The Striped Leg

[Fanfiction of A Study in Emerald.]

You have no doubt read many of the stories I have written about my friend Sherlock Holmes. I know they are passed in secret among the Restorationists. Copies of copies of copies, stored under floorboards or in safes or buried deep in the woods. The greatest compliment that can be paid a writer, I suppose, is never to know the extent of his success.

The stories I write serve a double purpose. The most important purpose is to bring my fellows hope. We have all been taught that pernicious lie that the Old Ones are some exalted state of being, to which we cannot aspire and before which we can only tremble. No! Fearsome as they are, they are mortals—and all mortals can be defeated. Sherlock Holmes is not a myth nor a nursery story—he has defeated them. I have seen it myself.

My second humble aspiration is to put down a little of Sherlock Holmes’s methods, in the hopes that they may be imitated by Restorationists in the New World or on the Continent or even in our fair Albion. For this purpose, the best I can think of is the case connected with the Roylotts of Stoke Moran. (All names and some details, as always, have been changed.)

We had returned from our safe-house only a few days prior. As, after a tooth is pulled, the mere fact of the toothache’s cessation fills a man with perfect happiness, I was brought to bliss by my comfortable armchair and the roaring fire. The cold of the safe-house does my injured arm no favors.

My peaceful drowsiness was interrupted by Holmes in a state of great excitement. “A slip of a girl has knocked at our door.”

I had heard the knock but had, rather optimistically, attributed it to the neighbor’s door. “Give her a halfpenny and tell her to go away.” I sank deeper into my armchair.

“She is quite distraught,” Holmes said. “I invited her into the parlor. When a young lady of good repute is wandering around at this time of night, shivering and with her eyes red with tears, I imagine something is afoot.”

I hope you will not criticize me if my first feeling was resentment. In the past month, I had spent nearly sixteen hours crawling through a slimy tunnel barely large enough for my shoulders, not to mention almost losing my life to the claws of a Dark Young. In a civilized world, I would have had at least a week with nothing to do but puff my pipe and read the newspaper.

But we will not have a civilized world until a true-blooded human sits on the throne of Albion, and so I rose and walked to the parlor.

The girl would have been quite pretty, if she had had the bloom of youthful health or the gay and winsome smile that ought to have appeared on such a lovely face. Alas! Her cheek was pale and she had a sickly air. Her shoulders hunched as if she were forever preparing for a blow. An expression occasionally began to flicker across her face, but she shut it down as soon as it began to bloom; I did not have to be Holmes to recognize that it had rarely been safe for her to feel a passion or sentiment.

Of course, Holmes was not the sort to notice that the fire in the parlor had quite died down to embers. I busied myself building it back up. She would shiver from fear, but not from cold, if I had anything to say about the matter.

“My name is Helen Stoner. Mrs. Farintosh told me—” She was almost on the verge of tears. “Mrs. Farintosh told me you could help.”

“Mrs. Farintosh…” Holmes seemed to be searching his memory. “Ah, yes, Mrs. Farintosh. The case with the opal tiara, was it not? Before your time, Watson.”

She sniffed. “Yes, sir. The one with the ancient Egyptian curse.”

Sherlock Holmes’s brisk, businesslike tone can seem cold; but what I have found is that those who seek out our services most need a man confident that he can fix their problems, whatever they might be. “And I soon set it right,” Holmes said, “which I shall do in your case as well, Mrs. Stoner.”

“Miss Stoner, if you please.”

The fire built up, I set a teapot upon the hearth. There is nothing like a cup of tea to steady the nerves.

“It must be a difficult issue indeed,” Sherlock Holmes said, “if your fiance can provide no assistance, in spite of being one of the Deep Ones.”

Miss Stoner’s astonishment distracted her from her fear. “How did you know?”

“It is simplicity itself,” Holmes said. “You wear a necklace of fine Deep One make. The African influence in the pendant points to it being crafted within the past eighteen months, as that is the current style. An old Deep One necklace may be bought on the market, but a new one is always a gift from a family member or a lover. You do not bear the Innsmouth look, so it is not a family member. The current fashion in London is for young women to shave the front of their heads and to draw lines on their necks, so as to imitate the Innsmouth look, but you have not done so. Further evidence for a Deep One lover, as they prefer full-blooded humans. You wear an engagement ring and you go by Miss; a fiance, then, and not a different suitor nor a husband. You wore the necklace when very frightened, and touched it for comfort as soon as you entered; therefore, your fiance brings you joy, and is not the problem. Nevertheless, if he could help with it, surely you would not come to me.”

“Remarkable,” Miss Stoner said. “Correct in every detail.”

I finished making the pot of tea, and poured her a cup. Her hands trembled as she lifted it to her lips.

