He did so and a how-to list appeared on-screen. He was enthralled. Little smiles were chasing each other over his lips. He inhaled energetically as I added, with a definite sarcastic edge, “I’m sure someone as brilliant and intuitive as you will figure it all out soon enough. Just please don’t erase or delete anything.” I always kept my files completely backed up, but I didn’t want the hassle. “There’s a guest room and bath down the hall there.”

  He pulled out his pipe, but I interrupted that move emphatically. “No, no. You can only smoke on the porch.”

  He appeared affronted, but I didn’t care. I was completely tapped out and headed off, but I did pause a moment at the foot of the stairs to glance back at him. He was leaning closer to the screen, poring over the on-screen instructions. His concentration was so intense it seemed I had ceased to exist for him.

  Wondering about this strange man, this clearly singular individual, I stood and watched him, the bluish light from the screen glowing on his dark hair.

  In spite of the startling way he had entered my life and how he had certainly shaken it up so far, I was even more intrigued by—and considerably concerned about—the prospects of what might lay just ahead.

  9

  The morning arrived only a few hours later and way too early for my taste. The birds in the trees outside my window were far too cheerful. For a moment, I laid there staring at the slanted, beamed ceiling over my bed, playing with the idea that it all had been a dream. But I knew better. Mr. Holmes had clearly become my responsibility, at least for the time being.

  I rolled out of my four-poster with a sigh, clipped my hair back, and slipped on loose gym shorts, a tee shirt, and the short robe I wear for my morning tai chi routine. As I went through the sharp thrust and parry strokes, I would not have held out very well against Holmes’ assailant last night. But I worked at the tai chi chuan not with any thought of combat but rather to focus my energies. I was deep into that mode, when my concentration was shattered by the sound of an explosion from below. I yelped, then shouted, “Holmes?”

  Scrambling down the stairs, I saw a cloud of smoke billowing from the kitchen. I raced into the doorway and faced a shocking sight: there was a spattering of blood on the front of the counters and floor where Holmes was sprawled out, barely conscious. Bright red blood was covering his face and the collar of an elegant green silk robe he wore over his white shirt.

  “Oh my God!” I exclaimed as I slid down beside him to assess the damage and stop any profuse bleeding. But when I grasped the hand he held up to his bloody face, I got a good whiff, and my tension became annoyance. “Tomato sauce?”

  Holmes looked up at me, wheezing with disorientation, “Mmmm, yes. To mix with my eggs.” He pointed toward the saucy countertop. “Before opening the can, I was just heating it in that little—”

  “Microwave oven.” I sighed with relief but plenty of exasperation. “Yeah. I get it.” As I climbed to my feet and began cleaning up the mess, Lucie wandered in and began lapping up the “blood,” which was everywhere.

  “My apologies for the disarray,” he said, as he shakily raised himself up and took a seat on one of the pine chairs at my kitchen table. “You must allow me to repay you for any damage that may have resulted and, indeed, for your hospitality here.”

  I was feeling ornery and decided to stick it to him. “Thanks for the offer, but you don’t really have any money, do you?”

  “Not presently,” he admitted, without the slightest hint that I had challenged his ability to sustain himself. He dabbed tomato sauce off his face with a paper towel. Then he asked, “Are there still pawnshops in this day and age?”

  I told him there were. He breathed a long, melancholy sigh and speculated, “I suppose I could endeavor to pawn my Stradivarius. I imagine it’s worth quite a reasonable amount by now.”

  I hate it when anyone tries to manipulate me, so I paused in my cleaning and turned it right back on him. Smiling broadly, I said, “Oh yes! What a great idea! I can tell you several places where you could get a good deal.” I was rewarded by seeing a bit of color drain from his face. I let a pause hang in the air, allowing him to be troubled by the prospect.

  “Yes. Well, I would, of course”—he fidgeted—“have to be certain that the proprietor and his establishment were of the highest, most unimpeachable character and—”

  “Oh yes, of course you would,” I agreed with utmost sincerity. I’m embarrassed to admit how much I enjoyed seeing him squirm.

