Warlock Holmes--A Study in Brimstone by G.S. Denning Read Free Book Online

spoke.
    “Well then, let us bid farewell to the world of men,” Lestrade suggested, but rather than embark upon a mystic journey to a faerie realm, he simply shut the sitting-room door.
    In all my strange adventures with Warlock Holmes, that is the moment I came closest to washing my hands of the whole business. Perhaps if I had not been too terrified to move, I might have run away and never more associated myself with Warlock or his “peculiar” friends. I didn’t. I stayed. And in that moment, my illusions fell from me. Despite what I believed to be true about my world, despite all my medical knowledge, I was forced to admit that the room certainly appeared to contain an ogre, a vampire, a warlock and a dead man. Oh, and myself, of course. Ignorant of Holmes’s true powers, impotent against Grogsson’s strength, no more than a tasty treat to Inspector Lestrade—there I stood.

5

    I CANNOT RECALL WHAT I EXPECTED TO HAPPEN NEXT. Did I anticipate some sort of black mass? That my hideous companions would fall upon the corpse and devour it? Creeping shadows? Chanting? Perhaps I was too involved in my terror to anticipate anything at all.
    In any case, I was heartily relieved when they started doing police work. It was in no way supernatural and it was also in no way… competent. Grogsson seemed unable to talk about the corpse without giving it a derisive little nudge with his foot, quite disturbing the crime scene. Vladislav Lestrade had a professional demeanor, compared to the others, but could not stop himself dipping his fingers in the congealing pools of blood and sucking at them greedily. Warlock raised a magnifying glass to his eye and began looking all about the room.
    “What is that device for?” I asked.
    “Ah,” he said, as if divulging a great secret, “only look at my face and you shall know! It makes one of my eyes look large and disconcerting!”
    That it did. Though nobody asked me, I endeavored to help. Understand, I had no knowledge of investigative practice. At least, I had no knowledge of investigating
a crime
. Then again, what does a doctor do but
investigate
illness? Each disease leaves its mark—its signature—for any man with the wit to spy it out. My instinct was to approach crime-solving with the medical method; to observe the symptoms, their effects and aftermath, and from that data, determine the cause. By happy chance, this proved to be an apt method.
    “It makes one of my eyes look large and disconcerting!”
    I began with the object most familiar to me: the human body. This particular specimen was approximately forty years of age and utterly without friends. I assumed this last part, but his expression, even in death, was one of an insufferable, self-centered blowhard. I cannot explain what gave this impression, only that upon entering the room and beholding him, one got the feeling that he was much more fun to be around now than he had been while living. There were no visible wounds on his body. I concluded that, if it were not for the note in his mouth, there would be no reason to judge this a murder. It had every appearance of a heart attack. The only strange thing about the body was the smell. It reeked of alcohol, but there was something else as well, a bitter tang not native to corpses, whiskey, or any food I knew. Poison, I surmised.
    Despite the lack of wounds upon the corpse, the room contained a notable quantity of blood. There were no spatters upon the walls, such as one might expect from a sword-swing or gunshot. Rather, it was spread across the floor, mostly in small droplets. There were a few puddles of it, one only a few feet from the corpse, near the door. I guessed it must be the murderer’s blood, unless there was another victim. Probably this man’s killer had some slow-bleeding injury or other and the puddles represented spots where he had stood for a time. He must have paused by the door to watch the victim expire. The blood was O negative, as I learned from