I HAVE IT ON GOOD AUTHORITY THAT ONE OF THE most celebrated lines in my entire published oeuvre is this one: “To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman.”

The subject of the sentence is, of course, Irene Adler, the adventuress and contralto whom Holmes first matched wits with in an episode I have chronicled under the title “A Scandal in Bohemia”. The events of that tale took place a short while after the events of the foregoing section of this manuscript and constitute, for once, a more or less exact rendering of the incident as it actually occurred.

The one instance where my published account veers from the truth lies in the story’s later stages. Therein I describe a brief encounter with “a slim youth in an ulster” who passed Holmes and myself while we were stopped at the entrance to Baker Street and bade us good morning. The fellow moved hurriedly on and neither of us caught more than a fleeting look at him. I assumed he was some acquaintance of Holmes’s unknown to me, while Holmes averred that he was not unfamiliar but his identity remained a puzzle.

The next day, Holmes received a letter from Miss Adler – Mrs Godfrey Norton as she was by then – in which the lady confessed that it was she, in masculine dress, who had greeted us on our doorstep. “I have been trained as an actress myself,” she wrote. “Male costume is nothing new to me. I often take advantage of the freedom it gives.”

What I omitted to mention in the story is that, even though I had only the briefest glimpse of the aforementioned “slim youth”, the person concerned was unquestionably a man. The size of the hands, the timbre of the voice, the squareness of the jaw, and especially the Adam’s apple, were all features which no actress, however skilled, could have mimicked. In this, Holmes agreed with me. There was only so much, he said, that could be accomplished with padding and stage makeup and alteration of one’s posture and gait.

“Naturally she could be lying in her letter,” he concluded. “The fellow was an operative of hers, and she is merely pretending he was she in order to bamboozle me further. Because otherwise, if he truly was Irene Norton, née Adler, in disguise, then her powers of impersonation border on the miraculous.”

Holmes’s fascination with her went beyond her physical allure, which was all too apparent in the photograph of her that he accepted in lieu of payment by the King: that fulsome mouth, those spirited eyes, that irrepressible voluptuousness. In fact, I would submit that Irene Adler was beguiling to him in spite of her beauty. She was his intellectual equal, of that there is no doubt, and he was impressed to have been thwarted by her so charmingly and with such aplomb while pursuing the King of Bohemia case. Yet I am willing to suggest that he was captivated by her in no small part because of the possibility, remote though it was, that she genuinely did boast abilities beyond normal human ken. Holmes might not have had an eye for the ladies but he did have a nose for the anomalous.

* * *

The above serves as preface to what occurred well over a year later, towards the tail end of 1888, when Holmes and I received a summons from his brother Mycroft to attend a meeting of the Dagon Club.

This I learned of when Holmes called round at my house in Paddington one evening, just as Mary and I were settling down to dinner. We had been husband and wife for scarcely a month and were not long returned from our honeymoon in Bournemouth, about which I shall say nothing other than that it was a week of perfect happiness, marred not at all by the chilly weather.

No sooner had the maid shown Holmes in than he bowed to Mary and said, “A thousand pardons, Mrs Watson. Far be it from me to ruin this picture of newlywed domestic bliss, but I need to borrow your husband.”

“I cannot help but think that you would not be calling at such an hour if it were not a matter of urgency,” said Mary.

“You read me like a book, madam.”

I looked at my wife. “I have your leave?”

She gave a gracious nod. “I saw, though, that mournful glance you just threw at your serving of game pie, John. Would it help if I asked the maid to prepare you a paper of sandwiches to take with you?”

“It would help very much, my dear.”

“And for you too, Mr Holmes? Mrs Hudson is an excellent cook, but you are still as thin as a rake, so I suspect you of skipping meals from time to time.”

“A sandwich would not go amiss.”

“Do you like sliced tongue?”

“Delicious.”

As our cab circumnavigated Hyde Park, Holmes and I ate our impromptu repast.

“Where are we bound?” I enquired between mouthfuls.

“Pall Mall.”

“The Diogenes?”

“Not exactly. Think of a circle within a circle.”

“Ah. The Dagon Club.”

“I’m afraid so.”

Disembarking outside the Diogenes, we entered and passed straight through to the Stranger’s Room.

An august assemblage awaited us.

The Dagon Club had been established back in 1880 by Mycroft Holmes following the unpleasantness at Shadwell, in which he had become unwillingly embroiled and which had nearly cost him his life. This secret conclave gathered in the Stranger’s Room at irregular intervals, as and when necessary, with its membership composed of seven notables, each pre-eminent in his sphere. Its stated aim was to suppress knowledge of certain specific arcane matters – anything pertaining to the Great Old Ones, the Outer Gods, and sundry related beasts that were less cosmically awesome but no less monstrous. While Sherlock Holmes fought these enemies of mankind through the sweat of his brow and the might of his fist, Mycroft Holmes and his confrères went to great pains to keep all mention of them out of the public domain, thus protecting the innocent in their own way.

On that evening a quorum of four was in attendance. Their number comprised Mycroft himself, his second-in-command Lord Cantlemere, the financier Milton Goldsworthy, and Sir Alexander Chalfont-Banks, the high court judge.

“First things first,” said Mycroft Holmes, dispensing with any preamble. “You, Dr Watson.”

“Me?” said I.

“Are you planning to write any further books?”

The question caught me on the hop. “I… I don’t know… That is to say…”

“Heavens, man,” barked Sir Alexander Chalfont-Banks. “It’s a simple enough query. Are you or aren’t you? Pull yourself together and give us an answer.”

I reminded myself that I was a campaigner, a physician, as respected in my own way as any of these august individuals; I should not be browbeaten by them.

“I am contemplating the possibility,” I said. “There are numerous of Sherlock Holmes’s cases which might lend themselves to––”

“Yes, yes,” said Mycroft, overriding me. “All we want is an assurance that you will send any manuscripts to us before submitting them to a publisher, just as you did last time with… what was it called again?”

“A Study in Scarlet.”

“That’s it. Florid, melodramatic title.”

“I was originally intending to call it A Tangled Skein.”

“Is that any better?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Selling well?” enquired Lord Cantlemere. With his hatchet-like nose and drooping whiskers, he had one of those faces that looked irascible all the time, even when its owner was not. Having said which, His Lordship was seldom not irascible.

“None too badly,” I replied. “I, regrettably, struck a poor deal. Twenty-five pounds for the full rights, so I shan’t see a penny in royalties.”

“Ah. Foolish,” said Milton Goldsworthy, who was a man of few words and not all of them courteous. “Bad business brain.”

“I have learned my lesson and shall endeavour to do better in future.” I was conscious that, in speech and bearing, I had been reduced to a state of embarrassingly earnest obsequiousness. I felt like a schoolboy who had been called before not one but four stern headmasters and asked to account for his poor performance in his exams.

“What we can’t have,” said Mycroft Holmes, “is you revealing certain unpalatable facts that the world is better off not knowing.”

“I would never do so on purpose.”

“But you might inadvertently. So here I am, Doctor, reminding you. Every single word you ever publish must be scrutinised by the Dagon Club before it sees print. Understood?”

“Understood.”

I glanced sidelong at Sherlock Holmes, who was having trouble masking his amusement at my discomfiture.

“We are at war,” said his elder brother. “War with eldritch forces that dwell on the borders of reality and mean us nothing but harm. And in war, one strategy is the control of information. We cannot have society at large learning about the existence of Cthulhu, Nyarlathotep, Azathoth or any of their ilk, nor about those humans who offer obeisance to these entities and actively incite them to spread their malign influence over the Earth. If the truth were to become widely known, there would be panic, chaos, insanity, anarchy on an unprecedented scale. Civilisation would falter, and the so-called gods would find mankind an easy mark. They are bent on our destruction, and there must not be a single chink in our armour, else we shall surely succumb.”

His three colleagues murmured agreement.

“That is why I founded the Dagon Club,” Mycroft went on, “and that is why we are monitoring your activities closely, Doctor. Yours and Sherlock’s. But anyway. To the subject at hand.”

He charged a wineglass from a bottle of what appeared to be a rather fine Burgundy, and took a long, slurping sip. I looked on with envy. The other three club members were all enjoying alcoholic beverages too, while Holmes and I had not been offered so much as a cup of tea.

“Extortion,” Mycroft said. “It is an ugly word and an uglier deed. Uglier still is the peculiar kind of extortion I have come across lately – and I use the word ‘peculiar’ advisedly.”

“Peculiar how?” asked the junior Holmes.

“I shall come to that in a moment. It all began just over a month ago, when Sir Martin Tideswell sent out a memo proposing that the Royal Navy be reduced in strength by a third.”

“The First Naval Lord said that?”

“He did. The memo was not widely circulated and I have managed to keep it under wraps, so that the press have not got their grubby hands on it. Privately, however, Sir Martin came in for plenty of criticism, both from within the Admiralty and in the top echelons of government. It was a significant misstep in an otherwise unblemished career, and I fear that his days as commander of the fleet are numbered. Then, a week later, came the Marquess of Beecherston’s letter to the Times.”

“Yes. I recall reading it and being surprised by its sentiments.”

“Not half as surprised, I’ll bet, as the Queen was,” said Mycroft. “Beecherston had been widely tipped to be the next Viceroy of India, and there he was, stating openly in a national daily that the Raj was an oppressive colonialist regime and that Britain should not – and I quote – ‘continue to plunder the subcontinent for its wealth and resources, like a band of pirates in pith helmets’. Until then, His Lordship had been a staunch proponent of greater social intervention in India as a means of reinforcing Her Majesty’s dominion over her subjects there, so it was something of a volte-face on his part.”

“To put it mildly.”

“Needless to say, the Queen was unamused, and the viceroyship is no longer on the cards for Beecherston. He’ll be lucky if he keeps his seat in the Upper House. It wasn’t long before I became aware of similar antics from four other equally prominent individuals, every instance so alike that it formed an unmistakable pattern. Each man displayed a sudden, radical change of heart which would seem to undermine his own position and possibly the fabric of the nation. It was as though, all at once, these pillars of the establishment had crumbled.”

“Very queer,” opined Sherlock Holmes.

“Naturally I took it upon myself to interrogate the persons in question,” said Mycroft. “I spoke to the six of them one-to-one, and each defended his stance with gusto and talked about experiencing pangs of conscience and wishing to do what was right. None showed regret for his decision, nor could any be convinced to recant it. Beneath all their protestations and self-justifications, however, I noted a common denominator. To a man, they were clearly frightened. Frightened to death.”

“Of what?”

“I could not persuade them to say. The further I pressed them, the more they retreated into prevarication and bluster. I presumed that agents of some foreign power must be threatening their personal safety or the safety of their close kin. It was the only explanation that made sense. Spies abound in this country of ours and are getting more ruthless by the day. There are also anarchists and the Fenians to consider. They, too, will stop at nothing to undermine the fabric of this great nation. Certainly my thinking was running along those lines. That was until one of the six, in an unguarded moment, let slip something. ‘I must keep quiet,’ he said, ‘or it will come again.’ Those were his exact words. ‘It will come again.’”

“And did you get him to expand on that remark?”

“No, Sherlock.” Mycroft Holmes gave a sombre shake of the head, which set his jowls wobbling beneath his chin. “Try as I might, I could not. But mark the pronoun. ‘It’. Not ‘he’ or ‘they’. Not even ‘she’. ‘ It will come again.’ Now what do you think that might signify, brother?”

“Without further data, I would be loath to speculate.”

“But if we factor in the fear shown by all of them, it hints at something abnormal, don’t you think? Something outside the mundane sphere. Something belonging to the preternatural demimonde that you and Dr Watson – and we Dagon Clubbers too, in our way – now inhabit.”

Lord Cantlemere fixed a gimlet eye on Holmes. “Sounds to me like exactly the sort of knotty, arcane problem that you revel in unlocking.”

“Don’t you mean un Sherlocking?” said Milton Goldsworthy, and immediately started sniggering at his own pun, as though it were a witticism of the highest order. Sir Alexander Chalfont-Banks chimed in, and together the pair chortled and snorted in their shared mirth. Meanwhile Mycroft Holmes sat patiently by, essaying the thinnest of smiles. As for Lord Cantlemere, he did not go so far as smile, but then humorousness did not fit comfortably on his austere face, any more than a rose might flourish on stony ground. He did, however, tilt his head to one side as though catching strains of a distant, haunting music.

Once the outbreak of jollity – if that is the right term for it – had run its course, Mycroft fetched out a folded sheet of paper from inside his jacket. He handed it to his younger sibling.

“Here is a list of the people concerned, with notes on each.”

Holmes unfolded the paper and, glancing at it, whistled. Over his shoulder, I read the half-dozen names. Including Sir Martin Tideswell and the Marquess of Beecherston, they constituted as illustrious a roll call as ever there was.

Holmes waved the sheet of paper at his brother. “What do you want from me, Mycroft?”

“What I want, Sherlock, is for you to do what I could not: find out what has terrified these men so. You might need this.” Mycroft produced a sealed envelope. “A letter of authorisation, signed by me. It will guarantee you an audience with any of the names on the list and access to almost anywhere you might desire.”

“I’m sure I can manage, even without your imprimatur.”

“Take it anyway.”

Holmes did as bidden, stowing the envelope, unopened, in an inside pocket.

“I wish you luck,” said Mycroft. “Report to me as soon as you learn anything useful.”

He batted a hand in the air, dismissing us. There were no goodbyes. The meeting had been adjourned, just like that, and Holmes and I were expected simply to leave.

As we made our way out onto the street, I felt compelled to voice my disgruntlement. “Really, those men in there are among the rudest I have ever met. They seem to have forgotten that manners exist. Your brother is the exception, I suppose. He may be curt but he is not actively impolite. As for the others, they truly believe that the majority of folk are lesser beings, to be disdained and disparaged.”

“I have often found that those deemed ‘the great and good’,” said Holmes, “have relinquished goodness on their way to greatness. We just have to accept that the Dagon Club are there to help and that whatever minor indignities they inflict upon the likes of you and me are worth enduring in the name of allyship. Now then.” He flourished the list of names. “I have some other ‘great and good’ to interview. You probably shan’t see me for a few days.”

“Let me know how you get on.”

“Of course.”

* * *

A week passed, with no sign of Sherlock Holmes. I expected him to drop by at any moment, or else to wire me. A further few days went by, still without any word from him, but I wasn’t especially worried. Holmes had a tendency to throw himself wholeheartedly into a case and would disappear from view for however long it took, before re-emerging at the end, brimming with new intelligence, like a diving bird coming to the surface with a beak full of fish.

Then, on a bitterly cold Sunday afternoon, I received a visit from his brother. I answered the knock at the door myself, for it was the maid’s day off and Mary was out. I could not disguise my amazement when I saw who was on my front doorstep. Mycroft Holmes seldom strayed from his Whitehall stamping grounds. His immense physical bulk seemed to anchor him there, where he was in constant demand for advice and policy-making, and only under exceptional circumstances did he bestir himself to venture elsewhere. With that in mind, my thoughts immediately took a dark turn.

“Not that this isn’t an honour and a pleasure, sir,” said I, ushering him to the drawing room and taking his coat, gloves and scarf from him, “but might I ask if all is well? You are not, I trust, the bearer of grim tidings.”

“You mean about Sherlock?” Mycroft lowered his corpulent self into an armchair and held out his hands to the fire to warm them.

“That is what I mean. I cannot for the life of me imagine why you might be calling, not least on a Sunday, unless something dire has happened involving your brother. Pray tell me I am wrong.”

“Could it not be that I am simply here for social reasons?”

“With all due respect, no.”

Mycroft nodded, the roll of fat beneath his chin bulging outward with each inclination of the head, much like the vocal sac of a croaking frog. “True. We are not friends, you and I, Doctor. Associates, yes, even brothers-in-arms, but not friends. Tell me, how would it feel if you learned that Sherlock had met with some great misfortune?”

My heart was racing now. “I should be destroyed. It would be the worst calamity I could imagine, apart from if it was Mary.”

“Ah yes. The fragrant Mrs Watson. Is she home?”

“Playing bridge at a friend’s house. But never mind her. Right now, it’s your brother that concerns me. If you have something to say about him, for God’s sake say it.”

“You look shaken, Doctor.”

“I am very shaken. Come on, out with it. What has happened to him?”

At that, Mycroft started chuckling. His belly shook and his eyes creased up, disappearing into the folds of his face.

