"It was on her hand, the mud. Her left hand, and the right boot." I stopped, disbelieving, and looked at Holmes. His grey eyes were positively dancing. "She replenished the mud, to keep the path obvious. This whole episode — it was deliberately staged. She wants you to know that she was there, and she put the Baker Street mud on her shoe to thumb her nose at you. She even washed her hands of it in the Ladies' to leave you that datum, if you hadn't already worked out that he was a she. I can't believe it — no one could be mad enough to mock you like that.
What kind of game is she playing?"
"A decidedly unpleasant sort of a game, with three bombs and a death thus far, but I agree, the style of humour is a match with the clothing parcel and the exploding beehive.
One is forced to wonder — " he mused, and his voice drifted away. "Yes?" I encouraged.
"Nothing, Russell. Merely speculation without data, a fruitless exercise at the best of times. I was reflecting that the only truly superior mind I have encountered among the criminal classes was Moriarty, which ill equips me for the possibility of subtlety in our current foe. Were I quite certain of, for example, the intent of the marksman who shot at us in Lestrade's office, or of Dickson's efforts, or even — Yes, I suppose — " He drifted off again.
"Holmes, do I understand you aright? That the actions against us were not actually intended to be deadly?"
"Oh, deadly, certainly, though perhaps not merely deadly. But yes, you understand me. I mistrust a series of failures when the author otherwise gives signs of great competence.
Accidents are not unknown, but I dislike coincidences, and I deny out of hand the existence of a guardian angel. Yes," he said thoughtfully, and I winced as I heard his next phrase coming, "it is quite a pretty problem."
"Quite a three-piper, eh Holmes?" I said in hearty jocularity. He could be the most irritating individual.
"No, no, not yet. Nicotinic meditation serves to clarify the known facts, not pull them out of thin air. I do not feel we have all the facts."
"Very well, but surely you can speculate in generalities.
If she didn't wish to kill us, what are her intentions?"
"I did not say she does not intend to kill us, just possibly not yet. If for the sake of hypothesis we assume that what has occurred over the course of the last few days is more or less what she had in mind, then we are left with three possible inferences: one, that she does not want us all actually dead at this moment; two, that she wishes us to be fully aware of an intelligent, dedicated, resourceful, and implacable enemy breathing almost literally down our collars; and three, that she wants us either to go to ground or leave England." "And isn't that what we're doing?"
"Indeed," he said complacently.
"I — " I stopped, shut my mouth, waited.
"Her actions tell me that it is what she wants me to do. She knows me well enough to assume that I will perceive her intent and refuse to cooperate. Therefore I shall do what she wants."
I decided finally that the brandy was to blame for the dullness of my logical faculties, for though I was certain that there was a basic fallacy in his reasoning, I could not put my finger on precisely the juncture. I shook my head and plunged on.
"Why not just disappear for a few days? It is really necessary to — "
"Take flight?" he supplied. "Beat a hasty retreat? Run away? You're quite right. This morning I should have agreed that a few days' retreat to Mycroft's flat or one of my bolt-holes was sufficient for regrouping." (I shuddered here at the thought of being confined with Holmes in the Storage Room for any length of time.) "But today's events have proven me wrong. Not the clothing parcel — that was a clever joke. Even the shoes, though sinister, could be got around. But — that bullet. It nearly hit you. I believe it was meant to," he said, and although he did not look at me, the control in his voice and the small twitch in the right side of his mouth spoke volumes of the rage and apprehension this threat set off in him. To cover his gaffe he rose in a jerk and began to stride up and down, his hands behind him as if tucked beneath the tails of a frock coat, the smouldering pipe he still gripped endangering his clothing.
Words tumbled out of him as he paced, spoken in his high voice as if berating himself.
"I begin to feel like a piece of driftwood tumbling about between waves and sand, snatched up and tossed ftom one place to anothet. It is a most disconcerting feeling.
Were I alone I might almost be tempted to let myself be tumbled, just to see where I washed up. That, however, is not an option. "What then are the options? Offensive — an all-out attack? On what? Beating at mist with a cricket bat. Defense?
How does one defend against a mirror-image? She has read Watson's tales, and my bee book, the monographs on soil and footprints — not available to the general public — and God knows what else. A woman! She has turned my own words against me, caused me considerable mental and physical distress, kept me off my balance for five whole days, chased and harried me across my home territory until I am forced to go to ground — to sea. Do you know — " he broke off, and whirled around to shake an outraged pipe stem at me, "this — person has even penetrated into one of my bolt-holes! Yes, today, there were signs — I still cannot believe that a woman can have done this, deducing my deductions, plotting my moves for me, and all the time giving the impression that to her it is a deadly but effortless and highly amusing game. Even Moriarty did not go so far, and he was a master without parallel. The mind, capable of such coups de maître. Maîtresse." He stopped, and straightened his shoulders with a jerk as if to settle his clothing back into place.
"A most gratifyingly challenging opponent, this," he said in a calmer voice, and lit his pipe, which had gone out. When it was going again he continued in a completely different vein.
"Russell, I have been considering your words of this morning. I do occasionally take the thoughts of others into account, you know. Particularly yours. I have to admit that you were completely justified in your protest. You are an adult, and by your very nature I was quite wrong to treat you as if you were Watson. I apologise."
I was, as one might imagine, completely flabbergasted, and highly suspicious, but he went on as if discussing the weather. "Today while I was on my distressingly fruitless quest for information through the human sewers of fair London town, it occurred to me that the matter of your future has come to a head. This peculiar — present situation has forced it, but it should have come sooner or later. The question I am faced with is, what does one do with a student who has passed every examination laid before her?
Eventually she must be removed from in statu pupularis and allowed to assume the rights and responsibilities of maturity.
In your case every paper I've set you, every test, up to the viva voce question of the mud on our opponent's footwear, has come up an alpha.
"I have, then, a limited number of options. Considering the gravity of this particular case, I feel I should be justified in removing you from the firing line as I did Watson, until I can clear it up. No, do not interrupt. Much to my displeasure, I find I cannot bring myself to attempt that.
For one thing, the logistics of keeping you under control are too daunting.
"It has been on my mind since Wales that an apprentice kept from her journeyman's papers will spoil.
Faced with this, what for lack of a better term I shall call a case, I have two choices: I can maintain your 'apprenticeship' (as you yourself called it), or I can grant you your Mastery. Having never been one for half-measures, I see no point in delaying the inevitable. Therefore — " He stopped, took his pipe from his mouth, looked into the bowl, put it back into his mouth, reached for the pouch in his pocket, and I very nearly screamed at him with the tension of being torn between "Thank God, here it comes, at last!" and "Oh, God, here it comes, he's sending me away."