Tony Richards - The Astonishing Adventures of Sherlock Holmes in the Twenty-First Century

But then he remembered something from his walk tonight.

And Holmes cried out, “Good Lord!”

Was the creature still observing him? Holmes doubted that. They had only been connected when he’d touched the screen, and that link had been severed. He’d been abruptly cut off, and that ought most likely to work both ways, he thought.

Holmes went at a steady jog through the hotel lobby, drawing curious glances from the guests and staff. On reaching the open air, he broke into a run. And he was back on the quiet streets above Rokin a mere minute later.

He’d returned to the same unremarkable converted townhouse he had stopped in front of a while back. The building looked precisely the same – pot plants on the windowsills, curtains of differing patterns. It was a remarkably convincing illusion on some levels. Except there was no evidence of any living occupants he could make out.

This was the late evening, and almost all the lights were on in here. But not so much as a moving shadow passed across a windowpane. There was none of that flickering alteration of the quality of light that indicated television sets were being watched, no murmuring from any radio or stereo system.

In most apartment blocks, a dog might bark, a little child might cry out. But this one remained silent.

When he had watched the two gentlemen from the taxicab enter this place, not so long ago, he had seen neither of them reach out and touch any of the bell pushes beside the closed front door. Neither of the men had looked up, waved, or shouted out. The door had simply opened for them, and then closed behind them like the surface of a dark body of water. He had not even heard the buzz – and they were usually quite noticeable – of an automated entry system.

Holmes worked it feverishly through his mind again, trying to make certain that he was correct. The being that had spoken to him when he’d touched the screen … it had broken off contact with him almost as soon as it had discerned that he was no potential victim. But did it do the same with those who answered that description, or did it continue talking to them once that it had got inside their heads, guiding them and coaxing them along?

This door had swung open for those two middle-aged men because the creature knew that they were coming.

But could it see or sense him now? Were eyes – alien and strange ones – watching him from behind the cover of this commonplace façade? Holmes pressed himself against the wall, but nothing happened. So he waited where he was till something did. The truth was, he had little choice.

After some five minutes, a latch clicked. The door eased open, but then slammed shut again before Sherlock Holmes could even take a glimpse inside. A man was standing on the narrow porch, grey of hair and rather overweight, but in a pricey-looking three-piece suit.

He was blinking in the electric glow of the streetlights, and his eyes looked glassy. And the great detective’s first thought was that this might be another victim. But then the fellow looked directly at him, his cheeks reddening slightly. He began walking away immediately, except that Holmes couldn’t help but notice his gait was unsteady and his movements quite disjointed. He was trying to move quickly, but slowed down after the first ten paces. By the time he’d reached the corner of the block, the poor fellow was so tired that he had to lean against a lamppost.

He had not been drained of his vitality altogether, the way that Pieter Hoek and the other unfortunates had. But he had obviously been drained somewhat. Holmes forgot about the man and pressed himself against the brickwork again, waiting for a second chance.

As soon as he heard the latch click again, he launched himself forward, taking little notice of the man who was emerging, simply making sure he got inside the house. The light in here was dim, tinged heavily with red, and it took a few seconds for his eyesight to adjust.

But finally the illusion was revealed for what it was. This was no converted apartment block! There were no individual flats!

He was in an enormous lobby, sumptuously decorated in the grand style of the Belle Époque. The fabric here – and there was much of it, not merely on the furniture but in the form of hanging drapes – was all coloured crimson or scarlet, much of it trimmed with gold brocade. There was a fire crackling in a grate. Antique vases and fine ornaments of glass and gold were on view all around him. Up ahead of him was an enormous stairway – carpeted in red – which led up to the higher levels of this place.

There were couches and chaise longues everywhere he looked. And on those were seated – or, more accurately, lolling – perhaps a dozen well-dressed men of around Pieter Hoek’s age. And for each of them, there were at least three of the young women who staffed this place.

He thought it was the light at first, but Sherlock Holmes began to realise there was something rather strange about them. In the first place, they looked so similar that they could practically be sisters … and since there were several dozen of them, that was quite impossible. In the second, their faces and their bodies – openly apparent through the filmy garments they were wearing – were impossibly perfect. None of these women was particularly tall. They each had short dark hair, a heart-shaped face with bee-stung lips, smooth pale shoulders and the figures of a troupe of teenaged gymnasts.

There was not a spot, a mark, a blemish on any of them that he could see. Except that each of these alluring women – to the last – had a beauty spot above the left-hand corner of her mouth. They looked more like the product of some artist’s imagination than real human beings.

One of them glanced up at him. Her eyes were very dark, and filled with lust and laughter. And when he looked around more closely, Holmes could see the same was true of all of them.

Their movements were languid as a cat’s. They were toying with the menfolk, tickling them under their chins, ruffling their thinning hair and draping breasts against their shoulders. And the men looked spellbound. As Holmes watched, one of them stood up and wandered off in the direction of the staircase with a temptress on each arm.

A door slammed shut up there. The man was gone.

None of these wenches had paid him the slightest attention so far, Holmes took note. So perhaps it was the case he was required to sit down. And he was considering doing that when – to his faint astonishment – he heard his own name being called.

His gaze swung back towards the stairs. A similar woman to the rest was standing at the top of the first flight, smiling at him, with her dark eyes flashing.

“Mr Sherlock Holmes?” she asked. ”The mistress of the house will see you now.”

He was led to the very top, where there was a single open door. When Holmes looked around, the woman who’d accompanied him thus far had vanished. Except that that did not surprise him as much as it should have done.

“Are you going to stand out there all day?” asked a voice from beyond the open doorway.

It was a female voice, of course. And it was very languid, very smooth, as sweet as honey and as dark as chocolate, sexual and tempting in its every variance of tone. Holmes recognised it, naturally, from a short while back. It was the self-same voice he had conversed with when he’d touched the laptop screen.

He took a breath, then stepped into the room. There were no lights switched on in here, but there were two sources of illumination. One was yet another fire burning in a grate – although, peculiarly, it seemed to cast not the slightest heat. The other was the full moon through a solitary window. It appeared bright red, an alarmingly harsh hue. Which told Holmes that he was now as close as he would ever want to get to the real source of this awful magic.