The Adventure at Baskerville Hall & Other Cases

cannot resist the temptation to go over them once more in writing, as I have done so often in my mind.
    To resume – had I waited a short while longer before making 'That List' (with which scathing term it is always referred to by its object), I would have been able to state conclusively that Sherlock Holmes rarely eats breakfast. As far as I have observed, he prefers to start the day with only a cup of devilishly strong coffee, unless I am able to persuade him to join me at the breakfast table by means of bribery or threats. As a doctor, I have always had a wide variety of dire medical warnings available to me, but since the recent change in our relationship I have found, with gratified amusement, that I now have a whole new range of bribery material at my disposal, beyond previous offers to refrain from complaining about the state of our sitting-room.
    Holmes claims that in the new century increasing numbers of people will adopt such habits, but as a medical man I cannot believe that this diet is more healthful than a hearty breakfast every morning. Indeed, since our relationship took on a new and most welcome aspect, and my nocturnal activities are consequently increased, I find that now more than ever do I consider my morning repast to be the most important one of my day.
    The increased intimacy between us was still a new and fragile thing, as complex and delicately-balanced as a dew-hung spider's web and I dared not examine it too closely, lest it prove just as transient. I think it would not be a staggering revelation to anyone if I say that Sherlock Holmes is an intensely private person, indeed I may be accused of grossest understatement. I lived with him for several years before I learned of the existence of his brother, so I took it as no great surprise that although I had known his body more intimately these past few months, his mind was as much of a closed book to me as ever.
    So it was that I still knew almost nothing of Holmes's past romantic experiences. However, while I knew nothing of their number, I suspected they had not been very varied. He was far from being a naïf that much was evident, yet he sometimes betrayed uncertainty with particular actions, or at certain moments in our encounters. No, let me be more precise, since the only eyes ever to skim these words will be my own, and this document will be destroyed immediately upon completion. Our dealings with Charles Augustus Milverton have clearly shown me the abject folly of leaving such incriminating evidence intact.
    Holmes liked it well enough when I took him in my mouth, and he reciprocated with an ardour and skill that often left me striving not to think of all his previous bed partners with whom he had clearly performed this act. However, whenever I touched his buttocks, as I often did to pull our groins into closer contact when engaged in ... well, during more intimate moments, he would hesitate. Furthermore, he himself had never initiated such contact with me. On one occasion, returning home from an evening at my club where brandy had made me daring, I took him in my mouth and brushed my fingers down between his legs and back. He had tensed below me, I removed my fingers and neither of us ever referred to the incident again.
    Needless to say, all these indicators of hesitation and uncertainty were quickly suppressed and would have been imperceptible to anyone who had not spent the last few years observing him as I had, but they were there, nevertheless. I was thus forced to conclude that this particular activity was not to his liking, although it was whether from inexperience or disappointing results upon previous encounters I had not determined, and I am embarrassed to write that I spent a not inconsiderable amount of time musing on this.
    * * * *
    One evening last week, on a bitterly cold winter's night, I had agreed to join some friends from my university days for an evening in a public house. They were in town for a week and, while being a raucous crowd with whom I no longer felt I had very much in common, they had the twin advantages of being both charitable enough to invite an old acquaintance and presenting an excellent excuse to get out of Baker Street for an evening. Holmes had been much preoccupied with a case lately, and I was growing heartily sick of waiting by the fire for him every evening like a domestic housewife.
    Holmes had declined my invitation to join us; he was not a naturally sociable person and so I took no