When I returned to the sitting-room, Holmes sat defeated on the sofa. He looked like a small child who had been deprived of his favourite toy. My patience was at an end. I flung a stack of unread newspapers at him.

‘Good God, man!’ I cried. ‘Go through these newspapers. Surely there will be something to inspire you there. See who has been murdered. Check the agony columns. I guarantee you that something will engage that great heaving brain of yours.’

He looked up at me with sad, resigned eyes. ‘It is unlikely, Watson. We have hit the bottom of the barrel. Our last two cases have gone nowhere but into the dung heap of sordid love affairs.’

‘Self-pity does not become you, Holmes. It’s the drugs. Pull yourself together.’ I snatched one of the newspapers off the top of the pile and took it to my usual chair. ‘I will find something if you will not!’

‘What did Chubb’s say about your box?’

‘The same as Mr Boobbyer.’

‘As I expected.’

‘Then why did you suggest them?’

‘A vain wish. I had hoped to avoid the one man I fear that you do, in fact, need.’

‘What do you mean? What man? Give me the name.’

‘You cannot visit him alone.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake, give me his name. You are going nowhere in this state.’

‘He is … a somewhat shifty and malevolent character. In a rather forbidding area of town. No, Watson, out of the question.’

‘Now you have piqued my curiosity. What is he – some kind of criminal?’

Holmes sat up on the settee. A change came over his face as he savoured the idea. It took on the mien of an eager fox. ‘He is a dangerous man with peculiar habits. But if anyone can open your lock, it is he.’

‘Peculiar habits, you say? Pot, kettle, black!’

‘Pot, kettle, black?’

‘An expression from my childhood. You are the pot calling the kettle black. My mother read it somewhere and she used to … never mind.’ But the idea was a good one. Getting him outside and moving could not hurt. ‘Get dressed, Holmes. I want to go there now.’

Just then Mrs Hudson entered with a sandwich and a lemonade for Holmes. She set it down before him. ‘Gentlemen, you will get out of this house or I will have you out on your ears. Mr Holmes, you will eat this first. And drink this. I have run you a bath. And then you will go out with the good doctor while I tidy this rubbish. And I will brook no objections. Get going, young man. Now.’

Mrs Hudson and I stood side by side, staring at the present shipwreck of a human being who never ceased to surprise me with his infinite and extreme variation. To my surprise, Holmes stood up, and without a word did exactly what our landlady had commanded.