Chapter Text
Too often Holmes has chastised me for starting a story in the middle, or for spending an inordinate amount of time on some tangentially-related subject before segueing into my tale. Here, then, is the briefest possible summary of the circumstances which led to one of the strangest memories of my life:
We were on our way home in a hansom after having brought a midnight stakeout to a successful conclusion. Holmes had just about reached the end of his summation and had moved on to his usual post-case extolling of the virtues of food and sleep, remarks made more to reassure me that he would tend to himself than because he actually believed them, when suddenly he cut himself off mid-sentence by crying out for our driver to stop.
He leapt from the cab the very moment it was safe to do so, and I was part of the way through asking what the matter was when I recognized our surroundings as Baker Street, not far from home. My eyes searched instinctively for 221b, and finding it I caught sight of that which had compelled Holmes to end our cab ride early: a flicker of candlelight in the sitting-room window.
When our cab was paid and sent away I drew my revolver, all six shots still chambered, but Holmes gently touched my arm.
“If he meant to surprise us he would not have bothered with a light,” said he. “It is a thief or a spy.”
But even so we did not have the luxury of hoping that the intruder had come unarmed. He drew his own weapon and together we crept toward our door, careful to remain out of sight of the sitting room window. As we approached the light of the candle moved away from the window and Holmes held up a hand to stop me, straining to listen, but after a few moments drew his keys from his coat.
“Wait out of sight by the stairs,” he whispered into my ear. Normally this might have offended me, but the night’s excursion had left me weary and the likelihood of my making it up the seventeen steps to our sitting room unheard in such a state were low.
Quietly, quietly, Holmes unlocked the door, and crept silently up the steps as I took my place by the stairs. This was far from the first time even that year that we’d been the intended victims of a break-in and by now I had learned to trust my friend’s directions, and those senses which were much sharper than my own. He would not be caught unawares in his own home, and so I was to remain hidden and wait for my moment: many were the occasions on which we had prevented any bloodshed simply by flushing our target out and then pressing a gun to his head as he passed me.
That did not make the waiting enjoyable. But there was always an unwilling sort of thrill in it that consoled me, and even the discomfort of my pounding heart was something I looked back on fondly afterwards.
I will not linger overlong on the tension that accompanies such a watch. One noise only I heard before the crisis of our late-night adventure: a quiet snarl and a sound that might have been a book being slammed shut. A few minutes later I heard the faint click of a hammer being pulled back — and then the unmistakable sounds of a struggle.
“Watson!” cried Holmes, and I sprang from my hiding spot and charged up the stairs into the sitting room.
By the time I had reached the landing I could hear fleeing footsteps in Holmes’s bedroom, and upon kicking his door open I was greeted by the sight of a young man in waistcoat and shirtsleeves throwing the window open.
“Stop!” I cried, and only partly as the useless command of a hunter to his quarry: something in the man’s posture had convinced me that he had no intention of climbing the distance from Holmes’s first-floor window to the ground below, and I had no desire to see him crippled by the fall.
Very much to my surprise he obeyed, turning to look at me over his shoulder with an expression of shock painted over what I could see of his handsome features. But then Holmes was darting past me, yanking him away from the window before he could recover, and together we wrestled him to the floor and managed to get the handcuffs around his wrists.
“Careful, Watson,” said Holmes, sounding entirely too pleased for the circumstances at hand. “He is a clever one. Mrs. Hudson!”
We sat him up against the wall with some difficulty, for though he knew himself defeated he clearly took umbrage with being manhandled, and Mrs. Hudson tutted at him as she appeared at the door. She had clearly been roused by the commotion, but by now had learned to tell the difference between a shout of alarm and an unconcerned summons.
“You are far too young to be breaking and entering, young man,” she declared, bustling over to the lamp to light it. “Shall I send for the constable, Mr. Holmes?”
“No need,” said Holmes airily, and I should not have been shy in sharing our landlady’s incredulity if my attention had not been caught by my first good look at our intruder.
I could not help but stare. I had seen only his silhouette during our struggle. In the light he seemed much younger — barely into his twenties — despite the marks of care carven into his face, the stubble of days upon his chin and eyes rimmed red with the strain of many sleepless nights.
Eyes of a shade I had seen in only two other men, a familiar and much-beloved piercing grey.
His nose was less hooked, his features more handsome, but once I had seen my friend in his eyes I could not help seeing him in every other aspect of our prisoner: the carefully concealed energy, the dismayed defiance, even the mess of his dark hair mussed during the struggle. He looked nothing like either of the Holmes brothers and yet there was a definite resemblance, one that softened my heart so far as to pity him, for despite his admirable bravado I could see he was exhausted and frightened.
