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I cried out. At the same instant light blazed up on the stairway that led to the upper and i
"My dear Miss Delapore," said Holmes, "if you will pardon my interruption, I fear you are laboring under a misapprehension." He came down the last of the stair, bearing in one hand a metal rod, from which a flickering corona of electricity seemed to sparkle, flowing back to a similar rod held up by Carnaki, who followed him down the stair. Carnaki wore a sort of pack or rucksack upon his back, of the kind one sees porters in Constantinople carrying; a dozen wires joined it to the rod in his hand, and lightnings leaped from that rod to Holmes', seeming to surround the two men in a deadly nimbus of light. The cold glare blanched all color from his face, so that his eyebrows stood out nearly black, like a man who has received a mortal blow and bleeds within.
Looking down at me he asked, as if we shared a cup of tea at Baker Street, "What was your wife's favorite flower?"
Miss Delapore, startled, opened her mouth to speak, but I cried in a convulsion of grief: "How can you ask that, Holmes? How can you speak of my Mary in this place, after what we have seen? Her life was all goodness, all joy, and it was for nothing, do you understand? If this-this blasphemy-this monstrous abyss underlies all of our world, how can any good, any joy exist in safety? It is a mockery-love, care, tenderness… it means nothing, and we are all fools for believing in any of it…"
"Watson!" thundered Holmes, and again Miss Delapore turned her eyes to him in astonishment.
"Watson?" she whispered.
His gaze held mine, and he asked again: "What was Mrs. Watson's favorite flower?"
"Lily of the valley," I said, and buried my face in my hands. Even as I did so I saw-such was the horror and strangeness of my dream-that they were the hands of an elderly man, thin and twisted with arthritis, and the wedding-band that I had never ceased to wear with my Mary's death was gone. "But none of it matters now, nor ever will again, knowing what I now know of the true nature of this world."
Through my weeping I heard Carnaki say softly, "We'll have to switch off the electrical field. I don't think we can get him up the stairs."
"You will be safe," said Miss Delapore's voice. "I command Them now-as did my grandfather, or the thing that for so many years passed itself off as my grandfather. I knew his goal-its goal-was to take over Burnwell's body, as it had taken over my grandfather's fifty years ago. He despised my uncle, as he despised my father, and as he despised me as a woman, thinking us all too weak to withstand the power raised by the Rite of the Book of Eibon. Why else did he bring me home from school, save to lure that poor American to his fate?"
"With a letter blotted with tears," said Holmes drily. "Even in the margins, and the blank upper portion by the address. Hardly the places where a girl's tears would fall while writing, but it's difficult to keep drops from spattering there when they're dipped from a bedroom pitcher with the fingers."
"Had I not written that letter," she replied, "it would be I, not Grandfather, who was given to the Hooded One tonight. At least by luring Burnwell to me I was able to give him poison-brown spider-mushroom, that does not take effect for many days. Grandfather would have had him, one way or another-he does not give up easily."
"And was it you who sent for him, to meet your grandfather in Brighton?"
"No. But I knew it would come. When Grandfather-when Lord Rupert's vampire spirit-entered poor Burnwell's body, that body was already dying, though none knew it but I. I knew Uncle Carstairs had mastered the technique too, of crossing from body to body-I assume it is you who were his target, and not your friend."
"Even so," said Holmes, and his voice was quiet and bitterly cold. "He underestimated me-and both underestimated you, it seems."
And there was the smallest touch of defiance in her voice as she replied, "Men do. Yourself included, it seems."
The snapping hiss of the electricity ceased. I opened my eyes to see them kneeling around me, in the horror of that nighted cavern: Holmes and Carnaki, holding their electrical rods to either of my hands, and Miss Delapore looking into my eyes. Somehow despite the darkness I could see her clearly, could see into her golden eyes, as one can in dreams. What she said to me I do not remember, lost as it was in the shock and cold when Carnaki touched the switch…
I opened my eyes to summer morning. My head ached; when I brought my hand up to touch it, I saw that my wrists were bruised and chafed, as if I had been bound. "You were off your head for much of the night," said Holmes, sitting beside the bed. "We feared you would do yourself an injury-indeed, you gave us great cause for concern."
I looked around me at the simple wall-paper and white curtains of my bedroom at the Cross of Gold in High Clum. I stammered, "I don't remember what happened…"
"Fever," said Carnaki, coming into the room with a slender young lady whom I instantly recognized from the miniature Burnwell Colby had showed us as Miss Judith Delapore. "I have never seen so rapid a rise of temperature in so short a time; you must have taken quite a severe chill."
I shook my head, wondering what it was about Miss Delapore's haggard calm, about her golden-hazel eyes, that filled me with such uneasy horror. "I remember nothing," I said. "Dreams… Your uncle came here, I believe," I added, after Holmes had introduced the young lady. "At least… I believe it was your uncle…" Why was I so certain that the wizened, twisted little man who had come to my room-whom I believed had come to my room-yesterday had been Carstairs Delapore? I could recall nothing of what he had said. Only his eyes…
"It was my uncle," said Miss Delapore, and as I looked at her again I realized that she wore mourning. "You remember nothing of why he came here yesterday? For before he could mention the visit to anyone at the Priory…" And here she glanced across at Holmes; "He fell down the stairs there, and died at the bottom."
I expressed my horrified condolences, while trying to suppress an inexplicable sense of deepest relief that I somehow associated with dreams I had had while delirious. After inclining her head in thanks, Miss Delapore turned to Holmes, and held out to him a box of stout red cardboard, tied up with string. "As I promised," she said.
I lay back, overcome again by a terrible exhaustion-as much of the spirit, it seemed, as of the body. While Carnaki prepared a sedative draught for me Holmes walked Miss Delapore out to our mutual parlor, and I heard the outer door open.
"I have heard much of your deductive abilities, Mr. Holmes," said the young woman's voice, barely heard through the half-open bedroom door. "How did you know that my uncle, who must have come here to take you as my grandfather took Burnwell, had seized upon your friend instead?"
"There was no deduction necessary, Miss Delapore," said Holmes. "I know Watson-and I know what I have heard of your uncle. Would Carstairs Delapore have come down into danger, to see what he could do for an injured man?"
"Do not think ill of my family, Mr. Holmes," said Miss Delapore, after a time of silence. "The way which leads down the six thousand stairs ca