“This is no laughing matter,” I said heatedly. “We are talking about your own flesh and blood! Your closest living relative! Is he injured? Comatose? Dead? What?”

“Oh, my dear Watson,” said Mycroft, in tones both higher-pitched and clearer-sounding than before. “Your face. It is a picture!”

“Holmes?” I breathed.

“One and the same,” said my interlocutor. It was still Mycroft Holmes, to all outward appearances, but the voice was unambiguously that of Sherlock Holmes.

“My goodness! You absolute fiend!” I shook my fist at him. “What a horrible trick. I hope you’re ashamed of yourself.”

“I didn’t plan it in advance,” said Sherlock Holmes. “I admit that part of my reason in coming here in guise of Mycroft was to hoodwink you. It never fails to entertain me when at last you penetrate my masquerade and realisation dawns in your eyes. ‘Good grief, it is you, Holmes!’ But when you started showing fretfulness as to the reasons for my brother’s presence and were so obviously fearing the worst… I’m sorry, but I just couldn’t help myself.”

I poured a glass of sherry to steady my nerves. “Never do it again. You had me thinking… well, you know what you had me thinking.”

“And it was touching, how upset you got. Nothing can be more gratifying for a man than to see the devastating effect that news of his death has upon his best friend.”

“Nothing can be crueller than to purport to be conveying such news.”

“And I apologise for doing so. The Devil took me. Say you forgive me.”

“Grudgingly,” I replied.

“Demonstrate it by giving me a glass of that sherry.”

“That really is a quite brilliant impersonation,” I said, handing him the drink. “Even by your standards. I’d never have known you weren’t Mycroft.”

“In truth, passing myself off as my own brother is not so difficult,” said Holmes. “After all, we grew up together. I know his every tic and mannerism intimately. Added to that, we are the same height and have many physiognomic characteristics in common. The size was the thing.” He clapped his bulbous stomach with both hands. “I am carrying dozens of pounds in padding, and I have used up half the theatrical putty in London fleshing out my face. Walking around with all this additional ballast – being so large and ungainly in general – is profoundly uncomfortable. Frankly, I don’t know how Mycroft can bear it.”

“He does not move much. That’s how he bears it. Am I to take it that the purpose of all this is to facilitate your interviewing the men on the list he gave you?”

“Spot on, Watson. The letter of authorisation Mycroft handed me gave me the idea. I thought, rather than wave that under people’s noses and have to come up with various pretexts for meeting them, why not simply be him? He had spoken to each of them already. All I needed to do was claim that he wished to follow up that conversation with a few supplemental enquiries. Nobody refuses when the mighty Mycroft Holmes asks for a chat. In his world, to do so is practically a capital offence.”

“Were you not concerned that, your brother already having drawn a blank with these men, you yourself, as he, might not get any further with them? Anything they had been reluctant to tell him the first time, they might be even more reluctant to second time around.”

“But I am not Mycroft. I have my own wiles, and I would say they are superior to his.”

“Fair enough. So, what have you discovered?”

“Plenty,” said Holmes, “and much of it worrisome.”

“Very well,” I said. “But before we continue, I’d be grateful if you would shed that disguise. It’s disconcerting to see Mycroft but hear Sherlock.”

“I would happily oblige,” replied he, “but unpicking all this putty and divesting myself of the padding is an arduous process. I would prefer to leave it until I get back to Baker Street, when I can do it at my leisure.”

“Very well. Go on then.”

“My first interviewee was Sir Martin Tideswell,” said Holmes. “I went to his office at the Admiralty. To be Mycroft Holmes in the halls of power is to be like a god. Doors open as if by magic. Flunkies kowtow. Even Sir Martin himself, lord of the oceans, was deferential. We fell to discussing his memo, and midway through the exchange I ambushed him. I asked, apropos of nothing, if he had ever seen a monster. There was a momentary hesitation before he replied roundly in the negative, but that hesitation spoke volumes. Sometimes a man pauses because he does not understand the question. Other times he pauses because he does not want to answer the question. This was indisputably the latter case.

“‘You mean at sea?’ he said. ‘During my days as a naval officer? No, sir. Not once. Not a mermaid, not a sea serpent, not a kraken. I do not believe in such creatures.’

“‘I am not talking about years ago,’ said I. ‘I am talking about recently, in the past month. Something horrifying, something your mind could scarcely encompass.’

“Sir Martin was thoroughly discombobulated now. His face grew red with indignation, even as his eyes darted hither and yon in panic. ‘This is an absurd line of enquiry,’ he said. ‘What on earth has got into you? I never thought you the sort to entertain such a ridiculous notion as the existence of monsters. Mycroft Holmes is famously a repository of logic and reason.’

“‘Whatever you encountered,’ I said, ‘it has scared you so much that you have begun acting against your own best interests and those of England.’

“‘Preposterous!’ he snapped.

“‘You would not be the first person whose grip on sanity has been loosened by a confrontation with the unnatural.’

“He rose to his feet, looking fit to burst. ‘That is quite enough,’ he thundered. ‘I don’t care that you are who you are, Mr Holmes. I don’t care that you have the ear of the prime minister and the Queen. I will not tolerate this rank idiocy one minute longer. Get out. Go!’

“I knew I had pushed him as far as I dared. Also, I had no wish to tarnish my brother’s reputation as a subtle operator. I made my excuses and left. Nonetheless, I was now inclined to believe that Mycroft’s suspicions were correct and that there was an element of the uncanny involved here.”

“Sir Martin protested too much,” I said.

“Quite. It seemed at least possible that he had been surprised by some weird and – to him – inexplicable entity, and either was afraid to talk about it or had been constrained not to by someone. What I next had to do was find out whether the same held true for the other five names on the list.”

“And did it?”

“Indeed so,” said Holmes. “Refill my sherry glass, would you? That’s a good fellow. My second interviewee was the very man who confessed to Mycroft that he must stay silent or ‘it will come again’. This was the munitions manufacturer Sir Stockton Spaulding, whose company has supplied our nation’s military with armaments and ammunition for over a quarter of a century. Up until last month Spaulding Ordnance Ltd was busy developing a successor to the thirteen-pounder gun, currently the gold standard for field artillery. Sir Stockton himself promised to deliver a weapon of far greater accuracy, lighter so that it requires fewer horses to pull it, and with an effective firing range of four thousand yards. Then, abruptly, he cancelled the project and ordered all of the blueprints and prototypes destroyed. He has since put his company up for sale. The only explanation he has given is that he no longer wishes to be responsible, however indirectly, for countless deaths on the battlefield.”

“One can’t blame him for that, perhaps. Remorse is a powerful motivator.”

“But after twenty-five years of faithful indenture to the Crown, and with so much government money invested in his operations, for him to turn around like that and toss it all on the dustheap? Churlish, to say the least.”

“Self-destructive, too. How did your meeting with him go?”

“Sir Stockton is renowned as a man of steely resolve,” said Holmes. “Business rivals fear him. He drives the hardest of bargains. It’s said you are as likely to get a concession out of him as you are to get a hungry lion not to eat you. Yet the fellow I encountered at his palatial residence in the leafy depths of the Surrey countryside was as timid as anything. Far from being the grizzled old brute of his reputation, he looked frail and broken. Odder still, it was broad daylight and he had every single shutter in the mansion closed. Inside, the place lay in perpetual gloom. I made some cursory remark about this, and he said, ‘Yes, you mentioned it last time you came, Mr Holmes. I will tell you now what I told you then: my eyes have developed an unusual sensitivity to sunlight.’

“‘Is that the real reason,’ I said, ‘or is it the case that your eyes do not wish to see something on the outside looking in?’

“‘Whatever can you mean?’ said he tremulously.

“‘What thing is it out there that you fear so much? What are you screening yourself against, Sir Stockton? Describe it.’

“‘I can hardly find the words to—’ he began, then stopped himself. ‘There was no thing, sir, as you put it. I repeat: my eyes have become sensitive to sunlight. That is all. I cannot abide it. It gives me a headache.’

“‘You are afraid of seeing it again, this creature,’ I persisted, ‘and you were told that you would, unless you did as ordered and abandoned your plans for the new artillery piece. In the event, you went further than that and decided to sell your company as well. Who orchestrated all this? Who is wielding such influence over you?’

“At that, Sir Stockton let out a cry and swooned. I revived him with some brandy, and as he came round I spoke to him soothingly and solicitously. I said he should make a clean breast of it. He would not find me a sceptical audience, and anything he revealed, I would treat with the utmost discretion.

“At last he said, ‘If one cannot trust Mycroft Holmes, whom can one trust?’ Whereupon, with the relief of a sinner in the confessional, he told all.

“The long and the short of it, Watson, is this. Late one evening last month, as Sir Stockton was smoking a cigar on the terrace before turning in for the night, a figure loomed out of the dark. It came loping across the lawn towards where he stood, and at first he thought it merely a man, perhaps one of his domestic staff, the gardener or the gamekeeper, fresh from some nocturnal errand. That was until he perceived that the figure had curving horns on its head, talons on its fingers, and a spiked tail. It had wings, too, leathery and membranous, like a bat’s. It was thin and long-limbed and seemed as much to dance on tiptoe as to walk. Its black, glossy hide glistened in the starlight.

“As it approached ever nearer, Sir Stockton was overcome with terror. ‘I could not move,’ he said. ‘I thought I must be dreaming, for this was an apparition that could only belong in a nightmare. It had no face, Mr Holmes. No eyes, no nose, no mouth, just a smooth, hideous blankness. It stepped up onto the terrace and halted a few feet away, and I would swear it then set to studying me. It canted its head from side to side, appraising me as a cat might a mouse or a dog a juicy steak.’ He wanted to run, but felt that even if he had been able to stir his numb legs into motion, he could not have escaped. He sensed that the beast in front of him, whatever else it was, was a consummate predator and would bring him down before he had gone three steps.

“‘What happened then?’ I asked him.

“‘After several interminable moments,’ came the reply, ‘the thing did a smart about-turn and left me there. Why, I could not fathom. I had been convinced I was going to die and my last few moments on earth would be spent screaming in agony as that hellish, faceless entity tore me to shreds. Instead, I was spared. Long after it had gone, vanishing into the darkness, I remained rooted to the spot. I was shaking all over, light-headed, utterly unmanned.’

“Eventually Sir Stockton’s valet came out of the house looking for him. It was past his customary bedtime and the fellow was wondering where his master had got to. He could see Sir Stockton was in a state of shock and helped him indoors. When the valet enquired what the matter was, Sir Stockton could not say. Words failed him. He did not sleep a wink that night. Then, the following morning, the woman came.”

“The woman?” I said.

“According to Sir Stockton, she turned up at the mansion gates, unannounced. She never gave a name. She told the butler that she had a message for Sir Stockton which she must deliver in person. It concerned the events of the previous night. Learning this, Sir Stockton felt he had no alternative but to agree to see her. He could only assume this woman had knowledge of the monstrosity that had menaced him on the terrace. Perhaps, he thought, she could explain what he had seen. Perhaps she could reassure him that it had just been some phantasm, a trick of the mind.”

“What did she look like?”

“She was in her twenties, petite, pretty, well presented. She had long, curling blonde hair and one of those pert, uptilted noses that, as Sir Stockton put it, ‘speak of intelligence and vivacity’. She reminded him, indeed, very much of his late wife, as she had been in the bloom of her youth.

“‘Sir Stockton,” the woman said, “I shall keep this brief. Last night you came face to face with a creature known as a nightgaunt. It is as deadly a beast as ever walked the planet. If you wish never to meet it again, here is what you must do.’ And she proceeded to list her terms.

“‘Which were that you must give up work on the new gun,’ I said to Sir Stockton, ‘and not tell a soul why.’

“‘It was as straightforward as that,’ replied he, with a nod. ‘I was still dazed and trembling from my encounter with that thing she called a nightgaunt. Exhausted, too, after my sleepless night. I could scarcely think straight.’

“The woman told Sir Stockton that he had three days to comply. If he had not commenced dismantling the project by then, he should prepare for a return visit from the nightgaunt.

“‘It will come to you,’ she said. ‘It will find you wherever you are. No door can be barred against it. No gun can harm it. Trust me on that. And this time it won’t be content merely to look at you. Imagine those talons rending your flesh. Imagine it lingering over your slaughter, savouring every second of it. That is all. Good day!’

“So saying, she departed. The whole exchange lasted no more than a couple of minutes, and Sir Stockton described her as being bright and cheery throughout, as though it was all just some pleasant social occasion. He was left to ponder her words, but really he could see no option other than to do as she demanded.

“‘You have no idea, Mr Holmes,’ he said, ‘how appalling the nightgaunt was. That featureless face. The supple rubberiness of its hide. The way it moved across the grass – so light-footed, so silent, so sinister. Even recalling it now, I feel my stomach churning and my pulse starting to race. Oh God! I can’t bear to leave the house any more. I don’t dare look out of the window, in case the nightgaunt should be there, peering in. I wonder constantly if it is lurking in the woods at the edge of the estate, or in one of the hedgerows, biding its time. I have done everything the woman asked, and more, and yet I remain in a state of, as it were, paralysis. Is this my life from now on? Am I never to be free of this abiding, sickening dread? Am I to be a prisoner always – a prisoner of fear?’

“With that, he put his head in his hands and wept. This hard-nosed captain of industry, this esteemed, knighted millionaire – sobbing in front of me like an admonished infant. I tell you, Watson, it was pitiful to behold.

“I felt that I had gathered all I usefully could from him, and so, with a few words of consolation, I left him in peace.”

“In pieces, rather,” I said.

Holmes chuckled dryly. “Alas, too true. At least I now had two salient facts. One: there had indeed been monstrous visitations. Two: there was human involvement.”

“What else do we know about nightgaunts?” I asked. “I must confess, the name alone gives me the shivers.”

“The arcane literature does not tell us much, but what it does tell is bad enough. Nightgaunts are baleful, feral abominations with no love for human beings. They seem to relish the terror they cause by their appearance alone, and will attack without provocation and kill without compunction. In short, Watson, we can count ourselves blessed if we go through life without ever falling foul of one.”

“Amen to that,” I said.

“I shan’t bore you with a full account of my meetings with the other names on the list,” Holmes said, resuming his thread. “They went much as the one with Sir Stockton Spaulding did. By applying the right mixture of probing, cajoling and sympathy, I was able to break down each man’s resistance and get him to tell his story. In every instance the details were similar to those of his peers’ stories, but not the same.”

“How so?”

“Where Sir Stockton was terrorised by a nightgaunt, the others encountered a range of different monsters. One man, it was that slobbering winged hybrid known as a byakhee. Another, it was a guttural, subterranean, cannibalistic humanoid known as a ghast. Yet another, a shoggoth – protoplasmic, many-eyeballed, covered in slime. A whole gruesome bestiary of abominations. I looked them up in my copy of Von Junzt’s Unaussprechlichen Tieren. The title might translate as Unnameable Beasts, but Von Junzt nonetheless succeeds in providing a name for almost every creature he alludes to.”

“For your interviewees it was a unique monster on each occasion,” I said. “I wonder why.”

“That is certainly one of the more singular aspects of the whole affair. That and the fact that somebody appears to have mastery over these various entities, who are not known for being tameable, let alone governable. But listen to this. Each man also received a subsequent visit from an anonymous woman.”

“Sir Stockton’s petite blonde.”

“No, that’s just it. In one instance, it was a rather buxom redhead. In another, a tall, slender brunette. In a third, a young lady of Latin heritage, with dark, flashing eyes, who spoke in heavily accented English.”

“Not just a regiment of monsters but a monstrous regiment of women too.”

“Ho, Watson! Pawky as ever. A different woman in each instance, but all of them delivered the same message: ‘Change your ways in the manner I stipulate, or else the next time the creature you encountered comes calling, it will be the last thing you ever see.’ The result was invariably capitulation on the victim’s part. What is interesting, however, is that every time the woman resembled a significant female from the man’s life. Remember what Sir Stockton said about the blonde?”

“She reminded him of his late wife.”

“The same held true for the rest of them, more or less. For one man, the woman took after his daughter, who had married a Canadian and moved to Toronto and whom he missed terribly. For another, she brought to mind his long-lost mother, who died when he was a boy. For yet another, she was not dissimilar to his first love, whom his parents had considered an unsuitable match and forbidden him from pursuing a relationship with. This cannot be accidental. And hence, by such a means, through a combination of fear and sentimental appeal, six great men have been brought to their knees. A law proposing stricter ratification of existing international treaties will now not be passed in the House of Commons. The police, due to be given broader powers when it comes to investigating sedition and treason, will now not get them. And so on and so on. It is a subtle, concerted campaign to undo much of what makes this country of ours – this empire of ours, for that matter – indomitable.”

