The Horror of the Many Faces
Adapted by Cybra
Disclaimer: The Basil of Baker Street Mysteries belong to the late Eve Titus. The Great Mouse Detective belongs to the Walt Disney Company. The original "The Horror of the Many Faces" was written by Tim Lebbon. Inspector Vole belongs to Mlle. Irene Relda and is used with permission.
It always seems as if this sort of tale takes place on a dark, foggy night when the chief character is walking alone. However, I must write that clichéd line, for it was true that night as I took the long way home from my club.[1]
I shall never forget that night. That night started a chain of events that even I can scarcely believe.
My footsteps echoed hollowly on the cobblestones, reverberating in the silence as I turned down an alleyway. The quiet unnerved me, so I decided to cut this leisurely stroll home short. I hummed tunelessly to myself, almost literally whistling in the dark.
The shadows of buildings nearly hid the figure crouched in a side alley to my left. I turned, prepared to defend myself, but grew concerned when I saw that he or she was crouched over someone.
"I say, do you need help? I'm a doctor," I offered, drawing closer but not too close for the moment.
Now with less distance between us, I recognized the silhouette.
"Basil? What on earth – " I stopped in mid-sentence as I realized exactly what was happening. "What in heaven's name do you think you're doing?!"
Basil turned his head to look up at me, a cruel smile totally alien to his features on his lips. In his right hand, a scalpel stained crimson with the blood of the young mouse lying dead before him. Still smiling wickedly, he returned his attention to the corpse and made several more quick incisions inside the open chest with surgical precision. Reaching into the chest cavity with his left hand, he grabbed and pulled out the heart. He examined the organ for several seconds before standing, giving me one more sinister smile, and walking away with his prize.
All this I watched, frozen with horror and a near-uncontrollable desire to vomit. How could my friend – Could I even call that creature my friend? – possibly do such a thing? He had dissected this mouse as if the poor soul was one of his experiments. Even if the mouse was a criminal, he deserved due process. Basil had no right to make himself judge, jury, and executioner.
Had Basil's great mind completely turned on itself, driving him to murder?
I do not remember returning to Baker Street. I do remember that Basil was not home when I returned. I also remember shuddering at the thought of him going about and dissecting others.
My dreams that night were far from pleasant.
~@~
Basil still had not returned home when Vole called the next morning.
"The fourth victim…" Vole paused and sighed, shaking his head. "The witness swears he saw his wife kill the man and then cut him open, but she keeps claiming she was nowhere near the area. She says she was at her sister's house, and her sister can confirm it."
"Perhaps the sister is covering for her?"
"Maybe. We are looking into that." Vole glanced at the clock. "Where is he? A puzzle like this is exactly the sort of thing he likes looking into, and he isn't here."
"I honestly don't know."
Though at first reluctant, Vole had finally been kind enough to give me the details of the "puzzle" he spoke of. Four victims had been found in the same condition as the mouse I saw yesterday. (The mouse Basil had removed the heart from had yet to be found.) Each victim had a different organ or organs missing or extensively prodded after being removed. In each case, a witness saw someone he or she knew and trusted, someone they would never have thought would commit murder, performing some part of the dastardly deed.
I had been debating with myself for the past hour whether or not to say something. Now that I had all the details, I was torn between telling him what I knew to return the favor and my loyalty to Basil.
However, no matter how loyal to Basil I was, if my friend had turned murderer and was giving himself a self-taught anatomy lesson on fresh corpses, I had to tell Scotland Yard. But that did not mean it would not hurt.
"Vole," I began, wondering how I would say this, "Basil may be your man."
The inspector stared. "What?"
I told him about the night before, every last detail.
Vole visibly paled under his gray fur. "The other witnesses saw people they knew."
"Basil is a master of disguise."
Both of us stared at each other, the ticking of the clock the only thing interrupting our silence. I observed the skin under his fur turn white, and I knew that the skin under my fur must match his.
Basil would be more dangerous than any other murderer, as lethal as or more so than Leather Apron.[2] He could hide anywhere in any disguise he chose. Highly intelligent, he would be able to outwit Scotland Yard at every turn.
