The Blind Banker

by spandrella

A novelization of season 1, episode 2 of Sherlock. Also includes canon notes and an essay by the author.

Sherlock: The Blind Banker

a novelization by

rk wright

"Are there not subtle forces at work of which we know little?"

–The Adventure of the Blanched Soldier

One

The Girl

First, the tea leaves, into the kettle. Then the smooth splatter of water pouring over the leaves. It has been done thousands of times before, and this is the first time it's ever happened.

"The great artisans say, the more the tea pot is used, the more beautiful it becomes," Soo Lin said to the tourists, carefully placing the lid on the pot, letting the water flow over the lip and down the curved clay surface. "The pot is seasoned by repeatedly pouring tea over the surface. The deposits left on the clay creates this beautiful patina over time." She doubted if the primary school kids watching knew the word 'patina,' but there was nothing wrong with that. They were at the museum to learn. "Some pots, the clay has been burnished by tea made over four hundred years ago." She studied it, trying to see it for the first time, trying to see all of its four hundred years.

The gallery she was in emptied of tourists when the announcement came over the loudspeakers that the museum would be closing in ten minutes, so she stood and started to pack up the teapots. The ritual of cleaning was just as important as the making of the tea. She didn't hear Andy behind her until he spoke.

"Four hundred years old. And they're letting you use it to make yourself a brew," he said with his awkward laugh.

"Some things aren't supposed to sit behind glass. They're made to be touched, to be handled." She turned to look at him, and the look on his face, so—what was the English word?—soppy, frightened her. She turned back to the tea set, cleaning its various pieces and placing them carefully in their velvet-lined box. "These pots need attention," she said, running her fingers lightly over the curve of the pot's belly. "The clay is cracking."

"Well, I can't see how a tiny splash of tea's going to help," he said.

"Sometimes you have to look hard at something to see its value," she replied. She lifted another teapot to the light. "See? This one shines a little brighter."

"I don't suppose, um, I mean…" He took a breath and started again, his hands stuffed in his pockets. "I don't suppose that you…that you want to have a drink. Not tea, obviously. In a pub. With me. Tonight. Um." He tried to smile confidently.

"You wouldn't like me all that much." She looked down at her teapots.

"Could I maybe decide that for myself?"

"I can't. I'm sorry. Please stop asking." She closed the wooden box's lid over the tea set and gathered her things in her arms. She didn't look at him as she walked out of the gallery.

There was more of the National Antiquities Museum behind the scenes then there was in front, narrow aisles packed together to store artefacts and art pieces not on display in the public side of the museum. She walked down an aisle in the Asian wing, putting the teapots back in their assigned drawers—you could get lost just in the catalogue numbers back here—when she heard the low, echoing clunk of the heavy door at the end of the hall. The museum was closed, and she was the only one with a reason to be with the Asian artefacts. "Is that security?" she called. She could see nothing outside of the narrow aisle she was standing in. There was no answer.

Slowly, slowly, she exited the aisle. There was no movement, no more sound. "Hello?" she called, her voice sounding small.

In one corner of the room, furniture pieces and statuary stood clustered together, covered with drop cloths. One of the drop cloths was swinging back and forth, even though this was an indoor hall, with the ventilation carefully controlled to preserve the artefacts.

Was it a person, hiding under the drop cloth? Pretending to be a statue? She felt afraid, and yet also not afraid at all. Slowly, deliberately, she crossed the hall, alert for any movement from any direction, any noise. She reached up and pulled off the drop cloth. It tumbled to the floor with a soft whump.

It was not a person. It was much, much more terrifying.

Two

The Banker

John returned empty-handed from the shop, his cheeks flushed and his eyebrows drawn together. Sherlock was reading in his armchair. "You took your time."

"Yeah, I didn't get the shopping."

Sherlock looked up from his book. "What? Why not?"

"Because I had a row. In the shop. With a chip and PIN machine."

Sherlock blinked at him. "You…had a row with a machine?"

"Sort of," said John, thinking that arguing with Sherlock had given him plenty of practice. "It sat there and I shouted abuse. Have you got cash?"

"Take my card," said Sherlock, gesturing with a nod toward his wallet in the kitchen.

"You could always go yourself, you know. You've been sitting there all morning. You've not even moved since I left."

Sherlock considered telling John about the swordsman tied up in his bedroom, or about challenging John on the obvious fallacy that John could not know what Sherlock had done since he'd been gone, not having been there to observe it. But it was more productive to let John rant until his frustration dissipated. He turned a page in his book.

"What happened about that case you were offered? The Geria Diamond?"

"Not interested," said Sherlock, shutting his book with a snap. "I sent them a message."

Suppressing an exasperated sigh, John left the flat with Sherlock's card.

When he returned, he was laden with shopping bags. Sherlock didn't stir as John came struggling up the stairs.

"Don't worry about me," said John sarcastically, "I can manage." He put the bags down on the kitchen table and looked at what Sherlock was doing. "Is that my computer?"

"Of course," said Sherlock, "Mine was in the bedroom."

"What, and you couldn't even be bothered to get up?" John looked at Sherlock with incredulity and exasperation. "It's password protected!"

"In a manner of speaking. Took me less than a minute to guess yours. Not exactly Fort Knox."

"Right. Thank you," said John, snapping the laptop shut and grabbing it away from Sherlock.

Sherlock had left the mail open on the end table. John leafed through a pile of past due bills. Sherlock hadn't had a case in weeks, but since his mood hadn't spiralled into destructive boredom (yet), John thought he must be occupying himself with experiments at Bart's. "Time to get a job."

Sherlock snorted dismissively. "Dull."

"Listen," said John, leaning forward, "Um, if you'd be able to lend me some…Sherlock, are you listening?"

Sherlock was sitting with his hands clasped under his chin, staring at the wall. After a moment, he said, "I need to go to the bank." He stood up and grabbed his coat. "Are you coming?"

It was a wet day. The cab swished through puddles, past Londoners hiding under umbrellas. John held his peace as they travelled into the City, but when they got out at Tower 42, all glass and stainless steel and revolving doors—not exactly where you go if you just need to make a withdrawal—he couldn't help himself. "When you said we were going to the bank…" he said, as they pushed through the slow-moving revolving door and up the escalator, but he didn't finish his sentence. Sherlock clearly wasn't listening.

At a combination reception and security desk emblazoned with the logo of the firm, Shad Sanderson, Sherlock introduced himself and after a brief phone call they were shown upstairs to a large, sparsely decorated office. After another brief wait, they were joined by a man about Sherlock's age wearing an expensive business suit.

"Sherlock Holmes!" He shook Sherlock's hand. He spoke confidently, but his movements were quick and nervous.

"Sebastian."

"How are you, buddy? Has it really been eight years since I last clapped eyes on you?"

"This is my friend, John Watson."

"Friend?"

"Colleague," said John, shaking Sebastian's hand as well.

Sebastian glanced back and forth between the two of them and scratched the back of his neck. "Right. Well then. Grab a pew," he said, gesturing to the leather chairs in front of the desk. "Do you need anything? Coffee, water?" Both John and Sherlock shook their heads no. "We're all sorted here, thanks," Sebastian said to the assistant hovering in the doorway. She left, closing the glass door behind her.

"So you're doing well," said Sherlock, sitting down without removing coat or scarf. "You've been abroad a lot."

"Well, some."

"Flying all the way around the world twice in a month?"

Sebastian paused for a beat, then forced a laugh. "Right. You're doing that thing. We were at uni together," he said to John, "And this guy here had a trick he used to do."

"It's not a trick," said Sherlock, slightly tetchy.

"He could look at you and tell you your whole life story."

"Yes," said John, "I've seen him do it."

"Put the wind up everybody," said Sebastian, "We hated him. We'd come down to breakfast in the formal hall and this freak would know who'd been shagging the previous night."

"I simply observed," said Sherlock, looking not at Sebastian's face but at his desk top.

"Go on, enlighten me," challenged Sebastian. "Two trips a month? Flying all the way round the world? You're quite right. How could you tell? You're going to tell me there was a stain in my tie from some special kind of ketchup that you can only buy in Manhattan?"

"No, I—"

"Or maybe it's the mud on my shoes."

Sherlock's face was impassive. "I was just chatting with your secretary outside," he said quietly. "She told me."

Sebastian laughed out loud, but it reminded John more of the Joker from Batman than something spontaneous and joyful. He had the air of a bully who'd never been told, either during school or after leaving, either that he was a bully or that he wasn't terribly funny. Sebastian clapped his hands together. "I'm glad you could make it over," he said without hesitation or further preamble. "We've had a break in." He stood and led them out of his office, across the trading floor. "Sir William's office, the bank's former chairman. The room's been left here like a sort of memorial. Someone broke in late last night."

"What did they steal?" asked John.

"Nothing," said Sebastian. "Just left a little message." He stood and led them to Sir William's office, swiping a security card to open the office and pulled open the door for Sherlock and John. The "message" that had been left did not need pointing out. A large gilt-framed portrait of a man who might have been Winston Churchill, except for the modern suit and the slightly smaller belly, hung on the wall. The portrait's eyes had been obliterated by a yellow slash of spray paint that dripped down the portrait's face and onto his collar. On the wall next to the painting was a signature, of sorts—little more than a scrawl, a horizontal line and something that could maybe be a capital S, if you squinted and turned your head sideways. Sebastian didn't speak as Sherlock examined it, then showed them out of the memorial office to a computer terminal that had security footage loaded onto it.

"We don't have video cameras," explained Sebastian. "The system takes photos, sixty seconds apart." He cued up the footage to 23:34:01, and the vandalized portrait was clearly visible. He clicked back to the previous photo, logged at 23:33:01, and the paint was gone. Everything else looked precisely identical, and there was no trace of an intruder. "Someone came up here in the middle of the night, splashed paint around, and left within a minute."

"How many ways into that office?" asked Sherlock.

"Well, that's where this gets really interesting," replied Sebastian. He brought them back downstairs to the front security and borrowed a terminal from one of the receptionists. Showing on the screen was a map of the building, one map for each floor. He enlarged the map for the trading floor. A scattering of small red dots marked the locations of doors. "Every door that opens in this bank gets logged," he explained. "Every walk-in cupboard, every toilet."

"And that door didn't open last night?"

"There's a hole in our security," said Sebastian, buttoning his suit jacket. "Find it and we'll pay you. Five figures. This is an advance." He pulled a check from his breast pocket. "Tell me how he got in, there's a bigger one on its way."

Sherlock did not look at the check, or even at Sebastian. "I don't need an incentive, Sebastian," he said icily. He stepped around Sebastian and started to walk away.

"He's, uh, kidding you, obviously," said John. "Shall I look after that for him?" He took the check from Sebastian. He wasn't sure what was making him so flabbered, the size of the check or the fact that Sherlock was walking away from it.

They caught up with Sherlock back in Sir William's office as he was taking pictures of the graffiti with his mobile. He spun in a slow half-circle, looking for things in the room out of place. He crossed to the windows which formed one whole wall, pulled up the blinds, swung open the glass door and stepped onto the small balcony. There were no other buildings of height nearby, and the drop was sheer. He scanned the balcony for signs, then stepped back inside.

He then attracted rather a lot of attention in the trading room by bobbing and weaving around people's desks and behind cubicle walls, as if he was dancing or shadow boxing an invisible partner. The trading floor slowly fell silent as brokers paused in their activity to watch Sherlock duck behind pillars and inside offices. He punctuated this activity by ripping the name plate off an office door, and left without further explanation. John made excuses to Sebastian and followed Sherlock out.

"Two trips round the world this month?" John asked Sherlock on their way downstairs. "You didn't ask his secretary. You said that just to irritate him. How did you know?"

"Did you see his watch?"

"His watch?"

"The time was right, but the date was wrong. Said two days ago. Crossed the Date Line twice, but he didn't alter it."

"Within a month? How'd you get that part?"

"The watch is a new Breitling. Only come out this February."

"Okay. So do you think we should sniff around here for a bit longer?"

"Got everything I need to know already, thanks."

"Hmm?"

"That graffiti was a message. Someone at the bank, working on the trading floors. We find the intended recipient and…"

"…they'll lead us to the person who sent it?"

"Obvious."

"Well, there's three hundred people up there. Who was it meant for?"

"Pillars."

"What?"

"Pillars and screens. Very few places you can see that graffiti from. That narrows the field considerably. And of course the message was left at 11:34 last night. That tells us a lot."

"Does it?"

"Traders come in to work at all hours. Some trade with Hong Kong in the middle of the night. That message was intended for someone who came in at midnight." He pushed on the office building's revolving door and they stepped out into the cold London sunlight. He held up the name plate he'd taken. "Not many Van Coons in the phone book. Taxi!"

Twenty minutes later, they were standing outside a posh apartment building, buzzing the button that was neatly labelled Van Coon. John shoved his fists in his pants pockets to get them out of the rain. "So what do we do now?" he asked when Van Coon didn't answer. "Sit here and wait for him to come back?"

"Just moved in."

"What?"

"Floor above, new label." Sherlock pointed.

"Could have just replaced it."

"No one ever does that," said Sherlock, pushing the button labelled "Wintle."

A cheerful woman's voice came crackling through the speaker. "Hello?"

