(He unfolds the envelope and looks at the front of it. Printed in the bottom right hand corner is:
NATIONAL ANTIQUITIES MUSEUM
SHERLOCK (croakily): Maybe we could start with this. (He walks out, closing the door behind him, and heads off down the road, John following him.) JOHN: You’ve gone all croaky. Are you getting a cold? SHERLOCK (coughing): I’m fine.
NATIONAL ANTIQUITIES MUSEUM. Sherlock is pacing around a display area while he interviews Andy. SHERLOCK: When was the last time that you saw her? ANDY: Three days ago, um, here at the museum. (Sherlock focuses briefly on a glass case showing some of the clay teapots. Most of them are dull but one is shiny.) ANDY: This morning they told me she’d resigned just like that. (Sherlock looks at another case containing some jade figurines, and then at a piece of artwork.) ANDY: Just left her work unfinished. SHERLOCK (turning to him): What was the last thing that she did on her final afternoon?
Andy has brought the boys to the basement archive, and now turns on the lights as he leads them in. ANDY: She does this demonstration for the tourists – a-a tea ceremony. So she would have packed up her things and just put them in here. (He leads them to the open stack and starts turning a handle at the end to widen the gap. John goes to stand behind him and looks into the stack but Sherlock has noticed something more interesting in the shadows further along the room. He walks closer to it. On a stand is a life-sized sculpture of a nude woman ... and yellow paint has been spray painted across the front of it. An almost horizontal straight line goes across the eyes, and over the body has been sprayed the open upside down eight with the almost horizontal line above it. Andy and John turn and see what he has found.)
Outside the museum, night has fallen as Sherlock and John come out. SHERLOCK: We have to get to Soo Lin Yao. JOHN: If she’s still alive. RAZ: Sherlock! (The boys turn as Raz runs over to join them.) JOHN: Oh, look who it is. RAZ (to Sherlock): Found something you’ll like. (He trots off and Sherlock immediately follows. John heads off after them a little more slowly.)
Shortly afterwards the three of them are walking across Hungerford Bridge, heading towards the south side of the river. JOHN: Tuesday morning, all you’ve gotta do is turn up and say the bag was yours. SHERLOCK: Forget about your court date. (They continue onwards, unaware that the Chinese woman with the dark sunglasses is watching them.)
SOUTH BANK SKATE PARK. Raz leads the other two across the under-croft. A boy has just done some kind of clever jump on his pushbike. GIRL: Dude, that was rad! SHERLOCK: If you want to hide a tree, then a forest is the best place to do it, wouldn’t you say? People would just walk straight past, not knowing, unable to decipher the message. (Raz points to a particular area on the heavily-graffitied walls.) RAZ: There. I spotted it earlier. (Amongst all the other paint there are slashes of the yellow paint forming Chinese symbols. Some of them are already partially painted over by other artists’ tags and pictures.) SHERLOCK: They have been in here. (To Raz) And that’s the exact same paint? RAZ: Yeah. SHERLOCK: John, if we’re going to decipher this code, we’re gonna need to look for more evidence.
The two of them split up and begin searching. Sherlock walks along the end of a railway line and finds an abandoned spray can on the tracks. Squatting down to pick it up, he puts the end of his flashlight into his mouth and runs a thumb over the yellow paint on the nozzle, then sniffs the nozzle [anything for a quick fix, eh, Sherlock?!]. John walks through an underpass, looking closely at the graffiti and posters on the walls as he goes. Sherlock is now walking past a wall which has many posters glued to it. One of the posters attracts his attention and he tears off the bottom corner of it and takes it with him as he continues onwards. John is now out on the railway lines. His flashlight picks out splashes of yellow paint on the sleepers and on the rails, then he raises his light to a brick wall, possibly the wall of a maintenance shed, which is about fifteen feet wide. He steps back, his mouth open in surprise as he begins to realise that the entire wall is covered with large yellow Chinese symbols.
Later he has finally tracked down Sherlock who is currently looking at the side of a parked rail freight container. JOHN (trotting towards him): Answer your phone! I’ve been calling you! I’ve found it. (He turns around again and the two of them run off into the night side by side, Sherlock’s coat billowing behind him. Your transcriber struggles to resist the urge to sing the Batman theme tune.)
