He is sitting languidly in his chair, the yellow back perched open, resting upon his knee, his thumb marking the place he left off, a short way through the chapter entitled "The Sea-chest." It is not for lack of enjoyment that he is unable to keep his eyes fixed upon the page, but a wandering contentment, which compels him to cast them about the room.
The fire crackles and pops with an easy energy and turns heat and light back into the slowly darkening room. The dancing flames send the wainscoting and everything inside it into a state of perpetual chiaroscuro. Watson is about to reach across to turn up the lamp next to Holmes' arm chair, when the owner of the same suddenly heard bounding up to the second floor. Only nine, light sounding treads, because Holmes takes the stairs two at a time. He is through the door before he can even have the time to finish opening it.
"I take it your excursion was successful, then, Holmes?" Watson asks, leaning forward in his arm chair. Holmes' only reply is a triumphant sounding, "Hum!" as he shoves a disheveled looking piece of paper under Watson's nose and then goes to peer out the bow window, with another nondescript noise. Watson smirks and rubs his mustache, examining the thin strip of paper.
Not more than fifteen centimeters across, and about three centimeters wide, it is smoothly cut on three sides and looks torn on the fourth. Its arrival, however, in Watson's eyes, is something of an anticlimax. He has been expecting a solution to this "little problem," for some days now, and the paper which he now holds in front of him is decidedly blank. He turns up the lamp, and it's added luminescence contributes nothing to the paper's assets. Watson opens his mouth to speak, but before the question has fully formed in his mind Holmes interrupts:
"Well, Watson?"
"Well, Holmes?"
"Well, what do you think of it!" cries Holmes. "It is of some interest in our little problem, is it not?"
"I must confess, Holmes," Watson replies, feeling something akin to a blindfolded man in the middle of an art expedition, "that I see nothing more than an ill-used scrap of paper."
"Tut, Watson, tut!" Holmes cries, and strides over to Watson's arm chair with visible gusto. He snatches the paper from Watson's fingers and holds it at arms length in front of them. "It is," he begins, while rummaging through his pockets with his free hand for a cigarette, "the flap from the envelope found in Paulot's breast pocket. I would have liked to have gotten away with the whole thing, which was a veritable gold mine, once I was afforded the opportunity to see it up close..." Here he pauses as Watson proffers up a glowing match to light Holme's cigarette. The stick perched easily between his lips, he continues: "However, Gregson was not in much of a charitable mood this evening, and so I found myself sneaking this-" a flourish of the scrap, "into my pocket."
"You may call me a fool, Holmes, but I still don't see how the envelope itself could have made you any wiser, let alone the flap of it. Didn't Gregson say in his first note that there was no post mark or return address?"
"He did indeed, Watson, and I commend you for remembering it! There is, however, a very little which we may hope to glean from this scrap." The steady stream of smoke from his cigarette rises elegantly towards the ceiling, and vanishes noiselessly. "We are looking for a man, Watson, who is left handed. Clearly, he has a hopeless smoking habit, which puts even as tenacious a connoisseur of tobacco as myself to shame. He is also a man of singularly strong habits, who hails from the United States- Ohio, if I am not very much mistaken, and is less comfortable financially than you or I."
"Why, Holmes! All of that from the flap of an envelope. I cannot possibly begin to imagine! Incredible!"
Holmes chuckles slightly, obviously glad of his friends approval. "And more than what I have previously expounded." Here he throws his quickly finished cigarette into the grating of the fire. You know, I should consider you a hardened felon, old man, were flattery to be declared a crime by Her Majesty's government."
"Nonsense, Holmes, nonsense. However did you deduce all that?" Watson watched as the end of the cigarette is consumed in the flickering flames, and then looks back at his companion, who has since ceased to squat beside the arm chair, and stands pacing along the window sill.
"You know my methods, Wat- Aha!" Holmes cuts himself short, snapping his pocket watch shut and restoring it to it's proper place. "I do hope you will forgive me, old man. However, I have but half an hour to arrive at a small establishment about a mile and a half from here. The winter air being as crisp as it is, I should prefer to get along and stretch my legs. If you should care to join me..."
"I should like nothing more, Holmes," and Watson throws his yellow back onto the chair without marking his place. He has already put on coat, hat, gloves and scarf when Holmes returns looking thoroughly pleased.
"Excellent, Watson! I thought I could depend upon you. And along the way, I will continue my explanation of the man who sent this letter. If you would be so kind as to bring along your old Webley, I do believe it would make a nice match for my Irish Constabulary."
Watson pulls the service revolver out of his pocket, to signify that he has thought ahead of Holmes and pocketed it beforehand. Holmes grins and grips the handle of his Royal Irish, before stowing it firmly in his coat pocket once more. He looks about for his hat, briefly, before Watson says 'Holmes,' and points to the hat, sitting discarded on the chemical bench in the far left of the room. Holmes picks it up, and they are out the door before it has settled firmly on his head.
This is the short little Prologue. So, anyway. Let me know what you think of it. The characterizations, the plot (what little you can tell from this,) the style. If there was anything you particularly liked or didn't like. Even flames. I'll take those too.