Shadows over Baker Street

The Curious Case of Miss Violet Stone

POPPY Z. BRITE AND DAVID FERGUSON

I came down to breakfast one morning and found Sherlock Holmes still in his dressing gown, contemplating a note written in a large, straggling hand. He waited for me to pour my first cup of coffee, then passed the note across the table to me.

Mr. Holmes:

Please, sir, may I come and see you. I fear for the life of my dear sister. I will come after luncheon today. Please, Mr. Holmes, I do not know where else to turn.

Thomas Stone

“What do you make of it, Watson?” he asked when I had had time to peruse the childish scrawl.

“Not much. I suppose you already know all about him, though.”

“No more than appears in the note,” Holmes said, though I was well aware that even such a short note might speak volumes to his practiced eye. “A fact or two, nothing more. Let us wait and see what the man himself has to say.”

The morning had dawned clear and mild, but by midday a loathsome yellow fog rolled through Baker Street, pressing like a greasy face against the windows and filling our cozy rooms with a damp chill. Holmes was stoking the fire when the bell rang and Mr. Thomas Stone was shown in.

I could not determine his age at once, for he was a young man who seemed somehow old. His features did not appear particularly aged—in fact, he was fair-haired and handsome, with dark determined eyes and a set to his jaw that suggested a tendency toward stubbornness. His shoulders were broad, but something in his posture and bearing made me think at first glance that he might almost be a pensioner. Then I looked again and determined that he could not be more than twenty-five. The cuffs of his trousers were dark with some grime heavier than that of the London streets.

“Thank you kindly for letting me come on such short notice,” he said as he shook our hands.

“I have no doubt that it was necessary,” Holmes said. “Watson, permit me to introduce you to Thomas Stone, apprentice cook at the Grand Hotel.”

“The two of you have already met, then?” I asked, but one glance at our guest’s astounded face told me that it was not so.

“I never laid eyes on the gentleman until this very moment. But I suspected he was in the restaurant business when I read the note, and I knew I was correct the moment he came in.”

“I can’t imagine how you knew it, sir,” said the awed young man.

“You used the word luncheon in your note. Most people would say midday, unless they had reason to measure out the day in meals. As well, the note was written on a scrap of invoice from a Dover fish merchant. On the reverse of the paper I found the letters TEL and the word sole. What sort of establishment would receive such an invoice? The restaurant in a fine hotel. I heard no cab outdoors before you entered, and there is no mud on your shoes, so I deduced that you came from nearby. The Grand’s restaurant is the only one in the area fine enough to serve Dover sole.”

“But surely he might have come from somewhere other than his workplace!” I ejaculated.

“Observe the stains on his trouser cuffs, Watson. Traces of grime from the kitchen, and a fragment of fresh parsley there in his boot lace. As for his position, observe the heavy callus on the second joint of his right forefinger. That sort of callus comes from a long acquaintance with a knife, though perhaps not quite long enough to become the head chef. And his eyes lack the chef’s tyrannical gleam. No, he must be the apprentice. If I am wrong, I shall cook supper for him with my own two hands. Am I wrong, Mr. Stone? For the sake of your digestion, I hope I am not.”

“Not at all, sir. I been apprentice cook at the Grand for two years under Chef John Sutcliffe. But that’s not why I come.”

“No,” I recalled, “your note said you feared for your sister’s life. Whatever is wrong with the girl?”

“Ah, my poor Violet,” Stone began. But he got no further, for Holmes shot out of his chair and snatched up a newspaper from the table. “Your sister is Violet Stone?” Holmes demanded.

“Who on earth is Violet Stone?” I said.

“Forgive me, Watson. I forget that you read no part of the dailies save the financial news. You might do well to take a closer interest in the doings of your fellow citizens!”

I began to sputter, for Holmes had always spoken contemptuously of human-interest stories, claiming the minutiae of people’s lives were inconsequential unless he could study them with his own keen eyes. Holmes handed me the newspaper, pointing out a story, and I subsided as I scanned the headlines.

