My own complete happiness, and the
home-centred interests which rise up around the man who first finds himself
master of his own establishment, were sufficient to absorb all my attention ; while Holmes, who loathed every form of society with his whole Bohemian
soul, remained in our lodgings in Baker Street, buried among his old books, and
alternating from week to week between cocaine and ambition, the drowsiness of the drug, and the fierce energy of his
own keen nature. He was still, as ever,
deeply attracted by the study of crime, and occupied his immense faculties and
extraordinary powers of observation in following out those clues, and clearing
up those mysteries, which had been abandoned as hopeless by the official
police. From time to time I heard some vague account of his doings : of his summons
to Odessa in the case of the Trepoff murder, of his clearing up of the
singular tragedy of the Atkinson brothers at Trincomalee, and finally of the
mission which he had accomplished so delicately and successfully for the
reigning, family of Holland. Beyond these signs of his activity, however, which
I merely shared with all the readers of the daily press, I knew little of my
former friend and companion. One night-it was on the 20th of March, 1888-1 was
returning from a journey to a patient (for I had now returned to civil
practice), when my way led me through Baker Street. As I passed the well-remembered
door, which must always be associated in my mind with my wooing, and with the dark incidents of the Study in
Scarlet, I was seized with a keen desire to see Holmes again, and to know how
he was employing his extraordinary pokers. His rooms were brilliantly lit, and,
even as I looked up, I saw his tall, spare
figure pass twice in a dark silhouette against the blind. He was pacing
the room swiftly, eagerly, with his head
sunk upon his chest and his hands clasped behind him. To me, who knew his every
mood and habit, his attitude and manner told their own story. He was at work
again. He had arisen out of his drug-created dreams, and was hot upon the scent of some new problem. I rang
the bell, and was shown up to the chamber which had formerly been in part my
own. His manner was not effusive.