Back at the wall, John leads Sherlock towards it, but his mouth drops open in surprise again, this time for a different reason. The entire wall is now blank. JOHN: It’s been painted over! (Sherlock shines his flashlight around the area as John continues to stare at the wall in disbelief.) JOHN: I don’t understand. It-it was here ... (he stumbles backwards) ... ten minutes ago. I saw it. A whole load of graffiti! SHERLOCK: Somebody doesn’t want me to see it. (He turns and grabs the sides of John’s head in both hands.) JOHN: Hey, Sherlock, what are you doing ...? SHERLOCK: Shh, John, concentrate. I need you to concentrate. Close your eyes. JOHN: No, what? Why? Why? (Sherlock lowers his hands to hold John by the upper arms.) JOHN: What are you doing?! [Protesting too much is what you’re doing, John, honey. Just KISS HIM!] (Sherlock starts to spin them slowly around on the spot, staring intensely into John’s eyes.) SHERLOCK: I need you to maximise your visual memory. Try to picture what you saw. Can you picture it? JOHN: Yeah. SHERLOCK: Can you remember it? JOHN: Yes, definitely. SHERLOCK: Can you remember the pattern? JOHN: Yes! SHERLOCK: How much can you remember it? JOHN: Well, don’t worry ... SHERLOCK (still spinning them): Because the average human memory on visual matters is only sixty-two percent accurate. JOHN: Yeah, well, don’t worry – I remember all of it. SHERLOCK (disbelievingly): Really? JOHN: Yeah, well at least I would ... (he pulls himself free) ... if I can get to my pockets! (He rummages in his jacket pocket.) JOHN: I took a photograph. (He takes out his phone and pulls up a flash photo he has taken of the wall which shows all the symbols clearly. He gives the phone to Sherlock, who takes it and looks embarrassed as John sighs and turns away.) [And would someone like to explain to me why the baddies bothered painting the wall? If they saw John find the wall, they must have seen him take the photo, so why paint over the symbols? Anyway, onwards ...]
221B. The photograph has been blown up into small sections and then printed out and all the pictures are stuck on the mirror. The numerical value of each symbol has been written against it. Sherlock is standing at the fireplace looking at the pictures closely and has spotted a pattern. SHERLOCK: Always in pairs, John. (John is sitting at the dining table with his back to the fireplace and his head propped in his hands. Sherlock’s voice wakes him up. He blinks and turns his head, squinting round at his friend.) JOHN: Hmm? SHERLOCK: Numbers come with partners. JOHN (gazing around the flat blankly): God, I need to sleep. SHERLOCK: Why did he paint it so near the tracks? JOHN (tiredly): No idea. SHERLOCK: Thousands of people pass by there every day. JOHN (propping his head in his hand again): Just twenty minutes. SHERLOCK (realising something): Of course. (He’s looking at a photo of the full wall, and now smiles triumphantly.) SHERLOCK: Of course! He wants information. He’s trying to communicate with his people in the underworld. Whatever was stolen, he wants it back. (He runs his finger over the symbols.) SHERLOCK: Somewhere here in the code. (He pulls three photographs off the wall and turns towards the door.) SHERLOCK: We can’t crack this without Soo Lin Yao. JOHN: Oh, good(!) (Tiredly, he gets up to follow.)
NATIONAL ANTIQUITIES MUSEUM. The boys are back with Andy in the same display room they met him in earlier. SHERLOCK: Two men who travelled back from China were murdered, and their killer left them messages in the Hangzhou numerals. JOHN: Soo Lin Yao’s in danger. Now, that cipher – it was just the same pattern as the others. He means to kill her as well. ANDY: Look, I’ve tried everywhere: um, friends, colleagues. I-I don’t know where she’s gone. I mean, she could be a thousand miles away. (Sherlock has turned his head away in exasperation, but now his gaze focuses on the nearby glass case displaying the teapots.) JOHN: What are you looking at? SHERLOCK (pointing at the case as he walks towards it): Tell me more about those teapots. ANDY: Th-the pots were her obsession. Um, they need urgent work. If-if they dry out, then the clay can start to crumble. Apparently you have to just keep making tea in them. (Sherlock bends down to look more closely at the shelf.) SHERLOCK: Yesterday, only one of those pots was shining. Now there are two.
