Chapter 2: Settling Down and Getting Beaten Up
We were brought outside of the hospital by the doctor and several attendants, who stood nearby, as though afraid that we, like the insane, would attempt a flight through the city. I looked around, marvelling at all the mechanical conveyances moving about us. Cars, Doctor Hopkins called them.
"This part of the city is relatively safe, almost without crime, so we'll allow you to settle down nearby."
"And what of our old lodgings at Baker Street?" Holmes inquired. "I would like very much to reclaim possession of it again."
"They have set up a museum there in your honour," Doctor Hopkins replied, "You shall have to put up with some modern quarters here."
I looked up, hearing thundering in the heavens above me, and saw to my wonder a huge bird soaring above the clouds, wings stiff, leaving its own trial of clouds behind it –
"That would be an aeroplane," the doctor explained. "A heavier-than-air flying machine."
"Fascinating." Mary breathed. The two of us looked up for a few moments before the doctor nudged me in the ribs.
"Stop looking up and follow Holmes' lead. Everyone'll think that you're crazy otherwise."
Holmes had already adopted the mannerisms common to the people of this time. He was looking at his tablet computer, ignoring the aeroplane. All around us walked people in the fashionable wear of the day, most of them focused on what Doctor Hopkins called 'smartphones'.
I must say that though I found modern wear rather objectionable, especially the way young women wore tight-fitting clothes that exposed the feminine contour of their bodies, I was not inclined to force them to change their habits, though Mary was rather less tolerant.
"Humph!" She wrinkled her nose in displeasure. "The way they dress makes them look like cheap tarts*! Why, if I were their mother - "
Just then, a woman attired in that same fashion that Mary found so intolerable strode past opposite the street, carrying a baby in her arms with a man who was presumably her husband beside her.
I pretended not to notice Mary's outburst, remarking England's weather had not changed much in one hundred and twenty years.
Holmes ignored their otherworldly attire and attitudes entirely, so focused was he on the tablet computer in his hand.
We were ushered into a cab, and were driven about for five minutes before arriving at our new residence.
"Welcome to your new home. But just before you settle in, let's see if you can deduce who this person is."
Doctor Hopkins opened the blue door, and we were greeted by a handsome youth of about twenty-five, hatless like everyone else, who had curly brown hair framing light chocolate eyes which were bisected by a blade-thin nose. The thin lips were slow and torpid, pointing to a certain calmness of character, and his jaw was, like most of the people that we had seen so far, small and slightly pointed at the chin.
"I must confess that I am at a loss as to how this person might have anything to do with us." I spoke instantly, ire roused at how we were being paraded like sideshows at a circus, but Holmes tutted and walked around the youth, surveying him as he might a specimen of London's less reputable society.
"You are Doyle's descendant."
The lad laughed and clapped his hand around Sherlock's, shaking it in delight. "That was incredible, Mister Holmes!" I almost stepped forward to demand an apology from him before I remembered Doctor Hopkins' briefing, in which he told us that "Incredible" was no longer an insult in informal social contexts, but rather a compliment that was usually directed at something the speaker deemed to be a noteworthy accomplishment or deed.
"Elementary, Watson." Holmes smiled over his shoulder at me.
"How did you do it?" The youth gushed. Doctor Hopkins, equally surprised, scribbled almost illegibly on his notepad, lips flapping incoherently.
"Please." Holmes laughed and held his hands up. "It was all a matter of what was reasonable or not in the first place, really."
We entered the apartment, where Holmes proceeded to inform us of his methods once we were all seated.
"You see," he began, "You are well-to-do. It would not be reasonable for them to ask me to deduce who you are if you were not in a descendant of my brother or some scion of my biographer's family. Ah, ah – don't say a word yet." Holmes held up a hand as the lad gave a start of surprise. "You must be asking yourself – How did you know that I was wealthy? I noted that you were wearing cotton clothing that had texture comparable to that of our time. The clothes that most people wore, I read on the Internet, were made of some sort of mix of cotton and other synthetic fibres. Suffice it to say, you must be reasonably well off if you were to wear something so different from what others wore and so similar to ours."