“As Mycroft put it, pillars of the establishment have crumbled,” I said. “How many more would it take for the whole edifice to come crashing down? We must stop this before it goes any further.”

“Of course we must. These half-dozen men are, I am sure, only the beginning. There will be more. Those behind the scheme, having been successful thus far, will feel emboldened to carry on. But how do we find them and curtail their operations? That is the question.”

“You must have a plan.”

“I have the germ of one,” said Holmes. “There is one man among the six who is made of sterner stuff than the others. He is Professor Avery Mellingford.”

I recalled seeing his name on Mycroft’s list. “The chemist. A Fellow of the Royal Society.”

“For some time now, Professor Mellingford has been working on a form of poison gas that may be used on the battlefield against enemy troops. It is an innovation which, if implemented, could tip the balance of future wars in our favour. He was dissuaded from continuing his researches after a run-in with a formless spawn on a beach near his home in Rye.”

“A formless spawn?”

“Not one of Von Junzt’s more inspired nomenclatures. A formless spawn is, well, formless. A better adjective might be ‘protoplasmic’. In its basic manifestation it resembles a pool of tar, but it can assume any shape that suits its purpose. Most often it has insect traits, with tall, stilt-like legs, but it is apt to extrude tentacles too, of the kind you might see on a squid or octopus.”

“It sounds delightful.”

“Now, the professor being a man of science, he takes a level-headed approach to life,” said Holmes. “There is no denying that the formless spawn put the frighteners on him and the extortion has worked, in as much as he has got rid of his notes on his poison gas and locked up his laboratory. I think, however, that he may be amenable to changing his mind about that. During my conversation with him, he talked about ‘childish superstition’ and ‘the necessity for empiricism at all times’, and he seemed half-inclined to think he had been the object of an elaborate hoax, for which he chastised himself more than once. He is a bachelor, moreover, and a loner, with few attachments to other people, women least of all, giving him a certain independence of thought and freedom from conventionality.”

Holmes could almost have been describing himself. “If women do not feature greatly in Mellingford’s life,” I said, “then I’m curious to know what sort of woman was deployed to deliver the extortion threat to him.”

“A matriarchal figure,” Holmes replied. “Not tall, rather portly, in her sixties, imposing, dressed in black, probably a widow, with an aristocratic voice and a certain regality of bearing…”

“Akin to his grandmother, perhaps?”

“No, Watson. Try again.”

“An aunt?”

“You are being really quite dense. Must I spell it out?”

“Well, otherwise you would appear to be describing our very own queen.”

Holmes clapped his hands. “There we have it! Even someone who has little affinity for his fellow countrymen feels an intrinsic, patriotic loyalty towards our monarch. It is in the British blood. If Victoria, or someone very like her, makes demands of us, we are apt to obey.”

“And you think Mellingford might be persuaded to begin work again on his gas?” I said. “Even if it puts him at risk of another, potentially fatal brush with the formless spawn?”

“I do,” said Holmes, “not least when I tell him I can guarantee his safety.”

“Can you?”

“I believe I am capable of defending him against the depredations of a formless spawn. But only provided I have the dauntless John Watson by my side.”

I mustered a stoical sigh. “I had a feeling you might say something like that.”

* * *

The next week, I found myself travelling to Sussex. I caught a train to Eastbourne and changed there for the spur line towards Rye. The track for this last leg of the journey ran alongside the coast, with my compartment window affording views of sea and shingle beach practically the entire way. The weather had turned blustery. Shreds of silvery cloud streaked across the sky, while the English Channel was in a fractious mood, all heaving grey-green waves marbled with froth.

Past Hastings, with just a couple of stops remaining, I drew from my pocket the letter from Holmes which had coaxed me out of London. It went as follows:

Watson,

Matters are coming to a head and you are needed. Bring your wits, your courage and your service revolver.

Holmes

This terse missive had come with a newspaper clipping attached, a short article that had appeared in one of the broadsheets the previous day. It read:

NOTED SCIENTIST RESUMES IMPORTANT MILITARY RESEARCH

Professor Avery Mellingford announced yesterday that he is to begin work again on a weapon vital to our nation’s interests.

The nature of said weapon remains top secret but it is believed to possess the capability to alter the face of warfare radically. The professor recently suspended his researches, citing personal reasons. He has since rescinded that decision and is pleased to claim that his labours are proceeding apace.

Professor Mellingford is one of Britain’s foremost chemists, credited with numerous innovations regarding chlorine compounds and the atomisation of liquids. His speech last year at the Royal Society on the topic of the fixation of atmospheric nitrogen and its potential for use as an agricultural fertiliser drew considerable acclaim.

I had in fact spotted the article in the paper and had immediately discerned the hand of Sherlock Holmes in it. Doubtless he had organised its publication, most likely via Mycroft and the Dagon Club, one of whose members was a press baron. It was a deliberate provocation. Those responsible for the campaign of extortion, whoever they were, would surely see it and respond accordingly.

I disembarked at Rye, that cluster of houses which sits atop a hill overlooking Romney Marsh and the River Rother. During its heyday as a port town, Rye had been a thriving centre for trade and commerce, until the river silted up and became unnavigable to large ships. Thereafter, in the seventeenth century, it turned to fishing and pottery for its economy, although smuggling flourished as well. Now it had settled into genteel respectability as a market town, yet it still seemed very much on the periphery of things, an isolated outpost of civilisation with emptiness all around.

Holmes met me at the station and ushered me towards a four-wheeled trap waiting outside. We headed eastward out of town, across the river, and thence into the flat, desolate expanse of the marsh. Here, sheep grazed on rough fields amid drainage ditches and outcrops of scrubby, stunted trees. The lanes we drove along were muddy and deeply rutted, and the earth itself looked perpetually sodden, as though in a losing battle with the sea. The further we went from Rye, the more I felt as though the landscape was fraying around us, giving itself up piece by piece until eventually it would disintegrate altogether.

“You have remembered your pistol, of course,” Holmes said to me.

I patted my pocket where the sidearm lay. “And plenty of rounds, too. It did occur to me that I might need your specially adapted bullets, the ones daubed with the Seal of Unravelling. Have you prepared some?”

“No.”

“But we face a foe of supernatural origin. Standard ammunition might not suffice.”

“We shall see.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Our formless spawn, should it put in an appearance, may not be all that we are expecting,” said Holmes.

“There is more to it than meets the eye, then?”

“Or less.”

“Less?”

He smiled at me, damnably enigmatic. “Worry not, Watson. Sit back. Enjoy the scenery. We haven’t much further to go.”

At last we reached our destination, a largish house of Elizabethan vintage that seemed not so much to rise from the ground as teeter unsteadily on top of it. Diamonded windows were set into crumbling brickwork, much of which was overgrown with various kinds of creeper. A single-storey outbuilding squatted alongside.

Professor Mellingford greeted us at the door, and I quickly gathered that Holmes had been staying as his guest for the past few days. During that time the two men had achieved an easy-going familiarity, to the point where Mellingford, as he shook my hand, said, “Welcome, Doctor. Make yourself at home. If my friend Holmes vouches for you, that’s good enough for me.”

The professor was tall and slender, with a bald pate surrounded by a curtain of slightly too long hair. He wore a brocade waistcoat, a wing-collared shirt and a cravat secured with a ruby-topped pin, and struck me as rather raffish-looking for someone who pursued such a sober-minded vocation. He had an amiable air, though, and I took an immediate shine to him.

Soon enough we three were sitting down to lunch, where the conversation was cordial but serious. Mellingford spoke a little about his poison gas, disclosing that it was a colourless, odourless compound which raised blisters on the skin and, when inhaled, in the lungs. “My aim,” he said, “is to create something sufficiently noxious to disable the enemy but not kill. If their soldiers are hospitalised in great enough numbers, then our soldiers will have an easier time of it. There are other factors to bear in mind, such as wind speed and direction and the rate of dispersal during deployment, but strength of toxicity is the main one.”

“Wouldn’t blistered lungs pose a risk of pulmonary oedema?” I said.

“Potentially. That is why I have to be careful when calibrating the composition of the gas. I am keen for it to be non-lethal.”

“I was led to understand that you destroyed your notes on the gas. If so, how are you going to be able to recreate it?”

“The notes may be gone,” said Mellingford, “but everything is still up here.” He tapped his head. “I am not starting over from scratch, and it shouldn’t take me long to get back to where I was.”

“But who is to say that the military brass won’t take your compound, when it’s ready, and develop a more concentrated, deadly version?”

He spread out his hands. “That, Doctor, is beyond my control. All I can do is present them with a humane deterrent and hope for the best.”

Talk then turned to the incident that was Holmes’s and my reason for being at his house.

“It was hair-raising, and no mistake,” Mellingford said. “As I’ve told both Holmes here and his brother, it happened as I was walking home from Rye one evening, where I had just dined at the Mermaid Inn. Dusk was settling, and in the half-light I spied something out of the corner of my eye, a dark silhouette on the horizon. At first I thought it was a cow but, from the way it moved, I soon perceived it was not. It both crawled and slithered, if that is possible, and I became aware that it was getting closer, on a course to intercept me. I quickened my pace, and the thing accelerated too. I broke into a run, but it was faster and in no time it was upon me. It reared up, a mass of legs and tentacles, looming over me. It opened a vast maw, fringed with countless teeth. At that moment I feared I had lost all rationality. This was like nothing I had ever seen, nothing anyone had ever seen. No Linnaean taxonomy could account for it. No academic textbook bore its image. I am not ashamed to say that I fainted. When I came to, the thing was gone, without a trace. What it had gained by harassing me but leaving me unscathed, I had no idea. Not until the following day, when that woman called. Then it became all too apparent what was going on, and unfortunately, I gave in to duress. Thank God that the Holmes brothers have been able to convince me to see sense.”

“You do not fear the return of that creature?”

“I would, Doctor, if for one moment I thought it was real.”

“You think you imagined it?”

“Not at all,” said Mellingford. “It existed. It had physicality. It was, however, a confection. Someone went to great lengths to construct a monster costume using all manner of theatrical artifice – rubber, paint, wires, levers and so forth – which was then unleashed upon unsuspecting me. The fact that it manifested at twilight is surely no accident, for during that liminal period one’s eyesight is at its least sharp. Nor would I be surprised if, in order to enhance the effectiveness of the illusion, some form of hallucinatory substance was used on me as well. An opiate could have been slipped into my drink at the pub. It is easy to say all this with hindsight and be phlegmatic about the experience, but in the immediate aftermath I was profoundly unnerved. Little wonder that I acceded to the woman’s ultimatum. I am now resolved to continue as before and damn the consequences. These villains can try to intimidate me again, but I am wise to their game. Besides, I have Holmes – and now you as well, Doctor – to protect me. I feel perfectly safe.”

Later, privately, I asked Holmes if he thought Mellingford was correct and the formless spawn was just someone in a costume.

“That at least would explain why you don’t feel we need your ‘magic bullets’,” I said.

“Mellingford has accounted for the creature in a way that satisfies his sense of logical propriety,” Holmes said. “Whether or not it is the truth, I have done nothing to dissuade him. As long as he no longer fears the formless spawn, he will not hide or cower.”

“I see. You mean to put him out there, do you not? Dangle him as bait to draw the formless spawn into the open?”

“You make it sound as though I am using him to ensnare our adversary.”

“Aren’t you?”

Holmes gave a dry chuckle. “Guilty as charged. But I would not do it if I wasn’t confident that we can keep him safe from harm. At any rate, I have already outlined a plan of action to him and he has consented. This very evening, Mellingford is going into Rye for dinner and returning just as darkness falls.”

“Alone?”

“So it will seem to any observer,” said Holmes. “In fact, he will have a pair of guardian angels watching over him.”

* * *

In the early evening, as planned, Mellingford set off on foot to Rye. Holmes and I accompanied him until we were within sight of the town, whereupon he and we parted company. While Mellingford carried on, Holmes and I repaired to a spinney of hawthorn beside the lane. Holmes had selected this beforehand as a suitable place of concealment.

We lurked within the spinney for an hour or so while the daylight waned. A breeze soughed across the marsh, rattling a nearby clump of bullrushes. Sheep bleated to one another at intervals, an oddly mournful sound. The world quietened and darkened, even as lights came on one by one in the windows of Rye until the place bristled with illumination. A half-moon hung in the purpling sky, low and pallid.

Holmes was adamant that, if the formless spawn were to attack, it would do so in a lonely spot, away from potential eyewitnesses. Mellingford would therefore be safe while in Rye itself, and once he left the ambit of the town, he would have us with him as bodyguards, albeit at a remove.

Presently we heard footfalls, and here came Mellingford, striding forthrightly down the lane. Even though he knew where Holmes and I were, he gave no indication of it. He marched past, and once he had gone some hundred yards further, Holmes tugged my sleeve.

“Now we follow,” he whispered.

I drew my revolver, and together Holmes and I stole along the lane in Mellingford’s wake, crouching low. I was on the alert, my every nerve end tingling. I scanned ahead and to the left and right, searching the gloaming for any sign of the formless spawn. Every now and then my attention was caught by a patch of darkness moving, but it always proved to be something innocent: a shadow, a wind-shivered tree and, in one instance, a black ram.

Mellingford made it back to his house without incident. No formless spawn appeared. I cannot say I was unhappy about that.

We regrouped in his drawing room.

“Disappointing,” Holmes declared, “but it was just a first attempt. Our foe will show up, I am sure of it. He needs to make good on his threat, otherwise what is the point of threatening?”

And so we did the same thing the next evening. Mellingford sallied forth to Rye again, and Holmes and I took up our position in the hawthorn spinney and waited.

“I must say, Mellingford is being incredibly brave,” I murmured to Holmes, “voluntarily exposing himself to danger like this.”

“Like any good scientist,” my companion replied, “he is putting a theory to the test.”

“Not all tests involve personal peril.”

“He has assessed the odds. He firmly believes he is up against charlatanry. He is challenging our foe’s determination with his own pragmatism.”

“That does not diminish my admiration for him.”

“His admirability is all the more reason why we must make sure his life is preserved.”

Shortly after this exchange, Mellingford came back down the lane. As before, his demeanour exuded confidence. Holmes and I slipped again into our roles as shadowers, I with my gun drawn. We skulked along a fair way behind him, and he continued onward, seemingly blithe to our presence, not sparing us so much as a backward glance, for all that he was well aware we were there. He was playing his part impeccably.

All proceeded as it had the previous evening, save for the fact that near Mellingford’s house, Holmes and I were accosted by a farmer. The fellow emerged in front of us from a gateway, quite unexpectedly. We halted, shrinking towards the edge of the lane, but he spotted us and gave a start. Mellingford, meanwhile, was turning a corner ahead, so that he was temporarily lost from view.

“Why, bless me!” the farmer declared in a thick Sussex burr, his hand on his heart. “What are you two gents doing there, acting all furtive like? Affrighted me something terrible, you did.” He was a plump, jolly-looking sort, dressed in a well-worn tweed jacket and a collarless shirt with a kerchief tied loosely around his neck.

“Our apologies,” said Holmes, straightening up, while I hid my revolver behind my back. “My friend and I are playing a game with another friend. We are seeing whether we can reach his house before he does, without him catching sight of us. It’s silly, I know. A childish whim, cooked up over a pint of beer. But there is money riding on it.”

This sounded fairly plausible to my ears, and certainly seemed so to the farmer. “The things you toffs get up to,” said the rustic, with a cheery laugh. “You do so love your little japes. Well, far be it from me to stand in the way of a wager. I shall bid you good evening and good luck, sirs.”

We continued on our way, and he on his, and I prayed that this interruption, brief as it was, had not left Professor Mellingford unchaperoned for too long.

As it was, Mellingford was fine. Holmes and I hastily recovered the ground we had lost, bringing the chemist within our sights again, and saw him to be unmolested. The rest of the journey was uneventful, and once more we convened in Mellingford’s living room.

“This will work,” Holmes insisted. “We simply have to be patient.”