Sherlock's voice became much friendlier. "Hi! Um, I live in the flat just below you. I don't think we've met."

"No, well, I've just moved in."

"Actually, I've just locked my keys in my flat."

"You want me to buzz you in?"

"Yeah…and can I use your balcony?"

"What?"

It was a short drop from Miss Wintle's balcony onto Van Coon's. The door, as Sherlock had suspected, was open. Nobody ever locked patio doors that were seven floors up. He strolled through the flat, looking at the books stacked on Van Coon's coffee table and the dishes in the sink. The refrigerator had nothing but champagne inside. He ignored the buzzing coming from John's finger on the doorbell, still downstairs.

"Sherlock? Are you okay? Any time you feel like letting me in?"

The bathroom was as neat and impersonal as you'd find in a hotel. Next to this was a set of double doors he knew must lead to the master bedroom, but both doors were locked from the inside. He took a step back and threw his shoulder against the deadbolt, which gave way easily, and fell inside.

Edward Van Coon lay face up on his bed, fully dressed in a business suit and overcoat. A nickel-plated pistol lay on the floor at his feet. There was a small hole in his head next to his right eye, which was wide and open and staring.

Sherlock would have cursed in frustration, if he was the cursing sort. As it was, he rolled his eyes. This was going to make things complicated and stupid, and not necessarily more interesting.

Sure enough, it was hours before the cops thinned out and stopped asking stupid and repetitive questions. When there were only forensics technicians and a few inspectors left, Sherlock was able to steal a pair of latex gloves and resume his examination. John had come upstairs with the police, and stood in the centre of the room with his arms folded, looking at the body from a slight distance.

"Do you think he'd lost a lot of money?" asked John. "Suicide is pretty common among City boys."

"We don't know that it was suicide."

"Come on," scoffed John, "The door was locked from the inside. You had to climb down the balcony."

Sherlock knelt in front of the open suitcase in the corner of the bedroom. "Been away three days, judging by the laundry." He stood up and looked at John. "Look at the case. There was something tightly packed inside it."

John didn't move. "Thanks, I'll take your word for it."

"Problem?" asked Sherlock.

"Yeah, I'm not desperate to root around some bloke's dirty underwear."

"Those symbols at the bank, the graffiti, why were they put there?" Sherlock crossed the room and bent over the body.

"Some sort of code?"

"Obviously. Why were they painted? If you want to communicate, why not use email?" He was rifling through Van Coon's pockets.

"Maybe he wasn't answering."

"Oh, good, you follow."

John did not feel like playing along. "Nope."

"What kind of a message would everyone try and avoid?" asked Sherlock, examining the dead man's fingernails. He didn't give John a chance to answer. "What about this morning, those letters you were looking at?" Sherlock pushed gently on Van Coon's chin to open his mouth.

"Bills?"

"Yes," said Sherlock, reaching into the man's mouth and pulling out what looked like a dark rose petal or a burned piece of paper, "he was being threatened."

John leaned forward in spite of himself to stare at the object. "Not by the gas board," he said quietly.

A plainclothes policeman strode into the room. "Ahh, Sergeant," said Sherlock, crossing the room and holding out his hand, "We haven't met."

The cop ignored Sherlock's outstretched hand. "Yeah, I know who you are," he said, angry at Sherlock already. "And I'd prefer it if you didn't tamper with any of the evidence."

Sherlock handed him the evidence bag, into which he'd dropped the black piece of paper, which John could now see was an origami lotus flower. "I phoned Lestrade, is he on his way?" Sherlock asked.

"He's busy. I'm in charge. And it's not Sergeant, it's Detective Inspector Dimmock." He walked back out into the living room. John and Sherlock followed. "We're obviously looking at a suicide."

"That does seem the only explanation of all the facts," agreed John.

"Wrong," said Sherlock, pacing. "It's one possible explanation of some of the facts. You've got a solution that you like and you're choosing to ignore anything you see that doesn't comply with it."

"Like?" challenged Dimmock.

"The wound's on the right side of his head," said Sherlock.

"And?"

"Van Coon was left-handed." Sherlock mimed trying to shoot his right temple with his left hand. "Requires quite a bit of contortion."

Dimmock raised his eyebrows. "Left-handed?"

Sherlock rolled his eyes. "Oh, I'm amazed you didn't notice, all you have to do is look round this flat." He pointed at each item in turn. "Coffee table on the left-hand side of the couch. Coffee mug handle pointing to the left. Power sockets, habitually used the ones on the left. Pen and paper on the left-hand side of the phone because he picked it up with his right and took down messages with his left. Do you want me to go on?"

"No, I think you've covered it," said John.

"I might as well, I'm almost at the bottom of the list. There's a knife on the breadboard with butter on the right side of the blade because he used it with his left. It's highly unlikely that a left-handed man would shoot himself on the right side of his head. Conclusion? Someone broke in here and murdered him. Only explanation of all the facts."

"But the gun—"

"He was waiting for the killer. He'd been threatened."

"What?"

"Today at the bank. Sort of a warning," said John.

Sherlock pulled on his scarf. "He fired a shot when his attacker came in."

"And the bullet?"

"Went through the open window."

Dimmock had been listening in spite of himself, but at this he scoffed. "Oh, come on! What are the chances of that?"

"Wait until you get the ballistics report," said Sherlock, pulling on his gloves. "The bullet in his brain wasn't fired from his gun, I guarantee it."

"But if his door was locked from the inside, how did the killer get in?"

"Good!" said Sherlock. "You're finally asking the right questions." He spun on his heel and left the flat. John gave a small awkward smile to Dimmock and followed him out.

Instead of going home, though, Sherlock hailed another taxi and went back downtown, to a posh bar a few blocks away from the bank. Sebastian and several of his clients were laughing over wine and food.

"It was a threat," said Sherlock loudly over their conversation. They all stopped talking to stare at him. "That's what the graffiti meant."

"I'm kind of in a meeting," said Sebastian, still chewing. "Can you make an appointment with my secretary?"

"I don't think this can wait, sorry, Sebastian," said Sherlock. "One of your traders, someone who works in your office, was killed."

"What?" said Sebastian blankly.

"Van Coon," said John. "The police are at his flat."

"Killed?!"

"Sorry to interfere with everyone's digestion," said Sherlock. "Still want me to make an appointment? Would maybe nine o'clock at Scotland Yard suit?"

Sebastian scratched under his collar, then stood up and motioned with his head for Sherlock to follow him. They went to the men's toilet. John leaned against one sink and Sebastian started washing his hands in the other, just for something to do.

"He went to Harrow and Oxford. Very bright guy. Worked in Asia for awhile, so…"

"So you gave him the Hong Kong accounts," finished John.

"Lost five mil in a single morning, made it all back a week later. Nerves of steel, Eddie had."

"Who'd want to kill him?" asked John.

"We all make enemies."

"You don't all end up with a bullet through your temple," John said.

"Not usually," said Sebastian, straightening his tie. His mobile beeped with a text message. "Excuse me." He pulled his phone out of his breast pocket and looked at it. "It's my chairman. The police have been onto him. Only they're telling him it was a suicide."

"Well, they've got it wrong, Sebastian." Sherlock spoke for the first time since entering the toilet. "He was murdered."

"Well, I'm afraid they don't see it like that."

"Seb—"

"And neither does my boss. I hired you to do a job. Don't get sidetracked." He pushed past Sherlock and left the toilet.

"I thought bankers were all supposed to be heartless bastards," said John drily. The muscles in Sherlock's jaw twitched.

Three

The Journalist

Brian Lukis ran. Down the middle of the street. He ran, in spite of not being able to breathe. His legs, unused to exercise, felt like they were tied on with marionette strings. He didn't notice the cars honking; his mind was full of the danger behind him.

He fumbled with keys in sweaty, shaking fingers before tumbling into his building. He locked the door behind him, sprinted up the stairs to his attic flat, locked that door as well, and stood in the centre of his room, gasping for air.

He felt the eyes on the back of his neck, and turned slowly around to see who was in the flat with him.

Andy liked the museum's restoration room. It had a dozen light tables so you could work near people without having to work with them. The room smelled of old leather and dry cotton gloves. Of age and Soo Lin's teapots. He was doing maintenance on a Greek water pot when his boss came over.

"I need you to get over to Crispian's," she told him. "Two Ming vases are up for auction. Chenghua. Will you appraise them?"

He fumbled. "Uhm…Soo Lin should go. She's the expert."

"Soo Lin has resigned her job," said his boss. "I need you." She walked away, leaving him with the Crispian's catalogue, staring at Soo Lin's empty work station.

He went to her flat after work, a place above a shop in London's Chinatown. He knew he was out of line. Knew she probably didn't want to see him, especially not him. But she was all alone, and even if she didn't confide in him, he knew her from a distance. Knew when something was wrong. He just wanted to make sure she was okay.

There was no answer when he rang her buzzer. He waited and tried again, then dug in his pocket for a pen and a piece of paper. All he had was the envelope that his paycheck had come in. He scribbled a note on it and dropped it through the mail slot, hoping that either she'd find it or one of her neighbours would and give it to her. But he was not reassured as he walked away.

John looked around the surgery while Sarah read his CV. It seemed busy, but organized and clean. None of the waiting patients seemed in dire condition. He still wasn't sure how he felt about being a GP—trauma was more exciting and fulfilling—but he needed something that could be part time work, and trauma most certainly wasn't.

She looked up from his CV. "All we have is locum work."

"That's fine."

"You're, um…you're a bit overqualified."

He liked the way a stray piece of hair that had come loose from her ponytail fell in front of her eyes. "Well, I could always do with the money."

"Well," she said, tucking the stray hair behind her ear, "We've got two away on holiday this week, and one's just left to have a baby. It might be a bit mundane for you."

"No," John reassured her, "Mundane is good, sometimes. Mundane works."

"It says here you're a soldier."

"And a doctor."

"Anything else you can do?"

"Er…I learned the clarinet at school?"

She smiled. "Well. I look forward to that."

When John arrived back at 221B, Sherlock was sitting on the couch with his hands folded under his chin, staring above the fireplace where he'd taped the pictures of the graffiti at the bank. "I said, can you pass me a pen?" asked Sherlock, not looking in John's direction.

John looked around the empty flat for the person Sherlock was having a conversation with. "What? When?"

"About an hour ago."

"Didn't notice I'd gone out, then?" asked John, picking up a pen from the coffee table and tossing it at him. "I went to see about a job at that surgery."

"How was it?"

"Great. She's great."

"Who?"

"The job."

"She?"

"It."

Sherlock did not have the motivation to inquire into the distracting turn that he could tell John's love life was about to take. Instead he nodded his head towards his laptop. "Here. Have a look."

John started reading the news article that Sherlock had left open. "'The Intruder Who Can Walk Through Walls'?"

"Happened last night. Journalist was shot dead in his flat. Doors locked, windows bolted from the inside. Exactly the same as Van Coon."

"God. You think-?"

"He's killed another one."

D.I. Dimmock, however, was not convinced.

"Brian Lukis. Freelance journalist. Murdered in his flat. Doors locked from the inside." Sherlock brought up the news article on Dimmock's laptop to show him.

"You've got to admit, it's similar," put in John. "Both men killed by somebody who can 'walk through solid walls'."

"Inspector, do you seriously believe that Eddie Van Coon was just another City suicide?" Dimmock shifted uncomfortably in his chair. Sherlock sighed. "You have seen the ballistics report, I suppose? And the shot that killed him, was it fired from his own gun?"

Dimmock glared daggers at Sherlock. "No."

"No. So. This investigation might move a bit quicker if you would take my word as gospel." He leaned over Dimmock's desk. "I've just handed you a murder inquiry. Give me five minutes in his flat." He nodded at the picture of Brian Lukis in the newspaper article.

Dimmock was clearly unhappy, but after a long moment, he nodded.

Lukis' flat was on the third floor of a converted house. He'd been using the stairs for storage as well as the banisters and the floors. At a glance, Sherlock took in the empty suitcase lying open next to the bed, and the black crumple of origami on the carpet. He took in Lukis' workstation—analogue recording equipment and tape machines crammed in around a computer, a printer, and piles of notebooks and DVDs. Sherlock pushed back the curtains and looked out the window.

"Four floors up," he muttered. "That's why they think they're safe. Put a chain across the door, bolt it shut, think they're impregnable. They don't reckon for one second that there's another way in." He turned and walked out of the bedroom.

"I don't understand," said Dimmock, following him out of the room.

"We're dealing with a killer who can climb," said Sherlock. "He clings to the walls like an insect."

"What are you doing?" asked Dimmock, as Sherlock balanced on the banister and pushed at the skylight over the stairs. It opened with a bang.

"That's how he got in," said Sherlock.

"What?"

"He climbed up the side of the walls, ran along the roof, dropped in through this skylight."

"You're not serious," scoffed Dimmock. "Like Spider-Man?"

"He scaled six floors of a Docklands apartment building and jumped the balcony to kill Van Coon."

"Hold on," Dimmock was almost laughing now.

"And, of course, that's how he got into the bank, he'd run along the window ledge and onto the terrace." Sherlock stepped off the banister. "We have to find out what connects these two men." He started scanning Lukis' possessions, picking up a book with a West Kensington Library stamp in it. He looked at the Date Due stamp and calculated backwards. Lukis had checked the book out the day he died. He tucked the book under his arm and left Lukis' flat.