“It is a very difficult matter. I have—a little money I’ve saved. I economized whenever I could, though he was always watching— I mended my clothes until they were threadbare and used every scrap of soap—” She thrust a handful of bills at Holmes. Though the pile was impressive in breadth, looks were deceiving; it gained its size through the smallness of the denominations. “When I’m married, with control of my own income, I’ll give you whatever you—”

Holmes shook his head and returned the bills to her tiny hand. “Keep your money, miss. My reward is the freedom of humanity. I ask only that you keep that noble flame burning in your heart, and when you see some little opportunity for rebellion, or to make this cruel world kinder, you take it.” He added, almost as an afterthought, “You may choose, when you are able, to defray the expenses of someone else in need of assistance.”

As she returned the money to her pocket-book, tears begin to drip down her cheeks. “Sir—sir, you are so generous.” The strain of her emotions set her off into a coughing fit.

“Now, now, we don’t need all this fuss,” Holmes said, carelessly handing her a handkerchief. “What is the case?”

She coughed into the handkerchief. When she drew it from her mouth, it was red with blood. “I—do not know how to begin. Whenever I try to speak of it, it slips away from me. Dr. Roylott always has some explanation for me which is so wise and benevolent that I feel it is my own wrongdoing, or that I am a madwoman. He is a Wise One Under The Earth.”

“The K’n-yan,” Holmes said, “and I would not call them wise.”

“He is the last surviving member of the Roylott family, one of the most ancient families in England, and he has been alive for a thousand years. The family received its lands in Surrey as a grant from the Queen Herself, in recompense for Dr. Roylott’s assistance in the conquest of Albion. He knows so many things, and has read so many books, and—how can I challenge him? How can I do anything but submit? My fiance, though he is kind to me, listens to Dr. Roylott with great respect. He says nothing, but I know he thinks of my suspicions as the fancies of a nervous woman.”

“I find there is often great wisdom in the fancies of a nervous woman,” Holmes said.

“I know,” she said, “I know that there is something wrong about the death of my sister, though I cannot put it into words. I also know that Dr. Roylott is not the man they say he is. —Oh, I am getting the entire matter out of order. I don’t know where to begin.”

“Pray begin at the beginning,” Holmes said. “And do not spare a single detail. A matter hardly thought of by the victim may be the key to unraveling the case.”

“I suppose the beginning is in the Roylott family’s financial difficulties. The family estate once spread to Berkshire in the north and Hampshire in the west. My stepfather is not a—not a prudent man. Over the centuries he has wasted the family wealth on alchemical experimentation and the quest to bring the dead to life. Finally, he had nothing but a few acres of land in Stoke Moran and the nine-hundred-year-old house, itself mortgaged as much as it could be. Wishing not to live out his life in poverty, and unwilling to choose suicide as the rest of his family had, Dr. Roylott took a medical degree.”

“The K’n-yan are quite adept in the arts of medicine,” I commented.

“My stepfather is no exception,” said she. “He moved to Calcutta, where he established a large practice among those who wished to benefit from a K’n-yan’s skilled hand with a knife. Too skilled for his own good! The natives in his neighborhood began to disappear. A servant, one moonlit night, found his workshop. Some of his subjects had been vivisected. Others were sewn to each other, or to animals… The natives in India have not been pacified, sir. They do not respect the ancient privileges of the K’n-yan. He barely escaped with his life.”

“Would that the English soul develop such courage!” Holmes said fervently.

The girl startled at Holmes’s easy blasphemy, but continued her story. “While he lived in India, he married my mother, the young widow of Major-General Stoner of the Bengal Artillery. My sister and I were twins, and only two years old at the time of the wedding. Shortly after our return to England, my mother died in a railway accident. She had a considerable sum of money—a thousand pounds a year—and this she bequeathed to Dr. Roylott, on the condition that we reside with him. We would each receive two hundred and fifty pounds upon our marriage, to support us in comfort. Dr. Roylott abandoned his attempts to start a practice in London and returned to his house in Stoke Moran. We had money enough for all our wants, and though we mourned our mother’s untimely death we eagerly anticipated a happy life together.

“But we had not been prepared for how much of a calming effect our mother had had on our stepfather, or the ways that she had shielded us from him. The—” She hesitated. Even when a woman is seeking out a wanted criminal in order to commit treason, it is difficult to overcome a lifetime’s habits of censorship.

“The K’n-yan are not, by their nature, cruel,” Holmes said in a professorial tone. “Without the Old Ones, the men of the air, the men of the water, and the men of the earth would live in peace and amicity. It is power that warps them, and the capacity to be cruel without consequence. A millennium’s habit of brutality is not easily mended, and it finds an easy way to its victim.”

