• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

'And what exactly are you a Doctor of?' he growled.

'Metaphysico-theologico-cosmologo-nigology!' announced the Doctor triumphantly.

Holmes pursed his lips and strode to the window.

'Facile quotations from Voltaire will not help your case,' he barked. 'If you remain unwilling to provide a straight answer then I can only surmise that you are unwilling to cooperate with our investigations.'

'Oh very well.' The little man pouted, and stared down at his gaiters. 'If it helps, I took a medical degree in Edinburgh in eighteen seventy.'

'What a coincidence!' I exclaimed. 'I studied for my Bachelor's degree and my baccalaureate at the University of Edinburgh from that very year onwards! I must say,' and I studied his features more closely, 'that I do not remember you.'

The Doctor shifted uneasily in Holmes's armchair.

'I can't say I'm surprised. I looked different then.'

I stroked my moustache and looked ruefully down at my figure: stockier now than it had been seventeen years ago.

'So did I,' I admitted.

'This is getting us nowhere,' Holmes pronounced, staring out of the window.

'Be so good as to tell me what your researchers were at the Library, Doctor.'

'India.'

'More specifically.'

'Hindu mythology:'

'More specifically still.'

'Legends concerning the rakshassi.'

'Rakshassi?' I asked.

'Demons from the pantheon of the Indian subcontinent,' Holmes replied tersely.

'Usually associated with the worship of Kali,' the Doctor added. 'Kali being the Indian goddess of death and destruction.'

'I thought you had been in India, Watson,' Holmes asked.

'I passed through ten years ago on my way to Afghanistan,' I replied, 'but I confess I took little interest in the heathen ceremonies of the natives.'

The Doctor glanced over at me, and there was something dark and unpleasant in his eyes.

'God's in his heaven and all's right in the world,' he sneered.

I drew myself up to respond to the gibe, but Holmes interrupted, saying,

'And the books that were stolen: they were all associated with this subject?'

'As you well know.'

As I watched the clash of wills between the two men I could not help but recall the words that I had written about Holmes some six years before, soon after the occasion of our first meeting. I had been drawing up a list of his interests in an attempt to more closely understand his character. I had jotted down, in no particular order, that he was well up on poisons generally, that he could tell at a glance different soils from each other, that his knowledge of anatomy was accurate but limited, that his knowledge of sensational crime and criminal law was immense and that he was an expert boxer, singlestick player and swordsman, but that he knew nothing of astronomy, philosophy or literature. At this point I had thrown the list away, crying: 'If I can only find what the fellow is driving at by reconciling all these accomplishments . . .!' I could see something of the same thought process concerning the Doctor going through Holmes's mind.

'Perhaps we might be better employed,' the Doctor said finally, breaking both Holmes's and my train of thought, 'in examining the list of other visitors to the Library. Accepting that I am naturally a suspect, we should question the others as soon as possible. May I see the list?'

Holmes turned away to gaze out of the window onto the Baker Street bustle below.

'I retain an accurate memory of the names,' he said, 'and there is, therefore, no necessity to examine the list. Your own name appears, of course, Doctor, as does that of a Mrs Kate Prendersly of Whitefields Lodge in Deptford, an inmate of Broadmoor named Minor, a certain Baron Maupertuis, his manservant, Surd...'

'How do you know he is the Baron's manservant, Holmes?' I interjected.

'The address is the same, Watson,' Holmes said, pityingly. 'And since he is only referred to by a surname, without any qualifier, the conclusion is obvious.'

'Any other names?' the Doctor asked.

'A Professor Challenger, whose