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.The Dolled Collector	By : keithcompany Category: Titles in the Public Domain > Sherlock Holmes > Het Views: 2578 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: This is a work fiction, based on the Sherlock Holmes series by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Chapter List
- 1-The Dolled Collector
- 1
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------
We were in the sitting room that afternoon. I was organizing an other chapter of my memoirs, or the chronicles of my friend's adventures, while he read rapidly through the newspapers of the week, catching up on anything and everything that caught his attention, however briefly.
Suddenly, he crumpled up a portion of the daily he was perusing and swore. "Damnation! They did not 'mortar the village.' The army unit fired their mortars, which lobbed shells upon the village. I may stop subscribing to this publication is this is the new standard for writing and editing at their offices."
"What ever is the difference, fellow?" I asked.
"One is English, the other is not," he replied. "There are nouns and there are verbs. One does not noun things, one does a verb to or upon a thing. This growing practice of using nouns in places one should insert a verb is tiring. It's a collapse of the English Language!"
I left him to wax wroth for a long while. Eventually, he stopped ranting on the spiraling descent of our national regard for the intellectual arts and started packing his pipe for a smoke. I shuffled my papers and asked him a question.
"Last week, that chase across the docks? After the smugglers? Do you recall that man in the peacoat that attempted to impede you?"
"Clearly," he said. His terse manner reflected an interior ire, still smoldering even as he relaxed into his cushioned seat.
"When he attempted to... brain you, you stopped him how? Didn't you... knee him in the groin?"
"As you well recall."
"And it turned out, he was able to... stomach the blow, and... elbowed you in the chest."
"We spent two hours last week establishing the events of that fight, if you so wish to label the encounter."
"But you... knuckled down, as it were... gutted it out, and... floored him with a fist to the face, quite neatly... pole-axing him, what?"
"Watson," he asked, "what in the world is the matter with your speech. You seem to hesitate at every other verb."
"Oh?" I asked, the innocent. "Brain, knee, stomach...are those verbs or nouns?" He didn't reply, but his eyes narrowed. "It seems to me, that since your chosen profession is to... nose about, as it were, that you've verbulated a noun or two in your time."
He remained silent, but turned away from me. I chuckled and took a sheet of paper to record the incident. "It wasn't often that I managed to strike a blow in one of our conversations," I wrote, speaking aloud as I did, "so that added an extra measure of pleasure to one where I not only held my own, but came out on top."
"Not exactly," he started to say.
"Quiet, Holmes," I shushed him, "I'm... penning my thoughts." That's when a knock at the door announced a visitor. Our housekeeper ushered in a small woman, rather attractive but her head was hardly as far off the floor as my watch fob. She was well dressed, in the lastest styles as near as I could tell, but there were signs of fatigue upon her face.
Holmes glanced at her, looked her over once and shrugged. "I cannot help you, miss."
"You don't even know my problem, Mr. Holmes," she replied. "And it's Mrs. I am widowed."
"It matters not," he told her. "I have no time for your issues. They do not interest me." She looked helplessly over to me.
"Tell me," I asked, for I knew he was just spoiling for a chance to show off his deductive powers, "how you have already come to this conclusion."
"There are no difficult murders in the papers this week," he said, ticking off one finger. "If she's here about a death, it's one where even the Yard is capable of finding the villain, and my powers would be wasted.
"She is not in great financial straits," the second finger, "or she'd be in last year's fashion, or worse. Or her current clothes would be more worn, less laundered, et cetera, et cetera. So the chance of a great reward for monies recovered is small."
"She is not closely involved in a great scandal," third, "or I'd recognize her from the papers. If she's involved at all, it's only on the periphery, and besides, scandals interest me not at all."
"She is not in great danger," the fourth and final, "or her poise would suffer more. I presume that she is here about a business matter, or a problem with her servents, something that hampers her personal convenience, but has scant chance for mental challenge or distraction." He closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair.
The widow strode over to the chair opposite Holmes and sat herself down. "You offer your services for money, do you not?"
"Mostly as a means of keeping the boring people filtered out," he replied. He named a sum for a week's worth of effort on her behalf. It was an exhorbitant sum, far in excess of his usual fees. She didn't blink, but thrust a hand into her reticule and produced a quantity of notes.
