Harold raised the tire iron above his head and smashed it down on the glass. The sound of the window shattering was much louder than he’d anticipated, and yet he didn’t flinch at the noise. Tiny shards of glass sprinkled back at him from the broken window, covering his coat sleeves and muddy shoes. He flicked the tire iron around the open window a few times, knocking out the remaining hunks of sharp glass. He dropped the iron back into his bag and placed both gloved hands on the windowsill, pressing himself up and through the window. In a moment he was inside.

Harold heard no alarm but assumed that one must have been activated. He didn’t have much time, but he didn’t think he needed it. And if the Swiss police found him smashing a priceless gasogene in the private museum? Well, then they could tell the New York police they’d found him, and the various authorities could figure out which jail they’d want him in. Harold didn’t care. All he wanted was the diary.

He walked quickly through the museum, and as it was small and Harold’s destination was its main attraction, he found what he was looking for in no time at all. He entered the carefully prepared study of Sherlock Holmes, flicked on the lights, and looked around. Of all the places to end, this one made as much sense as any.

The room was cramped with objects. The fireplace was adorned with sharp pokers and a long singlestick, with which Holmes had stalked Moriarty in “The Final Problem.” Drawings of various Holmes adventures littered every available surface. On a small table lay Watson’s stethoscope, as well as Holmes’s violin. Another table held Holmes’s chemical kit, with which he would test bloodstains, tobacco, and the other assorted residues of murder. A deerstalker hat, just like Harold’s, rested on a hook. First editions of all of the Holmes stories covered the bookshelves. A tea set was laid out on a breakfast table, spoons and knives set in their places as if Holmes and Watson were midmeal. Newspapers of the period sat beside the cups and saucers. And along the far wall, in what Harold couldn’t help but notice was the darkest corner of the darkened room, a small desk held an antique gasogene up to his gaze.

Without hesitation Harold walked to the gasogene and raised it from the table. He shook it. The base was easily wide enough to hold a diary, and, for a piece of hollow glass, the gasogene felt quite heavy. He twisted at one of the screws on the base, but it wouldn’t budge. He tried the other, with no better luck. It occurred to him that besides a steel tire iron something along the lines of a screwdriver would have been a pretty smart addition to his collection of break-in tools.

He set the gasogene back down on the table, went to the fireplace, and lifted the poker. It was heavier than the tire iron. Longer. It was perfect. Harold gripped it with both hands and could see his knuckles whitening around the hilt. He raised the poker over his head. Was he sure that the diary was in the gasogene? Yes. No. It honestly no longer mattered. He’d smash it to pieces, or he’d smash something else to pieces, or he’d break every heirloom in this entire museum if that’s what it would take.

He kept his eyes open wide as he squeezed the poker in his palms, arched his back, and drew the poker down on the gasogene with every bit of strength he possessed. Glass shattered, the steel poker clanged violently against the metal base, and the force of the contact sent Harold stumbling back across the study. His wrists hurt.

“Harold White.” When he heard the voice behind him, his mind went instantly blank. The words themselves sounded foreign. Harold? White? Oh, yes, Harold realized, as the color drained from his face. That would be me. He prepared himself for jail, placating his natural terror with the thought that it wouldn’t be for more than a few years. It’s not as if he’d killed anybody, after all. It was only as he was turning around to face the voice addressing him that he realized that whoever was calling his name knew his name. And that was when Harold became scared.

He completed his turn to see the Goateed Man staring back at him across the study. The man held a gun in front of him. Harold’s vision danced between the top of the pistol and the goatee on the man’s face. The gun looked like the same one he’d seen in London. And the goatee was no more attractive than he’d first thought.

Despite the fear that squeezed on his muscles and contracted his breath, Harold realized that the man in front of him hadn’t yet pulled the trigger. Harold could handle this. He stepped forward, right foot and then left, toward the Goateed Man.

“Stop there,” said the man.

“No,” said Harold. He stepped forward again. He couldn’t be more than six feet from the man now. The man drew the gun higher, aligning its barrel directly across from Harold’s scalp.

“Take another step and I’ll bloody kill you,” said the man.

“No,” said Harold as he took another small step. “You won’t.” He stepped again. Four feet separated them now. “Because you want the diary. And you know you need me to get it.”

The man gave Harold a strange look.

“You mean that?” he said, glancing ever so quickly to the floor behind Harold’s feet. Harold turned his head, shifting his eyes down to the floor. A few feet behind him, amid a pile of broken glass and poking out from the metal base of the gasogene, sat a two-inch-thick, leather-bound diary.

“I don’t think I need your help anymore to find the diary,” said the man, grinning.

So much for that. Harold had accomplished everything he’d been asked, and then some. He was done now. So much for being just a little bit smarter than everyone else. Being clever had gotten him far, but now it didn’t seem like it would get him any further.

“Not yet,” said Harold. Only now was he truly scared. But it wasn’t the gun that terrified him-it was the thought that the gun would kill him before he could hold the diary in his hands and peel open its dusty pages.

“I wasn’t supposed to kill you,” said the man. “But now I don’t have a bloody choice. I just need the diary, but I can’t have anybody knowing where it came from. And if you’re alive when the Swiss police get here…”

“Fine,” said Harold. “Kill me. I don’t care anymore. But please. Five minutes. Give me five minutes to read the diary. I can read really fast. Really, really fast.”

“Step back and kick the diary toward me.”

“No, please. Three minutes. That’s it. You can’t let it…” Harold was pleading now, begging. He was mere feet away from the diary. He imagined that he could smell its must, that he could taste a century’s grime on the back of his tongue. “You can’t let it end like this. I just need to read it.”

Staring into the man’s eyes, Harold saw something he thought was pity.

“Look,” said the man, “I didn’t sign on to kill nobody. I’d rather not. I’ll make you a deal, all right? You get out of here, and you never tell a word of this, and I say I found my way here on my own. But you need to leave. Now.”

“No,” said Harold. He wanted to explain his desperation, to somehow make clear to this man why he couldn’t walk away. But he couldn’t explain this.

“Are you bloody crazy? Go away. Leave me the book and go.”

Harold wanted to cry, but he didn’t. He tried to speak, but all that came was a soft panting. He looked with wide, begging eyes at the man, and he stepped forward again. If he could not leave here with the diary, then he could not let himself leave here at all.

“Right then,” said the man. “You win.” His finger curled around the trigger. Harold did not close his eyes but held them open. He felt no need to shield himself from this.

“POLIZIA!” came a loud cry from elsewhere in the building. The sound snapped both Harold and the man loose from their diabolical pact. They heard footsteps and the noises of a body shifting around. Harold thought he heard the crunch of broken glass under a boot.