"How do you get people to play your game?"
"That's not necessary for you," the cabbie said. He looked supremely unconcerned and slouched at the back of his chair.
"But for the others?"
The cabbie pulled out a gun and rested it on the table. Sherlock pulled a disgruntled face.
"How dull."
"Isn't it?" the cabbie agreed. "Which bottle'll it be, then?"
"I'll have the bullet." He templed his fingers and smiled back.
"Sure?"
"Deadly certain."
The cabbie pulled the trigger, and a flame popped out of the end. "You'll have seen a gun before now. Not that it matters, of course. You'll be wanting to see who wins this."
"Wins," Sherlock scoffed. "It's a matter of luck."
"Four times I've played and four times I've won. You call that luck if you like, Mr. Holmes; you call it that if you can't understand it; if you can't read my mind."
"Mind-reading? I don't read minds; I observe everything."
"I read people. It's so easy, even you. I can see how you think. I see you never step down from a challenge. Is this going to be the challenge that breaks your resolve, Mr. Holmes?"
"Why this game? Surely there's an initiative."
"'Course there's one. There's funding, if you talk to the right people."
"Who are these people?"
"Now Mr. Holmes, there's no reason to tell you that, now is there?"
Sherlock snagged the pill bottle closest to him, dumped it into his hand, and raised the pill to his mouth.
"Tell me as we take."
A shot cracked the relative quiet; Sherlock threw himself to the ground and saw the cabbie fall. Sherlock clambered to his feet and looked out through the broken window to the opposite building. No one was there.
"What was the name?" he roared, dialing for Lestrade one-handed and stomping on his hand.
"Moriarty," the cabbie gasped. His face was turning blue.
"Was I right? Did I pick the right one?"
By the time Lestrade arrived, he was dead.
"Of course you would be here," Donovan snipped. "And the victim's cause of death is unknown—"
"To you, perhaps," Sherlock retorted. "A distance shot with that precision—the target was clearly hit because he left directly afterwards—and clearly acclimatized to violence; evidently possessed strong moral principle; I would say a man with a history of military service—"
"There was no bullet," Anderson interrupted.
"What?"
Anderson and Donovan smirked.