Sherlock, as was his habit, was silent in the cab ride to the library and John, after his, asked no questions.

At the West Kensington Library, Sherlock went searching through the stacks, looking for the place where Lukis' book had been shelved. "The date stamped in the book is the same day that he died," Sherlock said quietly to John, pulling books off the shelf and paging through them. John, however, paused in front of a shelf full of books on investigative journalism.

"Sherlock?" he said, pulling books off the shelf by the handful to better see the back of the shelf. Sherlock turned and looked—and found himself looking at an exact duplicate of the graffiti at Shad Sanderson, spray painted on the back of the shelf.

"So," said Sherlock, back at Baker Street forty minutes later, "the killer goes to the bank, leaves a threatening cipher for Van Coon, Van Coon panics, returns to his apartment, locks himself in. Hours later, he dies."

"The killer finds Lukis at the library, he writes the cipher on the shelf where he knows it'll be seen," John took up the story. "Lukis goes home…"

"Later that night, he dies too."

"Why did they die, Sherlock?"

"Only the cipher can tell us," said Sherlock thoughtfully. He turned abruptly away from the photos over the fireplace and put on his coat.

Four

The Cipher

He didn't provide John any additional explanation until they climbed out of their cab near Trafalgar Square. "The world's run on codes and ciphers, John. From the million-pound security system at the bank to the PIN machine you took exception to. Cryptography inhabits our every waking moment."

"Yes, okay, but—"

"—But it's all computer generated. Electronic codes, electronic ciphering methods. This is different. It's an ancient device." John realized, now, where they were going, as they climbed the wide, crowded steps to the National Antiquities Museum. "Modern code-breaking methods won't unravel it."

"Where are we headed?" asked John.

"I need to ask some advice."

"What, sorry?" John couldn't help grinning.

Sherlock did not need to turn round to hear the smile in John's voice. "You heard me perfectly, I'm not saying it again."

"You need advice."

"On painting, yes. I need to talk to an expert." Instead of going into the museum, though, he made a sharp left, and followed the wall of the mammoth building. The crowds thinned out away from the entrance, and by the time Sherlock turned down the service drive, they were alone, except for a teenager halfway down with a can of spray paint in each hand and a duffel bag at his feet.

"Part of my new exhibition," the boy said, not looking at Sherlock.

"Interesting," said Sherlock, eyeing the graffiti, which showed a London copper with a pig's nose holding an assault rifle.

"I'll call it…Urban Bloodlust Frenzy," said the boy with a chuckle.

"Catchy," said John, resisting the urge to derail Sherlock's line of inquiry with a lecture about defacing public property.

"I've got two minutes before a Community Support Officer comes round the corner. Can we do this while I'm working?"

Wordlessly, Sherlock handed him his phone, displaying the photos he'd taken of the graffiti in Van Coon's office and the library shelf. The kid tossed John the spray can and took the phone, scrolling through the photos.

"Know the author?" asked Sherlock.

"Recognize the paint," said the kid. "Looks like Michigan hardcore propellant. It's A-zinc."

"What about the symbols? Do you recognize them?"

"Are you sure it's a proper language?"

Sherlock took a step closer. "Two men have been murdered, Raz. Deciphering this is the key to finding out who killed them."

The kid—Raz—looked from Sherlock to John in disbelief. "And this is what you've got to go on? It's hardly much, now, is it?"

"Are you going to help us or not?" asked Sherlock.

After a moment, Raz nodded. "I'll ask around."

"Somebody must know something about it."

"Oi!" came a shout from the end of the alley. They turned to see three cops running towards them. Without a backwards glance, Raz and Sherlock took off, Raz kicking his duffle towards John as he went. "What the hell do you think you're doing?" demanded the cop to John, who belatedly realized that not only was he not running, but he was still holding Raz's spray paint. "This gallery's a listed public building."

"Wait, wait, no," said John. "It's not me who painted that, I was just holding this...for…"

The cop looked down at the duffel with the cans of spray paint spilling out. He raised his eyebrows at John. "Bit of an enthusiast, are we?"

Andy didn't want to go to the auctions in Soo Lin's place, and he was worried about her. He tried to make this clear to his boss. "She was right in the middle of an important restoration. Why would she suddenly resign?"

"Family problems. She said so in her letter."

"But she doesn't have a family. She came to this country on her own."

"Andy—"

"Look, those teapots, those ceramics, they'd become her obsession. She's been working on restoring them for weeks. I can't believe that she would just abandon them."

"Perhaps she was getting a bit of...unwanted attention?" The supervisor raised her eyebrows at Andy as she walked away. Andy flushed, hot with embarrassment, and looked around to make sure no one had heard.

The mirror above the fireplace was now completely obscured by Sherlock's case notes and crime scene photos. He didn't turn his head when he heard John come up the stairs. "You've been awhile."

"Yes, well, you know how it is," said John, trying to keep his voice calm. "Custody sergeants don't like to be hurried, do they? Just formalities. Fingerprints, charge sheet, and I've got to be in magistrate's court on Tuesday."

Sherlock did not turn round. "What?"

"Me, Sherlock! In court! On Tuesday! They're giving me an A.S.B.O."

"Good, fine," said Sherlock absently.

"You can go and tell your little pal that he's welcome to go and own up anytime." He started to take off his jacket.

"This symbol, I still can't place it." Sherlock snapped shut the book he was looking at. "No," he said, pushing John's jacket back onto his shoulders, "I need you to go to the police station, ask about the journalist." He pushed John towards the door. "His personal effects will have been impounded. Get hold of his diary or something that will tell us his movements." Sherlock grabbed his own coat and followed John down the stairs. "I'll see Van Coon's P.A. If we retrace their steps, somewhere they'll coincide." He walked off up the block, leaving John to hail a cab. As John climbed in, he noticed a small Asian woman across Baker Street with a digital video camera pointed in his direction. She was all in black, including gloves, trench coat, and opaque sunglasses, but she did not have the look of a tourist. She'd disappeared before John was all the way inside the cab.

Van Coon's P.A., Amanda, was the sort of busy, efficient person who would be a P.A. only until something better came along. Her hair was immaculately arranged, and her desk had exactly the right number of personal touches—a plant, some hand lotion, a bowl of candy. At Sherlock's request, she opened Van Coon's Outlook calendar. "Came back from Dalian Friday," she said, looking at Van Coon's schedule on the computer. "Looks like he had back-to-back meetings with the sales team."

"Can you print me off a copy?"

"Sure."

"What about the day he died? Can you tell me where he was?"

"Sorry," she said, pointing at the empty date on the diary. "Bit of a gap. But I have all his receipts." She pulled them out of an envelope in a file folder in one of her drawers.

"What kind of a boss was he, Amanda?" Sherlock asked, spreading Van Coon's receipts out over the table. "Appreciative?"

"Um…no. That's not a word I'd use," Amanda smiled a little. "The things Eddie appreciated had a big price tag."

"Like that hand cream. He bought that for you, didn't he?"

She didn't answer, but it didn't matter. "Look at this one," he said, holding out a receipt. "Got a taxi from home on the day that he died. £18.50."

"That would get him to the office…"

"Not rush hour. Check the time. Mid-morning. Eighteen would get him as far as…"
"The West End. I remember him saying."

He handed her another receipt from the same day. "Underground, printed at one o'clock. Piccadilly."

"So he got a tube back to the office? Why would he get a taxi into town and then a tube back?"

"Because he was delivering something heavy. Nobody likes a package on the escalator."

"Delivering…?"

"To someone near Piccadilly station. Dropped the package, delivered it, and then…" he picked up a third receipt. "Stopped on his way. He got peckish." And Sherlock was out the door, without any further explanation to the Amanda.

"Your friend…" said Dimmock, as he rummaged through the evidence box for Lukis' diary.

"Listen, whatever you say, I'm behind you 100%."

"He's an arrogant sod."

John half-smiled. "Well, that was mild. People say a lot worse than that."

Dimmock held out a pocket-sized daily diary. "This is what you wanted, isn't it? The journalist's diary?"

John took it and pulled off the rubber band that held it shut. It fell open to a page bookmarked with a boarding pass stub, from Dalian to Heathrow.

"So," Sherlock muttered, now to himself, standing outside the espresso bar where Van Coon had bought coffee and a sandwich. "You bought your lunch from here en route to the station, but where were you headed from? Where did the taxi drop you?" He spun in a circle on the crowded street, scanning for likely spots, and collided with somebody. He turned and saw John, holding the journalist's diary. "Eddie Van Coon brought a package here the day he died," he said fervently to John. "Whatever was hidden inside that case. I've managed to piece together a picture using scraps of information—credit card bills, receipts. He flew back from China then he came here."

"Sherlock—"

"Somewhere in this street, somewhere near. I don't know where, but—"

John pointed. "That shop. Over there."

Sherlock looked across the street, then at John, his eyebrows knitted together. "How could you tell?"

"Lukis' diary, he was here too. He wrote down the address."

"Oh."

They crossed the street and entered the Lucky Cat Emporium. It seemed to be a basic Chinatown souvenir shop, like hundreds of others in Gerrard Street, selling cheap knickknacks to tourists. The shelves were crammed with little waving cats, imitation Ming vases, scrollwork and watercolour tapestries and paper lamps, Buddha statues and tea pots. A small, elderly lady, her skin the colour of dull pennies, watched them enter. She did not smile. "You want lucky cat?" she asked.

"No," said John, smiling politely, "Thanks, no."

"Ten pound!" said the woman, with an air of it's so cheap you would be stupid to not buy it. "Ten pound! I think your wife, she will like."

"No, thank you," smiled John, idling over to a shelf stuffed with handle-less tea cups. He picked one up and turned it over, just to look like he was doing something while Sherlock did whatever it was he needed to do.

And there it was. Staring at him. The horizontal line and the scrawl that looked like a combination between a numeral 8 and a sideways S. "Sherlock," he said. Sherlock strolled over. "The label there?" said John, holding the cup out bottom up.

"Yes, I see it."

"Exactly the same as the cipher." They looked at each other until Sherlock signalled, with a slight gesture of his head, to leave the shop.

"It's an ancient number system," he said, once they were back out on the street. "Huang Zu. These days only street traders use it. Those were numbers written on the wall at the bank, and at the library. Numbers written in an ancient Chinese dialect." He stopped at a produce vendor that had all his goods in crates on the sidewalk with prices posted in both Chinese and Arabic numerals.

"It's a 15," said John, picking up a potato. "What we thought was the artist's tag. It's number 15."

"And the blindfold, the horizontal line, that was a number as well. Chinese number one, John."

"We found it." John couldn't help but smile, but as they resumed their walk back towards Piccadilly, he saw her again. The Asian woman, all in black—even her nail polish was black, he saw this time—and she once again had a silver digital camera pointed at them. John blinked, and she was gone.

They stopped in a Chinese restaurant so that John could eat. Sherlock ordered nothing. "Two men travel back from China," said John, as Sherlock doodled Huang Zu characters on his napkin, "Both head straight for the Lucky Cat Emporium. What did they see?" Now that he thought more on it, they didn't seem to be any farther along than they'd been an hour ago—the indecipherable characters had become a number, but what the number signified, they still had no idea. Nor did they know why the men had been targeted with the cipher in the first place.

"It's not what they saw," said Sherlock. "It's what they both brought back in their suitcases."

"And…you don't think duty-free." Sherlock shot him a look that clearly telegraphed his refusal to dignify that remark with a response. The waitress brought over John's sandwich. "Thank you," said John to her.

"Remember about what Sebastian told us?" asked Sherlock, leaning forward and speaking in a low voice. "About Van Coon, about how he stayed afloat in the market?"

"Lost five million…"

"Made it back in a week? That's how he made such easy money."

The light went on over John's head. "He was a smuggler."

Sherlock was watching the crowds in the street outside. "A guy like him would've been perfect," he said. "Businessman. Making frequent trips to Asia. Lukis was the same. A journalist, writing about China. Both of them smuggled stuff out. The Lucky Cat was their drop-off."

"But why did they die?" asked John. "It doesn't make sense. If they both turned up at the shop, and delivered the goods, why would someone threaten them—and kill them—after the event, after they'd finished the job?"

Sherlock stared thoughtfully out the window for a long moment. Then a smile crept across his face. "What if one of them was light fingered?"

"How d'you mean?"

"Stole something. Something from the hoard."

"And the killer doesn't know which of them took it so he threatens them both. Right."

"Remind me," said Sherlock, still gazing across the street, "When was the last time that it rained?" He got up abruptly and left the shop, leaving John to either finish his sandwich, or abandon it and follow him.

What Sherlock had spotted was a phonebook leaning against a door to a flat above the Lucky Cat Emporium. The plastic around the phonebook had torn, and the pages were wrinkled and swollen with rain water, the plastic cloudy with condensation. "It's been here since Monday," said Sherlock, examining it. John did not ask how he knew when the last rain was. Sherlock rang the flat's buzzer. The nameplate over the bell said "Soo Lin Yao" in neat feminine handwriting.

There was no answer. Sherlock did not ring again, but turned up the alley next to the building. Slightly mystified, John followed.

"No one's been in that flat for at least three days," said Sherlock, walking up the alley.

