The Strange Return of Sherlock Holmes Read Free

burning!’
    â€˜Oh, no!’ cried Coombes. ‘I forgot.’
    He leapt to his feet and, in several jerky steps, rushed into the kitchen while we followed close behind. He hurried to the stove where several sheets of paper in a flat pan had burst into flames. He removed the pan and set it in the sink, and black ash floated upward towards the ceiling.
    Ffoulkes was leaning in the doorway with his hands in his pockets and a grin on his face. ‘So that’s what you do with your wheelbarrows full of books,’ he said. ‘You slice them up and burn them on the stove?’ Ffoulkes nodded towards the kitchen table where a book and a knife lay. The book had been torn apart.
    â€˜Oh, a little hobby of mine,’ said Coombes. ‘It is possible to learn a great deal more from books than what is printed in them. I’m just carrying that notion to its logical conclusion. I’m trying to develop a process to determine scientifically who has owned, or handled, any book in the world.’
    â€˜And what,’ said Ffoulkes, ‘could be the point in doing that – even if it could be done?’
    â€˜Why, good Heavens!’ cried Coombes. ‘Had a test to prove who has handled a particular book or document been invented long ago, thousands of criminals now walking free would instead be paying the penalty for their crimes – criminals of every sort, from murderers to white-collar swindlers.’
    â€˜Do you have a theory how such a test might be constructed?’ I asked.
    â€˜Several,’ said he. ‘They depend on identifying actual or reconstitutable samples of DNA found in the oils that the fingers leave on the pages of the book, or in flecks of skin that inevitably rub off when one is turning pages.’
    â€˜Sounds far-fetched,’ said Ffoulkes, lazily. ‘But good luck.’
    â€˜Oh, no, Mr Ffoulkes! A hundred years ago it would have been far-fetched. Today it is almost inevitable.’
    â€˜Really?’ Ffoulkes smiled.
    Coombes wiped his blackened hands on a towel and darted away into the sitting room with amazing speed, and then he vanished into a bedroom off the front hall. He returned with a book in his hands. ‘I imagine you have read this book? The Double Helix by James D. Watson. I knew a man named Watson once. No relation, I’m sure. There has been a biological revolution, gentlemen, that astonishes me. They are cloning animals. They have created rat hearts using cells of baby rats. They have created mature human embryos from adult skin cells. I am sure you know all this.’
    â€˜Yes, yes, it is all very amazing,’ said Ffoulkes. ‘But on a more practical note, what sort of place is this holiday cottage you have found?’
    â€˜Quite right, quite right,’ apologized Coombes. ‘I get too excited when my favourite topics are in the air. The cottage has two bedrooms, a sitting room, kitchen, bathroom, patio, and a nice view of the hills. That’s about all I can say. I think you will like it, Mr Wilson. The main thing is, will you like me? Perhaps I should enumerate my worst traits.’
    â€˜I don’t think that is necessary,’ I said, laughing.
    But Coombes was determined to tell me his faults. ‘I’m moody,’ he said. ‘I’m alternately in a state of furious energy and then in a state of reverie and passivity, a dreamlike state. What we used to call “a brown study”.’
    â€˜What do you do in your furious state?’ I asked.
    â€˜Walk the floor, dart away to solve problems, talk too much. I have learnt my behaviour can be disconcerting to those who are used to regularity and steady habits.’
    â€˜I do need peace. My nerves are easily jangled. Are you ever loud?’
    â€˜I am loud only when I play the violin,’ said he. ‘And I haven’t played a violin since . . . well, I haven’t played one for a long time. But I intend to