A 14-year-old orphan named Matthew Arnatt is living on the streets in the town of Farnham, Great Britain, in 1868 and stealing food to survive. One day, he is startled by the sight of a black cloud that behaves strangely. It has just exited a first-floor open window: “Smoke that moved with a mind of its own, pausing for a moment and then flowing sideways to a drainpipe where it turned and slid up towards the roof” (2-3). Shortly after witnessing this odd phenomenon, Matty hears a blood-curdling scream from the window where the smoke emerged. He flees in terror.

Elsewhere, 14-year-old Sherlock Holmes is called into the headmaster’s office at his boarding school. He attends Deepdene School for Boys and looks forward to returning home for the summer holidays. In the headmaster’s office, he finds his elder brother, Mycroft, waiting for him. Mycroft says Sherlock will have to spend the summer with an aunt and uncle he has never met. His father’s regiment has been sent to India, and his mother and sister are both ill. Mycroft will be working for the Foreign Office in London and can’t look after his sibling.

Uncle

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