So after a wholly satisfying meal, we arrived at the theatre at precisely eight o'clock. Waking up so early in the morning did little to tire my friend, and he was as alert and awake as ever.
"Keep the revolver in your front pocket," he whispered as we took our seats in the side of the theatre. "I don't want any surprises."
The performance, however, was far from satisfactory. I saw Holmes drum his fingers on his lap, staring at the star actress with his sharp eyes. Once or twice he muttered, "It's not her. She did the right thing."
As the curtains were drawn, my companion sprang up, caught me by my arm, and hurried outside. We rushed to the side exit, and was just in time to meet a woman dashing out.
Immediately, she grasped Holmes by the arm. "Thank God. They're not here now, but they will come. It is dangerous even now. We must make haste."
She nodded to me and we started on our way, at a very fast pace. I saw Holmes glance furtively behind him, then whisper to his sister, "Moriarty give you much trouble to-day?"
"Only a few kidnapping attempts but not much," she whispered back. "I'll explain all when we get to safety."
It turned out, however, that safety was not Baker Street. I soon grew lost among the intricate network of streets and alleys that we traversed, though it seemed to me that Holmes and his sister were of one mind, and knew exactly where we were headed. After fifteen minutes or so we were joined by, as I soon found out, Mycroft, the eldest Holmes.
"I knew you'd find me," she whispered to Holmes, "and I wired for Mycroft to join us."
"We are headed to your rooms, perhaps?" I asked her quietly.
"No, no, too dangerous. Did you not hear what I just said?" she replied.
And that was all that was said, until at last we arrived at a dark, abandoned alley and M quickly unlocked a decrepit wooden door and pulled us all in.
She led us down an old, dusty hallway, and unlocked another door, locking it again behind us. I was amazed at the change.
In the depths of this old, abandoned building was the private quarters of Sherlock Holmes' sister. The resemblance with Baker Street was remarkable.
There was the chemical table, riddled with test tubes, stained with an assortment of molecules. There was the bookshelf, filled to the brim with volumes bursting with loose papers and old notes. And more scraps of writing and newspapers were tossed and spread all over the room, on the mantelpiece, on armchairs and couches, on the carpeted floor.
But the room was quite a bit neater than Holmes', and lacked the smoke that resulted from my friend's long relationship with his pipe. In the corners were bits and pieces of costumes, wigs and dresses and trousers. There was a makeup table, and a music wing, full of sheet music and adorned with a silver, shining flute on the chair. It branched off into a hallway on the side, where there was a kitchen and bathroom.
M soon had a fire roaring, and boiled some water for tea. "Of course you all have had supper," she remarked as she added sugar and mint leaves to our cups. "Maybe this will soothe our nerves, though I am sure they are all as strong as steel."
"It is safe here?" Holmes asked from the couch.
His sister nodded. "Oh yes. Moriarty is not dust, you know. He cannot reach into every crack and cranny of London."
She sighed. "Still, I used to have one or two other places like this that got destroyed by him."
M swiftly handed each of us a teacup, and sat down elegantly on the couch next to Holmes. I then had my first full look at her.
Certainly she was more similar to Holmes than Mycroft. Her youth was evident. Her eyes were alert, her features beautiful in an intelligent way, expressive and sharp, and her limbs long and slender. Her fingers possessed a unique dexterity and delicateness, one that likely enabled her to perform chemical experiments with the small test tubes. Her dark brown hair was clipped up, giving her an older, wiser look to her young face. Her gown of burgundy red was simple, but of excellent taste. She was the very likeness of a female Holmes.
After a moment, she suddenly gave a little laugh. "No doubt you all think this much more different than I do, but I cannot help but see the comedy of it all. Mycroft's face here is more than enough to provide loads of laughter."
Holmes' older brother sunk back into his chair. "I kept your wishes. Do you ask for more?"
She smiled. "No, you were very good in my instructions. Oh, dear me, how rude! Poor Sherlock here, for all his intellect, and his long-suffering friend do not even know my name!"
She laughed, glancing merrily at Holmes as he asked, "Well is it Margaret or Rianne or what? M?"
The waterfall of bubbling laughter that ensued brought a smile to my lips. No doubt she was more vibrant and joyful than her brother could even dream of being.
"M, ha! That was a good one, wasn't it? Well, my name – it's really quite awkward introducing oneself to their brother, isn't it? – is Myelina Holmes. I am dear Sherlock's here twin."
