A crash sounded in the sitting room when I was halfway back down the stairs, and the small sound I recognized as Holmes' cry of pain carried faintly to the landing. I picked up my pace.
"Holmes?"
He answered, but I could not make out the words. I pushed open the door to find Holmes on the floor next to his chemistry table, his box of extra supplies teetering on the edge as he gently inspected his ankle. I lurched forward to steady the box before it could fall.
"What happened?" I asked as I knelt next to him, watching closely even as I examined his ankle. I had been wondering if he would fake an injury as one of his attempts. Such a thing had worked on me before, after all, but I had not expected him to try it less than an hour after seeing through my own disguise.
He tried to wave off both the question and my examination despite his grimace—as he would if truly injured—but when I asked again, he finally gestured to the vial I only just noticed on the floor nearby. "I did not notice it had rolled off the table until I stepped on it. I twisted my ankle as I fell."
I gently inspected the joint, still wondering if he was malingering. I could not accuse him without proof, however, and he flinched when I prodded a spot on top, scowling when he realized I had noticed.
"Come," I said, draping his arm over my shoulder. "I will get some ice from Mrs. Hudson after you are settled on the settee."
He hated sitting quietly due to an injury, but he did no more than continue to scowl as I steadied him upright. Leaning heavily on me to keep most of his weight on his other foot, he slowly limped towards the settee…
And provided my proof.
Holmes has a different limp when he is in disguise versus when he is truly in pain, and his limp between the chemistry table and the settee was certainly not the honest one. I stopped halfway across the room, forcing him to stop, too.
"Holmes, you should know better than to fake an injury to a doctor. You know how many hypochondriacs I have on my rounds."
His face almost comically fell, and he put his foot firmly against the ground, standing on his own as I smiled. "Did you even trip?" I asked.
He nodded sharply. "I slipped on the vial and twisted my ankle on the way down." The affirmative turned into a shrug—probably at the amusement I knew was in my face. "The best disguises contain an element of truth."
They do, and I had used the concept less than an hour earlier, but he had to have known how difficult it was to feign an injury.
"What gave it away?"
"Your limp," I replied, unable to smother another grin when he reflexively glowered at his feet. "I suspected from the moment I heard the crash, but your disguise-related limp is different from your injured limp. Your first step revealed the ruse."
He returned to his chemistry set without answering, still irritated that I had seen through him again, and I settled in my chair to watch. His chemistry experiments usually interested me, and he had mentioned wanting to do one involving spontaneous combustion.
A frown crossed my face a few minutes later, however, and my attention shifted from his experiment to his feet. While he was not limping on that ankle, he was favoring it somewhat. He put all his weight on his other foot when possible.
"Holmes, did your attempt exaggerate instead of create an injury?"
Inarticulate grumbling came from where he still stood, and I pulled myself out of my chair to stand next to him.
"Holmes."
"I am fine, Watson," he said, attention apparently focused on dripping a clear, nonreactive liquid into the chalk dust covering the bottom of the beaker in his hand.
"The object of the bet was to trick," I told him, "not hide. Successfully hiding an injury for five minutes does not constitute winning."
He did not turn away from me fast enough to hide a twitched grin. "I would not use my last attempt to hide an injury."
"Good. Then you can tell me why you are favoring that ankle."
He made no answer, and I finally reached up to gently take the beaker from his hand, setting it on the table. "Holmes."
He tried to wave me off and retrieve his beaker, and he sighed when I moved the beaker out of reach.
"The joint popped when I fell," he told me. "It has done it before, and it will stop hurting in a few minutes."
I studied him for a moment. "You know that walking on an injury will only make it worse."
He scowled at me again but nodded. "If it does not stop hurting, I will move to the settee, but it has done this before."
I returned his beaker and moved back to my seat. I would keep an eye on him to make sure he did not ignore an injury, but I needed to plan my own second attempt. While I would not have done it first, he had just confirmed that malingering counted as a trick, within certain limits. Now I just had to decide how to use the materials I had available to convince Holmes without scaring him in the process.
It was difficult to feign an injury long enough to win, but illnesses were much easier.
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