms the freedom of movement to work free.
He lurched from side to side, making frustrated mutterings as he attempted to weaken my hold. I was able to right myself somewhat, and – finding that I had both of my feet solidly on the ground – lifted one of them to kick his legs out from under him. He fell heavily with a grunt, pulling me down with him, my fingers still entwined in the cloth. For no special reason, I noticed that it was wool, with a wide herringbone pattern that was visible even in the dark, though just as lighter and darker shades of gray and black.
My knee hit a cobblestone as I landed, bringing tears to my eyes and focusing my thoughts intently on the struggle. The man was attempting to get his arms up to break my grip. Once, twice, he chopped, and one of his arms had gotten between my own as he attempted to reach my face. His fingers were scrabbling about on my chin, working toward my eyes, when I propped and centered myself on the injured knee. With a gasp from my sharp and renewed pain, I pulled up my other leg abruptly, slamming that knee into my opponent. And then, as he twisted beneath me, again.
With a groan, his hands immediately dropped away from their struggles, but he didn’t stop trying to get away, twisting weakly from side to side. He began to curse under his breath, wheezing specific words and phrases of the vilest sort. And then he looked up, our eyes locked, and he spat at me.
I think of myself as several things. I am a doctor. I was a soldier. And for little more than a fortnight now, I had been a widower. The feelings that had remained constrained within me since my recent loss, pushed down with medical detachment and military discipline, found their own secret door just then. A thin black crack in an obscure part of my own dark foundation was all that was needed.
And then I went mad.
If Holmes and Inspector Lanner hadn’t arrived then, I’m not sure what else would have happened. As it was, I was prevented from causing any permanent harm.
Even as I heard the footsteps running toward us from the front of the old house, I released my right hand from its twisted grip in the man’s coat and immediately refolded it into a fist. “That is enough of you,” I muttered, and he looked up at me with suddenly widened and fearful eyes, seeing in my expression just what he had awakened, if only for an instant. It was only Holmes’s cry of “Watson!” that prevented me from punching the villain’s head into the cobbles beneath it, possibly with enough force to fracture his skull and kill him. If I had known then what was to come in the days ahead, perhaps I would have followed through. Instead, I pulled my force at the very last instant, simply hitting him on the intersection of his mandible with his skull. His head whipped around, and the resulting motion, reacting on that delicate mass of brain tissue within, dropped him instantly into a state of unconsciousness.
Releasing my left hand from his coat allowed his now-tensionless upper body to sag to the ground. I painfully rocked back on my knees and pushed myself up to a standing position. Holmes and Lanner were there by then, alternately looking between the unconscious man on the ground and at me. I didn’t need to examine my opponent to know from his regular breathing that he was all right and would be awake soon. I had recognized him for certain at the last minute, just before I hit him. “It’s Baron Meade,” I said, my voice sounding rougher and more winded than I would have liked. “He came out the back.” I swallowed. “There was a secret door.”
Holmes glanced sharply toward the building, but then back to me as several constables entered our immediate vicinity. Lanner directed them to carry the unconscious man toward the street. “My apologies, Watson,” said Holmes quietly, as the others left us. “I should have made sure that the constable assigned to watch with you back here knew to stay put where he was placed. I’m not surprised that you wouldn’t let anything past you, but I had no idea how desperate things might become.”
“The gunshots? The explosion? Was anyone injured?”
“No. One of the Baron’s men panicked and began to fire when we stormed the house. He was subdued quickly, but as you can imagine, the shots escalated the business considerably. And then . . . .” He paused and rubbed his face with uncharacteristic worry, “Then one of the men tried to ignite a barrel of fuel. Inexplicably, there was a flash and bang, but it didn’t set off the cache stacked around it.” He shook his head. “Thank God. The man who tried to kill us all, however, didn’t survive. The rest were much more fortunate.”
Holmes started to turn away, but I stopped him as I had a moment of clarity. “You sent me back here because you sensed there might be danger up front. You were diverting me out of the way.” I gestured toward the house. “You didn’t know there was a secret door. You thought no one would come this way.” It was a statement, not a question.
He at least had the decency to look embarrassed. “Nonsense,” he said, gesturing toward the dark building. “We knew from my reconnaissance earlier today that there was a rear door, and someone had to watch it. The fact that the constable left before the Baron appeared proves that the police could not be trusted to do the job.”
“You forget, Holmes. You told me you spiked their guns earlier today when you examined the house by fixing the known rear door so that it couldn’t be opened from within. The same for the windows. You believed that no one would be able to escape by this route. You placed me here to keep me out of the action.”
“Watson – ”
“I do not need any protection,” I said, a trace of bitterness in my voice, reawakening the anger that had been in me for weeks. Striking Baron Meade had not drained it away.
“Watson, it has been less than a month since . . . .”
“Holmes, thank you for what you tried to do, but do not do it again.”
He was silent for a few seconds, and then said with a nod, “I apologize, my friend. It is fortunate that you were here after all. My efforts to seal the place up appear to have been circumvented, as the rat had a different escape route.”
“Not at all,” I said, willing to let it go for now. I looked around for a moment, retrieved my revolver, and then took a step toward the house. “Let’s see this secret door.” I led him to the foundation of the building and, lighting a match, showed him the line demarking the edges.
“Blast!” said Holmes. “If only I’d had time to fully explore the house earlier today, I would have seen this. But the Baron’s untimely return mean that I had to get out without finishing the job.”
I pushed on the hidden opening, but it refused to yield. However, a kick snapped the weak catch and the passage was visible before us. We found ourselves in the basement of the house. Holmes examined the door from the inside, lamenting again that he hadn’t had the time to make further explorations during the day when he had briefly invaded the building while it was unoccupied. We found our way to the stairs and quickly went up to where the last of Baron Meade’s men were being led out in handcuffs. In the corner was a body, now covered by newspapers, except for the stump of an arm that was revealed flung out beside it in an already congealing pool of blood.