I widened my eyes. "His twin!"
She smiled. "Yes, yes. I will explain all."
And now, to my relief, we can stop calling her M or Holmes' sister.
Myelina cleared her throat. "When we were born, Sherlock, our parents were both delighted and horrified at the same time. They loved both of us, but they could not afford to feed and raise two of us. So they had to choose – Sherlock or me."
"I would have enjoyed a little sister," Mycroft muttered.
"Now, now, Mycroft, no complaining," she scolded. "Our parents decided to keep the boy. They gave me to a friend of theirs, and I grew up with them. We moved to northern France in my early childhood, but I was still taught about you two, and I kept my British roots. Well, I changed my name and studied for a career in acting, and it proved to be a great one. I moved to London, and performed both in plays and flute performances, but it turned out I had a gift. Observation, deducting, logic. I needed to use them, to tax my brain. Otherwise I would enter into the blackest of depressions, which was communicated very effectively into flute music. If you ever want to feel on the brink of death, just listen to those compositions. Anyways, I discovered how impossibly daft Scotland Yard was."
Holmes murmured something in agreement.
"Actually, they're not so bad, but in all of their unfinished cases I wanted to scream at the obvious solutions. You might be surprised to know that I am a little above your level, Sherlock, and you too, Mycroft. Well, detective work wasn't enough for my hyperactive brain. The police would get mad, I would be mad, and it would be terror.
"So I started on this little scheme of mine. I found this nice lady named Margaret Hunter, who was deathly frightened of some enemies of her father. I endeavoured to solve her little problem, and that is how I found the charming Professor Moriarty. His employees were those enemies, and I had a brilliant idea.
"Well, to make a long story shorter, I convinced Margaret to collaborate with me. Under her appearance – a trivial trick with makeup and costumes – I entered into a job with Moriarty as a master thief. I choose robbing because I could always return the value of the lost items in money, which was plentiful.
"So during the day, I hid Margaret in some place of mine while I went about the extremely easy task of thieving. Mind you, I only did this more minor offense in order to gain more valuable information. If I did nothing wrong I would never gain the trust of Moriarty.
"Eventually, I earned his complete confidence, and he revealed to me more ghastly crimes. Murders, revenges, tortures. These I tried to stop as best as I could, but sometimes, of course, they slip.
"Then you, Sherlock, came along. At first, before you heard about the professor, all was well. But soon you became a thorn in Moriarty's side. He stopped me from thieving, and ordered me to stop you. At first, I only planned to prevent you from solving your cases. All the times you failed, Sherlock, I was responsible. Any unfinished cases was my doing. But Moriarty wasn't satisfied. The closer you came to him, the more he suspected me. The noose grew tighter around me. I needed help. Your help.
"It was time to reveal myself, to leave Margaret and Rianne, and emerge as Myelina. I brought Margaret out last night, hid her in Boscombe Street, and I went to you. But Moriarty is cunning. His agents found Margaret, thought she was me, and was about to murder her but she died of terror before they could lay a hand on her. They left quietly, and it was about two or three hours later before a passer-by discovered her, and alerted the police."
"One moment," Holmes interrupted. "What was the matter about Hunter's father's enemies?"
"Ah, yes, the enemies," Myelina exhaled. "Those were a lower branch of Moriarty's doing. Her father did something stupid, gained the hatred of a couple hot blooded men, and it resulted in all of his blood relatives being murdered on August 13th, one every year."
"But why do it that way?" I asked. "Why not just kill them all at once?"
All three Holmes threw their hands up, exasperated.
"Don't you know how those types of criminals work?" Mycroft demanded.
"They like to make an extra loophole for the police, provide more confusion and despair for their victim's relatives, and make themselves feel clever!" Sherlock exclaimed.
"And besides, multiple murders at once in the same family would raise a large amount of suspicion!" Myelina finished.
I raised my hands in surrender, feeling, even more than usual, stupid in the presence of three such geniuses.
Myelina waved a hand consolingly. "Oh, please don't feel bad, Dr. Watson. You're cleverer than most."
"He's fine, Myelina," Holmes muttered.
I crossed my arms. "Of course I'm fine!"
"The enemies?" Mycroft pressed.