Holmes pushed back the cuff of her sleeve. Five bruises purpled, the shape of four fingers and a thumb, a little too large to be human.

The lady blushed and pulled her cuff back over her wrist. “He doesn’t know his own strength.”

“You do not,” Holmes said, “have to defend him here.”

There was a long silence.

“He is an angry man,” she said quietly. “He flies into such rages—and then an hour later it is as if nothing happened, and he invites you to tea, and you must smile and thank him, even while you still bleed. I daren’t make a noise in my own house, lest I anger him. We can’t keep a servant. Julia and I were reduced to doing all the work of the household ourselves. Even if the servants could withstand his rages, he would—use them—for experimentation—” She gathered herself together. “He has a passion for the books of the Old Ones. The Necronomicon, and the Seven Cryptical Books of Hsan, and stranger tomes. He spends most of our income on his researches, so we don’t have enough to eat. He invites strange men with dark faces to our house, and converses with them long into the night, and is wrathful if we even so much as bring him his dinner, accusing us of listening at the door. Late at night I hear the chanting.

“The property is underground, like any house of the K’n-yan. It is dark and dank and chill, even in the summer. When we moved in, I contracted a cough, and it has never gone away. Dr. Roylott has a great love of the animals of the underground. He will not tolerate the killing of a rat, even if it is gnawing at the bags of flour. All through the house he has his animals, slugs and snakes and the like, till you cannot turn a corner without running into one. My sister had a little bird, the light of her life. It grew ill when she moved in, pining for the sun we rarely saw. Finally a snake crawled through the bars of its cage and devoured it. We dared never speak of the subject to Dr. Roylott, but my sister wasted away without the ability to stroke its soft feathers.”

“Deplorable,” Holmes said, “and yet I sense it is not what drove you to speak to me.”

She shook her head. “It is the death of my sister. She died just two years ago.

“You can understand that, living the manner of life which we did, we had very little opportunity to converse with others our own age. We have, however, an aunt, my mother’s maiden sister, Miss Honoria Westphail, who lives near Harrow. My sister and I were occasionally permitted to pay a visit, particularly when Dr. Roylott found that the stars declared it to be an auspicious occasion. He—wished to perform his rituals without us there, I believe. Two years ago, my sister went there for the Winter Solstice, and there she met a half-pay major in the marines. She won his heart, for she was a charming woman, and the major proposed.

“My stepfather learned of the engagement, and immediately began to dote on Julia. We lived in a cold and drafty section of the manor, which was far away from him, because the sounds we made disturbed him while he was at his researches. He insisted that she move into the room next to him, for fear that she catch a chill. He was gentle and kind with her, and never did violence to her, even when she made mistakes that would once have incurred his wrath. Nothing but the finest foods were good enough for Julia. He gave her gifts, jewelry and ribbons and even a perfume that stank horribly, although she wore it daily to please him. At the time we believed that he had recognized that Julia’s fiance might have objected to her mistreatment, and was trying to bribe her to speak well of him.

“But a fortnight later—I swear, I will be correct in every detail, as that horrible night has seared itself upon my memory. Dr. Roylott had retired early, though he had not yet fallen asleep. He has a habit of smoking the black lotus, which causes strange dreams even in those awake. My sister and I find the day-dreams caused by the black lotus disturbing, and now that she had changed rooms my sister spent each evening with me in the upstairs parlor.

“For some time, we talked about her upcoming wedding. Before she left to take her rest, she paused and asked me a question.

“‘Tell me, Helen,’ she said, ‘have you ever heard a piercing whistle in the dead of night?’

“‘Never,’ said I, ‘why?’

“‘During the last three nights, around three o’clock in the morning, I heard a low, clear whistle. I am a light sleeper, and it awoke me. It sent a chill to my very bones. I couldn’t tell where it came from—perhaps the next room, perhaps the tunnels. I thought I would ask you whether you heard it.’

‘I haven’t,’ I said. ‘It must come from some manner of strange creature which Dr. Roylott has summoned.’

‘Very likely,’ she said. ‘It frightens me so.’

‘Well,’ I said, ‘in six weeks you shall wed’—for her fiance was eager, and no bride had ever been more impatient to leave her familial home than Julia—‘and you may put it out of your mind forever. No harm will come from a whistle.’ There are no words that I have regretted more, since that day.

‘You are always a comfort to me, my sister,’ Julia said, and retired for the night.

“Still, I could not sleep that night. The comfort I provided to my sister rung hollow in my ears. I remembered all the most salacious stories from the penny dreadfuls. If Dr. Roylott lost control of that which he had summoned, Julia’s fate would be ghastly. You have, of course, studied the psychic connection which exists between twins.”