Mellingford spent the next day, as he had the last, ensconced in the outbuilding next to the house. It was a stables which had been converted into a laboratory. He busied himself therein, starting first thing in the morning and carrying on well into the afternoon, while Holmes and I passed the time in our own way. Remote though its location was, Mellingford’s house was snug and comfortably appointed, and his cook was skilled. He had an extensive library, which I availed myself of, and there were pleasant rural walks to be had in the vicinity. Under other circumstances, if we hadn’t been there on urgent, possibly life-or-death business, I would have called our sojourn pleasant. I missed Mary terribly, of course, and kept hoping the current situation would be resolved soon so that she and I might be reunited.

The third evening passed much as the previous one had, even down to another encounter with the farmer. This time, he surprised Holmes and me just as we had secreted ourselves in the hawthorn spinney.

“Goodness!” we heard him say from outside our hiding place. “Hello! Is it you two again? I saw you sneaking in there, and I thought to myself, ‘Can it be them same pair as I saw last night? Why, it surely can!’ and I felt I ought to investigate. What is it now, gents? Are you lying in wait? Planning on leaping out at your friend and giving him a scare?”

Holmes shouldered his way out of the hawthorn to stand before the farmer. I could just make out the both of them through the tangle of branches.

“Listen, my good man.” Holmes adopted the same amenable approach as before, although there was a tetchy edge to his voice. “I’m delighted that what amuses us amuses you too. I do rather wish, however, that you would leave us be. Our friend is liable to come along at any moment, and we’d be grateful if you didn’t give our position away.”

“Oh no, sir. I’d never dream of doing that. Wouldn’t want to ruin your fun.”

“Here,” said Holmes. “Here’s a half-crown. Now do us a favour and run along, would you?”

The coin disappeared smartly into the farmer’s pocket. Then, touching finger to forelock, the man strolled off. I heard him humming to himself as he went and I recognised the tune as the folk ballad “Early One Morning”. Still just within my earshot, he started to sing the words of the chorus:

Oh, don’t deceive me
Oh, never leave me
How could you use
A poor maiden so?

For a coarse son of the soil, he had a surprisingly melodic singing voice.

Holmes resumed his place at my side, muttering something about meddlesome locals, and together we waited for Mellingford to appear.

Sure enough he did, and we tailed him all the way to his house without incident.

“I am beginning to think,” I said to Holmes once we were all three indoors, “that the formless spawn is never going to put in an appearance. Could it be that our adversary failed to note the article in the paper?”

“I doubt it. We are dealing with people of great resourcefulness and thoroughness.”

“Then why have they not acted yet?”

“Be patient, Watson. The moment will surely come.”

We went to bed, only to be awoken at daybreak by a loud, bloodcurdling scream.

* * *

The scream came from outdoors, and I leapt from my bed and ran to the window, which afforded a clear view of the garden and also of Mellingford’s laboratory. I threw open the curtains and saw, to my horror, Mellingford kneeling on the stretch of lawn between the two buildings while a great black monster hulked over him.

The thing stood some seven feet tall, supported by a pair of long, backwards-bent legs. Its spindly arms were capped with pincers, and numerous tentacles whipped and writhed about its head and torso like snakes. Its mouth yawned so wide, it could have engulfed an entire football. Two bulbous eyes, positioned asymmetrically, glared down at the cringing chemist, each of them sulphur-yellow and slitted like a cat’s. Its skin glistened blackly and seemed to have the consistency of crude oil.

Mellingford was in a state of helpless, quailing terror, and who could blame him? Even in the dim dawn light it was obvious that the formless spawn could not be a manmade artefact. Everything about it, from the sinewy musculature of its legs to the supple fleshiness of its tentacles, was organic. The thing lived, and Mellingford could see that for himself now, beyond dispute. His scientific brain could no longer explain away its existence in terms of cunningly wrought theatrical costuming. His eyes bulged. His jaw gaped. He was moaning incoherently. Everything about him betokened a man whose mind was rapidly unravelling.

I knew I had only seconds to act. The formless spawn looked set to rip Mellingford to shreds. I scooped up my revolver and dashed downstairs, calling out for Holmes in the meantime, in case my friend had not already been alerted to the crisis by Mellingford’s scream.

He had, for as I reached the hallway he was there ahead of me, making for the front door. He paused just long enough to snatch a furled umbrella from a stand, and then he was outside, with me following hot on his heels.

We ran across the grass barefoot, in our pyjamas, and rounded the corner of the house just in time to see the formless spawn grasp Mellingford’s throat in one pincered claw. Holmes did not hesitate. He raced towards the creature and, reaching it, adopted a fencing stance. Then he lunged, jabbing the umbrella tip into the formless spawn’s torso.

The creature recoiled, letting Mellingford go. Holmes lunged again, delivering a second jab, and the formless spawn took another backward step. He repeated the action a third time, and a fourth, with similar results.

I would never have credited the idea that a mere umbrella could prove so effective against a large, horrifying abomination such as that formless spawn, but Holmes was demonstrating otherwise. An expert fencer, he was wielding the implement with aplomb, as though it were genuinely a rapier or foil. He was offering the creature no quarter, and his efforts to repel it were proving absurdly successful.

Yet I wondered how long he could maintain this intensity of exertion and how soon it would be before the formless spawn saw an opportunity and counterattacked.

“Holmes!” I cried, raising my revolver and cocking the hammer. “Stand aside!” I had no idea whether a plain Eley’s No. 2 round could wound a formless spawn, let alone slay one, but I was more than willing to give it a try.

“No,” cried he in return. “Don’t!”

“All I need is a clear shot.”

“I have this, Watson.”

Holmes beleaguered the formless spawn a few moments more, then paused. There was a brief lull, during which he and the monster regarded each other. The formless spawn seemed to be looking at him curiously, almost quizzically, as though it could not fathom what sort of being this was, this human who did not fear it and was so determinedly resisting it.

I held my revolver steady, braced to fire should the formless spawn so much as twitch in Holmes’s direction.

Then, to my surprise, the creature turned around and shambled away.

To my greater surprise, Holmes said to it, “Fontaine’s on the Strand. This Saturday. Eight o’clock.”

The formless spawn glanced back at him, before continuing its slouching retreat.

“Don’t be late,” Holmes added.

I kept my revolver trained on the monster until it was out of range, and even then I did not lower the weapon until it was gone from view altogether. Thereupon I decocked and pocketed the gun and went to Mellingford’s side.

The man was a wreck. He blubbered and sobbed like a babe, and was so limp and incapacitated that it needed both Holmes and myself to bring him to his feet. We all but carried him back into the house, where, having lain him down on the sofa with his head propped up, I attempted to ply him with brandy, to no avail. I tipped the liquor between his lips but he appeared to have forgotten how to swallow. I am not sure I have ever seen a man so completely and abjectly broken, and I feared it would be a while before he regained his wits, if he ever did.

“You hardly need me to tell you he is in a bad way,” I confided to Holmes, out of the prostrate Mellingford’s hearing. “I shall send for his usual doctor. With time and professional care he may recover, but brain-fever is likely, and possibly a complete nervous collapse.”

“I am at fault here,” Holmes said, pursing his lips ruefully. “I should have seen this coming. Our enemy must have studied Mellingford’s routine and known that he is wont to go to his laboratory at dawn every day. It was a moment of vulnerability and they exploited it. I have been outwitted, Watson, and I do not like that.”

“At least Mellingford is alive. You saw the creature off before it could do him any physical hurt – and with an umbrella, of all things! And then you had the bravado to invite it to dinner.” I grinned at the recollection of Holmes calling out the name of one of London’s top restaurants to the formless spawn, along with a date and hour. It had been a deliciously impudent verbal coup de grâce. “What gall! As if you hadn’t already shown it how little you were scared of it.”

“Gall?” said Holmes. “Oh no, Watson. The invitation was genuine.”

I frowned. “I don’t understand.”

“There’s no reason why you should. All I can say is that I need to book a table at Fontaine’s on Saturday night. I am hoping that I will have a charming guest for dinner and that it will be a pleasant and, if all goes well, revelatory occasion.”

I looked at him to see if he was joking.

He was not.

* * *

Fontaine’s was at that time the best French restaurant in town. Its head chef had studied under Escoffier, no less, at the Faisan d’Or in Cannes, while its pastry chef had been trained by Alphonse Gouffé, the Queen’s own pâtissier. Its wine cellar was said to be second to none, and its gourmand menu ran to eighteen courses and had famously defeated the gastronome and food writer Nathaniel Newnham-Davis, who in spite of his battle-hardened stomach could not cope with the sheer quantity of dishes on offer but nonetheless praised the meal as “an embarrassment of riches that leaves one wanting more even when one has had ample”. It was a place of swagged, tasselled curtains and rich red flock wallpaper, with plenty of brightly lit tables where a beau might entertain a lady he wished to impress – and be seen to be doing so – but also the odd dark niche where a married man might enjoy a discreet tryst with his mistress. It was a favourite haunt of wits, aesthetes and socialites, and indeed of Oscar Wilde, who was all three, as well as of grandees and nabobs of every stripe. Booking at least three months in advance was recommended.

Happily for Holmes, he knew the maître d’, Georges. Better yet, the fellow owed him a favour.

“You recall the affair, don’t you, Watson?” he said. “The case of near-fatal food poisoning at the restaurant where Georges previously worked? The substitution of spoiled beef for good? The malefactor who gave himself away by arranging the forks the wrong way round? No? It was one of those pettier problems that might make a nice little story for you to write someday. At any rate, Georges vowed he would never forget the help I gave him, and now, as if by a miracle, there has been a cancellation at Fontaine’s and a table for two is mine.”

“But who are you meeting there?” I asked. “More to the point, how does using a formless spawn as a messenger even work? As far as I could tell, the thing was mindless and speechless as well as formless.”

“The average formless spawn may be that, but ours was not.”

“You are speaking in riddles.”

“All will be revealed, my friend. It is possible, of course, that I am wrong, and then I face the mortification of turning up at Fontaine’s only to sit across from an empty chair all evening. But I do not think I am wrong. Let us meet up on Sunday morning, you and I, when I can regale you with everything that occurred.”

I duly returned to Baker Street that Sunday, to find Holmes in a strange mood. He seemed enervated, bemused and whimsical all at once, and a smile kept playing at his lips, which, in one so habitually straight-faced as he, was a perturbing mannerism. I could see he had much to relate, for he was puffed up with anticipation, like a ripe peapod. At the same time, it was apparent that he did not know where to start, and he spent many minutes making sure that I was sitting comfortably and that my coffee cup was filled and that the fire was stoked in order to alleviate the autumnal chill pervading the room.

“Well now,” he said, settling down in his chair at last, “what a night that was.”

“You dined well?”

“Oh, excellently! The reputation of Fontaine’s is richly deserved, and Georges could not have been a more punctilious host.”

“And your guest? I presume he made it.”

“She did.”

“She?”

“And what congenial company she was, too,” said Holmes. “Given that she and I had hitherto exchanged only a few words, we discovered we have a great deal in common and are highly sympathetic. Her physical attractions are manifold, for those with an eye for such things, but her mind… What a mind! And what talents she has, withal.”

“Who are you talking about?” I said.

“Who do you think?”

“If pushed, I would say Irene Adler. She is the only woman about whom you would ever speak so rapturously.”

Holmes nodded. “And she it was who joined me at Fontaine’s. She who dined with me, drank with me, conversed with me at length, provided me with much valuable information, and in the end, as is becoming her custom, outplayed me.”

“I am intrigued, to say the least,” I said. “Tell me all.”

* * *

I record the events at Fontaine’s here just as Sherlock Holmes reported them to me, with a few added authorial inferences and interpolations of my own.

He sat down at his table at eight p.m. precisely, but it wasn’t until a quarter past that his guest arrived.

“Mrs Norton,” said Holmes, rising.

“Mr Holmes,” replied she, settling into the chair which Georges the maître d’ had drawn back for her. She offered Holmes a gloved hand across the table, which he shook before lowering himself back into his own chair.

“Madame’s outer garments?” prompted Georges.

Irene Norton, née Adler, doffed her cloak, scarf and gloves and passed them to him. Then, after he had whisked them away, she and Holmes faced each other for a silent minute. Their table was in prime position, away from the main entrance and any draughts that might come in when the door was opened, and convenient for the kitchen but not so close that waiters would be constantly brushing past.

“I did ask you not to be late,” said Holmes.

“And if you knew anything about women,” came the rejoinder, “you would know that it is our prerogative to do as we please, which includes, if we so wish, being late.”

“Wine?”

“Don’t mind if I do.”

Holmes had ordered a bottle of white Bordeaux, an 1870 Sauternes, per the sommelier’s suggestion.

Even as he reached for the bottle, however, Georges was there, plucking it from its ice bucket and charging Irene’s glass, then topping up Holmes’s. The maître d’ was as attentive as this all evening. He had an almost preternatural knack for knowing what his customers needed before they did and would glide into action whenever required and melt into the background straight after.

“Now then, Mrs Norton—”

“Shall we order first?” said Irene, interrupting.

“I’ve taken the liberty of doing that already.”

“How very forward of you.”

“Georges made recommendations from the à la carte menu. I’m certain that every course will be top-notch.”

“Even so, that isn’t how we do things in the States.” Irene’s New Jersey accent thickened as she expressed her disapproval. “A woman is entitled to her say in all aspects of life, including choice of food.”

“But we are not in the States,” Holmes pointed out.

“And another thing. It’s not ‘Mrs Norton’.”

“Forgive me. I should have realised. You do not have a wedding ring on.”

“I am not divorced. I simply prefer to go by my maiden name, which is also my stage name.”

“Yet the absent wedding ring implies that all is not as it might be in the Norton household.”

“If I’m honest…”

“Do be.”

“I am not finding marriage to my liking.”

“Why not? By all reports Godfrey Norton is a good man.”

“That’s just it. He is. Kind-hearted. Handsome, what’s more. But also…”

“Uninteresting?”

“I thought it would suit me, being the wife of a lawyer,” said Irene. “A man who is respectable, decent, reliable, with prospects. I thought it would bring stability to my life, and it did, for a while. But it turns out that it is also rather dull. The dinner parties, the Bar functions, the endless shop talk about this trial or that legal precedent – not my thing at all. And that cramped, fusty flat at the Inns of Court we have to squeeze ourselves into…! So Godfrey and I are trying to negotiate a way in which we can continue to coexist as spouses while each enjoying a degree of freedom. Until we have worked out a suitable compromise, I stay at Claridge’s and my wedding ring stays in its box. But we are not here to discuss my marital status.”

“Indeed not,” said Holmes. “We are here to discuss your involvement in a scheme to cripple Britain by means of extortion, terror and intimidation.”

Irene arched a perfectly plucked eyebrow. “When you put it like that, Mr Holmes, it sounds so shabby.”

“How would you put it, Miss Adler?”

“A job,” said she.

“A performance too.”

“Performing is my job.”

At that moment, a waiter appeared with two small plates. Like Georges, and all the staff at Fontaine’s, he was French. “Madame, monsieur, an amuse-bouche. Compliments of the chef.”

Each plate held a disc of toast topped with foie gras and a sprig of parsley. These canapés were no bigger in diameter than a florin and vanished in a single, flavoursome bite.

“So you do not deny you are part of an anti-British conspiracy?” said Holmes.

“Is it ever worth denying anything to Mr Sherlock Holmes?” came the reply. “Mr Sherlock Holmes always seems to know everything anyway.”

“Not everything, Miss Adler.”

“Oh, do call me Irene.”

“In most instances,” Holmes continued, “I know enough to form a concrete theory, but still there remains scope for conjecture. For the sake of completeness, I like to have the blank spaces filled in. Hence, we are here.”

“Well, that may be why you are here. Perhaps I am here simply because a man has invited me to Fontaine’s, and who would turn down a free meal at Fontaine’s?”

“I put it to you, Miss Adler—”

“I told you. Irene.”

“I put it to you, Miss Adler, that as part of the aforementioned conspiracy you have applied your acting skills and passed yourself off as an array of women, each of whom has conveyed a message to a noteworthy Englishman, asking him to desist from a certain course, or else to act against his own best interests and those of the nation. You have then told him that the consequences of failing to do so would be quite literally monstrous.”

“That certainly sounds like something I could do. I am highly versatile on the stage. I have been Rosina in The Barber of Seville, Maddalena in Rigoletto, Cornelia in Giulio Cesare, among others. I have played a few ‘breeches roles’, too, such as Maffio Orsini in Donizetti’s Lucrezia Borgia.”

“Is it not the case that contraltos are usually saddled with the part of the female villain?”

“Better to be that, surely, than some winsome soprano who sings interminable arias about some man she loves and can’t have.”

