Rain drenched his coat, thick black mud covering his shoes and a faint lingering smell of cyanide trailing after him as Sherlock Holmes, the world's only consulting detective, wearily made his way home from his most recent case. The familliar orange glow of the doorway of 221B Baker Street broke into the dark London smog as his housekeeper Mrs. Hudson answered the rap of his bony knuckles against the door. The greying, pleasantly plump woman took his coat, as the man himself slunk into the living room, and she supressed a shiver of cold as she watched his lean, dark frame shrink wearily into his own room. She gently tapped awake the other man, who had fallen asleep by the fireplace waiting for his friend's return.
"Yes, Mrs. Hudson?" Illuminated in the warm firelight, the man was in his early 40's, his pallid blond hair framing warm, friendly features and worried blue-grey eyes.
"I just thought you'd like to know, Doctor Watson, your friend came home a few moments ago and he's off to bed. you seemed worried earlier."
"I was, actually. Thank you, Mrs. Hudson." He stretched in the chair, settling back down into a comfortable position for the night. Sherlock heard everything, lying silently in bed. The past few weeks, he had stopped bringing John on cases. Things had been getting too dangerous, and John never seemed to have time between his patients now that he had taken up practice again. But John waited up every night anyway, evidently worried about his friend's well being.
John Haymish Watson, PHD, looked down the row of cots in the psychiatric wing at St. Bart's hosptal. The people here suffered from every variety of mental disorder known to man. thirty or forty voices were raised in conversational babble, shouts of pain or terror, frightened whispers, as the men and women in this wing were tormented by the invisible phantasams of their minds.
John rapped on the door at the end of the hallway, twice, to announce his entrance. Then he opened the door. The room was padded, and a single man in a straight jacket sat huddled in the far corner, apprently fast asleep. His hair, which had been shaven clean upon his admittance to the hospital a year and a half ago, now fell in unkempt black ringlets that framed the emicated, high cheekbones and the stern dark eyes.
Arthur Pembleton, 38, admitted for violently attacking his brother one day in a delusional fit, claiming that his brother was a criminal who had killed eight people and attempted to poison him with an innocent cup of tea. Apparently, James Mycroft Pembleton had been taking care of his insane brother since their parents died, trying to keep him as much out of trouble as possible although Arthur was obviously completely disconnected from reality. He kep referring to himself as "Sherlock Holmes", and he would gather bits of rubbish from around the house claiming they were "clues", and prosecuting imaginary criminals in the living room.
His sudden turn to violence, the doctor's hoped, might actually be a turn for the better. He had never noticed his brother before that day. Suddenly all his hallucinations and imaginings from that point seemed to be base off real people, as if some small part of his surroundings was seeping in through the walls of the imaginary world he had built around himself.
"Holmes," The Doctor adressed the insane man in the name he insisted for himself. He wouldn't have responded to Arthur. "Holmes, it's time for your supper." He unclipped the sleeves of the jacket and watched as the man tore into his food with the savegery of a wild animal. "How are you today then?"
The dark eyes shifted from the food to John for a moment, the gaze glazed and vacant. Then he straightened, and pulled the jacket as if it were a suitcoat he were adjusting on his way out for the night. "Fine, my dear Doctor. I've just made progress in the case of the theft of that priceless vase that was sent to the Queen from a chinese diplomat last month. You'll be fascinated to hear, I'm sure."
John shuddered as the deep voice, so carefully controlled and intellegent, related the imagined scenario. No doubt but he had spent the afternoon pacing back and forth the room like a caged animal, frustrated by the lack of "clues" until his mind had created some for him. It was startling, when you heard how wonderfully and clearly he spoke, to realize that these elaborately detailed scenarios and careflly explained experiments were nothing more than the ramblings of a brilliant but complete madman.