“What is that, Holmes?”
“The length of silk we bought in Aden. I thought to use it as an aide-memoire, to bring back the details of that curious afternoon. The whole affair puzzles me still.”
Recalling the events of Aden was something of a wrench, since so much had taken place in the intervening months—weeks in India tracking down a missing spy and jousting with a mad maharaja, followed by the better part of a month in Japan with all the complexity of events there, interspersed by the dream-plagued weeks at sea. Granted, we had nearly been killed in the Aden bazaar by a balcony falling on our heads, but near-death experiences were no rarity in my life with Holmes. I had in the end dismissed it as a curious series of events that might have had tragic consequences, and fortunately had not. Clearly, Holmes was not of the same mind.
“It had to have been an accident, Holmes,” I objected. “The balcony fell because the bolts were old, not because someone tried to pull it down on our heads.”
“So I tell myself.”
“But yourself will not listen.”
“A lifetime’s habit of self-preservation leaves one disinclined to accept the idea of coincidence.”
“Holmes, one event does not a coincidence make.”
“But two oddities catch at the mind.”
“Two?”
“The fallen balcony, and the ship’s passenger who enquired about us, then disembarked. In Aden.”