The Revenant of Thraxton Hall: The Paranormal Casebooks of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle by Vaughn Entwistle Read Free Book Online

He wanted to reread what he had written. But instead of amusing dialogue and apt character descriptions, he found only the same word scribbled over and over in his own handwriting:
    Elementary.
    Elementary.
    Elementary.
    When he turned the page, the Elementary s continued.
    He slammed the notebook shut. There had been no letter. No spectral projection of Sherlock Holmes. It had all been a dream, an hallucination brought on by a soporific of his own concoction. He wobbled to his feet, gripping the armrests for support.
    Nothing , he thought, just a silly dream . But as he made to leave the room he noticed the curling arabesques of cigarette smoke hovering near the ceiling.
    The next morning, a letter from the Society for Psychical Research arrived in the first post.

 
    CHAPTER 5
    THE BEST OF BOTH WORLDS
    Conan Doyle awakened with the mysterious woman’s words— A medium of some renown —echoing in his head. The phrase jogged loose the memory of a news cutting he had read somewhere. After an hour’s search, he found the article in a recent issue of The Strand Magazine. Triumphant, he slipped the magazine into his leather portfolio and determined to read it on the train to London. He was heading back to the capital city with a specific mission in mind: he would return to number 42 ______ Crescent. Only this time he would be forearmed with something he lacked upon the first visitation—knowledge.
    *   *   *
    As he enjoyed the privacy of an empty carriage on the ten fifteen to Waterloo Station, Conan Doyle pulled out The Strand Magazine and paged through it until he came upon a headline: “Medium Communes with the Dead.” Beneath the banner-black type was a photograph of a medium seated at a séance table holding the hands of two sitters on either side whose faces could not be seen. The medium was a young woman in a black silk dress. Her hair was pinned up and she wore a sheer black veil that shadowed her face. The photograph had been taken without the benefit of flash powder, and the lengthy time exposure required in the dimly lit room had caused the image of the medium’s face to be blurred by motion. It gave a rather uncanny effect: a main image and then a secondary ghost image—as if the camera had captured her soul leaving her body. Beneath the photo was a caption: The medium Lady Hope Thraxton conducting a séance .
    He stared at the image for a long time. He had craved to see the young woman’s face ever since his dark interview. But now, even though he possessed a photograph, her true likeness remained tantalizingly out of reach. The article’s author, whose name he did not recognize as a regular Strand contributor, gave a rather breathless account of a séance he had attended at a “fashionable London address.” No doubt this was the Mayfair residence Conan Doyle had recently visited. Here the medium supposedly contacted her spirit guide, providing a conduit that allowed direct communication with several relatives who had passed over to the other side. The author claimed to be an expert investigator into the supernatural who had unmasked many false mediums and charlatans, and who remained convinced that Lady Thraxton was the most gifted psychic he had ever encountered.
    The train whistle blew, signaling the station ahead. Conan Doyle returned the magazine to his portfolio. Minutes later, he stepped from the echoing vault of Waterloo Station into the clamor of Waterloo Road: the clatter of carriage wheels on cobblestones, the cries of costermongers hawking “fresh fish” and “posies, a penny a bouquet,” street urchins begging “spare a farthing for a poor young lad”—his mind so distracted he imagined he could hear his name being called: “Arthur! I say, Arthur!”
    Then he noticed an inconspicuous black carriage pacing him with an extremely conspicuous Oscar Wilde hanging out the carriage window waving a white handkerchief. Conan Doyle stepped to the curbside as the carriage pulled