“The remarkable thing about the women I have mentioned,” said Holmes, “is quite how unalike they were.”

“I said I was versatile.”

“Their heights, their complexions, their figures – all wildly varying. Yet I suppose a consummate operatic actress could adjust her appearance in such a way that she could look like almost anyone. Each woman, too, bore a passing resemblance to a woman who had some influence over the victim in question.”

“Generally speaking, I’m the sort who does her homework. I like to be thorough.”

“I do not doubt it,” said Holmes. “Researching your intended target beforehand, seeking out a photograph or portrait of a female he loves or reveres in order to model yourself on her… Such things are well within the capabilities of one as resourceful as you.”

“You honour me, sir, with this praise.”

“I think you’ll agree that everything I have just enumerated lies safely within the bounds of reason. What I find not so reasonable is how you could also alter yourself to become something inhuman.”

“Inhuman?” said Irene.

“I refer, Miss Adler, to a shoggoth. To a byakhee. To a ghast. To a nightgaunt.”

“You have stopped speaking English.”

“I refer, also, to a formless spawn.”

“Still not making much sense, Mr Holmes. How much of this delectable wine have you drunk?”

“There, there,” said Holmes in mild rebuke. “The coquettish naïf ? It ill behoves you. You know the words I am saying, or, even if you don’t know the names, you are at least cognisant of the distinctive physical appearances of the monsters I have enumerated. You have been not merely the agent through which the extortion demands were imparted, you have been the medium of extortion. Convincingly impersonating others of your own species is one thing. Convincingly impersonating loathsome unearthly creatures is quite another. How you accomplished it is a mystery to me, one I would be delighted for you to clear up. Your move, Miss Adler.”

* * *

Irene Adler paused for a moment. Around her and Holmes was the clink of cutlery on crockery and the thrum of idle conversation. Her eyes graced him with a look that carried both appraisal and approbation.

“My move, Mr Holmes?” said she. “Is this a dinner or a game of chess?”

“Perhaps it is a game of chess, in a manner of speaking,” said Holmes. “Two minds vying across a table.”

“Very well then. Let me offer a riposte to your challenge. If I were a conjuror, would you ask me how I pulled off a certain trick?”

“Not at all. I wouldn’t have to. Conjuring tricks are easily penetrable. I have yet to see one I cannot parse. Whereas the ability to turn into monsters is nowhere near as explicable.”

“Some would say it was impossible.”

“Impossible to do perfectly. Your formless spawn, for instance, which is the only one I have had first-hand experience of… Traditionally a formless spawn is protean, changing shape almost continually. If threatened or attacked, it will retreat into the aspect whereby it is least susceptible to injury, namely an oozing liquid. Yours, however, maintained the same shape the entire time it was at Professor Mellingford’s house, a blend of human, insect and cephalopod. This confirmed to me that it was a formless spawn in name only.”

“Sherlock Holmes the logician,” said Irene in an arch tone. “The paragon of rational thinking. The no-nonsense nonpareil of all that is practical and verifiable. Such is your reputation. And now you speak of monsters as if they were real?”

“Whether they are real or not,” Holmes said carefully, “you yourself have given them corporeality. I should like to know how you did it.”

“I should like to know why you think it was me.”

“Because you too are protean, Miss Adler. More so than any ordinary actress – any ordinary human being, for that matter. I first suspected it some weeks ago, on the occasion when you addressed Watson and myself outside Baker Street in the guise of a young man.”

Soup arrived, a veal consommé Breton garnished with julienned leek and celery. Holmes and Irene tucked in.

Between spoonfuls, Irene said, “This might be a good time for me to ask whether you intend to have me arrested. I mean, what is to prevent me standing up right now and walking out of here? You could grab ahold of me, sure, but then I would scream blue murder and accuse you of all manner of depravity. I am very capable of causing a scene, as you can well imagine, and I could do it in such a way that every red-blooded male in this room would set upon you in order to prove his masculinity and defend the honour of little old helpless me. By the time the dust had settled, you would be bruised and battered and I would be long gone.”

“A fascinating scenario,” said Holmes, “and a plausible one. In counterargument, I offer you this. Call it my version of the Sicilian Defence in chess. The Sherlockian Defence, if you will. There are a dozen people in the restaurant who are in my employ. I have salted the place with paid agents, among both diners and waiting staff, and all of them are poised to spring into action should anything untoward occur at this table. They are watching us closely, even if it appears they are not. For instance, that lady of a certain age over there, behind you, dining on her own.”

Irene cast a subtle glance over her shoulder. “I see her. The one with the hatchet face and the string of pearls. The wealthy-dowager type.”

“So she would have you think. In actual fact she is Molly Upshaw.”

“Should I know the name?”

“Why would you? Mrs Upshaw runs a refuge for waifs and strays on the Isle of Dogs. She is as tough as old boots but has a big heart. Children in the East End know they can go to her if they are in trouble and she will shield them from harm. She and I have collaborated in the past, and she is happy to help me out now in exchange for a modest donation to assist with her cause. Then there is that youthful pair billing and cooing over by the window.”

“Love’s young dream.”

“Pinkerton agents whose speciality is posing as infatuated lovers.”

“Ah, that rare thing, a female Pinkerton,” said Irene. “Following in the footsteps of the great Kate Warne, who uncovered the Baltimore Plot to assassinate Lincoln. If this one is half as gutsy as Mrs Warne, then she’s my kind of girl.”

“She and her partner are pursuing a corrupt Chicago union boss who has fled to England to escape charges. The trail has led them to London, but they have agreed to take time out from their investigation to work for me. There are yet others who are in my employ. The old married couple three tables away. The sandy-haired fellow with the outmoded four-in-hand necktie, and his companion in the loud check suit. That waiter with the curly hair.”

“The Adonis?”

“The one just passing, with the salver perched on his fingertips.”

“I didn’t notice any salver. Too busy admiring his looks.”

“Those are just some of my allies,” said Holmes. “You will be under close surveillance the whole time you are here. Remember that.”

“Well, you’ve certainly taken precautions,” said Irene. “I’m flattered. Am I truly that dangerous?”

“Let’s just say I am leaving nothing to chance.”

“But what if I, too, have taken precautions? What if, for argument’s sake, I were to reach into my handbag – this handbag here – and pull out a loaded Derringer? I could do it in a trice. One shot, straight to your heart, and then flee. I predict that, paid agents or not, in the confusion following the gunshot I would stand good odds of making a clean getaway.”

“An eventuality I have foreseen,” said Holmes. “The moment I detect a hint of trouble from you, I shall give a prearranged signal. Produce your Derringer by all means, but all it takes is a gesture from me, and you will suddenly find a host of guns pointing at you. You might kill me, but you yourself would live for only a split second longer. That is assuming you even have the gun.”

“A girl should go nowhere without a gun, not even to a posh restaurant. It’s the American way.” Irene shrugged her shoulders. “Well then. All things considered, it would seem we are already at stalemate.”

“I would go further than that and say I have you in mate. There are limited moves available to you.”

She favoured him with a quirky, lopsided smile. “If you insist. It certainly seems that this restaurant is a trap – a gilded one, but a trap nonetheless – and I have blundered into it and its jaws have closed on me and there is not a hope of escape. Bravo.” She clapped her hands softly and ironically. “I suppose, therefore, that I have no choice but to tell all.”

“We could spend the rest of the meal chatting inconsequentially, or failing that in awkward silence,” said Holmes, “but yes, you telling all would be my preference.”

Irene finished her consommé, then said, “It was two and a half years ago in Brattleboro, Vermont…”

* * *

It was two and a half years ago in Brattleboro, Vermont, and the Trenton Opera Company were nearing the end of a tour of New England. Based at the Taylor Opera House in New Jersey’s capital city, the company had spent most of the winter and early spring zigzagging through Connecticut, New Hampshire and Massachusetts, with occasional forays northward into Maine, playing a selection of scenes, duets and arias in theatres and music halls before small but appreciative audiences. It was not what you might call profitable but it usefully occupied an otherwise fallow period and helped keep the performers’ voices in trim, ready for the summer season.

Irene Adler was the star attraction. Her turn, towards the end of the show, was always hotly anticipated. When she sang, she held an auditorium spellbound from first note to last. Her rendition of “Ah! fors’è lui che l’anima” from La Traviata was invariably met with rapturous applause, and who better to express Violetta’s longing for freedom and the right to lead her own life than a woman who espoused those very ideals herself ?

Not every show put on by the Trenton Opera Company was a triumph. A night at the Essex County Playhouse in Arkham, Massachusetts was plagued by problems, from instruments in the orchestra spontaneously going out of tune and limelights refusing to work, to the curtain being rung down when it shouldn’t and not rising when it should. None of these technical hitches could be ascribed to human error. It was almost as though some malignant power resented the pleasure the company gave and was doing its best to ruin the occasion. Meanwhile in a musty, mildewed town hall at the port of Innsmouth, also in Massachusetts, the audience were oddly muted. Throughout the performance they sat there barely moving, their eyes reflecting the stage lights in a strange, blankly pale fashion. When they clapped, the sound was feeble and muffled. “Damp” was the word that sprang to mind.

By the time the company reached Brattleboro, in the foothills of the Green Mountains, the performers had been travelling for several weeks and were starting to tire of one another. All that time spent cooped up together in railcars and average-at-best hotels was generating the kind of familiarity that bred contempt. Irene was becoming sick of one of her co-stars in particular, a tenor who had only just joined the group. He had set his cap at her and would not take no for an answer. He thought he was rakishly irresistible. She thought he was a pest.

They had a rest day at Brattleboro, and Irene wanted very much to spend some time on her own. So she arranged a little excursion for herself, hiring a buckboard wagon and heading out of town to sightsee. The countryside around those parts was pretty, all secluded valleys and rolling forest, interspersed with covered bridges crossing placid rivers and quaint villages where the nineteenth century had barely begun to make inroads.

She drove northward at a steady lick. The sun was warm and the budding tree branches cast dappled shadows on the roadway. After a while she was pleasantly lost, and as it was nearing lunchtime she stopped at an inn a few miles outside Bellows Falls.

The place didn’t look up to much but she was hungry and doubted she would find anything better nearby. As she entered, she spied a playbill posted on a message board by the door. It was for the Trenton Opera Company tour, and among the acts featured upon it, there, prominently, was herself. Her name was accompanied by a fairly accurate likeness of her face, above the legend “The Beauteous Singing Sensation! The Canary of New Jersey!” It would have been churlish to argue with the first of the two epithets, but she was not much fond of the second. Canaries did nothing but sit in cages and aimlessly tweet.

There were a dozen or so locals dining at the inn, and Irene took a table as far from everyone else as she could. She hoped nobody would recognise her, but that hope was dashed when the innkeeper’s wife came to take her order.

“Why, it can’t be!” the woman declared, bunching her hands beneath her chin. “Oh my, but it is. You are Irene Adler, ma’am, are you not?”

What could Irene do but give a gracious nod of assent. She could not pretend she was someone else, not with her own image displayed right outside the inn.

“My dear Lord!” said the innkeeper’s wife. “We saw you sing but two nights ago, over in Londonderry. It was magical. Hank! Hank!” She was calling to her husband at the bar. “Hank, look who it is. Irene Adler. At our inn, no less.”

The innkeeper came over, beaming from ear to ear. “Miss Adler. An honour. We heard you sing just the other evening, over at –”

“Yes, dear, I’ve already told her that,” said his wife.

“I said to Betsy here afterwards, ‘Betsy,’ I said, ‘I’m not the opera-going type, but that Irene Adler, I think she might have made a convert out of me.’ Didn’t I say that, Betsy?”

“You sure did, Hank.”

“And you know what she said to me? She said, ‘Are you sure it was her singing and not those bewitching eyes of hers?’” The innkeeper guffawed. “She’s a pistol, my Betsy.”

Irene ventured a polite laugh.

“Anyways, what’ll you be having? It’s on the house. Anything you fancy.”

“I insist on paying.”

“The Canary of New Jersey pay? No, sirree. Not at my inn.”

The meal was mostly indifferent, although the gravy and biscuits were not bad. Finishing, Irene rose to go, only for the innkeeper to sidle over to her with a sheepish look, his wife just behind him.

“Would it be an imposition, Miss Adler, if I were to ask a favour?”

“You’d like an autograph?”

“Well now, that would be mighty kind, and no mistake. But actually I was wondering if you wouldn’t mind… Only if it’s not too much bother… But if you’d be agreeable to…”

His wife dug an elbow into his ribs. “Out with it, Hank.”

“Would you sing for us? Don’t have to be a lot. Just a couple of tunes. Thing is, we don’t get much in the way of culture out here in the sticks, and I’m quite sure these folks” – he motioned at the other diners – “won’t ever have heard a voice like yours. Of course, if I’ve overstepped the mark…”

Irene could hardly refuse his request. She had just had a free meal, after all. It wouldn’t hurt to, as it were, sing for her supper.

At her nod, the innkeeper preened with delight and, in a loud voice, demanded hush from the room. Then, with all the hyperbole and swagger of a circus ringmaster, he introduced her. “Trust me, folks, you are in for a treat. You won’t have heard the like in all your born days.”

Irene bowed to her audience and launched into “Voi che sapete” from The Marriage of Figaro. She thought the tune famous enough that even these boondock-dwellers would know it, but her performance drew blank looks and the applause at the end was polite rather than enthusiastic. Sensibly, she switched to traditional songs: “I Bought Me a Cat”, “Hush, Little Baby”, “Oh Shenandoah”. These went down a storm, with everyone joining in. By the time she was done, Irene had won over the entire room. She left the inn to the accompaniment of whoops and cheers.

Outside, as she was unhitching the wagon, she was approached by two men who had followed her out. They were both of them lean, raw-boned backwoods types. One had a long, square-cut beard that went down to his collarbone, while the other sported a wispy moustache and a battered Unionist forage cap. Each had a rifle slung over his shoulder, a Winchester repeater.

The backwoodsman with the cap removed it and, clutching the brim with both hands, said, “Pardon me, ma’am. Tain’t like me ter do this kinda thing, but I just wanted ter tell ya, that were some downright beautiful singin’.”

“Thank you for saying so,” Irene replied.

“I think I now know what the angels are gonna sound like when I get to them pearly gates.”

The other backwoodsman butted in. “Sinner like you, Natty, you ain’t ever gettin’ to no pearly gates, that’s fer damn sure. Hell no.”

The one called Natty rounded on his companion. “You mind your mouth, Zeke,” he snapped. “This here’s a proper lady. She don’t want to hear none of that ‘damn’ and ‘hell’ talk.” He turned back to Irene. “I apologise for my friend. He lacks couth.”

“It’s fine,” Irene said. “But I appreciate your good manners, sir, and your gratitude. Now, if you wouldn’t mind, I’ll be on my way.”

“Of course, ma’am. Of course. I just wanted to tell ya that it ain’t only your voice that impressed me so. It’s the way you were actin’ out the songs while you were singing ’em. That first one especially. I don’t know nothin’ about that fancy opera stuff, but even so I could tell you were becomin’ someone else as you sang. You got sorta all wide-eyed and youthful. Leastways, that’s the impression I had.”

“Well, Mr…”

“Natty. Just Natty’ll do. Ain’t no one calls me Nathaniel, not since my ma died.”

“Well, Natty, you may not know opera but you are perceptive all the same. As it happens, that aria is sung onstage by a boy. Or rather, the role – Cherubino – is customarily played by an actress dressed as a boy. He’s an amorous adolescent page who gets up to all sorts of high jinks.”

“Then that makes sense,” said Natty. “It’s a heck of a gift you’ve got, miss, an’ I’m mighty glad that you happened our way.”

“Me too,” said Zeke.

“You’re both most kind.” Irene made moves to climb back up onto the wagon.

“Sorta makes me feel bad ’bout doin’ this.”

Irene looked round in time to see Natty swinging his rifle at her, butt first. Light exploded across her vision, followed by darkness.

* * *

Some time later, Irene came to. She was bound hand and foot and draped belly-down over a horse’s saddle. She felt sick and dizzy. The horse was plodding along an uneven forest trail, and with every jolt of movement, a spike of pain went through her head and her nausea worsened. She could not suppress a moan.

She heard Zeke’s voice. “Think she’s waking up, Natty.”

“’Bout time,” Natty replied. “I was beginnin’ ter worry I mighta hit her too hard. Miss Adler? Miss Adler?”

Irene turned her head to see Natty’s face – upside down, since she herself was inverted – leaning close to hers. He and Zeke were walking alongside the horse.

