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'I wish I had been in a better mood to appreciate it,' Holmes said dryly.

'Forgive me, Doctor, but if you are to be believed, we are several thousand miles and nineteen years from home. Do you have any suggestions?'

The Doctor blinked owlishly.

'As usual, the time is no problem,' he said. 'It's the space that might be difficult.'

The Doctor walked off around the corner, telling us that he would be back in a moment. Indeed, he was. A miraculous contraption appeared out of the air before us, a blue cabinet of the Doctor's own construction that can travel through the aether at his direction. He told us that after walking round the corner he had made his way across America by rail and engaged passage in New York upon a ship bound for London. Once there he had located his miraculous time-travelling cabinet, which remained exactly where he had left it at the home of Professor Litefoot, and travelled back to the moment at which he had left us.

I did not know whether to believe him or not, at least, not until we travelled back to Baker Street in that same cabinet: nineteen years removed from the life of the world in as many minutes. I cannot help thinking that such power is dangerous, and yet I cannot think of safer hands to hold it than those of the Doctor. He is a strange little man, but he engenders such trust.

Bernice and I talked for some of those nineteen minutes. We were standing in a corner of the control chamber of the Doctor's mighty craft, a room whose oak-panelled walls and brass railings give no hint as to its true function. With the Doctor's permission Holmes had opened a round panel in one of the walls, and was asking pointed but, I fear, ill-informed questions as to the source of its energy. Ace was standing near Holmes. I assumed that she was watching to make sure that he did not interfere with the workings of the mechanism.

I asked Bernice if I might see her again. Perhaps, I offered, a night at the theatre might amuse her, or a meal at the Savoy. She smiled.

'I'm a good six hundred years too young for you,' she said, handing me a package wrapped up with string. 'Have this instead.'

'A gift? Really, I . . .'

'It's not a gift, it's some of my diary entries. You might find them useful when you come to write this case up.'

I started to protest, but the Doctor wandered over.

'Perhaps you would like to stay,' he said. 'There's room enough for more travellers.'

Bernice looked askance at him.

'Well, why not?' he asked defensively. 'I've been thinking that one of our problems is that there's just the three of us, cooped up in here, getting on each other's nerves. It might do us good to broaden the team a bit. Bring some fresh blood in.'

'This isn't Mission bloody Impossible,' Ace muttered.

'A tempting offer,' Holmes replied, shutting the panel decisively. 'I greatly wish to see more of these worlds you talk about, and the shining marvels that technology will bring us in the future. And yet...'

He glanced over at me, a question in his eyes. I nodded. I knew what he was thinking: the same arguments had occurred to me as well.

'. . .And yet I fear that we would be out of our depths. The adventure we have just shared with you has brought us both to the edge of our sanity.

The human brain cannot take too much information at once: it must be given time to sort, to index, to catalogue. We need our London around us once more, like a comfortable overcoat.'

'Perhaps...' I ventured.

'Yes, Watson?'

'Perhaps in a few years. When we have distanced ourselves from the events of the past few days.'

He smiled.

'A wise prescription. We would be happy to travel with you, Doctor, but not just yet. Not, at least, until I see that scoundrel Moriarty dangling at the end of a noose.'

We soon arrived in our sitting room at 221b Baker Street, frightening the life out of Mrs Hudson, who was tidying the room and had just popped out for a fresh duster. By