Finally, Vole placed his head in his hands and broke the near-silence. "Dear God…"
"What can you do, Inspector?" I asked.
"The only thing I can do: Put out a warrant for Basil of Baker Street." Lifting his head, he gave me a look. "Though I admit that it's the absolute last thing I want to do."
I nodded.
Neither of us pointed out that once Basil found out about the warrant, the only person who would be able to catch Basil of Baker Street would be Basil of Baker Street.
~@~
Twenty-four hours to the minute found me still in our rooms on Baker Street, wondering where my friend would strike next. So far, his strikes had been random enough, but perhaps there was some pattern that nobody had yet seen.
My revolver[3] sat heavy in my pocket. I may not know where Basil was, but I did not want to be surprised by him. Yet I hoped that I would not be forced to use my weapon on my friend. If one finds a mad dog, one is supposed to shoot it, but I knew that I would have great difficulty shooting this mad dog.
"Dawson!" a voice hissed from the darkness beyond the sitting room fire.
Military training that had yet to be forgotten came back full-force as I pulled my revolver from my pocket and whirled, aiming my revolver in the direction of the source.
"Freeze, sir!" Vole's own voice shouted as he leapt from his hiding place, aiming his own weapon.
In truth, I had not been alone the entire time. Vole had reasoned that at some point, Basil would return to our rooms, most likely to kill me to get rid of a "possible threat." After all, I knew Basil best of all and might be able to lead Scotland Yard right to him.
The tall, shadowy figure sighed. "Vole. I am actually quite impressed. If I hadn't seen your tail moving, I wouldn't have known you were there."
Ignoring the jibe, Vole said, "I am sorry, but you are under arrest, Mr. Basil, for five counts of murder."
"I'll turn on the light," I offered, my weapon still trained on Basil.
"Don't!" Basil commanded.
I froze, and Vole, who had been moving forward to cuff my friend, stopped moving.
"No, it will attract attention. Even though it isn't as if they don't already know where we are. They have to. Fear must smell so sweet…to bees…"
I exchanged a look with Vole. Clearly, Basil had lost his mind.
"I am going to turn on the light," I stated, once more moving towards the lamp.
"Fine. But I would prepare myself if I were you, Dawson. It has been a rather eventful twenty-four hours for me."
In order to light the lamp, I had to set my revolver on the table, leaving myself exposed. I was immediately thankful that Vole was there watching my back. I quickly lit the lamp.
Hearing a gasp from Vole, I picked the revolver back up, training it back on Basil, and then gasped myself.
Basil looked as if he should have been dead. His clothing was torn, muddied, and wet. His fur was sticking in all sorts of wild directions. His hands were bloody – I saw cuts, so I could believe for the moment that it was his own blood – and his cheek was badly scratched in several places. His eyes were wide and wild, like a beast that had been chased by dogs.
"Dawson, Vole, whatever you do, do not lower those revolvers!" he half-snapped, half-pleaded as he saw our arms begin to lower. "Keep them on me. After what you both think I did, lower your guard and you're likely to shoot me at the slightest movement or sound. That's right. Aim it right here." He placed a hand over his heart.
"Mr. Basil…" Vole gasped. "You…you look terrible!"
"I assure you, Inspector, that I feel worse." He gave us a grim smile, but it was so different from the evil smiles he gave me as he crouched over the dead man he had killed. "But despite how bad I look, can you possibly believe that I didn't kill those people?"
"How can you possibly ask that?" I shouted, deeply hurt. "I don't want to believe that you did it, but I saw you with my own two eyes!"
"You believe because you saw it? Because you saw me killing someone you must believe that I did kill someone?" He gave me an equally hurt look.
Vole's eyes snapped back and forth between Basil and me like someone following a tennis game. However, he did not speak. Wisely, he knew that this was between the two of us, and we had to settle this.
"Let me explain to you everything I know," he requested of us, of me. "Afterwards, if you still wish to take me in, do so. But I warn you, taking me to gaol will be condemning countless more to their deaths."
