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I know something of hunting - enjoyed the hunt, before I lost the nerve. This was the most peculiar chase I ever saw, the hound a mongrel and the prey forbidden.
I have seen things more frightful, in the caves of Afghanistan, in the Palace here in London. I have seen things more bizarre - seeming more bizarre, until my friend unravelled the yarn, found which variable equated to what, and explained. Birlstone comes to mind, and Baskerville, and Lamberley. This unsettled me in different ways.
There we were, chasing down the busy dusk-time street, the mongrel with its nose to the pavement fairly dragging us along - but I'm getting ahead of myself. I should say something about how it came about.
We'd stumbled on it unawares. My friend saw it coming no more than I did.
"I do not take cases," he told me when I met him. "Instead, I consult." He goes out, though. Investigates. He calls it research. Then he comes back knowing what he needs to know to advise. Sometimes I go with him.
But he wasn't consulted. She was very clear on this. So how did we come to the place?
It was a woman told us, Morstan by name. She'd had a letter, from the son of an old friend of her father's. If there was another letter, she said, she'd send it back unopened. And it wasn't something she should bring to the police, but someone perhaps should know. So she brought it to him.
The letter said she was wronged. That more happened in India than she knew.
Her father was in India during the Mutiny, she said, when the country's gods and men rose against ours. She had letters then, too. What was in them she didn't say, only that he was much changed before his death, and she wanted nothing to do with anyone who'd been there.
I don't dare imagine. Men fighting against men can be bad enough, but gods, even minor ones - not equal to the Great Crowned Ones, but far above mere humans still ... Even in Afghanistan, the Thing in the caves met only our men, not others of its kind.
It is said in India, heretics abound who follow still their old, false gods, who even now do not bow to those who rose all those centuries ago from the depths of Carcosa and R'lyeh and Leng, to lift us above our savage state. There are many strange stories of India, of its creatures and men and gods, and this may be no more true than others. During the Mutiny, to be sure, both men and gods rose against Them Who Governed, until our Queen took it all in hand herself. I cannot let myself think of it.
I've never been to India. I thought to go there, once, when I was a crack marksman - when I fancied myself a hunter, before I knew what it was to be prey. I wanted to hunt tigers. Without Afghanistan, I might have seen India eventually, perhaps Tibet after - but I was a different man then.
The Morstan woman, I was saying. She had a life, a good one, with the Widow Forrester. She wanted no part in this. She put it to us, and washed her hands of it all.
"Wiser than most of her sex," said my friend. "Wiser than most people, whatever their sex."
"Pretty, too," I said. I felt I ought to. Once, I'd liked women - then the caves of Afghanistan drained me of life. When I found it again, it was a different one. Now I spend my days with my friend, and look for nothing else. I have no regrets.
"I did not observe," my friend said distractedly, studying the paper she'd handed him.
The letter said she should come to Pondicherry Lodge and learn the truth.
My friend looked it up: Pondicherry Lodge, in Upper Norwood. Until a week ago, the residence of one Major Sholto, from the same regiment as Miss Morstan's father. His two sons still lived there.
"London has been dull recently," said my friend. "But this hardly warrants our interest. All crime has been dull and commonplace these recent days, and this not even speaks of a crime."
So we didn't go to Upper Norwood then. Inspector Lestrade consulted my friend over some unpleasant business in Boscombe Valley, and we forgot all about it.
Then he saw the obituary, some days later: Thaddeus Sholto had died. The one who wrote the letter. My friend raised his eyebrows, and his head swayed from side to side in thought.
The next day, the papers were full of fantastical descriptions of the man's features twisted in death, of the ghastly smile on his face. The locked room he was found in. And we were drawn in after all.
My friend said nothing, but I knew where his mind had gone. With this, I can always tell. And that was the day that ended with the chase. - But I'm rushing ahead again.
We went. Inspector Jones permitted us to examine the room - a crammed chemical laboratory full of glass bottles, old chipped vials and test-tubes, Bunsen burners, and such. A smell of acid. And there it was. I didn't see it, not at first, but I felt it all the same. Or perhaps I only think so.
My friend looked. His spine stiffened. I looked as well, and as I came close the scar on my shoulder itched. It might have been the presence. It might have been a memory. I couldn't tell.
I remember thinking we should have borrowed Miss Morstan's wisdom. Left all this alone. But my friend couldn't resist, and - in the end, I'm glad we went, after all.
What he'd found: a greenish smear between the floor-boards. Ichor, bile-green, such as is found in the veins of those above us.