"I make that in a day," she said, dropping the wad onto the floor between them. He opened his eye to examine the quantity.
"Tell me more about your problem," he said politely.
"My name is Angela Little, Mr. Holmes. I make and sell doll houses." I saw his eyes start to roll up in his face, but they came back down to the wad of cash on the rug, then up to our guest. She didn't miss the response. "Yes, sir, toys. Very good toys, I must say. I inherited the business from my husband at his death, and have improved it since.
"We have shops in seven countries, and regular customers in another ten. We make extremely popular products, of a wide variety, all of exquisite detail." She toed the stack with a delicate foot. "This is about the cost of one of our castles. There are mansions, stations, individual rooms-"
"Yes, yes," he interrupted, "I'm sure the whole catalog is simply fascinating, as well as the extended infrastructure of your business. The problem?"
"My employees have been disappearing. And not the journeymen or the big apes down in shipping. You expect a lot change in those areas. But craftsmen that have been with the company for ages are not turning up for work, with no note, no final paycheck, no turnover."
"They're probably ashamed to admit that they've given up the business for something that actually contributes to society," he muttered. "Much as I'd like to earn your fee, I have to say it seems likely that in the changes you've worked in the business since taking over, the established workforce took offense and took to the road."
"Mister Holmes," she replied, "I've been running the business for twelve years."
"Oh. Well, maybe I'd better stop making judgments until I get better information," he offered, as close to an apology as she was likely to get. She seemed to realize it as she stood, handing over a calling card.
"Quite. Shall we say, noon?"
-----
The head offices of Little Homes took up three former residences of a line of brownstones across London from Baker Street. One entire home had been converted to their showroom.
Spiral staircases rose up to a gallery where individual houses were arranged, but the more impressive pieces were on the ground floor.
The dollhouses on display were amazing. I moved slowly from a one-twentieth scale replica of Balmoral, around a one-sixth ballroom complete with an orchestra and a laden refreshment table, skirting a Viking castle under siege, to stand entranced at a block of flats that opened in half to reveal a dozen separate living quarters, each reflecting the distinct character of the person or persons living within.
Holmes met me there, having taken a different path through the displays. He reached past me to point to a smoking chair not greatly different from his own. "What do you make of that, Watson?" he asked. I copied him after he patted the seat, and estimated that it would be very comfortable, if only I were six inches tall.
He seemed disappointed in my answer. Looking around the room for witnesses, which there were none of, he reached out and plucked up a maid doll. He turned her over and made a noise of surprise.
I was surprised when he tilted the doll to show me the ersatz woman's nether garments. I briefly noted the detail seemed rather inclusive, then looked away. Yes, it was only a doll, but that somehow made it more unseemly, to look under her skirts.
He had just replaced her when Mrs. Little entered. She offered a tour of the facilities, which Holmes said was crucial to his investigation.
The next house over was converted into the manufactory. On the ground floor, craftsmen, almost all old men, fashioned the houses (and castles, ships, towers, barracks, forts, sitting rooms, arenas). In the back, laborers boxed them for shipping and manhandled them onto wagons.
I glanced at the invoices, and houses from this location were intended for custom in France, Russia, Sweden and a variety of points in Britain.
The hulking brutes she'd alluded to certainly matched her description. But seeing them, I realized that the rest of her staff was as small as she! We went back through the factory floor towards a stairwell and I confirmed it. Where I had thought that people were just crouching low to work within the tiny structures, they were, in fact, almost pygmies.
I began to ask Holmes if he'd noticed it, but quieted. Of course he had.
The floor above had dozens of small sewing workstations where women and a few men assembled the furnishings: Everything from the carpets of entryways to the jewelry on the dolls. The variety of scale was mind boggling, but each worked on their assigned tasks with careful dedication.
Except for the whispering. Small comments passed from worker to worker as we made our way across the floor, in a language that was just short of accessible. It sounded almost like Greek, except where it sounded like Gaelic, or the random phrase that reminded me of nothing so much as a Siamese stevedore I'd heard haranguing Arabic dockworkers on my way back from the Crimea.
