Gaslight Grimoire: Fantastic Tales of Sherlock Holmes

by Campbell, Jeff; Prepolec, Charles

“I meant with your husband, Mrs. Westen,” said Holmes.

  I saw Carnacki hide a smile. “Mrs. Westen,” he said, “with your permission, I think my time would be put to better use if I could now see the library.”

  She nodded, and ran a hand over her hair. “Yes, of course. Ask Susan if you need anything. She is still rather new here, but a bright girl.”

  Our Occult Detective took his leave.

  “What is Mr. Carnacki’s interest in this matter?” asked Holmes.

  “Oh, he helped my husband with the library a few years ago. I’m not entirely sure what he did, but I’m convinced it had something to do with the missing book.”

  “Ah yes, the putative missing book.” Holmes smiled. “I am still not entirely clear as to why you think a volume is missing.”

  She shot him a sharp look. “I deduced it, Mr. Holmes. Henry was lying unconscious in a locked room. A secret compartment whose existence I previously knew nothing of stood open and empty. Something must have been in it, and the room is a library after all. What else was I to think?”

  Holmes is often not at his best when confronted by the more intelligent members of the fair sex — and for just a moment his expression resembled that of a man who had unexpectedly bitten into a hot pickle, though he quickly recovered himself.

  “I think we should see Professor Westen now,” said Holmes. “Come, Watson, your expertise will be needed.”

  Mrs. Westen bustled ahead of us, ushering us into the cottage and up a flight of stairs. We reached a landing and passed through an open door. There, in a bed, Professor Henry Westen lay still beneath a coverlet. He had a full head of hair, dark like his drooping and untrimmed moustache, without any trace of grey, which gave the impression of a man young for his academic distinction. His face was thin, pale and immobile, but as I stooped for a closer look he began to move his head in an erratic, agitated way upon the pillow and made incoherent grunts and growls deep in his throat. Here indeed was “a man sleeping through nightmares” as Mrs. Westen had described him in her letter.

  “Has he been able to drink anything?” I asked, opening my bag for thermometer and stethoscope.

  Mrs. Westen nodded. “When he is calm and quiet I can press him to take a little water or tea. He will swallow, but he simply will not wake.” This last she spoke in a distinct tone of frustration.

  “A good indication, Watson, that our hypnosis supposition may be close to the mark,” said Holmes, examining the professor’s hands, particularly some slight skinning of the right knuckles, before turning his attention to the clothes draped over a bedside chair.

  “Indeed,” said I. “His temperature is normal, his pulse is slow and even and his breathing is that which I would expect of a man in deep sleep. The question now is, who was the hypnotist?”

  “Why not ask him? If this is a case of hypnotism it naturally follows that the professor is in a highly suggestive state.”

  I bent closer and said, “Professor Weston, who has put you into this trance?”

  The man in the bed began to toss and turn again, and I became aware that his harsh grunts and growls concealed words, or rather a word, though it made little sense: it sounded like “Sigsand,” repeated over and over.

  Holmes, with a pair of the professor’s shoes in his hand, turned to Mrs. Westen with a frown. “Who or what is Sigsand?” he asked.

  “It is an ancient book — or rather manuscript in the form of a scroll — of forbidden lore,” replied Mrs. Westen, “on which Henry and Mr. Carnacki worked some time ago. They were very secretive about it, but I believe they were engaged in translating it.”

  “Could it be the missing book?”

  Mrs. Westen went deathly pale and gasped, “Heaven help us! Might someone think they could use it for wicked purposes, Mr. Holmes?”

  The man in the bed gave a horrible moan, exclaimed, “I will not!” in a terrible voice and dropped back into growled incoherencies.

  “Professor?” said I. “Can you hear me?”

  His eyes snapped open. I jumped.

  Mrs. Westen gasped. “Henry?” and someone else said, “John.”

  It was a woman’s voice, but so muffled and distant that I could not tell from whence it came, nor for the moment recognize it, though I should have.

  A tap at the bedroom window turned my attention there — and my heart flew to my throat. There at the glass, staring in at me with black hollows where her eyes should have been, was the face of my late wife.

  “Mary!”