I shivered, and my stomach heaved, but bent and looked through my friend's looking-glass as he beckoned me to. I saw a thin layer also on top of the boards, with an indistinct paw-like print. Some animal - some thing - had stepped in it.
Something had bled, and dripped its blood on the ground, and stepped in it.
My friend looked at me, then pointed a thin finger towards the edge of the carpet in the corner, where none of the many who had examined this room had tread. There was the print of a small, shoed foot - a child's foot.
Were there children in the household? When we went to ask, the housekeeper said no. Her face said she was lying. My friend said, exasperated, "If one means to lie, one might at least do it well."
"A child!" I said, horrified. "Why would she hide it?"
My friend made an equivocating gesture with his hand. "Perhaps not quite a child." The paw, the foot - the same creature? Some of the blood royal have limbs of that kind. I felt myself shiver, as if from a distance - as if my body were not mine. My friend added, "You needn't remain, Major. Such things are not comfortable to witness."
His face was grave, but I saw the spark in his eyes then, knew what thought had developed in his mind. Knew the moment it became conviction.
Dread pooled in my gut. I knew what he'd thought of. Who. I wished for nothing so much but that my friend had never heard of the murder of Franz Drago, or of the man who orchestrated it.
The man he'd chased through London, through Albion, through half the continent already, and always in vain. The man who murdered more than one of those above us. Sherry Vernet, he'd called himself. Rache, he'd called himself. I'm no scientific mind like my friend, but I can tell his thoughts well enough, when they bend that way. That day, in that room, he was thinking of ichor, and murder, and that man. And so I stayed.
"I've long theorised," said he, eventually, eyeing the laboratory set up around us, "that he may be doing something with the ichor always splashed so copiously on the scenes of his crimes."
It may well be true.
But I've lost track of my narrative again. Forgive me.
My friend examined the room once more. Tilted his head back, stared at the ceiling. There was a trap door, well hidden as a panel of wood. And a small green smear at one edge.
"An ugly business," my friend said. "Sholto must have been an accomplice. But the situation got out of hand, and Sholto died. It seems the creature escaped from our quarry in the event."
My friend was already rushing down the stairs, past Inspector Jones who was vigorously interrogating the other Sholto brother. He did not share his discovery.
He did stop to question the postman, who came by just then. "I don't know what's wrong with this house now," said he, a portly fellow who didn't seem given to flights of the imagination. "Never been this way before. But I saw a face in the window the other day, and it weren't human, Mr Moriarty, I'll swear it weren't natural. Sent a chill right down my back."
My friend thanked the man, and off he was again, and I close behind.
"I would prefer to stay on the scene," he told me as we climbed into a hansom cab, "but I cannot send you there. He will not give him to you."
It got worse, then.
The "him" someone would not give to me proved to be a mongrel of a dog. Not a normal dog, though. One trained to sniff out and follow the trail of Things more than human.
I had heard of such creatures: forbidden abominations synonymous with treason. The mongrel before us seemed very ordinary, for such weighty words. He was called Toby, and wagged his tail at us.
I was uneasy. How could my friend be familiar with a man who kept such a beast? The detective and the criminal, should they not be enemies? But I knew: it was all to trap that man, again. And to my friend, there is only the work, and how it can be done.
I should not be writing this down.
But he asked me. I promised to remind him. And I am not an eloquent man; I will not find words when I need them. This manuscript will hold them for me instead.
Why am I writing this down? To keep my promise.
"This time I shall have him," my friend muttered, his head swaying, just before we set out. I did not know - do not know now - whether I wanted him to fail or succeed. I can only say I dreaded the result. I feared for my friend.
But chase he must, and so follow I must, and we embarked on the strangest of chases - for the creature that had spilled the ichor, or for the man my friend was after. It was all the same to him: "He'll want to recapture the creature, I'm sure of it," he said, eyes as intent on the dog as the dog's nose was on the scent, "and we're ahead of him this time, for he couldn't openly chase. If we're lucky, we'll be in time to lay a trap."
The dog never hesitated as it led us through the busy streets, firm on its trail. Dusk was upon us, the horizon darkening by the minute, and a blood-red moon stood high above us.
The house we were led to was a modest one, not poor but far from the luxury of Pondicherry Lodge. There was the back garden, a gate left standing open - the dog gave an excited yip and rushed through it. My friend and I stopped at the fence - not out of any sense of propriety, but because of what we saw ahead on a small patch of grass. There we found -
Even today I cannot do the image justice.
Dogs like Toby, my friend had said, were not expected to attack or kill their quarry. So that wasn't unexpected. But the dog that should have jealously guarded its prey for its masters - this dread forbidden hound - stood there on the grass, wagging its tail and lolling its tongue, every now and then ducking its head to gently nudge the creature it had hunted down with its snout.
