“I knew him, long ago. We spent the better part of a year in each other’s company.”

“When?”

He smiled to himself. “While I was dead.”

I knew my husband and partner was not referring to some spiritualist experience of a previous lifetime. “When I was dead” was his whimsical term for the period beginning in the spring of 1891, when he disappeared at Switzerland’s Reichenbach Falls, and for three years wandered the globe, returning to London only when a mysterious murder called him back to the land of the living. Knowing that Mycroft had preserved his Baker Street rooms for him during those three years, and knowing what Mycroft was, I had no doubt that at least a portion of that time, Holmes had been about the Queen’s business. Still, I had never heard the details.

I was not to hear them now, either. Holmes had already turned to his brother, and was asking, “How did these come to you?”

“Through the hands of a certain captain who has an interest in both worlds.”

“Not Creighton?”

“The man who currently holds the same position that Creighton did then, fellow by the name of Nesbit.”

“And the story that accompanied them?”

“So tenuous as to be nonexistent. An Afghan trader brings a rumour that a light-skinned native man is being held by a hill raja. Six months later, a camel caravan modifies the story, that the man was being held but took ill and died, asking that these, his last effects, be returned to his people. We did trace the amulet’s arrival to such a caravan, but no man could say who had carried it south, or whence it came.”

Holmes nodded, but said only, “I find it difficult to imagine that particular individual being held against his will.”

I broke in, with a request I did not think unreasonable, particularly as we seemed to be on the edge of being dragged into a case involving Kimball O’Hara. “I’d appreciate a little background information, just a few details about what you were doing when you knew the boy.”

Holmes glanced sideways at his brother, assessing his condition, then suggested, “Perhaps it would be best if we saved the tale for a later time.”

I started to protest, then decided that Mycroft’s colour was indeed not peak, and brought my curiosity under control, allowing them to continue.

Mycroft answered, “As you say, it takes some doing to imagine O’Hara in custody for more than a few days. He was—how did you put it to me? ‘Wily as a mongoose, slippery as a cobra, more deadly than either.’ ”

“If not in custody, then what?”

“The Bear is awakening.”

“‘The Bear,’ ” I said. “You mean Russia? But I thought our relations with them had settled down—don’t we even have a trade agreement now with the Bolsheviks?”