Gaslight Grimoire by Charles Prepolec

Author:Charles Prepolec
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing
Published: 2011-11-14T22:00:00+00:00

The Steamship Friesland

The Steamship Friesland

by Peter Calamai

For reasons that will presently become obvious I have instructed my solicitors to withhold this tale from publication until 75 years after my death. It could be argued that I should have specified that span after the death of my companion and friend of many years, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, since he is the central character of the tale. Holmes, who so often came close to death during our adventures, bids fair to outlive me by many years, removed as he is from the unhealthy miasma of London to the pure air of the Sussex Downs and rejuvenated by the Royal Jelly, of whose regular use he believes me ignorant.

As I write, the nightmares of the Great War have eclipsed much of the previous public fascination with spectral happenings. Only a few years ago it was not thought frivolous to believe in an afterlife and in shadowy beings who could inhabit both the world of the living and that of the dead. Perhaps when this tale appears there will be still some who can remember the world of 1894 when ghosts moved among us.

My tale begins in the early summer of that year, just a few months after Holmes had effected the capture of Colonel Sebastian Moran, an event which I recorded in ‘The Adventure of the Empty House’. Although that is now more than two decades ago, I am able to draw upon the customary accurate and complete notes that I kept of many of my friend’s unusual and important cases.

My wife had once again abandoned me for some ailing relations, so I was spending time in our old rooms at 221B Baker Street. I had retired early, but the deep ache from the Jezail bullet that had long ago pierced my flesh kept me from sleep. I was reading one of Kipling’s fine stories about Mowgli when my attention was diverted by unusual sounds from the sitting room. Long association with Holmes had inured me to the acoustical disturbances of violin playing, explosive chemical experiments and even indoor revolver practice. That night, however, it was the great detective himself who was the source of the troubling sounds.

Through the heavy oak door it first seemed as if Holmes was carrying on an agitated discussion with a late-night visitor who had somehow contrived to mount the 17 steps to our rooms without alerting Mrs. Hudson, our long-suffering landlady. When I inched open the door, however, I could clearly see that my colleague and friend was alone in the sitting room, apparently talking to himself.

“Are you quite sure it is the same three men behind this trouble?” he asked. Then he waited for some moments in quiet repose, his gaze fixed to a spot in front of and above his head and his hands grasping tightly his favorite cherrywood pipe.

“Would they not have taken great care to avoid drawing undue attention to themselves?” Another pause, much shorter than the first. “Their emotions concerning the matter are that strong, then?” Pause.

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