The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories Part II by David Marcum

Author:David Marcum
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Sherlock Holmes, mystery, crime, british crime, sherlock holmes novels, sherlock holmes fiction, sherlock holmes short fiction, sherlock holmes collections
ISBN: 9781780928302
Publisher: Andrews UK
Published: 2015-10-04T16:00:00+00:00

The Adventure of the Willow Basket

by Lyndsay Faye

“An artisan of considerable artistic skill,” Sherlock Holmes answered in reply to my latest challenge, pulling a thin cigarette from his case. “A glass-blower to be specific, although I nearly fell into the rash error of supposing him a professional musician. Shocking, the way the mind slips into such appalling laxity after a full meal - I’ll be forced to fast entirely tomorrow in case my wits should happen to be called upon.”

Staring, I marvelled at the man before me, who scowled at his now-exhausted supply.

“Dear me, I shall have to stop for tobacco on our - “

“No, I won’t have it!” I lightly slapped the white linen tablecloth between us, causing our whiskys to shiver with a sympathetic happy thrill. “Eight in a row is quite too many, Holmes! Even you cannot pretend to clairvoyance.”

“You wound me, my boy.” He lit the cigarette, suppressing an impish expression. “I have never pretended to clairvoyance in my life, though I have placed eleven such repellent creatures in the dock for swindling the credible out of their hard-earned savings. One, a Mr. Erasmus Drake, defrauded over a dozen widows using only a mirror, a pennywhistle, and a cunning preparation of coloured Chinese gunpowder. He won’t be free to roam the streets for another three years, come to think of it.”

“Well, well, never mind clairvoyance then, but you have just identified the professions of eight individuals at a single glance! I shall have to commence approaching complete strangers and demanding they give us a full report of their lives and habits in order to corroborate your claims.”

“My dear fellow, surely you know by now that you needn’t trouble yourself.”

“All right - how do you know he is a glass-blower?”

The detective’s eyes glinted as brightly as the silver case which he returned to his inner coat pocket. We sat at our preferred table in the front of Simpson’s, before the ground-glass windows where we so often watched the passersby; but despite the glow bestowed upon London minutes before by her army of gas-lighters, the illumination beyond the wavering panes no longer sufficed for even my friend’s keen gaze to pick out those details by which he had built his reputation, and thus we had shifted in our seats to examine the restaurant patrons instead. Holmes’s turbot and my leg of mutton had long since been whisked away following our early repast, and we sat in a small pool of quiet amidst the throng of hungry journalists and eager young chess players, their sights fixed upon sliced beef in the dining room or cigars and chequered boards up the familiar staircase. There seemed not a man among them my friend could not pin with the exactitude of a lepidopterist with a butterfly; and, while his remarkable faculty always gives me as much pleasure as it does him, on that evening we reposed with the more luxurious complacency of two intimate companions who had nothing more pressing to do than to order another set of whiskys.

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