The Manifestations of Sherlock Holmes by James Lovegrove

Author:James Lovegrove
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Titan

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In the event, I did not see Holmes or even hear from him for a full twenty-four hours. I was visited at noon the next day at my practice by a Mercury messenger, who presented me with a note in my friend’s handwriting summoning me to an address in Shadwell. I gave the messenger a shilling, and he thanked me in speech so rapid and garbled that I couldn’t make out one word in three, before racing off at such speed that he seemed to vanish.

The address turned out to be an engineer’s workshop.

“My investigations have brought me inexorably to this place,” said Holmes as he met me outside, “the doorstep of a scoundrel as ingenious and villainous as any we have encountered in our adventures together. I fear I shall have need of your invulnerability, old friend, and perhaps also your service pistol, which I am glad to see you have brought along, judging by the bulge in your jacket pocket.”

“Your note implied I might need it.”

“I pray my instincts are wrong,” said Holmes, “yet I fear they are not. Let us go in.”

The engineering workshop looked much like any other of its ilk, a barnlike premises that housed machinery and tools – lathes, drills, bandsaws. Its sole occupant was also its sole proprietor, one Algernon Dodson, according to the hoarding above the entrance.

Dodson was a small, sallow-complexioned individual with thinning mousy hair and an unprepossessing face, which seemed set in a permanent sneer. Some childhood disease – polio, I adjudged – had left him with a withered left leg, a defect he had remedied by fixing an elaborate metal brace to the limb, which cunningly utilised pistons and springs to lend support and an almost full range of motion. He came towards us with scarcely a limp, the brace creaking ever so slightly as he walked.

“Gentlemen,” he said, his hands hidden behind his back, “how may I be of assistance?”

“You may assist us,” replied Holmes, “by confessing, Mr Dodson, to at least three counts of premeditated, cold-blooded murder. It will go easier on you, and save us all a great deal of bother, if you do.”

To Dodson’s credit, he scarcely even batted an eyelid. Instead, he whipped his hands out from behind him. In one was a kind of claw-like gauntlet, which he slipped over the other. It hissed with power as he flexed the fingers.

Reaching for Holmes with this device, he attempted to grasp my friend’s neck.

I swiftly interposed myself between the two of them, raising an arm so that Dodson’s gauntlet clamped onto my wrist rather than around Holmes’s throat. The pressure Dodson brought to bear on me was immense, and inflicted considerable pain – but not, of course, any harm.

I grinned at the man, and he in return frowned in dismay.

“Dash it all,” he cried. “Your bones should be powder by now, your wrist as narrow as a pipe cleaner.”

“Luck of the draw,” I said, and punched him unconscious.

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