Sherlock Holmes: The Coils of Time & Other Stories (Sherlock Holmes Adventures Book 1) by Ralph Vaughan Read Free Book Online

do you, Mr Holmes?” Kent asked.
    “What is the supernatural but nature poorly observed or misunderstood?” Holmes replied.  “Our ancestors painted themselves blue and built stone circles to please spirits they believed moved among them, making the sun to rise and the crops to flourish.  We observe the stars through telescopes and practice scientific agriculture, but modern man has yet to completely divorce himself from that blue-skinned savage, hence we still have among us astrologers, hex-makers and people who believe in ghosts.”
    “The things seen in the East End are not ghosts,” Kent insisted.
    “Obviously not,” Holmes agreed.  “Those who believe they are will not connect them with the Vanishments, while those who disbelieve will have nothing to connect to the Vanishments.”
    “The Ghosts are not supernatural, but I do believe they are evil,” Kent said.
    Holmes nodded.  “In that, we are in complete agreement.”
    As they walked along, they quietly shared information about the Ghosts and the Vanishments.  The Vanishments were noticed about three months earlier, but likely started before then.  The victims were usually from among those wretched masses unlikely to be missed, whose disappearances were easily ascribed to an avoidance of responsibilities, to an unlucky fall after too much gin, or to the murderous activities of London’s somewhat considerable criminal element.  It was only when numbers of the missing became legion that people began to take notice, and most Londoners hoped the metropolis was merely experiencing another rash of murders, looking to the waters of the Thames for bodies that failed to rise.
    Sightings of the “Ghosts” started later, one of the reasons why the city’s journalists and social theorists had failed to connect them to a common cause.  Those who had spied the pale flitting shapes usually described them as seeming to rise from the earth, but those who were often in the best position to observe them were often the least likely to be believed, common labourers and those who engaged in no sort of honest labour at all.   The Ghosts were short, slight, very quick and favoured dark nights and thick fogs.  Those who refused to believe in their reality were quick to blame alcoholic delusions, too quick in Inspector Kent’s opinion.
    “When so many people see something similar,” he said, “you have to look beyond the characters of the observers and concede there might be something behind it.  If the word ‘Ghost’ sticks in your throat, call it something else, but don’t deny it simply through unreasoned prejudice.”
    “Have you formed any opinions, Inspector?”
    “People or some strange animal, I cannot say, Mr Holmes,” Kent asserted, “but I do believe they are using the city’s sewer system to travel about.”
    “I agree, but what is the basis for your deduction?”
    “I plotted the sightings on a Baedeker map of metropolitan London,” Kent explained.  “The correlation was nearly exact; more often than not they corresponded with access to either a main sewer track or one of the branches.”
    “Sound work,” Holmes told him.  “Did you plot the Vanishments similarly?”
    “I did.  Though there was not as equal degree of correlation, it was still too high to dismiss, and to my mind soundly linked the two events.”
    “And your superiors…”
    “Totally denied the implications.”
    Holmes sighed and shook his head.  “Your method was a thoroughly conventional approach to the problem, not totally lacking in imagination, yet not bristling either.  I am quite accustomed to people being unable to see at all what I see so easily and, but it takes a particularly dull and coarse mind to so cavalierly dismiss the undeniable reality of demonstrable incidents so marked plainly on a commercial map of the city.”
    Kent suddenly halted, grabbing Holmes’ arm.
    They stepped into the shadows of a building’s wall. 
    “The alleyway on the