“Please, Holmes,” I said. “As a gentleman, I would never presume to tamper with your pleasures. But as a physician, I feel obliged to inform you that a second dose of cocaine at that volume could seriously—”
“Doctor,” he interrupted, “I do appreciate your concern.” But he continued nonetheless. When he had finished his preparations, he glanced up at me. “I wish I could even begin to convey what I experienced at that moment by the bedside,” he said.
Sliding the needle in and driving the plunger home, he groaned aloud at the waves of pleasure that assailed him. Then he began to laugh a giddy madman’s laugh. Seconds later, a stillness came over him. The drug was accelerating his moods, or perhaps just jangling them into an inchoate frenzy.
He lit another cigarette, clearly having forgotten the one he had left smoldering in the mantel ashtray. “If I attempt to explain it, you must give me your word we shall never speak of the matter again.”
I freely gave it, and waited.
“Watson, a race of sentient beings inhabited this planet millennia before humans arrived. And as preposterous as it may seem, they have discovered the means of moving their souls backward and forward through time.”
“Good Lord, Holmes! What on earth are you suggesting?”
Holmes held up a patient, silencing hand. He drew hard on his cigarette before continuing. “At a single touch of her hand, she was able to communicate this to me. She has confided to no one else, but the consciousness inhabiting the body of Miss Violet Stone is in truth a traveler from this time before man, come to gather the information and lore of our age.”
I was mute, stupefied. And yet Holmes, in spite of his mischievous nature, had never once told me anything other than the truth of his perceptions. During the whole of our acquaintance he had never deceived me, misled me, or informed me of anything with any other principle at heart other than my own enlightenment. As discordant a note as it struck in my own rational nature, I had no choice other than to believe that this was the truth.
“This race refer to themselves as the Great Ones. Though you might not recognize them as sentient beings, were you to lay eyes on one—they are rather like enormous limpets as far as I can gather—they possess a body of knowledge unrivaled by anything in our history. Alexandria was but a village lending library by comparison.
“They require a living host, and the consciousness of the person they inhabit is in turn spirited back to their own time, between the ending of the Mesozoic and the beginning of the Palaeolithic period. This traveler inside Miss Stone is inexperienced, and something has gone dreadfully wrong in the process. Miss Stone’s body has rebelled. She will not take sustenance, and as a result is too weak to move. The traveler has kept her alive as best it can, but in order to reverse the process, a special device is required. And that, Watson, is what these instructions are for.”
He sat upright in his chair, cigarette in hand, face gleaming.
I have known madmen, treated them, done what I could to help with their sufferings. A person off the street might at that moment have looked upon the countenance of Sherlock Holmes and declared him mad, irrevocably insane. And yet through our years of acquaintance I had learned that what might look like one thing in the mien and deportment of a normal personage, on Holmes tended to indicate the exact opposite.
“I shall be very busy for the next few days. Send away any callers. I am not to be disturbed. We must hope I shall find myself equal to the task before me.” He rose, ascended the stairs, and shut his study doors with a bang.
True to his word, Holmes remained sequestered for three days. Meals sent up to him were largely ignored. Requests came for cups of tea and coffee and pitchers of water for drinking, and on three occasions, Holmes abruptly quit Baker Street, twice in the first day and once again late at night on the second. He returned with oddly shaped parcels, greeted no one, and again disappeared into the study.
Finally, on the morning of the third day, he emerged, somewhat wild-eyed and with an air of disorder about him. I was just waking, and through eyes still slightly bleary from sleep, I watched as he blithely tossed Violet Stone’s notebook onto the fire crackling in the grate.
“Great Scott, Holmes!” I said, returning my coffee cup to its saucer. “What are you doing?”
“It is finished, Watson. The instructions were to be destroyed when the task is complete.” He settled into a chair opposite me.
“The device is finished? What the devil does it do?”
“Were I to explain it to you, Watson, you would think I had utterly taken leave of my senses. I scarcely understand it myself.” He stretched and yawned like a great cat. “We shall pay a visit to the Stones before the morning is out. And after that, I shall greatly enjoy myself resting. This has been most taxing indeed.”
A message was sent to the Stone house to expect us within the hour. At the appointed time, Holmes emerged from his rooms every bit as fresh and crisp as if he had just returned from a seaside holiday. A queerly shaped bundle draped in black cloth was tucked beneath his arm.
I was barely able to restrain my curiosity about this bundle. What bizarre machine could help to alleviate the suffering of Miss Violet Stone? What could be the actual cause of this suffering? Could it truly be as Holmes had explained? As a medical doctor, I had seen nothing in my own patients that seemed to fit the history of the case. As I had done so many times before, I wordlessly followed Holmes out to a cab in the gray London morning and trusted that all would be revealed to me in time.
We found Mrs. Stone sitting anxiously in her front room, twisting a sodden handkerchief between her white-knuckled fists. “Good morning, gentlemen,” she greeted us. “Tom should be along shortly. He sent word that he would come when the chef permits him.” She quickly tucked the handkerchief away, and again I caught a faint whiff of jasmine as I leaned down to clasp her hand.
“Ah, good,” said Holmes, taking a seat and setting the draped bundle next to his feet. “I hope this morning’s events will bring the business to a satisfactory conclusion.”
“Mr. Holmes, it is so strange,” said Mrs. Stone.
“What is that, madam?” asked Holmes, raising a quizzical eyebrow.
“This morning, when I went in to see her, Violet told me that you would return before noon today. She asked Tom to put off going to work, but he went anyway. How could she have known the hour of your visit before I knew it myself?”
But before Holmes could venture to answer the lady, Mr. Thomas Stone bustled in. “I came as fast as I could,” he said breathlessly.
“Ah, good,” said Holmes, rising. “Now that we are all present, I will require a moment or two alone with Miss Stone. May I show myself up to her room?”
Mrs. Stone and Thomas exchanged a baffled look, but gave no protest as Holmes once again tucked the mysterious (but apparently quite heavy) machine under his arm and made his way up the stairs. I endeavored to make polite conversation with the Stones in his absence, but anxiety pinched their features and I was considerably preoccupied with my own bafflement. Our conversation proceeded only in fits and starts as a quarter of an hour passed, then twenty-five minutes.
At last, just as my watch declared that Holmes had been gone for the better part of an hour, his voice summoned us from the top of the stairs. The Stones and I rose with one motion, and were I not a gentleman, I would attest that Mrs. Stone sharply elbowed me out of the way at the bottom of the stairs.
We found Holmes grinning to himself at the bedside of Miss Stone. The lamps in the room were turned up bright and the fire had been stoked in the grate. The chest by the bed had been moved, and I noted briefly that its surface looked to have been recently marred and scratched by the weight of some heavy, sharp-edged object. But such thoughts were driven from my mind only to be puzzled over in later days, for when my eyes bore witness to the transformed girl on the bed, I could think of nothing else.