GIRL HAS EATEN NOTHING FOR THREE YEARS

Mother tells reporter, “She subsists on air and faith”

AN ANOMALY OF NATURE

PHYSICIANS SAY “PREPOSTEROUS!”

BUT CAN FIND NO EVIDENCE OF IMBIBITION

I read the accompanying feature and learned that Miss Violet Stone of 10 Percy Lane, Highgate, had become ill three years before on holiday in Greece. She had swum in an island pond and taken a chill, after which her family reported she was never the same. Gradually she ate less and less until she could be made to swallow nothing; she would retch and choke when food was pressed upon her, and reject whatever was forced down her throat. Recently a charwoman had left the family’s employ and reported the strange case to the newspapers.

“I agree with my colleague, whoever he may be,” I said. “The story is preposterous. If Miss Stone had truly stopped eating and drinking, she would have expired after thirty or forty days at the outside. You see, the human body is like that fire there.” I pointed at the grate, where a few logs were blazing merrily. “It burns because it has fuel. Take away the logs and you have no more fire.”

“A pretty analogy,” said Holmes, “but the fire is also fed by oxygen. Smother it and you will extinguish it. Yet you cannot see the oxygen, and if you were not a learned man, you would have no evidence that oxygen existed at all.”

“Are you suggesting that Miss Stone subsists on something unknown to science?”

“Not at all,” said Holmes, who had begun to pare his nails with a Malay kris. “I was merely pointing out a flaw in your analogy.”

“If you please, sirs,” said Stone timidly. Holmes and I looked at him, surprised; we had become so interested in the tale of his sister that I believe we had both half forgotten he was there.

“Forgive us,” said Holmes. “We are a pair of old pedants, nothing more. Because your family name is a common one, I failed to connect your note with the newspaper article until you told us your sister’s Christian name was Violet. Pray go on.”

“Well, it is true that she never eats, at least not that I can tell. My hours at the Grand are long and I only see my family in the early mornings, and sometimes if Chef gives me a day off. But neither she nor Mother has ever told a falsehood that I know of. And why would she lie? Why would she suffer deliberately?”

“Is she suffering, then?” Holmes asked.

“Her body is thin and twisted, but she claims no hunger. She says she takes her sustenance from other realms and needs no food on this earth. That’s a bit of a blow to me, as you might imagine—I used to cook little things for her when she first became ill. Custards and the like. Now she says swallowing one of my custards would be as painful as swallowing hot coals.”

“Indeed! And she has been so ever since taking a swim on holiday?”

“Oh, yes, sir. Three years ago our great-aunt died and left some money to our mother. Our father’s been dead since I was small, you see, and he left us comfortable, but there was never any money for extras. My mother had always wanted to stand among Grecian ruins and feel the ancient wind blowing through her hair—that was how she put it, like. She’s got a bit of a poetic soul. I couldn’t leave the kitchen, but I insisted she and Violet use the money for a holiday.

“They were picnicking on the isle of Knoxos one day when Violet saw a clear pond and went for a swim. She wasn’t usually the swimming sort, but Mother says she saw something glimmering on the bottom and wanted to dive for it—thought it might be a coin of antiquity or some such. It was nothing, Violet said, only a trick of the sunlight on the water—but that night she took ill, and they had to sail for home a fortnight earlier than they’d intended. Mother thought she would improve once they reached London, but she took to her bed and hasn’t got up since.”

“What are her symptoms?”

“While still on Knoxos, she suffered amnesia—though it was almost as though she tried to hide it. She pretended to know Mother, but could not answer the simplest questions about our lives back in London. When she returned I could see she didn’t know me either. I sat with her whenever I had a moment, telling her tales of our childhood, often reading to her. She dotes on being read to. It’s queer, though—before the accident she used to enjoy newspapers and modern novels. Now she prefers tomes I scarcely understand the like of, myself. Not long ago she asked me to bring her something called the Necronomicon, but I’ve not been able to find it in any of the high-street bookshops.”

