The Case of the Haunted Horrors Read Online Free

Holmes, the famous consulting detective.”
    “Sherlock Holmes! The very man I need.”
    “Well, he ain’t around right now. So you’ll have to make do with us.”
    “You
?” The man gave a hollow laugh. “What could you do? A bunch of street urchins and ragamuffins?”
    “You’d be surprised what we can do,” Wiggins replied loftily.
    “Yes, I’m sure I would. How many of you are there?”
    “Seven.”
    “But we got lots and lots of friends,” Beaver interjected. “And we can go everywhere. Nobody notices us, ’cos they don’t think we’re worth botherin’ with.”
    “They think we’re just a bunch of street urchins and ragamuffins,” added Wiggins with a sly grin.
    The man paused, thinking hard. Then he shook his head. “I don’t think so,” he said at last. “It would be far too dangerous.”
    “Never mind that,” said Beaver. “We’re used to danger. Fenian terrorists, Black Hand gang assassins, Indian thugs, Chinese triads. We seen ’em all off.”
    “Course,” Wiggins continued, “we could just tell Madame Dupont and the police how you broke in here in the middle of the night, like a burglar…”
    “You could. But who’d believe you? A bunch of street urchins…”
    “Madame Dupont would. And PC Higgins – he knows us. And Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard. And then there’s Mr Holmes…”
    “Enough, enough! Very well, you may help me. But there is one condition. You must not breathe a word of this to anyone – not Madame and certainly not your police friends – until the matter is settled. Do you agree?”
    “Hold on,” said Wiggins. “We ain’t agreed to take the case yet. We don’t know who you are, or what it’s all about. Right, Beav?”
    “Right.” Beaver stared suspiciously at the man, and then indicated the wax model. “For a start, if you ain’t him, who are you?”
    “My name is Selwyn Murray. He was my twin brother, Alwyn.”
    “Twins! No wonder you look exac’ly the same.”
    “Not exactly. We are – were – what they call mirror twins. Everything was the same, but the other way round. I have a mole on my left cheek, for instance, Alwyn had one on his right, and so on. I am right-handed, Alwyn was left-handed.”
    “Oh, I get you,” said Beaver. “Just like lookin’ at yourself in a mirror.”
    “Precisely.”
    “Well, in that case,” said Wiggins, shining his lantern on the wax figure once again, “Madame D got it wrong. Look, he’s got the gun in his
right
hand.”
    “A natural mistake, you might think.”
    “Yeah – ’cept it weren’t her mistake.”
    “How d’you mean?” asked Beaver, puzzled.
    Selwyn Murray looked acutely at Wiggins. “Go on,” he said.
    Wiggins moved over to the photographs and tapped one of them meaningfully. “Look at this picture, where he’s shot hisself and he’s lying ’cross the desk, dead.”
    “Do I have to?” Beaver asked with a little groan.
    “See where the gun is?”
    “Oh, yeah – it’s by his right hand!”
    “Exac’ly! If he’d shot hisself, he’d have used his left hand, and that’s where the gun would have dropped.”
    “Hmm. You’re a clever lad to have spotted that,” said Selwyn Murray. “Maybe you will be able to help me after all.”
    “Course we will. It’s plain to me that there’s been some jiggery-pokery going on here.”
    “That’s precisely what I believe. Someone arranged this so that the world would think my poor brother killed his wife and child, then took his own life.”
    “You mean somebody else murdered them all?” gasped Beaver.
    Murray nodded grimly.
    “Why’d they do that?” Wiggins asked him.
    “Because,” he said, “they thought Alwyn was me.”
    Sarge opened the door of his lodge cautiously and peered out through the narrow crack.
    “It’s us,” whispered Wiggins. “Beaver and me.”
    “Are you all right?” Sarge opened the door wider, then stopped as he glimpsed a shadowy figure behind them in the darkness. “Who’s