As we came to the arch Holmes went through, signing to us to wait. As he stood beyond the opening, we could see his clear-cut face lit by a red glow. Quickly he stepped back.
  "There is some devilry afoot", said he, "devised for our welcome, no doubt. However, the passage across the bridge is not yet barred to us. Come and look!"
  Inspector Baynes and I peered out, crowded from behind by Lestrade, Athelney Jones and Tobias Gregson. Before us was another cavernous hall. It was loftier and far longer than the one in which we now stood, and we were near its eastern end; westward it ran away into darkness. Down the centre stalked a double line of double pillars, and right across the floor, close to the feet of two huge pillars, a great fissure had opened. Faintly, my nostrils apprehended the musky odour of long unwashed Orkish army boots, and I realized that our enemies were not far away. At present, however, all was still.
  Hastily, we sped across the floor of the cave. Suddenly, the silence was broken by the clatter of boots and hoarse yells; the Orcs had arrived on the other side of the chasm. Arrows whistled among us; none found its mark, save one black-arrowed projectile which pierced Holmes's deerstalker and came to a shivering standstill; it pointed the same way as Holmes' eagle's bill of a nose. We hurried on and, on Holmes' orders, wasted no time firing back at the Orcs shooting arrows at us from the other side of the chasm. Inspector MacDonald and Stanley Hopkins supported the still only half-conscious Miss Burnet between them.
  Suddenly, I saw before me a dark chasm. At the end of the hall the floor vanished and fell to an unknown depth. The outer hall could only be reached by a slender bridge of stone, without kerb or rail, that spanned the chasm with one curving  spring of fifty feet. At the brink Holmes halted and waited for the rest of us, who came up in a pack behind him like so many fox-hounds.
  "Lead the way, Lestrade!" he said. "MacDonald and Hopkins will follow with the lady. Straight on, and up the stair beyond the door!"
  I looked behind. Beyond the fire I perceived swarming black figures, some of them in bowler hats, others in spats: there seemed to be hundreds of Orcs. They brandished spears and scimitars which shone red as blood in the firelight. Doom, doom, rolled the drumbeats, growing louder and louder, doom, doom.
  Athelney Jones raised his revolver, though it was a long distance to chance a shot with such a small handgun. His finger curved around the trigger, but then his hand fell, and the bullet hit the floor and ricochetted, nearly bobbitizing Tobias Gregson.
  "You infernal, bumbling fool!" shouted the inspector to his colleague in a voice that betrayed how the events of the last few hours had frayed his nerves. "What are you doing?"
  With a cry of dismay and fear, Jones pointed. Two great Trolls appeared, both with a rope around the neck which showed that they had recently arisen from the dead. They bore great slabs of stone, and flung them down to serve as gangways over the fire. But it was not the Trolls that filled Jones with terror. The ranks of the Orcs had opened, and they crowded away, as if they themselves were afraid. Something was coming up behind them. What it was could not be seen: not a bloody thing, actually. It seemed to make everybody mad with terror, though.
  It came to the edge of the fire, and the light faded as if a cloud had bent over it. We all realized with numbing terror that we were in the presence of a walking and jumping cloud that also could bend knees.
  "It could be a simile", said Lestrade from the other side of the chasm. Baynes turned around and shot him. Holmes smiled and rubbed his hands.
  "I must congratulate you, inspector, on choosing such a decisive course of action", he said. "Your powers, if I may say so without offence, seem superior to your opportunities."
  Inspector Baynes' small eyes twinkled with pleasure.
  "You're right, Mr Holmes. We stagnate in the shires. A case of this sort gives a man a chance, and I hope that I shall take it. What do you make of that figure over there?"
  "Well" remarked Holmes, "it is obviously a case of condensed acid rain from the furnaces of Udûn."
  "Liar!" thundered a voice. It came from the dark figure, that streaming with fire raced towards us; it seemed as if it had a sword in one hand and a whip in the other. (That has not been proved, though.) It halted before Holmes and said: "Occam he say I am Balrog with wings."
  "Rubbish", declared Holmes. "What Occam's Razor says is that entities should not be unnecessarily multiplied. I am quite satisfied to regard you as a perfectly round cloud, though with legs and knees, to be sure."
  The being before us gibbered with anger. "But I am a Balrog!" it managed to utter at last.
  "Rubbish!" declared Holmes. "Occam's Razor commands us to regard you as a cloud, because that is the simplest explanation."
  "But I was called a Balrog in the previous chapter, before you lot turned up!" squealed the Balrog.
  "That is extraneous, unnecessary material, quite irrelevant to the main narrative. I do not accept material which has simply been included to prove a point."
  "Really?" thundered the Balrog. It pointed an accusing foot (it not being proved that it possessed arms or hands, and thus fingers to point with) at the pale Miss Burnet. "Then how about that lady, who is quite irrelevant to this narrative?"
  "You weary me with your personal, unprovoked flaming, cloud."
  "And you weary me because you can't use your freaking head!" screamed the unseen figure. It seemed to turn around, and there seemed to be a backside to it. "Look - do I have wings or not?"
  "How tiresome you are", said Holmes. "Now just follow the dictates of Occam like a good little cloud and scud out of here."
  "Look, you bloody git, can't you answer a simple question? Do I have wings - yes or no?"
  "Bah!" said Holmes with an impatient gesture. As if cued, inspector Baynes once more raised his revolver and emptied it into the Balrog, which fell to the ground, kicked its demonstrably existent legs and lay still.
  Holmes laid his hand upon the inspector's shoulder.
  "You will rise high in your profession. You have instinct and intuition", said he.
  Baynes flushed with pleasure. He bowed his knee (thereby proving beyond doubt that he too possessed at least one of them) and kissed Holmes' hand.
  "There, there - that will do!" said Holmes after ten minutes and retrieved his hand. "Now, do rescue poor Lestrade and see to it that he comes to the attention of a medical man before he expires. Gentlemen, carry the lady across the bridge. Watson and I are in a hurry; once more Hildebrandsen, the famous Norwegian barytone, is singing in the Golden Hall, and we would fain miss it."

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