I stepped out onto the terrace. "What is it, Holmes?" I queried. Holmes looked pensive.

* * * * *

Meanwhile, thirty years ago and two continents away…

LUCY: Oh, Jefferson, I love you so.

HOPE: Oh, Lucy, Lucy...

LUCY: But however will we escape the Nazis... er... ahem, I mean the Mormons?

HOPE: Oh, Lucy. Why do you always pull the football from in front of Charlie Brown?

* * * * *

Greenhough Smith whacked me on the back of the head.

"What the Hell is that?!!" he cried.

"It's an old play that Conan Doyle wrote years ago. He keeps trying to get it into print one way or another, so that he can finally make some money off of it."

Greenhough Smith drew a large "X" over each of the fifty seven pages of the flashback.

Trying not to pout at the heavy-handed editing, I continued...

"What is it, Holmes?" I queried.

Holmes looked pensive. "It troubles me, Watson," he finally replied. "It troubles me greatly."

"What do you mean?"

"The account of our case that you showed me last week. I believe you entitled it 'The Accidental Apiarist'. Why in heaven's name did you call it that?"

"I though it sounded fine," I said.

"Yes," he turned dramatically and pointed accusingly at me. "It SOUNDS fine, but it makes no sense!! There were two individuals in that case who could be referred to as 'apiarists' for the purposes of titling, but neither one of them was in any way 'ACCIDENTALLY' an apiarist!! Your titles are almost always quite literal: 'The Sign of Four,' 'The Red-Headed League,' 'A Scandal in Bohemia'. It's as if you titled your recounting of the Milverton affair 'The Bucolic Blackmailer'! Yes it SOUNDS nice, but has nothing to do with the story. The individual was in no way 'bucolic' or 'accidental'!

"Holmes, why are you berating me about this now?"

"It won't do to get sloppy, Watson!!"

"I take your point," I said. "But why did you call me out here?"

Holmes quickly turned on his heels and returned to the room with Motherspaw and Lestrade. "Forget about that for now, Watson. We have a denoument upon us." I followed him, quickly and bewilderedly, back into the room.

Holmes strode direclty up to Colonel Motherspaw and peered intently into his face. The Colonel blinked dumbly back at Holmes. "Colonel," my friend said quietly. "Back in part two, you told us your loved ones were in danger. Do you recall doing so?"

Motherspaw nodded.

"Exellent!" Holmes ejaculated. "Now do you remember how you described the danger at that time?" Holmes continued, as I quietly handed him a handkerchief.

The Colonel quietly cleard his throat. "Yes, I said we were in eminent danger."

"Spell it please," Holmes said, while distracted with cleaning his trousers.

"E-M-I-N-E-N-T."

"Precisely," Holmes smiled as he tried to hand the handkerchief back to me. I simply let it drop to the floor. "Some of you may have thought it was a typo, or poor spelling on the Colonel's part, but he was unconsciously telling us that he knew more than he was saying. He was aware that the threat would come from someone famous or of high office."

"Oh Dear!" Motherspaw declared.

"Ah hah!!" Holmes ejaculated again. He glanced at me, but I shook my head and shrugged my shoulders. Holmes pounced upon the door handle to a closet and pulled it open. Out fell Motherspaw's daughter and two gentlemen dressed in a pantomime moose costume.

Greenhough Smith turned to the next page. It was blank, as were all subsequent pages.

"Where's the end of the story, Watson?" He turned and noticed that he was sitting alone. "Watson?!!"

A junior editor peered into the senior editor's office. "He said he had some work to finish, he'd bring the conclusion with him then."

Greenhough Smith grimaced. "That son of a..."

"Gentlemen, you may relinquish your moose costume!" Holmes stated theatrically. "Lestrade, Watson, may I present the offspring of Colonel Reginald Motherspaw: His daughter, Miss Violet Motherspaw and his sons Reggie Jr. and Turlingdrome Motherspaw."

The two young men climbed out of their costume and looked sheepishly from their father to their sister. They were athletic young lads in their early twenties. That they and their sister shared a deep familial affection was demonstrated by the fact that Violet, whose strikingly womanly figure was outlined by the backlighting, was now helping her brothers clean phosphorous, that had soaked through the moose costume, off of their clothes.

"Good Lord, Holmes," I said. "However did you know?"

"Elementary, my dear Watson!" he replied...

"I never say that," said Holmes, reading proof over Greenhough Smith's shoulder. He picked up a blue pencil and crossed out "my dear Watson". I moved the proofs I was holding further to my left, but Holmes and Greenhough Smith simply switched shoulders.

"Elementary," he replied. "I proposed taking our client to see Gilbert and Sullivan as a distraction, thinking that he might reveal more, given a relaxed and convivial setting. It succeeded beyond my wildest expectations. I realized that he was not the Gilbert and Sullivan fanatic that he pretended to be for the simple reason that when he began singing 'The Major General's song, he omitted the words 'the very model of' from the first line of the song. Go back and read part seven if you don't believe me!" Holmes glared at the rest of us in the room.

"Oh, dad," Reggie Jr. turned to his father. "You never listen to anything but Sousa marches."

"I know, boys. I should not have feigned and enthusiasm that I don't have."

Holmes was tapping his feet and looking at his pocketwatch. "Before the show, the Colonel and I had stopped for dinner at the Khyber Winds restaurant. I dined on Bangers au Patel with the best dahl outside of India."

"Holmes, what is dahl?" I queried. He ignored me.

