Either through mechanical problems or through some deep-seated class resentment of the driver (he’d probably cast his ballot for the incoming Socialists), our train stopped well short of the assigned station. This expression of class solidarity (if that is what it was) became somewhat derailed itself when Holmes summoned many strong men to haul our possessions over the slippery ground, to the puzzlement of the local’s passengers and the huge indignation of those on the Express. Class warfare at its most basic. Holmes did, however, tip the men handsomely.

The instant we had spilled into the waiting train it shuddered and loosed its bonds to steam furiously off for Dover. I understand that mention was even made in the next day’s Times of a puzzling stop in the wilds of Kent for a hasty on-load of essential governmental equipment. Mycroft’s decrees were powerful indeed.

The entire trip to Marseilles carried on as it had begun, rushed and uncomfortable. And dreary—it was on that train that we read of the death of the Reverend Sabine Baring-Gould, an old friend of Holmes’ whose problems on Dartmoor had occupied our early autumn. Then the Channel crossing was rough, so rough that I spent the entire time braving the sleet-slick deck rather than succumb to sea-sickness, reaching Calais with nose, hands, and toes not far from frost-bite. Paris was flooded, its higher ground packed with refugees and their bags, the train crowded and all the first-class sleepers occupied by fleeing residents. We spent Friday with an aged Italian priest and his even more aged and garrulous sister, both of whom exuded clouds of garlic. The rain and snow persisted, slowing the journey so much that I began to doubt that we would actually arrive before the steamer had departed, but in the end, the boat, too, was held (for the train as a whole, not merely for the two of us), and when we reached the docks, our possessions were hastily labelled and carried on, divided between cabin and hold. We scurried up the ice-slick gangway in the company of a handful of other train passengers, slipping almost apologetically onboard the sleeping boat, witnessed only by P. & O. officials and, I thought, one or two other sets of eyes in the higher decks, their presence felt but unseen in the darkness.

Once in our cabin (this, at any rate, had no priest in residence) I crept into bed, praying that exhaustion would take my body into sleep before the pitch and toss of the boat asserted itself. To my relief, such was the case: The steam-roller of the past fifty-four hours rumbled over my recumbent body, and my last memory was of Holmes wrestling open the small port-hole, letting in a wash of frigid air scented with salt, and nary a hint of garlic.