The Adventure at Baskerville Hall & Other Cases

never have dreamt of forcing a confidence."
    "I know. It is an admirable quality in you. So I am solving your dilemma for you – I obtained it from a shop in a small alleyway in Whitechapel in the disguise you saw earlier, the advice I received was verbal only, so you needn't look at me from under your eyebrows in quite that fashion, and as for why–" here he finally untangled himself, rose from the bed and started to dress.
    "As for why ... my dear man, I am well aware that your sexual encounters span three continents and, as you have demonstrated during our interludes together, both genders. In quite some depth. I imagine that our limited activities of the last few months must seem rather tame to you after your time experiencing the delights of Her Majesty's British Army."
    He now stood by his fireplace, mostly dressed and with his arms folded, presenting several barriers to me. But I was starting to know him better, and knew that this show of distancing himself was precisely that, just a show. I sat up, pulling the blanket over my lap.
    "Holmes..." I asked carefully, "What on earth could have given you the impression that I'm unsatisfied with how things are between us?"
    "Oh, come now," he scoffed. "Surely you have wished to extend our illegal activities beyond the limited range of what we currently get up to. I was merely carrying out some necessary ... research."
    I got out of bed and approached him, bare as the day I was born, while he firmly tied the belt of his dressing-gown.
    "Dearest fellow ... please believe me when I say that these past few months have been among the happiest of my life." I breathed. "I had held you in such high regard and desired you for so long that I could scarcely believe it when I discovered you reciprocated my feelings. You know this is true. So believe me now when I tell you that I really don't care what we get up to; as long as you are my partner for these 'illegal activities' then I am perfectly content."
    By this point I was standing in front of him, grasping his upper arms. He looked away from me, but I could see a faint flush along his cheekbones. I leaned forward to brush a kiss over those lips that can by turns charm and infuriate me, and he caught me when I would have drawn back.
    "What you just did," he murmured against my mouth, "It was staggering. I have never felt anything like that before."
    "It is good to know that I still have some capacity to surprise you," I teased him. "As you have so often surprised me."
    He grinned openly at that. "Well, I have to say that this sort of surprise is infinitely preferable to battling swamp adders or chasing violent criminals across half of London." He cleared his throat, escaping as was his wont from profound displays of emotion. "Now come, Watson. Since you have now well and truly missing your meeting with your old acquaintances, I feel it my duty to make it up to you with my humble skills upon the fiddle. But do get dressed before you leave my bedroom, there's a good chap. We wouldn't want to send Mrs. Hudson into hysterics."
    I snorted at such false modesty applied to his exceptional musical skills as I pulled away to retrieve my scattered clothing. As he left his bedroom and I found my shirt under the bed, I found also the strange object that had precipitated the evening's events. Carefully, I re-wrapped it and placed it on Holmes's bedside table. Listening to the flurry of scales and arpeggios that now emanated from our sitting-room, I thought to myself that it would be a poor thing indeed if London's foremost consulting detective was not intrigued as to further exploration of the possibilities it presented.

THE ADVENTURE OF THE MISSING HEIR

    "The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something, and tell what it saw in a plain way. Hundreds of people can talk for one who can think, but thousands can think for one who can see. To see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion, all in one."
    John Ruskin , 1819 – 1900
    * * * *
    "Watson," Holmes asked me, languidly curling himself still further into the recesses of his armchair, "were you really proposing to dash that rather unpleasant fellow's brains out with our much-abused poker?"
    It was a bright, frosty afternoon in December, and our sitting-room door had only just closed behind a Mr. Steve Dixie, a more or less typical example of the sort of thug with whom Holmes's work brought us into all too frequent contact. The regularity of meeting such