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  His bulkier companion lunged for the old man with an infuriated, tigerish growl, and promptly found himself with his right arm wrenched up behind him and rotated from the shoulder at such an angle that he was bent double and could scarcely move. The Yorkshireman, having deftly sidestepped the assault, now had the Lascar fully under his control, like a lassoed bull. However much the Lascar struggled, he could not turn around or break free. He swore as saltily and lustily as only a sailor knows how, both in English and his native Bengali, but his invective had no more effect than his bodily straining.

  The Yorkshireman then dealt a savage punch to the Lascar’s midriff. His fingers were half bent and rigid, so that his fist was less like a pugilist’s, more like a blunt-edged axe. The blow landed on the right-hand side of his opponent’s ribcage, just above the liver, and I could tell that this was no accident. He had struck precisely at the point for which he had been aiming, and the resultant shock to that organ left the Lascar breathless, sickened and helpless. He swooned, collapsing to his knees beside his associate. Both men were ashen-faced and close to insensibility. The fight had definitely gone out of them.

  “Well,” said the victor of the brief contest, straightening up. “That’s those two dealt with.” He no longer sounded like a native of Yorkshire; rather, his voice had the crisp, clipped resonance of a well-educated product of the Home Counties. “And you, my girl,” he said to the Lascars’ unfortunate living merchandise. Around us the pub patrons, briefly diverted by the fracas, had returned to their pursuits. “Quick now. While your abusers are incapacitated. You will never get a better opportunity than this to escape. There is a Salvation Army shelter on Hanbury Street in Whitechapel. Seek refuge there. Young as you are, you may yet put your miserable formative years behind you and make something of yourself. Here.” He slipped a half-crown into her hand. “That ought to see you on your way.”

  The girl secreted the coin in a pocket of her skirt. “Bless you, sir.”

  “Don’t thank me. Just go.”

  She turned and made for the door. One of the Lascars grabbed feebly at her heel, but she skipped past him, and then was gone.

  “As for you,” the Yorkshireman said, turning and fixing me with a pair of grey eyes whose glittering brightness was in stark contrast to the ruin of the rest of his face, “you too can redeem yourself by helping me pursue your friend Stamford. It’s your fault that I’ve lost him, so you owe me the courtesy of joining me in the act of recovering him.”

  “Lost…?”

  I looked around. Stamford was nowhere to be seen. He must have fled while the old man – who was clearly much more than he seemed – had been giving the Lascars a drubbing.

  “Yes, lost. Dr Stamford is the reason I am in this den of iniquity, passing myself off as a ne’er-do-well. If not for you, I would still be observing his activities, unseen, and he none the wiser. Now, come. We must hurry if we are to pick up the scent again.”

  And that, in all honesty, was how I first met Sherlock Holmes.

  MY THOUGHTS WERE RACING AS I FOLLOWED THE bogus Yorkshireman out of the pub. At that precise moment I had no idea who he was, what his game was, why he was in heavy disguise, or what motive he had for shadowing Stamford. He had not even volunteered his name, or enquired as to mine.

  I was intrigued. I felt that I had been dragooned into an enterprise whose nature I could not fathom, and by rights I should have baulked. But there was something compelling about this stranger; his manner was so authoritative that I was unable to resist. I went along in his wake, meekly, but not reluctantly. I had been stirred out of my dejected torpor and for once I was not brooding on the disturbing implications of all that had befallen me in the Arghandab Valley. I was clear-headed again, with a plain and appreciable goal before me: to catch up with Stamford. Everything else was immaterial.

  That said, I did not lack concern for my erstwhile dresser. Stamford seemed a desperate, more troubled soul than the young man I remembered. He had refused to acknowledge me and the helping hand I had extended. He was under surveillance by this enterprising and quick-witted individual who had passed himself off as an elderly son of the Dales. What, I could not help but wonder, had he done to get himself into such a fix? What had gone so dramatically awry in his life?

