Tales of the Wold Newton Universe Read Online Free PDF Page B

was.”
    “And where is the briar bush?” I said.
    “Ah! That’s the question,” Raffles breathed. “What kind of a rabbit is it which pulls the briar bush in after it? That is the sort of mystery which has attracted even the Great Detective himself. He has condescended to look into it.”
    “Then let us stay away from the whole affair!” I cried. “We have been singularly fortunate that none of our victims have called in your relative!”
    Raffles was a third or fourth cousin to Holmes, though neither had, to my knowledge, even seen the other. I doubt that the sleuth had even gone to Lord’s, or anywhere else, to see a cricket match.
    “I wouldn’t mind matching wits with him,” Raffles said. “Perhaps he might then change his mind about who’s the most dangerous man in London.”
    “We have more than enough money,” I said. “Let’s drop the whole business.”
    “It was only yesterday that you were complaining of boredom, Bunny,” he said. “No, I think we should pay a visit to our journalist. He may know something that we, and possibly the police, don’t know. However, if you prefer,” he added contemptuously, “you may stay home.”
    That stung me, of course, and I insisted that I accompany him. A few minutes later, we got into a hansom, and Raffles told the driver to take us to Praed Street.
----
    1 Two hundred and eighty pounds.

4
    Persano’s apartment was at the end of two flights of Carrara marble steps and a carved mahogany banister. The porter conducted us to 10-C but left when Raffles tipped him handsomely. Raffles knocked on the door. After receiving no answer within a minute, he picked the lock. A moment later, we were inside a suite of extravagantly furnished rooms. A heavy odor of incense hung in the air.
    I entered the bedroom and halted aghast. Persano, clad only in underwear, lay on the floor. The underwear, I regret to say, was the sheer black lace of the demimondaine . I suppose that if brassieres had existed at that time he would have been wearing one. I did not pay his dress much attention, however, because of his horrible expression. His face was cast into a mask of unutterable terror.
    Near the tips of his outstretched fingers lay the large matchbox. It was open, and in it writhed something.
    I drew back, but Raffles, after one soughing of intaken breath, felt the man’s forehead and pulse and looked into the rigid eyes.
    “Stark staring mad,” he said. “Frozen with the horror that comes from the deepest of abysses.”
    Emboldened by his example, I drew near the box. Its contents looked somewhat like a worm, a thick tubular worm, with a dozen slim tentacles projecting from one end. This could be presumed to be its head, since the area just above the roots of the tentacles was ringed with small pale-blue eyes. These had pupils like a cat’s. There was no nose or nasal openings or mouth.
    “God!” I said shuddering. “What is it?”
    “Only God knows,” Raffles said. He lifted Persano’s right hand and looked at the tips of the fingers. “Note the fleck of blood on each,” he said. “They look as if pins have been stuck into them.”
    He bent over closer to the thing in the box and said, “The tips of the tentacles bear needlelike points, Bunny. Perhaps Persano is not so much paralyzed from horror as from venom.”
    “Don’t get any closer, for heaven’s sake!” I said.
    “Look, Bunny!” he said. “Doesn’t that thing have a tiny shining object in one of its tentacles?”
    Despite my nausea, I got down by him and looked straight at the monster. “It seems to be a very thin and slightly curving piece of glass,” I said. “What of it?”
    Even as I spoke, the end of the tentacle which held the object opened, and the object disappeared within it.
    “That glass,” Raffles said, “is what’s left of the sapphire. It’s eaten it. That piece seems to have been the last of it.”
    “Eaten a sapphire?” I said, stunned. “Hard metal, blue