"On our way from the restaurant, we were accosted by the Bootmakers of Toronto, but finally escaped their clutches and arrived at the theatre. After five minutes of Gilbert and Sullivan," he continued, Colonel Motherspaw was fast asleep. I used this opportunity to slip out of the theatre and investigate a moose that I had noticed following us to the theatre. I had found the perfect spot from which to spy upon the moose, unobserved, when our earlier gustatory exertions betrayed me. A raucously loud bit of flatus escaped from me which alerted the moose to my presence. The moose tripped over itself several times, then fled at top speed. I knew I couldn't catch it at that speed, especially as I was feeling a bit bloated and cramped. Luckily, a cart of Jalapeno peppers had toppled in its path and it ran directly through the pungent vegetables upon its escape."

"So Toby..." I began. Holmes continued talking right over me.

"So I went and procured Toby to take up the chase. He was reluctant to smell the peppers very closely. He seemed unwilling to follow the path. He kept crying out and rubbing his nose with his paws, but finally as I held the peppers against his nose, he started following the path, with only a small trail of blood dripping from his nostrils. Any time he seemed to lose the trail, I pulled some peppers from my pocket to give him another whiff. This became so efficient that I merely had to put my hand in my pocket, and Toby would bay loudly and continue on his way.

"In this way, we tracked the moose back to a phosphorous factory. Toby and I entered and were immediately assalted by a confederate of the moose. We were on a catwalk high above large boiling vats of chemicals and as I struck our assailant, the Jalapeno peppers I had in my hand, were forced into his eyes. He screamed like a banshee, clawed at his eyes and fell into one of the vats. As I peered through the dark factory, I noticed the moose escaping in the distance.

"Toby and I climbed down a ladder to give pursuit. We were startled when the confederate climbed out of the vat, his skin bleached white and his hair greeen. He muttered something about poisoning the water supply of Gothan City and left. As this was no concern of mine, I continued after the moose, with Toby directly behind me. The moose fled further down the corridor between the vats. One of its antlers caught on a lever which began dousing the hallway in phosphorous. Toby and the moose swam through the liquid. I floated serenely upon it using a door as a makeshift raft. The moose led us back to Motherspaw's residence and disappeared. This was all clearly a distraction which allowed the Colonel to hide his daughter, using the pretense that the moose had kidnapped her."

Holmes loudly cleared his throat in reaction to the snoring. Everyone snapped to attention, rubbing their eyes and yawning.

"Now that we have all rested our eyes, I shall continue."

"No you won't," said Lestrade. "Wait until I get back," he said as he ran in search of a water closet.

Lestrade returned, looking much relieved.

Holmes turned to the brothers. "By the way, who was your confederate?"

Turlingdrome Motherspaw squared his shoulders. "His name was Joseph Kerr, a mate of mine from university." I thought I heard a rimshot, but there were no drums or cymbals to be seen in the room.

"Hmmmm. Yes," Holmes responded. "To continue. The case was now becoming quite clear to me. The brothers were sent out of town, to make the path to Motherspaw and the daughter seem clear. Colonel Motherspaw wanted to draw out his opponent but keep his daugher from harm, so he secreted his sons back into the country and concocted the moose kidnapping scene. But why a moose?? Why indeed!

"We must now return to the scene of the Khyber Winds estaraunt. While dining on my bangers with the most exquisite dahl ever..."

"Holmes, what is dahl?"

"I noticed a small volume fall from a waiters pocket onto the ground. Picking it up, I noticed the title 'An Irrational Fear of Moose - the Life and Campaigns of General Phineas "Stoke" Moran'. Surreptitiously glancing through the book, while keeping up a conversation with Motherspaw, I read of an early Indian campaign of his which went disasterously wrong, leaving him and his troops in Canada, in pitched battle with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The mounties won the battle by releasing a herd of rabid moose onto the battlefield. 'Stoke' Moran was never the same again.

"Quickly flipping to the concluding chapters of the book, I noticed that General Moran, became 'Sir Phineas "Stoke" Moran shortly after the publication of 'The Charge of the Light Brigade'. This certainly made him an 'eminent' person in the empire and a dangerous one to any who knew the truth about that debacle. A rising and promising young general finds his career and his mind destroyed by Canadian moose. What wouldn't he do to regain the glory he felt he was owed. Thus he began tracking down and eliminating all who knew the truth.

"It turns out that there were quite a lot of people who knew the truth and Motherspaw was, luckily, near the end of the list. By learning of Moran's motives, I have now cleared up a total of 274 murder cases in 12 countries and 4 continents (one of which is Antarctica). Any questions? There will be a quiz."

"But Holmes," I frowned. "What of the tomfoolery in the kitchen?"

"Ah yes," Holmes smiled. "The Red Herring gang. Their petty intrigues had nothing to do with this case, but I did deduce their scheme. You may pick them up, Lestrade, on your way to arrest 'Stoke' Moran."

"But where is Moran?" Lestrade grumbled.

"Must I do everything?" Holmes shouted. "He usually spends his evenings these days at the Silly Old Buffer Club on Drooling street."

Lestrade left with purpose in his stride. Holmes began tying himself off for a shot of cocaine. Violet Motherspaw and I eloped and spent the next month on a wonderful honeymoon.

General "Stoke" Moran escaped Lestrade's police and fled the country on the ship 'Hand of God'. The ship went down off the Spanish coast after being repeatedly struck by lightning, passing through numerous typhoons, and having its cargo of gun powder and kerosine simultaneously explode and ignite. So perhaps justice was served after all.

THE END -Really!