"Could have gone on holiday," said John. Could be anything at all not even remotely connected to the case, he almost added.

Sherlock stopped under the fire escape and looked up at the back side of Soo Lin Yao's flat. "Do you leave your windows open when you go on holiday?" he asked. The fire escape's ladder was on a hinge that held the ladder about ten feet off the ground to prevent access to the flat from the street. But Sherlock, tall and lean, leapt high enough to grab it, and under his weight it swung down and hit the pavement with a clang. He climbed up the ladder and into the window, the ladder swinging back upwards when his weight was no longer on it.

"Sherlock!" John was a head shorter than Sherlock; he couldn't jump high enough to grab the ladder, even if he'd fancied breaking into a flat. Frustrated, he jogged back round to the front so Sherlock could let him in.

Climbing through the curtains, Sherlock nearly fell over a small table just under the window, knocking over a vase. He caught the vase as it tipped, before it could hit the floor. A small amount of water dripped onto the rug immediately below, but not very much. Not nearly enough. "Someone else has been here," he called down to John. "Somebody else broke into the flat and knocked over the vase, just like I did." The rug was still wet. He looked round for other signs of disturbance. There were clothes still in the washing machine. He pulled out a shirt and gave it a brief sniff before throwing it back into the washer. The doorbell rang—John was back on the sidewalk. "Think maybe you could let me in this time?" he called through the mail slot. Sherlock did not really hear him. He was taking in the details of the kitchen. "Could you not keep doing this, please?" called John.

Sherlock gave an experimental sniff at the milk in the refrigerator and recoiled. "I'm not the first," he called.

"What?"

"Somebody's been here before me."

"What're you saying?"

Sherlock examined the wrinkles in the throw rug. "Size eight feet. Small, but athletic."

"I'm wasting my breath," John muttered to himself, leaning on the doorbell.

Sherlock spotted a photograph in the living room of two small Chinese children. One had to be Soo Lin Yao. The boy had close-cropped hair and a quiet smile. The girl look like someone had just stopped tickling her. Her face was obscured by a handprint on the glass over the picture. "Small, strong hands," Sherlock said to himself. "Long, thin fingers. Our acrobat. Why didn't he close the window when he left-?" The minute he asked himself the question, he knew the answer. "Ohh, stupid, stupid. Obvious. He's still here." He turned around, on his guard. His eyes fell on a changing screen at one end of the room. Slowly, walking as silently as possible, he approached the screen. Jerked it aside.

Nobody was there.

He did not have time to digest this fact before he was whipped backwards by his neck. Somebody behind him had a towel or a pillowcase wrapped around his throat and was twisting. His assailant kicked the backs of his knees and he went down. Dimly, he could hear John still on the street outside. "Anytime you want to include me?"

Sherlock tried to get his legs under him but couldn't. His fingers scrabbled at the cloth around his neck, and he tried to yell for John, but he couldn't draw breath. His assailant dragged him by his neck across the carpet.

"No, I'm Sherlock Holmes," called John petulantly through the mail slot, answering his own question, "and I always work alone because no one else can compete with my massive intellect."

Sherlock's vision started to darken around the edges and he could no longer feel his hands. He was half-aware that his assailant had let go of his throat and disappeared, but he couldn't move or breathe.

John leaned on the doorbell again.

The air came back into Sherlock's lungs all at once, and he rolled over and sat up, gasping and coughing. There was no question of pursuit.

In his hand, he realized, was a black origami orchid. Like the one in Van Coon's mouth. Like the one in the middle of Lukis' floor.

He stood up, still dizzy, and went down the front steps to meet John. "The, uh, the milk's gone," he gasped, his voice hoarse. God, but his neck ached. "And the washing's starting to smell. Somebody left here in a hurry three days ago." All the air felt gone from his lungs.

John was staring at him. "Somebody?"

"Soo Lin Yao. We have to find her." Looking down, Sherlock spotted an envelope that had been pushed through the mail slot. It wasn't mail, but a handwritten note, clearly written on whatever paper the writer had to hand. Soo Lin—Please ring me. Tell me you're ok. Andy. The envelope was from the National Antiquities Museum. "Well," said Sherlock, holding up the envelope. "We could start with this."

John was still staring at him. It sounded like Sherlock had gotten hit in the larynx, but he didn't see how that could be possible. "You've gone all croaky, are you getting a cold?"

Sherlock coughed. "I'm fine." He walked up the block towards Wardour Street, leaving John to follow.

They walked the half mile from Gerrard Street to the Antiquities Museum. Sherlock paid their way in and walked to the Asian wing. He bullied the docents in the gallery until they gave up and figured out who the Andy on the envelope was, and went and found him.

He was an ordinary young man in ill-fitting trousers. John thought he looked sad. Sherlock asked if he was the one who had left the note for Soo Lin, and he said he was. "When was the last time you saw her?" asked Sherlock.

"Three days ago. Here at the museum. This morning, they told me she'd resigned, just like that. Just left her work unfinished."

"What was the last thing that she did?" asked Sherlock, pacing and looking in the display cases. "On her final afternoon?"

Andy stood with his feet pressed together and his hands stuffed in his pockets. "She does this demonstration for the tourists. A tea ceremony. She would have packed her things and put them in the back."

"Back where?"

Andy hesitated. Civilians weren't allowed in the rear of the museum under any circumstances, and for all that this bloke said he worked with Scotland Yard, it hadn't escaped Andy's notice that he'd said nothing about working for Scotland Yard. But still, this might be his only chance to find out what happened to Soo Lin. His only chance to help her, if indeed she needed help. So he brought them backstage, back to the storage units where Soo Lin kept the teapots that weren't in the display cases. Andy slid the unit farther open—the storage units were all on a long tracks, and normally kept shoved together except when someone pushed two apart to create an aisle—so that Sherlock could take a look, but Sherlock wasn't paying attention. He was staring at a Greek statue of a woman.

She had yellow spray paint slashed over her eyes.

On her torso was the peculiar looping lines of the Huang Zu number fifteen.

Five

The Spider

"We have to get to Soo Lin Yao," said Sherlock, ten minutes later, as they exited the museum. Dusk had deepened into night while they'd been inside the museum.

"If she's still alive," said John. Eddie Van Coon and Brian Lukis has been killed within twenty-four hours of receiving the Huang Zu warnings. Soo Lin Yao had left her apartment in a hurry three days ago, and not been seen since.

"Sherlock!" called a voice. They both paused and turned. It was Raz, the graffiti artist, running across the square towards them.

"Oh, look who it is," said John.

"I found something you'll like," said Raz, ignoring John. He led them across the square to the Embankment Station and over the Hungerford Bridge.

"Tuesday morning," John told Raz on their way over the bridge. "All you've got to do is turn up and say the bag was yours."

"Forget about your court date," said Sherlock impatiently.

Under the bridge on the other side, a park had been taken over by kids. Graffiti covered almost every available surface. "If you want to hide a tree, then a forest is the best place to do it, wouldn't you say?" mused Sherlock. "People will just walk straight past, not knowing, unable to decipher the message."

Raz pointed them at a pillar. "There. I spotted it earlier." There were, indeed, splashes of yellow paint peeking out from under fresh graffiti.

"And that's the exact same paint?" asked Sherlock.

"Yeah."

They all three studied it, but too much of it was concealed under the fresh graffiti to be able to make anything out. "John, if we're going to decipher this code, we're going to need to look for more evidence," said Sherlock finally.

Running with Sherlock's idea that this general vicinity had been a designated spot to leave messages for some time, they let themselves into the nearby Waterloo train yards and split up. Almost immediately, Sherlock found fresh, empty cans of Michigan yellow. But it was John who found the message on the outer wall of a signal booth. It took him by surprise—he'd been watching the tracks, following a trail of drops and smears of yellow paint when he looked up and there it was, on the blank brick wall of a storage shed. He stepped back, almost tripping over a railroad tie, trying to see it all at once in the light of his puny torch. Instead of just the two characters—the numbers fifteen and one—there were dozens, covering the entire wall.

It took him ten minutes to find Sherlock, who was examining the graffiti on the side of a freight car. "Answer your phone, I've been calling you!" said John, running up to him. "I found it." Sherlock asked no questions, but followed as John ran back the way he'd come.

The wall was empty, blank and black.

"It's been painted over. I don't understand," said John, dumbly. "It was here. Ten minutes ago. I saw it. A whole lot of graffiti."

"Somebody doesn't want me to see it," said Sherlock, looking up and down the shadowy tracks. Abruptly, he turned to John and grabbed either side of John's head in his hands. "Hey!" said John, startled.

"John, concentrate! I need you to concentrate. Close your eyes."

"Wait, what?" said John, trying to pull away. "Why? Why? What are you doing?"

Sherlock let go of John's head and grabbed his shoulders and spun in a circle, forcing John to orbit around him. "I need you to maximise your visual memory. Try to picture what you saw. Can you picture it?"

"Yeah…"

"Can you remember it?"

John was looking both confused and worried. "Yes, definitely."

"Can you remember the pattern?"

"Yes!"

"How much can you remember it?" demanded Sherlock, still spinning John around.

"Look, don't worry—"

"Because the average human memory on visual matches is only 62% accurate."

"Yeah, well, don't worry, I remember all of it."

"Really?"

"Yeah, well, at least I would," said John, breaking away from Sherlock at last, "if I can get to my pockets. I took a photograph." He handed Sherlock his mobile. On it was a photo of the graffiti, illuminated by John's torch.

Sherlock stared at it for a moment. "Oh."

Back at Baker Street, Sherlock printed the pictures off of John's mobile and taped them above the fireplace. He had translated all the Chinese characters into their Arabic numerals—but had no idea what each numeral stood for. He studied them, waiting for patterns to emerge. "Always in pairs, John. Look."

John was falling asleep at the desk, his chin in his hands. "Hrmm?"

"The numbers. Come with partners."

"God, I need to sleep," said John to himself.

"Why did he paint it so near the tracks?"

"No idea."

"Dozens of people pass by there every day…"

"Just twenty minutes?"

"Of course…of course! He wants information, he's trying to communicate with his people in the underworld. Whatever was stolen, he wants it back. It's somewhere here, in a code…we can't crack this without Soo Lin Yao." He pulled the photos off the wall and the translation chart of Chinese characters to numbers and was out the door. In spite of his exhaustion, John stood up and followed.

"Two men who travelled back from China were murdered," said Sherlock to Andy, early the next morning, back in the Asian galleries of the Antiquities museum. "And their killer left them messages in Huang Zu numerals."

"Soo Lin Yao's in danger," said John. "Now that cipher, it was just the same pattern as the others. He means to kill her as well."

"Look," said Andy, "I've tried everywhere. Friends, colleagues, I don't know where she's gone, she could be a thousand miles away."

John spotted Sherlock not listening, staring in a display case. "What are you looking at?"

Sherlock pointed at the case filled with small clay teapots. "Tell me more about those teapots."

"The pots were her obsession," said Andy. "Um, they need urgent work. If they dry out, then the clay can start to crumble. Apparently you have to keep making tea in them."

Sherlock leaned down and peered at the pots. "Yesterday only one of those pots was shiny. Now there are two."

It took some doing to convince Andy to let them hide in the museum after closing, but eventually he shut them in the restoration room, begging that if security did catch them, they not say who had let them in or he'd get fired. They sat amongst the boxes for hours, listening to the quiet hum of the humidity control system, not speaking as John tried to catnap.

The security guards had been by three times before they heard scraping and soft footsteps. Soo Lin didn't turn on any lights, but crept to her worktable carrying a clay tea pot. Sherlock laid a hand on John's arm but didn't move from his spot. As they watched, she poured the tea into a clay pot and lifted it ceremoniously to an imaginary drinking companion. She was not merely moistening the pots—she was taking the time, in spite of her fear, to conduct the tea ceremony, as it had been conducted over these pots for hundreds of years. She poured the tea from the clay pot into two small clay mugs, and did not hear Sherlock behind her until he asked, "Fancy a biscuit with that?" With a yelp of surprise, she spun around and dropped the teapot. Sherlock caught it. "Centuries old," he said to her. "Don't want to break that." She stared at him, eyes full of fear. Sherlock snapped on the light table and smiled at her. "Hello."

Ten minutes later, after telling her who they were and why they were looking for her, she told them why she'd run away. "I saw the cipher," she explained. "And I know he is coming for me."

"You've been clever to avoid him so far," Sherlock told her.

"I had to finish. To finish this work." She gestured at the teapots. "It's only a matter of time. I know he will find me."

"Who is he? Have you met him before?"

"From when I was a girl with him, back in China. I recognize his…signature."

"The cipher."

She nodded. "Only he would do this. Zhi Zhu."

"Zhi Zhu?" asked John.

"The Spider," supplied Sherlock.

Soo Lin unlaced her trainer and pulled it off. She showed the bottom of her foot to Sherlock. A stylized black lotus had been tattooed on the bottom of her heel. "You know this mark?" she asked Sherlock.

"Yes," said Sherlock. "It's the mark of the Tong."

John cast a questioning glance at Sherlock.

"Ancient crime syndicate, based in China," Sherlock explained.

"Every foot soldier bears the mark," said Soo Lin, her voice small. "Everyone who hauls for them."

