My Fiancée had insisted that our old flat be left unchanged through the supervision of Mrs. Hudson. As I entered I saw, it's true, an awful messiness, but the old landmarks were all in their place. There were the chemical experiments littering the kitchen and the acid-stained work counter. There upon a shelf was the row upon row of reference books, which many of our fellow-citizens would have been so glad to burn. The books of codes, the religious texts, the Bible, the Torah and Qu'ran. The diagrams, the violin-case, and skull all met my eyes as I glanced round me. I had been here many times since I Sherlock had 'died', but this time the room was somehow brighter, like someone had turned the lights on.
There were two occupants of the room—one, Mrs. Hudson, who beamed upon us both as we entered—the other, the strange dummy which had played so important a part in the evening's adventures. It was a wax-colored model of my friend, so admirably done that it was a perfect facsimile. It stood on a small pedestal table with an old dressing gown of Holmes's so draped round it that the illusion from the street was absolutely perfect.
"I hope you observed all precautions, Mrs. Hudson?" said Sherlock, embracing her in his usual way.
"I went to it on my knees just as you told me." She confirmed, chucking him under the chin as he let her go.
"Excellent. You carried the thing out very well. Did you observe where the bullet went?"
"I'm afraid it has spoilt your beautiful bust, it went right through the head and flattened itself on the wall. I picked it up from the carpet. Here it is!"
He held it out to me. "A soft revolver bullet, as you see John. There's genius in that, for who would expect to find such a thing fired from a sniper rifle? All right, Mrs. Hudson. I am much obliged for your assistance. And now, John, let me see you in your old seat once more, for there are several points which I should like to discuss with you."
Mrs Hudson placed a soft hand on my shoulder, and smiled reassuringly before disappearing downstairs to her own flat. I briefly wondered what she and Lestrade thought about my current difficulties. Neither seemed to be treating me any differently than the day before, but still I felt the weight of this whole new world resting upon me. I watched my dearest Sherlock, perching upon his chair as if he'd never left, fixing me with an appraising gaze. I wished I could read him as well as he could read me, my eyes rested upon the photograph above the fireplace, it was taken 5 years previously when we had all lived here, it showed, Sherlock, myself, my Fiancée and both her sons.
Sherlock had thrown off the over coat from earlier, and now he was the Holmes of old in blue silk dressing gown, which he took from his effigy, and crouched with the bust on his lap.
As he inspected the shattered forehead of his bust he spoke "Plumb in the middle of the back of the head and smack through the brain. He was the best shot in Northern Ireland, and I expect that there are few better in London." He picked up his laptop, from the desk beside him, he started scrolling an I assumed he was traversing his index of biographies.
"My collection of M's is a fine one," said he. "Moriarty himself is enough to make any letter illustrious, and here is Morgan the poisoner, and Merridew of abnomible memory, and Matthew's, who knocked out my left canine in that milling room under Charing Cross, and, finally, here is our friend of tonight."
He handed over the computer, and I read:
MORAN, SEBASTIAN AUGUSTUS; COLONEL. Unemployed. Formerly 1st Battalion The Royal Irish Regiment. Born London, 1960. Son of Sir Augustus Moran, C. B., once British Ambassador to Japan. Educated Eton and Oxford. Served in Northern Ireland, Afghanistan and Bosnia. Author of Survival in the Desert (2001); Three Months In The Jungle (2004). Address: 45a Lambs Conduit Street.
On the margin was written, in Sherlock's precise hand:
The second most dangerous man in London.
"This is astonishing," said I, as I handed back the volume. "The man's career is that of an honorable soldier."
"It is true," Holmes answered. "Up to a certain point he did well. He was always a man of iron nerve, and the story is still told how he crawled down a rat hole in Belfast following a 'sewer rat' and finding a bomb under a primary school. There are some trees, John, which grow to a certain height, and then suddenly develop some unsightly eccentricity."
At this I stared up at him, and saw he was appraising me again. My blood was running cold at his words, but he continued.
"You will see it often in humans. I have a theory that the individual represents in his development the whole procession of his ancestors, and that such a sudden turn to good or evil stands for some strong influence which came into the line of his pedigree. The person becomes, as it were, the epitome of the history of his own family."
"It is surely rather fanciful." I thought suddenly of the horror of his own father, and then my sister's own problems.
"Well, I don't insist upon it. Whatever the cause, Colonel Moran began to go wrong. Without any open scandal he still made the army too hot to hold him. He retired, came to London, and again acquired an evil name. It was at this time that Moriarty, to whom for a time he was chief of the staff, sought him out. Moriarty supplied him liberally with money, and used him only in one or two very high-class jobs, which no ordinary criminal could have undertaken. You may have some recollection of the death of Stewart Lauder, in 2015. Not? Well, I am sure Moran was at the bottom of it, but nothing could be proved. So cleverly was the colonel concealed that, even when the Moriarty gang was broken up, I could not incriminate him.
You remember when I informed you of my desire to flee to Europe? How I sent the others away and boarded the windows in fear of snipers? No doubt you thought me fanciful. I knew exactly what I was doing, for I knew of the existence of this remarkable gun, and I knew also that one of the best shots in the world would be behind it.