  “Very well.” He saw that he was trapped. “If I could enlist your aid, then, in finding such a shop that—”

  “Holmes,” I finally grumbled, “I won’t let you pawn your—” I blinked. “Is it really a Stradivarius?”

  He gave one precise nod. “Of course.” Then shot my way a snooty expression implying he’d never condescend to an instrument of lesser pedigree.

  “Well, I won’t let you pawn it.” He showed a hint of relief, until I added, “Not immediately anyway.”

  That brought the faintest glimmer of new respect for my ability to confront him. That was likely quite different from many of the beleaguered women of his own era. Except perhaps for one of them.

  “Who was the woman in that photo in your valise?”

  From the way his scalp tightened back, I saw I’d hit paydirt—of some sort, anyway.

  His eyes shot at me like lasers, but seeing my inquisitive, suggestive smile, he quickly managed to reestablish a cool veneer. “I hadn’t realized that you’d taken advantage of casting me out on the street to pillage my personal belongings.”

  “There was no pillaging involved. I was just trying to figure out who you were. And I must say I was intrigued by your disguises and your stash of intravenous cocaine. But the photo of that striking woman was unexpected.”

  He was trying to avoid the issue by glancing around at the floor for something else to discuss. “She was merely a client.”

  “Did you often keep pictures of your clients? I didn’t see any others in—”

  “Ah, there it is,” he said, determined to change the subject. He reached down and from under the table he retrieved a small red silk slipper that looked like it came from a sultan’s harem.

  “And what, pray tell, is that?” I asked. “A memento of that same lovely lady?”

  He was appalled. “Certainly not. It is my Persian slipper.” He proudly held it out for my examination. “I keep tobacco in the toe.”

  “Well, it smells like you’ve been smoking a Persian’s socks. Be sure you do it outside.” I pushed the slipper back in his direction and returned to cleaning up the tomato sauce. I was about to pursue the question of the mysterious woman when I glanced over at him. He was looking at my legs, which were bare below my short robe. I felt at once self-conscious and could see he was turning something over in his mind. “What?”

  “Difficult to imagine you ever having a . . . large posterior.”

  I glanced down at my lower body, then at him. “What are you talking about?”

  “You mentioned your ‘hippy’ days?”

  I laughed. “Not that kind of hippy.” I searched for an appropriate explanation. “Hip is a word that means ‘in touch with the times.’ By hippies, I mean the counterculture—people who felt they were in touch with the best of humanity, human consciousness, and the Earth itself. A lot of young people still go through such a phase, just like I did a dozen or so years ago. When the term originated back in the late ’60s, they were also called flower children. Their big things were peace and love—and for too many of them, drugs.”

  “Drugs?” His eyes brightened.

  Way too much, for my taste. “Yes, drug usage destroyed many minds and lives, which is why I have put away your own cocaine supply.”

  He was highly offended. “I beg your pardon!”

  I grasped his wrist to check his pulse. “As I already told you, it is what we now designate a controlled substance, and as a physician I can’t have it lying around my house.”

  “I understand. However, I am perfectly capable of keeping it securely in my own—”

  “Holmes,” I interrupted quietly but sharp as an axe. “It is locked in my safe. Along with your pistol.” His eyes held challengingly on mine. Until he finally looked away. Then I lightened my tone. “So, aside from recovering from the explosion, are you feeling alright today?”

  “Quite,” he said briskly. I could see the blue circle in his mind was already working on something, then he hit on what he was searching his memory for. “Ah, yes. I saw illustrations of flower children last night on your CP.”

  “PC. For personal computer.”

  “Right!” he blurted as though he’d known it all along. His face was as enthusiastic as a kid on Christmas morning. “There’s an entire encyclopedia in there!”

  “Lots more than that.” I was enjoying his eagerness.

  “Seems to contain a good deal of information on crime, which is my primary interest.”