“The Necronomicon!” Holmes murmured. “What could a young English lady want with that moldy bit of occult trash?”

“Many nights she stays up scribbling in a little book. It is one of the few tasks she can still make herself do. She’s recovered from her amnesia, or at any rate she knows us, even if she had to relearn everything like a newborn babe. But she never recovered from her physical illness. First her body burned with fever. She would rave and screech in a tongue no one could understand. I don’t mind telling you the sound of it gave me a nasty turn, and it nearly shattered my poor mother’s nerves altogether.

“When the fever finally passed, Violet’s limbs began to wither and draw up like those of an old woman. Finally she stopped eating or drinking altogether, and we thought she would leave us then, but she lives yet. Sometimes she says she wishes to die, yet she still has this thirst for knowledge.”

Holmes had perched on the edge of his chair listening to Stone’s tale. Now he stood and reached for his hat. “Well, Watson, there’s nothing else for it—we must see Miss Violet Stone.”

Knowing there would be no rest for myself, Holmes, or the unfortunate Mr. Stone until we had, I donned my greatcoat and followed Holmes and the younger man out to the street. A cab was summoned and our trio rode over London’s slick gray cobbles into the dim afternoon.

Holmes produced from his waistcoat his faithful pipe and a pouch of tobacco. Meditatively tamping the bowl and gazing out the window of the carriage, he queried, “Pray, Mr. Stone, is there anything further you can tell us about your sister’s condition? Watson is quite a fine physician. Perhaps he can glean something from your description.”

The courteous lad inclined his head to me before saying, “I hardly know where to begin, sir.”

“I should say that of all places, the beginning would be the best place to begin. Wouldn’t you agree, Watson? Tell us what you observed of her initial symptoms, and of the amnesia that afflicted your poor sister.”

Puffing small plumes of blue smoke, Holmes leaned back against the cushions. His eyelids drooped, as they tended to do when he was listening to something with his peculiar powers of attention. When Holmes’s senses were most alive, his narrow frame always gave an impression of deep lassitude. Many a careless liar had allowed himself to be tripped up by the seeming inattention of this posture.

Young Stone, however, hardly seemed the sort who would have any reason to lie to us. His solemn face clouded as he cast his mind back to the time three years before. “It was like our Violet was gone altogether, sir,” he said. “Her voice was musical before, and her laugh like a bird singing. She was full of life, and when she talked, she would always move her hands, like. It was as if she was drawing pictures in the air of what she was telling you. When the awful fever finally passed and she could speak again without raving, all the light in her was gone out.”

The young man paused to take a deep breath and wipe at his eyes, stubbornly blinking at tears. Clearly, he was deeply affected by the tragic change wrought in his sister. Although he had years since reached his majority, for a moment the exhausted young cook before us was gone and we saw an overtired little boy struggling to keep his feelings in check.

“She’s different now. She never laughs. Her voice is flat, no spark anymore. Honestly, sir, it’s like she’s a different girl.” He sighed heavily and wiped at his eyes again. “And I fear that she’ll pass away anytime. How can she not eat, sir? How can she not eat and stay alive?”

“I hope to discern that, young man,” replied Holmes.

The cab had entered the sleepy terraces of Highgate and pulled up to the address Stone had provided. To all externals, the house was normal enough, another tall narrow building among many, each with its own gate and patch of yard. But Stone’s despair had communicated itself to me sufficiently that I could not look upon the Stones’ house with an objective eye: its half-shrouded windows became drooping eyes, its sooty walls the dull complexion of the sickbed.

Fog pressed moist fat lips to our faces as Stone led us up to the door. We were greeted by an emerald-eyed young maid who accepted our coats. “I’ll go tell the mistress you’re in, Mr. Stone,” she said, a mild Irish burr in her voice.

