By the time the boy came back with the reply, we had restored the sitting room and ourselves to our usual condition. Holmes gave the lad a sovereign, opened the note, and crumpled it again with a noise of satisfaction. "He says he'll be here shortly."

"Who will?"

"Tony."

I was not pleased with the prospect of confronting the other participant in last night's adventure. "Whatever for?"

"If Athanson is a client, Tony will know about it. And he will be able to get his hands on evidence. You mustn't be jealous, Watson," he went on, reading my unspoken thoughts with that infuriating accuracy of his, "he provides a service, which I have occasionally purchased in the past. That is the extent of our relationship."

Never once, from that first moment under the gas lamp onward, had either of us used the word love. Knowing him as I did that did not surprise me. I did not expect we ever would. But in his own way, he had just told me what I had been waiting to hear.

When we heard the knock at the door, it was Holmes who started from his chair and disappeared into one of the bedrooms without much in the way of explanation. I steadied my nerves and opened it myself.

"Good afternoon," said the young man on the other side of the doorway. "I'm looking for Mr. Sherlock Holmes."

"Do come in," I said. "He's expecting you. I am his friend and colleague Dr. Watson."

He was somewhat taller than I, but with the same square build, with a shock of dark brown hair and a rather overdone moustache. I saw with some amusement that he was looking me over with the same critical glance.

"I'm very pleased to meet you, sir," he said, shaking my hand with a firm grip that, like his accent, seemed rehearsed. "I'm a great admirer of yours. I've read all of your stories."

"Yes, I could tell," I murmured.

He cocked his head. "I'm sorry?"

"Nothing," I answered. "Let me just go see what's keeping Holmes."

Leaving him seated at the table in some bewilderment, I slipped into the bedroom.

"You invited him," I began.

"Don't be angry, Watson," he pleaded. "I simply can't--"

"Rubbish." I propelled him toward the door. "If I can face him, so can you."

"But Watson--"

After a brief attempt at protest, he resigned himself, and walked out into the sitting room with his usual aplomb. Tony was seated with his back to the bedroom and looking out the window. Holmes cleared his throat. "Thank you for coming, Tony--"

He laughed and got to his feet. "If I had a shilling for every man who'd said that to--" he began, but stopped when he caught sight of Holmes. His jaw dropped and his hands gripped the back of the chair.

"I'll wager you do," said Holmes, perfectly at ease now that he had rendered our visitor speechless with astonishment. "If not more. They are not all very polite, your clients."

"My God," was his only response.

"Please take a chair," Holmes said, sitting down himself. "Watson and I would like a word with you."

"I--sir--you must know, I had no idea it was--that you were--really--"

"It's all right, Tony," he answered, making an effort to calm him now that he had recovered his own composure. "I am not interested in prosecuting you for solicitation, nor is my friend Dr. Watson planning to have the law on you for copyright infringement. We simply need some information, and I was hoping that, in return for all the business I have brought your way, you might see your way to providing it."

Tony looked once at each of us, let out a long, hearty laugh, and finally relaxed into his chair and his ordinary accent.

"By God, Mr. S, I'll do my best. Now that my heart's beating again I couldn't be prouder. To think all this time I've been servicing the genuine article." He glanced in my direction with a little more trepidation." Your friend there--"

"Is aware of your peculiar vocation and of our previous relationship."

"No hard feelings?"

"None, I can assure you," I answered, and to my surprise I meant it. Now that he was at ease, he was so unlike me, and so clearly uninterested in pressing any kind of a claim, that it would have been absurd to cherish a dislike for him.

"It's interesting work, and it pays extra," he explained. "Since the Return we've been doing a bang-up business, too."

"Really," said Holmes.

"Oh, yes. The only one more popular than Holmes and Watson is Tennyson and Hallam and thank God I'm the wrong body type for that. If I'm to be buggered by a casual stranger I'd just as soon it be to the strains of 'The game's afoot!' than have quatrains shouted at me. 'Descend, and touch, and enter,' my--"

"Tony," said Holmes gently, "you're frightening the doctor."

"Sorry," he said. "We do have this habit of talking shop. No, Mr. S., anything I can do for you--"

"I wanted to ask you about one of those casual strangers," Holmes said, taking a newspaper clipping out of his scrapbook. "Do you recognize this man?"

Tony looked for a moment at the daguerrotype and his features contorted in disgust. "Do you know him?"

"He's certainly not a friend, if that's what you mean," Holmes replied. "Is he a client of yours?"

