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Vanishments, the East End Ghosts and William Dunning.  At least there was still the Lascar to hold to account.
    “Hold it right there,” he told the Lascar in the shadowed corridor.  “Scotland Yard.  I have some questions for you.”
    “Good morning, Inspector Kent,” the man said dryly.  “Your encounter with Clabber seems to have bollixed it for both of us.”
    “Christ Almighty,” Kent swore softly.  “Mr Sherlock Holmes.  Three years dead, and still the meddler.”

Chapter V
    A Common Quest
     
     
     
    “I gave Sir Reginald my word I would look into his brother’s disappearance,” Kent said.  “I was not about to be put off just because some high dandies at Scotland Yard and the Home Office find the whole situation embarrassing.”
    “As I intimated to Sir Reginald when he sought my assistance,” Holmes replied, now devoid of the colouring that had transformed him into an East Indian sailor and back in clothes more befitting a consulting detective dwelling in London’s West End.
    “Who was the man you took up the stairs?” Kent asked.  “He seemed overly curious about all the weird things been happening in the East End, and about the fate of a victim who could only have been young Dunning.”
    “More desperate than merely curious,” Holmes answered.  “And, yes, the man he was asking after was William Dunning.”
    “As William Dunning, or as the latest victim?”  Kent asked.
    “How astute,” Holmes replied.  “He is searching for victims of the Vanishments, and came across Dunning in that quest.”
    “Who is he?”
    They were in a public bath house not far from the Neptune, where Holmes had rented a locker in which to stow clothing and other necessities.  After the fracas with Clabber, who had been immediately dragged into an alley by some of the regular tavern rowdies for purposes of their own, and an outburst from the landlord over the matter of a broken rear window (though he quickly settled into a surly silence when threatened with police visitation of the upper chambers), there was no more information to be had, surreptitiously or otherwise, from the tavern’s patrons.
    “He did not give his name,” Holmes continued.  “But I was able to discern a few facts about him before he leaped out the window, onto the lumber room roof and ran off into the darkness.”
    “What did he say?”
    Holmes smiled.  “It is not what a man says that reveals the most about himself, but how he speaks, how he acts, how he appears.”
    Kent sighed.  “I’ve heard Lestrade and Gregson talk about your methods, but I admit to a certain reticence to their validity.  There is room in police work for theory, you understand, but I prefer solid facts that cannot be disputed.”
    “Such as the fact that you recently came into a tidy sum of money from an inheritance left by a country relative, then just as quickly lost it by speculating on ventures in the Kenya Colony?”  Holmes asked.
    “How the blazes did you know that?”  Kent demanded.
    “Your watch chain is quite new and obviously more expensive than a Scotland Yard inspector could afford,” Holmes explained.  “The watch, however, is far from new, and though it was previously highly polished, it has been let go.  The rim of the watch is crudely incised with the initials FJ, possibly a cousin, but more likely a favourite uncle.  Only a man without access to a watchmaker would take it upon himself to engrave his own initials on a rounded casing, and it would take a certain rustic naiveté to attempt it with a pocket knife.  The watch was part of your inheritance, but you bought the chain on your own, hence their mismatched quality.  You invested most of the remainder on ventures in our Kenya Colony, probably one or more coffee plantations, else why would you have a copy of the Mombassa Register in your inner coat pocket, which I spied when you leaned out the rear window, folded open to commodities page with several entries