Free The Case of the Peculiar Pink Fan by Nancy; Springer Page A

until you give me your promise.”
    “What?”
    “Promise me upon your honour that you will let me be, and will make no attempt to apprehend me or to constrain me.”
    Silence.
    A good sign, I realised, for Sherlock Holmes would make no promise lightly. And if he gave his word, he would abide by it without fail. Indeed, if only—if we could be friends—deep within me commenced the most peculiar fluttering sensation, as if a butterfly had split open the chrysalis of my heart. Indeed, I felt my pulse begin to throb so hard that I could hear—
    Hear my own heart beating?
    Almost too late, I realised it was not so.
    What I could hear, in that silence, was footsteps.
    Behind me and off to one side, someone walking.
    Someone had come out of the house.
    And was approaching nearer by the moment.
     
     
    My reaction was instantaneous and, I admit, contrary to reason: I tossed the rope to Sherlock, hissing, “Shhh! Stay down.” The rope, vertical against the tree behind it, should not be noticed in the night. My brother should escape detection.
    But where, pray tell, was I to hide? Instinctively I cowered, flattening myself to the ground, but what more to do—I could not think.
    “…don’t like it, I tell you,” said a deep, dark voice I recognised; it was the massive man who had quite terrified a certain midden-picker, and who consorted most incongruously with orphans. “I haven’t heard Lucifer make a sound for the past hour.”
    “Because the dog isn’t barking, you roust me out of bed?” The second voice, also male, sounded childishly wrought. “Really, Father!”
    “Don’t pout at me, Bramwell. It’s for your sake we’re taking all these precautions.”
    Bramwell.
    The Baron of Merganser’s son and heir.
    Then the big brute of a man was indeed, as I had concluded, the baron himself.
    With fascinated horror I watched as father and son emerged from between the beech trees. Both carried heavy walking-sticks by way of weapons. The son, Bramwell, had a burly physique similar to that of his mastiff-like father, but in the younger man’s case it made him resemble a toad.
    As did his face, what I could see of it in the gas-lit night. Small wonder he had not managed to win a bride in any gentlemanly way.
    Father and son made towards the mastiff’s quarters, and at once the baron roared, “See? Someone’s been feeding him!” Dramatically he pointed at the soup-bone I had flung over the fence. “Someone’s poisoned him!”
    “No, they haven’t poisoned your darling Lucifer. Can’t you hear the brute snore? He’s in his bed, sleeping.”
    Facing the mastiff’s house, they stood with their backs to me, and I took the opportunity to retreat as noiselessly as possible, scooting away hind-end-foremost, like a crustacean going under a rock, so that I could continue watching them.
    “As I should be asleep in mine,” added Bramwell pettishly.
    “Stop being a donkey! Poison or a sleeping powder, it means the same: someone is trying to get in!”
    “So?”
    “Someone is prying into our affairs!”
    “And what if they do? What if they pry their way right into the tower? All they will find there is a stable-boy dressed as a girl.”
    “Shut your mouth!” The baron’s fury froze me motionless in the shadows. The way he turned on his son, I really thought for a moment that he would strike him. But instead he growled, “Not another word of that. Do you understand me? Reply.”
    In a subdued tone Bramwell said, “Yes, Father.”
    “We must arm ourselves with pistols, then search the grounds. Come along!”
    “Yes, Father.” Meekly Bramwell followed as the baron strode towards the house.
    Even as they did so, movement from the other direction caught my eye: swarming up the rope hand over hand as smartly as any sailor, Sherlock lifted himself from the ditch, crawling out upon the side away from me, towards the fence.
    Quite sensibly, then, having concluded from Bramwell’s words—as I had—that Lady Cecily