Sitting back in his armchair in his comfortable little house in Toronto, Canada, Robert Bell frowned at the image on his screen. He had just bought the tablet computer and for nostalgia sake he had subscribed to the online versions of a number of London papers only to find that his former pupil, Sherlock Holmes was dead.

He rose to his feet when he read the words FAKE GENIUS!

"Fake! What do they mean fake? No pupil of mine is a fake."

Robert put the pad down then and went to make himself a cup of tea. When he got into the kitchen, however, he changed his mind and made a pot. Then he went to his computer and searched for everything that he could find about Sherlock Holmes.

There had been a trial with a man called Moriarty. Yes, he had heard something about that. Afterwards, museum security had been completely reevaluated. He had consulted on a number of new security measures because of it, but he had never bothered to follow up on the original case, so he hadn't known that Sherlock Holmes had testified at the trial. What surprised him most was not that Sherlock Holmes had testified, but that Moriarty had walked free. Something was wrong if Sherlock Holmes' testimony wasn't enough to close a case. He hadn't failed in that regard before. Not since Carl Powers. Maybe there was a connection between the two.

Working in a museum had allowed Robert to meet a number of people who were good at digging up information. He emailed them and began to compile data on James Moriarty and Richard Brook. The fact that Rich Brook meant the same thing as Reichenbach was not missed on him.

Something was going on that wasn't obvious, it wasn't clear. As his colleagues sent him information, a picture began to build up. A picture of a conspiracy that spanned around the world and back in time even as far as the Carl Powers case. Sherlock was right. The others had been wrong to look the other way and let a murderer go free.

He combed through the newspapers and other more obscure sources until he had compiled a dossier on the entire organization. Someone, codenamed M, had started a small crime organization in London. It had branched off to Dublin and then Romania and the rest of Europe before extending out to India and other parts of Asia. It was vast, and yet unseen. A criminal network responsible for thousands of crimes, and yet no one seemed to know about it. He made a copy of his findings and hid them in his old university files under exams. Then he sat in his armchair wondering what to do.

There was always Mycroft Holmes. He could send him a copy of his findings, but Mycroft was sure to have his own sources of information, and Robert did NOT want to remind Mycroft of his existence now, not when he must be grieving over his brother's death.

But it was Sherlock's death that puzzled him most. Why would Sherlock kill himself? He never had seemed particularly suicidal, and he would never do such a thing once he was on a case. His need to understand, to find the truth was so great, that he would never stop until the puzzle was solved, and this was such a puzzle. So many pieces of this web existed still. Why would Sherlock kill himself when there was so much to deduce, so much left to reveal?

That was why he was only slightly surprised when he noticed a shadow on the carpet before him.

"Hello again, Dr Bell," said the tall man in the long coat standing in his parlor door.

He smiled. "Don't you Holmses ever knock?"