John Adams - The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

"You will be safe," said Miss Delapore's voice. "I command Them now-as did my grandfather, or the thing that for so many years passed itself off as my grandfather. I knew his goal-its goal-was to take over Burnwell's body, as it had taken over my grandfather's fifty years ago. He despised my uncle, as he despised my father, and as he despised me as a woman, thinking us all too weak to withstand the power raised by the Rite of the Book of Eibon. Why else did he bring me home from school, save to lure that poor American to his fate?"

"With a letter blotted with tears," said Holmes drily. "Even in the margins, and the blank upper portion by the address. Hardly the places where a girl's tears would fall while writing, but it's difficult to keep drops from spattering there when they're dipped from a bedroom pitcher with the fingers."

"Had I not written that letter," she replied, "it would be I, not Grandfather, who was given to the Hooded One tonight. At least by luring Burnwell to me I was able to give him poison-brown spider-mushroom, that does not take effect for many days. Grandfather would have had him, one way or another-he does not give up easily."

"And was it you who sent for him, to meet your grandfather in Brighton?"

"No. But I knew it would come. When Grandfather-when Lord Rupert's vampire spirit-entered poor Burnwell's body, that body was already dying, though none knew it but I. I knew Uncle Carstairs had mastered the technique too, of crossing from body to body-I assume it is you who were his target, and not your friend."

"Even so," said Holmes, and his voice was quiet and bitterly cold. "He underestimated me-and both underestimated you, it seems."

And there was the smallest touch of defiance in her voice as she replied, "Men do. Yourself included, it seems."

The snapping hiss of the electricity ceased. I opened my eyes to see them kneeling around me, in the horror of that nighted cavern: Holmes and Carnaki, holding their electrical rods to either of my hands, and Miss Delapore looking into my eyes. Somehow despite the darkness I could see her clearly, could see into her golden eyes, as one can in dreams. What she said to me I do not remember, lost as it was in the shock and cold when Carnaki touched the switch…

I opened my eyes to summer morning. My head ached; when I brought my hand up to touch it, I saw that my wrists were bruised and chafed, as if I had been bound. "You were off your head for much of the night," said Holmes, sitting beside the bed. "We feared you would do yourself an injury-indeed, you gave us great cause for concern."

I looked around me at the simple wall-paper and white curtains of my bedroom at the Cross of Gold in High Clum. I stammered, "I don't remember what happened…"

"Fever," said Carnaki, coming into the room with a slender young lady whom I instantly recognized from the miniature Burnwell Colby had showed us as Miss Judith Delapore. "I have never seen so rapid a rise of temperature in so short a time; you must have taken quite a severe chill."

I shook my head, wondering what it was about Miss Delapore's haggard calm, about her golden-hazel eyes, that filled me with such uneasy horror. "I remember nothing," I said. "Dreams… Your uncle came here, I believe," I added, after Holmes had introduced the young lady. "At least… I believe it was your uncle…" Why was I so certain that the wizened, twisted little man who had come to my room-whom I believed had come to my room-yesterday had been Carstairs Delapore? I could recall nothing of what he had said. Only his eyes…

"It was my uncle," said Miss Delapore, and as I looked at her again I realized that she wore mourning. "You remember nothing of why he came here yesterday? For before he could mention the visit to anyone at the Priory…" And here she glanced across at Holmes; "He fell down the stairs there, and died at the bottom."

I expressed my horrified condolences, while trying to suppress an inexplicable sense of deepest relief that I somehow associated with dreams I had had while delirious. After inclining her head in thanks, Miss Delapore turned to Holmes, and held out to him a box of stout red cardboard, tied up with string. "As I promised," she said.

I lay back, overcome again by a terrible exhaustion-as much of the spirit, it seemed, as of the body. While Carnaki prepared a sedative draught for me Holmes walked Miss Delapore out to our mutual parlor, and I heard the outer door open.

"I have heard much of your deductive abilities, Mr. Holmes," said the young woman's voice, barely heard through the half-open bedroom door. "How did you know that my uncle, who must have come here to take you as my grandfather took Burnwell, had seized upon your friend instead?"

"There was no deduction necessary, Miss Delapore," said Holmes. "I know Watson-and I know what I have heard of your uncle. Would Carstairs Delapore have come down into danger, to see what he could do for an injured man?"

"Do not think ill of my family, Mr. Holmes," said Miss Delapore, after a time of silence. "The way which leads down the six thousand stairs cannot be sealed. It must always have a guardian. That is the nature of such things. And it is always easier to find a venal successor who is willing to trade to Them the things They want-the blood They crave-in exchange for gifts and services, than to find one willing to serve a lonely guardianship solely that the world above may remain safe. They feared Lord Rupert-if the thing that all knew as Lord Rupert was in fact not some older spirit still. His bones, buried in the sub-crypt, shall, I hope, prove a barrier that They are unwilling to cross. Now that the skull, which was the talisman that commanded Their favors, is gone, perhaps there will be less temptation among those who study in the house."

"There is always temptation, Miss Delapore," said Holmes.

"Get thee behind me, Mr. Holmes," replied the woman's voice, with a touch of silvery amusement far beyond her years. "I saw what that temptation did to my uncle, in his desperate craving to snatch the rule of the things from my grandfather. I saw what my grandfather became. These are things I shall remember, when the time comes to seek a disciple of my own."

I was drowsing already from Carnaki's draught when Holmes returned to the bedroom. "Did you speak to Colby?" I asked, struggling to keep my eyes open as he went to the table and picked up the red cardboard box. "Is he all right?" For my dreams as to his fate had been foul, terrible, and equivocal. "Warn him… prevent the old Viscount from doing harm?"

Holmes hesitated for a long time, looking down at me with a concern that I did not quite understand in his eyes. "I did," he replied at length. "To such effect that Viscount Gaius has disappeared from the district-for good, one hopes. But as for Burnwell, he too has… departed. I fear that Miss Delapore is destined to lead a rather difficult and lonely life."

He glanced across at Carnaki, who was packing up what appeared to be an electrical battery and an array of steel rods and wires into a rucksack, the purpose of which I could not imagine. Their eyes met. Then Carnaki nodded, very slightly, as if approving what Holmes had said.

"Because of what was revealed," I asked, stifling a terrible yawn, "about this… this blackmail that was being practiced? The young hound, to desert a young lady like that." My eyelids slipped closed. I fought them open again, seized by sudden panic, by the terror that I might slide into sleep and find myself again in that dreadful abyss, watching the horrible things that fluttered and crept from those angles of darkness that should not have been there. "Did you learn… anything of these studies they practiced?"

"Indeed we did," said Carnaki. And then, a little airily, "There was nothing in them, though."

"What did Miss Delapore bring you, then?"