Gaslight Grimoire_ Fantastic Tales of Sherlock Holmes - Barbara Hambly [77]
“Has he been able to drink anything?” I asked, opening my bag for thermometer and stethoscope.
Mrs. Westen nodded. “When he is calm and quiet I can press him to take a little water or tea. He will swallow, but he simply will not wake.” This last she spoke in a distinct tone of frustration.
“A good indication, Watson, that our hypnosis supposition may be close to the mark,” said Holmes, examining the professor’s hands, particularly some slight skinning of the right knuckles, before turning his attention to the clothes draped over a bedside chair.
“Indeed,” said I. “His temperature is normal, his pulse is slow and even and his breathing is that which I would expect of a man in deep sleep. The question now is, who was the hypnotist?”
“Why not ask him? If this is a case of hypnotism it naturally follows that the professor is in a highly suggestive state.”
I bent closer and said, “Professor Weston, who has put you into this trance?”
The man in the bed began to toss and turn again, and I became aware that his harsh grunts and growls concealed words, or rather a word, though it made little sense: it sounded like “Sigsand,” repeated over and over.
Holmes, with a pair of the professor’s shoes in his hand, turned to Mrs. Westen with a frown. “Who or what is Sigsand?” he asked.
“It is an ancient book — or rather manuscript in the form of a scroll — of forbidden lore,” replied Mrs. Westen, “on which Henry and Mr. Carnacki worked some time ago. They were very secretive about it, but I believe they were engaged in translating it.”
“Could it be the missing book?”
Mrs. Westen went deathly pale and gasped, “Heaven help us! Might someone think they could use it for wicked purposes, Mr. Holmes?”
The man in the bed gave a horrible moan, exclaimed, “I will not!” in a terrible voice and dropped back into growled incoherencies.
“Professor?” said I. “Can you hear me?”
His eyes snapped open. I jumped.
Mrs. Westen gasped. “Henry?” and someone else said, “John.”
It was a woman’s voice, but so muffled and distant that I could not tell from whence it came, nor for the moment recognize it, though I should have.
A tap at the bedroom window turned my attention there — and my heart flew to my throat. There at the glass, staring in at me with black hollows where her eyes should have been, was the face of my late wife.
“Mary!”
My brain felt like a lump of ice within my skull and the room rocked about me in a giddying dance as the spectre of my dead wife and I gazed at each other across an unknowable abyss. And all the while I was vaguely aware of Westen repeating, “Sigsand … Sigsand,” in a voice that spoke of effort and pain.
As if from a great distance, I heard Holmes gasp, followed by the double thump of the shoes he had been examining hitting the floor. The sounds seemed to break the spell for we rushed across the room together, and as Holmes flung open the window the ghastly visage of she whom I had once loved seemed to sweep away from the glass and fall beneath the level of the sill. We craned our heads out, but there was nothing to see — no face, no ladder, no strings or wires, nothing but a curious mist thickening about the lower portion of the cottage many feet below.
“Did you see her, Holmes?” I gasped.
“The woman,” he said with a queer, intense expression.
“The woman?” I repeated dully, puzzling at his words until I recalled that this was how he habitually referred to Irene Adler, the American adventuress who had bested him in the Bohemian scandal affair. “Holmes,” I said as levelly as my shaky voice allowed, “It was the image of my wife Mary.”
“No,” he said. “It was…” We looked at each other in silence for a moment, then Holmes said very quietly, “Mrs. Westen, was