The Three Locks by Bonnie MacBird (learn to read books txt) 📕

our sofa in his white cotton nightclothes. The blue dressing gown he often wore had been discarded in the heat, and it was like having some great white ghost lying in sullen stillness in the centre of our sitting-room.

From time to time Holmes arose, sawed tunelessly on the violin, then sank back down again. He would not eat and refused the cooling beverages Mrs Hudson offered to him.

These were the precise conditions under which my friend was most likely to turn towards artificial stimulants. While I longed to escape, or to pursue my mysterious silver box with another try at a locksmith, I resolutely remained with him, and vigilant. I busied myself with notes on old cases, a couple of cheap yellow-backed novels, and the newspapers. As the days passed, even the mystery of my silver box seemed to fade in the atmosphere of indolence and malaise that had settled into 221B.

It was upon the fifth day of this self-imposed confinement that I chanced upon a notice in The Times that Professor Richard Wyndham of Cambridge had announced the engagement of his daughter Miss Odelia Wyndham to Mr Frederick Eden-Summers, eldest son of the Duke of Harbingden. An unsmiling portrait of the young lady appeared next to the notice. Holmes’s response was a dismissive wave of the hand and silence. Nothing I could say would entice him to dress or to leave our rooms and go for a walk or any other activity.

By the next day, Thursday, I could stand internment with my morose companion no longer and ventured out into the sweltering city with my mysterious silver box to Chubb’s Lock Company, the second of the locksmiths that he had recommended.

Two hours later I returned, after having received the identical response I had gotten earlier from Mr Boobbyear and having been charged an exorbitant price for this useless information. The infernal box was secured with a trick lock and apparently was impregnable, except by destroying it. As I entered into the foyer, Mrs Hudson greeted me with a worried look. ‘What is it?’ I asked.

‘Listen.’

I could hear the strains of Holmes’s violin playing a racing, frenetic melody.

‘Well, better that than his recent tuneless atrocities,’ I remarked.

‘But it has been going on since you left. Some two and a half hours, Doctor. With no pause. None at all!’

That set me back. ‘Since immediately after I left?’

‘No, about ten minutes after.’

That could mean only one thing. I raced up the stairs.

Holmes was standing silhouetted in the window, his nightshirt billowing in the faint breeze, playing in a frenzy of excitement.

‘Holmes!’ I cried.

He did not hear me but continued playing. The piece reached a crescendo and ended. He put down the violin with a flourish and waved his bow in the air.

‘I have done it!’ he shouted.

‘What?’

‘I have memorized all six of Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas! Without a flaw! I recreated them in my mind, retrieving it page by page. I could see it!’

His eyes were feverishly bright. His face was damp with perspiration, and his whole body vibrated with excitement.

‘In two hours? How do you know it was perfect?’

‘Memorization! I review it once! I have it here,’ he cried, tapping his forehead with his bow.

‘Sit down, Holmes. You are in a kind of mania!’

‘No, I am inspired!’ But he did set down his bow. ‘What, no luck with your box again?’

‘How did you—?’

‘Never mind. Just listen! I will play them for you!’ He reached for his violin again, but I snatched it up and placed it in a far corner of the room. I moved over to his desk and tried to pull open the top drawer. It was locked. I turned to face him.

‘What have you taken?’

He shrugged.

‘Tell me now. Or I shall leave you in this mess, go to an hotel and send for my things. I mean it, Holmes.’

‘Just the usual, Watson. A seven per cent solu—’

‘Cocaine! The moment I leave. And something else. What else? Open this drawer. It is locked again.’

He waved and turned away. ‘That is my business.’

‘I would like my chequebook!’

‘I would like an end to starvation and the discovery of the missing seventh Bach Partita.’

Madness! I picked up the fireplace poker, inserted the sharp edge into the drawer and with a loud crack, broke it open.

I yanked out the drawer. There, at the front, was the small morocco case with his hypodermic. Near to it was a half-empty bottle of cocaine solution, and further back in the drawer several small blue bottles. I pulled one out. Upon a flowery pink and blue label were the words ‘Phillips Blissful Baby Soother’. It was a sleeping medicine for infants containing laudanum.

My God, he’d combined laudanum with cocaine! The combination could be lethal.

I glanced down at the small waste receptacle under the desk. Papers were piled to the top. I pushed them aside. At least twelve empty bottles of the Baby Soother were at the bottom. He must have been drugging himself with laudanum for days as I sat in the same room.

I looked up to see his look of guilt and alarm.

‘It was only a mild soother, Watson, no harm done. I would have driven you mad without it. You would have run shouting into the streets, demanding roast beef and chorus girls.’

‘No, you are the one on the edge of madness. Surely you know that laudanum is highly addictive and—?’

‘Not in this small amount.’

‘Holmes, I despair!’ I cried. ‘You are wrong and will turn that God-given intelligence to porridge. And combining it with cocaine? What on earth were you thinking?’

I snatched up the hypodermic, threw it to the floor, and crushed it under my boot, grinding it onto the wood at the edge of the carpet.

‘Watson!’ came an anguished cry.

I took up the small brush by the fireplace, swept the shards into a dustpan, and dumped them into that same waste receptacle. I then marched upstairs with the four bottles and flushed the remaining liquid down the toilet.

When I returned to the sitting-room, Holmes