Author's Note: Wow, what a lousy day. My computer broke down entirely and I had to steal one from my friend. It doesn't have Microsoft Word on it, so I tried to spellcheck this by hand as carefully as I could. Bear with any trouble, I wrote it in WordPad. And without further excuses,

Chapter Four: A Conflict of Interest

Deaf to both Mrs. Allastair's cries, and and to Miss Fairchild's pleas for explanation, Mr. Mycroft Holmes and myself both turned our attenteions to my illustrious companion.

Holmes had one lip slightly chewed under in an expression of intense concentration. Stepping forward, he addressed Miss Fairchild with the most interest that he had yet shown towards her.

"Miss Fairchild," he started, "you do not, perhaps, have a sister, I suppose?"

Looking to Mycroft in surprise, Miss Fairchild shook her head. "No," she replied, "I have only the one brother, and he is much older than myself, but no, I have no sisters at all."

"Female cousins, then," pressed Holmes, "do you have any women cousins closer to your own age?" Miss Fairchild answered with a little shake of her head.

"I see," said Holmes, returning to his thoughtful, introspective state, until I was hardly sure if he hadn't forgotten everyone else in the room entirely. After a few silent moments, he turned, and gestured to myself with one finger.

"I shoudl ike to have a quiet word with you, Watson," he said. "Mycroft, if you would be so good as to join us as well, I would be very much obliged." With that, he started outside, resisting Miss Fairchild's clutch at his arm as he went. Mycroft HOlmes and myself hurried out on to the steps to join him.

Holmes retained the cigar that Mycroft had given him back in Mycroft's own roomss, and he smoked it absently, seating himself on the first step, his back to us as he spoke.

"THis woman," he said quietly, "Mrs. Allastair, she makes a claim against your young lady, Mycroft."

Mycroft nodded slowly. "Yes," he agreed, "I did hear that when we came in.Perhaps you would care to explain what that was all about, then?"

Evidently, Sherlock Holmes did not care to explain, and so, as he smoked in silence without meeting his brother's gaze, I took up the task of informing Mycroft of what was amiss. "Apparently," I stated as helpfully as I could, "she has mistaken Miss Fairchild for the woman whom she believes is responsible for starting the fire in her home just now, a woman whom she saw only several moments before her cry, with a great resemblance to our friend."

Mycroft did not look surprised, although a deep frown creased his face as he listened.
Holmes raised a questioning eyebrow in my direction. "Mistaken, you say?" He asked simply.

Mycroft started up, with an unhappy grimace at the obvious doubt in my friend's voice. "Now," he said, "wait just one moment. You stood talking with the doctor, Miss Fairchild, and myself only moments before you answered the cry of "fire" in the first place. I do not, I confess, see how she could possibly have orchestrated anything of the sort."

"No," agreed Holmes, "no, neither do I. But, simply because we do not at present see it does not mean that it could not possibly have occured."

Now he turned his searching expression on me. "What do you think, Doctor? I value your input, as Mycroft and I are clearly at a difference of opinion."

I shrugged helplessly. "For myself," I said, "I can make nothing of it. Though I saw Mrs. Allastair identify Miss Fairchild with her own eyes, with not a shadow of a doubt, and yet I cannot deny the presence of the same in Mycroft's rooms. I don't quite know what to say."

"It is a very peculiar situation," Holmes agreed, and then that was all, it seemed that he had to say on the subject.

As the three of us returend into the house, Holmes did stop once, just inside the doorway, and leaned over to share a final, private word with Mycroft. I just barefly overheard the comment as I rushed forward to reassure and to seperate both Mrs. Allastair, and the now cowering Miss Fairchild.

"If I were you," Holmes was murmuring to Mycroft in a confidential, almost gently hissing tone, "If I were you, my good Mycroft, I should keep that woman in as close and careefula watch as I could, over the next few days. Mark my words, you would be a wiser man to do it." With that, he took two long strides, and joined me Mrs. Allastair's side.

"I would again press my recommendations," he said to her, "that if you determine any further details of the case, you should call on Doctor Watson and myself in our rooms on Baker Street."