"Explain," Vole ordered, motioning towards Basil's chair so he could take a seat.
Basil sat, visibly grateful for that small comfort. He drew his legs up to his chest so his chin rested on his knees and looked right at us. When we lowered our revolvers slightly, Basil did not object.
I could see no scalpel, no mess on his hands other than his own blood, no evidence that he had committed any crime.
But that proved nothing.
"Have either of you gazed into a mirror and really concentrated on the person you see there? No? Try it some time. It really is an interesting exercise. After about an hour, you see someone else. You see, eventually, what a stranger sees, not the composite picture of facial components with which you are so familiar, but individual parts of the face – the big nose, the close-together eyes. You see yourself as a person, not as you."
"Very interesting, Mr. Basil, but what are you trying to say?"
"What I am saying is that perception is not definite, nor is it faultless." He looked at me, a silent plea in his eyes. He was trying to make me understand some madness that only he could currently grasp.
"I saw you kill a man, Basil," I flatly told him. "I saw you kill him and steal his heart."
"The heart, the brain…All vital parts of the greater whole…Dawson, don't you see that – "
He stopped in mid-sentence, ears pricked, tail stiff, eyes wide and fearful. The skin under his fur whitened so that a corpse appeared healthier than he. Never before had I witnessed such terror from Basil.
"It's quiet outside," he whispered, his voice holding a small tremor. "They're coming."
I exchanged another look with Vole, this time a truly alarmed look. No mouse had ever frightened Basil as badly as he was then.
"Who is coming?" Vole asked, but Basil ignored him to race to the window.
Vole and I followed close on his heels, so that we stood on one side of the window and him on the other.
He gazed anxiously out the window before turning back to us. "I'm begging you both to listen to me. Especially you, Dawson, because of what you saw. If you are my friends, if you have faith and loyalty, if you care anything for me, you have to believe two things in the next few seconds or we will die."
"What are they?" Vole asked.
"The first is that I am not a murderer. Second, do not trust your eyes! No matter how long this takes, you can only believe in instinct and faith because those are the only things they cannot change. It's too inbuilt, perhaps, too ingrained…I don't know…"
He began to tremble as he fought for control. Whatever he knew, it terrified him so that it tore apart the cool armor he had built for himself, leaving a very exposed mouse.
And that exposure made me trust him if only for a few moments.
"Basil, what are they?" I demanded.
He snapped his head around to look at me. For a moment, I saw a glimmer of relief in those terrified eyes as if my words had given him sort of hope. "You ask what they are, Dawson, and not who. Already you halfway believe me." He turned his head towards the street and stiffened. "Quiet! Look! There! There! In the street!"
Instinctively, Vole and I looked. Running along the road, heading straight for the front door of our building, was Basil of Baker Street himself.
~@~
"They will come straight for me," Basil whispered, his voice somehow managing to hold some illusion of calm despite his slight trembling. "I am a threat."
"Mr. Basil…" Vole gaped at the approaching form. "It can't…How…?"
I felt numb all over. Though I needed to be alert for what was to come, I felt distanced from my surroundings. Reality seemed to slip away from me.
"Don't trust your eyes!" Basil's voice hissed at me from the dark tunnel where reality had retreated, his hand tugging my arm the only thing pulling me back.
That mouse had been running exactly like Basil. It was the same loping stride, the same flick of the tail with each stride. The same look of a determined hound on the hunt gracing his face. I knew it so well, for I had seen it ever since the Flaversham Case.
"You must believe only what you know for certain," Basil said. "And that is our friendship and history together."
This second Basil approached the front door.
"I will get them, it, the thing on the floor," Basil said, swallowing as if trying to swallow his fear. "You two need to shoot it in the head. Empty your revolvers, one shot may not be enough. Whatever you do, do not baulk. This thing here, tonight, is far bigger than us. We're fighting for London and maybe more."
Neither Vole nor I spoke. I could not find anything to say. I had to have faith in Basil.
I had seen him kill a mouse.
