Doctor John H. Watson, M.D, formerly of the 66th (Berkshire) Regiment of
Foot, had first made the acquaintance of Waleed Icbaal (the doctor employed
this Anglicized spelling of his friend's name -- as opposed to the more-frequently
encountered Iqbal, Eqbal, Ikbal or Eghbal -- in his subsequent narration of the
non-military adventure the two were later to share) in 1880, when the pair,
both then serving with the British forces in India, found themselves bedridden,
assigned adjacent cots in a remote field hospital while recovering from wounds
received at the Battle of Maiwand earlier that year.
Summarily Watson returned to England aboard the troopship HMS Orontes
and within a year had begun to share lodgings with consulting detective Mr.
Sherlock Holmes at their soon-to-be-famous 221B Baker Street address. The
doctor had, for the better part of a decade, by then lost contact with Sri Icbaal
(for this was the title of respect the Pakistani had earned during the intervening
years) -- until the frigid morning late in 1891 when a sari-clad, great-coated
young woman claiming to be Sri Icbaal's patnee (his wife in his and that lady's
native land) was shown by the doctor's landlady Mrs. Hudson into the presence
of Watson and Holmes bearing a softly mewling tightly-swaddled infant and what
would prove to be a most singular request...
>>> "Ed Read, Laugh'd, 'Tee-Hee!'"
>>> "A Fetid Yeast Coin"
>>> "Bombe Meals...? Very Costly, They!"
>>> "I Never Fight As Pope."
>>> "Wet Wilted Hatpins Hit Them"
>>> "Truth, Uncle...? The Breed Can Be of Value"
>>> Added He Eleven Pucks for a Tenth...? TBD"
>>> "Beneath the Seventh Duet of Mr. Uniger"
>>> "Hanover, Che, Before the Ballet 'Donut'"
>>> "By Order of Eve, the Real Tenth Count"
>>> "Per: the E Bourée, the CFO's PVC...and Thee"
(Extended incipits to come: a work in progress)
