Sherlock Holmes: The Coils of Time & Other Stories (Sherlock Holmes Adventures Book 1) Read Online Free PDF Page A

Ghosts of the East End…
    The Vanishments…
    The mysterious disappearance of a hale young man…
    Even without the murder of the Honourable Ronald Adair and the chance to finish the bill with Colonel Sebastian Moran, the time of his return to London, and the land of the living, had come.  At least now, with Moran out of the way,  he could concentrate solely on playing the part for which he had been summoned.
    Suddenly he felt the blackness of London surrounding him, the enormity of the cosmos beyond, space extending to infinity only to curve back upon itself, the beginning and the end melding into an unknowable present.  He felt as he were trapped within the meshing gears of a vast timework.
    He shook off the grip of the irrational unknown and again looked at the clock.

Chapter III
    My Brother’s Keeper
     
     
    At precisely the quarter-hour there came a soft rap upon the door.  The visitor was tall, more than middle-aged, stern of countenance and decorum, impeccably garbed.
    “Mr Holmes?  I am…”
    “Yes, please come in, Sir Reginald Dunning,” Holmes said hurriedly.  “I greatly appreciate your promptness, and your indulgence by coming at this late hour.”
    “It is I who owe you thanks, for seeing me at all,” Sir Reginald replied.  “Your brother speaks very highly of you and seems to think you can discover what has become of my brother, William.  I have told no one I was coming to see you.  Your brother was quite explicit that I keep your return to London an absolute secret.”
    “Yes, there was a reason, but the reason has passed,” Holmes replied.  “By the time the morning papers hit the streets, all London will know I did not die, as my friend Watson believed and so passionately reported.  Please be seated, Sir Reginald, and give me the details, as far as you know them, of your brother’s disappearance.”
    “I fear that William has become the latest victim of the so-called Vanishments,” Sir Reginald said.  “I trust the phenomenon is familiar to you.”
    “Yes, the endemic rash of disappearances is part of what drew me back to London at this time,” Holmes explained.  “It is why I agreed to see you right away after Mycroft forwarded your letter.  Pray continue, sir.”
    “My brother is many years my junior and there has always been a tremendous gulf between us,” Sir Reginald said.  “In many ways we are antithetical to each other, in disposition and outlook.  I have always been the practical one, solid and down to earth, responsible for William and myself ever since the deaths of our parents.  I have always looked out for William, perhaps too much so, some might say.  I am not being immodest when I say that it was I and I alone who built the Dunning Commodities and Trading Company into the concern it is today.”
    “Your brother took no interest in the company?” Holmes asked.
    “When I first started the company, he was too young to be allowed any real hand,” Sir Reginald explained.  “Later on, I assigned him as much responsibility as I thought he could bear.  It is not that he is a bad worker, for he always does as he is told, to the best of his ability, but he always has trouble focusing on the task at hand.  There always seems to be something, some fancy, that distracts him.”
    “Drink?” Holmes ventured.  “Women? Gambling?  The lure of narcotics of bliss?”
    “No.  I would not have condoned those vices, but at least I would have understood them,” Sir Reginald replied.  “He has always been a flighty lad, prone to too much thinking and reading, always yearning for adventure, for lands beyond the horizon, romantic nonsense.  I hoped he would lose his romantic inclinations as he matured, but, if anything, they seemed to worsen.  One of his jobs is to inspect cargoes and manifests, but he always seems to spend more time chatting up sailors and wharf-side riffraff, and his reports are always late.  Despite my best efforts to…”
    “Tell me of