Later, elsewhere in the museum, fingers reach through the gaps in a large grating at the bottom of a wall and carefully push the grating outwards. Moments after that, a shadow moves across the dimly lit display room, and a hand reaches into the glass case to take out one of the not-shiny teapots. The shadow moves away again. Not long afterwards, Soo Lin is in an almost-dark restoration room, pouring tea into the teapot on the desk in front of her. She picks up the lid and carefully strokes it around the rim as, behind her, a very recognisable curly-headed silhouette appears on the other side of a window in the door. Unaware of this, she picks up the teapot and pours some of the liquid into a pair of cups. Pouring more of the tea into the tray on which the cups are standing, she swills the teapot around to cover the outside with the drips. A figure steps up beside her. SHERLOCK: Fancy a biscuit with that? (Before he finishes the sentence she gasps in fright and turns towards him, the teapot dropping from her terrified fingers. Sherlock reacts instantly and bends his knees to reach down and catch the teapot before it hits the floor. He looks up at her.) SHERLOCK: Centuries old. Don’t wanna break that. (He slowly straightens up and hands the teapot back to her. As she takes it, he reaches out and flicks a switch on the desk, turning on the lights underneath the surface. He smiles slightly at her.) SHERLOCK: Hello.
John has now arrived and he and Soo Lin sit on stools on opposite sides of the table. Sherlock stands at the end of the table. SOO LIN: You saw the cipher. Then you know he is coming for me. SHERLOCK: You’ve been clever to avoid him so far. SOO LIN: I had to finish ... to finish this work. It’s only a matter of time. I know he will find me. SHERLOCK: Who is he? Have you met him before? SOO LIN (nodding): When I was a girl, living back in China. I recognise his ... ‘signature.’ SHERLOCK: The cipher. SOO LIN: Only he would do this. Zhi Zhu. JOHN: Zhi Zhu? SHERLOCK: The Spider. (Putting her right foot up on her opposite knee, Soo Lin unlaces her shoe and takes it off. On the underside of her heel is a black tattoo of a lotus flower inside a circle.) SOO LIN: You know this mark? SHERLOCK: Yes. It’s the mark of a Tong. JOHN: Hmm? SHERLOCK: Ancient crime syndicate based in China. (John nods his understanding and turns back to Soo Lin.) SOO LIN: Every foot soldier bears the mark; everyone who hauls for them. JOHN: “Hauls”? (She looks up at him. His eyes widen.) JOHN: Y-you mean you were a smuggler? (She lowers her gaze and puts her shoe back on.) SOO LIN: I was fifteen. My parents were dead. I had no livelihood; no way of surviving day to day except to work for the bosses. SHERLOCK: Who are they? SOO LIN: They are called the Black Lotus. By the time I was sixteen, I was taking thousands of pounds’ worth of drugs across the border into Hong Kong. But I managed to leave that life behind me. I came to England. (She smiles a little.) SOO LIN: They gave me a job here. Everything was good; a new life. SHERLOCK: Then he came looking for you. SOO LIN: Yes. (Upset, she swallows before continuing tearfully.) SOO LIN: I had hoped after five years maybe they would have forgotten me, but they never really let you leave. A small community like ours – they are never very far away. (She wipes tears from her face.) SOO LIN: He came to my flat. He asked me to help him to track down something that was stolen. JOHN: And you’ve no idea what it was? SOO LIN: I refused to help. JOHN (leaning forward): So you knew him well when you were living back in China? (She nods.) SOO LIN: Oh yes. (She looks up at Sherlock.) SOO LIN: He’s my brother. (Elsewhere, the hands of what is presumably a woman wearing black nail varnish open a box and fold back the tissue paper covering the contents. The box contains sheets of black paper. The hands take out the top sheet and lay it on the table.) SOO LIN: Two orphans. We had no choice. We could work for the Black Lotus, or starve on the streets like beggars. (The hands have folded the sheet of paper a few times, pressing down to set the folds, and now open the sheet out flat again. They fold one of the corners up, then turn the paper around to start folding up the opposite corner.) SOO LIN: My brother has become their puppet, in the power of the one they call Shan – the Black Lotus general. (The hands continue folding the paper.) SOO LIN: I turned my brother away. He said I had betrayed him. Next day I came to work and the cipher was waiting. (The hands have nearly completed their work and the paper is now folded into an intricate shape.) (In the museum, Sherlock lays the photographs on the table.) SHERLOCK: Can you decipher these? (Soo Lin leans forward and points to the mark beside Sir William’s portrait.) SOO LIN: These are numbers. SHERLOCK: Yes, I know. SOO LIN (pointing to another photograph): Here: the line across the man’s eyes – it’s the Chinese number one. SHERLOCK (pointing to the first photo): And this one is fifteen. But what’s the code? SOO LIN: All the smugglers know it. It’s based upon a book ... (Just then almost all the lights go out. Soo Lin looks up in dread. Sherlock straightens up and looks around sharply.) SOO LIN (softly, her face full of terror): He’s here. Zhi Zhu. He has found me. (And Sherlock’s off, racing across the room. John calls to him softly but urgently.) JOHN: Sh-Sherlock. Sherlock, wait! (Sherlock charges out of the room. John turns to Soo Lin and grabs her hand.) JOHN: Come here. (He pulls her across the room towards another room, or possibly a cupboard – it’s not clear which.) JOHN: Get in. Get in! (Sherlock races across a large open foyer with a staircase at each end and a balcony surrounding the floor above. He stops in the middle of the foyer and looks around. From his right, a figure runs across the balcony and fires a pistol at him. Sherlock turns and runs in the opposite direction, flinging himself to the floor and sliding along it to take shelter behind a statue on a low plinth. The figure fires a couple more times as Sherlock scrambles behind the plinth. In the restoration room, John looks up at the sound of gunfire, then turns to Soo Lin.) JOHN: I have to go and help. Bolt the door after me. (He hurries off. Soo Lin’s face fills with dread. John makes his way cautiously out into the foyer, then ducks and runs for cover as more gunshots ring out. The figure runs back across the balcony and disappears from view. Sherlock comes out from behind the plinth and hares across the foyer and up the stairs. John peers out from behind a column at the other end of the foyer as Sherlock reaches the top of the stairs and tears around the corner. He pelts into another display room and the gunman runs out of cover behind him and fires towards him again. Sherlock ducks behind a display cabinet displaying some ancient skulls as the figure fires again.) SHERLOCK (calling out): Careful! (The gunman fires again.) SHERLOCK (calling out): Some of those skulls are over two hundred thousand years old! Have a bit of respect! (He pauses for a couple of seconds, breathing heavily. There are no more gunshots.) SHERLOCK: Thank you(!) (There’s no more sound from the gunman. After a moment Sherlock frowns, then carefully peers through the glass of the case.) (In the restoration room, Soo Lin looks up anxiously. [A drum beat begins to sound. Again, I’m not sure whether she actually hears this or if it’s dramatic background music, but she closes her eyes in despair at the same moment. Upstairs, Sherlock also looks around as if he can hear the drumming and on the landing, John looks around too. As the drumming stops,] Soo Lin takes a shaky breath and slowly begins to crawl out of her hiding place. On the desk, paperwork is fluttering in a slight breeze. Soo Lin crawls to the edge of the table and peers over the top of it before slowly standing up. Behind her, a Chinese man a little older than her silently walks up and stops just behind her, staring at her intently. As if sensing him, she turns slowly around, and then gazes at him with affection when she recognises him. She softly greets him by name.) SOO LIN: 亮 [Liang.] (She hesitates for a moment.) SOO LIN: 大哥 [Big brother.] (She reaches out and cups his face with her hand.) SOO LIN: 请你 [Please ...] (As John continues to search for his friend, a single gunshot rings out in the distance. He turns towards the sound, his face filling with appalled horror when he realises where the shot has come from.) JOHN: Oh my God. (He races back to the stairs and runs down them, across the foyer and back to the restoration room. Entering the room, he slows down and looks around cautiously for any sign of the gunman. Carefully making his way across the room, he stops and then groans in despair and guilt at the sight which greets him. Soo Lin lies dead on the table, her outstretched arm revealing a black origami lotus flower in her upturned hand.)
NEW SCOTLAND YARD. John and Sherlock are standing a short distance away from Dimmock who has his back to them and is rummaging through paperwork on a desk as if trying to ignore them. JOHN: How many murders is it gonna take before you start believing that this maniac’s out there? (Dimmock turns and walks in between them, heading for another desk. John turns round and follows him.) JOHN: A young girl was gunned down tonight. That’s three victims in three days. You’re supposed to be finding him. (Sherlock walks across in front of John to get closer to Dimmock. John steps back and walks a few paces away in exasperation.) SHERLOCK: Brian Lukis and Eddie Van Coon were working for a gang of international smugglers – a gang called the Black Lotus operating here in London right under your nose. (He has leaned closer to Dimmock to emphasise his last point. Dimmock finally looks round to him.) DIMMOCK: Can you prove that? (Sherlock straightens up thoughtfully.)
