James Palmer - Shadows Through Time

“And?” said Abberline.

“I followed them to a watchmaker’s shop, where I was run off by a shoggoth.”

“Blimey! I hoped never to see one of those bleedin’ jelly things again.”

“As did I,” said Burton. “And if one accosted me, perhaps they waylaid your men. Oh, I’m dreadfully sorry, Frederick.”

Abberline looked downcast. “Bloody hell.”

“But there was something else you came to see me about?’ asked Burton, eager to change the subject.

“Oh, yes. There’s been a most unusual robbery,” said Abberline.

“Oh? Well, unusual has been my stock and trade as of late. Come have a seat and tell me about it.”

Burton moved round to sit behind his writing desk while Abberline took a chair across from him. “I’ll get straight to it,” he said. “Someone broke into the British Museum last night and stole a meteorite.”

“Bismillah, that is strange. But what is even stranger, at least to me, is that our mutual employer thinks this is somehow related to the Awakened.”

Abberline gave a small nod. “Aye, that he does.”

“And why is that?”

“Because the last people to be seen near the exhibit when the museum closed were Mr. Goforth and Mr. Swinburne.”

A knot formed in Burton’s stomach. Algernon Charles Swinburne was many things, but a thief was not one of them. Until now. He inwardly cursed whatever entity had Shanghaied the poet’s body.

“There’s more to it than that, I’m sure,” said Burton.

“Yes. The meteorite is said to enhance certain psychic powers.”

Burton nodded. “I don’t believe I am familiar with this.”

“It’s called the Wold Cottage meteorite, named for where it fell, way back in 1795.”

Miss Angell brought up a tray laden with scrambled eggs and sausage, as well as a carafe of steaming hot coffee. Despite initially declining, the inspector tucked in and ate ravenously before telling Burton the rest of the strange tale.

“The meteorite has been the source of no small amount of unusualness since its installation at the museum,” said Abberline after a sip of coffee. “People have reported seeing queer apparitions, and those who claim to be clairvoyant in some way have admitted to seeing visions.”

Burton remembered his latest dream and shuddered. “Visions?”

“Yes. As a policeman, you hear them all the time. My Da’ used to scare me to sleep with tales from his time on the beat, which included the block where the museum sits. But as I grew older, I never gave much truck to such rubbish. That is, uh, until…”

“You and I met,” Burton finished for him, a bemused grin playing on his lips.

“Exactly. It has nothing to do with you, though. I’m just used to the world working in a certain way, you see. I’ve seen some terrible things in my time as a copper, but there was always a human cause. A footprint, a murder weapon left behind, and that leads us straight to the killer. A human killer.”

“And now?”

“Now, I don’t know what to think. Maybe there are ghosts. I know for a fact there are monsters. I’ve seen them. Both the human and the other kind.”

Abberline drained his coffee, and Burton could see that his hands were shaking. “Bloody shoggoths,” the inspector mumbled.

“It isn’t always a spectre or phantasm,” said Burton. “Perhaps there is a rational explanation.”

“Well, there is more to the tale,” said Abberline. “A few years ago, the sightings and visions got so bad the curator traced everything back to when they first installed the meteor, generations before he was born. He had some of his geology boys crack it open, and they found a thick vein of some black, shiny, rocky substance they could never quite identify. All they knew for sure was that they had never seen it before, and that it didn’t come from Earth.”

“That part should be obvious,” said Burton as he poured a little brandy in his coffee and gave it an exploratory taste. “After all, it did fall from the sky.”

“Indeed. But the strangest part was, all the eerie activity increased. The curator then had the entire vein removed from the rock—as best they could without further damaging it; there’s still some left—and the ghostly visions all but ceased.”

“Where is the substance they removed?”

Abberline shrugged. “No one knows. This was done by the current curator’s predecessor. He’s looking through the museum records now. I don’t have to tell you Mycroft Holmes is very interested in getting his hands on that queer dust.”

Burton sneered and nodded. “But there was still some left in the meteorite.”

“Abberline nodded. “A meteorite which is now missing.”

“All right,” said Burton, tapping his bottom lip. “Let’s put the pieces together, as we know them. A meteorite containing a substance that can amplify psychic powers has been stolen by a group of men who have had their bodies taken over by a group of possibly malevolent entities for some unknown purpose.”

“That was my figuring as well,” said Abberline. “And the sum doesn’t add up to anything good as far as I can tell.”

“No, it most certainly does not,” said Burton. “But tell me, as an officer of the law, can someone be found guilty if they were not in charge of their faculties?”

“The basic madness plea,” said Abberline. “I’ve seen it work before, but it usually gets the perpetrator a lifetime in Bedlam instead of a prison. And he would have to prove he was not in control at the time of the crime, and not just playacting.”

Burton nodded thoughtfully. “Let’s go to the museum. I want to see the crime scene firsthand.”

“I can arrange that. Come with me.”

Thirty minutes later, Burton and Abberline exited a hansom at the steps of the British Museum. The entrance to the geology exhibit was bustling with policemen and a pair of confused museum docents who stammered and stared wide-eyed at the officers who questioned them. After showing their credentials, Burton and Abberline were ushered down a wide corridor lined with rows of pedestals containing every rock and mineral specimen imaginable. The display cases reminded Burton of Challenger’s extraordinary museum, as well as the room outfitted for that purpose aboard Nemo’s wondrous Nautilus . The rocks and crystals, pretty as they were, paled in comparison to those unique specimens. Burton was surprised to find rather large lumps of gold, silver, and platinum among the museum’s collection. If anything was stolen, he mused, surely those precious elements would have been pilfered before some plain old meteorite.

The corridor led to a large circular alcove at the far end, at the center of which was an empty pedestal surrounded by a cluster of shattered glass. Smaller displays covered the walls of the alcove, these also containing meteorites of varying sizes and shapes. An older man in a dark suit was speaking gruffly to what appeared to be an elderly, stoop-shouldered security guard employed by the museum.

“My men have been over this place with a fine-toothed comb,” said Abberline. “Mr. Holmes even sent for his brother, the famous consulting detective Sherlock Holmes. But he received a bit of bad news this morning.”

“Oh?” said Burton.

“Yes. Mr. Sherlock Holmes is dead. He fell from the Reichenbach Falls last night, tangling with that dastardly Moriarty chap. It appears both men fell to their doom.”

“Bismillah! That’s horrendous.”

“Yes. So, it appears we are on our own.”

They waited until Abner Donenfeld, the museum’s curator, was done berating the poor security guard. Burton knew Donenfeld from the Royal Geographical Society, though the two were hardly friends. He cast a sidelong glance at Burton before dismissing the guard.