"Hauls?" asked John.

She gave him a long, quiet look. "You mean you were a smuggler?" he asked her.

She pulled her trainer back on. "I was fifteen," she explained. "My parents were dead. I had no livelihood. No way of surviving day-to-day. Except to work for the bosses."

"Who are they?" asked Sherlock. The look on his face was bordering on respect, or perhaps pity.

She took a deep breath. "They are called the Black Lotus. By the time I was sixteen, I was taking thousands of pounds worth of drugs across the border into Hong Kong. I managed to leave that life behind me. I came to England. They gave me a job here. Everything was good," she looked around the room, as though she was seeing it for the last time. "A new life."

"And he came looking for you."

"Yes. I had hoped, after five years, maybe they would have forgotten me. But they never really let you leave. A small community like ours…they are never very far away." She wiped tears from her eyes. "He came to my flat. He asked me to help him. To track down something that was stolen."

"And you have no idea what it was?" asked John.

She shook her head. "I refused to help."

John leaned forward. "So you knew him well, when you were living back in China?"

She nodded slowly. "Oh yes. He's my brother. Two orphans—we had no choice. We could work for the Black Lotus or starve on the streets like beggars. My brother has become their puppet, in the power of the one they call Shan—Black Lotus General. I turned my brother away. He said I had betrayed him. Next day I came to work, and the cipher was waiting."

Sherlock unfolded the photo of the rail yard wall and slid it across to her. "Can you decipher these?"

She pulled the paper towards her. "Those are numbers."

"Yes, I know."
"Here," she said, pointing to the photo of the cipher at the bank, "the line across the man's eyes—it's the Chinese number one."

"And this one is fifteen," said Sherlock pointing to the other mark, "But what's the code?"

"All the smugglers know it," she told him. "It's based upon a book—" With a clang, all the lights went out at once. Sherlock and John spun round, but Soo Lin sat perfectly still. "He's here. Zhi Zhu. He has found me."

Sherlock asked no more questions. He bolted out of the restoration room and out to the galleries, ignoring John's calls to wait.

"Come here," said John, pulling Soo Lin away from the restoration table and towards the storage cabinets at one end of the room. "Get in, get in." He pushed her in first, then crouched down in front of her, between her and the restoration room.

Out in the gallery, Zhi Zhu saw Sherlock first. The sharp crack of a pistol echoed off the high ceiling and slick marble floors, and sent Sherlock diving behind a bronze statue of a man with a violin.

John started when he heard the gunshots. He knew that Sherlock didn't have a gun. He hesitated for a split second, then turned to Soo Lin. "I have to go and help him. Bolt the door after me." And he was gone.

Soo Lin did not move.

Sherlock waited a few seconds, then bolted across the gallery and up the stairs, to get to the balcony that Zhi Zhu had fired on him from. In a hall full of ancient pre-human skulls, Zhi Zhu fired again, and Sherlock darted behind a pillar. "Careful!" he called out. "Some of those skulls are over two hundred thousand years old. Have a bit of respect!" He waited. There was no answer, no more gunshots. "Thank you," called Sherlock, catching his breath.

Then he realized that the silence was entirely wrong.

Soo Lin took a deep breath and stepped out from her hiding place. When she turned around, she was not surprised to see him. "Big brother," she said in Chinese, calling him by the name he had had when she knew him, before he became Zhi Zhu. "It's you." She was no longer frightened. She put a hand on his cheek.

A single gunshot echoed through the museum.

"Oh, my god," breathed John, sprinting back the way he had come, even though he knew it was too late. In the restoration room, he could see her trainer, the laces still untied. A black origami flower rested in her palm. The rest of her was in shadow.

Six

The Syndicate

Dimmock was not happy about being summoned to the Museum at eleven o'clock on a weeknight, but Sherlock and John insisted to the security and PCs on the scene that he be called. He wouldn't have them at "his" crime scene, however, so Sherlock—in what was, for him, actually a compromise—went back to the Yard and sat, stubbornly waiting for Dimmock's return. When he finally arrived, Dimmock shrugged off his jacket and told them to go home, this was an isolated incident which had nothing to do with them.

"Look," said John, "How many murders is it going to take before you start believing that this maniac's out there?"

Dimmock walked past them without answering.

"A young girl was gunned down tonight, that's three victims in three days. You're supposed to be finding him," said John, following Dimmock. And you weren't supposed to leave her, a voice whispered at him inside his head.

"Brian Lukis and Eddie Van Coon were working for a gang of international smugglers," said Sherlock, stepping between John and Dimmock. "A gang called the Black Lotus. Operating here in London, right under your nose."

"Can you prove that?" asked Dimmock suspiciously. Sherlock did not break his gaze.

Sherlock found Molly in the basement cafeteria at St. Bart's. "What're you thinking?" he asked her. "Pork or the pasta?"

"Oh, it's you," said Molly, flustered. She hated the way Sherlock always just appeared out of nowhere.

"I suppose this place will never trouble Egon Ronay, is it?" He smiled at her. "I'd stick with the pasta. Don't be doing roast pork, not if you're slicing up cadavers."

"What're you having?" she asked.

"Don't eat while I'm working, digesting slows me down."

"So you're working here tonight?"

"Need to examine some bodies."

"Some?"

"Eddie Van Coon and Brian Lukis."

She did a double take. "They're on my list."

"Could you wheel them out again for me?"

"W-well, the paperwork's already gone through."

He did not seem to hear this. "You changed your hair," he observed.

"What?"

"The style, it's usually parted in the middle."

"Yes, well…"

"It's good, it suits you better this way." He smiled at her. She looked at him suspiciously, then smiled back in spite of herself.

Sherlock gave her time to eat and pull the bodies out of the freezer while he called Inspector Dimmock at the Yard. Thirty minutes later, they met in the morgue. Molly had already pulled the bodies—now in body bags and ready for transport to funeral homes—out onto gurneys.

"We're just interested in the feet," he told her as she started unzipping at the top.

"The feet?"

"Yes. Do you mind if we look at them?"

Mystified, Molly unzipped the bottom of the body bag. On the bottom of Lukis' bare right foot was the same lotus tattoo that Sherlock and John had seen on Soo Lin Yao.

"Now Van Coon," said Sherlock. Molly unzipped the body bag, showing the same tattoo on Van Coon's foot. "Oh!" said Sherlock, faking surprise, "So, either these two men just happened to visit the same Chinese tattoo parlour or I'm telling the truth."

Dimmock sighed. "What do you want?"

"I want every book from Lukis' apartment. And Van Coon's."

Dimmock raised his eyebrows. "Their books?"

"It's not just a criminal organization," said Sherlock to John later, when they arrived back at Baker Street. "It's a cult. The brother was corrupted by one of the leaders."

"Soo Lin said the name," said John.

"Yes, Shan. General Shan."

"We're still not closer to finding them."

"Wrong. We've got almost all we need to know. She gave us most of the missing pieces. Why did he need to visit his sister? Why did he need her expertise?"

"She worked at the museum."

"Exactly."

"An expert in antiquities…of course. I see."

"Valuable antiquities, John. Ancient Chinese relics purchased on the black market. China's home to a thousand treasures, hidden after Mao's revolution."

"The Black Lotus is selling them."

They may be purchasing them in China on the black market, thought Sherlock, but how are they selling them once they get to England? To go from one black market to another, it would be simpler to stay in China. There were plenty of Chinese collectors.

On a hunch, he opened his laptop and signed on to Crispian's, scanning the current and upcoming auctions. It didn't take long. "Here, John," he said, pointing. "Arrived from China four days ago. Source is anonymous. Vendor doesn't give his name…two undiscovered treasures from the East."

"One in Lukis' suitcase and one in Van Coon's," said John, looking over his shoulder.

Sherlock went back to the browser and searched for recently ended auctions. "Look, here's another one," he pointed. "Arrived from China a month ago. Chinese ceramic statue, sold for £400,000."

"Look," said John. "A month before that. Chinese painting, half a million."

"All of them from an anonymous source. They're stealing them, back in China, and one by one they're feeding them into Britain."

John looked from the auctions to Lukis' diary and print outs of Van Coon's schedule from the secretary. "Every single auction coincides with Lukis or Van Coon travelling to China."

"What if one of them got greedy when they were in China? What if one of them stole something?"

"That's why Zhi Zhu's come."

Mrs. Hudson tapped on the door jamb, and they both jumped. "Sorry. Are we collecting for charity, Sherlock?"

"What?"

"A young man's outside with crates of books."

It turned out that Van Coon and Lukis owned quite a lot of books. They filled most of the flat's floor space once they were all brought up in crates and stacked in the sitting room. "So the numbers are references," explained Sherlock.

"To books."

"To specific pages, and specific words on those pages."

"All right. So…fifteen and one, that means…"

"Turn to page fifteen and it's the first word you read."

"Okay. So what's the message?"

"Depends on the book. That's the cunning of the Book Code. It has to be one that they both own."

"Okay, fine," said John, surveying the crates stacked three and four high. "This shouldn't take long, should it?"

They were just starting to unpack the crates when Dimmock came up the stairs. He was carrying the pictures of the code graffiti in a plastic evidence bag. "We found these at the museum," he said. "Is this your writing?"

"We'd hoped Soo Lin could decipher it for us," answered John.

Dimmock nodded, satisfied. "Anything else I can do? To assist you, I mean?"

"Some silence right now would be marvellous," said Sherlock, not looking in his direction.

Sherlock worked haphazardly, pulling books now from this crate, now from that. He'd find doubles and set them on top of the books John was working with. John worked around him as much as he could.

Slowly the books transferred themselves from crates to available spots on the floor. Malcolm Gladwell. Iain Banks. The Bible. The Da Vinci Code. Nonfiction, fiction, reference books collected in pairs around the sitting room.

John didn't realize they'd been up all night until the alarm on his wrist watch went off. He glanced out the window and saw that it was full daylight outside. Sherlock scrubbed his hands through his hair in frustration. John remembered that he was supposed to work his first shift at the clinic that day, and tried to rub the sleep out of his eyes.

"I'm sorry to keep you waiting," said the medical receptionist helplessly to the patients queuing around her desk, "but we haven't got anything now till next Thursday. I know this is taking ages. I'm sorry."

Sarah, coming out of her office, looked at the backlog in the waiting area. "What's going on?" she asked the receptionist.

"That new doctor you hired," said the receptionist in a low voice, "He hasn't buzzed the intercom for ages."

"Let me go and have a word," said Sarah.

Sarah knocked on the door of the surgery that had been assigned to John. "John?" she called. There was no answer. "John?" She pushed the door open. The new doctor was sitting, his cheek on his fist, fast asleep.

At the end of the day, John came out of his surgery, somewhat bleary eyed. The waiting room was empty. "It looks like I'm done," he said, pulling on his jacket. "I thought I had more to see."

"Oh, I did one or two of yours," said Sarah, filing papers at the desk.

"One or two?"

"Well, maybe five or six."

John looked sheepish. "I'm sorry. That's not very professional."

"No," agreed Sarah. "No, not really."

"I, um...had a bit of a late one."

"Oh. Right."

The smallest of awkward pauses followed. "Anyway," said John. "See you." He turned to go.

"So, um," cut in Sarah, "What were you doing? To keep you up so late?"

"I was attending a sort of book event."

"Oh. She likes books, then, your girlfriend?"

John smiled a little. "No, um, it wasn't a date."

"Good," said Sarah. Then she blushed furiously. "I mean, um…"

"And," said John, smiling a little, "I don't have one tonight."

She smiled back at him this time.

Back at Baker Street, Sherlock had abandoned the crates and was staring at his own bookshelves. "A book that everybody would own…" He pulled down the Concise OED, the Bible, a medical text book. None of them fit. He was scrubbing his hands through his hair in frustration as John came up the stairs. "I need to get some air, we're going out tonight."

"Actually," said John, "I've got a date."

Sherlock looked blank. "What?"

"It's where two people who like each other go out and have fun?"

Sherlock looked blank. "That's what I was suggesting."

"No, it wasn't. At least, I hope not."

"Where are you taking her?"

"Cinema."

"Dull. Boring. Predictable. Why don't you try this?" he handed John a flier, half-ruined by rain, for the Yellow Dragon Circus. "In London for one night only."

"Thanks, but I don't come to you for dating advice." John tried to hand the flier back.

"It's been years since anyone took me to the circus," said Sarah when they came out of the tube.

John smiled and tried to look excited about it since she seemed agreeable. "A friend recommended it to me. He phoned up."

"What are they, a touring company or something?"

"I don't know much about it." As they rounded the corner, they saw that the steps leading up to the theatre had been lined with red paper lanterns.

"I think they're probably from China," observed Sarah.

"Yes," agreed John with a laugh, "Yes, I think so. There's a coincidence."

The theatre was old and rickety, with peeling paint on the walls and an air of dilapidated splendour. The box office was at the top of the first floor landing. "Hi, I have two tickets reserved for tonight," said John.

"What's the name?"

"Holmes," said John. It had been Sherlock who called ahead to reserve the tickets.

"Actually," said the man in the ticket booth, "I have three in that name."

"No, I don't think so," said John in confusion. "We only booked two."

"And then I phoned back and got one for myself as well," said a voice behind them. John turned to see Sherlock coming up the stairs. "I'm Sherlock," he said to Sarah, holding out a hand to shake.