  My brain felt like a lump of ice within my skull and the room rocked about me in a giddying dance as the spectre of my dead wife and I gazed at each other across an unknowable abyss. And all the while I was vaguely aware of Westen repeating, “Sigsand … Sigsand,” in a voice that spoke of effort and pain.

  As if from a great distance, I heard Holmes gasp, followed by the double thump of the shoes he had been examining hitting the floor. The sounds seemed to break the spell for we rushed across the room together, and as Holmes flung open the window the ghastly visage of she whom I had once loved seemed to sweep away from the glass and fall beneath the level of the sill. We craned our heads out, but there was nothing to see — no face, no ladder, no strings or wires, nothing but a curious mist thickening about the lower portion of the cottage many feet below.

  “Did you see her, Holmes?” I gasped.

  “The woman,” he said with a queer, intense expression.

  “The woman?” I repeated dully, puzzling at his words until I recalled that this was how he habitually referred to Irene Adler, the American adventuress who had bested him in the Bohemian scandal affair. “Holmes,” I said as levelly as my shaky voice allowed, “It was the image of my wife Mary.”

  “No,” he said. “It was…” We looked at each other in silence for a moment, then Holmes said very quietly, “Mrs. Westen, was there anything at this window just now?”

  “Nothing, Mr. Holmes,” she answered, as much mystified by our actions and exclamations as by the question. “We are twenty feet from the ground. What could possibly be at the window?”

  “What indeed?” said Holmes. “I think, Watson, we should repair to the library.”

  “I’ll ring for Susan to show you the way,” said Mrs. Westen, but my friend demurred and said we would find our own way to the church and its chained library.

  Once out of the door, however, I began to wonder if that might be easier said than done, for we were shrouded within the thickest fog I had ever encountered. It was like being encased by masses of grey wool, and almost as palpable. Not at all like the wet yellow London particulars. Yet, for all that, it was still a fog. We could barely see a yard in front of us, and the moment we left the door of the cottage we were groping like blind men along the wall. Presently we rounded a corner and found ourselves in that open space of coarse grass upon which stood the abbey ruins.

  “Quite an outré case this missing book affair has turned into, eh, Watson?” I heard Holmes say somewhere immediately ahead of me as we picked our way along. I voiced some vague agreement, and he continued, “Which may yet prove to be less than it seems.”

  “What I saw was utterly convincing … as I believe it was for you, at least momentarily.”

  “Remember, Watson, there is hypnotism at work in this case. For the present I shall give human trickery equal consideration with spectral manifestation. You observed how friend Carnacki absented himself immediately upon arrival?”

  “The library was of immediate interest to him,” said I, defending the Occult Detective. “Do you suspect him?”

  “I make no accusations. I merely note the fact. In any event, Watson, you will agree with me that I have not led you on a fool’s errand … that was the phrase you used, I believe?”

  I gave a non-committal grunt as we shuffled on through the fog. Its dullness deepened, it grew thicker and closer, claustrophobic and suffocating, our footsteps as queerly distorted as were now our voices.

  “I think there’s somethin
g distinctly unnatural about this fog,” said I, as much to break the deadening silence as to state the disturbingly apparent.

  “Yes,” said my friend, but refrained from further comment. I knew he detested any suggestion of the supernatural, and yet I was certain he would welcome a ghost over stagnation any time. Indeed, I was beginning to think that the supernatural was what we had run up against. It was not a wholesome thought there with the close greyness about us, creeping among the ruins of an ancient abbey, edging past broken arches and columns. It became a simple matter to imagine ghostly monks with nothing but darkness beneath their cowls walking silently close behind or looming up before me out of the fog.

  Then, as if my wandering imagination had overtaken reality, there was a loud crash, followed by a piercing cry, such that I had never heard issue from either man or beast. I stared uselessly into the fog, unable to tell from whence the sounds came. Then a hand clutched at my arm and I almost yelled with fright.

  “Watson!” said Holmes, invisible at my elbow. “Listen. Something approaches.”

