Sherlock Holmes: The Coils of Time & Other Stories (Sherlock Holmes Adventures Book 1)

Sherlock Holmes:

The Coils of Time

& Other Stories

by

Ralph E Vaughan

Dog in the Night Books

2013

Also by Ralph E Vaughan:

Sherlock Holmes Adventures

Sherlock Holmes in The Dreaming Detective

Sherlock Holmes and the Terror Out of Time

Sherlock Holmes in The Adventure of the Ancient Gods

Sherlock Holmes: Cthulhu Mythos Adventures

Professor Challenger in The Secret of the Dreamlands

Paws & Claws

Paws & Claws: A Three Dog Adventure (P&C #1)

A Flight of Raptors (P&C #2)

K-9 Blues (P&C #3)

The Death & Life of an American Dog (P&C #4)

The Dogs of S.T.E.A.M. (P&C #5)

The Dog Who Loved Sherlock Holmes (P&C Special)

The Adventures of Folkestone & Hand

Shadows Against the Empire

Amidst Dark Satanic Mills

Other Works

Reflections Upon Elder Egypt (nonfiction)

HP Lovecraft in the Comics (nonfiction)

Fear and Loathing in the World of the Alien (nonfiction)

Upon Unknown Seas, Beneath Strange Stars (collection)

Oh, Mr Yoda (play w/Patricia E Vaughan)

The Horses of Byzantium & Other Poems (poetry)

A Darkness Upon My Mind (poetry)

Midnight for Schrödinger’s Cat (poetry)

As Editor

The Many Worlds of Duane Rimel (Duane Rimel)

The Second Book of Rimel (Duane Rimel)

Dreams of Yith (Duane Rimel)

Fungi From Yuggoth (HP Lovecraft w/Nick Petrosino)

Martian Twilight (John Eric Holmes w/David Barker)

Sherlock Holmes: The Coils of Time & Other Stories

©2013 Ralph E Vaughan

“The Coils of Time” was previously published in 2005 by Gryphon Publications as “Sherlock Holmes in The Coils of Time,” in another format, and has been extensively revised for its inclusion here. All other stories appear in this book for first publication.

Dedication

To my former co-worker and laborer against ignorance, Lorna Samuel, who never hesitated to say “Piss off, Ralph!” whenever I needed a reality check, and to Gary Lovisi, owner of Gryphon Books, without whom nothing would have been written.

Table of Contents

The Coils of Time

Adventure of the Long-Suffering Landlady

An Incident In the Night

Lestrade & the Lost River Pirates

The Man Who Was Not Sherlock Holmes

The Adventure of the Counterfeit Martian

The Dog Who Loved Sherlock Holmes

Sherlock, Gary, HPL & Me

Note to the Reader

Prologue

The stench of the charnel pits…

Vanquished humanity shuffling into darkness…

The crack of the whip…

The eternal murmuring and sobbing of infernal machines below the once-great city…

The white winged sphinx looming over the ruins of London beneath seething charcoal skies…

The cries of Morlocks triumphant…

London…1954.

Fleeing that impossible and nightmarish realm, Moesen Maddoc, who often thought of himself simply as the Time Traveller, sought the imagined security of his old home in Richmond upon the Thames, that venerable brick manse overlooking Richmond Green near Cholmondeley Walk, northward of the Old Deer Park along Kew Road, a legacy of the First Charles, prior to the falling of the axe.  By the map, he was less than a dozen miles from the great city of London, normally the briefest of journeys along the L&SW Railway, but these were not normal times, and it had taken him several days, hiding in ruins and undergrowth, evading the savage Morlock bands and their human serpents, to make his way back to the tumbled wreck of his house.

He hacked his way through the overgrown gardens surrounding his house to his machine hidden beyond the shattered panes and the gaunt brick walls. Thankfully, during his absence it had not been molested.  It took him mere moments to reattach certain brass and crystalline levers to the control panel, then a timeless eternity to return to shortly after he started again.

Back to the Year of Our Lord 1894.

As Moesen Maddoc’s workshop materialised around him as it appeared before ruination, he felt as if the familiarity of the large windowed room should have been as soothing to his nerves as an opiate, but the chamber now seemed ominous and shadow-infested, the gas lamps dim and uncertain. He saw the stability of the present, but felt the encroaching shadows of the future.

He started as something pale and furtive flitted through the gardens beyond the windows, moving in the direction of the large, heavily wooded Deer Park, but it vanished before he was sure he had seen anything at all.  Most likely a deer or some other animal, he hoped. A great weariness seized him and he slumped in the machine’s padded leather chair.  The books with which he had hoped to rewrite the future slipped from his grasp and thudded harshly against the scuffed wooden floor.

