The Adventure at Baskerville Hall & Other Cases

account I know that no such incriminating evidence exists, it is absolutely impossible. Your threats are therefore empty insults more worthy of the gutter, and to which my partner and I are well accustomed."
    He shook his round head sorrowfully. "My dear Doctor. It is true that I told your," he paused significantly, " partner that I would not bring the Lady Eva's letters here. However–"
    Here he stopped, reaching into his overcoat, and when I saw what he withdrew I almost collapsed onto the snowy street. Through the rushing noise in my ears, I heard his falsely solicitous tones.
    "Did you think it had been destroyed?"
    What he was holding in his plump hand, with "Dr. Watson re: Sherlock Holmes" written clearly across the front, was a letter I had thought long since scattered to the four corners of London. It was an epistle I had written several months ago, on a beautiful summer's afternoon, when Holmes was lying on our settee in one of his black moods and nothing I could do or propose could lift him from it. In despair, I had sat at my desk and written him a letter, a love letter, declaring both the depth and the nature of my affection and desire for him in the most appallingly sentimental terms that I knew I could never voice aloud. Had I sat down and thought about it for a week, I could not have drafted anything that would make better blackmail material.
    However, I had destroyed it immediately. Almost as soon as I had finished it, the idiocy of even committing such words to paper occurred to me and I resolved to obliterate the letter so completely that no-one could trace it. Being summer there was no fire in the sitting-room grate, so I could not burn it. I had therefore excused myself for an afternoon stroll, torn it into pieces and dropped a few in every public rubbish bin I had passed on my ramble until I had disposed of them all. Yet somehow it was once more in front of my eyes, the separate parts found and pieced back together to form one horrific whole.
    "But it was destroyed!" I gasped, feeling weak at the knees. "I scattered the fragments in public rubbish bins all over London, there was no way they could be traced."
    "My dear Doctor," he repeated, "do you think that meeting with dissatisfied valets and housemaids is the sole occupation of my days? I also employ a trusted group of assistants who keep an eye upon people I deem of importance. It had been some weeks that Paul had been following you every time you poked your nose out of doors alone, and you may imagine how pleased he was to finally bring me such a treasure. When he saw you taking such care to dispose of some papers, I rather think he was hoping for some shameful account of your debts, for I know your weakness for gambling. But this ... this was a pearl beyond anything I could have hoped for."
    My panicked thoughts seemed to move with treacle-slow speed. Later that evening, I had found that the writing of such a letter had depressed me beyond words. Holmes had finally moved from the settee and was ensconced in his bedroom, scraping out something discordant and melancholy upon his violin, and so I had taken myself off to seek male companionship in a small, select establishment that I had frequented once or twice since moving to London. If this "Paul" had been following me on my solitary excursions then that must mean that–
    I looked at Milverton sharply, to find him nodding as he read my fears in my eyes.
    "Yes. I have known for some time of your preference for, shall we say, masculine company. Nothing that I can prove, of course; it would only be my word against yours. But this," he tapped the letter pointedly against his other hand, "is worth its weight in gold."
    Had it been only myself implicated, the matter would have been grave enough. However, sodomy is a crime that requires a partner, and regardless of how much I denied his knowledge of my proclivities, Holmes would almost certainly be dragged into this as well. Even if he were cleared at the trial, I could see every possible consequence of such a course of events – the probing questions, the ignominy, the honoured career ending in irreparable failure and disgrace.
    All this was considering solely the legal ramifications of exposure. What this would do to my friendship with Holmes and his opinion of me, I did not dare to consider. I met Milverton's eyes again, and knew I was beaten.
    "How much?" I asked, through a dry throat.
    "Three thousand pounds," he answered calmly.
    "It is