All was as the young man had described. The Stones appeared to be comfortable, but not among London’s elegant upper tiers of families. The house was decorated comfortably, but the occasional carpet edge was frayed, and the drawing-room chairs gave testament to many hours of use.

“Tom, who are these gentlemen?” said a voice from the hallway, and thusly we made the acquaintance of Mrs. Stone, a matronly widow swathed in a dress of figured bombazine. Her face was kind but careworn, and faint purplish smudges around her eyes spoke of anxious hours and lost sleep.

“This is Sherlock Holmes, Mum,” said Thomas. “And Dr. Watson is a physician.”

“Ah, yes,” replied Mrs. Stone. “I have read your names in the Times. It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance. I will have Anna bring us some tea, or perhaps a bit of claret?”

“Mum,” said Stone, “I’ve brought them to see Violet. Mr. Holmes is quite learned, as you might know.”

At the mention of her daughter’s name, Mrs. Stone’s shoulders fell as if a great weight had fallen on them. “Oh, my poor Violet,” she said, “I know not how she continues to draw breath in this world.”

“Is it true, madam, that she has taken no food or drink in three years?” Holmes inquired.

“Yes, sir, it is quite true. She has wasted away to almost nothing, and yet she continues to thrive, after a fashion. We have done everything we can to keep her comfortable, but as Tom must have told you, she hardly seems the same girl at all.”

“Well, then, claret will have to wait,” Holmes said. “If it is not too much trouble, may we see her at once?”

“The present moment is as good as any other,” said the weary mother, “for she is at all hours much the same. She hardly seems to sleep. Her eyes never close. There are times when she speaks less and goes entirely still in the bed, her breathing the only sign of life, but we have never known her to sleep as others do since all this began.”

We were led up the stairs and to a narrow hall where three doors led, doubtless, to the respective bedchambers of the Stone family. A faint redolence of jasmine hovered in the hall, a sachet perhaps.

Mrs. Stone turned to the leftmost door and silently opened it. The lamps in the bedchamber were turned low, and the murky dimness of the afternoon reached through the windows and sank the corners in gloom. When first I observed the maid kneeling at the foot of the bed, I thought she was performing some service for the bedridden girl. It was only upon closer inspection that I discerned the Catholic rosary beads dangling from the maid’s clasped hands.

“Anna!” barked Mrs. Stone. “How could you?”

The poor maid clutched the beads to her bosom, and it was then that I noticed her cheeks were streaked with tears.

“B-but, ma’am,” she protested, “surely ’tis a miracle! She is a saint!”

“I have told you before, Anna,” said Mrs. Stone, storm clouds collecting on her brow, “we’ll have none of that Papist claptrap in this house! Captain Stone was a Protestant like myself, and that is how I have raised our children!”

“Please, Mum,” interrupted young Mr. Stone. “Our guests . . .”

“Indeed,” replied the widow, regaining her composure. “Anna, wait for me downstairs. These gentlemen are here to see Violet.”

“Yes, ma’am,” replied the frightened maid, who then hurriedly left the room.

It was then that we beheld the stricken girl for the first time. Drawing aside one of the hangings around the narrow bed, the mother gestured us forward.

“Here she is,” said the mother, “my poor dear.”

The girl, perhaps seventeen, huddled in an implausibly small bundle beneath the coverlet. Her arms were mere sticks, her fingers small twigs scratching weakly at her lace-trimmed pillow. Her face may at one time have been quite comely, but the visage now was sunken, cheeks drawn in, complexion the pearly blue white of the recently departed. If I am to be wholly honest, she looked like something I would have expected to see on a mortuary table, not in a shabbily genteel Highgate bedchamber. Only the blazing eyes set in that livid face gave any indication of life.

“Mother?” she said softly, her voice barely more than a rasp.

“Yes, dear, and Tom is here early today. He has brought a doctor and another friend.” With one hand, Mrs. Stone urged us to come closer.

