"I have often walked down this street before. . ."

- Freddy Eynsford-Hill (From, My Fair Lady)

Home Again

It is like I have never been gone.

The sidewalk is as I remember it - its width about as twice the span of the length of my cane - and the cobblestones come up to its brink - separating the lanes of existence of "de flâneur" from the hansom cabs. The scent of the air - the fogs of the city, the horses of the street, the earthy smell of living people - it is all the same. The buildings have not altered in any significant way, though I can tell that among those who live inside them, three have died, two businesses have failed, one has moved, and one family has produced three children - including a set of twins - in the three years I have been away.

The Round of Life is as eternal as it ever was.

The glass above one small door is the same - no sign of age or wear has blurred the numbers and the letter that I see written there in gold.

The door opens without a creak - my key turned the lock without any protest. There are flowers in the vase on the hall table as I remove my hat and overcoat. There is no dust on the rack as I hang them up.

Not much has changed here either.

Mrs. Hudson rounds corner of the hall, a feather duster in her hand, and she stops short, looking at me with unbelief for quite five seconds. Neither has she altered much - but the combined effects of shock and wonder have somehow made her look far younger in this moment than ever I remember her.

"Sir!" she says, and I can hear the tears and the threat of hysterics in voice, a threat made good in another moment as she drops her duster and buries her face in her hands. But she does not hide her eyes for long - the next second she is staring at me again, and with a sharp sudden movement, she comes quite close to me.

"Sir!" she says again, with feeling, "I thought. . ." - she says no more, but suddenly takes my hand in one of hers and resumes her crying.

I allow the touch - I knew this would be a shock - best to get it over.

"Do you have something nice for my breakfast Mrs. Hudson?" I ask, in my own feeble attempt to soothe her, "I declare I am famished this morning!" I am not, but I do not stick at the lie, for she has always loved to feed me, this motherly soul. Were I her son, and obliged to eat at her every insistence, no doubt I would be as fattened as Mycroft by now.

She nods little through her tears, and I manage to slip away to my old sitting room.

Mycroft did well in retaining these rooms for me. As I open the door to my bedroom, I silently thank him, for I feel my mind slipping easily back into the old worn patterns as comfortably as into old shoes. There was some talk between us three years ago as to whether or not 221b ought be kept up in state I left it. It was Mycroft's suggestion that he do so, and now I see he was right.

Home.

Strange how everything being the same make it all so different.

I throw off my coat and over the back of the settee it goes, the soft whisper of cloth sounding loud in the extreme stillness of my old rooms.

I walk to my writing table - it is far more bare than I ever let it be when I am in residence, but there is one book upon it, which I take up, curiously. It is my mother's old Bible - I wonder why it is here, for I scarce remember this small portion of my past. Yet still, I open it, and my eye falls on one chance phrase -

". . .and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?"

I am not a very good man. Nor a religious one. . . But, I hope, at least, that the first two of these requirements I have mastered.

For the third I need my Boswell.

Ah, yes. . . that is why it all seems so different.

You are missing, my old friend. . .

Mrs Hudson enters just then, and with care I place the old Bible back on my bookshelf. She is chattering, fussing with the tray of food she has brought, fluttering around the table as though some foreign dignitary were about to sit down to eat her good simple meal. In her own quiet way, she is scolding me for appearing so suddenly. She is still frightened that it is all a dream - some concoction of her overactive Scottish imagination. I do not listen to her flow of words, but break in with logic, as I have always done -

"Did you not think it strange, Mrs. Hudson, that my rooms were being kept up?"

That stops her chatter, and she falters, "I. . . I thought it was that eccentric brother of yours, sir. . . that it was his way of. . . way of. . ."

"Yes?" I prompt, strangely curious as to how this kind old woman rationalized my absence.

"I thought it was his way of making a memorial, sir, and I didn't mind doing it, but. . ."

"But what?"

"You've been greatly missed, Mr Holmes. . ."

I may have only played at being Norwegian, but this is the first time in three years that I have felt truly English.

"Thank you, Mrs. Hudson," I say. And I mean it.

She leaves, but before I eat, I decide I must reacquaint myself with these rooms - I will not re-enter my life at Baker Street feeling like a stranger in a strange land.

Quickly, I survey my things. Many of them are as I left them three years ago, and there is but one thing missing from them all. It is the old meerschaum pipe that I took to Switzerland. That is the only part of me that has fallen into the Riechenbach abyss. That corner of my drawer will never be the same.

But a drawer can be closed.

I close my eyes and reflect. Of course there is more to home than things, else why would every man fight for his home with whatever passion he possesses?

There is more missing here than meets the eye.

I am alone in this old room - the chair across from mine is empty, and I feel it.

Many times these past three years I thought I had forgotten how much my one true friendship meant to me. I did not realize how little I knew myself.

Some drawers cannot be closed.

I pick up the paper. The Honourable Ronald Adair is dead. I know by whom, and I know why. Within twelve hours I will bait my tiger. All my plans - convoluted and recherché as they may be, are about to come to fruition. But I know I have been followed home, and the one thing I need now is the one thing I lack.

Someone to trust, and someone to care.

Ah, Watson, what have the past three years done to you? Do you still think of me as a friend - long lost, but still to be wished for as company?

Or, is it as I fear - that you have come to hate the one who brought you such grief three years ago; the one who did not even - could not even - write to you when Mycroft informed him of your wife's demise; the one who found peace and quiet in a lonely shack in the Tibetan highlands while you were here, toiling in your doctor's harness, unaware of it all?

Can I expect to come back to our old Baker Street life without so much as an apology?

Will the one thing that I need to be the same be the one thing that has changed?

