John Adams - The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

From his jacket pocket Colby withdrew an embossed cardboard photograph-case, opening it to show the image of a most beautiful young lady. Thin and rather fragile-looking, she wore her soft curls in a chignon. Her eyes seemed light, blue or hazel so far as I could tell from the photograph, her hair a medium shade-perhaps red, but more likely light brown-and her complexion pale to ghostliness. Her expression was one of grave innocence, trusting and unself-conscious.

"Old Viscount Delapore is a grim old autocrat who rules his son, his niece, and every soul in the village of Watchgate as if it were 1394 instead of 1894. He owns all of the land thereabouts-the family has, I gather, from time immemorial-and so violent is his temper that the villagers dare not cross him. From the first moment Judith declared her love for me, I offered to take her away from the place-to take her clean out of the country, if need be, though I hardly think he would come after her, as she seems to fear."

"Does she fear her grandfather?" Holmes turned the photograph thoughtfully over in his hands, examining the back as well as the front most minutely.

Colby nodded, his face clouding with anger. "She claims she's free to come and go, that there's no influence being brought to bear upon her. But there is, Mr. Holmes, there is! When she speaks of Viscount Gaius she glances over her shoulder, as if she imagines he could hear her wherever she is. And the look in her lovely eyes…! She fears him, Mr. Holmes. He has some evil and unwholesome hold upon the girl. He's not her legal guardian-that's Mr. Carstairs Delapore. But the old man's influence extends to his son as well. When I received this-" He drew from the same pocket as the photograph a single sheet of folded paper, which he passed across to Holmes, "I begged him to countermand his father's order, to at least let me present my case. But this card… " He handed a large, stiff note to Holmes, "was all I got back."

The letter was dated August 16, four days ago.

"My best beloved,

"My heart is torn from my breast by this most terrible news. My grandfather has forbidden me to see you again, forbidden even that your name be mentioned in this house. He will give no reason for this beyond that it is his will that I remain here with him, as his servant-I fear, as his slave! I have written to my father but fear he will do nothing. I am in despair! Do nothing, but wait and be ready.

"Thine only,

Judith."

The delicate pink paper, scented with patchouli and with the faint smoke of the oil-lamp by which it must have been written, was blotted with tears.

Her father's card said merely:

"Remove her from your thoughts. There is nothing which can be done."

Burnwell Colby smote the palm of one hand with the fist of the other, and his strong jaw jutted forward. "My grandfather didn't let the mandarins of Hong Kong chase him away, and my father refused to be stopped by Sioux Indians or winter snows in the Rockies," he declared. "Nor shall this stop me. Will you find out for me, Mr. Holmes, what vile hold Lord Gaius has upon his granddaughter and his son, that I may free the gentlest girl that ever lived from the clutches of an evil old man who seeks to make a drudge of her forever?"

"And is this all," asked Holmes, raising his eyelids to meet the American's earnest gaze, "that you have to tell me about Carstairs Delapore and his father? Or about these 'lurking shadows' that are Delapore's study?"

The young man frowned, as if the question took him momentarily aback. "Oh, the squeamish may speak of decadence," he said after a moment, not off-handedly, but as if carefully considering his words. "And some of the practices which Delapore has uncovered are fairly ugly by modern standards. Certainly they'd make my old pater blink, and my poor hidebound brothers." He chuckled, as if at the recollection of a schoolboy prank. "But at bottom it's all only legends, you know, and bogies in the dark."

"Indeed," said Holmes, rising, and held out his hand to the young suitor. "I shall learn of this what I can, Mr. Colby. Where might I reach you?"

"The Excelsior Hotel in Brighton." The young man fished from his vest-pocket a card to write the address upon-he seemed to carry everything loose in his pockets, jumbled together like cabbages in a barrow. "I always stay there," he explained as he scribbled. "It was how Miss Delapore knew where to reach me. How you can abide to remain in town in weather like this beats me!" And he departed, apparently unaware that not everyone's grandfather rammed opium down Chinese throats in order to pay the Excelsior's summer-holiday prices.

"So what do you think of our American Romeo?" inquired Holmes, as the rattle of Colby's cab departed down Baker Street. "What sort of man does he appear to be?"

"A wealthy one," I said, still stung by that careless remark about those who remained in town. "One not used to hearing the word 'No.' But earnest and good of heart, I would say. Certainly he takes a balanced view of these 'decadent' studies-to which the Delapores can scarcely object, if they share them."

"True enough." Holmes set letter and note upon the table, and went to the bookcase to draw out his copy of the Court Gazette, which was so interleaved with snipped-out society columns, newspaper clippings, and notes in Holmes' neat, strong handwriting as to bulge to almost double its original size. "But what are the nature of these folkloric 'practices' which are 'fairly ugly by modern standards'? Ugliness by the standards of a world which has invented the Maxim gun can scarcely be termed bogies in the dark.

"Carstairs Delapore," he read, opening the book upon his long arm. "Questioned concerning his whereabouts on the night of the 27th August, 1890, when the owner of a public house in Whitechapel reported her ten-year-old son Thomas missing; a man of Delapore's description-he is evidently of fairly unforgettable appearance-seen speaking with the boy that evening. Thomas never found. I thought I recognized the name. Delapore was also questioned in 1873 by the Manchester police-he was in that city, for no discernable reason, when two little mill-girls went missing… I must say I'm astonished that anyone reported their disappearance. Mudlarks and street-urchins vanish every day from the streets of London and no one inquires after them anymore than one inquires the whereabouts of butterflies once they flitter over the garden fence. A man need not even be very clever, to kidnap children in London." He shut the book, his eyes narrowing as he turned his gaze to the endless wasteland of brick that lay beyond the window. "Merely careful to pick the dirtiest and hungriest, and those without parents or homes."

"That's a serious conclusion to jump to," I said, startled and repelled.

"It is," Holmes replied. "Which is why I jump to nothing. But Gaius, Viscount Delapore, was mentioned three times in the early reports of the Metropolitan police-between 1833 and 1850-in connection with precisely such investigations, at the same time that he was publishing a series of monographs on 'Demonic Ritual Survivals along the Welsh Borders' for the discredited Eye of Dawn Society. And in 1863 an American reporter disappeared while investigating rumors of a pagan cult in western Shropshire, not five miles from Watchgate village, which lies below the hill upon which Depewatch Priory stands."

"But even so," I said, "even if the Delapores are involved in some kind of theosophistic studies-or white slaving for that matter-would they not seek rather to get an outsider like Delapore's niece out of the house, rather than keeping her there as a potential source of trouble? And how would the old man use a pack of occult rubbish to dominate his granddaughter and his son against their will?"

"How indeed?" Holmes went to the bookcase again, and took down the envelope in which he had bestowed Burnwell Colby's card. "I, too, found our American visitor-despite his patent desire to disown association with his hidebound and boring family-an ingenuous and harmless young man. Which makes this all the more curious."