"And how did I know that you were not related to my brother? Now, my brother was a man who knew so many official secrets that the government kept him obscure to protect him from foreign spies and assassins. He would not want his children so exposed. Besides, one who owes his inherited fortune to us would be more likely to come than one who did not. Since you are here, I assumed that you were more likely Mister Conan's descendant than Mycroft's."
"It's Sir Arthur Conan Doyle." Doctor Hopkins corrected.
"Really? I apologize. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle." Holmes replied.
"I initially meant my earlier sentence as a joke," Doctor Hopkins gasped, "But to think that you would be able to guess correctly!"
"Guessing was only a tenth of it, I believe." Holmes said diplomatically. He kicked my foot gently and I interpreted his meaning. A gentle pinch to Mary's hip was her cue to act faint and rest her head on my shoulder.
"Is she all right?" Doctor Hopkins started forward.
"She should be." I said. "She just needs some rest."
They left after excusing themselves, but not before the young man, who had forgotten to introduce himself in while under Holmes' spell, gave a collection of hardback books by his ancestor which contained all the short stories and novels on us that his ancestor had published with my permission. I began looking through them promptly, more than a little flattered that my humble notes on Holmes' exploits should be so well received.
"What!" I exclaimed when reading his published account of Holmes' return, "Who is this Moriarty that he speaks of?" I learned to my dismay that all the stories henceforth were either of old tales that I had neglected to put in print or modified versions of them. Since our disappearance, our chronicler had become more inventive than faithful where the disclosure of my notes was involved, possibly due to the pressures placed upon him by the editors at the Strand.
"At least they were published," I huffed. Mary, now recovered from her 'faint', sat beside me, reading a modern work of fiction titled 'Fifty Shades of Grey.' Beside her lay a dictionary, ready for the event in which she encountered an unfamiliar word from modern English.
"Shocking!" She breathed, face colouring. "Oh my! How absolutely lascivious!" I heard nothing more from her for the next hour as I busied myself with looking through my own work.
"Holmes!" I called out, worried at the prolonged silence from the kitchen. My wife gave a start beside me, and I looked up to see that she was positively crimson, and had almost finished the entire book. I dashed into the kitchen, fearing that he may have collapsed.
Holmes was bent over a wire protruding from the window, face holding equal parts fascination and disgust. His waved me to silence. He got up from his crouch, stepped over the tools that he had used to remove the device, and took me by my arm, marching me out of the kitchen, past my red-faced wife, and out of our apartment.
"Watson! I won't have this! Fear and mistrust do not make for good dinner companions!"
"Holmes? Are you all right?" I asked with no small amount of concern. Though he appeared the calmest and most resilient among us, I had not infrequently wondered whether his behaviour might take a turn for the better or for the worse without regular injections of cocaine, use of snuff, or consumption of shag.
"As all right as a man living under someone's magnifying-glass could ever be, Watson." He snarled. "The wire that you saw me in the kitchen couldn't have been used to keep us prisoner despite the magnetic properties of one part of the device; neither could it have been used to listen in on our conversation, since it was placed so openly. Nor could it have been a device by which to keep the window shut; why else would they install latches there? I do not know what to make of it, but I am certain that it is some form of device that can be used to transmit information to our caretakers."
"Well, if it was indeed a device of that sort," I began, "shouldn't we be magnanimous and think of it as them being concerned for our safety?"
"Yes, but I am not a specimen that you can keep in a jar, Watson! Look here, I would like to go for a solitary walk for some fresh air. This whole experience has been more unsettling on my nerves than I have allowed you to observe."
I retired to our quarters, but no sooner had I sat myself down beside Mary, who was now studiously avoiding my gaze, and was about to inquire as to the thing that plagued her so when Holmes was ushered in again by two well-built men, hideously dressed in 'hoodies', which seemed to me a regression of fashion back to the Middle Ages.
"I say!" Holmes protested, "This is most disagreeable, dear Sirs! To keep me under lock and key while telling me that I am a free man! I demand to see Doctor Hopkins at once! What? He will not come to us? Then shall we go to him instead?"
"Please calm down, Mister Holmes," the burlier of the two spoke, his jowls twitching like those of my deceased bull pup. "You're being kept in here for your own safety."