"Uh…hi," said Sarah, shaking his hand.

"Hello," said Sherlock, and then turned abruptly and went up the stairs.

John caught him up. "You couldn't let me have just one night off?"

"Yellow Dragon Circus? In London for one day? It fits. The Tong sent an assassin to England—"

"—dressed up as a tightrope walker? Come on, Sherlock, behave!" Outside of the confines of Baker Street, violent criminal organizations seemed very far away. And besides, this was a circus. That only cost £12 to get into.

"We're looking for a killer who can climb, who can shin up a rope. Where else would you find that level of dexterity? Exit visas are scarce in China. They need a pretty good reason to get out of that country. Now, all I need to do is have a quick look round the place."

"Fine. You do that, I'm going to take Sarah for a pint."

"I need your help!"

John looked at him incredulously. "I do have a couple other things on my mind this evening."

"Like what?" scoffed Sherlock.

"You are kidding?" asked John.

"What's so important?"

"Sherlock, I'm right in the middle of a date. You want me to chase some killer while I'm trying to—" he cut himself off.

Sherlock snorted impatiently. "What?"

"While I'm trying to get off with Sarah! …Hey," he said to Sarah as she came up behind them. "Ready?"

If she'd heard what he said, she didn't react to it. "Yeah." They continued up the stairs.

The circus was in a large, disused ballroom. A stage with drawn heavy, velvet curtains dominated one wall. A ring was blocked off in the centre of the floor. The circus-goers clustered around uncertainly. There were no seats.

"You said circus," John hissed quietly to Sherlock. "This is not a circus. Look at the size of this crowd. Sherlock, this is…art."

"This is not their day job."

"Yeah, I forgot. They're not a circus, they're a gang of international smugglers." Neither of them responded to Sarah's inquiring look, and then the circus started, announced by fingers tapping out a rhythm on a small hand drum that echoed across the hall's tall ceilings. As the rhythm sped up, a woman in an elaborate Chinese costume—embroidered silk qipao, a jewelled headdress crowned with feathers, her face powdered white and flatly deadpan—stepped forward. She did not speak, did not welcome them, but raised one hand in the air. When she dropped it, the finger drum stopped, and a floor tom rolled out an ominous boom-ba-boom. She ceremoniously pulled back a drop cloth to reveal a huge crossbow, over six feet long, resting on a pair of sawhorses, aimed at a vertically-mounted piece of heavy wood the size of a large door, some twenty feet away.

The hostess pulled a crossbow bolt out of a quiver on the floor. It was almost a meter long, a wooden dowel over an inch in diameter tipped with feathers and a diamond-shaped iron arrowhead. She held it out to the audience for inspection, then placed the bolt in the firing cradle. Pulling a single feather from her headdress, she dropped it in a bowl attached to the crossbow's trigger mechanism. There was a hiss and a thud, and the bolt stood quivering in the painted door, its head entirely buried in the wood. The audience jumped, then laughed nervously as they applauded.

A man stepped out, wearing a mail shirt, leather vest, and a Chinese opera mask, its face frozen in a threatening leer. He bowed to the audience and stood with his arms outstretched while two stage hands bound his arms with chains and pulled them tight so that his arms were crossed across his stomach. They guided him to stand with his back against the freestanding wall and chained him to it. The hostess watched impassively.

"Classic Chinese escapology act," said Sherlock in a low voice. John and Sarah both turned to look at him. "Crossbow's on a delicate spring. The warrior has to escape his bonds before it fires."

And, indeed, the hostess was placing another bolt in the firing cradle and cranking back the bow. The stagehands clicked padlocks shut and stretched chains across the man's neck and hips. A gong rang, and Sarah jumped.

The hostess pulled a short knife out of the quiver and held it out ceremoniously to the audience. "She splits the sandbag," explained Sherlock, "The sand pours out. Gradually the weight lowers into the bowl." Sure enough, the hostess stabbed at a sandbag above her head. As the sand flowed out, the sandbag crept upward, and at the other end of the pulley, a weight trickled downward toward the bowl that was the trigger. The bound man struggled furiously, freed both his arms, the grabbed at the chain around his neck. The weight was mere inches from the bowl, and creeping downwards.

The weight dropped, the bow twanged, and the bolt stood quivering—buried deep in the wood of the door. The escapologist had dropped to his stomach with a hairsbreadth to spare. The audience applauded enthusiastically this time, some people murmuring exclamations of relief or astonishment. The bound man—now, of course, free—stood up and bowed. John glanced behind him to see just how unimpressed Sherlock was.

He was gone.

The hostess held up her hand for silence. "Ladies and gentlemen," she said, speaking for the first time, "From the distant moonlit shores of the Yangtze River, we present for your pleasure, the deadly Chinese bird-spider." The drum rolled behind her voice to reinforce it. She exited the ring, and an acrobat descended from the ceiling, wrapped in silk ribbons that were unrolling, turning him over and over inside of it. He started doing what John thought was something like a trapeze act, only done with long silk scarves instead of a bar.

Sherlock slipped backstage, planning on acting lost if any performers happened upon him. But no one was there. Peeking out of the curtain, he saw the acrobat swooping around the ring, silk scarves wrapped around his hands. "Well, well," muttered Sherlock. But before he could resume his search, the backstage door to the alley clanged open. He heard footsteps approaching and ducked behind the costume rack.

It was the hostess. She stood in the open doorway, checking her phone and smoking a cigarette. Sherlock crouched—he was taller than the rack otherwise—and caught a hanger on the way down. It rattled.

Sherlock held his breath.

There was a long moment of silence from the hostess. Had she heard? Was she still checking her phone? The moment she moved, he knew he'd hear her shoes. He waited.

Footsteps moving away from him. The door clanged again, and as he sighed out a long, quiet breath, Sherlock looked down and saw a dark duffel bag, almost hidden in shadow. It was three-quarters full of Michigan yellow spray paint canisters. "Found you," said Sherlock softly. He picked up one of the canisters and headed for the makeup mirror, intending to leave a message of his own.

He only got as far as the horizontal line for the number one when he saw that a Chinese suit of armour, reflected in the mirror, had a person inside of it. And that the person was holding a machete.

The suit of armour advanced but Sherlock was already dancing backward, dodging swipes from the blade. He felt the curtain behind him and moved forward, grabbing a prop sceptre with his free hand and parrying the machete. He hit the suit of armour across the face with the can of paint, but didn't move out of range quickly enough and took a knee in the stomach.

The suit of armour tried to get hold of Sherlock's neck, but only got a handful of scarf. He dropped the sword to get a better grip. Sherlock managed to get his arm up and spray yellow paint through the mask's eyeholes. He landed two punches and then hurled his attacker to the floor.

The suit of armour hopped right back up, and landed a roundhouse kick to Sherlock's sternum, knocking him bodily through the curtain and off the stage, where he landed flat on his back in front of everyone watching the circus. The wind was knocked entirely out of him and he lay gasping as the suit of armour leapt after him, but John jumped in, fighting unscientifically but effectively. Then John also took a kick to the stomach and staggered backward.

The bird-spider acrobat slid down his scarves and, pausing only to take off his mask, ran for the nearest exit.

The suit of armour had somehow got his machete back in his hand—or had found a new one—and was standing over Sherlock, who was still trying to get his breath back and stand up when Sarah charged into the fray, wielding one of the crossbow bolts like a club. She caught the suit of armour across the back of the head. The suit crashed to the ground and moved no more.

Sherlock got up and pulled off the man's right shoe, knowing as he did that the black lotus tattoo would be on his heel. "Come on," he said, pulling on John and Sarah, "Let's go."

Seven

The Key

They did not take the first taxi that went by, nor the second. Sherlock led them down side streets and alleys—he seemed to know every path that feet could possibly take through rabbit-warren London—until he was sure they weren't being followed. He did not start to relax until they arrived, circuitously and eventually, at Scotland Yard. And even then, it was a remarkably short time before he was tense again, though this time it was because it had apparently slipped his mind just how much Detective Inspector Dimmock aggravated him.

"I sent a couple of cars," said Dimmock. "The old hall is totally deserted."

"Look," said Sherlock, "I saw the mark in the circus. That tattoo that we saw on the two bodies, the mark of the Tong."

"Lukis and Van Coon were part of a smuggling operation," said John. "Now, one of them stole something when they were in China. Something valuable."

"These circus performers were gang members sent here to get it back," said Sherlock.

"Get what back?" asked Dimmock.

"We…don't know," said John, after a moment's hesitation.

"You don't know?" repeated Dimmock. He sighed. "Mr Holmes. I've done everything you asked. Lestrade, he seems to think your advice is worth something. I gave the order for a raid. Please tell me I'll have something to show for it, other than a massive bill for overtime."

Sherlock just looked at him for a long moment, then turned and left, Sarah and John trying to keep up.

"They'll be back in China by tomorrow," said John, as they arrived back at 221B.

"No, they won't leave without what they came for," said Sherlock. "We need to find a hideout. A rendezvous. Somewhere in this message it must tell us." He was studying the cipher from the train yard again.

"Well," said Sarah, "I think perhaps I should leave you to it."

"Yes," said Sherlock. "It would be easier if you left now." At the same time, John said, "Oh, you don't have to go yet. Stay a bit." John and Sherlock looked at each other. John turned back to Sarah. "He's kidding. Please stay if you like."

She nodded. "Is it just me, or is anyone else starving?"

"Oh, god," muttered Sherlock in exasperation.

John did not tell her that Sherlock didn't eat while on cases, or at much of any other time, really. He went into the kitchen, hoping that the refrigerator would have something other than condiments and body parts in it, while Sherlock started sorting through his evidence pile once again.

Sarah was examining the photos on the walls. "So this is what you do? You and John, you solve puzzles for a living?"

"Consulting detective," said Sherlock shortly.

"Oh." She looked over his shoulder. "What are these squiggles?" she asked, pointing at the Chinese characters.

"They're numbers. An ancient Chinese dialect."

If she heard the condescension in his voice, she ignored it. "Oh, right, yeah. 'Course. I should've known that."

Mrs Hudson snuck into the kitchen through the back stairs to find John emptying a packet of crisps into a bowl. "I brought you some punch," she whispered, putting a tray on the table, "And a bowl of nibbles."

"Mrs Hudson, you're a saint," said John with relief.

"If it was Monday, I'd have been to the supermarket," she said apologetically.

"No, this is great, thank you," said John. Mrs Hudson slipped away.

Sarah picked up one of the sheets of characters. She didn't see the look of incredulous annoyance that crossed Sherlock's face. "So these numbers—it's a cipher."

"Exactly."
"And each pair of numbers is a word?"

Sherlock looked at her, interested for the very first time. "How did you know that?"

"Two words have already been translated, here." She showed him the photo she had. It was the same one they'd taken to the museum to ask Soo Lin about, that Dimmock had left behind after asking them about it.

Sherlock stared at it. "John."

"Hmm?"

"John, look at this." He tore open the evidence bag. "Soo Lin, at the museum. She started to translate the code for us. We didn't see it." He started reading the translated characters. "Nine…mil."

"Does that mean millions?" asked John, bending over Sherlock's shoulder.

"Nine million quid," said Sherlock softly. "For what?" He stared into middle space for a moment, then grabbed his coat. "We need to know the end of this sentence."

"Where are you going?" asked John.

"To the museum. To the restoration room. We must have been staring right at it!"

"At what?"

"The book, John. The book! The key to cracking the cipher! Soo Lin used it to do this" –He held up the partially decoded cipher—"whilst we were running around the gallery. She started to translate the code. It must be on her desk."

He was hailing a taxi before he was even all the way out the door. He didn't see the tourists, bent over a London A to Z, until he bowled right into them and knocked their book to the ground. The man cursed at him in German, asking just what the hell did he think he was doing. Sherlock picked up the book and handed it back to them, hastily apologizing in German. The taxi he wanted swept by without stopping, and Sherlock paused on the sidewalk in frustration.

Then he stopped.

Of course.

A book that everybody would own.

He bolted after the tourists, who had started to walk in the other direction, and snatched their London A to Z,. Ignoring their curses, Sherlock flipped through the book, working from memory. "Page fifteen, entry one…" The page was a map index. "Deadman's Lane…Dead man. You were threatening to kill them. That's the first cipher." Feverishly, he pulled the photo out of his pocket and looked at the next one. "Thirty-six, line nine…Fore." Nine million quid for—

The next word in the cipher was jade.

He kept flipping. The tourists gave up and walked away, angry, but not willing to get in a fistfight with a mad Brit over a book. "Nine mil for jade pin. Dragon den. Black tramway." He ran back up the block, up the stairs into 221B. "John?" he called. "John! I've got it! The cipher! The book! It's the London A to Z—" He stopped.

The flat was silent and empty. Two trays, clean and bare, had been laid for takeaway that hadn't arrived.

The Dead Man cipher was spray painted across the windows.

When John woke up, his head and neck were throbbing and his arms were numb to the shoulder. His scalp itched where blood had crusted over in his hair. After a moment, he realized he was sitting in a wooden chair with his arms bound behind him and his ankles lashed to the chair legs. A woman was talking in a soft Chinese accent. "A book is like a magic garden carried in your pocket."