Holmes nodded. “I am passing familiar.”

“I believe that I had received through our connection a premonition of Julia’s death, and I wish I had seen this at the time, for all might have been avoided. If only I had allowed her to sleep in my room—! It was a wild night. The wind was howling, and the rain beat against the ground above our heads. Such a night is most suited for summonings, and it only increased my worry. Finally, the night was pierced by the scream of a terrified woman. I sprang from the bed, wrapped my shawl around me, and rushed upstairs. As I approached my sister’s door, I heard a shrill whistling noise, just as my sister had said. I cannot describe the sound, nor do I believe any man can. Even to hear it sent bile rising into my throat.

“A cold wind blew through me, and I pulled my shawl close around myself. I tried to enter, but my sister’s door was locked—”

“Pardon me,” said Holmes, “but do you and your sister typically lock your doors at night?”

“Always. Though it is of little avail against Dr. Roylott, still, we feel better with our doors locked tight.”

Holmes gave a single crisp nod and seemed satisfied, although what he concluded I do not know. “Pray continue.”

“I saw my sister emerge from the door, her face white with terror. Her body swayed to and fro like a drunkard, and she groped for help from corners from which no help would come. I threw my arms around her, but she collapsed to the ground. She writhed as if in terrible pain, and her face was wracked with convulsions. I thought she did not recognize me, but then she called out in a voice I will never forget, ‘By the royal blood! Helen! The leg! The striped leg!’ She stabbed with her finger in the direction of the doctor’s room, and I could tell that there was something else she wished to say, but at that very moment a convulsion choked her words. I called loudly for my stepfather, and he hastened to my side wearing his dressing-gown. Helen fell unconscious. He poured a decoction down her throat and called for a doctor from the village, but it was all in vain. She died and never again regained consciousness.”

“Are you sure about the whistle?” Holmes said. “Would you swear to it?”

“Yes. The county coroner asked about it at the inquiry, and I swore on my honor that I heard it. Dr. Roylott attributed it to the hysteria I experienced because of my sister’s death—he believed it was nothing save the creaking of old tunnels. The coroner believed him. But it was not! I could have mistaken it for nothing else.”

“Peculiar,” Holmes remarked, “for a doctor to call for another doctor, instead of treating her himself.”

Miss Stoner coughed, and then gathered herself. “I believe that he was trying to show my sister’s fiance that he had done all he could.”

“Did your sister have anything in her hands?”

“Why, how did you know? She had a charred stump of a match in her right hand, and a match-box in her left.”

“She struck a light and looked about her when the alarm took place. That is important. And the coroner’s conclusions?”

“Dr. Roylott, seeing that my sister’s fiance was too wracked with grief to notice his behavior, was of little help to the investigation. There was no trace of poison and no marks of any violence. I believe my sister died of pure terror, Mr. Holmes, although I do not know what had frightened her—save, perhaps, that awful whistle.”

“The homes of the K’n-yan are honeycombed with secret passages. Could someone have used one of them to enter?”

Miss Stoner shook her head. “Julia had moved into the traditional rooms of the Roylott family. None of them have any passages. They had sworn a sacred pact to leave the walls and floors of their rooms solid, so that none would need fear that they would be murdered in secret by sister or father. The pact was bound in the ancient way, by blood and bone and the Old Ones themselves.”

“Hm,” Holmes said. “What do you gather from this allusion to a striped leg?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea.”

Holmes stood and paced, unsatisfied. “Pray go on with your narrative.”

“Two lonely years passed, about which I prefer not to think, much less speak. A month ago, however, a dear friend whom I had known for many years did me the honor of asking for my hand in marriage. Freedom was within reach, freedom of which I had given up hope for so long. His name was Armitage—Percy Armitage—the second son of Mr. Armitage and his Deep One wife. My stepfather treated me with the same solicitude with which he treated my sister, and insisted that I move into my sister’s old chamber. When I refused, saying it was a reminder of my grief, he raged so that I feared death. I moved into the very room where she died, slept in the very bed.

“Imagine, then, my fright when I heard a clanging noise, like metal against stone, and once again that horrible whistle. Though I had not heard it for two years, it was the very same. I could never forget that sound. I will recognize it until the day I die. I rose and lit a candle, but there was nothing to be seen. I was too afraid to go to bed again, so I dressed. As soon as it was light, I traveled to the home of Mrs. Farintosh, and she referred me to a man, who referred me to another man, who told me where you would be found.”

“These are deep waters,” Holmes said. “There are a thousand details I wish to know. Yet we cannot delay. Your life depends on this coming to a resolution as soon as possible. If we came to Stoke Maron, would it be possible for us to see these rooms without the knowledge of Dr. Roylott?”

