“As for the rest, sir,” I suggested to Norrys, “your shirtfront and your suitings are expensive and new: tailored for a man of your own height but of wider girth, for they hang slackly on your body. You have clearly lost a great deal of weight in recent weeks, due to some nervous condition.”
Jephson Norrys mopped his brow with a handkerchief. “Yes! It’s true, as you say. Mr. Holmes, I was told that you are the only man in England who can help me. Will you take my case?”
Sherlock Holmes nodded. “Your letter fascinates me.” Turning to myself, he remarked: “I may have need of a good medical man for some business in Anchester. What say you, Watson? Can I rely on you to suspend your Harley Street practice for some few days?”
I looked at our visitor, and I confess that my selfless desire to assist Jephson Norrys was mingled with my selfish urge to study his medical symptoms more closely. “I will gladly throw in with you,” I replied.
“Thank the heavens for that,” said our trembling visitor. Then the gaze of his watery eyes fell upon the dark basalt fragment which Holmes had left on the sideboard. “You have examined what I sent you, then?” asked Norrys, indicating the black stone. “Mr. Holmes, I’ll wager you’ve never seen such an object before.”
“On the contrary,” said Sherlock Holmes. He reached into his pocket and drew forth a hexagonal object roughly six inches across, and set this on the sideboard alongside the ancient fragment.
It was a dish of some sort, graven from black basalt and weathered with age. Along the outer rim of the six-sided dish, I beheld a weird series of hieroglyphs and runes from some alien script. The inner surface of the dish was flecked and caked with what appeared to be coagulated blood . . .
“Wherever did you get this, Holmes?” I asked him.
“That bloodstained dish has been in my possession these past ten years,” said my friend Sherlock Holmes. “Perhaps it is time that I told you, Watson, of my encounter with the Reichenbach Horror.”
The next few hours contained much activity. I sent a telegram to one of my Harley Street colleagues, urging him to take charge of my patients until my return. “It would be well for us to go armed, Watson,” said Holmes as he packed a valise. I retrieved my Webley Bulldog revolver and some of the recently invented 6.25-grain cordite cartridges while the housekeeper summoned a hansom to fetch us to Euston Street station. Holmes and Norrys and I caught the late train to Birmingham, securing a first-class compartment for ourselves.
Jephson Norrys showed symptoms of extreme exhaustion, so I gave him a sleeping draft. Before he quaffed this, Norrys pressed a loose-leaf memorandum book into my friend’s hands. “Read this, please. It will explain much,” said Norrys, in that peculiar gasping voice. As he fell deeply into slumber in a corner of our compartment, I stethoscoped him and was astonished to discover that his cardiac rate was in the bottom range of human limits. A man in such a state of nervous agitation should exhibit a heartbeat like a trip-hammer . . . yet the slow pulse of Jephson Norrys indicated a metabolism more appropriate to some cold-blooded amphibian. Still, his respiration was regular, and Norrys seemed safe for the moment. As he slept, his mouth opened and closed silently, suggesting the respiration of a fish.
Holmes looked at me ruefully. “Watson, old friend, how long have you known me?”
“This past January, when Queen Victoria died, also marked twenty years since you and I first clasped hands at St. Bart’s,” I reminded him.
“And yet I fear that you have never truly known me.” Holmes drew a black perfecto from his cigar case while the train carried us through the dark network of railway tunnels northwest of London. “You may recall, Watson, our encounter with the Sussex Vampire. I remarked at the time that I disbelieved in ghosts or supernatural agencies. I implied that I have always disbelieved.”
For a long moment, Sherlock Holmes merely lighted his uncut cigar and paused reflectively. “What do you recall of my encounter at the Reichenbach Falls?”
“There were two different versions of the truth,” I said. “You and Professor Moriarty went over the precipice together, and died. Later, it transpired that only Moriarty fell, and you chose to counterfeit your own death.”
“And now I must present a third version,” said Holmes, while our express train rattled through Watford without stopping. “Neither I nor Moriarty went over the falls. At the brink of the falls, Moriarty brandished a pistol and urged me toward a nearby footpath. At gunpoint, he ushered me downhill to the waterfall’s lowest cataract. Here we encountered a cliff face of solid granite, curtained with overgrown vines. Moriarty urged me forward, and I discovered that the solid cliff was actually two separate walls of rock, with a narrow passage between them concealed by a membrane of vines. Passing between the vines, and still held at gunpoint, I found myself entering a cavern . . . utterly dark, except for the weird glow of phosphorescent lichens oozing from the cavern’s walls. Moriarty followed at my heels. It was clear to me that he knew in advance of this place’s existence, and had brought me here for some grim purpose.”
Sherlock Holmes extended his cigar case to me. I accepted a torpedo cigar and took out my cigar cutter as Holmes resumed his narrative: “Inside the cavern, three robed and hooded figures stood awaiting us. Moriarty addressed them in a tongue unknown to me, although I fancy it resembled ancient Chaldean. Moriarty pointed at me, and by his gestures and intonations, I grasped his general meaning: ‘Here is the man whom I agreed to give you.’
“But then, in the half dark, one of the hooded figures reached out with inhumanly long limbs and snatched Moriarty’s revolver while another of the figures pinioned my enemy’s arms. I heard Moriarty cry out in English: ‘No! Not me, too! Your master promised that I would go free if I gave you this man!’
“Something coshed me. I awoke in darkness, with a throbbing headache, and found myself lying supine on cold stone. Something unseen was probing my face: weird tendrils pressed against my features, oozing across my eyelids and my mouth. Watson, my nostrils detected an odor of utter obscenity. From nearby in the darkness, strange chittering voices assailed my ears with high-pitched cries: ’Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!’ Beneath these sounds, I heard the low whimpering moans of a human voice: Moriarty’s voice. Did I say a human voice? Watson, in that dark cavern I heard something in Moriarty’s voice which told me that his mind had cast off the moorings of sanity, and was no longer human. Beneath Moriarty’s anguished tones, in counterpoint, I heard a damp rapid noise which sounded like dozens of tongues, lapping some unknown liquid repast.”
I shuddered, and nearly burned myself attempting to light my cigar. “Great heavens, Holmes!”
“Heaven had no embassy in that dark place, Watson. I had the sense to lie still, hoping my eyes would grow accustomed to the darkness. They did not. Yet by a little whiles, the procession of tendrils across my face slowed and became less frequent while the tongue-lapping sounds attained their hideous crescendo. Something was giving less attention to me, and more heed to the consumption of that unknown liquid. The fingers of my right hand touched something in the dark: something cold and hard, with sharp corners. It came away easily in my hand, yet it was heavy enough that it might serve as a weapon.