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charleygirlTitle: Jottings from a Doctor's Journal 15/?
Author: charleygirl
Rating: G
Words: 593
Characters involved: Sherlock Holmes, Doctor Watson
Genre: Friendship, fluff
Disclaimer: These characters, while out of copyright, were created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and do not belong to me.
Summary: A collection of scenes and fragments that are too long to be drabbles and too undisciplined to be 221Bs.
THE PATTER OF TINY FEET
Sherlock Holmes stared at me in disbelief. “Surely you are joking with me, Watson. Can you honestly not hear them?”
I stood in the centre of his bedchamber, listening intently, but had to admit after nearly ten minutes that I could hear nothing at all beyond the ticking of the sitting room clock and the nervous tapping of his fingers on the washstand.
Holmes’s pale face tightened at this revelation. “I cannot understand why. The noise is perfectly clear to me.”
“Are you absolutely certain that you are not imagining it?” I enquired after a moment’s hesitation, apprehensive as to his reaction.
He was absolutely still, fists clenched at his side, mouth a thin line. His whole posture radiated tension. “Well,” he said quietly, “if my closest friend thinks that I am going mad - ”
“I think nothing of the sort, Holmes,” I sighed. “It is merely that these mice you insist are in the wainscoting - ”
“They are in the wainscoting,” he declared with absolute finality. “The matter is beyond debate.”
“Then they are evidently not keen on…alerting me to their presence.”
“They have been alerting me to their presence every night for a week,” Holmes replied. “But, if I cannot convince you then there is little to be gained in continuing this conversation.” He sank down on his bed and waved me away with a flick of the wrist.
Dismissed, I listened again as I left the room, even going so far as to crouch and press my ear to the wall in case I could catch a momentary scratching against the skirting board, but I could still hear nothing. There was no evidence of the noises that had apparently been disturbing my friend’s rest for days on end and I could not shake the disloyal feeling that he had indeed been mistaken.
In truth, Holmes did look tired, the dark circles under his eyes becoming steadily larger each morning. Such was his mercurial nature that he could go without sleep for days at a time when thoroughly engaged on a case, but once his great brain lost its momentum and needed calm and relaxation, doing without his customary night’s rest was more than he could stand. He became even more snappish and irritable than usual, and just lately had taken to staying up till all hours, avoiding his bedroom and the sounds which he insisted were causing the problem.
I could understand how frustrating and distressing it could be when one desperately needed and craved sleep and was continually denied it, but what could I do about mice that I could not hear? The rational side of my brain kept telling me that, as I could make out no signs of their presence, the rodents simply did not exist, but Holmes was adamant that they did and despite my immediate instincts I knew that he was not a man given to strange fancies.
For another two days I prevaricated over what to do. I dared not mention the matter to Mrs Hudson in case she took offence at the suggestion that her house was overrun with vermin. Holmes did not mention the mice to me again, and I naively assumed they had departed for pastures new.
It was only when I was awoken at two o’clock in the morning and descended to find him, wild-eyed and dishevelled, hunched over by the skirting board with a loaded revolver in his hand that I decided it might be time to call in a pest-control professional…
Author: charleygirl
Rating: G
Words: 593
Characters involved: Sherlock Holmes, Doctor Watson
Genre: Friendship, fluff
Disclaimer: These characters, while out of copyright, were created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and do not belong to me.
Summary: A collection of scenes and fragments that are too long to be drabbles and too undisciplined to be 221Bs.
THE PATTER OF TINY FEET
Sherlock Holmes stared at me in disbelief. “Surely you are joking with me, Watson. Can you honestly not hear them?”
I stood in the centre of his bedchamber, listening intently, but had to admit after nearly ten minutes that I could hear nothing at all beyond the ticking of the sitting room clock and the nervous tapping of his fingers on the washstand.
Holmes’s pale face tightened at this revelation. “I cannot understand why. The noise is perfectly clear to me.”
“Are you absolutely certain that you are not imagining it?” I enquired after a moment’s hesitation, apprehensive as to his reaction.
He was absolutely still, fists clenched at his side, mouth a thin line. His whole posture radiated tension. “Well,” he said quietly, “if my closest friend thinks that I am going mad - ”
“I think nothing of the sort, Holmes,” I sighed. “It is merely that these mice you insist are in the wainscoting - ”
“They are in the wainscoting,” he declared with absolute finality. “The matter is beyond debate.”
“Then they are evidently not keen on…alerting me to their presence.”
“They have been alerting me to their presence every night for a week,” Holmes replied. “But, if I cannot convince you then there is little to be gained in continuing this conversation.” He sank down on his bed and waved me away with a flick of the wrist.
Dismissed, I listened again as I left the room, even going so far as to crouch and press my ear to the wall in case I could catch a momentary scratching against the skirting board, but I could still hear nothing. There was no evidence of the noises that had apparently been disturbing my friend’s rest for days on end and I could not shake the disloyal feeling that he had indeed been mistaken.
In truth, Holmes did look tired, the dark circles under his eyes becoming steadily larger each morning. Such was his mercurial nature that he could go without sleep for days at a time when thoroughly engaged on a case, but once his great brain lost its momentum and needed calm and relaxation, doing without his customary night’s rest was more than he could stand. He became even more snappish and irritable than usual, and just lately had taken to staying up till all hours, avoiding his bedroom and the sounds which he insisted were causing the problem.
I could understand how frustrating and distressing it could be when one desperately needed and craved sleep and was continually denied it, but what could I do about mice that I could not hear? The rational side of my brain kept telling me that, as I could make out no signs of their presence, the rodents simply did not exist, but Holmes was adamant that they did and despite my immediate instincts I knew that he was not a man given to strange fancies.
For another two days I prevaricated over what to do. I dared not mention the matter to Mrs Hudson in case she took offence at the suggestion that her house was overrun with vermin. Holmes did not mention the mice to me again, and I naively assumed they had departed for pastures new.
It was only when I was awoken at two o’clock in the morning and descended to find him, wild-eyed and dishevelled, hunched over by the skirting board with a loaded revolver in his hand that I decided it might be time to call in a pest-control professional…