“Indeed,” she said, “Mrs. Farintosh said that she had heard that he had business in town until tomorrow evening.”

“Then there is no obstacle,” Holmes said. “I shall consult with my associate. We must be fresh for the investigation. You may expect us to arrive in the morning. For safety’s sake, do not sleep in your room tonight. Do you wish to pass the evening in my bed, while I bunk with Dr. Watson? I swear to you that your virtue shall go unmolested.”

The woman shook her head. “I shall find a hotel.”

“Very well. You are not averse to this trip, Watson?”

“I am never averse to helping a lady in need.”

“Then all is settled,” Holmes said, and lit his pipe. Sensing a dismissal, the woman departed.

“What do you make of this business, Watson?” Holmes said, when she had left.

“Dark,” I said, “very dark. I do not know what to make of these mysterious whistles, and the peculiar words of the dying woman.”

“I have my suspicions,” Holmes said, puffing away at his pipe, “and yet I wish I were ignorant, or rather that there were no subject to be suspicious of at all.”

“What do you mean?”

“It is a matter I learned of during my time with the Great Race of Yith.”

I listened with no small interest, as Holmes rarely spoke of the years he had spent transported into the past by the Great Race, the years which had shaped him into the man I knew.

“The Yith have an ancient enemy, about whom they rarely spoke except in whispers. They dared not speak its name. With all the knowledge and the magics of the Great Race, they could not defeat that enemy, merely repel it to the inner abysses of the Earth, where it hunts even today. They arrival of that enemy is heralded by a whistling sound and a cold wind. Its forms are ever-shifting, and the tendrils it reaches out with to explore the world may well be termed a leg. It is not fully a creature of our reality, and phases in and out of our dimension following a system even the Yith do not know. This phasing creates a peculiar pattern which may well be described as a stripe.”

“That seems rather excessive, to murder a single young girl,” I said, “particularly in a man prone to violence, who could simply knock her on the head in a rage.”

Holmes shook his head. “The law is firm. He would not inherit if he is the killer, even if it is judged manslaughter. Still, there would be any number of other methods undetectable to a human coroner, and no reason to awaken the Yith’s ancient enemy—unless he already had it to hand.”

“Why would any man have such a thing?”

“War,” Holmes said. “An enemy that fought the Yith to a stalemate could well defeat those of the blood royal.”

“Why, this is excellent!” I exclaimed. “Though Dr. Roylott is a repulsive man, he is an ally against a common enemy!”

“No,” Holmes said. “If a war is to be waged, it must be waged with the tools of man, and none other. You read in your schoolbooks, I presume, of the great war between the Elder Things and the spawn of Cthulhu, well before the coming of Man?”

“Indeed.”

“Do you recall what the result was for the weaker species?”

With rising horror, I said, “the fall of the dinosaurs and the extinction of three-quarters of Earth’s species. No tetrapod weighing more than sixty pounds survived—other than the crocodiles, the sea turtles, and the shoggoths, of course.”

“I would spare humanity such a fate,” Holmes said, “and so Dr. Roylott must be stopped. But what in the name of the Roman God!”

Our hideout’s door had been suddenly smashed. The entryway framed a huge man. The K’n-yan are not so frightful as those of the royal blood, the sight of whom raises bile to the throats of the unprepared, no matter how courageous. Indeed, in shape the K’n-yan are quite human, though large enough that if human they could have gainful employment in a freak-show. They do not age without their own consent. Like most of his species, the man’s face was as unlined and his hair as dark and thick as a schoolboy’s. Still, the true nature of the K’n-yan is always detectable in the eyes.

The man’s eyes were unspeakably old, in the way no human eyes can be. What lurked in them was not madness but a terrible sanity. We speak of the wisdom of a man of eighty. What, then, the wisdom of a man who has lived for a thousand years, who has watched three hundred generations of humanity perish, who saw fair England before the rise of Gloriana and might—if he chooses—live until she passes from the earth? Holmes disdains their customary title of the Wise Ones, but I think there is percipience in it.

“Which of you is Holmes?” the man said.

“There is no one here of such a name,” Holmes said calmly. “You have interrupted us at our supper, sir, and I will have the law after you about our door.”

The man ignored him. “My stepdaughter has been here. I have traced her. What has she been saying to you?”

Unperturbed, Holmes continued, “sir, I am a subject of the British empire, and I will have my rights. You cannot go about smashing men’s doors and prattling nonsense about stepdaughters and tracing. Cease this at once, or I shall call for the constable.”