"Do not trust your eyes."
He was bloody and dirty from the chase, from hiding from the crimes he had committed.
"I am not a murderer."
And then the door burst open, Basil of Baker Street standing in the doorway. With the light of the lamp, I could see his tall, imposing figure, his clothes tattered and muddied, his face scratched, hands cut and bloodied. Then I had no more time for observation.
My nose was assaulted by the sweet smell of, of all things, honey. Turning my head slightly to look at Basil standing with us at the window, I caught sight of something from the corner of my eye. The Basil in the doorway seemed to have some things buzzing about his head.
I looked straight at this second Basil and the buzzing things were no more. Then he gave me the same cruel smile I had seen as he cut that mouse's heart out.
"Vole! Dawson!" Basil shouted, reaching across the window to grasp our arms.
The new visitor snapped his tail out like a whip to slash the lamp, knocking it to the floor where it shattered to pieces. Then, he leapt at us.
I backed away. With only moonlight and starlight filtering through London's constant hazy skies, the room had grown dark indeed without the lamp. I heard a grunt, a growl, the smashing of furniture, and something cracking as the two Basils tumbled into the center of the room.
"Doctor!" Vole shouted. "Which one is which?!"
To be perfectly honest, I could not be sure. Even as we both aimed at the two figures, I wondered which one I was supposed to shoot.
"Away!" I heard one shout. "Get away! Get away!" He sounded utterly terrified. "Oh God, why us?!"
I aimed my revolver but the pair rolled and twisted, hands at each other's neck, eyes bulging as first one and then the other presented his face for us to shoot.
Which one was my friend and which one was the imposter?
Vole and I stepped forward nearly as one, still smelling that peculiar honey stench, when something stung my ankle, a tickling shape struggling inside my trousers. Instinctively, I slapped at it and felt the offender crushed against my leg. My eyes widened.
Bees.
"Fear must smell so sweet…to bees…"
"Dawson!" Basil shouted.
I raced back to the window and pulled down the curtains to let in as much moonlight as I could. Then I turned.
One Basil had the other pinned to the floor, hands about his neck.
"Dawson, Vole, shoot it!" the uppermost Basil commanded.
His face was twisted with fear, the scratches on his cheek open again and leaking blood. The Basil on the floor thrashed and gurgled, choking, and as I looked down he caught my eye. Something there commanded me to watch, held my attention even as the Basil on top ordered me to "Shoot, shoot it in the face!"
Vole aimed his revolver, but I twitched my hand in a signal for him to wait. The uppermost Basil continued to try to make us shoot his vanquished foe.
The defeated Basil calmed suddenly and brought up a hand holding a handkerchief. He wiped at the scratches on his face. They disappeared. The blood smudged a little, but with a second wipe it, too, was gone. The scratches were false, the blood fake.
The Basil on top stopped screaming at us to shoot and stared at his foe for a couple seconds before turning to look back at Vole and me.
"Oh dear Lord," I gasped.
A bee crawled out of his ear and up over his forehead. And then the scratches on his own cheek faded and disappeared before my eyes.
He shimmered. I saw something beneath the flesh-toned surface, something crawling and writhing and separate, yet combined in a whole to present an image of solidness.
Bees left this whole and buzzed around the imposter's head. Basil was still struggling on the floor, trying to force hands that could not possibly be hands off of him.
"Do not trust your eyes…you can only believe in instinct and faith…"
Without thinking, I thrust my revolver against the uppermost Basil's head and pulled the trigger. Something splashed out across the floor and walls, but it was not blood. Blood does not try to crawl away, take flight, or buzz at the light.
My pulling the trigger – that single act bringing doubt on the charade and faith in my friend – changed everything.
The thing that had been trying to kill Basil shimmered in the moonlight. I kept seeing two images being flickered back and forth so quickly back and forth that my eyes almost merged them into one, terrifying picture. Basil…the thing…Basil…the thing. And the thing, whatever it was, was terrible.
"Again!" Basil encouraged. "Again! Vole, you, too!"
