Free Two Hundred and Twenty-One Baker Streets by David Thomas Moore (ed)

otherwise it would have driven straight through the flames.”
    “If we know the make of the plane, perhaps we can trace it from yesterday’s flight records.”
    “It would be an arduous job, Watson, and uncertain to succeed if the plane embarked from a private or remote airstrip like this one. No, I already know the destination of the plane. It is clear from this speckled bandana.” He turned abruptly. “Let’s go, Watson. We have some unwelcome news for Mr. Lowe.”
    K EVIN L OWE DIDN ’ T take the news well. He turned white and staggered to a chair. “But why, Mr. Holmes?” he gasped. “Why would someone steal my entire life’s work, only to burn it?”
    “Do you have any enemies?” I asked, but Holmes shook his head.
    “It’s not revenge,” he said. “In fact, I don’t think this was done for malicious motives at all; rather out of kindness, though perhaps not from your perspective. Tell me, Mr Lowe, the elderly man who acted so strangely the day before your theft: was he overweight and bald, with an eggshaped head?”
    “Yes. Was he the thief? Can you find him?”
    “He was the mastermind behind the theft,” said Holmes. “I know where to find him, and most likely his accomplices, too. But I will not.”
    Lowe leapt from his chair, his face suffused with anger. “I hired you! Why won’t you catch the man who’s ruined me?”
    “While I feel sorry for your loss, and pained that you are the innocent victim, you aren’t ruined, Mr. Lowe. You have the funds and the skill to replace the waxworks you’ve lost. You said yourself that you wanted to start afresh somewhere else. It means hard work for you, yes. But for a person close to the man who stole your mannequins, it means life or death.”
    “How could it possibly be so important?”
    As an answer, Holmes held up the white bandana, speckled with ash. Lowe’s eyes widened.
    “Him?”
    Holmes passed a cigarette to Lowe; the modeller’s fine hands shook as he lit it.
    “I believe we will have an answer in the national news in a day or two, perhaps a week,” said Holmes. “Meanwhile, Watson and I will return to New York. We’ll be in touch when events come to a head. If you’re looking for a way to pass the time, I suggest you begin a new collection of waxworks. Perhaps starting with Chewbacca.”
    Holmes was silent for the journey back to Bleecker Street. Although I called in on him several times in the days that followed, eager to find out if there had been any developments in the case, he remained taciturn, refusing to answer any of my questions relating to Mr. Lowe or the speckled bandana. Indeed, he seemed almost melancholy, as if he had been saddened by the events in Las Vegas.
    O N W EDNESDAY MORNING , August 17 th , I looked in on Holmes just after sunrise. He was sunk deep into his armchair, his brows drawn down over his eyes, surrounded by smoke so thick it made me cough. He looked as if he hadn’t moved all night.
    “Holmes,” I said, “this is no good, man. You’ve got to get out. Take up jogging, or something. These moods aren’t healthy.”
    “Have you listened to the radio this morning? Seen any papers or the TV?”
    “I’ve been with a patient.”
    Holmes passed me that morning’s New York Times . In the headline, in the photo, I saw the news that he had been expecting, although until that moment, I had had no idea what it could be.
    “Good God, Holmes,” I gasped. “Not—”
    He nodded. “We must call Kevin Lowe and get him on a plane to Tennessee.”
    Although we started early in the morning, Holmes had several phone calls to make, and we didn’t arrive in Memphis until nearly noon. Lowe arrived half an hour later. He was drawn and worried; even his paisley polyester shirt added no colour to his features.
    I knew that Holmes had called in favours from his local contacts, but I didn’t know how powerful those contacts were until we stepped out of the airport into the crushing southern heat, and straight into