The Sherlockian by Graham Moore Read Free Book Online

Hiatus than we do of Doyle’s. What great change had occurred in him that would move him to bring Holmes back? He certainly had no need of money, though publishers had been banging at his door for another Holmes mystery. So why just then? And why so suddenly? Why return to the mystery stories—to the ‘cheap penny dreadfuls,’ as he’d call them—and to the hero for whom he felt, we must acknowledge, no little antipathy? It is at this moment when we would most like to peer into the mind of Conan Doyle that his thoughts are closed to us. Until now.”
    “Didn’t he say that already?”
    “Shhh.”
    But there wasn’t much more to hear. Jeffrey looked behind him one final time, confirming that no, Alex had not in fact entered the ballroom. As the ducks began to quack again, Jeffrey turned around, back to the podium, allowing his calm to massage the room.
    “Ladies and gentlemen, it seems we now have a fresh mystery on our hands!” There was a smattering of chuckles and smiles around the room. “If you’ll pardon the further delay, I shall commence the investigation at once.”
    Before Jeffrey had even stepped off the dais, a fresh gaggle of chatter had washed over the room. A handful of excited Sherlockians stood and then realized they had nowhere to go. Harold recognized Satoru Ishii, the quiet head of Tokyo’s largest Sherlockian group. He stood at full attention near the front of the crowd, practically bursting from the need for something to do.
    “Well, it looks like you have some excitement for your story,” said Harold to Sarah. Only, when he turned, Sarah wasn’t there. Perking up his head, he whipped around to see her click-clacking across the slippery wood in her clunky flats. Her brisk walk was aimed unmistakably at Jeffrey, who, ever polite, was trying to back his way out of the room and fend off the rowdy queue of Sherlockians all waiting to ask him the same questions.
    Harold was not conscious of making the decision to take off behind Sarah. He would tell himself, later, that he did so in order to be useful to Jeffrey—it wouldn’t do to have her pestering him with her questions just now—but in truth Harold had a distinct urge to be useful to her.
    Facing the emboldened horde of inquiring mystery enthusiasts, Sarah quickly changed course and slipped quietly out between the solid doors. Harold gingerly maneuvered down the aisle, tiptoeing between the feet of a woolly-bearded German before stretching across the lap of a petite, professorially tweeded American. Harold’s quiet excuse-me’s and sorry’s added little to the general clamor.
    As he shimmied between the closing doors, the corridor beyond seemed shockingly silent. There was no sign of Sarah.
    Harold didn’t see her at any point along the labyrinthine hallway or in the bustling lobby into which it fed. But there, by the elevator bank, he glimpsed her hair bobbing in between the opening elevator doors. Harold was in—of all things—hot pursuit.
    Accelerating, he was at a near gallop by the time he got to the elevators. There was a curious sensation in his calves, shooting up to his knees. Thinking it over, he believed, not from any recent experience, that that must be called “running.” He huffed and puffed his hand between the elevator doors just in time, and delighted at the satisfying ding! he heard as the doors began reopening.
    “Are you following me?” she asked.
    Panting, Harold stepped into the elevator and steadied himself on the golden railing.
    “Deep breaths,” she added. “You’ll be okay.”
    “We . . . humph . . . we should . . . humph . . . back downstairs . . . hunnnh,” was about all Harold could manage in response.
    “Well put.” Faced with Sarah’s implacability, Harold decided to gather himself before again trying to dissuade her from heading upstairs. But as his breathing slowed, another mechanical ding! announced their arrival on the eleventh floor. Sarah made her way through the bright padded