Vole's revolver joined mine as we both knelt so that our aim did not stray towards Basil and we fired at that horrible shape. Each impact twisted the thing, slowing down the alternating images as if the bullets were blasting free the truth itself. Later I would realize that the bullets were doing more than that: they were actually defining the truth. Each time we squeezed our respective triggers made the creature weaker for we knew that this was not the real Basil.
We fired our sixth shots simultaneously, and the two bullets hit only air.
It is difficult to describe what we saw in the room, for I only saw it for a few brief seconds before it came apart. But every sight, sound, and smell was something completely unreal to me. The strong honey smell still hung in the air, but it seemed alien, almost as if it were someone else's memory. A noise briefly filled the room, sounding similar to a voice speaking an alien tongue, but I had and have no desire to understand what it was saying. A noise like the one I heard could only be described as mad.
All I know is that a few seconds after Vole and I had fired our last bullets, we three were alone. Vole cursed and hurriedly started to reload, I right on his heels, and Basil was already up, righting the oil lamp and giving us light. We need not have panicked, for we were truly alone.
Except for the bees. A hundred bees or so lie dead or dying on the carpet, huddled on the windowsill, or crawling behind chairs or objects on the mantelpiece to die. I had been stung only once, Basil seemed to have escaped entirely, a quick glance showed Vole rubbing his left arm where he had been stung, but the bees were expiring even as we watched.
"Dear God," I gasped. I went to my knees on the floor, shaking. I set my weapon on the floor, my shooting hand no longer able to bear the revolver's weight.
"Do you feel faint, my friend?" Basil asked.
"I don't think it's a question of feeling faint, Mr. Basil," Vole said, setting down his own weapon to reach out and touch one of the corpses, hand shaking.
"The inspector is right, Basil. I feel…" I paused, searching for a word. "…belittled. Does that make sense? I feel like a child who has been made aware of everything he will ever learn all at once."
"There are indeed more things in heaven and earth, Dawson," my friend said. "And I think we have just had a brush with one of those things."
He, too, had to sit, nursing his bruised throat with one hand while the other wiped his face with the handkerchief, removing any remaining makeup. He then cleaned the blood from both of his hands and washed away the false cuts there as well. He seemed distracted as he cleaned himself, his eyes distant, and more than once I wondered just where his eyes were looking, what they were truly seeing.
"Can you tell us what we just saw, Basil?" I asked. I looked around the room, still trying to imagine where that creature had gone, but knowing, in my heart, that its nature was too obscure for my understanding.
When Basil did not answer, Vole prodded, "Mr. Basil?"
But my friend was gone, his mind far away, as was its wont, searching the byways of his imagination, his intellect steering him along routes we could barely imagine as he tried to fathom the truth in what we had seen. On instinct, I stood and fetched his pipe, loaded it with tobacco from the Persian slipper, lit it, and placed it in his hand. He held on to it but did not take a draw.
Vole and I could only wait until his mind returned for some sort of explanation.
~@~
The first signals that Basil had returned to Baker Street were a sudden blink and his eyes clearing. His tail then swished once as he looked down at the smoldering pipe in his hand, blinking as if he had not known he had been holding it for the past hour.
"Welcome back to London," Vole commented dryly. "Now will you please tell us what is going on?"
Basil stared at him blankly, looking as if he had forgotten Vole was present. However, he cleared his throat in attempt to recover his lost dignity. "Of course." He took a deep breath. "I witnessed one of the first murders. I was taking a stroll at about midnight after spending the day performing a few minor biological experiments on dead invertebrates when I heard something rustling in the bushes of a front garden. Curious, I paused for a moment – "
"You said 'midnight?' What in heaven's name were you doing up at that hour?" Vole demanded.
Saying nothing, my friend preferred to give Vole an irritated look. I alone spotted the look of shame underneath the annoyance.
"Basil occasionally suffers from insomnia," I explained, fudging the truth a little. "Pray continue, Basil."
Vole gave me a penetrating look as if he suspected me of telling a lie, and, for a moment, I feared that he would question me further. But he, thankfully, let the matter drop.
