Sherlock Holmes and the Affair in Transylvania , livre ebook

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102 pages

English

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Sherlock Holmes and Doctor John Watson are returning to London from Bucharest after the great detective has interceded in a delicate matter relating to the Rumanian Royal House. As they depart from Bucharest they receive their mail forwarded from London. Doctor Watson opens a distressing letter from his niece, Mina, now living in Budapest with her young husband, Janos, a newly qualified lawyer. It seems that the young man has not returned from a business assignment in Transylvania.Holmes advises that he and Watson should postpone their return to Baker Street. Watson wires ahead and they are met at the station by Mina and her friend, Lucy Westenra. Holmes is duly intrigued by their stay overnight at the home of Dr Westenra in the grounds of the asylum of which Dr Westenra is the Administrator.Holmes suspects that letters from the young lawyer may have been forged, or written under duress. Next day they set off for Castle Dracula.

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Thriller

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Publié par	Andrews UK
Date de parution	07 octobre 2011
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781780920375
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0374€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Title Page

SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE AFFAIR IN TRANSYLVANIA

by
Gerry O’Hara

Illustrations by P M Rose

Based upon the Vampire Tales of Arthur Conan Doyle, Bram Stoker and J.S. Le Fanu

Publisher Information

Published in the UK by MX Publishing Limited,
335 Princess Park Manor, Royal Drive,
London, N11 3GX.
www.mxpublishing.com

Digital Edition converted and distributed in 2011 by
Andrews UK Limited
www.andrewsuk.com

© Copyright 2011 Gerry O’Hara

The right of Gerry O’Hara to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998.

All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without express prior written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted except with express prior written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended). Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damage.

All characters in this work are fictitious. The opinions expressed herein are those of the author and not those of or MX Publishing Limited.

Cover design by www.staunch.com from illustrations by P M Rose

Dedication

This book and artwork is dedicated to Kate

Chapter One

I sometimes wonder if I was ill-advised to disclose, in my recounting of The Problem of Thor Bridge, that in the vaults of my bankers, Messrs Cox & Co., at Charing Cross, there is a travel-worn and battered tin dispatch box with my name, John H. Watson, MD., Late Indian Army, painted upon the lid, crammed with papers, nearly all of which are records of cases to illustrate the curious problems which Mr Sherlock Holmes had at various times to examine. Some, and not the least interesting, were complete failures, and as such will hardly bear narrating, since no final explanation is forthcoming.
Among these unfinished tales is that of Mr James Phillimore, who, stepping back into his own house to get his umbrella, was never more seen in this world.
A second case worthy of note is that of lsadore Persano, the well-known journalist and duellist, who was found stark staring mad with a matchbox in front of him which contained a remarkable worm, said to be unknown to science.
No less remarkable is the case of the cutter, ALICIA, which sailed one spring morning into a small patch of mist from which it never emerged, nor was anything further ever heard of herself and her crew.
It is the strange matter of THE ALICIA which brings to mind the awful, utterly grotesque encounter which I feel solemnly bound to record on these pages, with, of course, the caveat - agreed with my friend and colleague, Sherlock Holmes - that publication shall be withheld until at least fifty years after our demise, whichever shall survive the other.
It is the appalling story of our pursuit of Count Dracula, he of The Undead, Nosferatu. He, too, had the mysterious ability to bring down the mists to cover his heinous activities.
My friend Holmes was apt to describe Professor Moriarty as “The Napoleon of Crime”; of Count Dracula one must say that here was a being so fiendish, so brutally evil as to make Moriarty, arch criminal that he was, of little consequence.
Our involvement began innocently enough. Holmes, at the behest of HMG, had consented to journey to Bucharest to investigate a matter of the utmost delicacy concerning a minor member of the Romanian Royal Family, whose foolishness was causing considerable embarrassment to His Royal Highness King Carol.
As with some of those copious files I have already referred to, the matter is not worthy of report, nor would the airing of such a scandal be appropriate.
His Majesty was deeply grateful for Holmes’s incisive handling of the matter and we were both - I as his Boswell, as it were - feted and honoured in the most inappropriate manner. Holmes received The Star and Sash of The Order of St Ignacious and I received the somewhat lesser honour of member of the Order of Istvan The Good. His Majesty graciously invited us to vacation in his beautiful country, offering the use of his hunting lodge in the forest of Bostrut, but my colleague yearned for the real world of 221B, Baker Street and we duly declined.
We elected to take the train to Budapest en route for Calais. His Majesty wished us Godspeed.
Our departure was typical of the extraordinary hospitality of our royal host. A red carpet lay before us as we arrived at the station, accompanied by The King’s Ambassador and entourage. A military band, resplendent in gold-piped uniforms, played a most moving rendition of our national anthem. Young women in folk costume overwhelmed us with bouquets of flowers. Holmes did his best not to appear discomfited by all the fuss.

