Sherlock Holmes Read Online Free PDF Page B

of the
ignorant world: blue-white incandescence, like lightning, and the
crackle of ozone filled the reeking air.
    “My dear Miss Delapore,” said Holmes, “if you
will pardon my interruption, I fear you are laboring under a
misapprehension.” He came down the last of the stair, bearing in
one hand a metal rod, from which a flickering corona of electricity
seemed to sparkle, flowing back to a similar rod held up by
Carnaki, who followed him down the stair. Carnaki wore a sort of
pack or rucksack upon his back, of the kind one sees porters in
Constantinople carrying; a dozen wires joined it to the rod in his
hand, and lightnings leaped from that rod to Holmes', seeming to
surround the two men in a deadly nimbus of light. The cold glare
blanched all color from his face, so that his eyebrows stood out
nearly black, like a man who has received a mortal blow and bleeds
within.
    Looking down at me he asked, as if we shared
a cup of tea at Baker Street, “What was your wife's favorite
flower?”
    Miss Delapore, startled, opened her mouth to
speak, but I cried in a convulsion of grief: “How can you ask that,
Holmes? How can you speak of my Mary in this place, after what we
have seen? Her life was all goodness, all joy, and it was for nothing , do you understand? If this – this blasphemy –this
monstrous abyss underlies all of our world, how can any good, any
joy exist in safety? It is a mockery – love, care, tenderness … it
means nothing, and we are all fools for believing in any of
it…”
    “Watson!” thundered Holmes, and again Miss
Delapore turned her eyes to him in astonishment.
    “Watson?” she whispered.
    His gaze held mine, and he asked again: “What
was Mrs. Watson's favorite flower?”
    “Lily of the valley,” I said, and buried my
face in my hands. Even as I did so I saw – such was the horror and
strangeness of my dream – that they were the hands of an elderly
man, thin and twisted with arthritis, and the wedding-band that I
had never ceased to wear with my Mary's death was gone. “But none
of it matters now, nor ever will again, knowing what I now know of
the true nature of this world.”
    Through my weeping I heard Carnaki say
softly, “We'll have to switch off the electrical field. I don't
think we can get him up the stairs.”
    “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 Branwell'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 Branwell 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
Branwell'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.