Throwing me a grateful look, Basil continued, "I paused for a moment and heard what could only have been a cry, so I investigated.
"What I saw…it was impossible. And I knew that it couldn't possibly be. I pushed aside a heavy branch and witnessed an old man being operated on. By the time I saw him, he was already dead because the murderer was already extracting the kidneys and liver. And the murderer, in my eyes, was…Mlle. Irene Relda."
The slight hesitation before the name did not escape my notice. To most, it might seem as though Basil was still having trouble dealing with what he saw. But I knew him best, and I knew the truth:
Basil was lying and doing a poor job at it.
"Mr. Basil!" Vole shouted. "How is that possible?"
"Pray, let me continue, Inspector, and things may become clearer. Not everything is clear even to me thanks to there being so many facets to this mystery, and most of them are still cloudy. It will come, though. But that night I realized that what I was seeing wasn't the truth, and here is how I knew.
"Relda, the real woman, actually being able to surgically remove a mouse's kidneys and liver? Impossible and unreal. Being the logically minded person I am, and believing that proof, rather than simple belief, defines truth, I totally denied what I was seeing as the truth. Though I admire her mind, she simply does not possess the medical knowledge required to perform such a thing. Also, how could she be in that lovely garden when she is currently on tour in France? Because I denied that this was truth, I believed that something abnormal was going on.
"Since I was so willing to believe that something, shall we say, out of this world was occurring, I was able to see it. I saw the true murderer. I saw…I saw…" Basil trailed off and began to tremble a little as he gazed out the window.
I wished to reach out and touch my friend's shoulder. Obviously, not all of the terror he had shown us had been feigned. However, I was uncertain if he would welcome the contact at the moment.
"Terrible," he whispered at last. "It was terrible."
"So what I saw was an impersonator creating you in his own image?" I questioned.
"No, Dawson. No, it created me in your image, or, rather, your version of me. It delved into your mind and cloaked itself in the strongest identity it found there: me."
Vole snapped his fingers, catching on. "As it did with the other murders. The witnesses saw people they knew and trusted like wives, brothers, and such." Then he paled. "Good Lord…What if it used that trick to lure its victims in?"
"Of that we'll never know, but that is a possibility."
Silenced encompassed us for several minutes.
"Will you come to the Yard tomorrow, Mr. Basil? Without a corpse, we have no real proof that the murderer is dead…"
"I will come. For now, I suggest that you return to your home and Dawson and I turn in for the night."
Knowing he had been politely dismissed, Vole said his goodbyes and left.
I turned to my friend and received yet another shock.
Basil was crying.
~@~
"We can never know everything," he told me four pipes later, "but I fear that everything knows us."
We sat in our usual chairs on either side of the fire. The tear tracks still unashamedly glistened in the flames' flickering light on his cheeks, and my own eyes were wet with sympathy.
"What did it want? What motive did it have to slaughter those people?"
"Motive? Perhaps it was something so alien to our way of thinking that we can never guess exactly what it wanted. Or maybe it had no motive at all. But I suggest that examination was its prime concern. It was slaughtering, slicing, and examining the victims just as casually as I have, these past few days, been poisoning and dissecting invertebrates. The removed organs displayed that in the careful way that they had been dismantled."
"But why? Why would it need to know our makeup, our build?"
He stared into the fire, the flames reflecting in those bright green orbs.
I was glad for that. I could still remember the utter vacancy of the eyes I had seen on his likeness as it crouched over the bloody body.
"Invasion," he stated, sighing.
I shivered. How badly I wanted to forget these past two nights, yet how well I knew I would remember them! I voiced these thoughts aloud as I said to Basil, "It seems as if we all have the major fault that the more we wish to forget something, the less likely it is that we can."
Basil's eyes focused on me, and he smiled and nodded. I felt a childish sense of pride from saying something he approved of.
In the ensuing silence, one matter remained on my mind that had more to do with Basil's account of witnessing one of the ghastly murders than the murdering creature itself.