“Don’t you dare meddle with my affairs,” the man said. “Miss Stoner is mine, and I can do with her as I wish. I am a dangerous man to fall foul of! See here,” and he spoke a word in the ancient tongue, the tongue of the blood royal, which rasps across the ears and cannot be pronounced in all its dimensions by the human mouth.

A cold draught swept past me, and it did not come from the door. An odd sound filled the room, faint and musical, that vibrated my bones until I felt a sensation like I had scratched glass. The outlines of the room blurred, and the familiar table and teapot became a sort of kaleidoscopic cloud. Through this cloud floated alien entities, flabby and quivering, rather like jellyfish in shape, packed so close together that you could not put a finger between them. They traveled through each other, the wall, the chairs, and (I recognized queasily) my own body, untroubled by solids.

“See that you do not force me to demonstrate more of my power!” came a voice, which seemed to simultaneously come from atop my head and inside my spleen.

“What an amiable man,” came another voice, wrapping around my arm like a python. “I daresay if he had stayed around I would have shown him a thing or two.” Much to my relief, all the items in the room resumed their accustomed colors and dimensions and absence of jellyfish. Holmes stood before me, his hands contorted into the shape of a five-pointed star.

When the spell seemed firmly repelled, Holmes shook his hands free and stretched out his fingers, to prevent cramp. “This safe-house, it seems, is no longer safe.”

Thus ensued a series of adventures too tedious to relate. We spent the balance of the night hiding out in the Doctors’ Commons, pretending to be resolving some minor yet thorny issue of maritime law. Holmes took the opportunity to research Roylott’s wife’s will. It seems that, though the income had been £1100 at the time of the wife’s death, because of the fall in agricultural prices, it was now no more than £750. Each daughter could claim an income of £250 in the case of marriage. It was evident, therefore, that if both daughters had married, Roylott would be in penury. Even one marriage was something Roylott was apt to wish to avoid.

The next morning, we took the train to Leatherhead, where we hired a trap at the station inn. I carried my revolver with me, as the most excellent argument against all manner of magicians and sorcerers. Holmes maintained a monologue about the weather, in the drone of an Oxford don renowned among the other dons for being a bore. The driver would wish to put the unpleasant experience out of mind as quickly as possible, and if asked by an inquisitive person may not recall that he made the drive at all.

I put my umbrella across my knees and, for lack of other entertainment, looked at the lanes of Surrey. The smell of the earth after rain rose. The trees and hedges threw out their first fragile green shoots. Fleecy clouds gathered in clusters in the sky, like the sheep I knew were grazing in the meadows. From time to time, the meadows were interrupted by a cluster of stones, which at first seemed to be nothing but an accident of geology; but as I stared, what seemed to be a pattern of shadows on the rock resolved into a door. The K’n-yan love to fill their lands with many secret entrances and exits, so that none can see their comings and goings, and so that they can observe the behavior of their vassals unnoticed. I shuddered to think that Dr. Roylott had used the same devices on the gentle Miss Stoner.

Soon we disembarked at a stone door, hidden behind some shrubbery, and were met by Miss Stoner.

“Good afternoon,” Holmes said, “and you see we have been as good as our word.”

Miss Stoner’s face was alight with joy. It sat well upon her features, and I saw how she could have won many a noble gentleman’s heart. “All has turned out splendidly!” Miss Stoner said. “Dr. Roylott has gone to town, and has sent word that he shall not be back before the evening.”

“We had a great deal of trouble causing that to be the case,” Holmes said, and sketched out both Dr. Roylott’s visit and our adventures the previous night.

“Good heavens!” she said. “You are my savior indeed.”

“Say nothing of it until the business is done,” Holmes said, “for even the most auspicious of affairs may go awry before the end. You must lock yourself up tonight. If he is violent, we shall take you away to your aunt’s at Harrow. Roylott shall no doubt hurry back as soon as he discovers he has been misled, so you must show us the rooms at once.”

The cavernous house, or rather a burrow, was damp and dark. The energy-globes flickered, barely enough for illumination, and bathed all we saw in an eerie blue glow. I had to strain my eyes to make out whether I passed by portrait, wall, or door. The burrow was cold enough, even with the warm weather, that I pulled my jacket close and regretted the loss of my good winter coat. Somewhere water dripped down the ancient stone.

All of the furniture was sized slightly too large for human comfort. One’s feet would dangle like a child’s off a chair; one would struggle to reach even the medium-height shelves on the bookshelf. Still, Dr. Roylott’s penury had not caused him to deprive himself of the luxuries appropriate to his class: silk squatting-cushions, stools inlaid with cunning ivory designs, teakwood pigeon-holes storing K’n-yan books’ metal cylinders, desks with graded sets of pigment-brushes and the Wise Ones’ customary green ink.