  We burst from the pub into the frigid night air. The alley was empty save for the girl, of whom we caught a last fleeting glimpse before she vanished round the corner. Now it was just the two of us. Of Stamford there was no sign whatsoever. I could not even hear any fading footfalls, owing to the racket coming from the pub and the adjacent tenements.

  The bogus Yorkshireman went down on one knee and began examining the many shoe prints in the slush. With questing, birdlike movements of the head he directed his gaze from one to the next, until at last his focus alighted on a single impression which he declared, with no apparent fear of contradiction, to be Stamford’s.

  “How can you be so sure?” I asked.

  “It is a ten and a half, Dr Stamford’s size. It is the imprint of the sole of a pointed-toe, elastic-sided ankle boot, exactly of the kind Stamford is wearing. It has, if one looks closely, a hole in the sole, as does Stamford’s. Added to that, the imprint in general is smeared rather than sharp-edged, and deeper at the toe end than the heel, suggestive that the wearer is not walking but running. And see? Here is another, matching imprint, a stride’s length away. Thus we have the direction in which Stamford is heading, and the assurance that he is proceeding at some pace. This way! No time to waste.”

  He set off along the alley at a fair lick, and I fell in beside him.

  “You run fast,” he said as we reached the junction at the end of the alley.

  “I’d run faster if the going were firmer.” The slush was treacherous underfoot. It would have been all too easy to slip and end up with a twisted ankle.

  “Nonetheless you move with the intrepidity and alacrity of a military man, ever ready for action.”

  “I have seen service.”

  “I know. You have paid the penalty for it, too. The way you favour that shoulder of yours, the stiffness with which you hold it. A war wound.”

  “You are observant.”

  “I am that at the very least. An army surgeon in Afghanistan?”

  “Good heavens!” I ejaculated. “How did you work that out?”

  “Simple. I overheard you addressing Dr Stamford, reminding him of your time together at Barts. Couple that with your history with the military – it was the most logical inference. You have lately spent time in the tropics, to judge by the darkness of your skin – a suntan, because it does not extend past your wrists, which are pale. Afghanistan it must have been, for there is hardship etched into your features, and those qualities abound in that country for the Englishman as nowhere else.”

  All this he expounded as we continued to dash through the maze of alleyways. He was not in the least out of breath, while his eye continually searched for, and identified, the spoor of our quarry in the slush.

  “I could tell a great deal more about you,” he went on, “were you to hand me a personal item and allow me to peruse it for a minute or two. A pocket watch, for instance. But this is neither the time nor the place for a full practical demonstration of my methods. Keep up, Dr Watson!”

  I had started to flag. My shoulder was giving me gyp, and the weeks I had spent bedridden in Peshawar and subsequently idle aboard the Orontes from Karachi to Portsmouth had taken their toll on my stamina.

  “You know my name,” I panted. “Of course. You must have overheard that too when I announced myself to Stamford. But I, sir, am ignorant of yours.”

  “Holmes. Sherlock Holmes. I would say it’s a pleasure, and under more relaxed and congenial circumstances would shake your hand into the bargain. Let us consider ourselves formally introduced, and at a later date we can—”

  He broke off, his brow creasing into a frown. We had come to a halt under a gas lamp, a rare feature in that seamy, warren-like part of London. By
its light I could see that the greasepaint that lent Holmes an aged pallor was now streaked with perspiration. One corner of his false beard was peeling away from his cheek, the heat from his exertions having loosened the grip of the spirit gum. I was able to perceive, moreover, that his dipsomaniac’s nose was nothing more than a cunning confection of putty.

  “Dr Stamford is cleverer than I gave him credit for,” he said tightly. “Look. We are at a main road, and his tracks end on the pavement here, close by this set of wheel ruts in the roadway itself.”

  “A cab,” I said. I bent and braced my hands on my thighs, winded and glad to be able to catch my breath. I fear I could not have continued the pursuit much longer. “He flagged down a hansom.”

  “No,” Holmes replied. “Not a hansom. There are two parallel sets of ruts in the mud, indicative of a four-wheeled carriage rather than a two-wheeled one. The narrow gauge of the axle leads one to deduce a clarence rather than a brougham.”

