“Any number of them, Doctor. Valeriana, passionflower, warm milk, chamomile tea, a short walk before dark, a hot bath before bed. Lately I have even ordered special elixirs from an apothecary in London. Nothing has helped.”
I looked at Holmes, whose expression revealed nothing.
“You must try some of my brandy,” said Mashbourne, pulling the silver flask from his waistcoat. “It puts me to sleep even at the noon hour.”
She smiled at him with such a sad affection that it put a lump in my own throat. “I have tried it, Arthur,” she said.
“Yes, you’re right. You have,” he said softly. Then he turned to us and spoke forcefully, “We must uncover the mystery behind this.”
“I should think one night’s sleep in this house and I will have the answer,” said Holmes.
Lady Carthon rose from her chair, and we rose with her. With a warm, sad smile, she said, “My sweet champions. I feel most fortunate to have you as my guests this evening.”
“It has been our pleasure, I assure you, madam,” I said.
She bid us good evening, leaving instructions with a servant to turn down two more beds, and departed from us for the night.
We watched her leave in silence. When she was gone, Holmes turned to Mashbourne. “The circumstances of the lady’s husband’s death, if you please.”
Mashbourne cleared his throat with a swallow of wine, then began. “As Emily has said, Captain Carthon was on patrol with his men in the desert near the Great Pyramids. I was assigned to his regiment as physician. Carthon’s men reportedly came upon a group of grave robbers one evening making off with a large quantity of antiquities from a recently uncovered burial sight. There was a brief but bloody skirmish, and the robbers were apprehended.
“Now, as Captain Carthon related to me in secret after he had secured the pilfered treasures with the royal governor, he’d come across something amongst the many items that he fancied would make an excellent gift for his wife. He showed me the necklace we all saw her wearing this evening. What followed, oddly, were several nights of unrest among the soldiers of the regiment.”
“Sleeplessness, you mean?” asked Holmes.
“Yes,” Mashbourne said, “but not to this degree. It lasted no more than a week. Then one night while out on patrol again, Carthon was murdered. Some said it was the grave robbers come back for their loot, but I was certain it had to have been a wild animal of some sort, for I examined the body, and it had been very badly mutilated.
“It was my unfortunate task, since I was returning to England, to deliver the unpleasant news, along with some of her husband’s effects, to Lady Carthon.”
“And the necklace was among those items?” asked Holmes.
“No,” said Mashbourne. “I believe he sent that to her earlier, before he was killed.”
I could see Holmes’s mind working again. “You said earlier that you were on to something,” I said to him. “Care to share it yet?”
“I have a theory, which I plan to put to the test tonight,” was all that Holmes offered.
“Come now,” said Mashbourne, clearly annoyed. “Is there no small crumb you might leave for us as a trail to follow your reasoning?”
“A crumb would leave you most unsatisfied,” he said, pushing back his chair. “Now, I’m afraid I must leave you, gentlemen. Sleep well.” As he reached the doorway, he turned again to us. “And keep a light on. If you encounter anything unusual this evening, any unnatural sounds or the like, come find me at once. I’m certain I shall be awake.” Then he was gone.
“He is a singularly peculiar fellow, is he not, Watson?” said Mashbourne.
“That he is,” I replied.
After cigars and a bit of Mashbourne’s brandy, we, too, retired for the night, a servant leading us upstairs and delivering us to our rooms.
“Good evening, Dr. Mashbourne,” I said as I left him.
“Good evening, Dr. Watson. I’m sure that I, for one, shall sleep soundly tonight. This day has truly exhausted me.”
He closed himself inside his room.
I shut my own door and found that a robe and pajamas had been laid out for me on what looked to be a most comfortable bed. A pitcher of water sat on a nightstand nearby, and I helped myself to a glass before dousing the light and climbing beneath the covers.
As I lay there, my eyes growing accustomed to the dark, I ruminated over Holmes’s last words, wondering as to what sort of unnatural sounds he referred. I listened carefully, surveying the night around me, and as my ears grew accustomed to the silence, I heard the sounds of the wind blowing through the trees outside, of an unlatched shutter banging softly in some distant part of the house.
I awoke to a crash. Attempting to rise, I found myself paralyzed, save for my eyes, which were wide open but useless in the utter darkness. I tried to maintain calm, convincing myself that the paralysis must be gone momentarily, that I most certainly must be dreaming. But then I heard a key twisting in the lock—had I bolted my door?—and sensed someone enter the inky blackness of my room.
I cursed myself at that moment for having ignored Holmes’s advice and dousing my light. Dark foreboding, a sense of malevolent evil, gripped me then. My heart began to race. I struggled vainly to get up—my arms and legs tingling, sweat forming on my brow, my breath sorely entering and leaving my chest—but still I was unable to rise.
I heard footsteps, coming nearer to my bedside. I told myself it was just a servant, looking in on me, or perhaps someone sleepwalking, but the panic in my heart rose to a crescendo, and something leaped up onto my chest! Cold hands grasped at my throat, strangling me. I gasped for air, trying to cry out for help as the breath left my lungs beneath the weight of my assailant.
Just as the darkness was about to swallow me, the door to my room crashed open with such force that it fell from its hinges, and blessed light poured in from the hallway.
A creature—for I know not what else to name it—was revealed by the light, crouched menacingly over me! No child’s fairy story was this, but a roughly bipedal, forward-slumping beast, with a vaguely canine cast, a doglike face with pointed ears. The texture of its flesh was a kind of unpleasant rubberiness. This nameless blasphemy stared at me with glaring red eyes, its scaly claws around my throat, its flat nose and drooling lips expelling the thing’s acrid, fetid breath upon me. Fanged teeth set all askew in its gaping maw were poised to rend me, when it howled its hatred at the sudden brightness, stretched out hideous black wings, and releasing me, flew directly toward the blazing doorway where Holmes stood, a lantern in one hand and his revolver in the other.
Holmes fired off a shot, striking the beast in the chest. The force merely knocked the creature backward a step, before it leaped again at him, wailing with fury. I saw Holmes empty his revolver point-blank into the beast, sending it toppling over dead at his feet.
“Watson! Are you all right?” he said.
I had managed to prop myself up on one elbow, the paralysis waning. “I don’t know,” I replied, still badly shaken, and examined myself for wounds. I’d been bruised about the shoulders and neck, but otherwise remained mercifully unscathed.
“Can you stand, old man?”
“Yes, I believe so,” I said, making a poor show of it, my legs trembling.
Movement on the floor caught my eye then, and I watched with Holmes in wonder as the dead thing slowly melted into a sulfurous oozing tallow, seeping through the floorboards until it was gone.
“What in God’s name was that?” I asked Holmes.
“Nothing of this world,” he said. “Now come, this way.”
I followed him to Mashbourne’s room, where, from the glow of Holmes’s lantern, I could see the poor man lying sprawled on the floor, his sleeping gown covered in blood. I moved quickly to his side, checking his wrist for a pulse. Finding none there, I moved to his neck, withdrawing in horror when I saw that his throat had been torn open.