It was moments before departure when a courier, red-faced and breathless, handed Holmes a sheaf of letters and telegrams which had evidently been expressly forwarded to us.
Settled into our reserved compartment for the long journey to Budapest, Holmes went about the business of sorting the mail. Pausing to light his pipe he brusquely produced an envelope addressed to myself. I must say I accepted it with some surprise.
“Good Lord,” I remarked, “who on earth could have known I was here?”
Holmes glanced at the envelope again.
“Well now,” he murmured, “the envelope is pleasantly scented, the hand-writing is clearly feminine and is surely the product of a good English girls school. It is post-marked Budapest and I do seem to recall that your niece has lately married and settled in that city.”
With that he returned to his own correspondence. I tore open the envelope and quickly sought the signature. It was indeed from my delightful young niece, Mina, newly wed and settled in Hungary with her husband, Janos Svbado, an enterprising and lately graduated lawyer.
The opening paragraph of the letter observed the usual obligations of filial courtesies but then descended into a somewhat alarming narrative.
I must have uttered a string of “Oh Lor’s” and “I’ll be blessed’s” because I became aware of an astringent Holmes, pipe in hand, inquiring acidly:
“Just what are you blessed about, may I ask?”
“Two things,” I replied. “You were perfectly correct, the letter is from my niece, Mina, though I’m blessed how she knew my whereabouts, Secondly, her husband, young Janos, seems to have disappeared on a journey to Transylvania.”
Holmes sighed and pulled on his pipe for a moment.
“The first point,” he said, “is hardly surprising, since the Bucharest correspondent of The Times filed regularly on the matter of our visit and, doubtless, the leading journals in other capitals copied his despatches. I expect your niece, homesick as she may be, followed the reports with interest.”
I acknowledged the sense of this.
“On the second point,” he went on, “I believe Transylvania is situated in a horseshoe of The Carpathians renowned for its wilderness. Indeed I have read that the area is said to have every known superstition in the world gathered there as if it were the centre of some imaginative whirlpool. One must hope that he had not been devoured by wolves.”
With that somewhat cynical jest he gave the briefest of smiles and returned to his correspondence.
I continued to concern myself with my niece’s letter and certainly intended to get in touch with her when we arrived at Budapest. My friend made no more mention of the matter and I was agreeably surprised when, as the train was drawing in to Vidin, he suggested I should wire Mina to arrange rooms for us as, no doubt, I would wish to offer her comfort in her time of anxiety.
Mina was there to meet us at the station. She looked a little pale but every bit as handsome as I remembered her. With her on the platform was a young lady of quite extraordinary loveliness whom she introduced as Janos’s cousin, Lucy Westenra. Mina told us that she was staying with Lucy while Janos was away in Transylvania. I noticed that the very mention of his absence brought tears to her eyes but she rallied quickly and led the way to a waiting carriage. Holmes was taken with the vastness of the station, one of the largest in Europe and of great credit to the Empire.
We learned to our surprise that we too were to stay at the house of Lucy’s father, Dr Josef Westenra. Holmes derived some amusement from the knowledge that Dr Westenra was the director of a lunatic asylum and that the house we were to stay in was just outside the grounds of the asylum.
The setting was quite remarkable, high on a hill overlooking Old Buda with a ruined abbey nearby, a most noble ruin with, of course, a legend attached.
It seemed that a white lady would appear at certain time at one of the windows.
An old graveyard full of tombstones lay below the house, giving splendid views of The Danube winding its way between the halves of the city, Buda and Pesht. The descent was quite steep in parts. Some of the lichen-covered gravestones had toppled over or collapsed into the graves.
Our host, Dr Westenra, had left that day to attend a conference in Vienna but he had given instructions that we were to be his guests and that he dearly hoped we would stay on until his return as he looked forward to making the acquaintance of Holmes and myself.
After a pleasant supper at which the serving girls bobbed prettily and endlessly as they