I find I do not know, but suddenly a plan comes to me as all my plans do - in a flash of intuitive insight.

I must find you out, old friend, and no matter how closely I myself am being followed, I will follow you, and learn your mind, somehow. Yet, for once I curse my imagination and despise my experimental turn of habit. Blast! This plan is far more likely to bring danger to you than comfort to me.

But, of course, what is life but one long experiment, and what are we but products of God's imagination?

I cannot eat now, for I have a far more pressing need. My grease paint is where I left it, and my box of theatrical accoutrements is nearby. As I prepare, I think of you, old friend, and I think I am sure you have not changed - not nearly enough, at any rate, to be uninterested in the death of Ronald Adair. Doubtless you will be found near to Park Lane very soon - if your habits have not changed either, your rounds will be nearly done, and a brisk walk across the Park would bring you to Number 427 quite easily.

Yes, I think I shall find you there. . . if you are at all like the Watson I know, then you will have been following the case with some interest - and perhaps even attempting to solve it in your own stolid fashion?

No matter. . . the answers shall be given to you soon. Even if you tell me off at first sight. . . I have a suspicion that I will be forgiven much, if I bring solutions and adventures with me. . .

My disguise is nearly done, but I need some final props - some books to carry to make me seem the old bookseller I mean to appear.

I look at the bookshelf in the corner of my room, mentally deciding which among the treasured volumes I could afford to lose should something go amiss with this charade. There is a less than well thumbed translation of Latin poetry by Catullus that I had dismissed as foolishness by the time I was seventeen; and there is that rather didactic piece on the Celts titled "The Origin of Tree Worship"; my copy of "The Holy War" that a thoroughly pedantic vicar had given me while I was in school; and of course, there was that wholly useless document, "British Birds". Well. . . perhaps not wholly useless, given the scientific nature of its subject, but I never had been able to fathom why anyone would wish to spend his days watching twittering flighty creatures, and it was a double mystery to me why Mrs. Adella Swindarham had thought that volume an apt gift in thanks to me for restoring her husband to her.

I smile a little to myself. . . Some mysteries are much better left as such. . .

I take these four volumes, and some nine more, and tie them loosely up with string. Then, I am ready. I descend the stairs with my usual rapid pace, and find a package of some weight and girth awaiting me. Ah good, this part of my plan I had already arranged. I leave very specific instructions with Mrs. Hudson regarding the heavy wax bust that sits, carefully wrapped, at the foot of the stairs. I know I can trust that my instructions will be carried out.

Of a sudden, it is quite like old times. . .

I go out. Avoiding the eyes of Moran's gang is childishly simple for me now - I have had three years of practice. The nets draw closer, but I have nets of my own now.

I have every confidence that by midnight Colonel Sebastian Moran, and his deadly air rifle, will both be soundly in custody.

Park Lane has not changed since my last walk around London - nor have the Londoners themselves. They cluster about some bumbling fool, who is nattering on about "padded grappling hooks" or some such nonsense - trying to explain how someone could have ascended to Adair's room without leaving a trace. I scan the crowd, for all ages and classes are attracted to a murder - especially a murder as public as this one has been. For a split second I am not sure - it has, after all, been a long time - but then I am absolutely certain that I see you, my friend, among these listeners! You turn away, obviously as equally disgusted with the plain-clothes detective's findings as myself.

For three seconds, I stare, and do not move quickly enough to avoid you. We collide, and suddenly my books are scattered across the cobbles.

My dearest friend - you try to apologize to me for your own clumsiness, but it is not this which makes me incapable of any other response than a snatch and a snarl. Watson! How you have aged these past three years! I can see the lines of care and of long worry in your face - and how much of that new grey can be laid at my door? For the first time I feel that I may not deserve your good will. Yet, I follow you, and thereby learn that your practice has done well, at least. For some ten minutes I stand at the corner of your street, a most unexpected indecision holding me back from my original plan.

How could you, in any way, want me back? How could you wish for danger any more? For I know I draw it with me, wherever I choose to go. . .

I must brave the fears that my long absence has somehow born in me. I must include you, dear friend, in my latest adventure, no matter how dangerous it may prove to be. My fear cannot protect you any longer, for my own need for your protection has once again overcome my reticence. I doubt you will ever know the conflict that my life is. Dear fellow, what torture it is to be a creature of method - of science! - and yet to hold within myself a spirit that burns for adventure and longs for active excitement. Why is it that I am a man, and still I have the heart of a boy?

Mycroft is, perhaps, the only one among our family who needs not bear the pain of his existence. He has found his niche, and is there content. But I - however content I may be - cannot be reduced to the dark corner of caricature.

No matter how many times I may die, I think I will always live - somehow.

It is not logical, but as your maid sends me in to see you, I realize that when my conflict is yours too, there is no conflict at all. . .

With you nearby, friend Watson, I have no reason not to be happy.

I walk up to the door of your consulting room, and I consider what I am about to do. It is terribly selfish, and yes, I admit that I have been cruel to you these past three years. But this move is up to me - and if you are yet the man I know you were then, then you will understand. I think you will not even question the shock I am about to give you - knowing me as you do, you will unhesitatingly mark it as my own way of doing things.

It is the game we play, you and I. The game of boys become men, the game of men still children in some way, the game of brothers and friends, a game of the mind and of the heart.

I could never admit that I have missed our friendship more than life itself, but then you understand that too. . .

As I open to door of your office, I smile, shocking myself. I have not smiled from heart's ease for three years.

I make some small talk, and you turn away from me for one moment. The game is afoot! I sweep off my disguise, and at last you see that I am alive.

Now the next move is yours, and then I will be home again.