The top floor held about ten tables where very old, very small women put together the dolls for the houses. This was also the level where one entered Mrs. Little's office at the top of the third house.
She sent her secretary for tea and settled us within. I told her how impressed I'd been with her displays in the storefront and she described a few of their more popular designs. Holmes sat through it with remarkable calm, I thought, considering his distaste for something as childish as...well, children's toys.
He was merely biding his time, of course, waiting for me to relax our hostess.
"Exactly where do you recruit your workers, Mrs. Little?"
"Ah," she reacted, "Well, the industry does tend to hire small people, to work in the small spaces, to attend to the small details-"
"I noticed," he interrupted, "a marked resemblance among your staff, something that would lead me to think I'd happened upon an unknown ethnicity. Especially as they have a common tongue, one I'm not familiar with. Where do they all come from?"
"The Old Country, is what my parents called it. It's a small valley somewhere in the Himalayas." She shrugged. "I am afraid I have no details. My grandparents fled some terrible threat, their entire village traveling westerly until they ended up here. They found a niche in the doll industry and have kept together ever since. But they never speak of their, of our origins."
"The Himalayas are far into the Orient," he mused. "But your features, and theirs, are more occidental than oriental." It was a statement, but he made it a question.
"There are theories about a garrison left in the area by Alexander the Great," she told him. The response was very natural, it seemed to me. The mystery of their origins was no cause of anxiety for her.
Holmes shifted topics, then, asking about her competitors, vendors, salesmen, the make up of the company, who owned the buildings, salaries, all minutias of her business dealings.
From there, he asked her to describe the people that had left, their responsibilities, their habits and their friends.
Finally, he said he had enough information to start with, thanked her graciously, and we departed.
Once we were within the cab, he ordered the driver to find a toy store. "We must check out the competition," he told me.
In the place the driver directed us, he made swiftly to the dolls. Once again he tipped one over to show me the undergarments.
"Imagine wearing something like this," he directed me.
"Holmes!" I said, shocked. "I know that some have made some accusations about our living arrangements, but I must assure you, I am not, and never have been one to wear either dresses or to play with dolls!"
"What are you on about?" he asked. "Look here, the seam. The outside of the dress appears much as any other clothing, but within, the seams are huge. On the scale of this doll, the interior would be a roll of cloth about as big around as her thumb."
"Yes, I suppose so."
"But you'd never get a person to wear clothes like that. It'd be too uncomfortable."
"You've never been a military man," I observed wryly. But he replaced the doll to look at the house on display. Removing a davenport, he asked me to touch it. It appeared to be fabric stretched across balsa wood.
"Hmm, I see," I said. "The Little Homes workers put far more effort into their materials. That’s why they're so expensive, that attention to detail."
"It's not that," he told me, replacing the furniture and turning to go. "That's too much attention. No one's ever going to sit on that chair, or wear that dress. It only has to look good on the outside. Anything else is wasted motion, wasted time, wasted resources."
"Then why do they do it?" I asked as he waved down a hansom cab.
"Why indeed?" he replied.
-----
The next day, he assigned me a list of interviews to perform. He stalked off before I finished breakfast, intent on his own research.
When I saw him again it was late in the day, in the display room of the company.
"Well, Watson, what have you learned?"
"Many things, Holmes. First of all, there have been no further disappearances since Mrs. Little hired us." I was disappointed with his response, or the lack of it. "What, man, isn't that good news?"
"Stopping them will be good news," he said. "I fear we have merely caused them a temporary pause as they determine how and if our advent affects their plans." I acknowledged that he had a point and continued with my report.
The entire tribe, or family, lived on the premises of the factory, in the last house of the row. They had stayed together since leaving their mountain valley a generation ago. There were a few of Mrs. Little's generation living on the Continent, overseeing the business' interests there.
They had little time to talk with me, and even less to say. Still, I had learned the pattern of the disappearances.
"It's not by work station, as you suspected," I told him. "It's been by age."
"Age?" he asked, his attention on a sailing ship replica in the corner.
