looked at the line of fine shops and stately business premises that
they really abutted on the other side upon the faded and stagnant
square which we had just quitted.
Let me see, said Holmes, standing at the corner and glancing along
the line, I should like just to remember the order of the houses here.
It is a hobby of mine to have an exact knowledge of London. There is
Mortimer s, the tobacconist, the little newspaper shop, the Coburg
branch of the City and Suburban Bank, the Vegetarian Restaurant, and
McFarlane s carriage-building depot. That carries us right on to the
other block. And now, Doctor, we ve done our work, so it s time we had
some play. A sandwich and a cup of coffee, and then off to violin-land,
where all is sweetness and delicacy and harmony, and there are no
red-headed clients to vex us with their conundrums.
My friend was an enthusiastic musician, being himself not only a very
capable performer but a composer of no ordinary merit. All the
afternoon he sat in the stalls wrapped in the most perfect happiness,
gently waving his long, thin fingers in time to the music, while his
gently smiling face and his languid, dreamy eyes were as unlike those
of Holmes the sleuth-hound, Holmes the relentless, keen-witted,
ready-handed criminal agent, as it was possible to conceive. In his
singular character the dual nature alternately asserted itself, and his
extreme exactness and astuteness represented, as I have often thought,
the reaction against the poetic and contemplative mood which
occasionally predominated in him. The swing of his nature took him from
extreme languor to devouring energy; and, as I knew well, he was never
so truly formidable as when, for days on end, he had been lounging in
his armchair amid his improvisations and his black-letter editions.
Then it was that the lust of the chase would suddenly come upon him,
and that his brilliant reasoning power would rise to the level of
intuition, until those who were unacquainted with his methods would
look askance at him as on a man whose knowledge was not that of other
mortals. When I saw him that afternoon so enwrapped in the music at St.
James s Hall I felt that an evil time might be coming upon those whom
he had set himself to hunt down.
You want to go home, no doubt, Doctor, he remarked as we emerged.
Yes, it would be as well.
45