Sherlock Holmes & the Silver Cord by M. K. Wiseman

Author:M. K. Wiseman [Wiseman, M. K.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: M. K. Wiseman, author

DOUBLES AND PAIRS

CHAPTER 9

I had managed alone in Baker Street in the three years leading up to the events in Switzerland. Led away by love, Watson had married our former client, Miss Mary Morstan. I did not begrudge him his happiness, though I did mourn, in my own way, his absence. I had learned of her untimely passing at a period when I was unable to return and be of use to my friend, and thus I had mourned anew but for different reasons.

The black band had gone from his hat by the time of my coming home to London. In Watson’s eagerness for change, to rejoin me in my adventures, I neglected to consider the still-raw state of his heart. I could not understand, yes, but Watson was wrong. I loved.

Or, he was right. How might a person like me love? Me, who recoiled from feeling, from thinking about feeling, as though it were poison. Who could stand afar and coldly, impassively, watch John conclude that my death had occurred and do nothing.

My walk began while I was terribly, hotly angry. Angry over Watson’s unbending, judgmental righteousness. Angry with myself for past actions and inactions. Angry for wanting to flee rather than feel. Angry for feeling in spite of fleeing. At length my walk transitioned into work as I abandoned my planned circuit for a path far more useful. My mind required engagement lest I find myself standing outside of the hall for the Theosophic Order of Odic Forces or worse, a church. The likes of Mr. Simmons and Mrs. Jones might be doing their level best to spirit their way into my senses at all hours, but I had other cases on my docket.

A quick bit of observation at the top of Haymarket in service to a smuggling case occupied my attentions, if little of my brains. I amused myself by contemplating the transcendence of the self, imagining that the smoke which billowed out of my mouth and curled up thinly from the end of my cigarette was my astral Other. With a cynical exhalation, I sent my misty double out into the skies to learn what he might.

In the end, I learned nothing while accumulating my tidy pile of ash. Irked, I dug about in my pockets and found that I had one card upon me. This I left for Mr. Turner some six streets over. I still had hopes of producing some definite results through membership in, or at least ready acquaintance with, the Society of Universal Energies. I might banter with Watson on the topic of locked room mysteries, but I truly disliked a case in which every door was barred and closed to me. A challenge was one thing. A pointed exclusion from all useful information quite another. I had leads, were I allowed to follow them. Mr. Frederick King, for example, had proved to be one of the rare individuals to evade my series of indexes. He was as hid from the public eye as was the very organization and beliefs he professed.

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