scalp wound–there was nothing else I could do for him at the moment–I quickly descended once more into the garden a few yards west of the terrace, and shouted Holmes’s name repeatedly. but there was no reply. It seemed to me that he had been made to vanish into a darkness whose ominous silence swallowed violence and death alike.
Now I had a few moments in which to look about the library. Perhaps Louisa had dropped something, left some actual trace of her presence in the house? but in the general disarrangement and confusion I could discover nothing.
It upset me at the time, but perhaps it is not really to be wondered at that in the circumstances, confronted by marvels and by violent injury, no one else seemed much concerned about the fact that Holmes was missing. I believe it was generally assumed that he had gone in pursuit of some intruder, despite my denials that that had been the case. Even though I was sure that my old friend had been in distress when I last saw him, I was still able to hope that he would soon return.
Despite my attempts to give myself such reassurances my worry grew.
Meanwhile, the various minor injuries suffered in the outbreak of violence kept me busy for a time in my professional capacity. At intervals I went outside again and looked and listened, but neither my borrowed electric torch nor my ears gave me the slightest encouragement regarding the success of any renewed search.
The screams uttered by Louisa’s mother had by this time declined into low exhausted moans. Obviously the woman remained for the moment inconsolable. In a low voice she had begun lamenting, over and over, the fact that her beloved Louisa had been here, within reach, and then had been somehow driven away again.
Mrs. Altamont, evidently in some forlorn hope of tempting her lost daughter back, asked that the electric lights be once more turned off. Of course the request had to be refused, and I invoked my medical authority firmly enough that the servants obeyed me. Meanwhile young Rebecca Altamont was trying, in a broken voice, to comfort her mother, even while struggling to suppress her own sobs.
Louisa’s father, obviously shaken to the depths of his being by the experience through which he had just passed, sympathized with his wife’s grief, but the main focus of his attention remained elsewhere. The man kept wandering in and out of the house, from the terrace to the library and back again, looking about him hopefully at every step, as if he thought his daughter might appear again. At length he came inside, let himself down in one of the chairs turned sideways from the table, and sat there staring into space, his mouth open, his expression vacant, as if unaware that his hand was still bleeding from a piece of broken glass. A servant who came to help him was ordered absently away, so that the blood continued to drip, unnoticed by the victim, upon the carpet.
On approaching him with my professional manner I had better success, and soon succeeded in getting his hand bandaged. Still Altamont, though yielding to my ministrations, seemed scarcely aware of his injury. Gradually I understood that the man had undergone something approximating a religious conversion, during the last few minutes of darkness following the appearance of his daughter–the image, the figure he had seen, had very probably touched, had been genuinely that of his little girl.
As I tied the knot securing the bandage on his hand, he roused himself from this ecstatic trance to become aware of who I was and what I was doing. His manner turned grim. “I was wrong, Watson, I was terribly wrong. Oh, forgive me, Louisa–the blessed spirits will forgive me, I know they will!”
“The blessed spirits?” I asked hollowly–my thoughts were still full of that shadowed horror which had hung near me in the darkness, and had struck twice at members of our group.
Martin Armstrong, who had now collapsed into another chair nearby, was also overjoyed, but while listening to Louisa’s father, kept shaking his head in obvious disagreement. “No,” the young man interjected at one point. “No, sir, you don’t understand. Oh, she came back, she did indeed! but the blessed spirits had nothing to do with it!”
The father, however, ignored this comment, and springing up suddenly from his chair, began clutching at one person after another, weeping in his growing joy and his continuing amazement.
Repeatedly he told us how Louisa, in the brief interval when she had been present, had spoken to her father of things no one else could possibly have known. Though stunned with astonishment, he was certain of her identity.
“And then... and then... certain things happened. There was a dreadful interference... which drove her away again.” Once more a sterner expression came into his face, and he looked around the room, as if seeing it for the first time since the lights had been restored. “Where,” he demanded, “is Mr. Holmes?”
Armstrong, in the background, was still in smiling disagreement, but made no further argument.
Tersely I explained, as best I could, the situation with regard to Holmes.
As he heard me out, Ambrose Altamont, his clothing disheveled, his hair standing on end, assumed a new expression. Presently he began to speak in a much harder voice. In a few moments I understood–he now blamed Holmes and me for his daughter’s untimely flight, and the accompanying violence.
“Sir,” I protested, “it was neither Holmes nor I who struck down the young man lying on your terrace!”
Energetically he waved off my protests. “No, of course not. Not with your own hands. but it was the interference, you see, which caused the trouble–it must have been.”
I would have protested, but fiercely he waved me to silence. “There are dark powers as well as light. I was warned about such things, but I would not listen. I did not believe, because I had not
Our client–now evidently our former client–went on to express great concern over the fate of Abraham Kirkaldy, which he at last seemed to realize, and to issue me a stern warning that all further harassment–by which he evidently meant all investigation–of the mediums must cease. Obviously the spirits were angry at our hostile intrusion, and with some justification.
Yes, Altamont was saying in effect, it was certainly too bad if something terrible had happened to Holmes, and if something even worse had happened to the poor young man–yes, he, Louisa’s father, blamed himself for bringing in the detectives.
He fixed me with the eye of a fanatic, even as he attempted to comfort his wife. “Can you understand now, Doctor, that we are dealing here with powers that must not be mocked? I tell you sir, my worst fear now is that tonight’s interference might have driven our little girl away from us for good!” And Madeline Altamont screamed again.
Meanwhile Martin Armstrong and I had begun to insist that the police must be called in–some unknown person had committed an act of violence which was almost certain to prove fatal. And–a servant discovered the fact while we were arguing–a robbery had taken place as well. A safe in Ambrose Altamont’s study was found open, and some items of jewelry it had contained, all fairly common things of no enormous value, had been taken.
Fortunately, Norberton House was equipped with a telephone.
The local constabulary were on the scene within twenty minutes following my call. A quarter of an hour after their arrival, they were in agreement with me that the help of Scotland Yard would, in this case, be very desirable if not absolutely essential. Holmes was still missing. No trace could be found of the weapon which had struck down Abraham Kirkaldy, while it was obvious that his injury must be due to something more than an accident.
Four more hours passed, and full daylight had broken over the scene before Scotland Yard’s help arrived, in the person of Inspector Merivale, whom I was heartily glad to see.
Merivale was a tallish man with keen blue eyes, dark hair, and a small mustache of which he was rather vain, frequently stroking or smoothing it with a finger. He was, I knew, regarded by Holmes as one of the best of the younger detectives at Scotland Yard. On his arrival he justified this opinion, as I thought, by temporarily setting aside the clamor of other witnesses wanting to be heard, to listen very seriously to my testimony regarding the disappearance of Mr. Sherlock Holmes. To my disappointment, it soon became apparent to me that the representative of the Yard more than half-believed that Holmes had vanished of his own volition, and would reappear in the same way when he was ready.
Needless to say, I made no mention to anyone, including Merivale, of Holmes’s earlier suspicions regarding vampires, and how they had been confirmed. Whatever help my old friend might need from me, I would be unable to provide it while confined in an asylum.
An energetic search of the immediate vicinity revealed no trace of any skulking strangers–or of Holmes. At the direction of Scotland Yard, plans were made to bring in a dog to follow the trail. Within an hour of Merivale’s
