The second letter he opened came from H. Greenhough Smith, the longtime editor of the Strand. It offered nine thousand pounds for a new series of Holmes stories-a new high bid. Arthur crumpled the letter and deposited it briskly into the waste bin. He would not even reply. Collier’s Weekly. in America, had offered twenty-five thousand dollars for the American rights to the same. Arthur, in a show of gentlemanly restraint, simply ignored both requests rather than commit the reasonable response to paper and direct both men to hell.

He had just written two new Brigadier Gerard stories. Where was the demand for them? (The horse he had named for the character, not the reverse.) No matter what feat he accomplished in his life, this Holmes would always be there to drown him in those bloody, sordid adventures which the public-feeble muffs!-so craved. Arthur caught himself and took a few slow, deep breaths. He would not let thoughts of Sherlock Holmes into this house.

He would read no more letters just now. A rather large package lay at the bottom of the mail stack. He would open that instead.

Less than a minute before the explosion, Arthur placed the package before him on his desk. Surprisingly heavy, it was wrapped in cheap brown paper and tied with fraying twine. The postmark read Surrey, but there was no return address.

Arthur cut the twine with a satisfying swipe and carefully removed the brown wrapping. Inside lay a black box. Arthur searched for a note, or a card, or a shop’s bill, but found nothing at all to indicate the package’s sender or its contents.

As he pulled off the lid, he heard the sound of metal scratching metal and then a sharp click. He looked down to find an inch-thick tube of dynamite nestled in pads of crumpled newspapers, like an infant in a crib.

For an instant, Arthur reconsidered his antipapal position and wondered, political slanders aside, whether a relapse into deep and sincere Catholicism might in fact be just the thing he needed.

He stood motionless for a generation, for an eon, for the longest four seconds of his life. There was no explosion. He did not die. As to whether this should provide confirmation for or against belief in the one true church, Arthur was uncertain.

He also did not feel any particular inclination to move, for fear that any shake of the package might restrike the flint inside, setting off the fuse that, at first glance, miraculously had failed to ignite. What little he knew of bomb making-and his knowledge on the topic was quite limited indeed-had come from his time with anti-Boer regiments in Africa. But the letter bomb was not popular among the rebels, and so a method for defusing such lay well outside of Arthur’s ken.

He opened his mouth to call for help but then stopped: What if Kingsley heard the cry and came bounding in, or Roger? What if it were one of the maids? It wouldn’t do to risk someone else’s life to save his own. On that point Arthur was assured.

He peered down into the package, for clues to its construction and thus to the method of its destruction. A short fuse-it must last for only a few seconds at best, thought Arthur-led from a flint at the top to the stick of dynamite. A few other strands appeared to coil around the explosive, but for what purpose he could not be certain. The crumpled papers that padded the stick trembled, and Arthur quickly realized they did so at the quivering of his own hands. His fingertips clutched the edge of the package, but the shaking seemed to start in his shoulders and move in short waves through his body.

He looked closer at the newspapers. Amid the small print, he made out a drawing. Some pictorial demonstration of the article’s topic, he thought. Was it a member of the government? A statesman? Arthur pulled the package closer to his face.

The drawing printed on the paper was of a gaunt, bird-faced man in a long cloak, with piercing dots for eyes and a tall deerstalker cap. It was Sherlock Holmes.

The dynamite wasn’t padded with newspapers; it was padded with pages from the Strand. Pages of a Holmes story. Arthur’s fear began giving way to rage.

If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well it be done with quickly, Arthur thought, misquoting as usual.

He placed the package down on the side table, and the dynamite rolled slightly to the right.

But rather than causing an explosion, the movement of the dynamite exposed another piece of paper beneath it. An envelope. Sealed, by the looks of it.

Did he dare reach down and take it? He did.

Arthur gently eased the envelope from underneath the heavy stick. He could see that there were words written across the front of the letter but couldn’t yet read them. As he pulled the envelope away, gazing upon it as if it were the proverbial sword pulled from the stone, the dynamite settled back down onto something hard. Something metal.

He heard another scrape, and a click. A second flint, hidden beneath the letter, had lit. The fuse that coiled around the stick was afire.

Arthur did what was then the only sensible thing: He turned on his heels and ran, fast as his forty-one-year-old legs could carry him, in the other direction. He made it to the doorway as the bomb exploded. His ears felt as if they were popping off from the sound. Shreds of mahogany splattered across the study. The windows gave way, their white latticework bursting outward and sprinkling glass everywhere. As Arthur collapsed on the floor, on the other side of the open door, there continued smaller crashes from inside, as vases, books, inkwells, and a neverused gasogene fell from their perches.

He heard an approaching clamor from all directions, his household running to find the cause of so great a disturbance. He dared not look back to see what had become of his study.

Rather, still on the floor, his body tense from the shock, Arthur looked at the envelope safely preserved in his hand. Though crumpled and a touch sweat-smudged from being clutched in his palm, the single word scrawled across the front of the sealed envelope was quite legible.

“ELEMENTARY,” it read.

CHAPTER 10 The Applied Science of Deduction

January 6, 2010, cont.

Harold did his best to ignore the Sherlockians arguing around him. As the timbre of their voices rose, in both volume and pretension, he focused more intently on the three ice cubes in his lunchtime bourbon. He watched their sharp corners round out as they melted. He shook the glass, splashing fresh liquor up and over the cubes, before taking another long sip from his drink. It was noon somewhere.

The two men behind him stood and pointed their accusatory forefingers at one another. Elsewhere in the hotel, similar arguments formed as the fault lines of every long-standing tension within the organization began to give way. Harold was far from the only attendee to fancy himself an amateur detective on a day like this one. The bar was crowded with theorizing Sherlockians, who in the absence of any actual evidence had created grand machinations to explain the crime. Minor points of canonical disagreement became reasons for brutal murder. Some tried to piece together their theories in small groups, hoping that with enough brainpower and expertise they might arrive at a solution. Others jumped straight over the “investigation” phase and landed square at the end of the story they were creating, instantly accusing the man across the table of some vile treachery. And, moreover, actually employing phrases like “vile treachery” in doing so. Everyone was a suspect. But at the world’s largest Sherlockian gathering, everyone was a detective as well.