‘Had Darwin spent more time in Rotherhithe or around Tower Hill,’ Holmes continued, ‘instead of years aboard the Beagle, he might have made a purchase of both tortoises and finches from the Galapagos Islands at the London docks and reasoned the mutability of species within the hour, thus saving himself a lengthy voyage and a year or more of mal-de-mer.’
‘As you say, Holmes.’
My companion signalled he was indeed in conversational mood.
‘Watson, I shall regret the passing of the barquentine. Each time I am in the upper docks there are fewer of them. They are the most beautiful of ships, possessed of the most aerial and graceful of rigs, the foremast with its transverse spars gives such breadth and balance, steadying the main and mizen poles. Such sheer, like the waist of a lissom woman, finely poised, so sure of herself in profile.’
I duly jotted down the detail of the barquentine on the note-book beside my plate, adding a small sketch.
‘Holmes,’ I said, pointing to The Times left open at the astronomy section, ‘is it not fascinating to know that on August 27, AD 2003, Mars will be at its closest to our planet for 60,000 years? Percival Lowell thinks Man will by then get to our sister planet and shake hands with the builders of the Martian canals.’
Alas, I was robbed for ever of one of Holmes’ pungent comments by our landlady Mrs. Hudson coming in to remove the breakfast plates, clearing away the remnants - ‘crocodile left-overs’ as she cheerily called them - to feed an alley cat called Marmaduke, the best mouser in Baker Street, she told us repeatedly in an admiring tone. On this day, after Mrs. Hudson departed with the last of the breakfast plates, Holmes left the room, returning in a green velvet smoking jacket.
‘Watson,’ he commanded. ‘I have a new organic chemical investigation in train. Before I settle in, please be kind enough to approach the window - but with caution, I beg of you.’
My curiosity aroused, I went to the window and bent below the half-drawn blinds, peering out through the copious lengths of Mrs. Hudson’s best lace.
‘What am I to look at, Holmes? Is some crime of mysterious character taking place right before me?’ I enquired light-heartedly.
‘Anything odd, my dear fellow? Do you see anything odd?’
I stared down at the bustling street. A diligence pulled by a team of Boulonnais mares, destination Glasgow and ports to the Western Isles, was commencing its long journey. Ragged little Street Arabs known to Holmes and me as the Baker Street Irregulars were playing with home-made hoops along the paving, dropping them to run to the diligence’s sides, begging for a coin or fruit from well-dressed passengers tucked under cream-coloured linen dust sheets, cheerily mocking them with offers of farthing buns until the driver’s whip made them fall away.
‘Nothing odd catches my attention, Holmes, no,’ I replied.
‘Is there a man with amber eyes - a little above the middling height, sited where he can observe our entryway?’
‘Why yes, there is such a fellow but from where he stands he can watch a dozen doorways if need be. Why should it be ours?’
‘Please describe him further, Watson. I avoided glancing at him for too long on my return this morning.’
‘Collarless cotton shirt, corduroy trousers and a long-sleeved waistcoat reaching down almost to his knees, if that’s the man you mean.’
‘And selling hares?’
‘Indeed. He has one in each hand.’
‘And a brightly-coloured handkerchief around the neck?’
‘He does wear such a kerchief, Holmes, yes.’
‘As to his hat, remind me from your vantage point, does he wear a billy-cock or bowler?’
‘A bowler, Holmes. What does such clothing tell you?’
‘That the collarless cotton shirt, corduroy trousers and a long-sleeved waistcoat are not the daily accoutrements of a denizen of Baker Street. That should have caught your eye at once. It is obvious their owner is up fresh from the countryside.’
‘And the kerchief...?’
‘Emphatically a common labourer. It protects the neck from sunburn in the open field at harvest time or against the winter cold, just as you wrap your own throat with a cravat.’
‘And you conclude what from the fact he wears a bowler?’
‘...that he works on a great estate. A bowler does not start its life in a peasant cottage. Its youth is spent on a well-to-do head.’
I stared down at the watchful man. ‘Holmes, what of it? He wears the clothing of a country labourer, possibly from a great estate - why not? What of importance do you read into his presence - he is here to sell his hares.’
‘Then answer one more question and I shall release you from your vigil - does his coat still bulge on either side?’
‘It does, Holmes, yes, but only from further hares stuffed into a pair of inside pockets, and still alive. I can see them wriggle.’
‘Indeed,’ my companion replied, reaching for a pipe. ‘Those same pockets were a-wriggle when I saw him at sun-up today, fixed to that same spot as by the strongest glue, yet when a passing woman approached him to buy his wares, he waved her on. Why so?’
‘And you conclude...?’
‘As should you. The hares are a guise for skulking.’
Holmes lit a pipe. To judge by the level of rank smoke already set up in the room it was the second of the day. With affection I watched him puffing life into the shag. I felt nothing in life could ever sever the chain that was around us then.
‘We need not worry, Watson,’ Holmes continued, smiling. ‘We shall watch for him through the morning. I am sure we shall soon discover whether a new game is at last afoot.’
For a while I lingered by the window, looking down on the rushing stream of life. My companion’s switch to a smoking-jacket from his outdoor wear signalled he would settle down to his chemical experiment. From out of his alchemical laboratory had appeared crucibles, alembics and a microscope. Our chambers were always full of chemicals, coal-tar derivatives, and criminal relics which had ways of wandering into unlikely positions or turning up in the butter-dish.
Holmes preferred the sitting-room, especially in the morning, with the two broad windows facing east. It offered a cheerful and well-lit space, though in risk of being overwhelmed by a tumble of Holmes’ books. His presence in this room was in part a reaction to the clutter of his study, so empty when we had first viewed it, now brimming with mementoes of a full life - billiard cues, boxing gloves and punching ball, make-up table with tiny tongs for curling our magnificent false walrus moustaches, a poison fang of the extinct 100-foot-long Bothrodon of South Africa. Framed newspaper cartoons and pictures of criminals adorned two walls, including the as-yet uncaught cambrioleur Arsène Lupin. One cupboard was crammed with the paraphernalia for our disguises - two huge pairs of shapeless porpoise-hide boots with tabs on, purchased from dustmen, beside a pair of smaller, lighter boots removed for a sum from the living feet of a milk deliveryman
Over the length of my association with Sherlock Holmes we averaged a new case every month. Earlier in the year we had had a run of public and private cases the equal of the annus mirabilis of 1895 but the past twelve weeks had been filled with tedium. Such fallow periods prove as irksome for Holmes as for me. It was like watching a butterfly fold up its wings and return to its chrysalis. He put it to me drily, only one important thing had happened in the last three months, and that was that nothing had happened. Like all special gifts Holmes remarkable powers needed a constant burnish lest they corrode through lack of use.