I hesitated for a minute before asking, afraid that I may have misinterpreted my friend's earlier actions. "Basil, why did you lie to Vole?"
He stiffened, and I realized that on this rare occasion I had caught Basil in a lie. "When?"
"You said you saw Mlle. Irene Relda killing that old man, yet you hesitated before you gave her name. It was almost as if you were trying to come up with an alternative person than who you truly saw." I narrowed my eyes as I realized something. "And now that I think about it, it wouldn't make sense for you to see Mlle. Relda. Why would that thing dredge her up from your memory?"[4]
He did not answer me, refocusing his full attention back on the fire.
"Basil, whom did you see murdering that old man?"
He closed his eyes. "You."
I stared.
"When I pushed back the branch blocking my view, I saw you, Dawson, over the dead man's body. I thought I would have a coronary right then and there. Like an idiot, I alerted that thing to my presence by saying your name quietly to myself. Apparently, it hears much better than we do." Opening his eyes and seeing my shocked state, he stopped.
"What happened?"
"That thing actually started laughing at me as it leaned over and started removing one of the kidneys. It whistled to itself at one point, much like you do when you're doing this or that." He trembled as his eyes unfocused, lost in the memory. "I kept thinking that this couldn't possibly be real, that I had seen you sound asleep not twenty minutes before. And then I realized that what I had just said was the absolute truth. There was no way you could have beaten me to that spot, killed that man, and then gotten that far into surgery in twenty minutes. On top of that, you had been sound asleep, and quite frankly, Dawson, you sleep like something dead."
"Thank you for that," I grumbled though I knew this to be true.
"On top of that, willful murder is something completely foreign to your nature. I know that you could never kill in cold blood." His trembling ceased and his eyes began to refocus. "As these facts played in my mind, what I saw before me became less real. This could not be my Dawson, and then the Dawson before me wasn't Dawson anymore."
He fell silent, looking at me. It took me a moment to realize that he was silently seeking my approval.
Shame swept over me. We had both faced the same test, and one of us had failed it miserably. Basil had seen the truth of it with his faith in me, but I had immediately believed what I had seen. Instead of trying to discover the truth, I had set the Yard on my friend. I should be the only seeking the approval of him, not the other way around.
"Basil…why us?" I moaned, leaning forward and placing my head in my hands.
I felt rather than saw Basil hesitate before he reached out and grasped my shoulder.
"Pure chance," he answered, "but a fortuitous chance for London."
I lifted my head to see Basil gazing at the floor now.
"Forgive me," I whispered.
"Forgiven if you can forgive my moment's doubt as well."
I nodded in agreement.
"Done." He paused. "Come, we must rest. It has been a trying night, and Vole wishes for me to speak at Scotland Yard tomorrow."
We rose from our seats and retreated to our individual bedrooms.
~@~
For some weeks after that, I went nowhere without my revolver in my pocket. I remember one morning as I was walking, I smelled fear on the air I saw a bee buzzing from flower to flower on some honeysuckle. I had decided to return home, my fully loaded revolver warm where my hand had grasped it.
Basil was unusually quiet during that time, taking no cases at all. He grew ill-looking, so pale and melancholy was he. It took only a day or two for me to grasp what was wrong with him. Something vast had eluded him: understanding. He had an idea of what had happened and it seemed to fit neatly around the event, but he could not understand. And that must have done much to depress him.
I can still remember those nights when we were at home. I would sit in my usual place, but Basil would sit by the window, gazing outwards towards the unknown. He always seemed to be seeking for some elusive truth. And as I would sit there watching him, I would see his eyes, glittering dark and so, so sad and know that they were seeing nothing of this world.
[1] In the Canon, Watson regularly visited a club, so it is logical to assume that Dawson would.
[2] Leather Apron is, of course, Jack the Ripper.
[3] Watson carried his old army revolver on cases, so I would assume that Dawson did the same on occasion.
[4] The lie and the explanation of the lie were not in the original tale, but I added this in since Lebbon's explanation of having Adler did not make much sense in my mind.