Myelina smiled sideways at him, then continued the story. "I convinced Margaret to work with me, because she would get a decent amount of money, and I would stop the enemies from killing her. They listened to my orders, and left her alone until Moriarty had them kill her because he thought she was a traitor.
"When I found out Margaret was dead, all I could do was make sure Moriarty didn't find me. My performance was already scheduled to-night, but if I skipped it, though the public would be stirred, it would only make sense to Moriarty. He thought I was Margaret who led a double life as Rianne, but now that Margaret was dead, it would only be suitable that Rianne was no more. The only problem was, Moriarty was suspicious.
"He knew, you see, that I, Myelina Holmes, existed. He didn't know my name, of course, but he knew I was alive. He'd seen me together with Margaret on several occasions, but I could not avoid those times. It was the one flaw in my plan. The natural thing would be to investigate me. Moriarty knows that Hunter isn't the shrewdest of women. He found that out from observing her when she was her, not me. Who was this stranger who was giving Margaret such clever tips, he would ask.
"Well, I found out very quickly that he was on my trail. Stuck to the main streets when I was nearly kidnapped in an alley, but I knew the vast number of agents were just waiting for the right moment to whisk me off to Moriarty. What was I to do? I needed your help, Sherlock."
"Thanks a lot," Mycroft muttered.
"Your welcome. And you really couldn't expect me to use you with your lack of energy that Sherlock is plentiful in. Now, I knew the little trail I left you would lead you to the theatre where I was to perform. I had to be there. So I took great care to lose my pursuers and hurried over to the theatre, knowing that it would be the last place where the agents would look. I told the directors that I was Miss Rianne's sister and that she was greatly ill and would not be performing. They hastily arranged a substitute, which you both may have noticed was not as convincing a character as myself. I then wired to Mycroft to meet us in a quiet street about fifteen minutes after the performance, because…well, he's our brother too, and he ought to be here. Well, when it was over, I left quickly, and Sherlock went too. From there you know the rest. Any questions?"
"Me?" Mycroft suggested.
Myelina nodded. "Ah, yes. Mycroft has always been an absolute darling. He was old enough to remember me when I was sent away, and we stayed connected throughout the years. He was the only one who knew the whole story about me, he was kind enough to keep everything a secret, and he's helped me on several occasions to get paperwork and things in order, which is a complex task if you are three people at once."
I noticed that Holmes had stared at his twin with his eyes riveted on her. A gleam of humanity stood out in that machine, a sliver of love and devotion to the one human being who was most like him, mentally and physically.
"Why did you never bother to tell me about you?" Holmes demanded as he recovered from a brief reverie.
Myelina shook her head. "It was absolutely necessary you did not know about me. I did not want to fight against my extremely clever brother for a cause I did not believe in, but it would have been worse if you knew me. I wouldn't be able to bear it. Now, however, matters are different."
"Indeed," Holmes announced. "Moriarty is on your trail. He knows your face, your name."
"That is not true," she quickly replied. "He knows my face, he does not know my name."
"Well, what are you going to do now?" I asked her. "Detective work?"
"Flute work," Myelina promptly answered. "I have a violin, too, Sherlock, and maybe we'll give Mycroft and Dr. Watson a little treat, hmm?"
After a delightful concert from the two master musicians, Myelina gathered us in a circle. "I must have you all swear to keep this secret. I have read every single one of your chronicles, Dr. Watson, and though they are quite exaggerated and not scientific as they should be, I will not prevent you from publishing an account of this one. However, I urge you to refrain from all mentions of it until the dear Professor is dead, and I give you my permission. Do I have your word?"
The three of us acquiesced, and as Myelina led us out of those cheery rooms, I heard Holmes whisper to her, "I will see you again. You will not disappear from me this time."
Myelina smiled. "By all means, try, Sherlock. But you will fail."
Then the door was closed behind us, and that was the last time in a long while that I saw Myelina Holmes.
Several times, Sherlock Holmes attempted to find his sister again, but never succeeded, unless she called upon him. The small rooms which had been hers were abandoned, and Miss Rianne disappeared forever. Still, on rare occasions, she would appear to him in the guise of one of the four million inhabitants of London, and only he would know that she was his sister.
After Moriarty was killed and Holmes faked his death for three years, she appeared to me to tell me it was alright for me to publish this story. But after that, she never appeared to either Holmes or I, and we were left to forever wonder underneath which stranger's costume lay Miss Myelina Holmes.
