Disclaimer: The characters of Sherlock are not mine, nor is the story, nor are the characters from the original stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I make no monetary profit from this.

Note: And I would like to apologize for the apparent abundance of cliffhangers that I am leaving all over the place. Thank you all for reading!

The Seduction of John S. Willoughby

Part Twenty

John Watson was starting to believe that they were going to get away with it.

Not that he'd really seriously dwelled upon the idea of their getting caught. That was unhealthy behavior, and if you spent too much time thinking about things like that you were liable to end up face down on the carpet with your head between your hands, wailing that your flatmate made you do it. He had, however, acknowledged the possibility with the proper gravity it was due– just being realistic – but the probability of their having to explain to the police just what they were doing wearing highly suspicious black balaclavas in someone else's house in the dead of night seemed to be dropping fast.

They had let themselves into the house with disgraceful ease – Sherlock hadn't even fumbled with the keys ("A small matter of the make of the lock and the scratches on the original ones"). Nor had he met any difficulty disabling the alarm system ("Ridiculously easy code to memorize, I don't know why they bothered"). And now John was holding the flashlight for him as the consulting detective worked on taking the safe apart with a set of picks, a hand-held drill, a jemmy, and a stethoscope (John strongly suspected that it was his). It was only a very small matter of time, and once Sherlock was done, all they needed to do was scoop the hard drive out of the safe, walk out of the house, and lock the door behind them.

This burglar business was turning out to be easier than he expected.

"John, hold that still please. Now two inches to the left, and lower the angle, a little more, that's good, thank you" said Sherlock, not looking up from his work. "Thank God you're here. I don't know what I'd have done without you. I might have just ended up biting it."

"You'd have thought of something."

"Oh, yes, but this is more fun."

"Will it take much longer?"

"Patience is a virtue."

"Mhm. And you're such a shining example to us all." John glanced at the window. Milverton's office had a view of the street and the front drive and the headlights of the passing cars could occasionally be seen through the long curtains. This made John uncomfortable, if not precisely nervous. "Why do I get the feeling that virtue doesn't count when you're housebreaking?"

"Nonsense. Look at Angelo: he's never done anything worse than robbery, though he easily could have, and profitably too. Steady with that light, now. Though I am the last person who wants to split hairs about morality. Not now, anyway. It would make a fascinating study if I wasn't trying to break open a safe. This safe in particular." He touched a gloved finger to the radiating discs surrounding the thing's keyhole. "See this? A double combination lock, antique but effective. The outer dial is for letters, the inner is for figures, and you need both a word and a number code to get this thing open. In addition to the key. I've never seen anything like it."

"But you can get it open?"

"Touching faith! I'll manage it. It's not like I haven't had practice."

Sherlock Holmes, safecracker. Oh, dear God. "I thought you hadn't actually done anything criminal."

"It was useful. Now shut up. I'm trying to concentrate." Sherlock put his tools down on the roll of cloth he'd brought them in, and stared at the lock through his balaclava as though he could bore a hole in it that way. "It might be easier," he said, softly, so that John could barely hear him, "to just work out the combination."

He gave the inner dial an experimental twist. "Three turns counterclockwise, then the combination clockwise followed by the turn of a key. The key's easy enough, that's just picks, but the combination, the combination…John!"

John hastily refocused the flashlight. "Sorry, sorry – just – I thought that car was turning into the driveway."

"Well, was it?"

"No, sorry."

"Curb your enthusiasm, then. Now, Milverton's smart, prides himself on it, it won't be anything typical, not his birthday, or his mother's maiden name and his year of birth, or his address and phone number, nothing that easy, not with what he keeps in there, I'm certain he anticipates people trying to break in and steal this stuff, it'll be something complicated, something obscure…"

John looked away from his flatmate, careful to keep the light fixed where Sherlock wanted it. There was another car coming down the road, and he sincerely hoped that it was only slowing down because it was lost in an unfamiliar neighborhood.

"World War I, he's enthusiastic about that, obsessed, why else would he have this safe, not to mention the rest of the memorabilia here. So maybe something to do with that…"

"Sherlock?"

"The Great War, the Great War, Archduke Ferdinand assassinated June 1914" – this was accompanied by a furious turning of knobs – "no, not that, something else…"

"That car, Sherlock-"

"July 1914, then, Germany declares war…ah, not that either…"

"There's another car. And it's stopping in front of the house."

"I'm close, the number's 1914 at least, I'm on the right track here…"

"Sherlock, I think that was a car door opening."

"Toss me the flashlight then, and look out of the window to make sure, why else do you think I brought you along?"

John peeked out of the curtains, and everything suddenly went to Hell. "Jesus, that's Milverton."

"What? He's not supposed to be here!"

"Well, he is, and he's heading to the front door and I hope you have a plan."

"Wait, I've almost got it, Britain declares war on Germany, August 1914…damn it!"

"He's coming in, Sherlock."

"August, August, August, no, he wouldn't – oh, the vanity, the utter vanity of it –."

"Sherlock!"

"Augustus, one nine one four…and the key…got you!"

The door of the safe opened with a small click. Yards away down the hall, so did the front door.

"Charles Augustus Milverton. He couldn't resist it. And he's supposed to be clever." Sherlock pulled the safe all the way open, and swore heavily under his breath at the contents. John could understand why. He could see over his flatmate's shoulder into the safe, and it was a mess of papers, CDs and memory sticks. Presumably what they were looking for was somewhere in there, but if the sound of approaching footsteps was anything to go by, they didn't have much time to do the looking.

"We'll have to wait for him to leave," said Sherlock, scooping up his safecracking kit and pushing the door to the thing closed. "I don't think he'll be long. That's his own anniversary party he's missing. Wardrobe?"

John rejected that – another decorative antique – as a hiding place out of hand. Even if things hadn't been…awkward? unidentifiably uncomfortable?...between him and his flatmate, he would have had qualms about squeezing into that thing with Sherlock. Besides, it was a foolish thing to shut yourself in a wardrobe – anyone who'd read Narnia knew that – and they wouldn't be able to leave the door ajar without risking discovery. "Curtains," he said.

Sherlock cast an appraising glance at the floor-length draperies. He looked like he was about to disagree, but John seized him by the elbow and steered him to the front-facing window. And just in time too. They had only just darted behind the curtains when, preceded by the scrape of a key in the lock, the door handle turned and Charles Milverton stepped into the room.