The Classified Dossier - Sherlock Holmes and Dorian Gray (eBook)

Christian Klaver (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2024 | 1. Auflage
352 Seiten
TITAN BOOKS (Verlag)
978-1-78909-872-3 (ISBN)

Infos

Mysterious socialite Dorian Gray is at the centre of Sherlock Holmes' latest investigation in this astonishing, uncanny mash-up of Victorian mystery and horror 1903 Sherlock Holmes and Dr John Watson have tickets to the newly arrived Egyptian Circus. Holmes is puzzled by his brother Mycroft's cryptic gift but is intrigued enough to attend the next production. The performers, dressed as wondrous half-animal, half-human gods from Egyptian mythology, display superhuman agility and stunts. But they speak no Arabic, sequester themselves in the stables after each show and take orders from a mysterious ring master who is yet to be seen. And then one of the performers is murdered. Holmes's enquires lead him to Montebank Manor, the home of the beautiful and secretive socialite Dorian Gray. As Holmes digs deeper, he learns Gray is hiding much more than his involvement in a murder. It's a darkly fantastical tale of lies, experimentation, hypnosis and wicked ambition.

Christian Klaver is author of Shadows Over London and the Nightwalker Series, and has also written over a dozen novels in both fantasy and sci-fi, as well as for magazines such as Escape Pod and Dark Wisdom. He's worked as book-seller, bartender and a martial-arts instructor before settling into a career in internet security. He lives in Detroit, Michigan, and tweets at @mrchrstn

Textauszug

Chapter 2

THE CIRCUS OF AMUN-RA

We returned to Baker Street where Holmes proceeded to sit, unspeaking, and fill our sitting room with bluish-grey smoke. After an hour of this, he jumped up, scribbled several telegrams and sent them out without illuminating their contents to me. He received two replies shortly, but again said nothing. Well used to his curious ways as I was, I was happy to let him explain to me his theories when he was ready, but wondered, as the night wore on and Holmes refused to speak, what kind of tangled problem Holmes’s brother had directed us to.

Certainly Mycroft’s actions spoke volumes. I had never known Mycroft to so much as leave London, let alone England. Holmes had only told me that he’d left on a government-issue steamer early the previous morning. I found it hard to imagine the enormously corpulent elder Holmes standing at the prow of some steamer, his grey eyes shining, the wind and sea spray in his barest fringe of salt and pepper hair. Mycroft, by his own admission, possessed so little sense of adventure and energy that it was quite beyond him to essay into the average London railway station, to say nothing of boarding a ship leaving England.

I lost track, as the night wore on, of how many times Holmes filled his pipe, but I think it safe to say that the three-pipe threshold was breached before the clock struck four. Still, it was not until an ashen light had started to paint our window, signalling morning, that I considered retiring. This was when Holmes finally stirred and spoke.

“This will be a difficult business, Watson,” he said. “I should very much like to get closer to these circus workers, but they are so secluded and unique that infiltrating them is going to be a pretty little problem. The regular workers are all managed by a man named Marcus Roberts, whom Tommy mentioned yesterday. At the time, the name was unknown to me, but that was quickly rectified and I have received reply already that the man exists and handles the cleaners, maintenance staff, ticket-takers and the like, and has had no exposure to the Egyptians themselves. Isolated at every turn...”

“Have you deduced what portion of this unusual situation has attracted Mycroft’s attention?”

“I need more information to make anything of it, Watson,” he said. “I cannot, as yet, explain either Mycroft’s interest in the circus or his even more remarkable and sudden lust for travel. All the threads start at the circus. As such, I think it may be time for a little old-fashioned surveillance? We have seen what the place is like during a performance at day. Will you join me in looking the place over at night?”

“I should be deeply hurt to miss it,” I said at once.

Our arrangements having been made, I went to bed and rose early (for my kind) so that Holmes and I could take an early supper at Simpson’s. They didn’t serve much I could consume, of course, and some of the rare meat dishes cast off a distracting aroma that is, for me, both tantalizing and filled with disappointment. However, I supped before going and I find it pleasant to be among people for short periods, despite the assault such a place makes on my senses. More importantly, I knew the importance of getting Holmes to take care of himself, especially since he often eschews food during his more difficult cases. Tonight, he acquitted himself admirably on a plate of mutton and potatoes while I pushed a lamb risotto around my plate.

In between bites, Holmes told me what little he had discovered about the circus while I slept. He’d gone through the public records and carried out some careful cross-referencing with his index files and newspaper clippings. The Circus of Amun-Ra being in Hyde Park, which lay just across the Serpentine River from Kensington Gardens, would require several permits to set up and run for as many months as it had.

“Could Mycroft have had a hand in their activities?” I asked. “His involvement is still a mystery to us.”

“Mycroft? The patron of a circus?” Holmes said, amused. “It certainly seems unlikely. As far as I have been able to gather until now, and my investigation is only in the preliminary stage, it seems as if the way for their occupation has been paved the good old-fashioned way: with a great deal of money. Mycroft is not what anyone would refer to as a poor man, but he neither has, nor needs money in the usual sense. No, if he had been instrumental in setting them up, it would have been done with much more care. I doubt that monetary payments would have been involved at all and if they had been, it would have been handled with greater discretion. It may well be worth tracing where some of those payments came from if our campaign tonight does not yield any results.”