  Something was indeed approaching. I did not hear it, I could not see it, but I knew something was coming all the same, as I’m certain did Holmes at that instant. And I knew that its motion through the fog was swift and unerring, exuding a sense of its utter wrongness as it rushed silently and invisibly upon us. Within seconds this grew in me to an unreasoning fear, to horror, to animal terror, to a sure knowledge of this thing’s hatred of my very humanity. The sensation overwhelmed me like an ocean wave of pure malignity. I cried out as it all but crushed me down into the rank grass. Then as swiftly as it had come, it was gone, passed unseen and the horror of the moment faded like the dwindling memory of a fevered dream.

  “Did you … did you feel that, Holmes?” I gasped.

  “Yes … an experience I should not wish to repeat,” he replied in a voice that struggled to regain its composure, part amazement, part disgust, as his figure grew more distinct before me. The fog was rapidly lifting.

  “Thank God,” said I, never meaning it more literally.

  We were, I saw now, within a few steps of the church. Its great oaken door was wide open, flung back upon its hinges.

  “Carnacki!” Holmes shouted, but his cry went unanswered and rang hollowly about the church. All manner of dire thoughts passed through my mind as the silence lengthened. Cautiously we made our way through the church to the chapter house, which contained the famed chained library of Grantchester. Carnacki was sitting on the floor in the shadow of a great octagonal table upon which lay ancient books bound by links of chain. He was surrounded by what looked like a hastily chalked five-pointed star, and as we approached he began an extraordinary and complicated gesticulation with both hands.

  “Good Lord!” said I.

  Holmes chuckled. “The First Sign of the Saaamaaa Ritual, Watson. A supposed defence against occult forces.”

  Carnacki visibly relaxed. “Jove! You’re real. I had to make sure you were who you seemed,” he said, standing up. “So, Holmes, you understand?”

  “I understand, which is not the same as belief, which in turn is not the same as fact, as Watson was remarking earlier.”

  “Is Professor Westen all right?”

  “As well as can be expected for a man in a deep and protracted trance,” said I.

  “Trance? Ah … yes. A psychic attack would explain both the astral projection that brought me here and what has happened just now. I was making a search of the library in the hope Professor Westen may have shoved The Sigsand Manuscript—” here Carnacki indicted the secret niche, now open and empty, within the octagonal table, “—into a cupboard or shelf … when something came unbidden into the room.”

  “Something?” said Holmes.

  Carnacki frowned, as though he were trying to recall a dream. “The bell-ringers had just left — I heard the door close — and there was a time of silence while I looked about the shelves and cupboards. Then a dog barked briefly somewhere outside and it was after this that I heard the church door open again, but very stealthily it seemed. I remember thinking how queer this was, and then I remember turning around and seeing … a small figure, I think, at the library door.” Carnacki spread out his hands at his inability to describe it further. “It approached me slowly. I don’t know what it was, nor exactly what shape it took, but I know that something else crawled or slithered along the floor beside it. And as it crept nearer I seemed to be trying to fight off a terrible need for sleep as someone was whispering ‘Sigsand … Sigsand’ over and over. I recollect snatching a piece of chalk from my pocket … and then had no more sense of time passing until you entered.”

  “Extraordinary,” said Holmes in a neutral voice while his gaze roved around the library: now on the octagonal table with its burden of chained books, now on the surrounding shelves and cupboards, now on the radiators, with their grey heating pipes, spaced at intervals along the wall. Finally he looked again at the drawn five-pointed star within which Carnacki remained, as if still unsure of our corporeality. “I wish I had thought to invest in a piece of chalk. It might have saved me untold trouble throughout the years.”

  “Make mock if you wish, Mr. Holmes,” said Carnacki, though without rancor. “Even a rough pentacle is a fair defence against most Aeiirii developments, though I might not have survived even a minor Saiitii manifestation. It is the wisdom that is behind such as this pentacle that is the soul of the book we seek. Deduction and knowledge of all things worldly is your school. Mine is the lore of magic as written by Sigsand and others — that and arcane wisdom combined with modern science. We both seek the truth, but our adversaries are of different stuff: the criminal and the Abnatural.”

  Carnacki’s words, though in places incomprehensible, impressed me with their heartfelt sincerity, and I could see that Holmes too had also taken them in with a measure of acceptance he might not have displayed earlier. He was about to speak when, from the tail of my eye, I noticed a small figure appear in the library doorway. I swung around with a shout, expecting to see heaven knew what, startling Holmes and Carnacki in the process.

