Free Nicholas Meyer by The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (pdf) Page A

rocker and offered the chair to me.
    Though I had no intention of remaining long, I sat down. Something about the man suggested a longing for human companionship, and it made me loath to dash in and out, though I knew that any delay here, coupled with the difficulties of the journey yet to be made to Hammersmith, could very well affect Toby's ability to perform at his best.
    "You'll be wanting Toby, then, Doctor?" he enquired, unhooking the monkey's affectionate arm from about his neck and setting the creature down on top of a covered bird-cage. "Just a minute, then, and I'll fetch him. You've no time for a cup of tea?" he added with a rising inflection.
    "I'm afraid not."
    "No, I thought not." He sighed and went out through the side door to the kennels. A barking and yipping from that direction told me that his dogs were glad to see him. I discerned Toby's yelp in the midst of the din.
    Sherman returned almost instantly with the animal, leaving the others howling dismally, his presence no doubt having evoked in them a similar desire to be loosed from their cages. Toby knew me and rushed forth, straining at his lead and wagging his stringy tail with ferocious energy and good will. I responded by presenting him with a lump of sugar, brought for the purpose—a regular feature of our reunions. As usual, I offered to pay Sherman in advance, and, in accordance with his own way of doing things—at least where Sherlock Holmes was concerned—he refused.
    "You keep him long as you need him," he insisted as he escorted me to the door, pushing a chicken aside on the way. "We'll settle it up later. Good-bye, Toby! Here's a good doggy! Give my best to Mr.
    Sherlock!" he called out to me as I, with Toby in tow, stumbled towards the cab.
    I called back that I would, and hailed the cabbie, who, by shouting, informed me where I had left him.
    Following his voice, we found the cab and climbed in. I gave the address Holmes had quoted in his telegram (and which I had visited myself the night before), and we hesitantly plunged into the round of blind traffic that was feeling its way through London.
    We rediscovered Westminster Bridge, got over it—narrowly avoiding a collision with a Watney's wagon—and then headed due west towards Hammersmith. The only recognizable point along our way was Gloucester Road Station.
    Turning at length into deserted Munro Road, we made for the faint glow of the sole lamp on the street, and there stopped.
    "We're 'ere!" the driver announced, with as much relief as surprise in his tone, and I got out to scan the vicinity for any sign of Holmes. The place was deadly still, and my voice, when I called out his name, echoed strangely against the impenetrable mist.
    I stood for a moment, perplexed, and was on the point of making my way to the professor's house—
    which I knew lay somewhere behind me—when I distinguished a tap-tap-tap on the pavement,
    somewhere to my right.
    "Hullo?"
    There was no answer, only the same not-quite-rhythmic tapping of a stick on the pavement. Toby reacted as I did to the sound, and let forth a little whine of unease.
    The tap-tap-tapping came on.
    "Hullo!" I repeated insistently. "Who is that?"
    "Maxwellton braes are bonnie!" a high-pitched tenor suddenly sang out of the mist, "Where early fa's the dew, And it's there that Annie Laurie gie'd me her promise true—and airly fathers lie—but fur bonnie Annie Laurie, I'd lay me doun and die!"
    I stood motionless, transfixed, as the singer and the song came on, the hairs rising on the hackles of my neck at the sheer horror of it—a lonely, fogbound London street, for all practical purposes lost to time and mind—and the piping treble of the mysterious singer ignoring my attempts to communicate.
    Slowly, with shuffling gait, he drew into view, aureoled by the street lamp—a ragged minstrel with shabby, open leather waistcoat, older leather breeches, and boots held together by their laces. His white hair grew sparsely on the sides of his