The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - By John Joseph Adams Page 0,1

served as a Duty Surgeon, had been injured by a Jezail bullet at the battle of Maiwand, and saved from certain capture by the courage of his orderly, known to us only as Murray. Pain and illness followed and an urgent return to England became necessary. Watson naturally gravitated to London where, following an introduction by a former colleague, Stamford, he made the acquaintance of Sherlock Holmes. It did not take the two long to decide to share rooms in Baker Street. Throughout the adventures Watson is the ever faithful companion, willing to accompany Holmes at a moment's notice. He is never as smart as Holmes—indeed, his conclusions are often considerably off the mark—and Conan Doyle cleverly does not allow Watson to appear more perceptive than his readers. But without Watson there would be no Holmes stories, for Watson chronicled Holmes's adventures and made Holmes famous by publishing them for the reading public in The Strand Magazine.

Although Holmes knew that he could always rely on Watson's companionship and assistance, even a detective as astute as Holmes occasionally needed the wisdom and advice of others. But whose knowledge and deductive skills would be sufficient to assist our genius hero? Obviously someone who shared Holmes's faculties of deduction and analysis—possibly to an even greater degree. For that person we need look no further than Holmes's older brother, Mycroft. Mycroft is an unusual character indeed, a larger-than-life figure who spends his days passing between his lodgings in Pall Mall, his office in Whitehall, and the Diogenes Club ("the queerest club in London").

It came as something of a surprise to Dr. Watson to discover that Holmes had a brother at all, and he could never have dreamed of Mycroft's influence on national affairs. ("Occasionally," Holmes told Watson, "he is the British Government . . . . His position is unique. He has made it for himself. There has never been anything like it before, nor will be again. He has the tidiest and most orderly brain, with the greatest capacity for storing facts of any man living . . . . The conclusions of every department are passed to him, and he is the central exchange, the clearing-house, which makes out the balance. Other men are specialists, but his specialism is omniscience . . . . Again and again his word has decided the national policy.")

Quite a man. It's no wonder that Holmes was able to entrust his affairs to Mycroft during the years of his "hiatus" following his presumed death at the Reichenbach Falls.

Our next major player is the long-suffering Mrs. Hudson, Holmes's landlady—a saint if ever there was one for her tolerance of Holmes's chemical experiments, the foul odours from his pipes, and his indoor pistol practice (who else, we ask, would have put up with a tenant who peppered the wall of his room with Boxer cartridges to carve out "a patriotic V. R.[6] done in bullet-pocks"?)

Smaller players, but invaluable to Holmes, are the band of a dozen or so ragged children (described as "street Arabs") known as the Baker Street Irregulars, who can go everywhere, see everything, overhear everyone, and provide vital information to the great detective.

Given the nature of Holmes's business, it is inevitable that Holmes should attract his fair share of enemies, and chief among his adversaries has to be Professor James Moriarty, the Napoleon of Crime—"the organizer of half that is evil and of nearly all that is undetected in this great city." Although Moriarty plays a major role in only one canonical story, his presence seems to pervade the canon. He is a criminal mastermind with "a brain of the first order. He sits motionless, like a spider in the centre of its web, but that web has a thousand radiations, and he knows well every quiver of each of them." As Holmes noted, Moriarty did little himself—he was the planner with numerous agents, and there was little or no reason for the authorities to suspect him of misdeeds. In what became the "Final Problem," Holmes lured Moriarty and his henchman, Colonel Sebastian Moran, to Switzerland, where a final confrontation took place above the Reichenbach Falls—a struggle which Moriarty failed to survive.

Moriarty's second-in-command, Colonel Sebastian Moran, once of Her Majesty's Indian Army, and the best heavy game shot that Britain's Eastern Empire ever produced, attempted to wreak vengeance with an air rifle for Moriarty's death, in the adventure titled "The Empty House," only to be deceived by a silhouette cast by a wax bust commissioned by