The smell inside the house burned my eyes, matching how Holmes had earlier described it. Lanner was standing nearby alongside a series of many stacked barrels and boxes, his arms akimbo. Hearing our footsteps, he turned. “Are you sure it’s safe like this?” he asked.
“Reasonably,” replied Holmes, “although we should move it out as soon as possible, separating the materials in the different containers from each other. Where are the explosives men from the Special Branch?”
“I’ve sent for them now. They were waiting one street over.” He lifted one of the lids, and then quickly replaced it when the strong ammonia smell washed over us. “What unholy mess is this?”
“A compound of nitrogen-based materials – fertilizers, actually. When combined with these other barrels of coal oil, they can form an incredibly powerful explosive agent.”
“And the crates of machine parts? Screws, and the like?”
“Shrapnel.”
“And he intended to blow up Parliament?”
“Possibly. Or Scotland Yard, or perhaps some other target. With the amount of these materials here, all mixed together and ignited, the blast would have been catastrophic. This is not a puny bomb assembled by your typical radical dynamitard, Lanner, to be left in haste by a wall of the Yard or at the base of Nelson’s Column. Baron Meade is more ambitious than that, and combined with his superior knowledge and malignant motivation, much more dangerous as well.”
“And tell me again, Mr. Holmes, how you got on to him?”
“The Baron’s shoes didn’t fit correctly,” he said, turning away. Lanner glanced toward me in frustration, but with his mouth tight, as if he didn’t trust whatever words might come spilling out.
I moved to the stack of materials and looked into a few of the crates. There were nails, and door hinges, and countless other metallic objects. When combined with the explosive force of the nitrogen compounds and the fuel oil, the deadly destruction would have been incomprehensible.
Through the open front door, we could hear the arrival of the heavy dray wagons, brought to evacuate the potential explosives from our presence. Holmes made sure that the different materials were kept separate and loaded onto their own individual wagons.
I stood to one side on the street and watched the progress of the silent and efficient men. I was wool-gathering in the aftermath of the affair, and unaware at first when the Baron was led nearby, in the grasp of two constables, toward a nearby Maria. I only came back to myself when one of the constables muttered in anger as the prisoner forced himself to a stop.
“Dr. Watson,” he called with menace.
I turned his way. Even in the gaslight I could see a bruise forming on his jaw beneath his left ear.
“I won’t forget this,” he hissed. “Remember, sir – you have brought this on yourself.”
My eyes narrowed. “Take him away,” I said in a low voice, feeling how easy it would have been to reopen that hidden door within myself, seeking the satisfaction of bringing the butt of my gun down on his head.
Holmes joined me, watching the disgraced nobleman being placed in the vehicle while stating that our work was finished for the night. We walked out to the Brixton Road, and turned toward Camberwell New Road, seeking any sign of a cab.
“Lanner would have arranged for transportation,” I said.
“Perhaps. However, I believe that he would like to carry on from here without us.”
The fog seemed to thicken as we incrementally approached the river. “Why here?” I asked. “Why did he not find a house in which to store the materials closer to his targets?”
“This location is out of the way without really being that far from important targets. Up the Brixton Road, pass near the Oval, and so on across the Vauxhall Bridge. Then he would have been just a few minutes from everything. Who would question a few wagons carrying barrels and boxes openly through the city streets? Once in place, he might even have set off this hellfire in Trafalgar Square at mid-day. Imagine the carnage he could have caused.”
“I would prefer not to.” I could not force myself to think of it. “All because of the loss of a loved one,” I said softly. “He blames the Crown for the death of his son.”
“Not just the Crown,” said Holmes. “The entire British people who would tolerate a system that, in his opinion, let his son die.” We walked on in silence for a few more minutes, before Holmes added, “Grief can cause a man to do strange things.”
He was not subtle. “Such as a man giving way to the urge to beat another into a pulp?” I asked. When he didn’t answer, I said, “I only hit him the once, you know.”
“That is true.” Then, “That was enough.”
When he didn’t speak again, I felt the urge to fill the silence. “I admit the motivation was there to do further damage.” I paused. “I’m glad that you and Lanner arrived when you did. Perhaps . . . I’m not ready yet to be accompanying you on these investigations.”
“Nonsense!” Holmes cried, coming to a stop and facing me, startling me with his loud call in the oppressive fog. “Work is the best antidote, my friend!” And he clapped me on the shoulder, repeating in a softer tone, “Nonsense. I will not tolerate it.” Then, louder, “Look!” He pointed into the distance. “Finally, a cab.”
In spite of our adventures, we actually returned to Baker Street at a comparatively early hour. Mrs. Hudson offered to provide us with some refreshments, but instead we deemed that whisky before the warm fire was exactly what the doctor ordered – with me serving as the doctor. There was no conversation, only companionable silence, and eventually I rose and made my way upstairs to my room, leaving Holmes staring pensively into the flames.
I slept far deeper than I would have anticipated, and awoke rather early, refreshed and surprisingly care-free. My mood was not even spoiled by the fact that rains had moved in, threatening to turn to ice as the temperature experienced a bitter January drop. Holmes, expecting few clients that day, started to shuffle through the mounds and stacks of papers that he was periodically forced to address, and I settled myself before the fire, painfully wincing whenever I was forced to move my sore knee.
And so Inspector Lanner found us when he made his way to Baker Street later that morning, to inform us that Baron James Osborne Russell Meade, former politician and philanthropist turned criminal, had escaped from custody late the previous night, not long after his arrest.
