"Still, it is one thing to discuss as men of science and another to have you discuss my practicing of it."
Holmes frowned in thought as he considered that. "Fair enough, Watson. Look sharp, we shall soon be at the London docks."
My nose curled at the dank odor of sewage and murky water and oil smoke belching from the ships as they pulled in and out of the various ports. "Why are we here again, Holmes?"
"As I said last night, I have already solved this little mystery. I am simply looking for evidence to support my conclusion before speaking to our client again. Come on, then. Here we are."
I followed him to the first dock's shipping office. The clerk looked up with bored disdain at Holmes. I supposed they did not get very many pasty-white men dressed in houndstooth coats and deerstalker caps. "What yes need?" he muttered.
"I would like to see the records for any ships that arrived within the last two weeks from the Orient."
"Why should I show them to the likes a' yes?"
I looked at Holmes for a moment, unsure of what he would say. Without missing a beat, Holmes became very serious and said, "We are here from the Royal Office to investigate an outbreak of Oriental malaria that has already killed four people. Anyone who came in contact with it is in grave danger. I need to see your manifests and passenger lists so that you might be spared a horribly agonizing death, sir!"
"Here yes go," the man said quickly, digging a large red book out from under the papers on his desk. "Take anything yes likes."
Holmes flipped through the pages quickly, scanning the lines of entries with his thumb. He came to the last page and said, "You are in luck, my good man. The contaminated cargo did not pass through here." He closed the book and slid it back across the counter, "Good day."
As we left the office, men were slinging containers on and off of the boats, while others hauled enormous fishing nets out of the water. Fish slime and dank water covered the ground where we walked, and though I was careful to step in as little of it as possible, Holmes was too lost in thought to bother. He sighed deeply and said, "Let us hope we do not have to search for too much longer. When the conclusion is inevitable, it is simply boring to have to chase it down."
All told, we visited four dock offices before Holmes found the entry he was looking for. "Ah ha!" he said and stabbed the page with his finger. I leaned over his shoulder and saw the passenger list for a boat that arrived last week from Hong Kong. The name Holmes was pointing at read, W. Barrymore, Count of Corvus.
Holmes was practically prancing with satisfaction as we walked back toward our carriage. He whistled a tune I'd heard him play on his violin many times, though the name always escaped me. "Tell me, Watson. Have you figured out the case, yet?"
"In fact, I believe I have," I said.
"By all means, tell the tale."
"The Gatekeeper, for lack of a better name, is a business associate of the good Count, and intends to blackmail him with details of his wife's sordid adventures on the night she described. Perhaps it is someone the Count wronged, and this is his way of taking revenge. A rather cruel thing to do, I might say. To corrupt a young woman like that by taking advantage of her loneliness. Despicable, I say."
Holmes listened politely as I spoke, and once I finished, he clasped his hands behind his back and resumed his whistling.
"Well?" I said. "Are you in agreement with my deduction?"
Holmes smiled at me and said, "Not in the slightest."
~***~
We took the carriage to Countess Barrymore's London home, and Holmes had managed to contain his amusement enough to knock on the front door.
The Countess appeared a few moments later by breathlessly racing down the steps. "Did you find him? Can we go see him?" she said.
"I believe we can," Holmes said.
She ran up and embraced him, gushing with thanks. Holmes tolerated the hug but did not return it. "First, I must ask you to allow me to inspect the gown that you wore to the gathering that evening."
The Countess retrieved a long black dress from her bedroom and handed it to Holmes. The golden raven pin was still attached to the shoulder. Holmes slid the dress along the palm of his hand and said, "Ah, exactly as I suspected. Feel this, Watson."
I ran my hand along the skirt and knowingly said, "I see."
"What do you see?" Holmes said.
I sighed with defeat. "I haven't the foggiest idea, Holmes."
"What do you feel, Watson?"
I touched the skirt again and said, "It is exquisitely soft, as the Countess had said. Is that it?"
