“Hot, blazing ninnymuffins! What is that?”
“Dr. Watson! Language!” Bradstreet urged.
“He’s right, Watson,” Holmes agreed. “It’s not like you.”
“Yes, but… but… but…”
Holmes raised one eyebrow and gave me a broad smile. “I told you he was great.”
A half-intermitted gasp caused me to turn my attention back to the cell. It was hard to tell if Hugh Boone was sleeping or not. One eye was closed, the other partially open but rolled back into his head. His breathing was tortured; the sounds he made caused us all to wince.
“Been like that for days now,” said Bradstreet. “Can’t get him to take no food. Poor bastard can’t open his mouth, not even a bit. Got a few ladlefuls of water down him, but that’s all.”
I shook my head. “That makes no sense. He must have been feeding himself somehow, all this time.”
“Well he’s in no condition to tell us how,” said Bradstreet with a shrug. “He’s said nary a word the whole time, and frankly, I don’t think he can.”
“Water is not the critical concern, in any case. And certainly not food,” I told him. “It’s his breathing. Hear how labored it has become? Hear that rattle? His lungs are filling with mucous and he has no power to clear them. See how weak he has become? Something must quickly be done, or this man will smother!”
“All right,” said Bradstreet. “But what?”
This, I deemed, was my signal to improvise. I found a disused old prison bench and had Bradstreet’s constables knock two of its legs off. Once we had it fairly steady on its remaining two legs and one side angling down to the floor, we constructed a set of leather straps that would hold Hugh Boone on his chest (well… and leg) with his head on the downhill side.
“There,” I told Bradstreet, when we had Boone in position. “That should help the mucous drain down and out of his mouth, rather than back into his lungs. You must check him frequently to make sure it does not stuff up his mouth or nose. If you tip him upright every now and then, he should be able to swallow it. Give him a few sips of water once an hour or so.”
“Awwww, come on now,” Bradstreet protested. “You can’t expect us to do all that!”
“Well, you shouldn’t have arrested him, then.”
“But… how long must this go on?”
I shrugged. “Until he is either freed or hanged for the murder of Neville St. Clair. Yet if you are building a case wherein you propose Hugh Boone overpowered and killed a fit fellow in his thirties, I might suggest that a successful resolution is some ways off. Now, good day to you. The hour is late—or perhaps early—and I have yet to return my new friend Isa Whitney to his wife. Ah! I just realized: I do hope neither he nor the cabman have woken up.”
“Or died,” Holmes added.
“Egad! I hadn’t thought of that!”
“Ha! And you’re the doctor!”
Luck was with us, however, and—aside from some added weariness in the corners of Best Horse’s eyes—we found our companions in much the same state as we’d left them. As soon as we were settled in and headed west, I opined, “A very strange case indeed, Holmes.”
He said nothing, but cleared his throat. Guiltily cleared his throat, it seemed to me.
“Holmes?”
“Um… yes, Watson?”
“Holmmmmmmmmmmes?”
“All right! Fine! Fine, damn it! It’s just that, as you said that last bit, it sort of occurred to me that it’s actually more like two cases and—though I certainly do enjoy this one, because of all the wonderful murders and twisted-up men—the other makes me a bit uncomfortable!”
“The other?”
“Yes! The smiff!”
“The what?”
“The smiff!”
I stared at him levelly for a few moments.
“Which is a word I’ve recently made up,” he explained, “to mean something like ‘a rather worrisome weak spot in the borders of our reality, through which significant quantities of magical/demonic energy seem to be leaking and for which Watson and I may be largely responsible’.”
“Oh? I am responsible?”
“As a matter of fact, you are. I don’t suppose you remember that little dust-up I had with Hugo Baskerville about two years ago?”
“You mean the night he tried to bend all my bones out through my skin? Yes, I seem to recall it.”
“And do you also recall that the particular danger that evening was that my battle with Sir Hugo took place upon the convergence of five great ley-lines?”
“Again, I do.”
“And…” Here Holmes let a particularly worried expression cross his face. “Do you remember that moment where it seemed like at least one of them sort of broke?”
I thought back to those horrifying moments as the other worldly light of the lines reached its straining point, to the terrible cracking sound and the sudden increase in the power of all Baskerville Hall’s ghostly inhabitants.
“Ohh… Now that you mention it… yes, I do.”
“Well one of those lines is just knackered, I’m afraid. Specifically, the one that takes its genesis at Baskerville Hall and runs across England, all the way from Dartmoor to the alley behind The Bar of Gold, where it abuts the Thames. And where now—unless I miss my guess—there is a bit of a smiff!”
“How is that my fault?” I demanded. “You were the one fighting Sir Hugo!”
“Yes. And I do admit my part in the fiasco,” said Holmes. “However, I would never have been there in the first place if my smart friend Watson had done his damned smart-person job and solved the case and outmaneuvered Sir Hugo and put everything to rights before I even got the chance to travel down to Dartmoor and arse everything up, now would I? So, perhaps a slight display of contrition might reflect well on your character!”
He threw his arms across his chest and settled in to a guilty sulk. Holmes was a good man at heart—in point of fact, a very good man, better by far than me. Yet he
