Meanwhile, Sherlock's E string broke with a horrible, detonating TWANG!

He tossed both parts of the instrument to the nearest couch, scowling greatly. No more of John's conversation with the visitors could be heard now that the door was closed. Earlier, he only managed to catch a few phrases here and there, but he hadn't paid much attention. They were unimportant visitors, therefore for John, and had absolutely nothing to do with the current case at hand, therefore deserved to be ignored.

He did, however, know that they were quite concerned with a pocketwatch and wanted to discover its original owner. Sherlock fell back on the soft surface grumpily.

Boring.

Oh, how Sherlock craved for a lead, not a simple pocketwatch puzzle. Or at least another exciting murder, that would be splendid too. Sherlock wriggled and tried to sink in as much as possible into the retro striped cloth sofa and buried his face into the cushiony backrest.

Also, he wished for a nicotine patch. At least five of them. At the same time. But they were hidden in his bedroom upstairs, far too far for his genius to handle. Maybe he could get John to fetch some once he finished fending off the riff-raff.

"John?" he called after a few minutes. Surely he had finished by now, and should be stomping up the stairs by now to resume his 'blogging'. But nothing – not a sound. Sherlock lifted his head from the sofa. He hadn't even heard the door swinging for John's reentry.

Something was wrong.

He leaped out of the sofa and made for the front door. He wrenched the door and leaned out to the cold afternoon air, completely oblivious to the mess that was his hair, and the uncountable raggedness that had taken over his clothes.

His appearance was irrelevant. What was important was that the entire street as deserted, the owners of the two visiting voices vanished into thin air. And they seemed to have taken John with them.

In the end, despite the countless hours he spent pouring a microscope over the dust that collected on the steps, scourging for any fingerprints that may have been left behind, and demanding information from all his back-alley informants throughout the city, Sherlock Holmes never saw John Watson ever again.