The creature, which looked very like a cat.
Moriarty and I looked at each other, and burst out laughing.
"There must be a mistake," said I, when I caught my breath.
My friend's eyes sparkled with humour. "No, Major, the canine nose has not failed us yet. Do you not see?"
I turned again to the dog, which was now tongue-bathing the creature, which graciously allowed it.
I looked closer. It did look very like a cat, save that it had too many paws. Then it yawned widely. It had too many teeth, too.
In that moment the door opened, and a girl came out. The little not-a-cat creature shook off the dog to streak around her legs. She petted it.
I looked at my friend, and his face fell.
Turning to the girl again brought no clarity for me. If the cat-like creature was more than natural, the girl, regardless, was entirely human. All I could see was a girl of not yet twelve, clearly of Indian descent though her dress was English. India again: surely it meant something. I stared at her, and felt as though I ought to be able to tell more than that.
An Indian girl: was the creature an Indian one as well? A vague memory resurfaced, of creatures I'd read about once. Of drawn illustrations - but they'd seemed sinister, then, and the little one here seemed anything but. When They rose from beneath the sea, when Their colossal power swept over the coast and then the land, it is said that there were those who drank of it, and were changed forever more. People, and beasts alike - the world over, when things are unexplained, when things are monstrous and not with intent such as those above us possess, these are the likeliest explanation.
Sometimes, it is said, a creature changed only slightly, and caught none of Their cravings. If such things exist in Albion, I have never heard. But in India, one aspect of the Manifold that took residence there took a fancy to them, and so they thrive. Like stray cats might. Something in my breast shuddered, seemed to warm: perhaps not all that is otherworldly must be dreaded.
None of this explained the murder. None of this explained Pondicherry Lodge.
I looked at my friend. There was chagrin on his face, the humour draining away. He took me by the arm, pulled me back into the street. "Let us not disturb them now."
"But -" said I, and then broke off, not knowing what to say.
"Did you not see? We have solved the mystery of Miss Morstan's letter. No? You called her pretty - surely you can bring to mind again the young lady's face. You did not note the resemblance?"
I blinked. The girl's darker features and Miss Morstan's lighter ones did share some commonalities - in the shape of the mouth and chin most strongly, but also the forehead.
"Yes," said my friend, "I see that you do. Captain Morstan sired a second daughter in India, and brought her to England, setting her up safely but hiding her from his first child. When he died, his friend Major Sholto must have taken over care of her - at a distance; she clearly did not live in Pondicherry Lodge."
"And then he died, and his sons found out," I realised. "And one of them brought the girl to Pondicherry Lodge, meaning to introduce her to Miss Morstan."
My friend nodded. "What the postman saw was most likely her, disguised in some fashion. The brother must have objected to her presence, fearing she might be connected to their father's background, or their own, and taint their reputation."
I shook my head in confusion. "But the murder? The creature?"
My friend's lip twisted. "The murder? I'm afraid Athelney Jones had the right of it. It was likely the brother, Bartholomew. After their father's death they must have quarrelled over their inheritance, and their father's secrets. Strychnine poisoning explains quite handily the state of the body, the distortion of his face - risus sardonicus, the ancients called it."
I stared at him. He had imagined treason. Restorationists. Him. It was this instead.
He must have known this before, and hadn't wanted to see.
"As for the girl and the creature, they must have been with Thaddeus Sholto when he died. The girl quite naturally panicked, and so they fled back to their home by the quickest route they could find. Pulling the door shut behind them, as it were."
And the ichor - just a minor scrape, then, for an adventurous cat in a place full of chipped glass and burning chemicals? I looked away, dismayed at the vastness of my fears in the face of something so ordinary. Dismayed, and then relieved: a traitorous gladness that the time of confrontation between my friend and his enemy had not yet come.
I thought again of the little creature, of the girl happily petting it, of the dog wagging its tail as if it had never heard of such a thing as a chase.
The world is full of horrors. But the world, even ours, is also brighter sometimes than my friend's profession may lead us to see.
"Perhaps you are right, Major," said my friend. I had said nothing. He knew anyway. "Perhaps I have allowed my purpose to cloud my vision. It is always a capital mistake to theorise based on what one wishes, rather than what one can observe." His head swayed slightly as he looked at me with a wry smile. "Should it ever strike you again that I've allowed myself to be seduced into such an error, kindly remind me of this Upper Norwood business, and I shall be very grateful to you."
In fulfilment of my promise,
S________ M____ Major (Ret'd)
Baker Street,
London, New Albion, 1888.