Although Holmes spent much of the next day wandering the city inquiring into various problems and facts, he returned back to the apartment with little information to share with us. I may have suspected that Holmes was merely holding his cards close but for his overall air of resignation. Already I knew that his Baker Street Irregulars had met with no success in their tasks, for the dirty street Arabs had come to make their report while Holmes was out. Sherlock Holmes had reacted to my report of their failure with only heavy sigh and a cloud of blue smoke, for he had turned to his rosewood pipe and his shag tobacco.
When I arrived down at the breakfast table the next morning, I was surprised to find that Sherlock Holmes was still wearing his dressing gown. For the past two mornings, since Mrs Kendrick had brought her case to us, Holmes had been dressed and ready for further work when I came down to dine. The first day he had been eager to hear the news I had withheld from him the night before and the previous day he had been out all day making inquiries into various details. Given his failures of the day before, I had expected him to be ready to embark on fresh inquiries.
"You are early in rising this morning, my dear Watson," said Holmes, lazily unwrapping his long fingers from around his knees and pulling his lanky frame into a standing position. Breakfast was waiting on the table and he was in a communicative attitude considering his pensive mood of the night before.
Mrs Kendrick waved a slightly distracted good morning to me as she peered down at the chessboard set between Holmes's chair and hers. "Mate in seven," she noted after a moment's study.
"Mate in five," Holmes replied offhandedly, not bothering to look back down at the board.
"White's in five," she refuted, quite to my confusion. "Black can't be any earlier than seven."
"Seven assuredly, but the balance of probability puts black in mate at five and white not at all," corrected Holmes.
What I had taken to be a chess game half-played appeared to be nothing more than a three-dimensional logic puzzle to the two of them. "If white can mate in five, then why wouldn't it?" I inquired, quite unable to follow Holmes's train of thought.
"White can mate in five if, and only if, they sacrifice their last knight on the first move. However, black can force the issue by rather forcing a sacrifice of the queen's rook," said Holmes, turning back toward the chessboard. "That rearranges the board thusly after three moves." He reached out to remove two pieces and make several adjustments.
"Do you see now?" Holmes inquired. His long fingers moved over the pieces as he explained the rest to me. "Black may mate in four further moves by levering the white knight with their rook. Or, by acting rashly and taking a small risk, they may mate in two by setting their queen two spaces over from where I have just indicated and allowing it to be taken."
Mrs Kendrick was silent for a moment. "Or," said she, her white fingers reaching out to the pieces, "white may unseat the entire plan by moving thusly, rather than how Mr Holmes had indicated. That would force black to make four further moves to not endanger their bishop and the entire game." As she spoke, she moved two pieces and reached for a third.
Holmes tutted softly at the motion. "J'adoube," she replied sweetly, moving the piece only a fraction of an inch, into the centre of the square.
"Yes," interjected Holmes, leaning over the board, "but black may compensate by refusing to have risked the queen and rather having sacrificed the rook. In which case mate will be in three further moves." Once again, he rearranged the pieces to match his discussion.
"But with your pieces as such, your bishop is still vulnerable. White can mate in three moves."
"Ah, but with the queen in play, white's knight is forfeit and that which you have suggested would be impossible. Rather, for that to occur, the last white rook would have to have been kept in play and not taken by the black queen."
"But with that it would have been unavoidable for the knight to have been retained and the situation would be entirely different. Mate by white would be inevitable despite the defence by black."
"But with that the queen would have been risked in taking the bishop and with some finesse black may be able to recover and force not only a stalemate, but also the checkmate, as we had previously discussed."
The two had stopped manually moving the pieces about and had lapsed into a purely verbal repartee. As they parried back and forth, I peered down at the board and noted something. "Why would black not have brought their knight into play? It seems foolish for a player, even a novice, to abandon a piece entirely." I looked at the board for another moment. "With the knight it is unavoidable that black should mate in three moves, at least with the pieces as they are set."
Holmes reached out to knock the knight from the board. "That knight has been out of play since the seventeenth move," he declared calmly.
"Twenty-first, if black rather sacrifices their queen's pawn and forgoes your elaborate gambit."
"Recall, it was eliminated in the nineteenth by that rather clever turnabout on theā¦" Holmes stopped himself as he saw the look on my face. "Calm yourself, my good doctor," said he. "We have not been at this all night."
"Only the better part of it, I'm sure," I replied with some derision.
"Not the better part," Holmes stated, latching onto the double meaning in my words. "This is just a mere diversion we undertook while we waited for you to descend to breakfast, a way to while away a few hours."
I refrained from commenting. "Shall we breakfast?" I asked instead, offering my arm to the lady. I was uncertain of what events had transpired the night before while I slept, but Holmes was in a fine mood despite the weather, which was again cloudy and rainy.
Although Holmes did have a tendency to forego food entirely during his periods of intense concentration, this was not one of those times, and he ate ravenously. "We have reached a point in the case where nothing further can be accomplished without further communication from the parties involved," said Holmes between mouthfuls. "And so I have no need to venture out today. Perhaps you would like to return home for a few hours, Watson," Holmes suggested kindly, "to check on the state of your practice."
I knew that I should take advantage of the opportunity to return to my home for a few hours to gather a few of the comforts I had missed and to see how my practice was making out under the watch of my neighbour, but I could not seem to summon the energy to anticipate the trip given the weather. I attributed it to my state of exhaustion following my exertions in the east of the city and to the late hours I had been keeping in combination with the dreariness awaiting me outside.
"I think that I should perhaps rather stay here today and venture out tomorrow when the weather is nicer," said I, peering at the rivulets of rainwater running down the windowpane of the bow window.