“Gotta tell ya, I sure do regret treatin’ you like this,” he said. “Tain’t how a lady oughta be tret.”

“Untie me,” Irene said thickly. “Let me go, right now, and I swear there won’t be any repercussions.”

“Can’t do that,” Natty replied, with a rueful shake of the head. “We gotta get ya where we gotta get ya.”

“And where is that?”

“You’ll see.”

The bumping, swaying journey continued for half an hour more. Irene focused on breathing steadily, trying to clear her head. She wanted to have her wits about her when they reached their destination, wherever that was. The moment she was off this horse, she would show Natty and Zeke what a serious mistake they had made. Even trussed up, she was far from helpless.

Finally the horse was halted. Natty and Zeke heaved her off its back and lowered her to the ground. Irene paused to get her bearings. They were in deep woods. There was nothing to be seen but verdure and nothing to be heard but birdsong and the breeze rustling the branches.

“Gonna free up your feet now,” Natty said, “but your hands are gonna stay tied. We got us some walkin’ ter do, see.”

As he loosened the knots at her ankles, Irene raised both arms and whacked her elbows down hard onto the top of his forage cap. Natty yelped and tumbled backwards, clutching his head. Irene tugged the ropes from her feet, staggered upright and made a run for it.

A rifle shot rang out. Irene heard the bullet buzz past within inches of her head.

“If I were you, Miss Adler, I wouldn’t go a step further,” said Zeke.

Irene ran on. She heard the Winchester’s action being worked.

“I’m warnin’ ya. I’m a darned good shot. I can clip the whiskers off of a muskrat at fifty yards.”

A second bullet came her way. This one went through the puffed sleeve of her jacket, practically grazing the skin of her arm.

Zeke had not been lying about his marksmanship.

“Care to try for a third? Mebbe in the leg? We need you alive, but nobody said nothin’ about intact.”

Irene slowed to a halt. Grudgingly, sullenly, she turned round.

“That’s better,” said Zeke, squinting down the rifle’s sights. “Now, you just walk back this-a-way, nice an’ easy.”

Natty got up off the ground, rubbing the crown of his head. “You’re a tricky minx fer sure, Miss Adler. Guess I shoulda seen that comin’. Good thing I got such a thick skull.” He put his cap back on. “Zeke, keep that gun trained on her. I’m gonna put these ropes back on her feet, but this time I’m gonna hobble her.”

He did as promised. Now Irene’s ankles were attached to each other with enough slack in the rope for a stride length but no more. Her hands remained fastened in front of her.

“We’re gonna leave the trail,” Natty said, “and head off cross-country. I see you got some sorta pants on rather’n a skirt.”

“They’re called Turkish pantaloons,” Irene said tartly. “As recommended by the suffragist Elizabeth Smith Miller. They’re practical while at the same time preserving feminine modesty.”

“Handy for walkin’, that’s fer sure. Same goes for them boots of yours.” They were sturdy side-buttoning boots, calf-length, with low heels.

“I hadn’t anticipated I would be going on a trail hike today,” Irene said, “but now I’m glad I chose to dress as I did.”

They left the horse tethered and set off in a line, with Natty at the vanguard and Zeke taking up the rear, his rifle aimed at Irene’s back. The terrain was rugged and the journey was mostly uphill, through dense undergrowth. It would have been tough going even if Irene had had full, uninhibited use of her limbs. She stumbled more than once.

They waded across a shallow stream just above where it debouched into a gorge as a waterfall. They scrambled up a boulder-strewn slope. They skirted the occasional fallen tree Now and then Natty would glance round and enquire whether Irene wanted to rest. She shook her head adamantly and continued onward, matching him and Zeke step for step.

If only her hands weren’t fastened. Then she could have reached for the gun she kept tucked into the waistband of her pantaloons. She could feel it there, just above her tailbone and hidden by the flap of her jacket: her Remington Model 95 Derringer. The tiny nickel-plated, double-barrelled pistol was a pretty thing with an ivory-inlaid grip. It held only two bullets, but under the circumstances two would suffice. The .41 rimfire rounds were tiny but perfectly effective, not least at point blank range.

“Where are we?” Irene asked. “Where are you taking me?” She could only assume the backwoodsmen had abducted her for nefarious purposes. They were leading her to a remote location, somewhere where a person’s screams would never be heard, and there they would attempt something unspeakable. But an attempt was all it would be, let there be no doubt about that.

“Place called Round Hill,” said Natty.

“And what’s at Round Hill?”

“We gonna tell her, Natty?” said Zeke.

“Don’t see why not. It’s this stone, see. This big black stone.”

“You’ve dragged me miles out into the wilderness,” Irene said, “against my will, all in order to show me a stone?”

“Yeah, but tain’t just any stone,” said Zeke. “Nuh-uh. It’s a stone as came here from up there.” He pointed skyward. “Way up there.”

“From space? A meteorite?”

“Guess you could call it that. Came down this-a-way just last year. Me’n Natty was out huntin’. Came this sudden streak of light in the sky, blinding bright.”

“A thunderclap, too,” said Natty. “Fair split the earholes.”

“We saw that streak comin’ in at an angle, and it went down over the horizon, and I said to Natty, ‘Whatever that is, it’s gonna hit over by Round Hill,’ ’cause I know the lay of the land round these parts. Then another loud thunderclap reached us, the sound of that thing smashing into the earth, and we spied this kinda plume of smoke rising up. Only, tweren’t smoke, it was a bunch of dirt and such, all thrown up high into the air. I knew a bit about meteors and so forth, and I was all in favour of going over there to Round Hill and taking a look-see. Natty weren’t so sold on the idea, but I talked him round, on account of I’d heard that scientists and museums and suchlike pay top dollar for rocks from space.”

“That sure got me interested,” said Natty.

“Took us a day or so to find the meteorite,” Zeke said. “You can see for yourself how thick these woods are, but then we came across the mess it left behind as it came in to land. Trees with their tops torn off, some knocked over altogether, broken branches lying around – a whole trail of debris, like a small hurricane had been through. Then there was the meteorite itself. It had pounded into the earth and was lyin’ there half buried in the middle of this crater, and it was all steamin’ and such, an’ givin’ off heat. But what was strange about it was how it didn’t look like just any old rock. It weren’t rough or lumpy or nothin’. It had a shape, edges, like it had been sculpted. Stranger still, there were all these growths around it.”

“Growths?” said Irene.

“Sure. In the crater. As though seeds or somethin’ had scattered off the rock when it came down, and already they’d taken root and were sproutin’. Natty and me, we went for a closer look, only we were cautious about it.”

“Mighty cautious,” said Natty.

“We saw that those growths were plants,” said Zeke, “mushrooms an’ lichens an’ the kind. But none like either of us had ever seen before. They were plants you wouldn’t find the match of anywhere else. Not here in Windham County, not in Vermont, mebbe not anywhere in the whole wide world.”

“Plants from space,” said Natty, “same as the rock.”

“The meteorite itself, now that we were up close to it, had these markings. I couldn’t make head nor tail of them, but I could only think they were in some language I didn’t recognise. All in all, Natty and I realised we had something extraordinary on our hands. We made camp and spent awhiles discussin’ what we were gonna do. How to dig the meteorite up. How to get it back to civilisation. How to convince some scientist types it was a genuine space rock and we weren’t just some fraudsters tryin’ ter make a fast buck. And all the time, the mushroomy growths kept growing, getting bigger and spreading, so fast you could almost see it happenin’ in front of you. Wasn’t long after that that we learned somethin’ about what they could do.”

“Do?” said Irene.

“You’ll find out for yourself soon enough,” Zeke said. “Tain’t much farther. Just up over yonder ridge. Ten minutes an’ we’ll be there.”

* * *

Irene was confused but also, in spite of everything, intrigued. This was no mere fancy yarn Natty and Zeke were spinning – the meteorite, the markings on it, the strange growths around it. There was depth of detail to the story, more than she believed simple men like these could have dreamed up. It really was as though they had something they wanted to share with her, no matter that they had felt obliged to knock her unconscious and frogmarch her through lonely, trackless woods in order to get her to it.

Her head was still throbbing from the blow from Natty’s rifle stock. The pain was centred around the contusion she could feel tightening the skin on her brow just above one eye. Meanwhile the Derringer dug into her lower spine, tantalisingly close yet for the moment unreachable. She was thirsty. She was angry. Meteorite notwithstanding, there would be a reckoning, she vowed. Natty and Zeke would not get away with this.

They forged onward. Irene became aware that the sky was darkening – or was it that the tree branches overhead were more densely clustered here than elsewhere, filtering the sunlight more effectively? She detected an unusual smell in the air, too. Overlaying the agreeable odour of woodland vegetation was something sharp and pungent, a little like bleach and a little like yeast.

Not long after, they crested the ridge, and there, as promised, a few yards below where they stood, lay a big black stone.

The meteorite sat at the centre of a circular depression, embedded in the soil. It was roughly pyramidal in shape and about twelve feet tall, the exposed part of it. On its sides were markings, as Natty had described – columns of weird hieroglyphs carved into the surface. They resembled no script, ancient or modern, that Irene knew of.

The two backwoodsmen had not been lying about the plants, either. The ground surrounding the meteorite was a riot of strange, fantastic growths. Some were tall and fronded, others squat and lobate. Some were mushroom-like, with intricately frilled caps, while others were shiny bulbous excrescences sprouting upward from filaments which threaded this way and that across the earth in veiny profusion. Their colouring ran the gamut of purples, yellows and greys, all the shades of a bruise, with here and there a splash of bright scarlet or tawny gold. Irene had never beheld the like. In a way, the plants were more fascinating, and puzzling, than the stone from space.

“This is where we part ways,” said Natty. “You go on down, miss. Me an’ Zeke are staying put here.”

“Will you at least undo these ropes?” Irene said. “You’ve got your rifles, and we know Zeke’s a dead shot. What can I possibly do as long as you’re armed and I’m not?”

The two men conferred briefly.

“All right then,” said Natty. He produced a bowie knife and severed all the ropes.

Irene rubbed her chafed wrists. “Thank you. And I’m to walk to the meteorite, is that right?”

“If you would.”

“And then what?”

“Wait an’ see.”

Irene set off down into the depression. She picked a careful path through the assorted fungal flora, stopping when she reached the meteorite.

Closer to, the hieroglyphs looked even more bizarre and incomprehensible. Some of them might have been pictorial, but representing what? Nothing appreciably earthly, that was certain. Nothing animal or vegetable or human. Some of them seemed just chaotic scribbles, such as a child might make with crayon on paper. Some, by the same token, had the stark simplicity of Nordic runes. The carving throughout was neat and precise.

The meteorite itself was so black that it might have been pure anthracite, yet unlike anthracite it was not dusty or brittle-looking. Rather, it was smooth and hard, and its surface caught the light in a way that lent it an almost iridescent lustre.

In addition to the hieroglyphs there were indentations in the stone, set at regular intervals. Each was a couple of inches deep and four or five wide and had a fringe of jagged glass shards around the inside of its rim. Further fragments of glass lay around the base of the meteorite, and Irene assumed that the indentations had been sealed pockets whose glass covers had shattered when the rock hit the ground, releasing whatever lay within. It was not difficult to infer what their contents had been: the fungal spores that had seeded the ground around the meteorite.

Having examined the meteorite for a minute or so, Irene straightened up and turned to face Natty and Zeke. Her back was to the rock now, and with it her hidden Derringer. All she had to do was get a hand to the gun without either of the backwoodsmen noticing.

“Well?” she said.

“Hold on, Miss Adler,” said Natty. “Shouldn’t be long.”

“Until what happens?”

“They been lookin’ for somebody like you.” Natty said this as though it explained, indeed excused, everything. “Charged us with findin’ somebody like you.”

“Somebody adaptable,” said Zeke.

“Yeah, that’s it. Adaptable. And when we saw you singing, performing like you did – well, you just fit the bill.”

“They want you. They need you.”

“‘They’?” said Irene. Making it look like just some casual gesture, she slid both hands behind her back. “What are you talking about? Who are ‘they’?”

“The Outer Ones,” said Natty. “The Outside Things. They got lotsa names.”

“We’re just doin’ as they’ve told us,” said Zeke.

“You should feel honoured, Miss Adler,” Natty added. “What’s about ter happen, it’s a great privilege.”

“But you’ve brought me here to kill me,” Irene said. “Am I wrong? That’s why you’re keeping those Winchesters pointed at me. Do you think this is some sort of holy place? Am I to be a human sacrifice?”

“No, that ain’t it at all,” said Zeke. “These here guns is just ter make sure you stay right where you are.”

“Me an’ Zeke,” said Natty, “we been comin’ up to this spot regular-like, ever since we found the stone. It’s become our secret place. Our special place. Them plants down there, see, they ain’t any ordinary plants. They got this dust as comes off of ’em.”

“Sorta like a powder.”

“Yeah. An’ it puts these voices in your head when you breathe it in, and you can hold a conversation with beings from far, far away. Leastways, the dust from one kinda plant can. Another kind, well, it gives a fella dreams.”

“Great dreams. Magical dreams.”

“Better’n booze,” said Natty wistfully. “Better’n opium.”

Irene’s mind raced. So this backwoods pair had found the meteorite and its attendant fungi, and discovered that one or more of the plants had hallucination-inducing properties. They had kept coming back to partake of the intoxicant, as though nature had furnished them with their own private moonshine still. This, to them, had seemed much more rewarding than selling the stone to a museum.

“You mean for me to breathe in that ‘dream dust’ too, don’t you?” she said. “Whatever for?”

“Tain’t for us to know,” said Natty. “Like I told yer, we’re just followin’ orders.”

“Whose? These Outer Ones you spoke of ?”

Natty nodded.

“And what are they? Figments of your imagination? Because that’s what any sensible person would assume.”

With her left hand Irene covertly raised the flap of her jacket. Her right closed around the butt of the Derringer. The pistol’s maximum effective range was twenty-five feet, which put Natty and Zeke just within hitting distance. It was no match for their rifles, so Irene would have to draw fast, aim true, and make both bullets count.

“They ain’t no figments, Miss Adler,” said Natty. “You’ll see for yourself in but a moment. I think I speak for both Zeke an’ me when I say I hope there’s no hard feelin’s. Weren’t us as chose you, not azackly. Tain’t your fault you’re so… What’s that word again, Zeke?”

“Adaptable.”

Irene tensed, ready to whip out the pistol.

That was when she noticed that one of the fungi close by her feet had started to pulse. The plant was an almost perfect sphere, and its surface was glossy brown chased with streaks of gold. With each pulse, the fungus swelled a little bit larger and its skin – if that was the word for its outer integument – grew thinner, gradually becoming translucent. Within the fungus Irene could now see a cloud of fine particles frantically spinning and billowing, seemingly agitated by internal pressures. She knew that shooting Natty and Zeke was her priority. Somehow, though, she could not take her eyes off the pulsing, swelling fungus and the mesmerising miniature maelstrom contained within.

She heard Natty say, “Here we go. Looks just ’bout ready to blow.”

Then, all at once, the fungus exploded.

Powder erupted into Irene’s face. It went up her nose. It stung her eyes, temporarily blinding her. It was between her lips, in her mouth. She could taste it on her tongue, both mouldy and spicy.

Briefly, she thought of those puffball mushrooms which emit their spores by bursting. Mostly, however, she thought that she must not inhale. The backwoodsmen had talked about breathing in the dust from the fungi. That was what they wanted her to do. That was what was supposed to happen.

She rubbed at her eyes with her left hand. She spat the dust – was it spores? – from her mouth.

But it was there in her nostrils. It coated her tongue and the back of her mouth. She had a feeling she had already taken some of it into her lungs.

Her head began to swim. She brought the Derringer round and up. Dimly she heard a shout of alarm from either Natty or Zeke. “Dammit, she got a gun!” She fired at random, loosing off both rounds in what she hoped was the right direction.

The world seesawed beneath her feet. It was too late. The dust was in her lungs. It must be.

She collapsed back against the black stone. Then she felt herself jumping, without actually having jumped. It was as though she were leaping out of her own body. Her soul was being wrenched free.

She flew.

* * *

She flew through the gulfs of space, in the emptiness between worlds. It was cold and dark, the stars just tiny white pinpricks amid the endless black.

