The House of Silk_ The New Sherlock Holmes Novel - Anthony Horowitz [81]
‘I could talk my way to the North Pole on that subject, sir. He is a remarkable person. But he would not appreciate it. All in all, the less said the better.’
The journey was almost unendurable to me. My watch showed me that it lasted two hours, but there was nothing to tell me in which direction we were going nor how far, as it had occurred to me that we might well be going round and round in circles and our destination could in fact have been very close. Once or twice the carriage changed direction and I felt myself swinging to the side. Most of the time, the wheels seemed to be turning over smooth asphalt but occasionally there would be a rattle and I would feel that we had passed onto a paved causeway. At one point I heard a steam train passing above us. We must be under a bridge. Otherwise, I felt swallowed up by the darkness that surrounded me and finally dozed off, for the next thing I knew we had come to a shuddering halt and my travelling companion was leaning across me, opening the door.
‘We will go straight into the house, Dr Watson,’ he said. ‘These are my instructions. Pray do not linger outside. It is a cold and a nasty night. If you do not go straight in, I fear it might be the death of you.’
I glimpsed only a massive, uninviting house, the front draped in ivy, the garden overrun with weeds. We could have been in Hampstead or Hampshire, for the grounds were surrounded by high walls with heavy, wrought-iron gates which had already been closed behind us. The building itself put me in mind of an abbey with crenulated windows, gargoyles and a tower stretching above the roof. All the windows upstairs were dark but there were lamps burning in some of the rooms below. A door stood open beneath the porch, but there was nobody to welcome me, if such a place as this could ever, even on the most sunlit summer’s evening, be described as welcoming. Urged on by my fellow passenger, I hurried in. He closed the door hard behind me and its boom echoed down the gloomy corridors.
‘This way, sir.’ He had taken up a lamp and I followed him down a passageway, past windows of stained glass, oak panelling, paintings so dark and faded that, but for the frames, I might barely have noticed them at all. We came to a door. ‘In here. I will let him know you have arrived. He won’t be long. Touch nothing. Go nowhere. Show restraint!’ And after having delivered this strange directive, he backed out the way he had come.
I was in a library with a log fire burning in a stone fireplace and candles arranged on the mantel. A round table of dark wood with several chairs occupied the centre of the room and there were more candles burning here. There were two windows, both heavily curtained, and a thick rug on the otherwise bare, wooden floor. The library must have held several hundred volumes. Shelves rose from the floor to the ceiling – a considerable distance – and there was a ladder, on wheels, that could be tracked from one end of the shelves to the other. I took a candle and examined some of the covers. Whoever owned this house must be well versed in French, German and Italian, for all three languages were evident as well as English. His interests encompassed physics, botany, philosophy, geology, history and mathematics. There were no works of fiction as far as I could see. Indeed, the selection of books put me very much in mind of Sherlock Holmes, for they seemed quite accurately to reflect his tastes. From the architecture of the room, the shape of the fireplace, the ornate ceiling, I could see that the house must be of Jacobean design. Obeying the instructions I had been given, I sat down on one of the chairs and stretched my hands in front of the fire. I was grateful for the warmth for, even with the blanket, the journey had been merciless.
There was a second door in the room, opposite the one I had entered, and this opened suddenly to reveal a man so tall and thin that he seemed out of proportion to the frame that surrounded him and might actually have to stoop to come in. He was wearing dark trousers, Turkish