"Yes. All the ones who remember 'the Old Country' are gone, as well as any with memories extending back to their travels across Europe." I glanced at my notes to give him the number of each group. There had been one woman, the first one born on British soil, who hadn't been seen since the day before Mrs. Little came to see us.
The times of each person's apparent departure varied, as did their location in the buildings.
"Well, they're not being recruited by the competition," he said. "I found that there's a large industry that crafts these sorts of things." There seemed to be some surprise in his tone. Toys had never interested him, so he knew nearly nothing about their production. "They all know the Littles, by reputation and product, and would dearly love to hire some of the artisans away. But they've never been able to do so."
"Of course not," our client said as she entered the room. "It would be something closer to an adoption than a hire. We're family."
"We have noticed," Holmes assured her. Then he gestured to the ship. "Someone here has a sense of humour, I see." She looked at him with a questioning glance. "The ship? It's named 'The Antelope.' The first ship Gulliver traveled on in Swift's book, leading him to Lilliput."
"Ah," she said with understanding. "Yes, that's a popular book here. The idea of hosting some little people in Little Homes has always been a happy fantasy of many."
She was headed out, and invited us to accompany her. We agreed and escorted her to the street. "When we started losing people, I recalled my managers from the businesses overseas," she explained. "They collected in Paris and should arrive at the docks this evening."
Mrs. Little was quite excited about welcoming the returning agents. Most were her cousins, all were people she'd grown up with. Even under the circumstances, she looked forward to being reunited with them.
"Family is very important to you," Holmes observed.
"Family is everything," she corrected him, but gently. I felt that she was about to inquire about my friend's family matters, but he anticipated it as well and forcibly shifted the conversation to her business affairs.
At the docks, however, tragedy developed. The travel agent the company used had the luggage of the travelers, but the travelers could not be found. Every single man and woman of Little Homes had boarded at Calais, but were missing when the boat reached its destination.
She was struck dumb by the news. Holmes had me take her gently to a bench and attend her while he asked a few questions. He also arranged for the baggage to be delivered to the factory later.
Little was recovering from her shock when he suggested we return her to her home. On the walk, he engaged her about the travel arrangements. She had made no secret of the plans, using the usual channels, the company agent.
"So, anyone might have been aware of when and where to find a large group of your family," Holmes mused.
"Well, yes, but... But who could be doing this, Mr. Holmes?"
"I don't know, Mrs. Little, but I promise you, we won't stop until we know, and right it as best we can."
The mystery deepened when we arrived back at their headquarters. Not a person was to be found in the shop. Not in any room, on any floor.
----
Angela grew rapidly more distraught as we made a quick search, finding the entire building was empty. There was no indication of where the family had gone, or why.
"We must get you away from here," Holmes advised her. "We'll try to find them, but you are in danger." She agreed, but distantly, then led us up to her office, her bedroom being situated on the same floor.
As she stepped into her office, something fell from the ceiling, like a small purse or sack. It struck her head and she disappeared in a great splash. I staggered backwards in surprise, with my friend's grip on my elbow the only thing preventing me from tumbling to the floor.
Before us, Mrs. Little's sodden clothes were crumpled in the doorway. A great puddle of clear fluid spread out. Her entire body had melted away in a trice.
"Stay back, Holmes," I warned. "Some acid has done away with her!"
"Not hardly," he replied, stepping up to the pile. "Any acid I'm familiar with would have destroyed her clothes as fast as her body." He sniffed the air as he knelt down. "This is no more than salt water.
As he poked at the clothing, a strange sound came from the pile. I finally identified it as a wail, a tiny cry. Holmes gently parted the folds to reveal a tiny head.
Angela was still there, but tiny. No more than a few inches tall, she was tangled in her own clothing, fighting to free herself. When she saw Holmes leaning over her, she stopped and crouched down, trying to cover her naked form.
"She's been dolled," I said quietly.
Holmes spun around to face me, hand reaching out. "Your handkerchief," he ordered. I whipped it out and leaned over to give it to him. That put me in position to note something coming towards us. A brown sack like the one that had dolled Angela was flying towards Holmes' back as if tossed from inside the office.
