Sherlock Holmes: Cthulhu Mythos Adventures (Sherlock Holmes Adventures Book 2) by Ralph E. Vaughan Page A

often than Sherrington did himself.
    “Your concerns…” Holmes urged, removing the clay pipe and gesturing roundly with the stem “They are…”
    “Very well,” Sherrington sighed. “But try not to be too harsh when I tell you what I heard at the Cairo Club. I was talking to Bunny Benton, well, Lord Prathering, I suppose you’d call him, when he mentioned a chap he knows named Knight…Brigadier James Wellington Knight…do you know him, Holmes?”
    Holmes’ eyes narrowed. “Something of an adventurer.”
    “Rather!” Sherrington exclaimed. “Something of a braggart, too, from what I’ve heard. Anyway, Bunny told me that this Knight chap said there were strange doings in the East End, Whitechapel to be exact, not far from the St Katherine’s Docks.”
    “What,” Holmes asked, “precisely?”
    Sherrington shrugged his thin shoulders. “There, it gets a little dicey, I fear, for what Bunny heard that Knight said was that he and his friend Archie Wallace, the Fleet Street scribbler, heard music from underground, well, maybe not music, actually, but something like it, if you know what I mean. Bunny thought it was all some kind of joke, but it’s a damned peculiar one, don’t you think?”
    “Yes, very peculiar,” Holmes murmured softly as he perused all the police files he had committed to his eidetic memory. There was no mention of any case involving either Knight or Wallace, but there were several cases near the docks in which strange sounds were heard, ranging from whines to groans, and while none of the witnesses the police interviewed mentioned “music,” Holmes knew from his own experiences that the classifications of any set of sounds as music was more an indication of mental refinement rather than any property inherent in the sounds themselves.
    “…and, so, then I thought: what the deuce, Holmes is always on the prowl for…”
    “Let us pay a visit to Brigadier General Knight,” Holmes said, interrupting the ramble to which he had abandoned Sherrington. He slipped off his dressing gown, donned his overcoat and hat, and grabbed his walking stick. “Are you up for an outing, a little bit of adventure, perhaps, Sherrington?”
    “Rather!” the young man agreed enthusiastically.  He reached into his coat pocket and withdrew an ivory-handled Webley British Bulldog. “I didn’t think I would need a revolver to eat a mutton dinner, but, as usual, Giles was right, damn the fellow!”
    “Ready then?” Holmes asked.
    “Right-o!” He eagerly returned the revolver to his pocket. “The game is afoot!”
    Sherlock Holmes frowned.
     
    II
     
    Brigadier General (ret) James Wellington Knight resided in the Westminster Mansions, not far from Portman Square, an easy walk from Baker Street. The door was answered by Ah Ling, the Brigadier’s young companion, who seemed neither surprised nor discomfited by the late hour of their visit. The slender girl garbed in a long robe of blue and gold immediately conducted the duo through the double-flat. She slid open an ornately carved door and motioned for them to enter.
    “Well, as I live and breathe—Sherlock Holmes!”
    The Brigadier was very old, but there was no sign of weakness in his frame. He sprang from behind his desk with an agility that would have shamed a young officer of cavalry. His hair had gone completely white with the passing decades, but his blue eyes glinted with galvanic mischievousness, and though his face was seamed with fine wrinkles, they were of the kind formed by squinting under foreign suns, not from worry or age. He was a large man, just over six feet tall and thick bodied, but his frame was trim, the result of an active life and a determination not to let himself go to seed.
    “And young Sherrington!” he continued, shaking the clubman’s hand in turn. “Still dabbling in the occult?”
    “Ah, been studying the Mahabharata, have you?” Sherrington said to keep from wincing as his hand was swallowed and squeezed by the