I was promptly lost by the twistings and turnings, and I am by no means a man with a poor sense of direction; but Miss Stoner led the way, and her steps were sure. The sound of her quiet cough was comforting to me in this strange place. Soon we arrived at her rooms.

The furniture in her rooms had been grand many centuries ago. Today, the velvet on the bed was threadbare, and the paintings on the wall were mildewed. The energy-globes pulsed, bright then dark, and sometimes went out entirely. The bed was high enough that Miss Stoner would have had to push herself up onto it with her arms, and the desk was impossible to write upon without straining one’s neck. In the distance, something scurried. It was not a pleasant abode.

“We will have light,” Holmes said. “Light reveals all secrets.”

Holmes removed the candlesticks from his pack and he and I set to lighting them and placing them until every inch of the wall was illuminated. It was not flattering to the room. The plaster was cracked; black mold spread oozing along the wall behind the bed. The cockroaches skittered away from the brightness.

“Hm.” Holmes poked the walls, floor, and ceiling with his walking-stick, occasionally moving a candlestick in order to get to a better position. “It is as you said. No secret passages.”

Holmes sat in the oversized chair, drawing his knees to his chin, while his eyes looked around the room. “You have a bottle of perfume on your vanity, but no other cosmetics.”

“Indeed. It was a present from Dr. Roylott.”

“He also gave perfume as a present for your sister,” Holmes remarked.

“Yes. The perfume Dr. Roylott gave me is of the same kind, and it has the same horrible stench. I think it must smell pleasant to him.”

Holmes hoisted himself off the chair, opened the perfume bottle, smelled it, and made a satisfied noise.

“What is that cage?” he asked, pointing to a cage which the candle-sticks illuminated.

“It was my sister’s bird-cage. She moved it in here with the rest of her things. She kept it as a memory of happier times, and then I suppose no one had any reason to move it.”

“And that rope?” he asked, pointing to a long thick bell-rope which was wrapped through the bars of the cage.

“Why, I suppose it must have been a way to communicate with the housekeeper, back when there was a housekeeper.”

“Permit me to satisfy my curiosity.” Holmes threw himself down on the floor with the lens in his hand, examining the minute cracks between the floorboards and occasionally moving a candle-stick either for better light or to get it out of his way. Then he did the same with the wood-work with which the chamber was paneled. Then he peered at an odd metal box on the ground. “Is this a ventilator, Miss Stoner?”

“Yes. The air underground is not good for humans or K’n-yan to breathe. The ventilator is a cunning piece of K’n-yan technology that prevents the air having an unhealthful concentration of carbon dioxide and other toxins.”

The ventilator attracted Holmes’s interest, and he examined it very closely with his lens. Finding its opening, he took off the top, and examined the clockwork inside, turning this gear and that lever. Finally, he gave the bell-pull a brisk tug.

It opened the door of the bird-cage with a loud clatter.

I was about to remark on what a queer arrangement that was, when Miss Stoner gave a small scream which transformed into a cough. When she recovered, she cried, “I heard that sound before.”

“When?”

“Last night! It was the sound that woke me up. I would swear to it.”

Holmes laughed. “Well, Watson, it seems that this case has a twist which I did not expect. With your permission, Miss Stoner, I wish to inspect Dr. Roylott’s rooms.”

“Oh, he never allows people in his rooms. They are most secret.”

Holmes pocketed the perfume. “Unfortunately for Dr. Roylott, I do not respect the wishes of murderers. Come, let us go.”

Coughing from anxiety, Miss Stoner guided us to Dr. Roylott’s rooms. Holmes made quick work of the lock with his lock-pick, and soon the door swung open.

“Miss Stoner, may I ask you to return to your room?” Holmes asked. “I fear that this will not be suitable for a lady’s eyes.”

The room was more luxuriously furnished than Miss Stoner’s. The bed was piled with soft pillows, a few decades old but still quite plush. Each of the pigeon-holes stored several K’n-yan books, most of an occult character; a stout oak bookshelf held human volumes, Grey’s Anatomy next to a fine translation of the Pnakotic Manuscripts. The desk was cluttered with membrane-paper, half in a machine’s steady hand and half in fine green calligraphy.

“Ah ha! Exactly as I expected.” Holmes pointed to one of the pigeon-holes, on which had been installed a wire-mesh cage door.

“Why did you expect such an odd thing?” I said. “It is as if he’s using it to store some kind of animal.”

“Well-observed, Watson. Now, did you mark that Dr. Roylott gave Miss Stoner and her sister the same perfume—a perfume notable for its pungent smell?”

“That is not so unusual,” I said. “Most men are not very wise in women’s matters such as perfumery.”