Holmes shook his head sadly and said, "Come along, everyone. We have a bit of journey to make. Please bring the gown with you, Countess."
I escorted her into the back of the carriage while Holmes went up front to speak with the driver. She smiled shyly at me and said, "I am sorry if I caused you any embarrassment the other night. Your detective said to leave out no details, so I thought it important to be specific."
"It was quite all right," I said. "I am not easily shocked."
Holmes knocked on the rear door before opening it. "I am going to ride up front with the driver to give him specific directions. I trust Watson will keep you good company," he said with a nod.
The Countess watched Holmes shut the door and lifted her fist to her mouth and bit one of her fingers. "I could see how excited you were when I was telling my story, you know."
My eyes widened at both the humiliation and her boldness in speaking so. I immediately sputtered out an apology, but she smiled wickedly at me and said, "I've found that what terrified me before only excites me now. You cannot imagine the thrill I received from looking at your cock protruding from your trousers while I spoke." She leaned forward seductively, "Tell me, did you pleasure yourself once I'd left."
I did not answer.
"Did you allow Holmes to pleasure you, perhaps?"
"What? How outrageous," I gasped. "You are possessed by the devil, woman."
"Yes," she whispered. "The Gatekeeper has possessed both my body and soul. I no longer have any control. That night after I left your apartment, I was so overwhelmed with passion that I began to frig myself in the back of the carriage. Thank God he didn't come back and open the door. He'd have seen me spread eagled on the bench with my three fingers inside of my cunny."
I laid my hand on my lap to cover up my emerging erection. "Three, you say?"
She nodded slowly, and I saw that she was squeezing her legs together as we spoke. Without her hat and veil, she was quite lovely to look at. Milk-white skin and straw blonde hair pulled back. Her eyes were indeed as green as jewels and even in her conservative outfit complete with scarf and coat and long skirt, I could see that her figure was a thing to behold.
"Perhaps it was telling my story to such a handsome man as yourself," she said.
"Handsome?"
"Yes," she said. Her legs were squeezing together even tighter now.
"I have a question," I said.
"Ask me anything. I have no secrets left."
"Exactly how hard was he hitting your bottom with the paddle?"
"Hard enough to sting, but not hard enough to leave a bruise. Does that help?"
I shrugged and said, "I suppose it is the best I could have hoped for. And you found that to be pleasurable? I cannot fathom how that can be so."
The Countess turned around to listen to the driver and Holmes in the forward compartment and then peeked out the window. "It certainly seems like we are going to be riding for a while," she said. She looked back at me and said, "Here. Give me your hand."
I held out my hand and she got down on her knees on the floor of the carriage and rested her elbows on the bench, offering me her buttocks. "Spank me lightly, and I'll tell you how much harder you need to do it." I hesitated, and the Countess turned her head to look back at me, "I thought you said you weren't easily shocked."
"I'm not," I said defensively. "Here." I smacked her across the backside lightly, making the fabri
c of her skirt ruffle.
"That simply won't do," she said. She hiked up her skirt to show me how her bloomers covered her perfectly formed rear end, like an upside down heart. "Try it now."
I slapped the other cheek, this time with a more satisfying sound against the light fabric of her underclothes.
"Still no," she said. "Pull them down."
"Are you certain?" I said.
"Yes, come on. The least I can do after you listened to my caterwauling, as you so succinctly put it."
"I did not mean it as an insult," I said.
"Cease speaking and spank me."
I pulled down the waistband of her bloomers and stared in wonder at her naked buttocks. Bent over, it was a sight of perfection. I could not help but run my fingers along her flesh and squeeze both delicious handfuls of flesh. I sneaked my hand between her legs while moving from one side to the other and the soft hairs of her sex tickled my palm. They were tipped with dampness.
I smacked her on the bare cheek hard enough to send a loud crack throughout the interior of the cabin. "That's it!" she cried. "Do it again."