ST BARTHOLOMEW’S HOSPITAL. In the canteen, mortician Molly Hooper is looking at the choices in the self-service display. SHERLOCK: What are you thinking: pork or the pasta? (She turns in surprise at his voice beside her.) MOLLY: Oh, it’s you! SHERLOCK: This place is never going to trouble Egon Ronay, is it? (He smiles at her, then nods to the display.) SHERLOCK: I’d stick with the pasta. Don’t wanna be doing roast pork – not if you’re slicing up cadavers. (Again he smiles at her. She grins nervously.) MOLLY: What are you having? SHERLOCK: Don’t eat when I’m working. Digesting slows me down. MOLLY: So you’re working here tonight? SHERLOCK: Need to examine some bodies. MOLLY: “Some”? SHERLOCK: Eddie Van Coon and Brian Lukis. MOLLY (looking at the clipboard she’s holding): They’re on my list. (Sherlock turns puppy-dog eyes on her.) SHERLOCK: Could you wheel them out again for me? MOLLY (apologetically): Well ... the paperwork’s already gone through. (Sherlock lifts his eyes a little as if noticing something, and points at her hair.) SHERLOCK: You’ve ... changed your hair. MOLLY (nervously): What? SHERLOCK: The-the style: it’s usually parted in the middle. MOLLY: Yes, well ... SHERLOCK: Mmm, it’s good; it, um, suits you better this way. (Once again he wheels out the smile. She returns it, looking both flattered and flustered, then turns away to the display, smiling nervously. Instantly Sherlock’s smile drops and he looks impatiently at his watch.)
MORGUE. Later, two body bags are lying on adjacent tables. Molly, wearing latex gloves, unzips the top of one of the bags and pulls the sides apart to reveal the face of Brian Lukis. Sherlock leads Dimmock into the room. SHERLOCK: We’re just interested in the feet. MOLLY (frowning): The feet? SHERLOCK: Yes. D’you mind if we have a look at them? (Smiling at her, he leads Dimmock to the other end of the body bag. Molly follows him and unzips the bag at that end, pulling the sides back to reveal the bottom of Lukis’ feet. On the bottom of the right heel is a tattoo identical to the one which Soo Lin showed the boys earlier. Sherlock straightens up, a smug expression on his face, and walks over to the other table.) SHERLOCK: Now Van Coon. (Molly and Dimmock follow him to the second table and she unzips the other body bag. Van Coon has an identical tattoo on his right heel. Dimmock sighs silently.) SHERLOCK: Oh(!) DIMMOCK (awkwardly): So ... SHERLOCK: So either these two men just happened to visit the same Chinese tattoo parlour or I’m telling the truth. DIMMOCK (sighing in resignation): What do you want? SHERLOCK: I want every book from Lukis’ apartment and Van Coon’s. DIMMOCK: Their books?
221B. The boys walk into the living room, taking off their coats. John sits down in his chair; Sherlock remains standing. SHERLOCK: Not just a criminal organisation; it’s a cult. Her brother was corrupted by one of its leaders. JOHN: Soo Lin said the name. SHERLOCK: Yes, Shan; General Shan. JOHN: We’re still no closer to finding them. SHERLOCK: Wrong. We’ve got almost all we need to know. She gave us most of the missing pieces. (He looks at John, waiting for him to agree. When John says nothing, he impatiently explains.) SHERLOCK: Why did he need to visit his sister? Why did he need her expertise? JOHN: She worked at the museum. SHERLOCK: Exactly. JOHN (finally catching up): An expert in antiquities. Mmm, of course. I see. SHERLOCK: Valuable antiquities, John. Ancient Chinese relics purchased on the black market. China’s home to a thousand treasures hidden after Mao’s revolution. JOHN: And the Black Lotus is selling them. (Sherlock tilts his head as he has an idea.)
