‘Ah, mon Dieu!’ said Janvier with an embarrassed laugh. ‘How could I have forgotten! We moved our laboratory to larger quarters in another building only yesterday. I was so engrossed in my story that it completely escaped my mind. We must go to another building!’ He strode through the laboratory to the other end. ‘Follow me, please. It is a shorter way out.’
‘You were about to mention the second curious thing, Dr Janvier?’ said Holmes.
Janvier unlocked a door at the other end of the deserted lab and we entered a small decoratively tiled antechamber where a set of double doors led outside. They, too, were locked. He withdrew another set of keys from his pocket and began to unlock them. As he flung the double doors open wide the brilliant sunlight blinded us momentarily. He turned, silhouetted in the bright rectangle.
‘Ah, yes. The last one was in rhyme,’ said he.
But before this fact could yield further thought, there was a sudden deafening roar and the sound of splintering glass. The entryway in which we were standing blew outwards into rubble. In a kind of slow motion the air turned a solid white and I felt myself propelled forwards through the air like a rag doll.
We were buried in an avalanche of bricks, mortar, plaster and dust. I was conscious only of white everywhere and a single thought: Janvier was wrong. And then blackness.
‘If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs …’
—Rudyard Kipling
Was I dead?
Wiping my eyes, I blinked out the dust, and rolled over onto my side. I opened my eyes to see the octagonal red tiles of the hallway in which I lay. Not Afghanistan. Not the battlefield. Montpellier.
I felt a sudden stab in my bicep, and sitting up, I noticed a long shard of glass was embedded in my sleeve. Light streamed in from above and I looked up, noticing a shattered clerestory window.
France. Janvier’s lab. An explosion.
I lurched to my feet, head clearing.
Janvier, who had been before us, had received a small cut over his eye. But he now stood, apparently otherwise unharmed, though a bit stunned. He vigorously brushed the dust from his own clothing.
‘Your forehead,’ I said. ‘It is bleeding.’
‘Thank you, Doctor,’ said he. He drew out a handkerchief and pressed it to his cut forehead. ‘I am all right,’ he said. ‘And you, Dr Watson? You look as though you had seen a ghost.’
I gently extracted the piece of glass. No large patch of blood; it was merely a scratch. ‘I am fine.’ I turned to look for Holmes. I could not see him, but nearby a wall had collapsed. My heart began to race. He had been right behind me. Had he made it through the door?
‘Holmes?’ I cried moving towards a mound of rubble, terrified at what I might find there.
‘Look!’ shouted Janvier. ‘He has gone back inside!’ The Frenchman pointed behind us into the damaged laboratory, where in the heavy layer of dust I saw a disturbed area where Holmes had fallen, and then footprints heading directly back inside towards the site of the explosion.
‘Holmes!’ I shouted again, peering into the room. I started after him.
‘Careful!’ Janvier cried. ‘There could be a second bomb!’
But I was already halfway across the room. Nearer the site of the explosion white dust filled the air.
I paused, now enveloped in a miasma of white and having lost view of the footprints, which vanished below me into the floating cloud. I squinted and bent down, trying to locate them. After some moments, I finally found them and proceeded slowly forward into the impenetrable whiteness.
A ghostly apparition, covered from head to foot in plaster, emerged from the fog. It was Holmes. In his hand he held something wrapped in a handkerchief. I heaved a sigh of relief.
‘All is well, Watson,’ said he.
‘Thank God. Did you find anything?’ I asked.
He nodded as Janvier came up behind me. The Frenchman fanned the air and coughed. ‘Outside, gentlemen, please!’
We made our way out of the building, and across a courtyard I could see a crowd of people gathering and pointing. I heard whistles and shouts and the clanging bells of the French police growing nearer.
‘Tell me what you found, Mr Holmes?’ urged Janvier.
‘Whoever did this has made his escape,’ said the detective. ‘However the explosion is a large one at the back of that room near the sinks. Dynamite. A second stick had been lit but I found it and managed to stop it before it ignited.’ He held up the offending item, and then placed it in his pocket.
‘You are mad, Holmes,’ said I. ‘You could have been blown to pieces.’
He smiled and shrugged.
I looked back at the swirling dust. ‘We should check for injured people!’
‘I did. There was no one.’
Janvier placed a hand on my arm. ‘No one was there. As I said, our work was transferred yesterday to a larger building. And everyone is eating their lunch.’
‘But you are different, Dr Janvier. Do you not occasionally work during lunch?’ asked Holmes.
‘True. Perhaps it is the American influence.’
‘But to the point. The timing of this – might you have been the direct target?’ asked Holmes.
Janvier paused. He and Holmes stared at each other intently for a moment. I had the impression that both were sifting the information and perhaps coming to some kind of joint conclusion.
‘Not likely,’ said Janvier. ‘The mistaken laboratory. The timing of the detonation.’
‘I concur. A message. Not intended to kill,’ agreed Holmes. ‘But dangerous nonetheless.’ He withdrew the stick of dynamite from his pocket, using his handkerchief to do so. It was a few inches long, wrapped in brown paper with a label. The fuse was blackened. ‘Made by Nobel, in Scotland. The best for the task that can be found anywhere. You are very lucky, even so.’
It was exactly like the dynamite that Isla McLaren had so casually displayed at 221B.
‘Holmes! That is the same—’
‘I know,’ said Holmes. He turned to Janvier. ‘The letters threatened you to stop or your work would “go up in smoke”, I believe you said.’
The scientist looked down at the