"Good Lord, Holmes," I whispered.

"Hey, I love that! Do that again! That's you all over!" laughed Oswald. "And that part's gonna stay, boy, the big details do. But the rest: one zap with the device and you're anything to anybody. That's my mission. I scout around fiction, zapping people, making them like me: easy to understand, what anyone wants them to be. That's the way my bosses like it, who knows why? Another world to conquer, I guess. I have to pick who I do it to, though. Some of them just won't take. You know, the average man in the street? You can't take the man out of the street, you can't take the street out of the man. But don't worry, Mr. Holmes: you're the centre of this world. Nobody remembers much about this place apart from you. From here, it's you, Watson, Moriarty, and who cares about the rest? We're the lucky ones who get to be all the different versions of ourselves. Every idea of us that anyone's ever come up with. For instance, you'll be stupid while Watson is intelligent �"

"Watson is intelligent."

"Sure, sometimes that's fashionable. Then it's gone again. Sometimes you'll be queer, because being a bachelor is kind of odd."

Holmes' face was a picture.

"You will meet creatures from space, you will be American, Canadian, German, travel through time to meet Sigmund Freud, be two dogs in costume, robots, cartoons, computer doohickeys come to life. You'll always be kind of eccentric �"

"I am not eccentric!"

"Cut off from this world of yours, I'd say you are. A guy in a deer stalker. That's what people remember. That's why we need it. To zap you properly. I love doing this stuff. The guys here love it too, now I've zapped them and set them free."

"We've come out of the rabbit hole," said Alice.

"Why be vun when you can be two, two, or three, three different people?!" laughed the Count, suddenly affable.

"So," summed up Oswald, "we're gonna keep Holmes here until we can get a hold of that hat. Alice, you can go find a milliner tomorrow. But Dr. Watson," he hefted the machine in my direction. "You can join us right now."

I braced myself to move. I swear I would have attacked him, weak as I was. But there came a sudden dislocation of events, as often I have experienced in war. Everything happened at once, that's what writers such as I say at this point. Holmes would point out that that was simply incorrect.

There were shouts, and shots, and explosions, and a sudden ripping noise.

A cavalry saber through fabric.

A carbine was shoved through the gap and fired.

It missed Oswald, who was already firing, his brigands with him.

A horse burst into the tent, its flanks flaring with blood and flesh as the guns that fired too fast blasted it apart. But on its back was a Dragoon, firing back even as he fell, and behind him was another and another.

I have since learnt that they had left barracks and galloped through the streets of Dorking, forming up through shouted orders and the calls of onlookers in windows. There had been a great charge of them, straight at this encampment in the woods, the moonlight off their sabers matching the stark white lights that Oswald's pirates had erected.

I have heard that eight in ten of them were cut down, by devices launched on the perimeter of the camp.

The tent collapsed, and something caught me on the side of the head once more.

I saw Holmes look at me with concern, his face had an expression of decision on it. And then I saw nothing more.

I woke in the Dragoon barracks.

They had surprised Oswald's men enough to force a swift retreat. Their craft had taken them off, but had not been tracked as well by astonished observers as it had in its flight to Dorking.

I knew I had to leave. I took a train to London, having wired ahead to some friends in the major hospitals. When I got there I received word that what I feared was so, that my darling was indeed gone, the victim of two bullets when she tried to prevent them manhandling me out of the window.

I visited her home and saw what was left. And then I knew not what to do. Holmes, I was sure, had left me to save me. He was Oswald's main quarry. Surely, he would attempt to take the brigands somewhere out of the city, where the pursuit would be a contest between them and him and not cost innocent lives?

He might subtly suggest to them a place where he might be found, somewhere featured in my writings, and then turn the tables.

I could not return home, or go to my practice, to places where they would know to find me. I could not stay in the streets I had often described. I was sure, with the inventions they had to hand, that they could find me there too.

So I found my abandoned place of darkness, broke in, and sat to think and, now, to write. And there is where my account fails me, and time catches up with words. I hope that you will read this, old friend. I hope that your place in our world, the necessity of you, will be affirmed by this account, rather than undermined. I fear that I have written of you once again. But I have written of the real Sherlock Holmes, not the chimera that Oswald imagines him to be. I have done my best to make my subjectivity into an object that will survive me. And I have sent it to an audience that I love. I am certain that your battle with these forces will be worthy of you.

I wait to see what, by the grace of God, will save us.

Here the Journal of Dr. John H. Watson ends.