She flew across an immeasurably vast distance, at an immeasurably vast speed. Planets whirled dizzyingly by, and clusters of asteroids, and a comet. The sun grew smaller and fainter at her back. She seemed to be zigzagging left and right, through a series of branching turns. It was as though she was being shuttled violently along a network of paths, following a predetermined course.

She flew to the outer reaches of the solar system, far beyond the gaze of any astronomical telescope. Ahead of her loomed a tiny planet that hung lonely and remote in the abyssal void. Around it a handful of moons orbited. They were not perfect globes like the Earth’s satellite but, rather, were pitted grey blobs that put her in mind of decomposing potatoes.

Irene sensed that this world was her destination, and sure enough she soon had entered its atmosphere and was descending towards its rugged, gloomy surface. Still at some considerable altitude she passed above a city, and then another, each a dense cluster of teetering, angular buildings surrounded by barren land. Both were gone from her sight before she could gain more than a vague impression of them, but shortly a third city hove into view, this one larger than either of the others, a metropolis perhaps equal in size to Boston. Her hurtling, headlong flight took her straight towards it, until she was soaring above its streets.

She was now travelling so low and slowly that she could take in details. The buildings of the city were terraced towers that rose like crooked cyclopean needles, and their masonry was formed of a gleaming black mineral which was identical, she thought, to that of the meteorite on Round Hill near Bellows Falls in Vermont. She noted that the towers lacked windows of any kind, although they did have doors at their bases – tall trapezoidal portals whose lintels bore carvings akin to those on the black stone.

There were what appeared to be public gardens dotted around between these edifices, with various forms of fungus serving as lawn and hedge and shrub. There was a river too, winding sinuously through the city. Its waters were a black, pitch-like substance that oozed along like molasses between its rocky banks.

As Irene glided through this alien metropolis, she wondered at how empty it looked. With so many buildings, and all of them so tall, its streets ought to be teeming with inhabitants. Yet wherever her gaze alighted, she saw no living creature. Dust piled up in drifts on the roadways, and the gardens looked rank and bedraggled, their paths all but obliterated by fungal growth. The city appeared, if not deserted, then unfrequented, and forlorn, too, as though its best days were long past.

Her rate of progress slowed further, and then, with whipcrack suddenness, she descended to the ground.

She stood for a while, dazed and disorientated. Little by little she recovered her wits and took stock of her surroundings. Light came from clumps of luminous fungi that were suspended from poles in a web of gelatinous threads. By their dim blue effulgence she saw that she was in an open space – an arena, she first thought, or a concourse – encircled by obelisks that were etched with more of those unfathomable hieroglyphs.

More imposing than these monoliths, and more unfathomable still, was a statue, which rose before her a good hundred feet high. It was fashioned in the likeness of some entity which almost defied description. It had mouths aplenty, this figure, each yawning wide and full of fangs, and it had tentacles in even greater quantity. Its legs were similar to those of a goat, and from numerous slitted apertures in its body smaller creatures were depicted emerging. They looked like maggots or grubs squirming their way out of necrotic flesh, but Irene sensed that they were actually the larger entity’s brood. The thing was a mother, and the sculptor had portrayed her in the throes of giving birth. Clearly she could issue forth dozens of progeny at once, and perhaps it was a continuous act. Perhaps she was never not spawning.

What else could this misbegotten monstrosity be but a goddess in effigy? The arena, by inference, must be a place of worship, a temple dedicated to the hideous goddess and held sacred by whatever beings called this far-flung planet home.

At that point, just as Irene entertained this thought, a handful of the world’s indigenes appeared.

They filed out from a nearby doorway in a procession, borne aloft on transparent wings akin to a dragonfly’s. They had curved, pinkish bodies, each around five feet long, with segmented carapaces and spindly limbs that hung in paired rows from their abdomens. Their heads were ovoid and eyeless, and glowed with an eerie lambency like that of a will-o’-the-wisp. In all, they numbered a score.

The frontmost among them halted before her, while the rest fanned out to either side. Hovering on blurs of wing, the creatures observed her silently. Every so often one of them would turn to its neighbour, and the glow of its head would change colour. Patterns of light would ripple across that egg-shaped appendage in every shade of the spectrum, and sometimes in shades Irene could not name or recognise. She quickly ascertained that this must be how these beings communicated with one another. The patterns and colours constituted speech.

The one at the front settled to the ground, coming to rest on its multiple legs and tucking its wings behind its back. The others followed suit. The frontmost bent its head towards Irene, and she perceived a set of small, beaklike mouth parts below that glowing mass. With them the creature now uttered words, in a faint, rasping voice that sounded like a wasp trapped under a glass.

“We welcome you, Irene Adler,” it said. “We have transported you in spirit-form from Earth to our world, Yuggoth, and now, here in the temple of Shub-Niggurath, we greet you.”

“Shub-Niggurath!” said the others, in similar buzzing voices. They bowed towards the statue. “ Iä! Iä! Shub-Niggurath!”

Shub-Niggurath, Irene thought, must be the goddess memorialised as the statue. The creatures hailed her not only vocally but in ecstatic firework bursts of emerald light that spiralled across their heads.

The veneration petered out.

Irene, with some effort, found her own voice. “Who— What are you creatures?” she said to the one who had addressed her and whom she took to be their leader.

“The name we call ourselves is this.” The lights of its head swirled crimson and yellow. “Your race know us as the Outer Ones and as the Outside Things. You also know us as Mi-Go. I myself have this name.” Another complicated pattern of lights passed over its head. “In the spoken tongue, it is Glaw Za-Jooll. I am a high priest of Shub-Niggurath, blessed be her name.”

Again, the other Mi-Go saluted their goddess. “ Iä! Iä!”

“And why have you brought me here?” Irene asked High Priest Glaw Za-Jooll. “What do you want with me?”

“It is very simple. We wish you to work on our behalf, Irene Adler. You are to be our servant, and in return we shall bestow upon you abilities like no other of your kind has ever possessed.”

“What if I don’t want them? What if I am nobody’s servant?”

“That is your choice,” said Glaw Za-Jooll. “You were selected by certain associates of ours who deemed you a viable candidate, according to criteria we set. Whether you accept our gift and the terms that go with it is up to you.”

Irene was torn between bewilderment and irritation. “Criteria?”

“We know what you are. You are one who performs for the entertainment of others. You excel at it. You inhabit the parts you play. You transform yourself. You are—”

“Adaptable,” she said, echoing the adjective Natty and Zeke had used.

“Just so. We would take that adaptability and make of it a superior version. We would create an improved, exalted Irene Adler.”

“At the price of serving you,” said Irene.

“You would be beholden to us, yes.”

“And what would that entail?”

“Errands. Favours. Nothing that is onerous, and nothing that would offend your sense of propriety.”

“Sounds very vague. You’ll forgive me if I don’t leap at the opportunity.”

“Would it influence your decision,” said Glaw Za-Jooll, “if I told you that your spirit self cannot return to your body without our sanction? You are on Yuggoth for as long as we wish you to be. That means indefinitely, if we so choose.”

“You’re lying.”

Glaw Za-Jooll wriggled his crustacean-like body in a manner that to Irene very much suggested a shrug. “Why need I lie? This temple is the terminus of a conduit between your world and ours. It serves not only to guide you thence to here but to bind you in place. You come and go at our bidding. If we decide not to let you leave, you are here for the duration. Your body on Earth will remain an empty shell, slowly withering until it expires. Your spirit self, of course, will then expire too.”

“So this isn’t a negotiation,” Irene said. “I am a hostage.”

“What you are being offered is a chance to become exceptional. You will be remade. You will be greater than you can ever imagine.”

“I imagine I’m pretty great already.” Irene felt she could allow herself a touch of flippancy. The whole situation was so incredible, so fantastical, that she was half convinced she was dreaming.

“You need to make up your mind, Irene Adler,” Glaw Za-Jooll said. “Yuggoth orbits far from the sun, and time here passes more slowly than on your planet. A minute to us is an hour of Earth time. How much longer dare you leave your body untenanted? How much longer do you think it can last, starved of nutrition?”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Can you afford not to?” said Glaw Za-Jooll placidly.

The choice, then, appeared to be no choice at all. Accept the Mi-Go’s proposition and the conditions that came with it, or die.

Did it even matter? Suppose none of this was actually happening. Suppose it was all just some fevered delirium brought on by exposure to the fungus. Then whatever answer she gave was irrelevant. A bargain struck with a phantasm of the brain was not binding.

Irene looked at Glaw Za-Jooll. The Mi-Go’s head shimmered expectantly, like a glass bowl full of fireflies.

She said yes.

Glaw Za-Jooll signalled with one limb, and another Mi-Go approached her, carrying a fungus identical to the brown and gold one that had detonated in her face on Earth. The Mi-Go held it in front of her, and the fungus began to beat like a heart, swelling, swelling, until all at once it erupted. Dust billowed out around Irene in a cloud. And then…

* * *

“And then?” said Sherlock Holmes.

In front of him and Irene were dishes bearing the remains of their entrée – tournedos à la bordelaise with broccoli, leeks and new potatoes on the side, which they had been tucking into while Irene told her tale. The bottle of Sauternes had been finished and replaced by an 1858 Romanée-Conti.

“And then,” Irene said, “I came round. I was back beside the meteorite, in that wretched fungus patch. Natty and Zeke were there too, up at the lip of the depression. It had gotten dark, and they had built themselves a campfire and were roasting a small animal on a spit.

“I tried to move, only to find that I was wedged in place somehow. I looked down to see that I was almost entirely encased by a fungus. It was a mass of grey frills and folds, somewhat like a honeycomb and also somewhat like a human brain, much the way a morel looks. Evidently it had grown over me while I was lying there, wreathing itself around my body, although leaving my face exposed. I struggled to free myself. The fungus’s grip was none too tight, but I felt hopelessly weak and could not seem to get my muscles to work.

“Natty must have seen me stir, for he came over. ‘Hey there, Miss Adler,’ he said. ‘Let me help.’ He began prising the morel off me, tearing it away in chunks. Presently I was liberated from it, and Natty helped me up. I was chilly and light-headed, and famished, too. I could barely stand unaided.

“‘Now, you don’t you exert yourself none,’ he said, putting an arm around my waist to support me. ‘You’ve been out a long whiles.’

“‘How long?’ I asked, and his answer was it had been the best part of twelve hours. That surprised me, because I’d been on Yuggoth for barely minutes, or so it had felt. Glaw Za-Jooll had not been lying about the difference in the rate at which time passed on his world and ours.

“Natty guided me over to the campfire, where I warmed my extremities and got my circulation going again. Zeke offered me a sliver of meat on the tip of his knife. I have no idea what it was. When asked, all he would say was that it was ‘critter’ and it was good eating. I think it may have been gopher, or maybe woodchuck. Anyhow, I took it and ate it.”

“Not a patch on this beef, I should imagine,” said Holmes.

“Believe me, hungry as I was at that moment, it tasted nearly as good. I gobbled it down and asked for more. I was still feeling as weak as a kitten, but the meat restored some of my strength.

“I saw by the firelight that Zeke had a wound in his biceps. It had been dressed, but blood was seeping through the bandage. I enquired about it, and he said, rather resentfully, that it was my fault. Turned out that one of my shots had found its mark.

“‘I’ve had worse, mind,’ Zeke said. ‘Tain’t hardly nothin’, little peppercorn-size bullet like that there Derringer of yours fires. Stings a mite, is all. I’ll live.’

“I was secretly gratified that I had at least meted out some retribution. I thought that perhaps, if I was lucky, the wound would become infected and Zeke would die of gangrene.

“Natty asked what I’d seen while I’d been unconscious. I said, ‘Nothing,’ but he didn’t believe me.

“‘Guess you don’t have to share with me what happened, Miss Adler,’ he said. ‘That’ll be between you and the Outer Ones. Tain’t my business to pry. But that fungus that spread all over you while you was out cold – that’s gonna have done somethin’ to ya, you mark my words. Me an’ Zeke watched it all swell up and cover you, and we both of us thought there’s no way you were gonna be wrapped up in that stuff, snug as a caterpillar in a cocoon, and it not have some effect.’

“Truth be told, Mr Holmes, I had no idea what to make of the whole incident. I knew I hadn’t dreamt any of it – Yuggoth, the Mi-Go, High Priest Glaw Za-Jooll, the bargain we’d struck – even though it had all the hallmarks of a dream. I knew, too, that it had changed my life irrevocably, although how, I wasn’t sure yet. I doubt you can understand.”

“As a matter of fact, I can,” said Holmes. “A few years ago I underwent a not dissimilar experience. But let us keep the focus on you for now, Miss Adler. I presume those sophisticates Natty and Zeke guided you back to civilisation.”

“I had little alternative but to go with them. I could never have found my way out of those woods by myself. We set off at first light, and parted company at the inn. I cannot say I was sad to see the back of those two. Then again, they were nothing but courteous and respectful throughout the whole episode. If one is to be kidnapped and made to suffer a weird form of drugging, let it at least be done chivalrously.

“The Trenton Opera Company’s tour continued to its end. I told none of the troupe what had occurred, although they must have noticed a difference in me. I became withdrawn, aloof. I sang as well as ever, but offstage happy-go-lucky Irene was gone. In her place was distant, moody Irene.

“That didn’t deter my would-be suitor, the tenor. With only a week left of the tour, he became yet more persistent. I snapped at him constantly, but he appeared to take this as a token of affection.

“All the while I kept wondering when and how Glaw Za-Jooll’s gift was going to show itself and what services I would be expected to perform for him and his fellow Mi-Go. That was during the times I believed I really had travelled to another planet and conversed with representatives of an alien race. Other times I was able to persuade myself it had all been just a hallucination and nothing about me had fundamentally changed.

“The very last night of the tour was at the Music Hall in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. We put on a great show, and afterwards there was a lot of celebratory drinking. I didn’t feel like joining in, so I repaired to my dressing room. I was in there removing my makeup when someone knocked at the door. In came the tenor, without waiting to be invited. He was inebriated. You can well imagine what happened next.”

“He tried to force himself upon you,” said Holmes. “The poor fool. Most unwise.”

“He seized hold of me, and I was puffed up with fury, all set to retaliate. My trusty Derringer was in my bag, which hung on a wall hook, out of reach. The nearest object to hand that could be pressed into service as a weapon was a hairbrush. I groped for it with every intent of stabbing the tenor somewhere sensitive with its pointed handle. That was when, all of a sudden, a look of sheer horror came over him. He let go of me and stumbled backwards. He was staring at me, his eyes bugging out.

“‘My God,’ he gasped. ‘Oh my dear God.’ And he wrenched open the door and fled, as though the Devil himself was at his heels.

“I could not for the life of me think what I had done to terrify him so. I had not even picked up the hairbrush yet. He had shied away from me, utterly repulsed, as though that which had been so very desirable had abruptly become abhorrent.

“I caught sight of myself in the dressing-room mirror. Mr Holmes… I was abhorrent. My face was not my own any more. I scarcely even recognised my reflection. You know how a funhouse mirror at a carnival distorts your image? I was looking at a funhouse-mirror Irene. Except, there was nothing comical about it. My features truly were malformed. I touched them with my fingers to check. The contours of my face felt lumpen and unfamiliar, exactly as the mirror showed.

“I lapsed into panic. What had happened to me? Was I ill? Did this disfigurement mark the onset of some loathsome disease? Would it spread to the rest of my body? Was this what that morel had done to me, some delayed effect of my contact with it?

“I urged myself to relax, to try and think clearly. As I did so, I observed that my face in the mirror grew less horrendous, more like its old self. Feeling a twinge of hope, I calmed myself further. In response, my features became yet more normal. Soon enough I was looking at good old Irene Adler again, as God made her.”

“What became of the tenor?” said Holmes.

“Only a man would think it worthwhile asking that question,” said Irene.

“Humour me. For the sake of completeness.”

“If you must know, he resigned from the company that same night and we never saw him again. He didn’t say why he quit. He left without explanation. Since he had been drunk, he doubtless was able to dismiss what he’d seen as an effect of the alcohol. Yet it obviously had a profound impact. I like to think that, ever since, he has been more circumspect in his dealings with women.

“As for me,” Irene continued, “I now had an inkling with regard to the nature of Glaw Za-Jooll’s gift. The morel that had cocooned me must have bestowed the ability to reshape my physique. In the privacy of my apartment, back in Trenton, I began experimenting. What had happened in the dressing room had been spontaneous. The rage that had overtaken me had manifested as that distended face. Now I needed to train myself to do consciously what I had done without thinking.