Holmes gave Alec Allastair one final, cautionary glance, and then with a quiet "Good morning," he turned on his heel, and strode from the room.

"I was mistaken," chatted my friend, upon our return to Baker Street. "Even the most odious of social engagements provides us with a bit of a conundrum which is most to my liking. Long ago, I should have learned to take your advice to heart with more faith and enthusiasm."

"And so you elieve Mrs. Allastai'rs accusations?" I asked, "despite the evidence of your own eyes?"

"What I saw, Watson, as I"ve said before, and what I can conjecture or deduce are too entirely different things," Holmes admonished me. "That is, in fact, the one factor which holds you, yourself back from greatness. That," he said, "and a generous and benevolent quality towards mankind which I would not give up in you for all the analytical prowess in the world."

I had no time to be flattered by his comment. Holmes had started up on an energetic tirade against his brother Mycroft, whom it seemed had fallen into some considerable disfavor in the eyes of my companion. I had only just started to convince him against contuing his diatribe, when the bell rang, and Holmes, who had until this moment been sedentary, sprang to his feet. Crossing to the door, he admitted the very man about whom we had only just now been speaking.

"Sherlock," breathed Mycroft Holmes, reaching out and clasping my friend's forearm in his agitation, "Please, if ever you have wished to return a favor to me of any kind, now would be the right time for it."

"I thought," said Holmes, "that I had done such a thing this morning." His manner softened, however, in the face of his brother's obvoius distress. "I take it from the haste that you have exhibited in coming to find us so soon after our departure, that Miss Fairchild has been taken in by the official police on Mrs. Allastair's accusations, then."

Mycroft's grave concern spoke for itself. "You know perfectly well," he began, for what must have been the third time that very day, "how unlikely it is that Anne had anything to do with it."

"Unlikely it is," returned Sherlock Holmes, "but hardly impossible. For that, I assure you, you have my sympathies."

Mycroft slid into a chair by the fire with a mournful groan, and my friend glanced up with an inquisitive expression. At this moment , I felt it necessary to leave the two brothers to their private exchange. Yet, even as I left, they sat in silence, apparently exectuing an intellectual tete-a-tete in nothing but glances at significant murmurings.

I spent the greater part of an hour, therefore, enrossed in a novel, which I could not help finding significantly less interesting than the problem of Miss Fairchild and the Allastair fire. This lack of interest in other distractions was not uncommon, and after a while I found my way downstairs again, treading softly so as not to disturb any heated conversation which I anticipated might have been taking place below.

When I reached the bottom, I found Sherlock Holmes sitting alone in his armchair, long legs curled up to his chest, smoking his pipe with perfect indifference. He was holding a photograph before his eyes with one hand, languildy, as if it was a fish. I could not see the picture itself, as it was obscured from my view by Holmes' angle in the chair, but as I crossed towards him, Holmes put the photograph down upon the table, and looked up at me.

"As you see, Watson," he said, gesturing at Mycroft's vacant chair, "it is quite quiet now, and it did not come to blows as you no doubt expected, and so vacated the room as hastily as you could. But it's quite safe now. You should know me better than to assume I would lower myself to any sort of physical quarrel or shouting match with Mycroft. Holmes sighed. "He's a good sort, incredibly bright, and yet blinded in the way that men often are by the eyelashes of a woman, which he believes, no doubt, to be the only eyelashes of their kind in all the world. And yet, if he were to look around him with unclouded vision, he would see that in fact every young lady that walks down the street has a similar pair of eyes. The only difference, perhaps, is that many of them might not have the misfortune of having such a singular tongue as I believe Miss Fairchild does."

Holding up the photograph, he showed me a picture that he had no doubt been given by Mycroft, of Miss Anne Fairchild, smiling daintily, dressed in that same hat which she had refused to put on when we had last seen her. "He thinks that I can save his darling from the charges," he speculated. "And I suppose I can. If, as I"ve said, there are so very many women who look just like Miss Fairchild, how hard could it be to find one that could have just as easily committed the crime?"