"Look out!" I cried, stepping forward with hands outstretched. I confess, I hadn't really thought the act through. If it was similar to the device that had dolled Mrs. Little, then there was a good chance it would do the same to me. But even in hindsight it seems to remain a good plan.
If only one of us were to remain normal sized, it were better that Holmes himself were the one. He would have the best chance of protecting and restoring us, if anyone could.
As it happened, though, the bag had no affect on me. I caught it out of the air and remained my proper size, and dry. Only then did I consider the possible consequences of my act.
For his part, Holmes snatched my kerchief out of my hand, wrapped Angela, and placed her inside a pocket. With a curt order to keep the bag for later examination, he led the way downstairs.
To my surprise, though, he did not immediately depart the premises. Instead, he went to one of the dollhouses. Finding one with the furnishings of a woman, built to Angela's scale, he removed the tiny client and carefully set her within.
"You should find some clothes," he told her, gesturing towards the wardrobe. "We'll stand guard." She nodded, in a daze, pulled the fabric close around her and stumbled towards the closet.
Holmes refused to close the side of the dollhouse to give her privacy, fearing to let her out of his sight. I managed to find a suitable screen, though, to block our direct view of her as she found and donned a dress quickly.
Then he took her up again, along with a handful of clothes from the closet, and we were off. Only after we were settled in a cab and headed for home did he relax enough to turn to me and say: "Did you really say She's been dolled'?"
-----
The bag was a small leather sack, tied with ordinary string. Herbs and some grains of sand were all that were inside. Holmes could make no sense of it, laid out upon his desk for examination.
Angela stood at the edge of the wrapping, unable to explain the contents, or her current condition. We had ascertained that she was unhurt by her experience, other than being a fraction of her normal size. And the shock of that was behind her, now. Little Miss Little was adapting quite well to her new situation.
None could account for the bags, the water, or the shrinking. Although it did begin to explain how the others had been removed.
"We should have been looking in the walls and the floors," Holmes said, shaking his head. "Not the rooms or the rivals."
"Will you go back?" Mrs. Little asked. He shook his head more.
"Not until we understand what we're dealing with," he said.
"What could we possibly be dealing with?" I asked.
"Elves, magic, the Fae, Leprechauns," he rattled off easily. I was shocked.
"Magic? Of all the people in the world to suggest a supernatural causation..."
"It's elementary, my dear Watson," he said. "No chemical reaction could have done this to her," he said, gesturing to our guest. "Nothing mechanical or surgical, not in the time available, and front of our very eyes. When you trim away everything that's impossible what you're left with is..."
"Impossible?" Angela suggested. He turned away, not looking either of us in the eye.
"I have some people to see," he said, sweeping up the bag and contents. "There will be some deliveries," he advised. "Keep her company, would you?"
"Of course," I said to Miss Little, "he's out the door by the time I could have answered."
"Is that bad?" she asked.
"It's not even unexpected," I said with a smile. "Tell me, do you play chess?" She arched an eyebrow up at me.
"I do, but I'd want to be where I could see all the pieces." I stacked some volumes next to the board and arranged a folded silk handkerchief as a seat for her. We enjoyed a lively conversation as we played.
---
Holmes had not returned by dinner time that evening.
Mrs. Hudson had done a heroic job on dinner, filleting Angela's size servings from a trout, and made our guest quite comfortable. She even set her to laughing outright as made a few claims about having served the Wee Folk as a girl.
We were still smiling and discussing her story of a fairy using the gravy boat as a bathtub, when the detective arrived home. He lowered two cases near the doors and slid into his seat at the table.
"What have you learned, Mr. Holmes?" Little asked.
"Well, your business has been shut down. The building is sealed and silent. Your laborers have been paid off and dismissed." He sighed, pulling something from his pocket. "I attempted to find you some more clothes or furniture..." He placed a small stool on the table next to the seat I had fashioned for her from a pair of snuff boxes.
Angela lifted it to examine it closely. "This is from the Old Country," she said softly. Almost too softly for us to hear.
"That was the only thing in the entire factory I could find that was built to your scale. The dollhouses have been smashed and burned, their contents and the various drawers and boxes of stock dumped into the fireplaces."
He gestured towards her stool. "This was left in a glass-fronted casing near the back of the display room."
