John Adams - The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

"And this is what Gaius Delapore and his son believe they have in their basement?" My eyebrows shot up. "It should make it easy enough for us to assist young Mr. Colby in freeing his fiancée from the influence of two obvious lunatics."

Holmes said softly, "So it should."

We remained at Carnaki's until nearly midnight, while Holmes and the young antiquarian-for so I assumed Carnaki to be-spoke of the appalling folkloric and theosophical speculations that evidently fuelled Viscount Delapore's madness: hideous tales of creatures beyond human imaginings or human dreams, monstrous legends of dim survivals from impossibly ancient aeons, and of those deluded madmen whose twisted minds accepted such absurdities for truth. Holmes was right in his assertion that the visit would supply the palette of my knowledge of London with hitherto unsuspected hues. What surprised me was Holmes' knowledge of such things, for on the whole he was a man of practical bent, never giving his attention to a subject unless it was with some end in view.

Yet when Carnaki spoke of the abomination of abominations, of the terrible amorphous shuggoths and the Watcher of the Gate, Holmes nodded, as one does who hears familiar names. The shocking rites engaged in by the covens of ancient believers, whether American Indians or decayed cults to be found in the fastnesses of Greenland or Thibet, did not surprise him, and it was he, not our host, who spoke of the insane legend of the shapeless god who plays the pipe in the dark heart of chaos, and who sends forth the dreams that drive men mad.

"I did not know that you made a study of such absurdities, Holmes," I said, when we stood once more on the fog-shrouded Embankment, listening for the approaching clip of a cab-horse's hooves. "I would hardly have said theosophy was your line."

"My line is anything that will-or has-provided a motive for men's crimes, Watson." He lifted his hand and whistled for the Jehu, an eerie sound in the muffled stillness. His face in the glare of the gaslight seemed pale and set. "Whether a man bows down to God or Mammon or to Cthulhu in his dark house at R'lyeh is no affair of mine… Until he sheds one drop of blood not his own in his deity's name. Then God have mercy upon him, for I shall not."

All of these events took place on Monday, the 20th of August. The following day Holmes was engaged with turning over the pages of his scrapbooks of clippings regarding unsolved crimes, seeming, it appeared to me, to concentrate on disappearances during the later part of the summer in years back almost to the beginning of the century. On Wednesday Mrs. Hudson sent up the familiar elegantly restrained calling-card of the American folklorist, the man himself following hard upon her heels and almost thrusting her out of the way as he entered our parlor.

"Well, Holmes, it's all settled and done with," he declared, in a loud voice very unlike his own. "Thank you for your patience with old Delapore's damned rodomontade, but I've seen the old man myself-he came down to town yesterday, damn his impudence-and made him see reason."

"Have you?" asked Holmes politely, gesturing to the chair in which he had first sat.

Colby waved him impatiently away. "Simplest thing in nature, really. Feed a cur and he'll shut up barking. And here's for you." And he drew from his pocket a small leather bag which he tossed carelessly onto the table. It struck with the heavy, metallic ring of golden coin. "Thank you again."

"And I thank you." Holmes bowed, but he watched Colby's face as he spoke, and I could see his own face had turned very pale. "Surely you are too generous."

"S'blood, man, what's a few guineas to me? I can tear up little Judi's poor letter, now we're to be wed all right and tight…" He winked lewdly at Holmes, and held out his hand. "And her old Dad's damned impudent note as well, if you would."

Holmes looked around him vaguely, and picked up various of his scrapbooks from the table to look beneath them: "Didn't you tuck it behind the clock?" I asked.

"Did I?" Holmes went immediately to the mantle-cluttered as always with newspapers, books, and unanswered correspondence-and after a brief search shook his head. "I shall find it, never fear," he said, his brow furrowing. "And return it, if you would be so kind as to give me your direction once more."

Colby hesitated, then snatched the nearest piece of paper from the table-a bill from Holmes' tailor, I believe it was-and scribbled an address upon it. "I'm off to Watchgate this afternoon," he said. "This will find me."

"Thank you," said Holmes, and I noticed that he neither touched the paper, nor came within arm's reach of the man who stood before him. "I shall have it in the post before nightfall. I can't think what can have become of it. It has been a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Mr. Colby. My felicitations on the happy outcome of your suit."

When Colby was gone Holmes stood for a time beside the table, looking after him a little blankly, his hands knotted into fists where they rested among the scrapbooks. He whispered, "Damn him," as if he had forgotten my presence in the room. "My God, I had not believed it…"

Then, turning sharply, he went to the mantelpiece and immediately withdrew from behind the clock the note which Carstairs Delapore had sent to Colby. This he tucked into an envelope and sealed. As he copied the direction he asked in a stiff, expressionless tone, "What did you make of our guest, Watson?"

"That success has made him bumptious," I replied, for I had liked Colby less in his elevated and energized mood than I had when he was merely unthinking about his own and other peoples' money. "Holmes, what is it? What's wrong?"

"Did you happen to notice which hand he wrote out his direction with?"

I thought for a moment, picturing the man scribbling, then said, "His left."

"Yet when he wrote the address of the Hotel Excelsior the day before yesterday," said Holmes, "he did so with his right hand."

"So he did." I came to his side and picked up the tailor's bill, and compared the writing on it with that of the Excelsior address, which lay on the table among the scrapbooks and clippings. "That would account for the hand being so very different."

Holmes said, "Indeed." But he spoke looking out the window into Baker Street, and the harsh glare of the morning sunlight gave his eyes a steely cast, faraway and cold, as if he saw from a distance some terrible event taking place. "I am going to Shropshire, Watson," he said after a moment. "I'm leaving tonight, on the last train; I should be back-"

"Then you find Viscount Gaius' sudden capitulation as sinister as I do," I said.

He looked at me with blank surprise, as if that construction of young Colby's information had been the farthest thing from his mind. Then he laughed, a single sharp mirthless breath, and said, "Yes. Yes, I find it… sinister."

"Do you think young Colby is walking into some peril, returning to Depewatch Priory?"

"I think my client is in peril, yes," said Holmes quietly. "And if I cannot save him, then the least that I can do is avenge."

Holmes at first refused to hear of me accompanying him to the borders of Wales, sending instead a note to Carnaki with instructions to be ready to depart by the eight o'clock train. But when Billy the messenger-boy returned with the information that Carnaki was away from home and would not return until the following day, he assented, sending a second communication to the young antiquarian requesting that he meet us in the village of High Clum, a few miles from Watchgate, the following day.

It puzzled me that Holmes should have chosen the late train, if he feared for Colby's life should the young man return to fetch his fiancée from the hands of the two monomaniacs at Depewatch Priory. Still more did it puzzle me that, upon our arrival at midnight in the market town of High Clum, Holmes took rooms for us at the Cross of Gold, as if he were deliberately putting distance between us and the man he spoke of-when he could be induced to speak at all-as if he were already dead.