  “Also, a world of misinformation. You have to check sources very carefully.”

  “One of my specialties,” he gloated. “I was amazed by the high price of illegal cocaine.”

  “Yes, large amounts can be worth millions.”

  “Mmm.” He grew even more exuberant as he got to his feet. “And I was delighted by how I could communicate with other computers. Your hospital link indicated that your patients are all doing well.”

  “What?” I turned sharply, looking at him with disbelief and anger. “That is private information, Mr. Holmes, and—”

  “I was frustrated, however,” he steamed on, more to himself than to me, “by my inability to access Scotland Yard and search for my records. Neither could I penetrate your city hall or police computers to gain additional information about the tiger murders or explore birth records for Moriarty’s and—”

  “Well, you’d need access codes.”

  “Or a good pair of . . . legs.” I caught him glancing furtively at mine again. I realized that he’d probably seen more exposed female flesh in the last two days than in all his nineteenth-century existence. Having been caught gawking, he glanced away self-consciously, changing the subject. “So . . . um, tell me, Winslow, is city hall still where it used to be?”

  “Yes, it is, but first let me get dressed and we’ll take a stab at contacting Scotland Yard.”

  “Excellent!” He rubbed his hands together. “And I shall do us up some scrambled eggs, if that would suit.”

  “Fine,” I said heading out. “But go easy on the tomato sauce.”

  While getting into jeans, I called the hospital and shifted my schedule a bit. Holmes made the eggs, then traded his tomatoey silk robe and shirt for a different ensemble. I provided a white shirt that had been left behind by He Who. Holmes turned the collar up, Victorian-style, and adorned it with a crimson cravat. Over that, he wore a black vest and matching trousers. His gold watch chain with that sovereign attached hung in an arc across the vest’s lower front. A Harris Tweed jacket, shorter than his previous frock coat, completed the look—still Victorian but less formal. It was an eclectic fashion statement, but after all, we were in San Francisco, so why not?

  Eating his very acceptable eggs while working at my laptop, I quickly realized that Holmes had been right: the process of getting information out of Scotland Yard was like jumping through hoops of fire. But I persevered because I knew that it would be nice to have Scotland Yard on our side. I finally initiated an inquiry and was startled when I received an instant auto-email answer of, “Thank you for your request to New Scotland Yard and the Metropolitan Police. Please be patient because we have an unexpectedly high volume of inquiries. We will assess yours as soon as possible. Whilst you await a reply, you may find answers at our FAQs link . . .” et cetera. I told Holmes why FAQs wouldn’t help, and we were both frustrated, but at least it was a start.

  Before tromping off to city hall, I did a quick online search of San Francisco and environs, which turned up scores of Moriarty references. We narrowed the field of search considerably and efficiently by age and gender. Holmes was amazed and enthused by how swiftly we accomplished this.

  Just before we left the house, I took his vitals, which looked mostly nominal, except that his pulse was still as irregular as his character. I was glad to be keeping a careful eye on him.

  As we finally headed out, I made sure Lucie’s doggy door was in good order while she sat patiently awaiting her traditional Mommy’s-going-away cookie.

  Outside, in place of his black bowler, Holmes donned a brown herringbone newsboy-style cap with a button crown and a short bill.

  As I drove us south from Baker Street onto Divisadero, I glanced at him, asking about the original Moriarty. Holmes’ eyebrows flicked up in reaction.

  “His anglicized family name originated in County Kerry as Ó Muircheartaigh. The Irish word muir means sea.”

  “A cognate of the Latin mare,” I noted.

  He glanced over, slightly surprised. “Yes. And cheàrdach means skilled.”

  “So ‘sea-skilled’ might mean what—navigator?”

  “Just so. And indeed, Professor James Moriarty skillfully navigated the seas of crime for decades.”

  “He was a professor?”