“I have made a small study of perfumes, and that is not the scent of the Phul-Nana perfume, which in fact smells of bergamot and orange. Does that not strike you?”

“I confess I don’t see the connection between that and the cage.”

“Did you notice anything odd about the ventilator?”

“I have no head for mechanical matters.”

“It has gears which do not connect to the main apparatus. Instead, they connect to the rope—for such we can call it, because it is clearly not a bell-pull.”

“I see what you are driving at! The ventilator covers up a machine which pulls the rope taut, and thus opens the cage door. Still, why would Dr. Roylott wish for such a machine? There are no servants to call.”

“The perfume answers the question. It is not the scent of the Phul-Nana perfume—but it is quite similar to the scent of the pheromones of certain species of spider. The very same species of spider, in fact, that lives in that pigeon-hole.”

“My dear Holmes!”

“As Dr. Roylott no doubt knows, with his love of underground animals, a certain species of spider from Romania, which dwells in caverns and underground places, has a fatal bite. Its venom drives the victim to death by convulsion within minutes. The species is termed the hissing spider, but that is not the sound they make. In fact, the sound is that of a piercing and uncanny whistle. Further, arachonologists mark the species by the distinctive red band on its legs—a stripe which would no doubt draw the attention of the victim.”

“We have come just in time to prevent a horrible crime!”

“This button on the ventilator in Dr. Roylott’s room connects to the ventilator in Miss Stoner’s room. He can transfer a spider to the bird-cage; the room is too dark for the spider to be noticed. During the day, Miss Stoner could surely swat the spider. Therefore he presses the button in the evening, when Miss Stoner is asleep. Driven mad by the stench of pheromones, the spider crawls towards their source, and bites Miss Stoner. The coroner arrives and pronounces it an accident. Even if he somehow could detect the venom of a spider from half a world away, a spider bite in this home could easily be waved away as an accident.”

“What a devilish plan! Are we going to kill the spiders?”

“No,” Holmes said, “it would be useless. Such a clever, wicked man may have a supply of spiders elsewhere. No, I think we should seek a more permanent solution.” He unlatched the door of the cage. “Spiders as well as humans,” he commented, “learn that a cage door is locked, and will not seek their freedom even if it could easily be obtained. Will you please join me in searching Dr. Roylott’s desk for his black-lotus leaves?”

I did so and soon found them. They were a little longer than tobacco leaves, and shone with a sticky light. I wrinkled my nose at their characteristic smell, and passed them to Holmes.

Holmes opened the perfume bottle he had pocketed and dumped a small portion of it into the black-lotus leaves, which quickly absorbed the liquid. “The smell of the black-lotus leaves shall cover the smell of the pheromones until the leaves are smoked, and by then Dr. Roylott shall be too dreamy to remark upon it. The smoking of the leaves will release the volatile chemicals, and they will fill the room.”

“And awaken the spiders which, discovering the cage door unlatched, will seek out the pheromones’ source.”

“Quite so. Violence does, in truth, recoil upon the violent, and the schemer falls into the pit which he digs for another.”

Such are the true facts of the death of Dr. Grimesby Roylott. I need not prolong the narrative much further, but I shall give an accounting of the fates of the principal players. To our satisfaction, the next morning’s newspaper reported on the accidental death of Dr. Roylott, who had uncautiously chosen to smoke black lotus in a room with a dangerous pet. Miss Stoner was free to marry her beau, which she did with alacrity. She inherited the entire £750, which alongside Mr. Armitage’s income allowed them a comfortable living. Not long after her marriage, Miss Stoner unburdened herself to her husband, giving him a full accounting of all details, although she left out our involvement; in her telling, the deduction and the murder plot were both hers. Shocked by how close he had come to losing his love, Mr. Armitage begged for her forgiveness and vowed always to listen to Miss Stoner’s feelings and doubts henceforth. Over time, she dropped hints of her true sympathies, and Mr. Armitage responded in kind. Today, they are both committed Restorationists, and Mr. Armitage is responsible for much of the headway the Restorationists have made with his illustrious people.

The morning after Dr. Roylott’s death, Holmes smoked his pipe as he read the newspaper. “My dear Watson, when you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras. In this case, I failed to heed this adage, to my peril. The whistle and Dr. Roylott’s interest in the occult had put me on entirely the wrong trail. We Restorationists are accustomed to battle the Old Ones, and it is easy to assume that every evil we face is of that type. Yet cruelty lurks in the heart of Deep One, K’n-yan, and human. Dr. Roylott was nothing but a man—a venal, bloodthirsty man, motivated by the most ordinary greed and indifference to the suffering of the powerless. I regret nothing of my role in this case. The world is better off with him gone.”