He blinked and looked round. They were in a nearly-circular brick tunnel, a discontinued passage for the Underground. Sarah was tied up in a chair a few feet away. She was awake, and looked unhurt, and was looking at him. She was also gagged. He wasn't. Maybe she'd tried to scream.

A woman walked out of the shadows toward him. She was dressed all in black, her eyes shielded by black sunglasses in spite of the gloom of the tunnel. The only light was from fires lit in fifty gallon drum containers. "Chinese proverb, Mr Holmes," she explained.

John blinked. "I'm not Sherlock Holmes."

She smiled superciliously at him. "Forgive me if I do not take your word for it." She reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and pulled out his wallet. "Debit card, name of S. Holmes," she said. "A check for £5,000, made out in the name of Mr. Sherlock Holmes. Tickets from the theatre, collected by you, name of Holmes."

"Yes, okay," said John. "I realize what this looks like, but I'm not him."

"We heard it from your own mouth."

"What?"

"'I am Sherlock Holmes and I always work alone,' " she quoted.

"Did I really say that?" John muttered, but remembered he had, while Sherlock was in Soo Lin's apartment. "I suppose it's no use me trying to persuade you I was doing an impression?"

In response, she raised a gun to his head. He tried to lean back and took a deep breath. "I am Shan," she informed him.

"You're…you're Shan?"

"Three times we tried to kill you and your companion, Mr Holmes. What does it tell you when an assassin cannot shoot straight?" She pulled back the slide on the gun, and after taking a moment to observe the panic on his face, pulled the trigger.

The gun clicked uselessly. It wasn't loaded.

"It tells you they're not really trying," she said.

John watched as Shan inserted a clip into the pistol and pulled the slide back. "Not blank of bullets now," she said. "If we wanted to kill you, Mr Holmes, we would have done it by now. We just wanted to make you…inquisitive. Do you have it?"

"Do I have what?"

"The treasure."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"I would prefer to make certain." At her signal, two lackeys behind her lifted the cover off the hulking object some twenty feet away. It was the crossbow from the circus. "Everything in the West has its price. And the price for her life"—because, indeed, the crossbow was pointed at Sarah—"information."

Sarah started to struggle and cry, her protests muffled by the gag in her mouth.

"Where's the hair pin?" Shan asked John.

"What?"

"The Empress' pin. Valued at nine million sterling. We already had a buyer in the West. And then one of our people was greedy. He took it, brought it back to London, and you, Mr Holmes, have been searching."

"Please," said John, "Please. Listen to me. I'm not Sherlock Holmes. You have to believe me. I haven't found whatever it is you're looking for."

"I need a volunteer from the audience! Ahh, thank you, lady." She had turned to Sarah. "Yes. You'll do very nicely." And Shan stabbed the sandbag, and the counterweight started sinking slowly, inexorably, towards the crossbow trigger. "Ladies and gentlemen! From the distant moonlit shores of NW1, we present for your pleasure, Sherlock Holmes' pretty companion in a death-defying act."

"Please!" shouted John.

Shan paid no attention. She placed a black origami lotus in Sarah's lap. "You've seen the act before," she said, apologetically. "How dull for you. You know how it ends."

"I'm not Sherlock Holmes!" shouted John.

"I don't believe you."

"You should, you know," called a voice from the darkness. Shan spun around, raising the gun. A silhouette down the tunnel slid back into the shadows. "Sherlock Holmes is nothing at all like him. How would you describe me, John?" The voice was moving. Sherlock was changing positions in the darkness. "Resourceful? Dynamic? Enigmatic?"

"Late," called out John.

"That's a semiautomatic," called Sherlock to Shan. "If you fire it, the bullet will travel at over a thousand meters per second."

Shan's eyes were combing the dark shadows of the tunnel. "Well?"

"Well—" There was a slight pause, followed by the thwack of a metal pipe hitting one of Shan's lieutenants, and the thud of a body hitting the ground—"The radius curvature of these walls is nearly four meters. If you miss, the bullet will ricochet. Could hit anyone. Might even bounce off the tunnel and hit you."

One of the barrel fires scattered with a clang as Sherlock came out of the darkness and kicked over the barrel. Before Shan could get her bearings, Sherlock was behind her, untying Sarah. But before he could loosen her bonds, Zhi Zhu, the bird-spider with the silk scarves, materialized out of the shadows and wrapped one of those scarves around Sherlock's neck from behind, yanking him off his feet. Sarah was left staring helplessly at the sandbag, drifting inexorably upward.

John tried to shimmy his chair sideways toward Sarah. He threw his body weight too hard and tipped over, landing hard on one arm, but the back of the chair was short enough that his shoulders weren't entirely immobilized. He wriggled along the ground and got close enough to the crossbow that he managed to spin on his hip and kick it off centre. He intended simply to aim it away from Sarah, but the jarring motion set off the trigger mechanism and Zhi Zhu dropped his silk scarf, staring at John in shock, crossbow arrow protruding from his stomach.

Sherlock struggled free of the scarf around his neck, only to see Shan running away up the tunnel. He let her go and knelt to untie the rest of Sarah's bonds, assuring her—in uncharacteristically gentle tones—that she was all right, that it was over.

John looked at her from the floor, still tied to the chair. "Don't worry," he told her. "Next date won't be like this." She managed to laugh a little through her tears.

Sherlock waited until Dimmock showed up before talking to any police. "We'll just slip off," he told Dimmock, after filling him in on the events in the tunnel. "No need to mention us in the report."

"Mr Holmes—"

"I have high hopes for you, Inspector," Sherlock cut him off. "A glittering career."

"If I go where you point me."

"Exactly." Sherlock turned and walked up the alley, following John and Sarah.

The next morning, Sherlock made the tea at 221B. "Ta," said John, as Sherlock handed him a cup. "So—Nine million for jade pin, dragon den, black tramway."

"It's an instruction to all their London operatives. A message. What they were trying to reclaim."

"A jade pin."

"Worth nine million pounds. Bring it to the tramway, their London hideout."

"Hang on. A hairpin worth nine million pounds?"

"Apparently."

"Why pay so much?"

"Depends who owned it."

Later that morning, they took a cab back to Shad Sanderson, to fill in Sebastian on the end of the case. Sherlock explained to John in his usual roundabout way. "Two operatives, based in London. They travelled to Dalian to smuggle these vases. One of them helps himself to something. A little hairpin."

"Worth nine million pounds."

"Eddie Van Coon was the thief. He stole the pin while he was in China."

"How do you know it was Van Coon and not Lukis? Even the killer didn't know that."

"Because of the soap."

Yes, of course, thought John. The soap. Obviously.

Eight

The Bank

The phone rang, and Amanda answered it with the standard Shad Sanderson greeting.

"He brought you a present."

She recognized the voice. The fast-talking man who'd looked at all of Eddie's receipts. "Oh. Hello."
"A little gift when he came back from China."

"How do you know that."

"You weren't just his P.A., were you?" He hung up the phone without waiting for an answer.

She turned, and he was standing right behind her. "Someone's been gossiping."

"No."

"Then I don't understand why—"

"Scented hand soap in his apartment. 300 millilitres of it. Bottle almost finished."

"Sorry—"

"I don't think Eddie Van Coon was the type of chap to buy himself hand soap, not unless he had a lady coming over. And it's the same brand as the hand cream there on your desk."

"Look," she stammered, "It wasn't serious between us. It was over in a flash. It couldn't last. He was my boss."

"What happened? Why did you end it?"

She looked down at her desk. "I thought he didn't appreciate me. Took me for granted. Stood me up once too often. We'd plan to go away for a weekend, and then he'd just leave. Fly off to China at a moment's notice."

"And he brought you a present from abroad to say sorry. Can I…just have a look at it?" He held out a gloved hand.

In his office, Sebastian was—with something less than total grace and gratitude—signing a check for £20,000. "He really climbed up onto the balcony?"

"Run a plank across the window and all your problems are over," said John.

Sebastian handed him the check. "Thanks."

Amanda pulled the hairpin out of her bun and handed it to Sherlock. "Said he bought it in a street market."

"Oh, I don't think that's true. I think he pinched it."

She smiled and nodded, half amused and half resigned. "That's Eddie."

"Didn't know its value, just that it would suit you."

"Oh? What's it worth?"

A slow smile crept across Sherlock's face. "Nine. Million. Pounds," he said.

She sprang out of her chair in a panic. "Oh my god. Oh my god." She backed away from him as if he had just pulled a gun on her, then bolted down the hall. "Nine million!"

Sherlock allowed himself a laugh.

It took a few days for the press to get wind of it, but one day the morning papers were full of headlines like, "Who Wants To Be A Million-Hair?"

"Over a thousand years old," reflected John, "and it's sitting on that bedside table every night."

"He didn't know its value. Didn't know why they were chasing him."

"He should've just bought her a lucky cat."

Sherlock made a noncommittal noise in his throat.

"You mind, don't you?"

"What?"

"That she escaped. General Shan. It's not enough that we got her two henchmen."

"Must be a vast network, John. Thousands of operatives. You and I, we barely scratched the surface."

"You cracked the code, though, Sherlock. And maybe Dimmock can track down all of them now that he knows it."

"No. I cracked this code. All the smugglers have to do it pick up another book."

True enough, thought John, looking out the window. A young man with black hair caught his eye. As he watched, the man spray painted a stylized eye on the parking meter across the street. With a quick glance up and down the block, the boy walked away as quickly as he had come. John looked across to Sherlock at the other window. Sherlock had seen him too.

Nine

M.

At M's insistence, General Chan turned on her computer's camera for video chat. His window stayed blank. He spoke to her only through the text chat function.

"Without you," she told him carefully, "Without your assistance, we would not have found passage into London. You have my thanks."

-Gratitude is meaningless. It is only the expectation of further favours.

"We did not anticipate. We did not know this man would come. This Sherlock Holmes. And now your safety is compromised."

-They cannot trace this back to me.

"I will not reveal your identity."

-I am certain.

The chat ended with a gunshot.

Canonical References

The primary source material for "The Blind Banker" seems to come mostly from the novels The Valley of Fear and The Sign of Four. Holmes never fights a Chinese criminal enterprise in any of the Canon stories, but in "The Adventure of the Illustrious Client," Watson must fake knowledge of ancient Chinese pottery in an attempt to gain access to the house of the adversary that he and Holmes are up against. It does not go entirely well because Watson is not the best liar ever. Holmes does get involved in a case involving foreign organized crime finding its way to British soil in The Valley of Fear and in "The Adventure of the Red Circle."

There's a lot of referential repeats that were also in "A Study In Pink" (Sherlock not eating on cases, Sherlock not accepting money, etc) that I won't bother to address here. (Unless I forget that I've already addressed them, in which case, deal with it.)

Two

The Banker

"Because I had a row. In the shop. With a chip and PIN machine." Watson's precarious bank account is never directly stated or elaborated upon, but is hinted at in several stories, including A Study in Scarlet (Watson's looking for a flatmate to share expenses for a reason), and in The Sign of Four when he resists his feelings for Mary Morstan on the grounds of his "weak leg and weaker banking account." In both "The Resident Patient" and "The Adventure of the Cardboard Box," Watson tells us that "a depleted bank account had caused me to postpone my holiday." It has also been hypothesized that Watson has a gambling problem, as evidenced by Watson confessing to losing half of his wound pension to betting on horse racing in "The Adventure of Shoscombe Old Place," and Holmes reminding Watson in "The Adventure of the Dancing Men" that his checkbook was locked in Holmes' drawer, perhaps as a security against Watson impulsively gambling away his money.

"What happened about that case you were offered? The Geria Diamond?" Watson occasionally makes reference to cases of Holmes' that he never gets around to writing up. The most famous of these include "the giant rat of Sumatra, a story for which the world is not yet prepared," the disappearance of Mr James Phillimore, the singular affair of the aluminium crutch, the dreadful business of the Abernetty family, "the lighthouse, the politician, and the trained cormorant," and many others (by some reckonings, as many as sixty). In "The Adventure of the Speckled Band"—which occurs fairly early in the Holmes Canon, both in terms of when Conan Doyle wrote it (1892) and when it takes place within the timeline of Holmes' life—Watson reckons he has notes on at least seventy cases; by 1904 (in "The Adventure of the Second Stain,") Watson tells us that Holmes participated in "hundreds" of cases.

"We were at uni together. And this guy here had a trick he used to do." Holmes has two cases brought to him by current or former school fellows, "The Gloria Scott" and "The Musgrave Ritual." Holmes says he did not have many friends in school, preferring to keep to his rooms, or to pursue his own solitary interests. Additionally, at least one of Watson's old schoolfellows brought a case before Holmes, that of "The Adventure of the Naval Treaty."

"Or maybe it's the mud on my shoes." Evaluating the soil on people's shoes or cuffs to determine their point of origin is one of Holmes' favourite parlour tricks.

"I was just chatting with your secretary outside. She told me." In both the Canon and the series, there are numerous occasions in which Holmes will impulsively tell a lie without giving Watson advance notice; Watson invariably trusts Holmes and plays along in the moment, waiting to ask Holmes about it at a later time. Indeed, these impulsive lies or impersonations are almost always more successful than Watson's deliberate attempts at subterfuge (as in "The Adventure of the Illustrious Client," in which Watson attempts to pass himself off as an expert in Chinese pottery). This particular line is a minor example; Holmes pulls off more significant deceptions in Watson's presence in "The Reigate Puzzle" and The Sign of the Four; Sherlock does the same in "The Great Game" and "The Hounds of Baskerville."