"Despite the rain," replied Holmes, "we have not had so nice a day as this for nearly a week. There is not a breath of wind."
It had been a cold and dreary autumn broken up only by a few fine and clear days. The last clear day, as Holmes was correct in remarking, had been a week ago. And aside from the weather, I could think of no reason why I should not leave the Baker Street apartment for a few hours, for I did have some business to attend to out in the city.
Still, it was with considerable reluctance that after breakfast I donned my coat and hat and started off into the rain. As I left the comfortable apartment, I couldn't help but give a long, lingering look back toward the warmth of the fire.
Holmes saw my look back at the place where he and Mrs Kendrick were both occupied with their books. "Go on, Watson," Holmes urged. "I give you my word that I shall act the model gentleman and put this case away from my lips, if not from my mind. Neither shall we engage in chess nor any other active pursuit." Only for Sherlock Holmes could chess be considered an active pursuit, but, then again, never had I witnessed chess being played in quite the manner that he and Mrs Kendrick had played it that morning.
Mrs Kendrick looked up and fixed me with a piercing gaze. "Do take a cab, doctor," said she, not sounding unlike my own wife, "for you should not like to take a chill." But despite the outward similarity to my wife, there was something about the way she said it that reminded me of Holmes. Still, I obeyed Mrs Kendrick's caution and took a cab to my Kensington home.
My neighbour happened to be at the door of his own house seeing a patient out as my cab arrived. He waved me over, seeing that I had the protection afforded by an umbrella and he did not. "Have you returned from your adventures?" he inquired, knowing that I rarely required him to watch my practice for more than a short time unless I was occupied with one of Holmes's more intricate cases.
"It has not been so adventurous as you would think," I told him. "I have been keeping watch over a patient and have only returned home for a few moments to gather some few things that I have need of." Although I was in fact occupied with Holmes, I did not feel entirely secure sharing that detail with him until after the case had been satisfactorily resolved.
"Ah," said my neighbour with sudden understanding. "Well, that at least does clear up at least one mystery."
"Mystery?" said I, rather too sharply.
"Over the past two days, since you left your practice under my watch, you have had several repeat visitors who have refused to substitute my services for yours," my neighbour informed me. "But if they were rather coming to receive information from you as to their friend's condition, then it makes perfect sense that they should have no use for me."
I did not think his logic quite sound, for even if the men were friends of a patient, there would be little enough reason that they should seek me out at home. Rather, they should in all likelihood inquire at the patient's home. But my neighbour continued on, "But you must not be entirely satisfied with this patient's night nurse for although the two men have both come to call quite late, past ten o'clock, you have still not yet returned home for the night."
"She is a young girl, newly trained, and the case is a complex one," said I in answer. "However, the family insists on having none other and I typically wait until all is settled for the night before taking myself away."
"How long do you expect to enforce the quarantine for? And do you expect that the illness has spread?" he inquired with some concern.
I was suddenly provided with the missing key to his previous assumptions. Following hard on the heels of the wave of illness in the east of the city, it would be a common thing for me to place another patient presenting similar symptoms under quarantine to prevent the further spread of the disease. Even the visitors would make sense under this circumstance.
All except, of course, for the small matter that the patient in question was entirely fictitious. "It depends entirely on the course of the symptoms and his progress," I replied rather cryptically. "Now, what of these men? I should like to tell my patient exactly who has been calling after him."
"They would not leave their names," supplied my neighbour amiably enough, "but then they rarely spoke with me, rather than to inform me that my services were not needed and to inquire when you would return."
"Perhaps with a description, the family will be able to supply the names," I pressed, entirely sure that these men were the same two that had been watching Mrs Kendrick.
"As it was late and I spoke with them across the yard, it was difficult to distinguish details of their faces," my neighbour said, entirely unsuspicious of my insistence. "However both were dressed identically in the fashion of sailors, with dark trousers and heavy pea coats. One leaned heavily on a stick and limped badly, however when I asked, he told me that it was an old wound."
"Did he say the nature of the wound?" I asked excitedly, knowing this detail would be invaluable to Holmes. "It would be helpful for the family," I added quickly.
"No, he didn't. However, he did have a scar running crosswise on the back of his hand, between his thumb and first finger. I remember it distinctly because it separated a blue tattoo into pieces. I couldn't make out the figure though, as it was half-hidden beneath the cuff of his jacket."
"However did you manage to see that?" I questioned, for he had already stated that he had only observed them across the yard.
"The light caught it quite clearly as he handed the letter to your maid," my neighbour replied, moving toward the house. "If you have any reason to think that our eastern illness has spread to other areas city, kindly inform me, for I should like to begin taking the precautions early, if that is the case."
I assured him that I would inform him as to the nature of my patient when it became apparent and walked casually back over to my own home. For the past two nights it had not been Mrs Kendrick's home that had been watched, but rather my own. I couldn't think of how they had managed to trace me, and then I suddenly remembered observing the black figure in the shadows on the night that Mrs Kendrick first came to us. If I could observe him, I should surely also have been observed, and much more clearly as I had made no efforts to conceal myself. It should have been only a small matter to determine where I lived, for I had made straight for my home.
I quickly collected the things I needed from my home, including the letter that had been left by the two men, left fresh instructions for my maid, and rapidly made my way to the nearest telegraph office. I had no intention of letting my wife come home to a house that was being kept under observation by such unsavoury characters, and sent her a wire instructing her to stay where she was until such time as I contacted her again. I knew that she would be worried and included a mention to the eastern pandemic, which had been at its height when she left the city. I felt secure that she would draw her own conclusions from that as to the reason I did not wish her to return, and that was my intention in including the mention.