“Another doctor?” the wraithlike girl asked in a tone of resignation. Over time, she had doubtless come to associate the visits of physicians with gropings of her fragile limbs, tests of the blood, and other discomforts.

“Miss Stone,” said Holmes, bowing to the girl, “I am Sherlock Holmes. This is my—”

But before Holmes could finish his introductions, the girl lunged forward in the bed and seized Holmes’s right arm by the wrist. “You!” she cried, her bright eyes burning with that eerie, maniacal fire. Her tiny hand was withered almost to a claw, but her grip on my friend’s arm must have been preternaturally strong, for Holmes did not pull away. Never had I known him to bear unexpected physical touch with anything like equanimity. However, in this instance, he stood quite still, nor did he speak or betray any emotion whatsoever.

“You can help me,” gasped the girl. “Yes, you. You have the necessary mental capacities.”

“What’s this?” I demanded, edging forward even as both the Stones took involuntary steps back from the suddenly animated girl.

“I have come here by mistake. It has all gone quite badly. We are new to this science of replacement. I am trapped here in the body of this girl child and I must return. There have been errors in the process. We are imperfectly joined.” The girl seemed quite out of her mind.

“I see,” said Holmes, his face a curious blank mask.

“You have access to a lens grinder? A metallurgist? Perhaps the shop of a machinist?” The girl’s pale eyes were desperate. All the life essence in her form seemed concentrated in those eyes. Her skin, hair, even the grayish bedclothes pooling at her waist seemed drained of any spark or color, but her eyes were as bright as those of the unfortunate lunatics I had been called upon to treat in London’s sanatoriums.

“Yes, all of those,” Holmes replied, still oddly blank of aspect and strangely passive before this wild-eyed wraith of a girl.

“You must help me,” the girl reiterated. “Tom?”

“Yes, Violet?” answered Stone after a pause, still recovering from the shock of his sister’s sudden animation.

“Where is my book of notes?” she asked him.

From a chest by the bed, Stone withdrew a small flowered notebook of the kind young English ladies are encouraged to keep as diaries. “It is here, sister,” he said, laying it beside her on the coverlet.

Releasing Holmes’s wrist, she pressed it into his large, dexterous hands. “All of the instructions are here,” she told him. “Follow them to the letter. Please do not fail me, Mr. Holmes!”

“Yes, Miss Stone,” said the still curiously passive Holmes. “I will endeavor to do my best.” And with that, he tucked the diary into his waistcoat and left the bedside without another word. I remained there with the equally startled Stones. Violet Stone settled back against the bedclothes and let her eyes drift shut.

After explaining to the Stones that surely my friend had excellent reasons for his abrupt departure from the room, I conducted a brief physical examination of Miss Stone. Failing to detect any immediate threat to her life, I followed the Stones back downstairs to the drawing room.

We found the detective’s lanky form folded into a chair, his long nose buried in the girl’s diary. “Fascinating,” he muttered, fishing a cigarette from his pocket and lighting it with a wooden match. “Utterly amazing.”

“What is it, Holmes?” I asked him, as anxious as the Stones for some explanation.

“Ah!” said Holmes, arising from the chair and closing the little book with a snap. “Mr. Stone, madam, we shall return in a few days’ time, when I hope we shall set things to rights.”

And saying little more, we retrieved our coats and made our way back out to the waiting hansom.

On the return trip to Baker Street, Holmes continued to peruse the young girl’s diary. I wondered what on earth could command such rapt attention from my friend, but many years of Holmes’s caprices and occasional erratic behavior had taught me to wait, for he would answer no questions but in their hour.

Burning with curiosity, however, I did contrive to steal a look at the pages. I do not know what I expected, but what met my questioning eyes was a complete shock. Rather than pages of a schoolgirl’s neat hand, the diary seemed full of highly technical drawings and schemata. While most of the letters and symbols I glimpsed were familiar, there were several lines of a flowing script that vaguely resembled Arabic, and on one page a shape that appeared to twist itself into eldritch configurations before my very eyes. If I were a superstitious man, I suspect the sight of that shape would have made me seize the book and hurl it out of the cab. Instead I averted my gaze until Holmes turned the page.