"It's something my great-great grandparents brought with them. The case was full of doll's clothes, furniture, fittings. Our clan's ability to make such things were what drove us to making dollhouses." There was more than a little grief in her tone as she spoke. My friend and I were silent for a moment out of respect.
She dabbed at her eyes a second then pointed towards the cases he'd left by the door. "And what are those?"
"Fascinating discoveries," he assured her. "Items that prove out a truly remarkable tale. Small evidence of great things. But the time is not right for their revealing. Come over this way." He gently plucked her up and led me to his chemical workbench. Placing our client on the surface, he spread out the pouch I'd caught at the factory.
"Now..." He paused. It was unusual for him to pause in an explanation. The entire following speech was full of pauses. For a man used to telling the truth as he knew it, without euphemism, he faced a difficult challenge here.
"Well, you have to remember... The practice of witchcraft is punishable by death in Britain. Anyone who is... knowledgeable in the Art... could be accused of practicing, leading to prosecution under the Witchcraft Act."
"The Witchcraft Act? Hold on, Holmes," I said. "George II said that magic and witchcraft did not exist! Anyone claiming magical powers is prosecuted as a con artist, not executed."
"True, but his amplification of the Act did not actually repeal the preceding Act," he replied, then gestured towards our guest. "If the Court were forced to accept that it's real, it could mean that one would be subject to the previous version of the Act. The one written by James."
"King James?" Angela asked. "The king that a circle of witches attempted to assassinate?" He nodded silently. "Oh. Death penalty?"
He nodded again. "And without benefit of clergy," he added.
"Well, that's just rude," she observed.
"Anyway," he continued, after a moment of silence, "I have consulted people. People that are... aware of the old ways. Experts in the... lore of witchcraft. Theoretical experts. They examined the... symbolism of the pouch. If magic... exists the items in the pouch could only be part of a very particular spell."
I glanced at Angela. She was staring raptly up at my friend. He was concentrating his talk on her, but I noticed that he was spending a bit of time glancing over towards the door. Was he waiting for someone?
"A shrinking spell?" she asked. "But then, what was all the water for?"
"And why did it not affect me?" I asked. Just then, a loud metallic snap sounded from near the door. With a loud huzzah, Holmes ran there and picked up one of the cases. I had barely taken a step when he was coming back, removing the panels on the side of the case as he did so.
What was revealed was a cage, one he placed gently down on the workbench end. Inside the cage was a tiny thing. A man, about the same size as Angela was at the moment. He glared up at us from his captivity, but was silent.
Mrs. Little stared, taking a few steps closer towards the cage.
"You found a dolled man," I said. Holmes gave a snort at my term, but offered no better one.
"What I've done was trapped an intruder," he replied. "Angela, do you know this man?"
"I've never laid eyes upon him, sir."
"As I thought." He pointed to the pouch and contents. "What this assemblage was intended for was not a spell as much as a counterspell." He turned to me.
"You, Watson, were not affected because you were not bespelled at the time. But Mrs. Little was."
"I was? What sort of spell? What are you talking about, man?"
"The spell restored you to your natural state," he said gently. "Dear, I believe you are descended from Lilliputians."
"Come off it, man," I said, scarcely believing we were having this conversation. "That's a work of fantasy."
"Really?" he said with a small smile. "It's not possible that a writer could craft fictional literature based on real events? Maybe to be published in the Strand for people who could never know how much was real, how much imagined?"
I shut up.
"Perhaps not the exact nations described by Swift," he said, turning to Angela, "but some place where the population is miniature in comparison to the rest of humanity.
"I suspect that your ancestors found a means of magnifying themselves, growing up to reach the very lower band of human height. The great water released by the counter spell makes me suspect that your mass was amplified by the addition of fluid."
"But I was born in London!" she cried. "And not in a doll hospital!"
"Of course," he said softly. "But that merely means the spell can be passed on. Did any of your people take a...normal sized human partner? Were there any scandals of babies produced outside of the clan?"
"No..." she said softly.
"It may not be possible," Holmes said. Then he turned to the caged man. "I fear that your ancestral home has found you. And they mean to take you home." The captive began waving his arms and shouting at us, but in a language we could not follow. Angela listened for a minute, then shook her head.
