Gaslight Grimoire_ Fantastic Tales of Sherlock Holmes - Barbara Hambly [58]
I should add that I hear rumors, from time to time, of queer noises emanating from the vaults of Cox and Co, where the portrait of Felix Ruber is stored, but I have not felt a pressing need to investigate further.
Sherlock Holmes in The Lost World
Sherlock Holmes in the Lost World
by Martin Powell
Author’s Note: John H. Watson, M.D. wishes to state that both the restriction for restraint and the libel action have been withdrawn unconditionally by Professor George Edward Challenger, who, being content that no criticism or observation in this narrative is meant in an offensive spirit, has guaranteed that he will place no obstruction to its publication.
The cave man’s stomach felt as empty as his head.
Days and nights of starvation, by no means an uncommon happenstance upon the Plateau, had dimmed his distinctive wisdom and he’d reluctantly ventured down from the relative shelter of the vine-tangled trees in search of sustenance.
He crawled through the open grass on his hairy belly like a filth-encrusted beetle, short spear gripped in a black-bristled paw, with a razor-edge blade made of bone clenched in his broad square teeth. The deer was grazing only a few short yards away.
The cave man scarcely breathed, hungrily eyeing his quarry with mouth-watering expectation. He was down-wind of the slight breeze as planned — he’d not yet lost total reason — and rapid glances over each wide bushy shoulder did not yet reveal a rival predator stalking the same prey. From a kneeling position he raised his spear. Perhaps, this was his lucky day.
The deer’s head sprang up in instant vigilance. The deadly double pair of antlers, and the Y-shaped horn upon its snout at once would have made the otherwise graceful creature utterly unearthly to the typical modern Londoner. Large liquid eyes darted for the coming danger. Before the batting of another long lash the fleet-footed deer sprang away in a series of lofty leaps that were almost miraculous in their prowess.
The cave man hadn’t time for disappointment. At first he sensed the commotion rather than heard it, rather like the thudding of an inaudible drum-beat. Alarm flashed in his deep-set, sweat-reddened eyes as he suddenly felt the rumbling earth beneath him.
Stampede!
A bank of swirling grasses, twelve feet high, parted and exploded outward with an eruption of the thundering brontotherium and her galloping calf. The frenzied terror of the massive beasts prompted the cave man to race for the salvation of the high branches at least a hundred yards distant. Still, he had to try. The brontotheres feared few enemies.
A pack of creodonts swarmed after the massive grass-eaters in all their yellow-eyed, jagged jawed horror. The grisly devils virtually slithered rather than ran, their low, long, ductile feline forms fluidly racing and flowing in the heat of the hunt. Bone-crushing wolfish snouts dripped and snarled with the stuff of nightmares.
The clodding of the cave man’s overly-wide, loutish feet betrayed him. A lone, lean creodont broke from the panting pack and instantaneously sized him up as easier game. No chance of out-running the racing red-tongued demon. The cave man whirled around, a bull-like bellow blasting from his thirsty lips as he hurled the stubby stone-tipped spear with all his shrinking, starving strength — transfixing the fiend from sternum to coccyx.
The dead beast’s berserker brethren rampaged on through the grassy plain, unaware of the spoor of the cave man. After a bit, fearsome screams in the distant thicket gave evidence that the hunters would long be occupied with their ponderous feast.
He swatted away skulking black buzzards and little flying lizards, hastily slinging the weighty carcass over his apish shoulder. No time to waste. More formidable scavengers were certain to follow.
The cave man had lived past another noon.
As I alighted from the motorcar at the very doorstep