Finally, I could bear it no longer. “What has she written there, Holmes?”

“Instructions, Watson,” Holmes answered vaguely, and it was then I noted the queer expression in his eyes. It was as if he were not entirely there with me in the coach. He looked vastly preoccupied, as if even as he spoke, the wheels of his mind were already turning and he was buried in some faraway set of problems and calculations. “Miss Violet Stone has provided me with a very detailed list of instructions.”

Upon our arrival back to our rooms, Holmes prepared himself an especially large dose of cocaine. As he rolled up his sleeve, he said to me, “I shall be spending a great deal of the next few days in private, in my study. Pray do not interrupt me except in the direst emergency.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” I said as he carefully found a site for the injection and released the cocaine into his bloodstream. “But I have never known you to take cocaine at a time like this, Holmes.”

“Ahhhhhhhhhh . . .” he sighed. Instantly his head lolled on his shoulders as the powerful drug coursed through him. “Normally cocaine sends me to a drowsy land of dissociated dreams.” He chuckled softly. “But today’s events have left me believing that I may be lost in one of those dreams and only dreaming that I am awake and aware.”

With infinite care, he extracted the gleaming hypodermic syringe from his arm. After a moment of reverie, he leaped from his chair and began to pace the room. “Watson, I am going to tell you this now. The drug has loosened my tongue, but we shall never refer to it again, because I fear I would feel a fool.”

I waited silently in my chair by the fire. Rarely have I seen my dear friend in the throes of the drug, and certainly not at such a copious dosage. His eyes were as fever bright as those of Violet Stone. His stately forehead gleamed with a sheen of sweat, and a vein pulsed ominously at his temple. He hastily poured himself a whiskey from the sideboard and, seizing a poker, began to jab savagely at the fire.

“Watson, what is the earliest record of a sentient race on this planet?”

“The Sumerians, I believe, from approximately 4000 B.C.”

“What if I told you that this was a gross instance of humanity’s shortsightedness? That a much wiser race preceded us?”

“I would ask you what evidence you have to support this claim.”

“Ah, dear Watson, ever the pragmatic scientist.” He downed the whiskey in two neat swallows and returned to the sideboard for another. “Cigarette?” he asked me, proffering the gilt box. I stated that at this hour I would prefer a cigar, with which he gladly provided me.

“Watson, my old friend, something singular occurred in that house today. When young Miss Stone seized my wrist, it was as if, as if . . .” He downed the second whiskey and took a chair in order to prepare his syringe for a second injection.

“Please, Holmes,” I said. “As a gentleman, I would never presume to tamper with your pleasures. But as a physician, I feel obliged to inform you that a second dose of cocaine at that volume could seriously—”

“Doctor,” he interrupted, “I do appreciate your concern.” But he continued nonetheless. When he had finished his preparations, he glanced up at me. “I wish I could even begin to convey what I experienced at that moment by the bedside,” he said.

Sliding the needle in and driving the plunger home, he groaned aloud at the waves of pleasure that assailed him. Then he began to laugh a giddy madman’s laugh. Seconds later, a stillness came over him. The drug was accelerating his moods, or perhaps just jangling them into an inchoate frenzy.

He lit another cigarette, clearly having forgotten the one he had left smoldering in the mantel ashtray. “If I attempt to explain it, you must give me your word we shall never speak of the matter again.”

I freely gave it, and waited.

“Watson, a race of sentient beings inhabited this planet millennia before humans arrived. And as preposterous as it may seem, they have discovered the means of moving their souls backward and forward through time.”

“Good Lord, Holmes! What on earth are you suggesting?”