"It sounds like the language my parents used, sometimes, but I'm not familiar enough with it."
"Oh, he can speak English," Holmes assured her.
"Of course," I said. "You said there were fascinating things in the cases. He went to find out what they were, if they impacted his mission. Then, snap, he was caged."
"Oh, blow it out your skeppik," the little man said in response. With the exception of the foreign word, his language was without accent. That word sounded, to my veteran's ear, like something meant to be profane.
"So, where are you from?" my friend asked down at him. "Lilliput? The Himalayas? Are you an Irish Leprechaun? A French faery?"
"If we're kidnapping the Escaped Ones to keep the secret," he pointed out, "I'd be a fool to spread the secret around."
"Good point," Holmes replied. He seemed to be in quite a good mood. Angela wasn't.
"What does this mean to me?" she asked.
"You have to make a choice," Holmes told her. "Go with them, or stay here."
"It's not her choice!" the intruder shouted. Holmes simply lifted the cage to the floor.
"I don't believe we can recover your clan," he explained. "They'll be hard to find under the best of circumstances, and their collectors will probably be shipping them back to your homeland soon.
"But if you wish, you're welcome to stay here. Watson and I will guard you from kidnappers, and do our best to keep you safe, happy and free."
"Free?" she asked with a small laugh. "I can't get down from the table to the floor without help. And if I walked along the window sill for some sun, I'd be afraid of the birds or a stray cat.
"We could address those concerns," I told her. She smiled up at me and walked over to my hand.
"But the chances are, you'd miss one we never anticipated." She shook her head. "I could never really be free in this world, not anymore. Being short was challenging enough. Being infinitesimal is beyond nightmarish."
She waved at Holmes, who drew the cage up and released the man within. "So," she asked him, "are we being repatriated as long lost children or extradited as criminals before the court?"
The man gave a deep bow. He only came halfway up and said, "My princess, you're the surviving heir to the throne of..." He glanced up at the two of us. "The throne," he finished simply. "Your return is to save the nation."
------
Angela was reunited with her clan that night, coming back the next day to assure us that all were well, and they'd been convinced of the nature of the return. Though it amounted to kidnapping here, they were looking forward to bringing new skills and knowledge home to...the Homeland, for the betterment of all.
With that established, we offered our services to the Princess. Items that would prove useful, materials that were hard to acquire at home were identified, purchased and left at the Little Homes loading dock. Then they were conveyed to whatever it was that would be taking them home.
The arrangements for their departure were kept in strictest secrecy. Princess Angela came back to visit one last time, to say goodbye and offer thanks.
She presented tiny medals on diminutive ribbons, to me, Holmes and Mrs. Hudson. "For your friendship," she said, "your loyalty, and your trust."
Our landlady was quite overcome with emotion at the scene and scurried off to her kitchen, saying something about burning in the stove.
"I doubt to ever see you again," she told the two of us. "Unless the Great Sherlock Holmes manages to intuit the location of our nation."
"I would rather hope for you to visit us, here, some day, your Grace," he replied. She smiled and made the little lies of future visits that one makes at such departures.
Finally, I aimed a kiss at her tiny hand, as did Holmes, and she was gone, ushered through the wainscoting by her escort.
Holmes wandered over to his chair, packing the pipe that had been unlit since Angela's shrinking. I sat at my desk, toying with my pen.
"And what will you call this case?" he asked me.
"Oh, I can think of several names," I admitted. "The problem is, whatever I write, people will think I borrowed or outright stole from Swift."
"Yes," he agreed. "Quite likely. Well, since you know they'll do that, anticipate it. Make it work for you. Say something like 'I found Swift's work so compelling, I found it a wonderful chance to play in the world he described.'"
"But then, readers will think it fiction!"
"Some," he shrugged, puffing away on his pipe. "But surely, anything you write, some people think it fictional." I thought about it for a moment.
"But whatever you do," he continued after a while, "don't even consider using that ridiculous verb you invented."
I smiled and began writing: The Case of the Dolled Collector.
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.The Dolled Collector