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

Brigadier’s grip. “And in the original Sanskrit.”
    Brigadier Knight glanced at the books and scrolls littering his enormous teak desk. Sherrington wanted to rub the feeling back into his hand, but did not want to do so in front in front of the two men, who did not at all seem troubled by each other’s grip. Instead, he looked about the bookshelf-lined room, at the many displays upon stands and in glass cases, a room more like a museum’s chamber than a retired officer’s study.
    “Yes, I’ve developed quite an interest in the old thing with its accounts of flying machines and city destroying explosives, not to mention its concept of the just war,” Brigadier Knight said. “But the original Sanskrit? I think not, as a much earlier version written in Proto-Iranian which is even more amazing in that it…” He paused. “But I do not suppose you gentlemen have come at this later hour to discuss ancient epics. How may I help you?”
    “I am investigating a series of unusual events in the East End,” Sherlock Holmes replied. “I believe you may be able to help me.”
    The Brigadier frowned and shook his head. “Bunny Benton, I’ll wager! I manage to prevail upon Archie to keep all this under his hat, but I did not count on Bunny’s big ears. Well-named chap, that one! Perhaps we should adjourn to a setting more conducive to conversation.”
    In the sitting room, Ah Ling served sherry, then left the men to their deliberations.
    “Music?” the Brigadier mused after Sherrington related what he had heard from their mutual acquaintance. “No, I would not call it music exactly, nor did Archie Wallace, who was with me when I heard it, but it was indeed coming from underground, beneath the alleys and byways north of the docks at the edge of Whitechapel.”
    “How, exactly, would you describe the sounds heard by you and Wallace?” Holmes asked.
    “Not music, as I said,” the Brigadier replied, sipping slowly and contemplatively at his sherry. “Definitely musical, though, but in a very organic way, much as the cry of a bird is musical, or the rhythmical howl of a wolf.” He leaned forward in his chair and regarded his two visitors with intense eyes that flashed like fire and ice. “Archie just called it weird, but I’ll tell you what it brought most to my mind. Out upon the lone immensity of the sea, far from even the smallest speck of land, where you feel like the trumps of doom have sounded and you’ve been left behind, sometimes you hear the great leviathans of the deep call to each other across the watery leagues, ancient wails and cries that have meaning only for the whales and dolphins—aye, that’s what I thought when I heard the sounds in the night.”
    “Were the sounds stationary or moving?” Holmes asked.
    Sherrington looked at the consulting detective, amazed, not hiding his surprise. The young man possessed a great capacity for belief and subscribed to a tremendous variety of obscure and arcane notions—Atlantis, ley lines, the Lost Masters of Tibet, mesmerism, the existence of a prehistoric race of monster-gods, pyramidology,  spiritualism, life on other worlds, and thaumaturgy—but he felt he had to draw the line at bally whales cavorting beneath the most populous metropolis on Earth.
    “Moving,” Brigadier Knight replied.
    “Do you think you could project what you heard upon a survey map of the area?” Holmes asked.
    Sherrington gulped his drink and poured another.
    “I already have,” Brigadier Knight replied. “I did so because I thought there might be some connection between the sound and the recent rash of disappearances.” He sent a sudden bluster of a laugh in Holmes’ direction. “With other men, their reactive expressions reveal to me their fears, joys, hopes and secrets, but, with you, I must read you, so to speak, from your lack of expression. I would not want to face you across the gaming table, Mr Holmes, for I would soon be a pauper.”
    “I leave card playing to