The next series of events, I must confess, is very difficult for me to describe. It all happened very quickly, and so preoccupied was I with what was happening around me that there will very likely be large gaps in this narrative where I have forgotten what took place altogether. I am sure you will forgive me when I say that it was all very taxing to my nerves, and that you will agree that I am justified in missing certain details.
Sherlock Holmes did not return from his outing for a very long time, until it was evening when I finally decided that perhaps it would be a good hour for me to turn in. Somewhat exhausted from the night before, and still fruitless, without any knowledge of what Holmes was up to, I was too weary and put off to wait up for him as I usually did.
Just as I was climbing the steps to my bedroom, however, there was a ring of the bell. I stopped for a moment on the stairs, convinced that it must be some sort of accident or trick of the wind, since it was very unlikely for anyone to call this late at night. On second thought, however, I remembered that people, though unlikely to call on me now that I had sold my practice, were very keen to receive advice from my friend in all hours of the evening. Rushing back down to the door, I opened it, to discover that my visitor seemed to have given up, and to have hurried off to some other place of refuge.
A bit concerned, I gazed out the window for a moment, trying to catch a glimpse of anyone who might be lurking outside hoping to be admitted. No one was there. All I could see, in fact, was the light of a candle drifting in from what I thought was the window of the building next door.
I gave up, and finally did go upstairs, settling down for the night, and undressing in my own room, deciding that no doubt, when my friend returned home, I would hear him open the door, and be rested enough to go downstairs and meet him. With that assurance in my head, I turned in for the night.
It must have been two or so hours later that I heard a crash downstairs, and roused myself groggily, to see a pair of bare feet disappearing around the corner, through my cracked window. To my alarm, I could hear crackling and splitting sounds in the downstairs room, and a buzzing roar that could only be recognized as the sound that a fire makes as it gathers momentum.
Out of my common sense with fear, I ran down the stairs and saw, exactly as I had predicted, a blazing fire rampaging through the sitting room, engulfing Holmes' precious armchair in a crazed ball of smoke and flame. Looking to the window, I saw that I had left it open, and my stomach sank as I recognized that it must have been through that window that the perpetrator had lit the fire.
In the middle of the floor, just next to the smoking chair was a candle, burning its way through the carpet. I beat at it with the blanket that lay, miraculously still in one piece, on the ground next to it, and succeeded to put out the candle itself. The fire, however, still burned away, and I found myself backed into the corner. I knew that my only recourse was to abandon my rooms, and make for the door, in hopes of escaping out into the street.
Without a further thought, I threw myself at the doorway, skirting the edge of the armchair, and avoiding the table that had just itself caught flame. It was at that moment, however, that the bookshelf teetered, eaten away at the bottom by the flames, and a large, heavy volume, which I later learned to have been the Encyclopedia Britannica, came crashing down, and struck me in the back of the head.
I am told that even as the door creaked open in front of me, I fell, stunned, to the floor, bleeding all over the pages of the encyclopedia, which soon itself caught flame and burned to ashes beside me.
When I came to, the room was dark. It was obviously not my own, as I could tell immediately from the fact that I was lying in an armchair, and it could not be the same armchair that I had seen burn to ashes only some time before.
I thought it had been only some time, but when I turned my head slightly to look out the window, I saw that it was neither evening, nor morning, but the middle of the afternoon, and that the sky had deeply clouded over, quite a change from the sunny atmosphere of the day before.
I attempted to turn over on my side, but my head began to ache horribly, and I became aware of a burning on my face that I could almost not bear. I felt that I was going to swoon and pass out, and so, with a considerable effort, I regained myself, and lay as still as I could in the chair, taking in long, calculated breaths of the air, which to my now well-trained eye, was no longer filled with smoke.
It was then that I heard a little cough from behind me, and I again tried, very slowly and carefully, to overturn myself so as to identify the source of the noise. It took me several minutes to do, but as I was gentle and made only soft and careful movements, I eventually found myself facing in the other direction without having unduly knocked myself out.
Now, I could see that the room I was in was a very familiar one. I was stretched out not, as I had previously thought, in the armchair, but across a small sofa, with my head facing towards the door. The room I was in was more luxuriantly furnished than my own, but showing that similar and familiar taste which I recognized as that of the Holmes family. It was, without a doubt, Mycroft Holmes' sitting room.