Holmes held up a patient, silencing hand. He drew hard on his cigarette before continuing. “At a single touch of her hand, she was able to communicate this to me. She has confided to no one else, but the consciousness inhabiting the body of Miss Violet Stone is in truth a traveler from this time before man, come to gather the information and lore of our age.”

I was mute, stupefied. And yet Holmes, in spite of his mischievous nature, had never once told me anything other than the truth of his perceptions. During the whole of our acquaintance he had never deceived me, misled me, or informed me of anything with any other principle at heart other than my own enlightenment. As discordant a note as it struck in my own rational nature, I had no choice other than to believe that this was the truth.

“This race refer to themselves as the Great Ones. Though you might not recognize them as sentient beings, were you to lay eyes on one—they are rather like enormous limpets as far as I can gather—they possess a body of knowledge unrivaled by anything in our history. Alexandria was but a village lending library by comparison.

“They require a living host, and the consciousness of the person they inhabit is in turn spirited back to their own time, between the ending of the Mesozoic and the beginning of the Palaeolithic period. This traveler inside Miss Stone is inexperienced, and something has gone dreadfully wrong in the process. Miss Stone’s body has rebelled. She will not take sustenance, and as a result is too weak to move. The traveler has kept her alive as best it can, but in order to reverse the process, a special device is required. And that, Watson, is what these instructions are for.”

He sat upright in his chair, cigarette in hand, face gleaming.

I have known madmen, treated them, done what I could to help with their sufferings. A person off the street might at that moment have looked upon the countenance of Sherlock Holmes and declared him mad, irrevocably insane. And yet through our years of acquaintance I had learned that what might look like one thing in the mien and deportment of a normal personage, on Holmes tended to indicate the exact opposite.

“I shall be very busy for the next few days. Send away any callers. I am not to be disturbed. We must hope I shall find myself equal to the task before me.” He rose, ascended the stairs, and shut his study doors with a bang.

True to his word, Holmes remained sequestered for three days. Meals sent up to him were largely ignored. Requests came for cups of tea and coffee and pitchers of water for drinking, and on three occasions, Holmes abruptly quit Baker Street, twice in the first day and once again late at night on the second. He returned with oddly shaped parcels, greeted no one, and again disappeared into the study.

Finally, on the morning of the third day, he emerged, somewhat wild-eyed and with an air of disorder about him. I was just waking, and through eyes still slightly bleary from sleep, I watched as he blithely tossed Violet Stone’s notebook onto the fire crackling in the grate.

“Great Scott, Holmes!” I said, returning my coffee cup to its saucer. “What are you doing?”

“It is finished, Watson. The instructions were to be destroyed when the task is complete.” He settled into a chair opposite me.

“The device is finished? What the devil does it do?”

“Were I to explain it to you, Watson, you would think I had utterly taken leave of my senses. I scarcely understand it myself.” He stretched and yawned like a great cat. “We shall pay a visit to the Stones before the morning is out. And after that, I shall greatly enjoy myself resting. This has been most taxing indeed.”

A message was sent to the Stone house to expect us within the hour. At the appointed time, Holmes emerged from his rooms every bit as fresh and crisp as if he had just returned from a seaside holiday. A queerly shaped bundle draped in black cloth was tucked beneath his arm.

I was barely able to restrain my curiosity about this bundle. What bizarre machine could help to alleviate the suffering of Miss Violet Stone? What could be the actual cause of this suffering? Could it truly be as Holmes had explained? As a medical doctor, I had seen nothing in my own patients that seemed to fit the history of the case. As I had done so many times before, I wordlessly followed Holmes out to a cab in the gray London morning and trusted that all would be revealed to me in time.

We found Mrs. Stone sitting anxiously in her front room, twisting a sodden handkerchief between her white-knuckled fists. “Good morning, gentlemen,” she greeted us. “Tom should be along shortly. He sent word that he would come when the chef permits him.” She quickly tucked the handkerchief away, and again I caught a faint whiff of jasmine as I leaned down to clasp her hand.