"We've had a break in." Holmes foils a plot to break into a bank in "The Adventure of the Red-Headed League."

"Someone came up here in the middle of the night, splashed paint around, and left within a minute." A burglar also strikes within a narrow window of time in "The Naval Treaty," more or less in the amount of time it takes for Mr Percy Phelps to run up the stairs and down a hall when he hears someone in the room above.

"'I don't need an incentive, Sebastian,' he said icily." Holmes is adamant, throughout his career, that he plays the game "for the game's own sake," as he reminds Mycroft in "The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans." In "The Adventure of the Illustrious Client," despite promises that his "fees will be assured and [he] will be given a perfectly free hand," Holmes initially declines to act. He also declines to take the case in "The Resident Patient" because it's clear to him that his prospective client is lying.

"Edward Van Coon lay face up on his bed, fully dressed in a business suit and overcoat. A nickel-plated pistol lay on the floor at his feet. There was a small hole in his head next to his right eye, which was wide and open and staring." "The Adventure of the Empty House" and The Sign of Four also involve bodies found in rooms locked from the inside.

"It's one possible explanation of some of the facts. You've got a solution that you like and you're choosing to ignore anything you see that doesn't comply with it." This is similar to a remark that Holmes makes in "The Adventure of the Priory School:" "It is impossible as I state it, and therefore I must in some respect have stated it wrong. Yet you saw for yourself. Can you suggest any fallacy?"

"And the bullet?" "Went through the open window." A bullet through a window which obscures the identity (indeed, the presence) of the assailant also figures into "The Adventure of the Dancing Men." Another bullet through another window also figures in "The Adventure of the Empty House."

Three

The Journalist

"Mundane is good, sometimes. Mundane works." Watson's medical practice is described as "never very absorbing" in "The Adventure of the Red Headed League," and he will typically abandon it at a moment's notice (and ask another doctor to cover his patients) if Holmes invites him to a case. (Arthur Conan Doyle's own medical practice was also never very absorbing; he started writing the Holmes stories to keep himself occupied while he waited for patients to arrive at his surgery.)

"He climbed up the side of the wall, ran along the roof, and dropped in through the skylight." The villains in The Sign of Four both (with varying degrees of skill) scale outer walls of houses and cross rooftops and enter locked rooms to kill people. The villains in The Sign of Four are sailors, though, not circus performers.

"Sherlock, as was his habit, was silent in the cab ride to the library and John, after his, asked no questions." This is a near-quote from "The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge."

"Why did they die, Sherlock?" "Only the cipher can tell us." One of Holmes' clients also received vague, coded threats from an implacable threat across the sea, only to die under suspicious circumstances, in "The Adventure of the Five Orange Pips."

Four

The Cipher

"The world's run on codes and ciphers, John. From the million-pound security system at the bank to the PIN machine you took exception to. Cryptography inhabits our every waking moment." Holmes is able to read many ciphers "as easily as I do the apocrypha of the agony column," and has written a monograph analyzing "one hundred and sixty separate ciphers." He is able to decode a substitution cipher in "The Adventure of the Dancing Men" once he receives sufficient material to work from.

"I'll call it…Urban Bloodlust Frenzy."—Raz (who's at least half a street kid), along with the Homeless Network who first appear in "The Great Game," is the modern day version of Holmes' troop of Baker Street Irregulars, the orphaned, homeless kids that he occasionally contracted with when he needed to cover a lot of ground to answer a relatively simple question. In A Study in Scarlet, he uses them to look for the cabbie that was seen outside the Lauriston Gardens house around the time of the murder; in The Sign of Four he has them search for a missing steamer launch. Watson describes the Baker Street Irregulars, when he first meets them, as "half a dozen of the dirtiest and most ragged street Arabs that ever I clapped eyes on."

"Me, Sherlock! In court! On Tuesday! They're giving me an A.S.B.O." A note to Americans: A.S.B.O. stands for "anti-social behaviour order," and is a civil order (rather than a criminal one) that was intended to divert certain minor criminal offenses out of the overburdened British justice system (I think. I'm fuzzy enough on the American justice system; Brits are just confusing).

"Could you not keep doing this, please?" Holmes is a competent burglar, and breaks into houses on several occasions; but when Watson (or Lestrade) is stuck on the doorstep, in the Canon he always opens the door for them promptly, and saves them from shouting or climbing through windows themselves.

"Somebody behind him had a towel or a pillowcase wrapped around his throat and was twisting. His assailant kicked the backs of his knees and he went down." Sherlock is also nearly strangled by a suspect in "The Reigate Puzzle."

Five

The Spider

"They sat amongst the boxes for hours, listening to the quiet hum of the humidity control system, not speaking as John tried to catnap." Holmes and Watson sit through a few night-time vigils waiting for criminals; most notably in "The Adventure of the Speckled Band," "The Adventure of the Red-Headed League" and (with Holmes waiting by himself) "The Naval Treaty."

"…and sent Sherlock diving behind a bronze statue of a man with a violin." I'm not sure if the presence of the violin was a deliberate placement by the filmmakers.

Six

The Syndicate

"Don't eat while I'm working, digesting slows me down." In "The Adventure of the Norwood Builder," Watson says that "It was one of [Holmes'] peculiarities that in his more intense moments he would permit himself no food, and I have known him to presume upon his iron strength until he has fainted from pure inanition."

"That's the cunning of the Book Code." Holmes is able to read many ciphers "as easily as I do the apocrypha of the agony column," and has written a monograph analyzing "one hundred and sixty separate ciphers." He is able to decode a substitution cipher in "The Adventure of the Dancing Men" once he receives sufficient material to work from. The Book Code, which Holmes (in The Valley of Fear) refers to as "Porlock's cipher," is used within Moriarty's criminal network to pass messages, and is slightly different than in the episode of Sherlock. Moriarty's gang uses Whitaker's Almanac, and picks out all of their words from a single page (e.g., the first number in the code is the page number, followed by a column number [1 or 2], and each number following refers to a word, occasionally requiring the reader to count quite high [Porlock's message uses the 293rd word on its page]). Shan's gang's version, in which the numbers run in pairs (a page number followed by counting out to the word) is relatively simpler and gives them more flexibility in vocabulary. In The Valley of Fear, Holmes is able to deduce which book they're using with his usual insight and logic, rather than the burst of inspiration that Sherlock has in The Blind Banker.

"You want me to chase some killer while I'm trying to…to get off with Sarah!" Watson, of course, does exactly this—that is, chase a killer across London while simultaneously falling in love with Mary Morstan—in The Sign of Four.

"The suit of armour advanced but Sherlock was already dancing backward, dodging swipes from the blade." Until recently, the vast majority of Holmes adaptations focused more on Holmes' intellectual side than his physical abilities. I have a vague memory of Basil Rathbone crawling on the outside of a moving train, but Jeremy Brett, in particular, was very much an intellectual Holmes, not an action hero (even when I was a kid, fight sequences with Jeremy Brett were not very compelling). Canon Holmes, however, was quite a BAMF—Watson says that he is an "expert singlestick player, boxer, and swordsman" in A Study in Scarlet, his prowess as a boxer is exclaimed upon (by another boxer) in The Sign of Four, and he keeps himself out of the Reichenbach Fall in "The Final Problem" by using his knowledge of "baritsu," a martial art which generations of Holmesians have tried to trace (the explanation that Doyle meant to say "bartitsu" being, of course, too obvious and simple to be true).

Seven

The Key

"They did not take the first taxi that went by, nor the second." This is a reference to "The Final Problem," in which Holmes admonishes Watson "to take neither the first nor the second [hansom] which may present itself," when Watson is on his way to Victoria Station while attempting to evade Moriarty.

"Three times we tried to kill you and your companion, Mr Holmes." This is the same number of times Moriarty tries to kill Holmes in "The Final Problem," before Holmes escapes to Switzerland. (Also the number of times in the first season that Moriarty tries to kill Holmes, through the cabbie, the Tong, and eventually with the bombs.)

"We'll just slip off. No need to mention us in the report." Holmes—who, as previously stated, plays the game for the game's own sake—often allows the official police to take the credit for cases that he's worked to a solution. In "The Adventure of the Cardboard Box," A Study in Scarlet, and "The Norwood Builder," credit goes to Lestrade and Gregson; and in "The Adventure of the Naval Treaty," Holmes assures Forbes, a Scotland Yard investigator, that "of my last fifty-three cases, my name has only appeared in four, and the police have all the credit in forty-nine."

Eight

The Bank

"Over a thousand years old, and it's sitting on that bedside table every night." Holmes occasionally keeps trophies (or receives gestures of gratitude) from cases. He receives a "remarkably fine emerald tie-pin" after the events of "The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans," and, of course, keeps Irene Adler's picture after "A Scandal in Bohemia."

Nine

M.

"Without you…Without your assistance, we would not have found passage into London. You have my thanks." In The Valley of Fear, in which a violent American secret society contracts with Moriarty's network in London, Holmes says, "These Americans were well advised. Having an English job to do, they took into partnership, as any foreign criminal could do, this great consultant in crime."

Author's Note

The Other Holmes

Some people have Doctors. I have Holmeses. The first on-screen Holmes that I connected with—the first Holmes that felt like mine—is Jeremy Brett. He starred in Granada Television's adaptations of the stories (the most faithful adaptations to date) from 1984 to 1994. If you want to see, not just Doyle's characters on screen, but Doyle's stories, these shows are where you should go.

During the decade that he spent portraying the reserved-yet-still-theatrical detective, Jeremy Brett was living through what was probably the most difficult (and, as it turned out, final) decade of his life. His beloved wife died in 1985, after the first season, and his emotional stability—always mercurial—deteriorated to the point that he was hospitalized in 1986. "I didn't want to do it anymore," he told Leann Hansen in an interview with NPR in 1991. He was diagnosed with manic depression and prescribed lithium, and with support and help from friends and family, went back to work.

But his health started failing. Lithium has shitty side effects, and Brett's heart was apparently damaged during his childhood by rheumatic fever. He gained a lot of weight. Towards the end of the Granada series' run, his heart was pumping so inefficiently that he sometimes had to rely on supplemental oxygen while on the set (can you imagine acting in a role like Sherlock Holmes when you can't breathe? Blows my mind). But he kept going to work, and by all accounts that I can find, exhibited nothing but care and dedication to the character, to the occasional frustration of the production staff. He carried the canon around with him on set and demanded that the writers alter the scripts to make them closer to Doyle's stories. He hoped to do an adaptation for every single story. He kept in contact with the Doyle family, and he paid attention to the audience, who loved Holmes so much.

He worked because the work helped him find his equilibrium again. Sometimes, when your brain chemistry isn't cooperating and your body isn't cooperating and you've swallowed so much grief that your heart is drowning, you continue to work because it's the one thing you can do. It's the best remaining part of your self and so you hold onto it as tight as you can for as long as you can. I don't know if that's how Brett felt; I don't know if that's why he kept working. But maybe. It's the hypothesis that makes sense to me.

I think Holmes was a burden to Brett (there's quotes of him on saying as much, but imdb doesn't cite its sources, which, frankly, is really annoying), particularly during those first couple of years. He didn't want to play Holmes when the part was first offered to him. Playing Sherlock Holmes is a double-edged sword, because he works his way under your skin and sets up camp there, and for a guy like Brett—already perhaps a little too accustomed to dancing with his darker side—it must have been very uncomfortable. "I've learned to live with him," he said in an interview from around 1991. I think he felt fondness for—and possibly pity for—Holmes (I don't think he could have played the character so well otherwise), but I think it was not the most fun or easy part he'd ever had.

He'd been a working actor for over thirty years before he was cast as Holmes. And then his wife died, and his sanity started unravelling, and his body started to let him down. He could have retired, and nobody would have questioned him. But—like Holmes—he worked himself to the point of exhaustion and beyond, in the service of something greater than himself.

But still. He went back to work.

And he did it for us. I mean, I know he did it for himself. I feel pretty certain that he found solace in being able to work after the loss of his wife. I hope he did it for himself, and not just for the audience. But the reason why he took Holmes so seriously as a character—the reason why he fought for the scripts to reflect the canon and the reason why he continued in the role in spite of his fear and initial dislike of the guy—is because he didn't want to let us down. He knew how people loved Holmes, he knew how kids looked up to him, and he wanted to do something that would make us proud. And maybe that's not quite on the level as donating your kidney or jumping in front of a bullet, but there's something really noble in that. Something selfless. I think of it sometimes, when the days are hard inside my head.

Benedict Cumberbatch's portrayal of Sherlock (and Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat's writing of him) is undeniably brilliant. As much as I resist, and as much as I can't compare or rank the two, sometimes it feels like Cumberbatch's Sherlock is edging out Brett inside my head for the spot of Default Sherlock Holmes. Cumberbatch is, I guess I have to admit, "my Sherlock."

But Jeremy Brett is Holmes. He's my grandfather's Holmes. He's Doyle's Holmes. And so he's never replaceable, never comparable to any other version.