— An admirer"
Holmes blinked several times and hurled the note at Lestrade. "Give this to your print man," he snarled. "Give the clothes to the laboratory, check them for foreign objects, corrosive powder, everything. Find out where they came from. And, for the love of God, can someone please provide Miss Russell with 'suitable clothing' so this case will not come to a complete standstill?" As he turned away in a cold fury I heard him breathe, "This becomes intolerable."
A variety of clothing appeared, part uniform, part civilian, all uncomfortable. We set off for the park in a police automobile, Lestrade in front with the driver, Holmes beside me, silent and remote and staring out the window while his long fingers beat a rhythm on his knee.
He did not divulge his laboratory findings. At the park he dashed up and down the paths for a very few minutes, nodding to himself, then bundled us brusquely back into the car. He turned a deaf ear to Lestrade's questions, and we rode in silence back to New Scotland Yard to make our way to Lestrade's office, where we were left alone.
Holmes went over to Lestrade's desk, opened a drawer, took out a packet of cigarettes, removed one, lit it with a vesta, and went to the window, where he stood with his back to me, staring unseeing out onto the busy Embankment and the river traffic beyond, smoke curling around him in the thin winter's sunlight that seeped through the dirty glass. He smoked the cigarette to the end without speaking, then walked back to the desk and pressed the stub with great deliberation into the ashtray.
"I must go out," he said curtly. "I refuse to take any of these heavy-footed friends of yours with me. They will send the wildlife scurrying for cover. While I am away, draw up a list of necessities and give it to the matron.
Clothing for two or three days, nothing formal. Men's or women's, as you like. You'd best add a few things for me as well — you know my sizes. It will save me some time. I shall be back in a couple of hours."
I stood up angrily. "Holmes, you can't do this to me. You've told me nothing, you've consulted me not at all, just pushed me here and there and run roughshod over any plans I might have had and kept me in the dark as if I were Watson, and now you propose to go off and leave me with a shopping list." He was already moving toward the door, and I followed him across the room, arguing.
"First you call me your associate, and then you start treating me like a maid. Even an apprentice deserves better than that. I'd like to know — "
I had just come up to the window when a sound like a meaty palm slapping a table came from just outside the wall, followed a split second later by a more familiar report.
Holmes reacted instantly and dove across the room at me just as the window imploded in a shower of flying razor- sharp glass and a second slap came from the opposite wall.
We both came up in a crouch, and Holmes seized my shoulder.
"Are you hit?"
"My God, was that — "
"Russell, are you all right?" he demanded furiously.
"Yes, I think so. Do you — " but he was sprinting low towards the door as it opened and an inspector in mufti looked in open-mouthed. Holmes gathered him up, and they pounded off down the stairs in pursuit. I steeled myself to creep around to the broken window and edge one eye over the lower corner. A steam launch was making its rapid way downriver, but there was also a mother with a pram stopped on the bridge, turned to look at a retreating taxi cab, her shoulders in an attitude of surprise. Inside of a minute Holmes and the others had swept up to her, and she was soon surrounded by gesticulating men pointing east over the river and south across the bridge. I saw Holmes look unerringly up to where I stood in the window, turn to say something to the tweedy inspector, and then set his shoulders resolutely and walk, hatless and head down, back to the Yard.
With typical police efficiency and priorities, Les-trade's office was filled with people measuring angles and retrieving bullets from the brickwork, none of whom had a dustpan or a means of blocking the icy air from the window.
I retreated into the next office but one, a room with no window. As soon as Holmes appeared I knew there would be no arguing with him, although I intended to try.
"I think you'd best change that order to clothing for several days, Russell," were his first words. "Stay away from windows, don't eat or drink anything you're not absolutely certain is safe, and keep your revolver with you." "Don't take sweets from strangers, you mean?" I said sarcastically, but he would not anger.
"Precisely. I shall return in two or three hours. Be ready to leave when I get back."
"Holmes, you must at least — "
"Russell," he interrupted, and came over to grasp my shoulders, "I am very sorry, but time is of the utmost urgency.
You were going to say that I must tell you what is happening, and I shall. You wish to be consulted; I intend to do so. In fact, I intend to place a fair percentage of the decisions to be made into your increasingly competent hands. But not just at this moment, Russell. Please, be satisfied with that." And he shifted his hands to both sides of my head, bent forward, and brushed his lips gently across my brow. I sat down abruptly, felled by this thunderbolt, until long after he had gone — which, I realised belatedly, was precisely why he had done it.
Holmes' air of illicit excitement told me that he was extremely unlikely to be back from his haunts in two or three hours. Irritated, I scribbled the lists for the young policewoman, gave her the last of my money, and turned my back on the windowless office. I was jumpy at every window
I passed, but I wanted to take a closer look at the parcel of clothing that had arrived for me that morning, which I had only seen from a distance. I made my way to the laboratories, where I disturbed a gentleman in an unnecessarily professional white coat standing at a bench with a shoe in one hand. He turned at my entrance, and when
I saw what he held, I was stunned speechless. The shoe^ was my own.
This pair of shoes now inhabiting the laboratory bench had disappeared from my rooms some time during the autumn, in one of those puzzling incidents that happen and are finally dismissed with a shrug. I had worn them the second week of October, and two weeks later when I went to look for them, they were not there. It troubled me, but frankly more because I took it as a sign of severe ab sentmindedness than anything sinister. I had obviously left them somewhere. And here they were.
I was relieved to see that the clothes were not familiar to me, though very much to my taste. They were all new, ready-made from a large shop in Liverpool, unremarkable, though not inexpensive. Thus far the examiners had found nothing but clothing — not so much as a stray shirt pin.
The note that had accompanied the parcel lay in a steel tray across the bench, and I walked around to take a look at it. It was grey with fingerprint powder, but even if the sender had been careless, the paper was too rough to retain prints. I picked it up, read it with grudging amusement, noted casually the characteristics of the type, and started to lay it back down, and then I froze in disbelief.
Yes, that's one too many shocks in the last few days, my brain commented analytically. I fumbled for a stool and after some time became aware of the technician's alarm. I told him what I had seen. I told Lestrade the same thing when he appeared. Some time later I found myself in the windowless room with the policewoman who had returned from shopping saying how she'd been careful to watch each item taken down and wrapped, and I made polite noises of (I suppose) gratitude and then sat there for a long while with my brain steaming furiously away.