My Dear Watson Read Online Free PDF

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    So it was not only Watson who was caught up in something he had never experienced before; Sherlock Holmes too was out of his depth. There was something about Watson that was singularly and subtly irresistible. Living so close, they were both able to appreciate each other in a way that was wholly unique. Holmes gave in to temptation, and started something that he had no control over.
     

1883: The Speckled Band
     
    They were sweethearts for a while. Clear into August of 1882 they were still courting in a way, still tiptoeing to hide their own bad habits, still tolerant of one another’s. Holmes especially still had unplumbed depths; black secrets, dangerous habits, and a disturbing resemblance to the now-infamous Professor Moriarty that would not reveal itself to Watson for years.
    When you know the whole story, there is an interesting shadow at the introduction of The Adventure of the Cardboard Box (which will be largely passed over for my purposes), in Watson’s line describing Holmes like a spider at the center of London’s criminal web: “He loved to lie in the very centre of five millions of people, with his filaments stretching out and running through them, responsive to every little rumour or suspicion of unsolved crime.” How like the description that Holmes will later give of the Professor: “He sits motionless, like a spider in the centre of its web, but that web has a thousand radiations, and he knows well every quiver of each of them.”
    The problem with someone as smart as Holmes is that he will always be underutilized if he is put to an average man’s work. Holmes recognized this himself and invented his own trade, but in all due fairness: so did Moriarty. It is hard to function so extraordinarily and function within the law, because the laws were made for ordinary people. Though Holmes made his choice early on to obey society’s rules, and to help prop them up, even he cannot abide them all the time. They hinder his full reach, and Holmes has batted a few laws to the side himself in his pursuit of the greater good. Moriarty was a Nietzschean man as well, above the law just like Holmes, though not necessarily immune to it.
    But this case was a long time before those dark days of Moriarty, and Holmes was being a bit of a darling, curled up on the couch in the summer heat, reading Watson’s thoughts on his face. It was a careful way of letting Watson know that he was being studied just as thoroughly, that Watson was not the only one taking notes. Watson was amazed: “Do you mean to say that you read my stream of thoughts from my features?”
    Holmes smiled at him and said, “Your features, and especially your eyes.” That sort of acute attention from Holmes was valuable because it was so rare; most days you had to murder someone just to get him to look up.
    I should say here again that I don’t know everything, and I’m not sure at all about what more happened during the honeymoon year of 1882. I think Watson has kept his most tender memories to himself; most of what he’s told me were of the hard times, the years when Holmes became erratic, the periods Watson had to leave him in the interest of taking care of himself. But I do know that after 1882 they were a solid unit, true domestic partners. They went about together as a matter of course.
    They were certainly on rather easy personal terms in 1883 during The Adventure of the Speckled Band ; you can see it plainly enough in Watson’s report of the case. It begins with Holmes bursting into his room to knock him up early, which indicates a level of comfort and access that Watson didn’t think to hide from the public. And then if you watch closely, the way Watson tells it, Holmes lingers in the room while Watson dresses, and they go down together to greet the distressed Helen Stoner. Holmes introduces Watson as “my intimate friend and associate” in his smirking, insufferable way. She was in no state to appreciate his loaded hint,