Stepping away from the now-quiet machine, he almost went sprawling as the physical brutality of recent events overwhelmed his ebbing adrenaline and slammed him full force.  He staggered down the teak-panelled corridor connecting the workshop to the main of the house.  He was weak from hunger, thirst and exhaustion, faint from loss of blood.  He wanted nothing more than to collapse into unconsciousness, blessed oblivion untroubled by dreams, visions or memories of what was to come, but he forced himself forward.

He had to learn where the path to the future had gone astray, and whether he was to blame. The answer could only be in the present.

At corridor’s end he threw the bolt back and tumbled through the open door.

Maddoc staggered into the dining room, nearly bowling over good Mrs Watchett, his housekeeper of long memory, almost causing her to drop the main course.  She uttered a sharp cry at his uncouth appearance, the cuts and bruises upon his face, his tattered and bloodstained clothes.  The startled men seated around the dining table shot to their feet.

“Good God!” exclaimed the Medical Man.  “What happened? Were you in a carriage accident?”

“Give him a glass of port!” cried the Editor.

“Were you attacked by coves?” demanded the Brigadier.

“He has obviously undergone a tremendous shock of some kind,” remarked the Psychologist.

Maddoc felt a strong grasp guiding him to his usual seat at the head of the table, and was surprised to see white-haired Mrs Watchett at his side, even more surprised to see the concern in her eyes.  A full glass was pressed into his trembling grip.  Only when he saw it being refilled did he realise he had downed the first glass of port in a single gulp.

“Tell us what happened to you,” urged Philby, a red-haired man whose usually argumentative nature had been suddenly replaced by a strange urgency of tone.  “We waited dinner nearly an hour pending your promised arrival.”

The circumstances of these men gathered around his dining table suddenly became intelligible to him.  Yes, he had invited them here, but the issuance of that invitation seemed a lifetime ago.  Had it merely been a week since he had so foolishly, so naively demonstrated the tiny working model of the Time Machine to some of these men?  A week for them, surely, but for him…an eternity.

In a sense, that had been another man who stood before them then, as confident in himself, in his visions of science and technology, as in the future itself.  He had hoped for, yet not expected, a bright future in which Britannia still ruled the waves, but he
had
expected a future of exalted technological achievements no matter the petty foibles of politics, a destiny crafted by an enlightened and ennobled humanity.  The men of that remote era, of AD 802701, should have proven wise elder brothers to him, but they had turned out to be little children afraid of the dark, more needful of his guidance than he ever could be of theirs.

How he had yearned to lead the Eloi out of darkness, out from under the shadows of the Morlocks.  So greatly had that desire burned within his breast upon his
first
return from the future that he had immediately set out again upon the seas of time, abandoning his own era and such foolishness as this dinner party, such mundane fools as these men..

“Have you been time travelling?” asked Wells, a man Maddoc had first met at the Royal College of Science in the mid ‘80s.  “Have you voyaged into history, or have you…have you seen the future, the maturity of the race, the destiny of mankind?”

Maddoc met their curious gazes.  Not all currently present had seen the earlier experiment with the model of the Time Machine with their own eyes, but those who had not would have certainly heard of it in detail from the others, especially that damned Wells, who fancied himself a writer.  To now deny the existence of the Time Machine now would be to invite investigation and belief, neither of which he wanted any longer, nor even cared about.  He dare not tell them the truth, of course, at least not all of it, but he was a man of science, not a storyteller able to cobble a satisfying tale out of nothing.  All he possessed was the cursed truth.  The trick, then, was to tell them nothing of the second journey, and just enough of the first to allow them the luxury of disbelief, the opportunity to dismiss him as an eccentric inventor and view his story as nothing more than a cautionary allegory based on current social conditions.

“Yes, my friends, I have travelled through time in a machine of my own design,” he finally said, forcing a lightness into his voice that he did not at all feel.  “I shall tell you of my sojourn among the Eloi and the Morlocks in the far future, more than eight hundred thousand years from now.”

“Quite fantastic,” the Brigadier murmured.

“But first I must partake another glass of this fine port and have some of Mrs Watchett’s excellent mutton, for it seems months since I have had decent food.”  At least
that
much was true, he thought ruefully.  “Then I shall relate to you the events which occurred during my voyage upon the seas of time, as much for your judgement as your enlightenment.  When you have learnt what is derived from the decisions made during our own time, your confidence in the current social order may not be as sound.”

Later, amid the soft clatter of dishes being cleared and the quiet hiss of the gas lamps and the quick scratchings of Wells’ pencil upon his notepad, Maddoc spoke to his once-welcome dinner guests:

“I told some of you last Thursday of the principles of the Time Machine, demonstrated my model, and even showed you the actual thing itself in my workshop.  After I finished remaking one of the nickel bars and regrinding a crystal lever, the first Time Machine began its first journey into the future, piloted by myself.  Here, then, is what happened…”

Then, for all their sakes, he lied.