Fagin ultimately couldn’t escape being carried off.
After bidding farewell to Inspector Lestrade and his men, along with the tightly bound criminals, Arna cleared the carriage from behind the factory.
It was getting late; she needed to get home early to avoid passing out at the reins and waking up the next day at the Baker Street lodgings, having to haggle with Dr. Watson again.
Besides, Mrs. Hudson was among the passengers this time.
Arna stopped the carriage at the main entrance and was about to go upstairs to call Mrs. Hudson when she spotted a figure wrapped in a shawl slowly descending the stairs. She looked tired but also seemed relieved.
“Nancy?” Arna called out. “Have you seen my aunt?”
Nancy nodded.
“She’s already asleep,” she said with a faint smile. “After getting the little ones settled, she started dozing off in the armchair, so I persuaded her to go to bed. When the police were banging around downstairs, she didn’t even turn over.”
Arna blinked.
Given the commotion downstairs had been quite loud.
Guessing what she was thinking, Nancy’s smile widened.
“She said she’d spent years listening to Mr. Holmes play the violin at three in the morning,” she shrugged. “A few policemen are nothing.”
Standing by the front of the carriage, Holmes placed a hand over his chest and gave a theatrical little bow. “I like that line.”
Watson, equally plagued by the noise, snorted.
“Then it’s best to let her rest. People of a certain age need a quieter environment,” he suggested.
Arna thought for a moment and quickly agreed.
“Then we’ll head back first,” she said. “Stay safe.”
Nancy nodded, hesitated, then spoke. “She’s worried about you, you know. Even though she might never say it.”
Arna paused, then offered a smile.
“Yeah,” she said softly, firmly. “Everything’s been resolved. Don’t worry.”
In the apprentices’ dormitory, a blanket was trembling quietly.
Only when Nancy’s footsteps faded away did the Artful Dodger whisper, “Well, he actually did it. A complete victory.”
Gasping and low laughter echoed through the room.
Oliver blinked in astonishment, curled up on his lower bunk.
“I… I thought I was the only one who talked,” he said, quite surprised.
The Dodger snorted.
“Mate, look at the situation now. Probably everyone snitched,” he tapped the headboard. “I bet even old Fagin’s cat would sell him out—if he actually kept one.”
Charley Bates popped up from another corner. “Yeah, I told him too.”
Oliver blinked. “So when I thought I was being sneaky…”
“Wrong. We were all sneaky,” another kid chimed in, giggling. “But who knew he could take down that many people, right?”
She made a face. “Thought old Fagin was gonna hang me.”
A moment of silence followed.
The Dodger tugged at his blanket again. “It’s fine. We can still stay here. Isaacs said we can keep working here.”
He sighed dramatically. “If he turns out worse than Fagin, I’ll steal the first horse I see and move to France.”
Someone knocked on the wall next door, and the kids quickly shut their mouths, dropping the subject. They closed their eyes, their minds buzzing with excitement as they replayed everything from the past few days.
But Arna, whom the kids were thinking about, was still in the carriage.
Running a bit short on time, Arna pulled out all her driving skills and equipped the honorary title just to get home before two in the morning.
She cracked the whip with a kind of manic enthusiasm, and the horse, already familiar with her, responded with equal zeal.
Wind howled past both sides of the carriage. The light was dim, the street scenes dark and blurry, wheels creaking. Watson’s fingers were welded to the frame like they had been on previous rides.
Holmes, however, seemed to find it amusing, spreading his arms to embrace the oncoming wind. After a while, he even pulled out his pocket watch and started timing.
Later, when Arna returned the carriage and horse amid complaints from woken-up employees, and stumbled into the living room with her companions, the time had unknowingly crept to half past one in the morning.
Watson grumbled about “reckless youths,” but his body had already moved to his medical kit, rummaging for bandages and gauze, intending to treat any possible injuries on Arna.
“Any scratch should be treated. You never know where bacteria might contaminate the wound,” he insisted. “Isaacs, come over. I need to check…”
But the clock struck two-five in the morning.
Arna, with a biscuit stuffed in her mouth, was still standing by the fireplace. Hearing the sound, she turned around dazedly, then her eyes closed, her knees bent like a puppet with cut strings, and she collapsed forward.
“Oh—good heavens!” Watson lunged forward and caught her just before her head hit the fireplace.
He expertly pressed two fingers to her pulse and frowned. “Rapid but steady… Pupils normal… Holmes, hand me the medical kit. I need to check more—”
Holmes was already crouched beside Arna, head tilted, carefully observing her.
“Observe his breathing pattern, Watson,” he said, taking hold of her left arm. “Breathing is smooth. No pallor, no shivering.”
He paused, then released the arm. “Not unconscious. He’s asleep.”
It flopped down limply without any twitching.
