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Ten Stars, who was sitting on Holmes’ desk blotter, indignantly threw a collar-button at him. “I met him when I was looking for Cloverberry.”
    “And is this place near a ring of stones?” From between the pages of the scrap-book Holmes extracted one of his vast collection of Ordnance Survey maps, and spread it on the desk. Craning to look over his shoulder, I saw Wylcourt Hall marked, and the village of Kethmure.
    “In the middle of one,” affirmed Peter. He couldn’t keep out of his voice the awed surprise of one who sees magic done. A small circle within two miles of Wylcourt Hall was labeled, Stone Circle — Fairies’ Dance.
    “And the boy’s father has hired wizards to find him. Well, well.” From the bottom drawer of his desk — the locked one where he keeps certain poisons and lists of names — Holmes brought out a thick, much-dog-eared notebook with a scribbled paper label on it, SPIRITUALISTS — THEOSOPHISTS. Prior to his journey to Tibet, Mr. Holmes had compiled a catalog of known frauds and fake adepts in matters occult, the way he compiled catalogs of every other sort of criminal and confidence trickster he heard of: details cross-referenced in his mind.
    Yet he had returned from those years of travel with a different outlook than he had taken out of England with him. And he had never, even when I first met him, been a close-minded man. I knew — not from John, to whom he never mentioned it, but from Martha Hudson — that Holmes had continued his catalog with the names given him by his various contacts in that portion of knowledge that lies along the boundary between the world we know and the multitude of worlds that we do not, and it was in this rear section of the book that he now searched.
    “Tell me, Peter,” he said after a time, with his long forefinger resting on a column of names, “is there an ill wizard in the Neverlands, who commands a group of black knights? Faceless knights,” he added, seeing Peter’s hesitant frown. Black Knights are as common as black birds, in the Neverlands, and come in all sizes and varieties. “Knights who do not bleed, when stabbed by a foe.”
    Peter’s eyes widened again. Then he quickly readjusted his features, as if he realized how much like a very little boy he looked, a little boy the first time a birthday-party magician produces a penny from behind his ear. Casually, he replied, “That would be Nightcrow. He has a dreadful fortress at the farthest end of the Neverlands. He seldom ventures forth, but sometimes one sees him—”
    Peter’s voice sank. It was the first time I’d seen him troubled: not frightened, because Peter doesn’t frighten easily, but deeply uneasy. “His island lies within the realm of nightmares. Even the pirates won’t go near it, and they’ll sail just about anywhere.”
    “So I thought,” said Holmes. Looking over his shoulder, I saw — as well as I could make out his strong but nearly illegible handwriting — the entry on the notebook page: Krähnacht, Jakob — 37 Barsham Lane, Deptford — followed by a long series of notations in Holmes’ personal shorthand, which as far as I know only Martha can make out.
    Hesitantly, I asked, “Why would this Mr. Krähnacht wish to kidnap Bobbie, even if he did know where he would come out of the Neverlands? Surely there are children in London—”
    “Obviously,” said Holmes as he drew a half-sheet of paper to him and picked up a pencil, “he was paid to do so. By whom, can be deduced fairly easily once we have the boy himself back safe. Can you bring Peter to this place,” he asked, turning round to me the sketch-map he’d made, “in three hours? It’s down-river a good ways, but I can be there by then in a cab.”
    Mischievously, I said, “Why don’t you fly with us, Mr. Holmes? I’m sure Peter and Ten Stars could fix you up.”
    Peter’s eyes flamed with delight at the thought of Mr. Holmes, Inverness flapping like some vast cinder-hued bird, soaring