Sherlock Holmes - The Stuff of Nightmares Read Online Free Page A

am just not in the mood for such footling diversions today. Pray enlighten me about this ‘other phenomenon’ that you rank above the continued wellbeing of Britain and its imperial dependencies – even though I have a suspicion I already know what it is.”
    “Baron Cauchemar,” said Holmes.
    “Ha-ha!” His brother slapped his meaty hands together. “Yes. I thought as much. Once again your predilection for the bizarre and outré shows itself. Not for Sherlock Holmes something so mundane as a hunt for terrorists. Oh no. He would rather pursue a phantom, a will-o’-the-wisp, a fictitious figure to whose existence only the worst kind of sensationalist journalism gives credence.”
    “Reports of Baron Cauchemar’s deeds are consistent and well corroborated. Sightings of him may have been few, but the eyewitnesses are nearly always reliable and every person describes him in the same way. He has even been spotted by two members of the constabulary, and their testimony cannot be called into question, can it?”
    “Pah! You mean to say you actually think this figment of the imagination is real? A prancing jack-in-a-box, popping up hither and yon in the East End, scaring burglars and impeding robberies in progress? Really, Sherlock, I can accept Watson here falling for such shilling-shocker claptrap, but you?”
    I made to protest at the insult that had been levelled against me, but my friend got there first.
    “Mycroft, Watson is as astute a judge of the facts as any man. He may embellish and romanticise his accounts of my exploits somewhat, in order to make them more pleasing as literary entertainment, but he has an eye for detail and a nose for the truth, and I will not have you impugning his character or his acumen.”
    Mycroft, abashed, turned to me and grumbled an apology, something about his having spoken out of turn, the pressure he was under, great weight on his shoulders, no offence meant.
    I myself was flattered beyond measure by Holmes’s praise. He was not usually so unstinting with his compliments, least of all where my intellectual prowess or my writing skills were concerned. There were times in his company, and more so in the company of him and his brother together, that I was made to feel as though I were a member of an inferior species, a reasonably gifted ape perhaps. It was nice to be reminded that my companion thought more highly of me than that.
    “But seriously, Sherlock,” Mycroft said, “this absurd Baron Cauchemar rumour, there’s no more substance to it than there was to Spring-heeled Jack. In fact, I would maintain that the former is an adjunct of the latter, a modern updating of a fifty-year-old myth, the only difference being that Cauchemar foils crimes whereas Spring-heeled Jack, with his propensity for assaulting strangers and molesting women, perpetrated them.”
    “It is a crucial difference, one that outweighs any superficial similarities between the two.”
    “Baron Cauchemar is a story that residents of a dismal, overcrowded corner of London have dreamed up in order to bring a touch of colour and excitement to their otherwise drab, squalid lives,” Mycroft insisted. “He is a fantasy, as insubstantial as this table is solid.” He thumped the top of the oak dining table to underscore his point. “They say he can leap twenty feet in the air. They say he can break down a brick wall with his hands. They say he can stun a man with a jolt of electricity or knock him out with a puff of gas expelled from his hand. I believe not one iota of it. The slums and rookeries of this city breed all manner of superstition and old wives’ tales: giant rats in the sewers, baby-abducting ghouls, flying boats, ghostly coachmen, sinister Chinamen with the power to bend your will to theirs via sheer animal magnetism, and whatnot. I’m almost ashamed to call you my brother if you’re going to start putting store by any of that nonsense.”
    “There is a compelling case for thinking that Baron