It was late that night when I finally saw Holmes again. That is to say it was very early in the morning. He crept into my room and shook me awake, his pale face looming above me in the dark, lit by a guttering candle in his left hand.

"What is it?" I said, wiping my bleary eyes.

"Get dressed, and come with me. Hurry."

Ten minutes later found me huddled in my coat in the Monroe landau. Holmes was wide awake, his eyes seeming to burn in the darkness as he stared unblinkingly out the window. I rubbed my gloved hands together, trying to restore the circulation in my hands.

"I have sent for Lestrade and a few constables so that we may do some serious excavation."

"What do you intend to do?"

He favoured me with a sly smile.

"To dig up the baron, of course."

Before long, we were marching across the grass, a constable at either side of us. Lestrade was ahead of us, holding a lantern. We used our handkerchiefs to filter the air as we made our way into the dusty basement. Holmes pointed at the footprint, and let out a small noise of satisfaction. Someone had made fresh attempts to obliterate it.

"It was one of the builders. It had to be one who had heard of my suspicions. A Fenian would not come all this way to attempt to remove evidence."

"But whose is it?" I asked, bending down to examine it again.
"Jonathan Talbot's," said Holmes with a flourish. He seized the large gladstone bag and wrenched it open. "Alas, the bird has flown, but we may still find the nest."
I gaped at Holmes as he extracted two large sticks of dynamite. He pointed the constables into the corner. They hefted their picks and began to hack away at the concrete.
Almost immediately, a choking, vile vapour filled the room. Having spent time among the dead, I immediately recognized it as platonic ether. The police reeled, but Holmes stepped forward with a coil of blasting wire and the dynamite. The constables had made a sizeable crack in the concrete, and I could smell whiffs of horrid gas coming from it. Holmes laid down his burden inside the crack, and began to spool out the wire. We all fled the room, and followed him as he set the switch. Lestrade called "fire in the hole" and Holmes set off the charge.

The resulting explosion shook the ground. Great gushes of dust flew from the door. We waited a few moments for it to settle, and then plunged back into the room to examine the results.

The bloated, green-grey body was partly mutilated from the explosion, but retained all the facial features of a man. Great ginger side-whiskers and a heavy moustache above a mouth set in a line of pain. He was still partly under a slab of concrete, but the constables started doggedly hacking away at it.

Holmes coughed slightly into his handkerchief, and turned to me. "Let's leave them to it."

I followed him outside, forcing down the nausea, and we went up the hill towards the manor.

"Jonathan Talbot, you say?" I inquired as we walked through the dewy grass, the sky beginning to light above us.

"Indeed," said Holmes, taking long strides. "After all, when I recalled to mind that Mr. Talbot had resoled his shoes recently, it all followed. Of all the builders' boots, his were the only ones that were new, with tread intact.

"But he might have had them resoled at any time."

"Not so. I asked after the shoe repairman in the village, and he said young Talbot had been in the day before yesterday to fix up his work boots. He thought of it when he saw my first examination of the tracks on the grass. He knew his worn tread would give him away, and so he needed to alter it."

"Brilliant!" I exclaimed. We had reached the manor. We stepped into the hall, and began to strip off our coats.

"Simplicity," he quipped.

"But you say he he has flown. How do we catch him?"

"Oh, Watson," he sighed, hanging up his cane and hat. "I look forward to the day when you ask me a question that challenges my intellect."

I made a noise of irritation. He chuckled, and signaled to the butler.
"We will have to appeal to the unfortunate Miss Monroe. I will see if I cannot compel her to assist us."

The sun had risen, and we had assembled in Lady Monroe's sitting room. She was nursing a cigarette on the end of a holder, and appeared beyond tears, having accepted a dose of morphine from me. Holmes too was smoking, and between them the atmosphere was hazy and stupefying. The younger Monroe entered, her normally pale face clearly flushed with grief and anger. Today she wore black lace gloves, a crumpled note in one hand. Though very small of stature, she marched up to Holmes and looked up at him with blazing eyes.
He smiled indulgently, and gave a little nod of his head. Someone less familiar with Holmes than I might have mistaken his attitude as flirtatious, but I knew he had his own perverse methods of interrogation. Drama was his weakness.
Ellen Monroe drew away from him with a jerk, an appalled look on her face. Holmes turned his gaze to Lady Monroe.
"Madam, you have been deceived," he turned his attention to the girl. "Miss Monroe, Come clean, so we can proceed, or go to the dock for abetting patricide."
Ellen Monroe looked about her like a trapped animal. With shaking fingers, she drew the lace gloves off her hands and revealed the white strip of flesh where a ring had sat.
Lady Monroe gasped, scandalized. "Ellen!"

"And I do not doubt," said Holmes, sidling up to the girl and putting a hand on her shoulder. "That you know where your fiance is hiding."

Slowly, the girl nodded. "Yes."

"And a letter would reach him there?"

"Yes."

"Excellent."

Holmes then whispered into her ear. She went to the late Lord Monroe's roll-top desk, took up quill and paper. Holmes followed her, and seated at her side, hissed dictation. She quickly wrote out a short missive, and it was posted without delay.

"Holmes-" I began, but he waved a hand to cut me off.

"All in time, good doctor."