"No, thank goodness," he answered. "A little play-acting, a little light discipline, some flogging, fine, it's a living, but when it comes to persecuting innocent dumb animals--"

Holmes's laugh rang out clear and sharp. "Indeed! This is most gratifying. Is he a small-animal man, or--"

"Really, Holmes--"

"Ah, I've got the accent all wrong," Tony exclaimed. "How embarrassing. You can't imagine how much I appreciate this opportunity, Dr. Watson."

"Well, Tony," Holmes broke in before I could respond, "suppose, in return for all our assistance with your professional development, I were to ask you to supply me with some form of physical evidence that would show that our man was one of your regular patrons, would that be possible?"

"Possible?" Tony laughed. "Nothing easier. Hastings has a ledger with all the real names, house names, days, times, and peculiar preferences. For this beaut he must have had to attach an extra sheet." Tony shook his head. "Usually poor Giancarlo gets stuck with him. Just because he's the last one they hired. It's not right."

"Well," Holmes said cheerfully, "if you can bring me the relevant portion of the ledger, I think it may be safe to say he will never darken your door again."

"Oh, Mr. S., if you can rid us of the pest you'll be the hero of the Malbreth Mews," he replied earnestly. "Not that you aren't already, in a way."

"Get me the document by five o'clock this evening and you will be quit of him forever by six," Holmes answered.

"Done." Tony rose, and we all shook hands. "It was a pleasure working with you, sir, and I mean that. You were always a gentleman." He turned to me. "And so considerate. Most of them never even think of using protection. As if just because we're paid for it we should have to take their infections along with their money. And God forbid one of us should suggest something that might interfere with a client's pleasure. Well, good afternoon, you'll hear from me soon."

Holmes stood in thought for several moments after the door shut.

"He seems an intelligent young man," I said.

"You know, Watson," he said heavily, "there has been so much talk about disease and epidemics spreading up from the lower classes ... to think I was so worried about catching something from him, and it never even occurred to me that disease might spread from the top down, and that the risk is much greater for him than for his clients."

"At least we can do them the favor of scaring off Athanson," I said, stroking the back of his tensed shoulders.

He raised his head. From the sound of his breath I thought he might be crying, but his eyes, though somber, were dry.

"It's a bleak world, Watson," he said. "And a cruel city, with a cold, dark heart. Queen Victoria is on the throne and Oscar Wilde is in Reading Gaol, and down in Malbreth Mews some poor wretch is inflicting all the pain of his thwarted, frustrated heart on some poor boy like Tony." He sighed. "And it will never again be me, thank God and you for that," he said, turning to me, "but it will always be someone." I passed my hand gently over his cold, furrowed brow. "Why does it happen, Watson? Whose evil purpose does it serve?"

"I don't know, Holmes," I said simply. "Perhaps one day you will find out. If you can discover the scheme, whatever it is, I will hunt the blackguard down."

"Come here, Watson," he said, and pulled me into his arms.

---

"Well, Watson," said Holmes, as he sat down on my bed to take off his boots, "I hear from Tony that Athanson continues to be a non-presence."

"Judging by the expression on his face when he left," I said, pulling off my collar, "I should be very surprised if he had the courage to leave the house in the morning, let alone return to his former haunts, for at least a year."

"I am glad to have resolved it," he replied as he hung his shirt on the bedpost. "It was, as I said, a commonplace sordid little affair--"

"But not without its points of interest," I continued. "Incidentally, Holmes, I received a request this morning from an actor who is founding his own theatre company. He wants my permission to produce dramatic adaptations of my stories."

Holmes snorted. "Soon I suppose we will be the subject of Christmas pantomimes and cartoons in Punch."

I had already seen several Punch cartoons featuring Holmes's easily-caricatured face, but forbore to mention it. "I wrote to give my consent. He will only pirate them illegally otherwise. We may as well not even give authors a copyright in this country, for all the good it does."

"Ah well," Holmes replied, slipping into bed. "Perhaps they'll be tastefully done."

"The actor himself wants to play you, naturally," I added, walking into the washroom and returning with my black bag, "but I took the liberty of suggesting an unknown who might be ideal in the part of Watson."

Holmes sat bolt upright. "You didn't."

"Of course I did."

"And why not?" he laughed. "It's a brilliant idea."

"Oh, my dear Holmes," I demurred. "It was elementary."

It was a moment before he realized. Then I felt the pillow strike me directly in the face.

"All right," he said after I had pummeled him with it for a minute or so, "all right, I deserve it." I climbed under the bedsheets with him. "And anything else you give me."

"Yes," I said quite seriously. "You do."

He would not say it, not then or, in all probability, ever. But he knew that I knew. He had been right, those many days ago. It was, always had been, absurdly simple.