The Mammoth Book of New Sherlock Holmes Adventures - Mike Ashley [200]
“Most instructive,” said Holmes dreamily.
Traill continued: “The horror was unspeakable. The leech clung to my hand, biting with a burning pain, rendering me too horrified to move. I was lucky that a doctor was passing by, who recognized the awful thing! He plucked it from my flesh with a gloved hand and threw it aside into the undergrowth. And then, straight away, on the grass of Hampstead Heath, this Dr James unpacked his surgical instruments from his black bag and cut the mouth-parts of the horrid beast out of my hand, while I averted my gaze and struggled not to cry out. ‘A narrow escape young fellow,’ he said to me. ‘If my eye had not been caught by the press report’ – and here he handed me the scrap of paper which you hold – ‘it might have gone badly for you. There is something in Providence after all.’ I thanked Dr James profusely, and at my insistence he charged me a guinea. Although he had dressed the tiny wound carefully, it was painful and slow to heal.
“And now you know why I fear madness. My mind seems unclouded, but my senses betray me – the leech-bitten hand burns like fire when I try to move against my sister’s wishes, as though her infernal spirits were real after all.”
“Quite so,” said Holmes, regarding him with intense satisfaction through half-closed eyes. “Your case, Mr Traill, presents some extraordinarily interesting and gratifying features. Would you recognize Dr James if you met him again?”
“Certainly: his great black beard and tinted glasses were most distinctive.”
This seemed to cause Holmes some private merriment. “Excellent! Yet you now consult the estimable but unfamiliar Watson, rather than the provenly knowledgeable James.”
“I confess that in my over-excitement I must have misheard the address Dr James gave to me. There is no such house-number at the street in Hampstead where I sought him.”
“Better still. The time has come to summon a cab, Watson! We can easily reach the Highgate Ponds before twilight.”
“But to what purpose?” I cried. “After six months the creature will be long gone, or dead and rotted.”
“Well, we may still amuse ourselves by catching tittlebats – as Mr Pickwick chose to call sticklebacks. The correct naming of creatures is so important, is it not?”
All through the long four-wheeler cab ride I struggled to make sense of this, while Holmes would talk of nothing but music.
In the bleak grey of late afternoon, Hampstead Heath was at its most desolate. A thin, cold rain continued to fall. The three of us trudged through wet grass on our fool’s errand.
“I must ask you for a supreme effort of memory, Mr Traill,” declared Holmes as the ponds came into view. “You must cast your mind back to that Tuesday in the spring. Remember the pattern of trees you saw as you sat on the ground; remember the dog that pranced in the water. We must know the exact place, to within a few feet.”
Traill roamed around dubiously. “It all looks different at this time of year,” he muttered. “Perhaps near here.”
“Squat on your heels to obtain the same perspective as when you sat,” suggested Holmes. After a few such reluctant experiments, our client indicated that he was as close as memory would take him.
“Then that patch of hawthorn must be our goal – the leech’s last known domicile,” Holmes observed. “Note, Watson, that this picnic-spot is several yards from the beaten path. The good Dr James must have been quite long-sighted, to see and recognize that leech.”
“He might easily have been taking a short cut across the