The Adventure of the Family Honor

By R. Porlock

Author's note:

I have to ask that if you do read and especially if you enjoy the beginning to this story, please review and let me know how you felt about it. There is so much more where this came from, and considerably more to this particular case at least, but I have no interest in providing you with it if you have no interest in reading it. If you would like to hear the rest, please take the time to drop a little note in my review spot there and let me know. I'd appreciate it more than you know.

Chapter One: A Letter from Mr. Mycroft Holmes

One evening in November, quite some time after the heart-stopping events of the Adventure of the Empty House had ceased to occupy every corner of my brain, I found myself roused from slumber by the mournful sounds of a violin being played in the downstairs rooms.

Half-reluctantly, I rose from my bed, and pulled on the almost threadbare dressing gown which my late wife had made for me at least two years previously. Though it was sorely in need of repair or replacement, I had refused for some time to wear anything else, even when I had been made a present of a new dressing gown by the sweetly sympathetic Mrs. Cecil Forrester.

Thus dressed, I descended the stairs, and found, as I had expected, my friend and housemate, Mr. Sherlock Holmes folded up in his armchair, violin in hand, having apparently, judging by the disheveled state of his clothes and hair, been lying silently there for some time.

I had known Holmes to sit up late at night many a time before, when lost deep in thought, or when in the middle of a particularly tricky problem. There was something about this deep and gloomy silence, however, that disturbed me. This was neither an exhibition of his occasional frustrated torpor, or of the coiled quiet attitude which arose form his deeper periods of reflection. This was instead a darker, more genuine depression, and so I read by my friend's expression.

"Holmes," I murmured, drawing a chair up beside his own, and trying to catch his eye, which was fixed past my shoulder at the blank wall across from the armchair. "You look ill," I noted. "Perhaps it is best for you to get upstairs to bed and to leave the instrument for tonight. You're as pale as a ghost."

"Am I?" Holmes asked in a dull voice. "I suppose it is rather late for all of that." He looked up at me, raising one thin eyebrow at my concerned expression. "Have I woken you? No," he chuckled. "You're accustomed enough to my irregular habits by now. You were awake already." He reached out with the long fingers of one hand, and ran the fabric of the corner of my dressing gown through his hand against his palm. I thought he might say something, but he seemed to have no desire to comment after all. Instead, he settled back into the chair, and reached across himself to the low table, where I could now see there was lying a folded piece of paper. Holmes took it up, regarded it distastefully for a moment, and then passed it over to me in a languid yet insistent gesture.

I took the proffered document, and, unfolding it, read it quietly aloud out of habit.

It was a letter, addressed to my friend, which read as follows:

"My dear Sherlock,

I am aware of how busy you no doubt are at the moment, what with the murder of Sir Charleston, and all such related hubbub. I am therefore loathe to disturb you, and yet-"

After the "and yet" the color of the ink changed, as if there had been a particular pause before the author had decided to continue the letter, and had needed to replace his ink in the meantime.

"And yet," it continued, "I feel that this circumstance and occasion warrants some particular liberties. I should like very much more than you know to see you tomorrow at four o'clock at the Diogenes Club, for the sake of escorting you to my rooms at Pall Mall. There, I would be most honored to introduce you to Miss Anne Fairchild. If you would be so accommodating as to meet me, I shall see you then.

Best regards as always,

Yours,

Mycroft Holmes."

I read the letter with some stirrings of interest. It was a rare thing that Mr. Mycroft Holmes should ask my admittedly very well renowned companion for any sort of assistance. It must mean, I reasoned, that something of particular peculiarity was afoot.

I was surprised, therefore, to discover that my reading of the letter had only further deepened Holmes' melancholy. He regarded me like a man would who had just watched his wife leave him out of the front door, taking with her all of his possessions and funds.

"Surely," I attempted hesitantly, "this is a summons that heralds some sort of case that Mycroft finds himself unable to get his own head around. He wishes to consult you in the matter, and you lie despondent and unresponsive in the face of his plea. I hardly expect that you'll ignore the requests of your own brother, who has so often before come to your immediate aid when called on." I planted my hands on my hips in what I intended to be a remonstrative manner, but Holmes chuckled ruefully, and waved my unspoken criticisms away with his still outstretched hand.

"My dear Watson," he began, fixing me with a darkly amused look, "I suspect that I shall derive no pleasure from anything that Mycroft has to say to me on this matter." He sighed, and pushed the paper, which I had replaced on the table, as far away from him as he could, as if the thing's very presence was offensive to him. "Still," he continued, "as you say, I can hardly refuse Mycroft anything, but to be perfectly frank, I find the entire matter rather degoutant."

"And why," I asked, somewhat peeved at my friend's seeming ingratitude, "should you be so very reluctant?"

"Because," replied Holmes, leaning forward in the armchair and fixing me with a more awake-looking stare than I had received so far this evening, "I am to make the fraternal acquaintance of a woman whom, knowing Mycroft as I only I can say that I really do, I shall not have the acquaintance, or the good will, of for very long."

I was somewhat taken aback by this interpretation of the situation. It had honestly not occurred to me that the matter was of such a delicate and intimate nature as Holmes seemed to imply. "You think then," I demanded, "that the request is of a more personal nature, rather than a professional one?"

Holmes smiled. "I know it," he said curtly.

"You've deduced it, then?" I insisted, still unconvinced by the extremely businesslike tone of the letter that Holmes was on the right track this time.

My friend was silent for a few moments, which I took to mean that he did not believe that I would be capable of following his reasoning in his case. He regarded the letter, folded on the table, with a dour, displeased expression, which after a moment's speculation, resolved itself into one of resignation.

"Well, then, Watson," he said finally, with the air of a man who has made up his mind at long last, "it seems that we shall have to go to the Diogenes Club tomorrow afternoon, if you would be so kind as to accompany me there."

"Certainly," I agreed, although I was a bit puzzled at the request. "However, if your surmise is correct, and you are only going to meet a young woman to whom your brother is partial, I don't anticipate there being any danger involved."

Sherlock Holmes started to laugh, so that I feared he would wake the landlady with his sudden vigor. "Watson," he declared, much more jovially than before, "when I once said to you that I should only ask for your most valued assistance in times of real danger, I erred."

He rose, and, shaking off his former dark lassitude, strode for the door to his own bedroom.

"No," he said over his shoulder to me as he left, "I believe all that all that is in danger in ths instance is my pride."