"Imprisoned, you mean!" Holmes' protests were the perfect picture of violated dignity. Rather than giving the impression that he was being unreasonably imposing, his masterful air had been artfully replaced by a cloak of humble pleading over wounded dignity. So stunning was his current behaviour in contrast to his usual that I almost dropped the glass in my hand.
The two men glanced guiltily at each other. "Okay, okay, it's all right, we understand. Look 'ere, Doctor Hopkins said that we were not to let you out, but I think it's okay if we go for just a litt'l walk together."
Holmes sensed that this was the best compromise that they could come to.
"All right, fine. Thank you for your understanding, gentlemen."
I returned my eyes to Mary after they had departed. "What's wrong, Mary? You look positively crestfallen."
She started again, eyes glassy and unfocused. I moved towards her, fearing that a fainting spell might suddenly manifest itself.
"Oh, no, no. I am all right. Merely under a spell of some sort." She seemed to recollect herself, eyes refocusing on me. "Wait, I didn't mean to say that, not really. What I really meant was that Christian –" She turned crimson again, eyes shying away from mine.
"What I ask of you may be too great a favour, but I will ask it of you anyway." She spoke bashfully. "Please forget everything that has transpired in the past hour."
"Whatever is the matter with you?" I asked, astonished. "Nothing at all has happened in the past hour."
Her eyes brightened and her complexion cleared up suddenly.
"Really? Then thank you, and thank the Divine for your many noble traits."
I was still puzzling over what she had said half an hour later when the doorbell rang, chiming its electrically-produced sound in the tinny manner that characterized all of our electronic devices. I opened the door to reveal –
"Good God! Mary, hurry and get me some gauze from the medicine cupboard! In the kitchen! Whatever happened to the three of you, Holmes?"
They were a sorry sight indeed, bruised and battered all over. The two men had sustained cuts and scrapes on their knuckles, and their clothes were soiled with boot prints. Holmes himself had a bruise on his right cheek, while the man leaning on his shoulder had a black eye. Based on their roguish grins, I suspected that I should have offered to tend to their adversaries instead.
"Five lads, three of them with knives, jumped us. Said that they would shank us if we didn't fork over some cash." The man leaning on Holmes' shoulder grinned despite his black eye. "We certainly showed them though, didn't we."
"Indeed we did." Holmes laughed, sounding like his old self once more. "Absolutely unimaginable, Watson! They were young lads, all not older than eighteen! The state of this city!"
"Well, that's what things have come to, now." The man who could walk on his own sank down on our couch beside Holmes, who had deposited his injured companion on the other side.
"I'm Bob, and this guy here is Thomas." The smaller of the duo, who was wearing a hideous maroon hoodie said by way of introduction. The larger man whom Holmes had carried in grinned and shook my hand. "Doctor Hopkins assigned us to watch over you, but we just couldn't help ourselves!" He gestured at Holmes, miming his nervous, energetic disposition. "Where's this place, has this restaurant closed down yet, things were like this when I was still your age – He kept going on and on! We just had to show him around town. Before I knew it, we were out of the safe part of town, and that was when those buggers jumped us."
Mary winced sympathetically as she brought in some warm water to tend their wounds with.
"I would be much obliged if the two of you kept this a secret from Doctor Hopkins – assuming that he hasn't found out about it through some nefarious electronic means already." Holmes nudged Thomas in the ribs.
"Oh yes. Don't worry; this room is not bugged. I'm not supposed to be telling you this, but only your bedrooms are bugged – that is, have some sort of listening device in there. Never really liked this kind of spying on other chaps when you tell them that their rooms are private like this. 'orrible, really."
Some good seemed to have come out of this at least; Holmes' friendship with these two men, forged by fire, might prove valuable to him indeed.
"Hard to believe that you're the real Sherlock Holmes, though," Bob interjected, "that is, until they told me that the DNA tests were a hundred per cent match. I was all up for this job after that."
"Thank you for your patience and faith in me." Holmes nodded solemnly. "I shall do my level best to adapt to these modern times and make myself useful."
"You could start by getting rid of that nineteenth-century accent," Thomas supplied. "Makes you stand out too much."
"I'll try." Holmes said, already making a decent effort to do so.
*Slang for prostitutes