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him tonight I thought I might wait with you. I often assisted him on his cases, and it’s possible that he intends me to do so again.”
    “Wonderful to meet you, Dr. Watson,” the red-beard said with a hearty handshake. “Come in, of course. We welcome any friend of Mr. Holmes.”
    “But we are not a ‘case,’ ” came an amused drawl from beyond him in the chamber. “Nor do we require containment. That quite makes us sound rather more precious than any innate value we could ever have, like the family silver.”
    I stepped over the familiar threshold to behold a sight more exotic than any I had ever before encountered in those rooms.
    Mrs. Hudson’s “colorful” gentleman also stood over six feet tall, like Red-beard. His long, clean-shaven jaw was emphasized by the middle part in the wavy brown hair that was allowed to fall to either side like spaniel ears.
    He wore pale trousers and an olive velveteen vest with a violet cravat. While tall and relatively young, he was already running toward fat in his midsection, which not even his vivid dress could distract from.
    “Your doorman,” he went on, “is Bram Stoker, the eminent theatrical manager and novice writer. I am Oscar Wilde, the novice eminence and theatrical writer. And what is your specialty, Doctor?”
    “I have none. I am a generalist.”
    “Yet you and Mr. Holmes both take on ‘cases.’ ”
    “I suppose you could put it that way.”
    “Then I will! Who, pray, is the patriotic marksman?”
    For a moment I was nonplused, then I glimpsed the “V. R.” Holmes had etched in bullet holes on the parlor wallpaper. “Holmes.”
    “I applaud his penmanship and sentiments, but didn’t the landlady and neighbors and the horses in the street swoon from fright?”
    “I wasn’t here, but I suspect he did it very quickly, that being the point of the exercise.”
    Bram Stoker laughed with delight. “What a scene that would make on stage. I must borrow it for some production.”
    “I believe Holmes was bored.”
    Now Oscar Wilde laughed, less heartily. “I had never thought of such an exhilarating cure for boredom. I must try it when my critics are in the room.”
    “But there are so many of them, Oscar,” Stoker responded genially.
    “You are right. I would run out of bullets and have to resort to stickpins. But let us not stand on ceremony when there are chairs to be sat on.”
    With this Stoker settled in the basket chair and left Holmes’s velvet-lined easy chair to Wilde. I took my usual seat to the left of the fireplace. Thus we settled into an uneasy conversational lull.
    I knew who both men were, of course, but had no idea why they would consult Holmes.
    I made so bold as to ask them.
    “Consult Holmes?” Stoker asked, blinking his pale carrot-colored eyelashes. “Not at all.”
    “Quite the reverse is true,” Wilde said, crossing his legs to reveal olive silk stockings and shoes that were more slippers than brogues. “Holmes has, in fact, consulted us .”
    “Really?” Politeness would not allow me to probe further, but I couldn’t credit that Holmes would ever do any such thing.
    He was a man who kept his own counsel. That I had achieved so much of his confidence through our long association was a matter of great pride to me. Wilde’s supercilious manner felt sharper than it was probably meant. He had been studying the interior, and I recalled that he edited some magazine involving fashion and interior design and the like.
    “I see Holmes and I have a mutual friend.”
    My eyes went to the photograph of General Gordon on one wall, my sole contribution to the room’s bohemian decor.
    “The General?” I asked, startled, for he was not only dead but I could not imagine that Wilde had ever met such a military hero, and certainly I had not, despite my years of service in Afghanistan.
    “The diva,” Oscar said, smiling.
    That is when I remembered the photograph of the late Irene Adler that Holmes kept on the mantel along with a