I spanked her as hard as I could on either cheek, hitting her hard enough to see red hand prints appear on the alabaster skin. She gasped and reached up between her legs and began to frig herself. I leaned back to watch her fingers slide in and out of the damp hole and rub the tiny button of skin until clear juices began to sputter from her sex. "I need your cock," she said.
I tore at my trousers until it was free, but just as I was about to slide it into her, she smacked me away and said, "No! I must save myself for him. Lie down."
I did as she instructed. The Countess shimmied out of her bloomers and spread her knees on either side of my face, so that I was looking directly up at her sex. She bent forward and grasped my tackle with both hands. "We will suck each other," she said.
"Anything!" I said.
As she lowered her sex to my eager mouth, I felt her envelope me with her mouth. I sucked on her cunny until it leaked, slicking my face until I had to close my eyes to keep them from stinging. I licked her until my tongue felt numb and sucked on her clitoral hood, even as she alternated between yanking my John Thomas back and forth into her mouth and taking it all the way down and all the way up over and over, working like the pistons of a factory machine.
I thought of her story from the night before, how the Gatekeeper had filled her up. I stuck one of my fingers into her coiled rectum as I licked her sex, and she groaned with pleasure. I slid my finger in and out, staring in wonder at the wrinkles of her orifice, and how she squealed each time I pushed it in further.
The carriage bounced along the country road, crashing her body down onto my lips and my cock deeper into her mouth. Finally, she lifted her head and said, "Do not spend yourself in my mouth. Tell me before you are about to spurt."
I moaned a meaningless reply, lost in the pool of her hot gates and the delicious spell of her mouth. I felt an orgasm building deep within my loins. A volcanic eruption with steam and fire and hot jets of burning lava about to explode. I grabbed the back of her head and held it in place as I gritted my teeth and came in one great, shuddering spasm. She moaned in complaint even as I filled her mouth and it bubbled out from her lips, even as I held her in place to keep her mouth firmly seated on me.
When I finally let go, she rolled off in exhaustion. Her face dripped with white cream like she'd eaten a baker's glazed confection without using her hands. I could not move. My jaw ached with pain and it hurt to close. It was all I could to lie there and try to catch my breath. I felt light in the head and did not dare try to sit up.
The Countess smacked me on the leg and said, "I told you to tell me. It shot into the back of my throat."
"I tried," I lied. "You must not have heard me."
~***~
By the time the carriage stopped, she and I had managed to get back into our clothes and comport ourselves. We did not speak much after that, though, and the Countess began to look out the window and say, "Where are we? This all looks too familiar."
When Holmes threw open the rear door, I saw the sprawling estate behind him and the Countess said, "What are we doing here? I thought you said you were taking me to him."
Holmes held out his arm and said, "And so I shall, but I believe there is something we must first learn here."
The Countess laid her arm on Holmes' elbow, and for a brief moment, his keen, hawk-like eyes centered on the carriage floor and quickly shifted from her to me. What the bloody hell had he seen, I thought. Damn his supernatural powers of observation.
I followed them toward the estate's front door and Holmes said, "Would you be so kind as to let us in?"
We all filtered into the home and Holmes looked around eagerly, "And where is the master bedroom?"
"Upstairs and to the left," she said.
"Excellent. Lead the way, my dear Countess."
Upon entering the bedroom, Holmes said, "May I see your gown once more?" He undid the clasp of the golden raven and said, "Do you know the scientific name for the bird family the raven hails from?"
The Countess shook her head.
"Corvus," Holmes said. He held up the golden raven and said, "The same as your husband's title. A rather clever nod to his station, I thought." He spread the gown out so that it hung from the tips of his fingers to the ground and lined it up with the Countess's figure. "And for the dress to arrive at your city home already sized perfectly to fit you, it stands to reason that someone was more than slightly familiar with your body."
"But who could know that?" the Countess said.
