Read Online Sherlock Holmes and The Adventure of the Ruby Elephants by Christopher James - Free Book Online

and beauty dwell within these ten square miles? Could you turn your back on that so readily?’
    â€˜Holmes,’ I said. ‘You know I am more than happily married. But you make both cases so persuasively I hardly know my own mind.’
    Just then we heard the unmistakable strains of a violin.
    â€˜Ah,’ said Holmes. ‘Ms Braithwaite strikes up again. Mozart, this time, I think. Still a little underdone, would you not agree, Watson?’
    â€˜It sounds perfectly serviceable to my ears, Holmes,’ I put in.
    â€˜Perhaps I should be so bold as to give her a lesson from here.’
    He leapt from his chair as quickly as he had dropped into it, displaying once again that strange athleticism that he could suddenly summon at will. He seized his fiddle and bow from the shelf, where they were balanced on a freshly printed copy of The Gentle Art of Making Enemies.
    He stepped lightly to the window and listened intently for a moment to the music drifting across the rooftops. To my astonishment, he picked up the piece immediately and played either from memory or extemporised brilliantly on the theme. After a minute or so, he stopped and listened again, keeping perfectly still. It appeared that Miss Braithwaite had stopped playing. But then her violin started up again, more strident this time. Holmes gave me a bright eyed look and let her play on for a while longer, before joining in again, the music taking extraordinary leaps and dives as it travelled up and down the scales. I watched him as his slight figure played against the window, his movements as fine and nimble as a cricket balanced on the end of a blade of grass.
    This long-distance duet played out for the next five minutes, no doubt much to the bemusement of the passers-by beneath our respective windows. Finally Holmes laid his violin aside.
    â€˜Here endeth the lesson, Watson,’ he declared. ‘Violin Concerto No. 2 in D Major. A work of genius. I am much moved by the idea of genius,’ he added more quietly, and there was no need to explain further.
    He sipped his fifth cup of tea of the day with immense satisfaction. He was, I noticed, smiling to himself between sips, although I could not tell whether this was because he felt he had in someway bested Miss Braithewaite or because he felt he had impressed her. Knowing something of my friend’s cool relations with the fairer sex, I decided it must be the former.
    Lunch passed without ceremony and so it was that Holmes and I found ourselves a street away from a large red brick building in the East End of London. Once more Holmes had assumed the persona of Bartholomew the milliner, and in the hansom Holmes disconcerted me somewhat by staying entirely in character throughout the journey. When I asked him for the time he peered at me with rheumy eyes as if I were a stranger on a train. Only as we approached the building did I hear the voice of my inestimable friend: ‘Remember, Watson. Be here on the stroke of midnight, wait for the flash in the third floor window. I will come down and let you in.’
    I watched Holmes as he turned the corner and became, once again, the ancient milliner, a pronounced limp coupled with a lugubrious manner rendering him every inch the weary tradesman. I considered the career he might have enjoyed on the London stage. He would have been a sensation.
    I passed the evening as best I could, laying aside one pot-boiler after another: The Black Shawl, Silver’s Revenge, The Unending Storm, but none could sufficiently distract me from the fate of my friend at the plumage factory. Suppose his cover was blown? He would be beyond the reach and protection of the law. We had not even let our old friend Inspector Lestrade in on the case; there were no burly constables waiting in the shadows to bowl in at the first sign of trouble. I wondered whether Holmes had overreached himself this time.
    To pass the hours, I decided to walk the majority of the way and