  “It could still have been a cab. Plenty of growlers are used as hackney carriages.”

  “But no jarveys ply this area of town at such a late hour. The dearth of fares makes it not worth their while, and the prevalence of dragsmen, who’ll rob their cash boxes as well as their passengers, is an even greater disincentive. No, this was a private clarence – ‘growler’ if you must – hired or borrowed by Dr Stamford for the express purpose of spiriting him away with the young lady whose services he intended to acquire.”

  “That is all supposition,” I said. “Guesswork.”

  “I never guess!” Holmes expostulated hotly, his eyes flashing in the lamplight. “If you should know anything about me, Doctor, it is that. I make inferences based solely on analysis. When I say Stamford absconded in a clarence, that is because he did. He came to the pub on foot. I know, because I followed him in similar wise. All along, the carriage was strategically positioned nearby, a provision so that he could make a quick, clean getaway.”

  “If you say so.”

  “I most certainly do.” Holmes cast a forlorn glance along the street. “Well, anyway, we have no chance of overtaking him now. Had he enjoyed less of a head start, the outcome might have been very different. As it is, Dr Stamford has truly eluded us. But the night is not a complete loss,” he added. “That poor girl has, unless I am much mistaken, been spared a terrible fate.”

  “Might I ask what your interest in Stamford is?” I phrased the question carefully, wary of sparking a fresh outburst of vituperation. “Why have you been impersonating an aged Yorkshireman in order to follow him? What is all this about?”

  “Ah, Dr Watson, thereby hangs a tale. If you enquire out of mere idle curiosity, I am not sure I can be bothered to explain. If, on the other hand, your eagerness to know is sincere, I believe I can accommodate you.”

  Holmes studied me closely, and I had the impression I was being tested, undergoing some sort of audition. Somehow my integrity was on approval, and if I passed muster, I would be initiated into a great mystery.

  I bristled at that. I did not care for such shenanigans. The person before me, this Sherlock Holmes, struck me as the type who enjoyed feeling superior to his fellow men. Even if it was only through the masking of his identity by a theatrical disguise and an assumed regional accent, he relished being in on a secret to which others were not party. I sensed that he had the propensity to be insufferable, and I was not in the mood, either on that night or at that general period in my life, to put up with anyone possessing such a character trait.

  I was more than a touch surprised, then, to find myself saying, “Actually I am very keen for answers, sir.” Not only saying it but meaning it.

  “And accordingly,” said he, “I shall furnish them. But not here. We can repair to somewhere warmer and drier than this, a place perhaps forty-five minutes’ walk away, no further. Baker Street. I have rooms there. Just moved in. Can’t afford them, to be honest. Decent, well-priced lodgings are so hard to find in London nowadays. If you would be willing to accompany me…?”

  HENCE TO THE ROOMS AT 221B BAKER STREET, which at that time, in the winter of 1880, were much as I have portrayed them elsewhere. Later on they were to become shabbier, messier, a magpie’s nest littered with more books than would fit the available shelf space, alongside hosts of parchments in loose-leaf folders, the odd scroll, and numerous leather-bound incunabula of venerable antiquity whose Latin titles I cannot recall without a shudder. These, in their heaps and piles, would vie for space with tribal masks sporting anguished expressions; rune-etched stones; intricately carved locked wooden boxes whose keys never left Holmes’s side; marble busts and clay bas-reliefs depicting a host of nightmarish beings; display cabinets full of talismans, amulets and totems; and sundry other handcrafted objects the origin and nature of which one might do better not to consider and which our landlady Mrs Hudson was under strict prohibition not to touch even with a feather duster, let alone her bare hands.

