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on a key fact, as though gravitated
to the missing piece of a mosaic he was attempting
to piece together. His words were sweet music
and I invariably glowed when recalling them,
but there was the lurking suspicion that he might
have strained a point or two in this respect. He
invariably referred to our investigation and the problems
that we must
solve in a manner so convincing that the
words were universally accept ed,
fortunately for me. Had anyone dared to question Mr. Sherlock
Holmes or looked closely at the façade
of our equal contributions to case-solving that
he had created, they might have burst out laughing.
When I allowed my mind to dwell on this,
there was the recurring thought that Holmes could have hypnotized
himself into actually believing that I was an indispensable cog
in the machinery that he had created. An
active weapon like Slim Gilligan or,
perish the thought, the awesome and
frightening Wakefield Orloff.
    Holmes
seemed preoccupied and, as he so often did
when involved in thought, busied himself in his chemical
corner. When he was intent on beakers and
retorts, conversation was impossible. I decided to
bide my time relative to certain matters that still puzzled
me about our afternoon expedition. I was attempting, without too much
success, to collect and sort notes on a
case history that I hoped to make
available to my readers, going through the usual
exasperation involved in locating certain information and assembling
it in the proper order. My friend had a
vial full of a dark liquid bubbling furiously.
He removed the candle beneath it and placed it on the desk. Holmes
was turning back toward his apparatus
when the upper pane of one of our bay
windows was shattered. There was a booming
sound, the candle was abruptly halved, and
there was a resounding thud in the far side of the
room. I sat transfixed, staring at the reduced candle,
convinced that I had felt a disturbance in the
air in front of my face, which may or may not have
been true. Then I was galvanized into action.
    "Holmes,
we are being fired upon," I cried, dropping
from the desk chair to the floor and making
for the window on all fours with the intent of
drawing the blind.
    "Calm
yourself, old fellow," said the sleuth in a casual
tone as though asking for a dinner roll.
    To
my consternation, he made for the door to our chambers
with no attempt of concealment.
    I
lunged back toward him with the half-formed idea
of pulling him to the floor so that he would not make
such a splendid target, but he was already at our
outer portal and had it open.
    "Billy,"
he called, "please inform Mrs. Hudson that
naught is amiss. A slight miscalculation in one of
my chemical experiments was the cause of the disturbance."
    I
assumed that the page boy acknowledged this request
and made for our landlady's domain. I was, again, scurrying toward
the window and had man aged to close the
drapes by the time Holmes reentered our
quarters from the landing.
    "Please,
Watson, do not be so concerned."
    I
fear my reply was made with some heat. "Bullets
flying through the air and you . . ."
    " A bullet," he interrupted. "Fired
with no intent of doing us harm."
    The
sleuth retrieved the upper portion of the candle
from the floor. "Remarkable piece
of shooting. Had the marks man fired
at a human target, one of us would now be
dead."
    His
eyes went upward and, to my horror, he crossed
to the window, pulling the blind partially aside
to view the shattered pane of glass. "See
the angle of the shot," he said, indicating upward.
    "For
God's sake, Holmes, close that drape." I had flattened
myself against the wall between the windows.
"You may be interested in plotting a trajectory,
but I'll have no part of your madness."
    He
did let the material fall back into place and there
was concern in his large eyes as he viewed me,
frozen in my protected position. "Good
fellow, the crash of a rifle bullet, fired from an
elongated barrel I suspect, is a jarring note on a quiet evening at
home.