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scolded myself, get away!
    I moved, however, only a few steps, just enough so that Holmes and Mrs. Watson would not see me if either of them happened to glance outside; I put myself on a line with the corner of the house and of the parlour. There I stood fiddling with my gloves while trying to calm my breathing and the pounding of my heart.
    I could still hear my brother speaking. “Therefore, I think we can now rule out the possibility of accident. Watson was purposefully lured or spirited away by some person or agency unknown.”
    Mrs. Watson’s soft reply was inaudible to me.
    “I cannot be certain, but it seems to me that the anti-medical elements, yammering as if surgery were vivesection, tend towards hysteria and are unlikely to act with such organised decision. Yet, although improbable, it remains just possible, as do other hypotheses. Some enemy from Watson’s army days, perhaps; I have been looking into that possibility, but my instincts tell me otherwise. Above all I continue to suspect the criminal underworld, but my informants so far have been able to tell me nothing. It is as if one moment Watson were playing billiards at his club, and the next, the earth opened up….”
    With a tattoo of hooves on cobbles a delivery-van rattled past, the driver glancing at me curiously, probably wondering why I was standing there. In London, any unchaperoned woman who pauses even for a moment to blow her nose puts herself in danger of being taken for a “social evil,” the polite term for a lady of the night.
    “It is this silence, this hiatus, that I cannot understand,” Sherlock was saying when the noise had passed. “If Watson was kidnapped, why no demand for ransom? If taken by some enemy, why no gloating message of revenge? We should have heard from such a tormenter by now. Have you anything to report? Anything at all out of the ordinary?”
    Her reply was brief.
    “Flowers?” said Holmes with dismissive impatience. “But surely such social gestures are to be expected. No, if we are to involve the police, we need something more than a black bag and an anonymous bouquet. Please think. Is there nothing—”
    Mrs. Watson said something in broken tones.
    “It is true, logic suggests no reason why murder might not have taken place.” My brother’s voice had tightened to the breaking point. “And in that case there would be no communication. Yes, I have thought it too. Yet I cannot give up hope. One must not give up hope! And,” he added with black fire flaring in his tone, “I will not rest until I have got to the bottom of this affair.”
    A considerable silence followed, during which another vehicle trundled past, this time a brougham, the driver and occupants eyeing me askance. I felt like a target set up for marksmanship practice.
    Finally my brother spoke again. “We must persevere; we cannot do otherwise. Can you think of nothing to help me?”
    Silence.
    “Have you had visitors? Other than that syrupy young woman who left just now? Who was she, by the way?”
    Oh, my goodness. My nerves could take no more; I left, walking down the street in the manner recommended by Ladies’ Moral Companion , “self-possessed and quietly, with not too much lagging and not too swift a step, looking as if one understands what one is about…” Only after I had rounded a corner did I let my breath out.
    I wondered whether I had now been added to Sherlock’s list of suspects.
    I certainly hoped not. I did not want him interested in the “syrupy young woman.” All the more so because he must not waste his time while trying to find out what had happened to Watson—
    But he was wasting his time, I realised as I entered a crowded thoroughfare of shops and businesses. (“Avoid lounging about the shop-windows; resolutely forego even the most tempting displays of finery. Pass men without looking at them, yet all the while seeing them…”) Brilliant as my brother was at unravelling many sorts of perplexities, he