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By Root 469 0

for a moment, then I remembered that I had attended his feast disguised as a man. I was still wearing the same formal attire, but it was just as ripped and stained as his was by now.

Considering the rips, I was surprised that he still referred to me as 'Mr'. He was either being polite or he'd led a sheltered life.

'Happy?' I asked.

'I do beg your pardon?'

'Are you happy? Have your plans worked out the way you thought?'

Sarcasm was wasted on him.

'I think that I was misled by the good Baron,' he said without any trace of irony. 'He promised me a new empire. He said that Jabalhabad would be a new port, a landbound harbour through which the trade of two worlds would flow.'

He smiled, rather shamefacedly.

'I'm afraid I believed him,' he continued. 'I didn't want Jabalhabad to remain a backwater province too small even for you British to bother about. Was I wrong?'

There was desperation in his voice.

'Ask them,' I said, gesturing towards his subjects. He opened his mouth to reply, but the rakshassa picked him up and threw him into the airlock.

I saw the Doctor's hat bobbing in the distance, and called out to him. He was talking earnestly to one of the fakirs, but waved his hat in the air in reply. A few minutes later we were reunited as the rakshassa pulled him out to stand beside me. We hugged in greeting. Holmes joined us shortly afterwards, but I didn't hug him.

The next caravan to come along was for us and us alone.

'We're honoured,' I murmured as I climbed through a simple but effective wooden airlock arrangement into the dark interior.

'There are times,' the Doctor said, joining me, 'when it pays to be one of the crowd.'

'You suspect that we have been singled out for something special?' Holmes asked.

I could just make out the Doctor's sombre expression.

'It seems to be the story of my life.'

Holmes laughed briefly.

'And mine as well. We make a fine pair, Doctor.'

The heavy thud of the door cut off my retort. Darkness descended upon us.

And that's where we are now. The caravan moved off shortly after that, but stopped a few minutes later. It looked like we were parking until all of the prisoners had been transferred from the tunnel. The Doctor lit a couple of his wonder-matches and stuck them into his hatband, so we could just about see what we were doing.

Which wasn't much.

Holmes paced up and down, and the Doctor made gnomic little utterances from time to time. To keep myself amused I did my usual trick of going back over my diary entries for the past few days and sticking yellow labels over the pages, then writing an alternative, more dramatic version of events in which I played a much larger part. After a while, even that palled.

When we heard the outer airlock door chunk open, then shut, I was so glad to have my boredom relieved that I didn't even feel scared. It was only when the inner door opened and a figure in a hooded white robe and white gloves stepped into the room, flanked by a massive rakshassa, that I felt a shiver run through me like a seam of silver through rock.

The figure stood silently for a moment. I could feel its gaze pass across me, although I couldn't see any features within the hood. The light from the Doctor's matches gleamed on the hard, chitinous skin of the rakshassa.

Holmes gazed at the figure. He looked anguished.

'Why?' he whispered. 'Why did you do it?'

Raising his gloved hands the newcomer threw back his hood. The sharp face and close-cropped grey hair were familiar. Very familiar.

Holmes's lips tightened slightly. His body-language told me that he was not surprised.

'Professor Summerfield,' he said quietly, 'may I introduce my brother, Sherringford.'

'Two meetings in a month,' said Sherringford Holmes with a smile.

'Wouldn't Mother have been pleased to see how well we're getting along?'

A continuation of the reminiscences of John H. Watson, M.D.

'Well?' Ace said, 'what's it to be?'

I looked across from our coign of vantage to the cluster of caravans.

'How much air have we got left?'