Dinner was cleared away shortly and we ordered coffee and whisky. There may be those that envy the disease of vampirism as I have described it, but they should not. It is a terrible way to live one’s life. There are, however, a few compensations: chiefly the enhanced taste of whisky. Another, even purer delight is coffee. After my infection, I found that coffee now tasted the way it smelled. My system could only handle a little foreign matter and the coffee and whisky together would push it to the limit, but it was entirely worthwhile.

It had rained while we dined but let up as Holmes and I left the restaurant. Night had fallen softly and incompletely on the Strand and while a little wet fog trailed around our ankles, it was not terribly cool and made a pleasant enough scene to my eye. Lanterns and the amber light from shop windows spilled over wet pavements, carriages and pedestrians alike as a brisk amount of traffic of all kinds flowed through the centre of London. Holmes hailed a cab and we were soon alighting near the circus grounds in Hyde Park.

The circus had finished their last performance of the day, so there was far less foot traffic here – such pedestrians as there were did not pay us any attention.

“We are in enemy territory now, Watson,” Holmes said in a low voice as we left the main road and crossed into the gardens themselves. We left the paths and Holmes steered us through a carefully cultivated stand of trees, aiming to approach the circus from the rear. The huge big top was dark and clearly deserted, but a warm light glowed in the smaller tent behind as well as in a few of the shanties nearby. I pulled Holmes further back into the shelter of the trees as I saw figures moving between the two light spills. It seemed that people were heading in small groups into the smaller tent. The middle of the path between the shanties and the smaller tent was sixty or seventy yards from us, but we dared not get closer.

One figure, immobile, was standing just off the path and seemed to be keeping watch. The bulky, pointy-eared silhouette of Seth. We waited while the rest of the performers filed into the tent.

“We seem to have arrived just in time for something,” Holmes said in a low voice.

My pulse jumped as I saw the ears of the imposing Seth flick slightly in our direction a half-instant after Holmes’s statement and I gripped his arm in an appeal for silence. Holmes immediately understood and we waited.

Seth stood, looking in our direction for a full two minutes, his ears twitching occasionally, before he finally trudged off to the glowing yellow slit of the entrance to the tent. When he had gone, Holmes and I were alone in the expanse of the garden with only the few trees and the bulky shadow of the tent for company.

We took a few long, slow breaths, waiting to see if there might be any other sentries, but nothing moved. Finally, at a signal from Holmes, we crept across the lawn to the opening of the tent and peered in.

Flickering candlelight painted the walls of the tent in a way that made me think of prehistoric caves. This tent, although smaller than the main one, was still about the size of a small church. And church it might as well have been, for there was an altar with a dazzling array of candles and rough benches for makeshift pews. The door flap to the tent was near the back, so they all faced the altar off to our right, with the result that there was little chance of them seeing us. We crouched just outside the tent flap in total darkness and beheld the strangest congregation I’d ever seen. With their costumes and masks off, the Egyptians looked more wondrous and bizarre than they had when performing.

Anubis stood at the altar, robed, his arms raised. The gold Egyptian headdress was gone, as well as the jackal ears, but I could see now that his snout had not been part of any ornament at all. His eyes shone in the light with the horizontal, blocky slits of a goat. Anubis’s mouth opened and his voice rang out: “Not to go on all-fours; that is the Law!”

Here the congregation answered: “Are we not men?”

“Not to suck up Drink; that is the Law!” Anubis intoned. His fur was not black, like that of the Egyptian namesake he’d portrayed, but grey and curly. A great mane that must have been mostly held in check before now stood around his face, which was both bestial and undeniably human. He raised hands that were not those of a man, but something like nimble cloven hooves, with two thick, hard, black curved fingers that held a thin book. He wore vestments of a kind, including a sash of black and gold, striking against the pervading grey of his person. There was something of man, deer, wolf and lion in the face and hands, a monstrous amalgam.

“Are we not men?” the congregation answered.

“Not to eat Fish or Flesh,” he said. “That is the Law!”

“Are we not men?”

“Not to claw the...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 12.3.2024
• Verlagsort: London
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Historische Romane
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Krimi / Thriller / Horror ► Historische Kriminalromane
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Krimi / Thriller / Horror ► Krimi / Thriller
• Schlagworte: anno dracula • Baker Street • Bram Stoker • Count Dracula • Cthulhu • Cumberbatch • Deadly Dimensions • Dorian Gray • Dracula • gabe denning • g.s. denning • H.G. Wells • Horror • Hounds of Baskerville • Invisible Man • Jack the Ripper • James Lovegrove • Jekyll • kim newman • Lois Gresh • Mr Hyde • Mycroft • Sherlock • Sherlock Holmes • sherlock vs cthulhu • The Christmas Demon • The Finality Problem • The Sign of Seven • Warlock Holmes • Watson
• ISBN-10: 1-78909-872-6 / 1789098726
• ISBN-13: 978-1-78909-872-3 / 9781789098723