  “Oh yes. He’d had a first-rate education and was endowed by nature with a phenomenal mathematical faculty. At age twenty-one, he wrote a treatise upon the binomial theorem, tracing it from Isaac Newton back to Euclid. On the strength of that, he attained the mathematical chair at Cardiff and had, to all appearances, a brilliant academic career before him.” Holmes’ face clouded. “But the man had hereditary tendencies of the most diabolical kind. A darkly criminal strain apparently ran in his blood, which instead of being modified by his extraordinary mental powers, was increased and rendered infinitely more dangerous. Sinister, disturbing rumors about him were whispered at Cardiff just before he departed university and ventured into the lucrative career of master criminal.”

  “At which,” I said as I turned left to head east on Bush Street, “he was obviously successful.”

  He nodded. “Sometimes going by the name Adam Worth, Moriarty was the organizer of half that was evil and of nearly all that went undetected in London, Winslow. He became the focal point of countless criminal enterprises.” Holmes’ hands shaped a funnel in the air, saying, “It all channeled back to him: robberies, burglaries, brothels, blackmail, kidnapping, smuggling. Though he rarely committed crimes personally, Moriarty used his intelligence and network of resources to provide criminals with strategies for their misdeeds and sometimes protection from the law—all in exchange for a healthy fee or a share of the profits.”

  “So, you were the consulting detective, but he was the ‘consulting criminal.’”

  “Yes, an ironic parallel.” Holmes’ eyes narrowed as he stared into the distance, seeming to picture Moriarty. “He was like a poisonous spider in the center of its web, but that web had a thousand radiating threads, and he knew well the meaning of their every quiver.”

  “Amazing,” I said, contemplating it. “He sounds positively Machiavellian.”

  “But far more potent. He was a criminal mastermind, a champion gamesman, but also a philosopher, an abstract thinker. His brain was of the highest order. Exceptional. Ingenious.”

  “So, obviously,” I said slightly tongue-in-cheek, “he was the perfect foil for you.”

  “Yes!” he agreed emphatically, totally missing—or possibly ignoring—my sarcasm, while taking his own exalted stature as a given. “James Moriarty was the singular individual truly worthy of testing my skills and my ardent opposition.”

  Wow. We could all wish for having the tiniest percentage of Holmes’ stunning, egoistic self-confidence. But I also remembered his vast reputation for brilliantly delivering the goods time and again. No wonder he was eager to recover his identity papers: they would be compellingly impressive on a CV.

  San Francisco’s city hall is old but nevertheless postdates Holmes’ time. Constructed in 1915 on Van Ness and McAllister Streets, it fills two city blocks and was in the same neoclassical Romanesque style of my neighborhood’s Palace of Fine Arts. At a glance, it looks like the US Capitol in Washington, with the same high vaulted dome. It’s a Beaux-Arts monument to the City Beautiful movement that epitomized that era’s high-minded American Renaissance.

  After finally finding a parking place, we climbed its broad marble steps to the glass doors at the front entrance. Holmes was startled when the doors opened automatically to admit him.

  Once inside, we located the City Records room, and were allowed to pore over microfilm records—now thankfully digitized and searchable on the building’s computerized system. Holmes hoped to get a lead on Moriarty’s lineage. I’d brought my iPad so we could further refine our earlier search. It wasn’t an easy process, but I was impressed by Holmes’ tenacity and his astonishing ability to cross-reference data in his head.

  In our search for the descendant of Henry Moriarty, the bad boy who had scarred his hand while stealing Holmes’ ID papers and diamonds, we came away with a list of several possible Moriartys who might help us locate our quarry. The first was a photographer. Her office told us she was that day engaged in a photo shoot at the top of San Francisco’s serpentine Lombard Street at Hyde Street. I understood why that would be an excellent location for such a photo session: from there, in the crystal clear, bright sunlight, the city spreads to the northeast with a spectacular view all the way out past Coit Tower on Telegraph Hill to the sparkling bay and Treasure Island.

  En route to that beauty spot, I mentioned how Treasure Island had a manmade enlargement expanding it into a naval station during World War II.

  Holmes was troubled, “Which implies there had been a First World War?”