Not long afterwards, he is sitting at the dining table surfing Crispians’ website for recent auctions, focusing on the auctions of Chinese and other Asian works of art. John is leaning over his shoulder to look at the screen. SHERLOCK (to himself as he skims through the list): Check for the dates ... (He points to a particular auction lot – two Chinese Ming vases.) SHERLOCK: Here, John. JOHN: Mmm. SHERLOCK: Arrived from China four days ago. (He runs his finger down the details and looks at the Sale Information at the bottom which includes the statement “Source – Anonymous.”) SHERLOCK: Anonymous. Vendor doesn’t give his name. Two undiscovered treasures from the East. JOHN: One in Lukis’ suitcase and one in Van Coon’s. (Sherlock moves to the Quest search site and types into the search bar, narrating as he does so, although he actually types the word “Chinese” first.) SHERLOCK: ... antiquities sold at auction. (The results list comes up.) SHERLOCK: Look, here’s another one. JOHN: Mmm. SHERLOCK: Arrived from China a month ago: Chinese ceramic statue, sold four hundred thousand. [As in, it sold for £400,000.] JOHN (consulting Lukis’ diary after he spots another entry on the screen): Ah, look: a month before that – a Chinese painting, half a million. SHERLOCK: All of them from an anonymous source. They’re stealing them back in China and one by one they’re feeding them into Britain. JOHN: Huh. (He looks at Lukis’ diary again and then at the printout of Van Coon’s calendar.) JOHN: And every single auction coincides with Lukis or Van Coon travelling to China. SHERLOCK: So what if one of them got greedy when they were in China? What if one of them stole something? JOHN: That’s why Zhi Zhu’s come. (Mrs Hudson knocks on the open door of the living room.) MRS HUDSON: Ooh-ooh! (The boys turn to her.) MRS HUDSON: Sorry. Are we collecting for charity, Sherlock? SHERLOCK: What? MRS HUDSON: A young man’s outside with crates of books.
Shortly afterwards, two uniformed police officers are carrying in yet another plastic crate to add to the many which have already been dumped in the living room. SHERLOCK: So, the numbers are references. JOHN: To books. SHERLOCK: To specific pages and specific words on those pages. JOHN: Right, so ... fifteen and one: that means ... SHERLOCK: Turn to page fifteen and it’s the first word you read. JOHN: Okay. So what’s the message? SHERLOCK (snarkily): Depends on the book. That’s the cunning of the book code. Has to be one that they both owned. (John looks round despairingly at the many many crates in the room, each either labelled “Van Coon” or “Lukis.”) JOHN: Okay, right. Well, this shouldn’t take too long, should it?(!) (He goes over to the nearest crate and flips open the lid, sighing tiredly when he sees the amount of books inside. Sherlock opens another crate and starts taking out books, looking at the cover of each one. John takes a handful from his crate and carries them over to the dining table and sits down. Dimmock walks in and holds up an evidence bag to Sherlock.) DIMMOCK: We found these, at the museum. (He shows the bag to John. It contains the photographs of the cipher which Sherlock had been showing to Soo Lin.) DIMMOCK: Is this your writing? JOHN (taking the bag): Uh, we hoped Soo Lin could decipher it for us. Ta. (Dimmock nods and turns back to Sherlock, who is still unloading his crate.) DIMMOCK: Anything else I can do? To assist you, I mean? SHERLOCK (without looking up): Some silence right now would be marvellous. (Dimmock stares at him, then looks across to John, who shakes his head apologetically. Biting his lip and trying not to cry at not being allowed to play with the big boys, Dimmock turns and leaves the room. Sherlock takes out a book from a crate and realises that he’s already got one like it from another crate. He puts them side by side – hard backed copies of Iain Banks’ “Transition.” Opening one of them to page fifteen, he looks at the first word on the page and then narrates the word in exasperated disappointment.) SHERLOCK: “Cigarette.” (Slamming the book closed, he puts both versions on top of the pile on the desk.) JOHN: Ah. (Sherlock goes back to rummaging through crates while John puts his pile onto the floor and crosses the room to get more books from a crate. Time moves on and later Sherlock finds two more identical books, “Freakonomics,” from the two men’s collections. He flicks to page fifteen, which is the beginning of a chapter headed “What Do Schoolteachers and Sumo Wrestlers Have in Common?” Moving down to the first word of the chapter, he reads it and then looks up in frustration.) SHERLOCK: “Imagine.” (Again he dumps the two books on John’s pile. Time moves on again and now it’s day time. Sherlock has removed his jacket and John has taken off his cardigan but they’re still in the same positions we last saw them. Again time moves on and now the daylight is even brighter outside. Books are scattered everywhere over the table and the floor and some of the crates have been shifted about. As Sherlock runs his fingers through his hair and then looks around at the crates and sighs, an alarm goes off on John’s watch. He looks at it and then out of the window as if to confirm that it really is the morning. He sighs tiredly and buries his head in his hands.)