  It proved to be Susan, the maid.

  She regarded our reaction with an odd, bemused expression. “If you please, gentlemen, Mrs. Westen said I should make certain you found your way.”

  “You may tell your mistress,” said Holmes, “that we are all quite safe and that we will be back to the house presently. I’m afraid it appears the Sigsand Manuscript has in fact been stolen and is quite beyond recovery. There is nothing further either Mr. Carnacki or I can do here.”

  “What—” began Carnacki, but stopped as Holmes waved his hand behind him in a quick, shushing gesture.

  “Very good, sir,” said Susan. After bobbing a curtsy she left to convey the news to Mrs. Westen. I could not imagine her receiving it with any equanimity.

  “What is this, Holmes?” I asked indignantly. “Surely you’re not frightened that there really are ghosts at the bottom of this business?”

  “Not at all, doctor,” said Holmes. “Mr. Carnacki, have you by chance a sounding hammer?”

  In reply Carnacki produced a small hammer from his bag. “It’s invaluable in finding hollows in walls and false panels. More than one ghost has been laid with its use.”

  Climbing onto one of the radiators, which lined the library walls, Holmes methodically tapped along the length of its brass feed pipe, rapping out several high notes before hitting a dull thunk. A moment more and he had unscrewed the pipe joint, dislodged the pipe itself and was carefully knocking the end of it against the palm of his hand where fell, like a conjurer’s trick, an antique parchment scroll.

  “Jove!” said Carnacki. “The Sigsand Manuscript!”

  “But who put it there?” I asked.

  “Is it not obvious?” said Holmes. “Professor Westen. There were scuff marks on his trousers and shoes which indicated to me that he had been doing a bit of climbing. The injury to his right knuckles suggested his hand had likely slipped
while undoing the pipe joint.”

  “And he did this,” said Carnacki, “to hide it from whomever held him in trance to steal it?”

  “Precisely. And our mysterious hypnotist is someone who knows about the books, covets the knowledge this scroll contains, but has no easy access to the library.”

  “But how are we to catch him?” said I.

  Holmes smiled. “I have already set the trap, Watson, when I gave the girl Susan that message to take to Mrs. Westen. To win our little victory, we must first admit defeat.”

  Our interview with Mrs. Westen in her downstairs sitting room was as embarrassing as it was awkward. Holmes had rarely tasted of defeat, and as he explained to Mrs. Westen his inability to help he made it plain that he was finding it a sour dish indeed. Carnacki also was clearly feeling humiliated in being “utterly stumped” as he put it, so early in his unique and peculiar career, which could only reinforce the impression of the ‘genus Charlatan.’ As for myself, I had to claim that as a general practitioner, I knew little about exotic trance states.

  Against this there were, from Mrs. Westen, recriminations of the bitterest kind, all of which we thoroughly deserved. To her accusations that we had not even attempted to find a solution we had no answer. She implored us to stay at least one night to see whether her husband’s condition improved, but we denied her even that. Our behavior toward the lady was wretched and beastly. It pained me, as I know it pained Holmes, but what else could we do?

  And so we took our leave, trooping along the road to the station with our long shadows trailing after us. We must have looked a quite dejected trio, which of course was the impression we hoped to give.

  Over a light repast at a nearby public house we laid out our plans for the coming night. We were back again at the church with twilight deepening perceptibly around us. The vicar had been told by Mrs. Westen of our arrival and business, but had yet to be informed of our failure and departure, so he was quite amenable to loaning us the church keys and a dark-lantern.

  By the time we entered the building it was all but night, and this made Carnacki distinctly uneasy. “Forces and entities rejoice and gather pow’r in darkness, according to Sigsand,” he said, as we made our way down the aisle with Holmes leading, lantern held aloft. Its light chased shadows out before us like dark conspirators surprised, and though I did not quite believe the essence of Carnacki’s quotation, his uneasiness at the approach of night communicated itself to me. I glanced over my shoulder, I peered into corners, I fancied following footsteps and looming attackers.