Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine #5 by Marvin Kaye (ed)

Author:Marvin Kaye (ed)
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: mystery, detective, magazine, Sherlock Holmes, anthology
Publisher: Wildside Press
Published: 2011-03-25T07:00:00+00:00

Two nights later, we sat in our lodgings, the ever-present London fog still testing its weight against the window panes. Most of the previous day had been spent in conference with the police, who, swayed by the hysterics of Sefton Talliard’s landlady, had initially evinced some disposition to suspect our complicity in that unhappy academic’s decapitation. The information, however, regarding the nature of Talliard’s shadowy enemies — provided by August Belknap, and substantiated by the testimony of Wiggins and Plunker of the Baker Street irregulars — had much allayed such suspicion. And Holmes’s own masterly analysis of the murder-site had demonstrated beyond all question that a brace of small, acrobatic killers had entered the locked room by way of the chimney, dispatched the sleeping Talliard, ransacked the room, and exited the way they had come, bearing their victim’s head — which will, I strongly suspect, never be located.

The constabulary, their doubts satisfied, had dismissed us, and we came away with Holmes miraculously retaining possession of Sefton Talliard’s journal. The book now lay open before him, and my friend was frowning over it.

“I am scarcely satisfied,” he complained.

“What, Holmes!” I returned. “Against all odds, you succeeded in preserving your client’s life — assuming that his enemies are now mollified.”

“August Belknap has nothing more to fear from the Faithful,” Holmes said, shrugging. “But that is not the point. The information placed at my disposal regarding Professor Sefton Talliard’s ruthless, cool, and unscrupulous character should have alerted me to the fellow’s intentions, early enough to forestall another ritual beheading. It should not have been necessary for me to read his very words in his own journal.”

“What did he say?” I inquired.

“See for yourself.” Holmes extended the morocco-bound volume. “And do not neglect the account of the destruction of the Matilda Briggs.”

Sefton Talliard’s hand was decisive and legible. It was with disapproving interest, but no great surprise, that I read of his plan, motivated by self-serving fear, to transfer the stolen plaque, object of alarming Faithful attention, from his own possession to that of the unwitting August Belknap. The photograph of Belknap’s late wife, a memento of immense sentimental value, prized and carried everywhere by its owner, offered the perfect place of concealment. This transfer, accomplished hours prior to the embarkation of the Matilda Briggs, clearly accounted for Talliard’s unwonted generosity in preserving the valise, containing the personal property of his colleague.

There followed a brief passage, written on shipboard, and phonetically rendering the invocation to Ur-Allazoth ceaselessly howled by the Dyak prisoner locked in the hold of the vessel:

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