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With some hesitancy, Lestrade pushed lightly against the door to the parlor. Then, with a sly grin, he shoved it wide open.

“Having a laugh at the expense of the slow-witted policemen, eh? Well, no scorpions in here. Also no tarantula spiders and no venomous swamp adders.”

Disbelieving, I pushed my way past Lestrade. Julius Ferregamo lay where we had left him, quite dead. But of the ghastly creatures, there was no trace.

“Impossible!” I breathed.

“Merely improbable, I should say.” Sherlock Holmes brushed by and knelt to examine the body. “If there were no scorpions, then there remains the question of how Ferregamo was stung to death.”

“Sounds as though I should have a word with the keepers at London Zoo,” Lestrade suggested, unhelpfully.

I joined Holmes as he lifted Ferregamo’s right hand gingerly. Under the fingernails were traces of paint. “He did begin scratching at the Redfern just before … the end,” I observed.

“Perhaps he wanted to see this other painting underneath,” said Lestrade. We both turned to see the police official examining the picture.

“Underneath?” I repeated. Looking closely, I could see that he was correct; there was a second picture, but it was impossible to tell what it might be.

“No doubt Mr. Holmes has some chemicals in his laboratory that could help reveal it.”

“No need for that,” Holmes responded, “I already know what it is. Lestrade, Watson and I have an appointment elsewhere. I can trust you to take care of the body before you begin waking up the zookeepers?”

Sherlock Holmes was transformed when he was hot upon a scent such as this. As the gleam of the street-lamps flashed upon his austere features, I saw that his brows were drawn in deep thought and his thin lips compressed. His face was bent downwards, his shoulder bowed, and the veins stood out like whipcord in his long, sinewy neck. His eyes shone out from beneath his brows with a steely glitter. Men who have only known the quiet thinker and logician of Baker Street would have failed to recognize him. But I recognized the battle-signs; the time of crisis had arrived.

It was close to midnight when we returned to Algernon Redfern’s studio off the King’s Road. Holmes did not wait, but simply pushed the door open and entered. I followed closely, my heart thumping so loudly in my chest, I was certain that I could be found in an instant by whoever or whatever awaited us.

I lack my friend’s cultivated eyesight, but I doubted that even he could make out any details in the darkness. The lamps were unlit, the blinds drawn and were it not for the fact that I knew Redfern possessed virtually no furniture, I would have feared to take a step in any direction.

“You didn’t knock, Mr. Holmes,” said a familiar voice from the other end of the room. “I sensed at heart you were a poor sport. The artist in me … knows these things.”

“Any pretence at sportsmanship vanished when you attempted to kill me, Mr. Ruber,” Holmes replied, stridently.

I strained my eyes, but I could not make out the shape of Algernon Redfern. He chuckled. “Ferregamo told you my real name. Oh, please tell me he said it with his dying breath. It would mean so much to me. Or don’t you propose to give me the satisfaction?” The last traces of his forced English accent were gone for good, I realized.

Holmes remained silent, a fixed point.

“Oh, very well,” sighed the man I had known as Redfern. “If it helps — and I doubt it will — I’m sorry. Not about Ferregamo, of course, but about any discomfort you may have experienced.”

I could remain silent no longer. “You seem to have forgotten, Redfern — I mean, Ruber, that four other people are dead, and I take it you are responsible.”

“Haven’t you told him, Mr. Holmes?”

“If I have kept the good doctor in the dark … so to speak … it is only because I find it difficult to credit that such a thing could occur in the world as I understand it. Very well, perhaps explanations are in order. All these terrible crimes were committed with just one target in mind: the late