  Let me enshrine the sitting room here, this once, recalling it just as it was back then in what I have come to regard as a more innocent time. Holmes’s chemistry bench was in situ, scarred with acid already, but the various pieces of equipment perched on it looking neat and not yet well used, nor yet subjected to the various gruesome substances, mainly organic fluids, that would stain them indelibly. The Persian slipper stuffed with his tobacco was on the mantelpiece, flanked by his two favourite pipes, the clay and the cherry-wood, and overlooking the coal scuttle where he kept his cigars. His encyclopaedias, dictionaries, gazetteers and other reference works sat in neat rows, thus far not supplanted by a plethora of grimoires and similar occult tomes. His scrapbooks and clippings collections were in their infancy and therefore did not occupy much room. His Stradivarius sat in pride of place on the table by the front window, resting athwart sheet music for a selection of Mendelssohn lieder. There was the comfortable if worn furniture, the bearskin hearthrug spread before the fire, the drinks cabinet – all the humdrum domestic features familiar to my readers from my prose and from Mr Paget’s illustrations in The Strand.

  So the place presented itself to me after Holmes and I had ascended the seventeen steps from the ground-floor hallway and entered; and so, in many ways, I prefer to remember it, before subsequent addenda transformed it into a shambolic museum of macabre curiosities, forbidden texts and ghastly relics.

  As for Holmes himself, after he returned from his bedroom having removed all his make-up and prosthetics and changed into a quilted smoking jacket, he was every inch the suave, spare-framed gent I have depicted time and again. In 1880 he was a mere six and twenty years old, with smooth skin and a firm jawline. His widow’s peak was not so pronounced as it would become, but his aquiline nose and domed forehead were as prominent as they would ever be. His grey eyes shone with an austere, lofty intelligence, and there was self-confidence in his every gesture.

  He kindled a fire in the hearth, and offered me a glass of cognac, which had much the same effect on my person as the fire had on the room.

  “I promised you answers, Dr Watson,” he said, sitting and sipping a cognac of his own. “Very well. How much do you know about Stamford?”

  “That is a question, not an answer.”

  “Indulge me.”

  “Well, what can I say? I know that he was perfectly competent when it came to the dressing of lesions and bandaging of wounds. I know that he ran with a fairly rowdy gang of contemporaries at the hospital, a fraternity whose principal bond was that they all came from a wealthy background. I know that he was something of a prankster and was responsible for gluing scurrilous speech balloons onto the Hogarth murals in the Great Hall which cast aspersions on the probity of the hospital’s main benefactors, the Hardwick family, and also for dressing the statue of Henry VIII on the gatehouse in a nurse’s uniform, although he was never caught and censured for either misdeed. I know that his Christian name is Valentine. Apart from that, not much.”

  “Did you know that he is an opium addict?”

  I w
as taken aback. “No, I did not. That would account for the pastiness I noted in his complexion tonight, though, and the redness of his eyes. What a wretched come-down. He was always boisterous but still, I felt, level-headed beneath it all, likely to mature into a responsible citizen. But I suppose a lot can change in a couple of years.”

  “Yes,” said Holmes, “Dr Stamford has become a slave to the poppy, and his habit takes him often to a den in Limehouse run by a Chinaman called Gong-Fen Shou. This in itself is a tragedy, but what makes it more terrible, by any judgement, is that I have divined a connection between your former colleague and a string of grotesque murders.”

  Now I was flabbergasted. “See here, Mr Holmes,” I said. “That’s quite an accusation to be bandying about. Who are you anyway? What is your profession? You act somewhat like a policeman, yet with all that disguise folderol – your imposture as a Yorkshireman – not to mention those unusual fighting techniques of yours, and above all your self-styled ‘inferences’, you are unlike any policeman I have ever met.”

  “That is because I am the superior of any policeman you have ever met, or are likely to meet.” Holmes spoke with calm equanimity, as though this were no boast but an unambiguous statement of fact. “I am, my dear doctor, something else altogether. I like to refer to myself as the world’s first consulting detective.”

  “The world’s first what?”

  “Consulting detective. Not merely the first but, I suppose, the only one.”

  He launched into his lengthy disquisition on the science of deduction with which my readers will already be familiar and so does not need to be reproduced here. I confess that I glazed over somewhat in the middle, but when I later came to set it down in A Study in Scarlet Holmes assisted me, rewriting that section of the book himself and fine-tuning many of the sentences so that his words read as a smooth and cogent elucidation of his empirical approach to criminal investigation.