Holmes ran his hand along the gown's fabric and said, "And you yourself acknowledged how soft and luxurious the fabric was against your skin. That is because it is made from the rarest Chinese silk. A rather expensive variety of it, I might add."
Holmes spun around to face a closet on the west wall of the bedroom. "Another clever reference to your husband's recent travels to the Orient."
"But who else could have gone to China and come back with such a dress for me?" the Countess said. "I know the men my husband went with, and none of them could possibly be the Gatekeeper."
"That is because none of his associates is the Gatekeeper, madam," Holmes said. He opened the closet door and reached inside, only to reemerge with the exact Greek Tragedy mask the Countess had described before.
Her mouth fell open and she tried to speak but no words came out. She finally summoned the voice to say, "What trickery is this? How did that come into this house?"
Holmes looked past the two of us and said, "Perhaps you would care to explain, Count Barrymore?"
I turned around to see the reddened face of a middle-aged man, looking at his wife with sad eyes that suddenly welled up with tears. He let out a low moan and said, "When I came home and found you were gone, I feared the worst, that you had left me. I only sought to excite you once more. I am sorry for the trickery, my sweet, sweet angel."
"You are the Gatekeeper?" she shouted. "You evil, wormy bastard!"
"Yes," Holmes said. "It was your husband the entire time. I began to suspect it when you first came to my office, but first I needed to check the shipping offices at the London docks. Your husband arrived home over a week ago."
The Countess screamed in outrage and began striking him across the face with her open hand, until Holmes and I both had to wrestle her back and hold her fast. "How could you do that to me? How could you humiliate me like that?"
The Count could not bring himself to speak, and his silence only spurred her to hurl curses at him of the most vile nature. It was the anger of someone who'd just had an entire dream collapse on her like the Temple of Dagon. The Count only bowed his head and endured her abuse.
"Take her," I said to Holmes. "Do you have her?"
He told me he did, and I took the Tragedy mask from him and grabbed the Count by the arm and pulled him out of the bedroom, even as his wife continued to scream at him. "Here," I said.
He looke
d at the mask and groaned, "I have already done enough harm with that."
"Put it on, you fool. Become that which she desires once more."
He fastened the mask over his face and the change was immediate. His back stiffened and his shoulders squared with mine. He pushed the bedroom door open and leveled his finger at Holmes and said, "Let go of that which belongs to me."
The Countess stopped struggling and Holmes released her. Her eyes were fixed on his mask and it was as if no one else existed in the room. The Gatekeeper grabbed her by both wrists and pulled her close to his chest, "Do not speak another word, or there will be terrible consequences."
She squeaked in compliance and stared up into the dark void of his hard mask.
I thought of our time together in the carriage and felt a sort of despair come over me, but Holmes put his arm around my shoulder and said, "Come Watson. We must leave these two."
I said nothing as we walked together back to the carriage. He opened the door to the rear compartment and sighed deeply as he sat on the bench across from me. The same one the Countess had occupied during our ride here.
"So, another of our adventures has come to an end, Watson."
"So it has, Holmes," I said. I could not bring myself to look away from the estate, imagining that the Count was already positioned behind his wife and administering the first of multiple smacks to her perfectly shaped rear end.
"I had the most delightful conversation with the carriage driver on the way here. I do not envy you that you were trapped in this compartment with the Countess all that time. Was it as horrible as it seemed?"
"It was…positively draining," I said.
The estate was soon swallowed up by the trees along the country road as we travelled back toward London. Holmes had already folded his hands across his chest and closed his eyes. I pressed my chin against my hand and stared out the window, trying not to dwell on what had occurred. Of all the damned luck. Just being in the carriage so close to where the Countess and I had thrashed together was enough to make it all play through my mind once more. Soon, I felt the familiar throbbing in my loins and had to adjust my trousers to accommodate it. I supposed that when I returned home I would have to break down and engage in some vigorous self-abuse.
Fifty Shades of Sherlock Holmes Page 3