The Papers of Sherlock Holmes Volume I by David Marcum

Author:David Marcum
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Sherlock Holmes, mystery, crime, british crime, sherlock holmes short fiction
ISBN: 9781780924281
Publisher: Andrews UK Limited 2013
Published: 2013-07-26T00:00:00+00:00

The Adventure of the Second Chance

“I am afraid, Watson, that I shall have to go,” said Mr. Sherlock Holmes.

I glanced up from my breakfast, raising my eyebrows. Swallowing my bite of egg, I managed to ask, “Go? Where to?”

“To Dartmoor. To King’s Pyland.”

And so later that morning, I found myself accompanying Holmes as we crossed the platform at Paddington toward our train, which was unexpectedly running a few minutes late. This delay, while unusual, was no less strange than the fact that Holmes and I were slightly early. Holmes had the irritating habit of arriving for trains at the very last second. This trait was balanced, however, by his uncanny ability never to arrive too late.

Holmes stopped to buy a stack of the latest papers. I knew that he would want to read about the disappearance of Silver Blaze and the death of the famous racehorse’s trainer, John Straker. As he rejoined me, I was consulting my watch.

“We appear to have a few minutes,” he said. “I shall be watching the speed of the train during our journey. I am curious as to whether the driver will be able to make up the delay en route.”

As we began to move toward our carriage, a man sidled up to us and quietly whispered Holmes’s name. We paused, but the man kept moving, saying out of the corner of his mouth, “Keep walking with me.”

Without any awkwardness, Holmes resumed walking. I was less adept, but managed to lurch into motion again, hoping that my pause had not been noticed.

The man led us to the side of the platform, behind a luggage cart, piled over our head with trunks and bags. Once out of sight, the man turned to us. “Do you know who I am, Mr. Holmes?”

Holmes adjusted the ear-flapped traveling cap he often wore, pushing the brim slightly higher on his forehead, allowing more light to reach his eyes. “You are Mr. Tom Morgan,” he said. The man nodded and smiled slightly. The smile went away when Holmes continued, “Tom Morgan, Watson, is what is known as a runner, working in the employee of the infamous Professor Moriarty. Tom here is somewhat more respectable than some of the Professor’s creatures, especially the ones he recruits from the East End, and Wapping and Limehouse. Tom lives somewhere near here, don’t you, Tom? You and your family, I believe. This allows Tom to have a higher level of respectability than some of the Professor’s tools, and thus Tom is able to move unmolested in a different level of society.”

Morgan showed a level of rising irritation as Holmes spoke of him and his history. However, he consciously made an effort to control himself, and by the time Holmes finished speaking, he had returned to the same lack of emotion shown when he first spoke to us.

“That’s right, Mr. Holmes, I work for the Professor.” His voice lowered by the end of the sentence, speaking Moriarty’s title in almost a whispered, fearful reverence. “It’s no secret that you have been on to us for a long time.

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