He turned away from my scrutiny and closed his eyes, letting himself collapse into the corner of Holmes’s bookshelf and the wall. He did not look to me like a burglar with malicious intent, and though I knew better than to judge by appearances I could not shake what was quickly becoming a natural sympathy for him.
In the meantime Mrs. Hudson sniffed. “If you are certain, Mr. Holmes. But I won't sleep with a burglar in my house.”
“Then I think you may safely go back to bed, Mrs. Hudson, for I do not believe our young friend intended to rob us.”
That was clear enough to me from the absence of any container to spirit our valuables away in, but given Holmes's profession I would have thought this rather more alarming than less so. I helped him move our prisoner to the sitting room after our landlady’s departure, which was far easier than getting the handcuffs on him had been. All the fight had left him, and he made no attempt to escape even as Holmes briefly released one of his wrists to thread the cuffs about the arm of the settee. I cannot easily express how truly unwell he looked. I knew we must learn his intentions, and yet the thought of interrogating him in such a state rather shamed me. Perhaps it was merely my own weariness settling in after our earlier stakeout, but when Holmes lowered himself into his customary armchair I found myself wishing he would simply send our intruder off with a tongue-lashing and be done with it.
“I see that you are greatly distressed. I would be much obliged if you would introduce yourself,” said Holmes, steepling his fingers. “Other than the fact that you are an expert lockpicker, an inexpert combatant and a new student of the violin I have very little upon which to base my opinion of you.”
Something fleeting and immaterial sharpened in the young man’s eyes, but he seemed too exhausted to maintain it for long and it dropped from his expression just as quickly.
“You were looking through my archives,” Holmes went on when he received no reply. “First the newspapers near the window, and then in my commonplace books. Specifically, the letter…”
He cast a quick glance at the shelf in question.
“R, I believe. In neither case did you find your prize.”
Still the youth did not respond. I began to feel some disquiet at the weary distance in his gaze: it reminded me too much of my own reflection in those early days of my residence at Baker Street.
“You then proceeded into my room to search for the rest of the newspapers.”
“You broke in to look at newspapers?” I asked the stranger with some incredulity. “Granted our collection is impressive in its volume, but surely…”
“You needed information,” Holmes murmured. “You knew it would be here. You did not know where, precisely, but after opening only a few of my files you understood how they were organized.”
There was a slight twitch at the corner of the young man’s mouth, as though he had only barely refrained from answering.
“You picked the lock on three separate doors without leaving a single scratch despite being in a great hurry— for this was almost certainly a crime of opportunity. You did not know we would be away tonight or you would have come much earlier, but upon seeing the flat was empty you decided to take your chances.”
I admit the man had rotten luck. If he had been an hour earlier we might never have known he was here. Holmes leaned forward in his seat.
“Your attempt to go unnoticed has failed,” said he. “But your other purpose may yet be satisfied if you tell us who you are, and what you are looking for. I think that at this point you have little to lose by it.”
But the young man did not answer. His gaze simply slid down and away.
“I think we had better call a constable,” I told Holmes.
But Holmes shook his head. “He seems unwilling to surrender any further control of his situation while in his current state. If I recall correctly Watson I believe you keep a sedative in your b—”
“No!” the young man cried, the first word I'd heard him utter since our arrival. His voice broke upon it, his eyes wide and frantic, and in our surprise Holmes and I exchanged glances.
“I don't mean—”
“Don't,” he pleaded. “I won't— I know you won't hurt me, but I—”
With what seemed like an enormous effort he hardened his expression.
“This is illegal,” he finished.
“I have no intention of sedating anyone,” said I. “But you are in no position to be telling us what is and is not legal. If you won't explain yourself then we have no choice but to turn you in to the police.”
Our prisoner said nothing. He merely trembled and glared ineffectually at us.
“You had better get some sleep, dear Watson,” said Holmes at last. “I will keep our new friend company.”
“Holmes, you need rest even more than I do!”
“I doubt I will find it now,” said he with amusement. “He will certainly fall asleep before I do, at least. Go on, Watson— I really think we will all make much better progress in the morning.”
I need not say I disliked this plan, nor list all the reasons why. But Sherlock Holmes would not be dissuaded when such a mystery was before him, and so I left him with his revolver and strict instructions to shout at the first sign of trouble.
It should not have been possible to sleep with such a guest in our sitting-room, but I was tired after the night’s events, and some part of me could not think of him as an enemy: I dreamt of him trembling and pleading with me, grey eyes wide with fear.