“Learning how to initiate and regulate the process was exhausting but exciting. I spent day after day sitting in front of a mirror, figuring out just what I could make my body do. There seemed no limit to it. I could change my complexion, my hair colour, the colour of my eyes. I could increase or decrease my bulk, redistributing my mass in various ways. I could alter my figure. I could become a man. I could be old, young, and anything in between. It required effort and concentration, and it wasn’t always painless. Yet it was, as with any voyage of discovery, thrilling.

“Once I had mastered the technique, I knew that the life of an opera singer was no longer for me. I foresaw all the things I could do, the places I could go, the adventures I could have, now that I possessed the power to transform my appearance however I wished. I could pass myself off as somebody else and live as they did. I could make myself the duplicate of a millionaire, a captain of industry, even a president. I could walk into a jewellers pretending to be the manager and walk out with half the contents of the vault in my pockets. I could rob a bank in broad daylight, and the police would never find the person described by eyewitnesses. I could spy for the government or a foreign power, selling my skills to the highest bidder. The possibilities were endless.”

“And for the next two and a half years, you proceeded to explore them all,” said Holmes, “making quite a name for yourself in the process.”

Irene nodded. “I roved across the States, and latterly Europe, using my newfound talent to line my pockets and, I may say, having a high old time. It’s odd, Mr Holmes, that I am not detecting a hint of scepticism from you about any of this. Most people, when hearing about aliens and fungi and bizarre metamorphoses, would at least be raising an eyebrow, if not lapsing into outright mockery. Yet you, whose watchword is rationality, are taking it all in your stride.”

“My reputation is one thing. I am another.”

“So it would seem. Tell me, at what point did it occur to you that my own reputation – adventuress, mistress of disguise, troublemaker – was not all there was to me?”

“When you had the audacity to bid Watson and myself good morning outside Baker Street.”

“You knew that was me?”

“I had a strong suspicion. It was in your personality to crow about a victory. Before then, I had heard you were something of a chameleon but had not seen it for myself. You overplayed your hand that day, and you overplayed it again when you waylaid Watson and myself on Romney Marsh, this time in the guise of a farmer.”

Irene chuckled. “You knew that was me too?”

“Had you done it just the once, I might not have tumbled to it,” said Holmes. “Twice running, and I could only infer that here was Irene Adler, up to her tricks. His singing voice was surprisingly good.”

“Sometimes I just can’t help it,” Irene said with a self-deprecating sigh. “I am my own worst enemy.”

“The farmer was a means of reconnaissance.”

“Yes. Through him I was able to establish that you and Watson were shadowing Professor Mellingford on his route back from Rye and I could not therefore confront him the same way I had before. I needed to get him alone and unguarded if I was to terrify him as effectively as possible.”

A waiter whisked their empty entrée plates away, and Georges appeared a moment later with their pudding course, îles flottantes.

“Monsieur’s glass is empty,” he said. “Let me refresh it.”

“No,” said Irene. “Let me.”

Georges was about to object, but she shot him a look. “Naturellement. If madame insists.”

She picked up Holmes’s glass and tipped the last of the Romanée-Conti into it.

“Would madame care for a new bottle?” Georges asked. “Or some dessert wine, perhaps?”

“No thank you. A coffee would be nice, though.”

“Bien sûr. Monsieur?”

“Not I,” said Holmes.

Georges clicked his fingers to a junior waiter, then indicated Irene. “Un café pour madame.” The man scurried off.

Irene returned Holmes’s glass to him, while Georges glided away to attend to another table.

“I don’t dare drink that now,” Holmes said, indicating his wine.

“Why not?”

“You could easily have adulterated it.”

“You mean drugged it?”

“Or poisoned. I was looking for some sleight of hand while you poured the wine, a tablet or some powder being stealthily dropped in. I didn’t see it, but that isn’t to say it didn’t happen.”

“Oh pooh!” said Irene dismissively. “As if I would stoop to that.”

“To get out of the bind I have put you in, I doubt there is anything you would not stoop to.”

“I have been nothing but forthright all evening, Mr Holmes. I have dealt plainly with you. It has been pleasant, even, unburdening myself to you like this. I have enjoyed your company and this excellent meal. Why ruin all that with something as tawdry as drugging you?”

“Fair enough,” said Holmes. “Then shall we conclude matters?”

“What else do you need to know?”

“Who you are working for. Who is behind the campaign of extortion you have been so instrumental in.”

“You’re not going to get that out of me,” Irene said. “There are limits.”

“One might reasonably infer that you are acting as thrall to the Outside Things. High Priest Glaw Za-Jooll has called upon you to discharge one of those ‘favours’ he mentioned. After almost three years spent gallivanting about, doing more or less as you please with the Mi-Go gift, now the time has come to pay your due.”

“Again, my lips are sealed.”

“You will at least admit, surely, that you have expanded your repertoire of impersonations to include monsters.”

“Hardly worth denying.”

“Drawn from the pages of Von Junzt’s Unaussprechlichen Tieren.”

“A bestiary as fascinating as it is repellent.”

“And all this has been at Glaw Za-Jooll’s instigation.”

Irene just smiled prettily.

“Need I remind you of all my paid agents in this restaurant?” Holmes said. “You are not leaving here until you have told me every last thing.”

“To do that would be more than my life is worth.”

“Your life, Miss Adler, is currently in my hands. As I have said, with the merest gesture I can have guns pointed at you. I can have you arrested and imprisoned for sedition.”

“But why would you? When I am so very fetching?” She batted her eyelashes at Holmes.

“You have no idea what I would do in order to get at the truth.”

“I know this much: you would lie through your teeth.”

“I’m not sure I understand your meaning,” said Holmes.

“I’m sure you do,” Irene said. “These paid agents of yours whom you insist the premises are littered with, your so-called Sherlockian Defence… A blatant bluff, sir.”

“I promise you it is not.”

“Tell me, then, how you were able to book so many tables at one of London’s most exclusive restaurants at such short notice, and on a Saturday night, too. It’s a wonder you managed even to get this one.”

“I have my ways.”

“An evasion, not an answer,” said Irene. “But let’s suppose you did somehow pull off the trick and your agents are indeed all around us. I shall now proceed to prove why each cannot be working for you, debunking them in the order in which you presented them… First, your Mrs Molly Upshaw, the East End angel of mercy posing as a wealthy dowager. I have been studying her throughout the meal, even though she is sitting behind me. Those pepper and salt cellars” – she pointed to the silver cruet set on the table – “are as good as having eyes in the back of one’s head. The pearls Mrs Upshaw is wearing are the genuine article, not imitation, and therefore unaffordable to someone from the lower echelons.”

“She has borrowed them for the occasion.”

“And she ate her soup as only the well-bred do, tilting the bowl away from her and scooping the spoon outward rather than towards herself.”

“I coached her beforehand in dining etiquette.”

“And the Pinkerton pair? So mutually besotted are they that they have not glanced anywhere else so much as once. Surely a paid agent would have looked towards our table occasionally, keeping watch for your signal, but those two have had eyes only for each other all evening. Who are your next shammers? Ah yes, the old married couple. The husband is desperately near-sighted, Mr Holmes. I saw how he held the menu up to his face and squinted at it. He can barely see past his nose. I could leer at him right now like a gargoyle and he would not even notice. And you expect me to believe this half-blind mole is keeping watch on me, let alone trusted with a gun? As for the wife, she looks thoroughly miserable. They both do. I have seen marital indifference, and those two are perfect exemplars of it.”

“Can you not accept that they might be excellent actors?”

“Take it from a professional, that level of shared loathing and ennui is hard to fake. You can acquire it only through bitter experience. Then there is the sandy-haired fellow with the four-in-hand necktie. You really blundered there, Mr Holmes. Unfortunately for you, you see, I happen to know him. He is a duke with whom I have had dealings, to his detriment and my profit. I know, too, his companion in the check suit. He is his secretary and acted as go-between when His Grace needed to recover, for a fee, certain compromising materials that came into my possession.”

“Might it be that that is precisely why I employed the duo?” said Holmes. “They know you and have good reason to want you behind bars.”

“Unlikely, given that His Grace vowed he would shoot me if he ever saw me again. It’s a good thing, as far as I’m concerned, that when his and my paths last crossed I looked very different. And finally, that curly-haired waiter. Now, he has not been able to take his eyes off me since I sat down, and to be fair, I have not minded at all. If you are truly acquainted with him, then I would very much like you to introduce us sometime. If, by the same token, you procured his services as a covert agent, expecting subtlety, you should ask for your money back. In short, Mr Holmes, pretending these strangers were in your employ was a neat piece of extemporisation but it has not held up to scrutiny.”

“Believe what you wish, Miss Adler. We remain in stalemate.”

“Do we?” said Irene.

“I have omitted to mention the two plainclothes policemen stationed outside the restaurant.”

“You must be referring to the pair of tramps I saw as I arrived, squatting on the pavement across the road, begging.”

The vexation Holmes felt must have shown on his face.

“Oh yes,” Irene said with a merry laugh. “Their clothes may be rags and their faces dirtied, but otherwise those two make less than convincing vagrants. I dropped a shilling in their cup as I passed by. I have yet to meet tramps with such neat haircuts as theirs, or with fingernails so well trimmed.”

“Even so,” said Holmes, “they are under orders to detain you, should you happen to leave the premises unescorted.”

“How will they know it’s me, when I am capable of shifting into any shape I choose, as you are well aware?”

“Can you change the outfit you are wearing?”

“Not easily, I admit, but it isn’t impossible. A tuck here, a little bit of rearranging there. I’m certain I can find some way of dodging them.”

The waiter brought Irene her coffee. She thanked him, then levelled her gaze at Sherlock Holmes.

“The fact is, Mr Holmes, you are in mate, not I.”

“How so?”

“You are not the only one who can claim to have a paid agent on the premises. And mine, unlike yours, is the genuine article. He is, as it happens, one of the waiters who has been serving us this evening. Not Georges, but one of his flunkeys. The old fellow with the receding chin and stupendously Gallic nose. Clovis is his name, and he used to have sizeable gambling debts. Now he does not. And in return for my generosity? Well, I can only assume you failed to detect a slight bitter tang to your îles flottantes. The sweetness will have covered it up.”

Holmes looked down at his pudding. All that remained in the bowl was a scraping of custard and a few flecks of meringue. “Ah. I see. You lied about not drugging me.”

“Don’t worry,” Irene said. “It’s nothing fatal, just a powerful sleeping draught. Already it has begun to take effect. You may not have noticed but your speech is becoming slurred.”

“It has done no such thing.” Even as Holmes uttered the denial, he could hear how thick and clumsy the words sounded. His tongue was going numb. His lips felt like rubber.

Irene sipped her coffee. “You thought you were a move ahead, Sherlock. But I have been a move ahead of you.”

Holmes registered that she had used his given name, and the familiarity this implied somehow did not strike him as inappropriate. He tried to raise an arm to seize hold of her. It would not budge.

“You…” he mumbled. “You have told me so much. Why not everything?”

“I have told you as much as I am willing to share.” Irene’s voice seemed to be coming from a long way away, deep in an echoing cave. “Rest assured that you have ruined my employers’ extortion scheme and they see little point in pursuing it further. Be content with that. But a word of advice. There is a wider plan in play. Plough your own furrow. Leave the rest of the field well alone.”

She finished her coffee and rose from her seat. The room was now pitching and yawing around Holmes. He was a cockleshell boat in rough seas, tossed helplessly this way and that. Only by a supreme effort of will did he manage to remain upright in his chair. Apprehending Irene, even calling for assistance, was beyond him.

“All said and done,” she said, “I have enjoyed myself tonight. There are few men I consider my equal, fewer still with whom I would be willing to engage in a battle of wits across a dinner table. It has been an invigorating duel. To bring the chess metaphor to a close: queen takes king. It was inevitable. Adieu, Sherlock Holmes.”

The last thing my friend saw before passing out was Irene Adler blowing him a kiss.

* * *

“Good grief !” I said as Holmes concluded his narrative. “And she just left you there unconscious?”

“Slumped across the table,” my friend replied. “I was lucky not to have ended up face down in what remained of my îles flottantes. Before exiting the restaurant, she did have the courtesy to slip Georges a pound note and ask him to take care of me. Something I’d eaten had disagreed with me, she told him. Georges could not have been more solicitous. I came round to find him bending over me, patting my cheek, brow furrowed in concern. All the other diners were staring and muttering. It was about a quarter of an hour before I fully regained my faculties. By then, of course, Miss Adler was long gone.”

“Your two policemen failed to intercept her on her way out, I take it.”

“She left by a tradesman’s entrance at the rear,” said Holmes. “While everyone’s attention was on me and my plight, her tame waiter – Clovis – smuggled her out through the kitchen, or so I gather. It was, I must admit, masterfully planned. If there is one consolation, it is that I did not have to pay for the meal. Georges would not hear of it. ‘It is our fault if the food caused you upset, monsieur. We must compensate you somehow. The good name of Fontaine’s must be upheld.’”

“And you didn’t tell him you had been drugged? Oh, Holmes! For shame!”

“I didn’t have the heart to. And my wallet was grateful for his offer. I am not made of money, Watson, and Fontaine’s is far from cheap.”

“You warned me that Miss Adler had outplayed you,” I said. “I didn’t realise quite how comprehensively.”

“If one must lose, best lose to a worthy opponent.”

“What now?” I said. “It seems there will be no more extortions. The Dagon Club will be pleased about that. But what about Irene Adler? She remains at large. Will you be pursuing her in the hope of bringing her to justice?”

“I’m not sure, Watson,” Holmes said. “She is, if nothing else, elusive. Were she to go to ground, I don’t think even I, with all my powers, would be able to unearth her.”

“You know, it’s funny. I have seen a photograph of the woman, but in the flesh I have encountered her only when masquerading as a man and a formless spawn. I wonder if I shall ever get to see with my own eyes what she actually looks like. I suspect not.”

“And that would be your loss, Watson. Your great loss.”

A thought occurred to me. “I wonder…”

“What do you wonder?” said Holmes. “Out with it.”

“Well,” I said, “it’s the fungus connection. Miss Adler was granted her chameleonic abilities by a fungus.”

“So?”

“Remember Dr Felder from earlier this year?”

“How could I forget him.”

“He used fungus spores as a cancer treatment, and according to his notes he obtained them from an ‘Amerikanische Frau’. And is not Irene Adler an American woman?”

Holmes regarded me with a knowing look. “Well done, my friend.”

“Ah. Of course, you had worked it out already.”

“I have certainly entertained the idea that Felder’s Amerikanische Frau might be Miss Adler. Given the role fungus played in her transformation from opera singer to mistress of metamorphosis, it is not difficult to draw a line from one to the other. Yet the supporting evidence is scant, and the reasoning scantier. If she gave Felder those spores, why? What does a potential cure for cancer have to do with a plot to weaken the foundations of the empire? The two things would seem to run counter to each other.”

“Unless she already knew, as Felder did not, that those spores cause more harm than good. There are many ways to sabotage a nation. Killing ordinary citizens is one.”

“Killing them and then bringing them back to life, or at least a semblance thereof ? No. Nor could Felder’s cancer treatment ever have been utilised in such quantities as to affect the population significantly.”

“It might lower national morale to have the undead running riot,” I pointed out.

“That I cannot gainsay,” said Holmes. “So far, however, no other doctor has made an attempt to replicate Felder’s work, at least to our knowledge. That suggests to me that the whole enterprise is a dead end. Something was tried and found not to succeed.”

“So much for that theory,” I said.

“On the contrary. I don’t believe that the fungus connection, as you put it, is coincidental. I perceive fragments of some kind of grand conspiracy here. What I am unable to do, as yet, is piece those fragments together into anything meaningful. Miss Adler spoke of ‘employers’ with plans. Who are they? The Mi-Go? Or beings of a more terrestrial persuasion? And what of the ‘wider plan’ she alluded to? Hum.”

Holmes sank back into his chair and his eyes took on that defocused, faraway look that told me he was lost in thought. He might remain in this state for hours, perhaps availing himself of pipe or cigarette but otherwise not moving or communicating in any way. Were I to speak to him, at best I would receive a grunt in reply, and else a terse rebuke. I took my hat and coat and my leave.

Homeward bound, I wondered how soon it would be before my friend alighted upon the solution to the problem. Surely not long.

Nor would it be long, I thought, before Irene Adler – this woman whose continual besting of Holmes only seemed to increase his esteem for her – re-entered his life.

On both counts, I could not have been more wrong.