Watson froze.
“…What?” he said, questioning his sanity.
Holmes let out an amused breath, then bent down in a fluid motion.
His long arm effortlessly slipped under her knees, the other hand supporting her back, and he lifted her up as if merely picking up a carefully stacked pile of books.
Watson blinked, startled. “Holmes, I can—”
“Considering your state of exhaustion, you’d drop him, Doctor,” Holmes said calmly, already striding up the stairs, using his elbow to push open the door. “Besides, given the night’s events, I’d like my biographer to be functional tomorrow.”
Arna’s head lolled against his shoulder, still deeply asleep.
Watson opened his mouth, then closed it again.
He let out a soft breath. “Right. Okay. I… I’ll brew some nerve-soothing tea.”
Upstairs, Holmes carefully placed Arna on the bed, then pulled out the blanket underneath and draped it over her.
Having done this task he had never engaged in before, he turned to go downstairs.
At the doorway, he paused, looking back at the young factory owner still sleeping soundly.
“Rest well, soon-to-be tycoon,” Holmes murmured. “Tomorrow, we’ll discuss why you suddenly fainted.”
The door clicked shut.
The next morning, Arna opened her eyes at exactly six o’clock.
The first thing she saw was darkness.
—No way, did she die yesterday? If she died, where was the respawn point in this game?
And she had worked so hard to develop the factory to its current scale, even applied for a patent!
Damned developer, this was a factory management game, not a survival game. A failure restart shouldn’t be triggered until she went bankrupt!
Indignantly, Arna flailed her arms and legs, kicking at the imaginary villainous developer for a while. The black, unidentified layer got kicked off, and a faint light seeped in.
She then realized a blanket was covering her, like some mysterious shroud blocking out every bit of light.
Arna tried to recall. She only remembered collapsing on time at two o’clock.
…Well, fine. As long as she was alive. And no doctor had asked her for money. She had woken up in bed, so nothing was too bad.
—At times like this, the last thing to do was to ask for details!
What if, after she asked, a bug auto-repaired itself, Watson suddenly remembered this, charged her a consultation fee, and wouldn’t let her leave unless she paid?
Arna got out of bed, cleared a few things from her backpack into a crate on the floor, then grabbed her fishing rod and bucket, ready to go fishing.
Downstairs, Holmes, who had rarely risen early, was already seated in his armchair, tapping his fingers on his knee. A cup of untouched tea was cooling beside him.
“Ah, our soon-to-be tycoon is awake,” he said dryly. “Sleep well?”
Arna frowned and swept back her messy curls. “…Not bad.”
She paused, then kindly extended an invitation. “Want to go fishing?”
Considering that the last time Holmes went fishing with her, her luck had been extraordinarily good—maybe she could get a luck boost!
Holmes smirked. “Tempting offer. However—”
He stood up, grabbing his coat from the hat rack. “I have other things to do today. A more urgent prey.”
Arna glanced at him and stated, “Nothing is more important than fishing.”
She persisted. “Come fishing with me, Holmes?”
“I’m afraid there is,” Holmes said with a wink. “Monks, for example.”
He shrugged on his coat. “Lestrade’s men might be satisfied with Sykes’s confession, but the real culprit would go free. That’s not something I’d like to see.”
Arna raised her hand like a dutiful student. “…Didn’t you tell him about Monks yesterday?”
She was genuinely surprised. “Inspector Lestrade is that forgetful?”
Holmes glanced at her.
“No, to be precise, he thinks it’s just a guess. To be precise, they see a solved case,” he said with a casual wave. “But I see the shadow of inheritance fraud, poisoning an orphan, and a conspiracy. There must be a more interesting story underneath. And waiting for Monks to make another move is too dull.”
He made a dramatic leap over the pile of junk on the floor and issued an invitation. “Coming?”
Arna said firmly, “No.”
She held up her fishing rod. “I’m going fishing. Goodbye.”
Holmes sighed regretfully, turned, and walked toward the door.
One step. Two steps. Three steps.
After silently counting to five, Arna’s voice rang out.
“…Say,” she asked in a thoughtful tone, “that Monks—is he pretty rich?”
If he was loaded, could she get a cut?
Raising kids was expensive! So was running a factory!
If this was a profitable venture—considering that her factory, while appearing not to have much liquid capital, actually didn’t have much liquid capital—Arna was willing to join.
“But this inheritance is likely to be split between two people. One is the orchestrator named Sykes, and the other should be your young employee, Oliver,” Holmes said leisurely. “So you might get some money, but not much.”
He turned back, a mischievous look in his eye. “His mother’s inheritance was probably mostly spent by now.”
Arna’s face fell.
“Alright, alright,” she muttered. “I’m going fishing.”
With that, she clattered out, bucket in hand, heading downstairs to find her carriage.