Another cough drew my attention, and I raised my head to see Sherlock Holmes, sitting in a chair very near to my little sofa, his head bare and bowed, his hands clasped in front of his face, so that it was obscured from me. It appeared, in fact, that he was lost in prayer, something that I had never before witnessed in him. The posture, however, and the way that he held his torso, with long legs crossed beneath him, identified it without a doubt as my friend, although his shoulders were drooped in apparent fatigue. I attempted to reach out with one hand, but upon drawing it out of where I had been lying on it, I saw that my wrist and fingers were covered over with large, red welts, and a network of scarring and blackened bruises. Tucking it again beneath me, I called out to Holmes, and I heard my voice distinctly crack, though I tried very hard to keep it steady.
"Are you praying for my soul," I asked, trying to make the smile in my voice evident, even in my apparently extremely unfortunate state, "or your own, then?"
My companion's head snapped up in an instant, and he straightened himself out, holding himself erect at the sight of my open eyes. I saw, to my horror that he had not in fact been praying at all, but that his eyes were bloodshot and strained, with large bags beneath them, and the faintest traces of streaks around the cheekbones. "My dear Holmes," I said, trying despite my injuries to start towards him, "you've been-!"
My friend held a finger to his lips, and shook his head quickly at me, stopping my words before they left my lips. "Please, doctor," he insisted, with a broken urgency in his usually calm voice, "it is very important that you lie still and quiet for the moment. You have been through quite the ordeal."
I did so, if only to prevent him from rousing his concern further, and wondered, even as I felt myself sliding back into sleep again, which of us it was that had been through the ordeal.
When I awoke for the second time, my situation had not changed, except that Holmes had slunk farther down in his chair, and appeared to have drifted to sleep despite himself, head lolling across his arm, which he'd thrown out against the nearby table.
From behind me, I could hear footsteps, and I craned my neck around to see, to my surprise and consternation, Miss Fairchild walking in from somewhere beyond where the breakfast table lay.
Upon seeing my face, she stopped, and held out her hands to me as if both in protest and in plea. "Please, Doctor Watson," she insisted, "You know now better than anyone that it could not have been I who did this thing. I was in custody at the time, and I have only been released this morning when it was discovered that another fire had been started while I was unable to do anything. Please, doctor, it wasn't I who did this to you."
"I know," I murmured. "I have enough faith in Sherlock Holmes' judgment that if he says he does not believe you the culprit, then I know that you are not." I leaned back against the sofa to show that my guard was down, and the lady relaxed. She placed the tray that she was holding, with several cups of tea and a loaf of bread, on the table beside Holmes, and glanced at him with a half-smile in her eyes.
"He has been there since last night," I said, gesturing at my friend. "I worry that this is the first time he has slept in so many hours."
Miss Fairchild chuckled darkly. "It has been more than that, you know." She leaned down to look into his closed and quiet face, haggard and yet peaceful in the few moments of sleep that he had secured. "I do not believe that until this time, Mr. Sherlock Holmes has allowed his vigil to lapse. He may sleep for quite some time, now, and I should not disturb him."
Something in her voice alarmed me. "I have been here for quite a time, then," I said, and Miss Fairchild nodded. "I'm sorry to be taking up what I presume to be Mr. Mycroft Holmes' couch for so long."
The woman's expression told me without requiring any explanation on her part, that I was most welcome, and should not consider myself as taking up any space that I was not given free of any trial or trouble on her part, or on Mycroft Holmes'.
"Perhaps, then," I said, entreatingly, "You would be so good as to escort my friend back to Baker Street. He is needed there I'm sure, unless you have already solved the mystery of the Allastair fire. He can do much more good there, where he can be called upon by the authorities for his assistance, rather than languishing here, kind as you have been."
To my surprise, Miss Fairchild laughed outright. "No, no," she insisted, "No, I will not try to move him again. I have asked him before, and Mycroft has begged him, but he will not take up the case again. He will not leave your bedside, I think, until you leave it yourself, and so the police force is quite on its own."
With that, she left the room, leaving the tray awaiting my friend's convenience. I watched him with some unwarranted pleasure, knowing that he would perhaps never discuss again this vigil that he kept for my sake, and that I would have to therefore satisfy myself with my own knowledge of the matter.