My revolver, still fully loaded, was warm where my hand grasped it in my coat pocket.
I walked along Baker Street every day for the next two weeks. Holmes was always in his rooms, I could sense that, but he never came out, nor made any attempt to contact me. Once or twice I saw his light burning and his shadow drifting to and fro inside, slightly stooped, as if something weighed heavy on his shoulders.
The only time I saw my brilliant friend in that time, I wished I had not. He was standing at the window staring out into the twilight, and although I stopped and waved, he did not notice me.
He seemed to be looking intently across the rooftops as if searching for some elusive truth. And standing there watching him, I felt sure that his eyes, glittering dark and so, so sad, must have been seeing nothing of this world.
The Adventure of the Arab’s Manuscript
MICHAEL REAVES
Of the many and varied adventures in which I have been privileged to assist my friend and colleague Sherlock Holmes, there are several which I have not made a matter of public record. The majority of these omissions have been for reasons pertaining to the security of the Empire, or to avoid causing scandal and embarrassment to certain parties involved. To a degree, these considerations apply to the following incidents as well. However, after much discussion, Holmes and I have reached the mutual conclusion that it is in the best interest of the Empire—indeed, of mankind in general—that they be documented, despite the considerable personal grief I anticipate recounting them will cause me.
Let me begin, then, on a day in early October, in the Year of Our Lord 1898. The sun was shining, pale and wan in the northern sky. There was a brisk snap to the air, and the leaves were reflecting the variety of nature’s palette. Holmes and I were returning from an interview in Reading. It was not long after the occasion of my second marriage, and I was in a mood of pleasurable anticipation at the thought of rejoining my new wife after dropping Holmes off at the Baker Street residence.
Our route took us near Foubury Gardens, at the sight of which my frame of mind became somewhat darkened by certain memories. They were bittersweet recollections, familiar to me by now, but nonetheless poignant. Only for an instant did they intrude, but it was sufficient to cause me to turn my eyes from the hansom window toward the front, and at this point I became aware of Holmes’s measuring gaze upon me.
“There are some wounds left by war that time cannot heal, sad to say,” he remarked.
Our relationship had endured long enough that his uncanny ability to divine my thoughts no longer had the power to astonish me, although I would never come to regard it as pedestrian. “As always, your words strike home,” I replied. “How did you know my mind was dwelling on my service in Afghanistan?”
My friend waved his fingers in a disparaging gesture. “Your behavior was embarrassingly easy to read. As we passed Foubury Gardens I saw you gaze upon the statue of the Maiwand Lion, which stands as a monument to the Berkshire Regiment massacre in that remote Afghan village in 1880. Your brow darkened, your fingers moved slightly toward the shoulder where you sustained your wound, and your posture straightened to that of a more military bearing—all doubtlessly without any conscious volition on your part. Even someone far less observant of human behavior than I would have had no trouble ascertaining your thoughts—provided they knew, as I do, of your past military service.”
I gave what I hoped was a noncommittal nod, and after a moment Holmes returned his interest to the scenery of the passing streets. I felt relieved. There are certain things which, despite all his perspicacity, my friend has not deduced about me, and I felt no shame or lack of friendship was implied by my desiring it to remain that way. There are secrets one cannot share with even the closest of friends. Besides, I told myself comfortably, it was long ago in another land; save for the occasional nostalgic twinge, I had wholly put it behind me. Not even Holmes, after all, could intuit an episode out of the past without some form of suggestive evidence.
All of this being said by my inner self to great confidence and satisfaction, I can now only imagine the irony with which my readers must greet this next scene. For when we returned to Holmes’s flat at 221B Baker Street, Mrs. Hudson informed him that a young woman awaited within. She presented Holmes with the lady’s card. Holmes glanced at it and handed it to me. The print on the pasteboard rectangle was small and cursive, and I was still trying to squint it into focus as I followed him through the door.
I recognized her immediately, of course. It was as if the twenty intervening years had passed in the space of a heartbeat. She was wearing a twill jacket and walking skirt now instead of the lambskin khalat in which I had last seen her. There were touches of gray in what had been lustrous black hair, and wrinkles—a legacy of the unforgiving tropical sun as much as years—at the corners of her eyes and mouth. But these did not speak of age so much as of life—the harsh and spartan life of the Afghan hill people.
“Miriam,” I said. I was dimly aware of Holmes standing somewhat to one side and watching us both, but that knowledge didn’t matter. All that mattered was the shock and the almost painful pleasure of seeing her there. I took a step toward her, as she did toward me, and then we simultaneously remembered that we had an audience, and a very curious one. I glanced at Holmes and coughed into my fist.
“My apologies, Holmes,” I said. “It’s just that—that is, she and I—”
“I believe not even Lestrade could fail to notice evidence of a past association between you two,” Holmes said dryly. He gave Miriam a slight bow. “Sherlock Holmes, at your service, Miss Miriam Shah.”
“I am most gratified to meet you, Mr. Holmes,” she replied. Her voice was as strong and melodic as I remembered it. She turned somewhat, and I noticed that she was wearing a single piece of jewelry—an amulet, carved from lapus lazuli into the shape of an open hand, with an eye in the middle of the palm. Even the shock of seeing her again was not strong enough to keep me from silently remarking its uniqueness.
I could not resist speaking, propriety be damned. “Miriam,” I said, “how do you come to be here? It is so wonderful to see you again—”
“And you, John,” she replied. “I wish I could say that naught but the desire to visit you after all these years has propelled me on this long journey. Unfortunately, that is not the truth.”
“Most interesting,” Holmes said. “Pray be seated, Miss Shah. I am quite curious to know why a chieftain’s daughter has journeyed all the way from the hill regions of northern Afghanistan—specifically, I believe, the vicinity of Mundabad—to see me, especially at the possibility of mortal danger to her soul.”
Miriam’s expression of surprise was, of course, little different from those I had seen on the scores of other clients who had found their way to Baker Street over the past decade. “You do not fall short of your reputation, Mr. Holmes,” she said. “How did you intuit these facts?”
Holmes raised an eyebrow. “My dear lady, I do not ‘intuit.’ I deduce. I extrapolate. In your case, the process was simple. Your accent alone is sufficient to determine your nationality. In addition, you have until recently been wearing the traditional veil of the Moslem woman, which covers the lower half of the face. The upper half is slightly, but noticeably, more tanned. On the whole, Afghan hill women toil at a greater and harder variety of tasks than those who dwell in the country’s more metropolitan areas. This keeps them exposed to the desert sun longer. There are lines of paler skin on your arms and fingers as well, indicating that you are accustomed to wearing jewelry—a practice which few save the daughters and wives of tribal leaders can afford to do. The obvious fact that you know my friend and colleague places you in the Mundabad region. Finally, the single piece of jewelry you have retained”—he gestured at the amulet nestled in the hollow of her throat—“is, I believe, a talisman known as a hamsa, intended to ward off evil.”