“Ah, good,” said Holmes, taking a seat and setting the draped bundle next to his feet. “I hope this morning’s events will bring the business to a satisfactory conclusion.”

“Mr. Holmes, it is so strange,” said Mrs. Stone.

“What is that, madam?” asked Holmes, raising a quizzical eyebrow.

“This morning, when I went in to see her, Violet told me that you would return before noon today. She asked Tom to put off going to work, but he went anyway. How could she have known the hour of your visit before I knew it myself?”

But before Holmes could venture to answer the lady, Mr. Thomas Stone bustled in. “I came as fast as I could,” he said breathlessly.

“Ah, good,” said Holmes, rising. “Now that we are all present, I will require a moment or two alone with Miss Stone. May I show myself up to her room?”

Mrs. Stone and Thomas exchanged a baffled look, but gave no protest as Holmes once again tucked the mysterious (but apparently quite heavy) machine under his arm and made his way up the stairs. I endeavored to make polite conversation with the Stones in his absence, but anxiety pinched their features and I was considerably preoccupied with my own bafflement. Our conversation proceeded only in fits and starts as a quarter of an hour passed, then twenty-five minutes.

At last, just as my watch declared that Holmes had been gone for the better part of an hour, his voice summoned us from the top of the stairs. The Stones and I rose with one motion, and were I not a gentleman, I would attest that Mrs. Stone sharply elbowed me out of the way at the bottom of the stairs.

We found Holmes grinning to himself at the bedside of Miss Stone. The lamps in the room were turned up bright and the fire had been stoked in the grate. The chest by the bed had been moved, and I noted briefly that its surface looked to have been recently marred and scratched by the weight of some heavy, sharp-edged object. But such thoughts were driven from my mind only to be puzzled over in later days, for when my eyes bore witness to the transformed girl on the bed, I could think of nothing else.

“Mummy! Tom!” she cried. “I had the strangest dream! I was swimming in a pool on the isle of Knoxos. And then I woke up here! I must be so excited about going on holiday that I’m dreaming of it in advance.” And then she laughed, a merry bell-like laugh every bit as musical as Thomas had described to us in the hansom cab. Though still terrifyingly gaunt, Violet Stone appeared a wholly different person. Light danced in her eyes. It was a warm light, though, entirely unlike the hideous gleam of three days before. And just as Mr. Stone had said, her restless hands carved graceful gestures from the air as she spoke.

“Violet?” queried Mrs. Stone, and then rushing to her daughter with a mother’s instinct, she cried, “Dear, dear Violet!” She threw her arms about the girl and burst into a violent fit of weeping.

“Mummy, what is it?” the girl asked anxiously. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing is wrong, Violet,” said Holmes, patting the lady on her shoulder. “Absolutely nothing is wrong.”

Moments later, when the smiling girl announced that she was hungry, absolutely dying for one of her brother’s delicious custards, we knew it was time to withdraw. Holmes slumped in the leather seat of the cab back to our rooms, exhausted. I noticed that the mysterious device he had brought on our journey was now missing, as was the black cloth he had draped it in. When I remarked on this, Holmes looked at me as if I were thoroughly out of my mind and said nothing.

I felt so full of questions as we ascended the stairs at Baker Street that my head seemed about to burst, but it was apparent that my old friend was in no way disposed to explain. He cordially bid me good morning and disappeared into his room without another word.

I spent many hours of the following days struggling in vain to come up with some sort of explanation for the whole business. When a grateful letter arrived containing a generous check and the heartfelt thanks of the Stone family, I endeavored to pry some sort of explanation from the closed lips of my friend, only to be wordlessly repelled once again.

To this day, I have never been able to explain the case to myself, and true to our agreement, no further attempts to explain it to me have been forthcoming. I must, as a last recourse, trust in the account given to me by Holmes. As much as this record may stray beyond the bounds of credulity, such is the sum and the entirety of what I know of the curious case of Miss Violet Stone.