SHERLOCK HOLMES
THE ADVENTURE OF THE DIABOLICAL CHAIR
By Tommyhawk1@AOL.COM
WWW.TOMMYHAWKSFANTASYWORLD.COM
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Holmes and I were sitting at table enjoying our luncheon. We had our sections of the paper, I with the front page and Holmes the society section. His own preference, he always began by reading what he called "the important news." Given that my friend's concept of news was hardly that of the rest of us, we shared the use of one newspaper each morning with complete cordiality.
I was deep in the contemplation about the news on the Continent when my friend said, "I see that we shall be spending the night in Brighton."
"Brighton?" I said, with some astonishment, as you can imagine. "Why should we want to go there?"
"Because we are about to have an urgent visitor who will request that we accompany him there." Holmes said.
"Indeed?" I knew that Holmes could spot a client on the street before they came up to the doorstep, so I looked outside.
"An opportunity for you to exercise your powers of deduction." Holmes said. "Pray enlighten me."
I studied the tall, handsome youth walking our way from across the street; he wore a jacket bearing a coat-of-arms as an emblem near his heart. Based upon this, I said, "A young man of good breeding, presumably the younger son of a noble family. He must be here for something too private to confide to a non-family member."
"Bravo." Holmes said to my attempt. "You made a wonderful deduction."
I beamed and Holmes then added. "Unfortunately, you failed to notice that while the jacket does carry a heraldic device on it, the size and position of it is not one of a family member, but of a retainer. The young man is recently retained by the family, is here without their knowledge, and in fact comes from a quite humble background."
"How can you know all that?" I inquired, as I am continually astounded at my friend's abilities of deduction.
"Because it is the beginning of December, and yet he is still wearing a light-weight summer jacket. He would have worn something more over it if he had anything more, but has not been with the family long enough to be given a heavier-weight winter jacket and does not own one for himself; thus both his recent retention and his humble background. As for coming without their knowledge, no family would send a retainer recently hired to bring me to them; they would instead choose a long-time and long-trusted person."
"That explains everything except how you knew we would be summoned to Brighton." I said.
"Because he is a member of the household of Lord Venable, as you can see from the heraldic device." Sherlock said. "As for knowing that the Lord is now in Brighton," he tapped the newspaper, "you can see that my reading of the society column does have relevance to my chosen profession. I read just this morning that the Lord had taken a house in Brighton for the winter."
"Holmes, you never cease to amaze me." I marveled.
And the knock came at the door, the young man was about to be shown into our rooms.
The man who entered glanced about with the air of a man being hunted in the jungles by savages. His eyes saw us without comprehension. Holmes was quickly on his feet, and showed the youth to a chair when he entered, "Here, rest yourself." he said kindly. "Watson, do bring this man a cup of tea and a crumpet. He has not eaten all day."
"I...I thank you." the man said and took the tea and food from me. When he had consumed it, he had not only restored his body, but restored his composure. He began. "I have come here on behalf of Lord Venable, to seek your advice about a singular occurrence that has taken place in our house at Brighton."
Holmes considered the man and said, "Since Lord Venable did not send you, pray do not use his name in this."
"You are right!" the man exclaimed, "I am here on my own behalf, or rather, that of my best friend. But you are the only one I could think of that may make sense of it all! "
"Then tell us what you will." Holmes said. "I can see that you have kept the cab waiting for us, otherwise, the cabman wouldn't have tied his horse to the post and slipped into the pub at the corner for a drink."
"My name is Quentin Mawther." our young visitor began. "I was retained this last summer to work for Lord Venable. I met Mark Douglass there. He was hired to work in the stables and I was to work as one of the household valets. The duties weren't overly onerous, but they kept us all about the grounds all the time. It was only natural to seek out friendships, then, among the other servants."
I suspected that Quentin and Mark were something more than mere friends, but among the lower classes with their compromised beliefs as a result of their upbringing, such liaisons were more to be deplored than condemned, I held my tongue.
"So what has happened to your friend Mark?"
"I must explain first the rather peculiar behavior of Lord Venable the last month. Even though the season for the beach is quite past, he did not return to London with his family, but rather sent them back while he stayed in the beach house with only a half dozen of us."
"Did he have business which kept him in Brighton, then?" Holmes asked.
"None but that of the chair he had ordered from Paris." Mawther said. "And that is also very peculiar. For one thing, the chair is extraordinarily complex, and is powered by an electrical source that His Lordship also had installed."
"Indeed?" Holmes was interested. Electricity was still a very new science, and expensive as a result. The scientists were gleeful about what life would change into once it was cheap and plentiful, but those days had yet to materialize in any but a few places.
"And there were men he brought in to assemble the chair, according to very complex instructions. In addition to the chair itself, there are assemblages of equipment related to it in chambers on three of the sides."
"That is peculiar, but I fail to see the relevance as yet."
"There were only the seven of us in the house, Lord Venable and six of us servants." Mawther went on. "None of us were properly schooled in how to keep a house. Four of us were recently retained, and the other two are as young as we are."
"That is peculiar." Holmes agreed.
"We were all ordered to take over the servant's quarters downstairs, this though three of us were retained to work in the stables. There is a bell there to allow the Lord to ring for us in the night if he should need it.
"The first night after the chair was fully installed, and we were alone in the house, the seven of us, the bell rang, and Mark was the one we had drawn by lots to answer the bell that first night.
"Mr. Holmes, Mark did not come back for more than a half hour, and at the end of that time, he came down with a wild look in his eyes. His hair and clothes were disarranged and he said, 'You must all go up and see to his Lordship at once. He is in trouble.'"
We all raced upstairs, all but Mark, and we found His Lordship sitting in the chair." Mawther paused and gulped at his tea as if it were whiskey. "He was naked, his wrists and thighs had bands of badly bruised flesh. We saw him not moving and went to him. Mr. Holmes, His Lordship was dead."
When I realized, I went back to find Mark to ask him what had happened, but he was gone. Naturally, the police are certain that he is the one who killed Lord Venable. The doctor pronounced Lord Venable dead of a heart attack, but still, the reason for that is assumed to be Mark."
Mawther looked at us. "I vow to you, Mr. Holmes, that I am positive that Mark had no guilt in whatever happened. He is not of a character to murder his master, sir, you must help me find out what really happened. The Brighton police are searching for Mark, and refuse to even consider any other explanation but that Mark tormented His Lordship until he suffered a heart attack. Please, Mr. Holmes, won't you come with me to Brighton and find the explanation for what actually happened?"
Mr. Holmes was silent and I recognized his having fallen into a study and made shushing motions to Mawther. After a quarter-hour, Holmes stirred and said, "As I prophesized when I saw the cab draw up, we must travel to Brighton. The chair, whatever it is, is central to this mystery and examination of it is all that shall explain the circumstances of Lord Venable's death."
"Bless you, Mr. Holmes, bless you!" exclaimed Mawther, and before another half hour was done, we were en route to Brighton.
The house at Brighton was large for a summer house, containing nearly two dozen rooms on three floors. The house was apparently built originally on a smaller lot within a set of similar-looking houses which had later been dismantled to make room for the Lord's gardens, for it was quite flat-sided without balconies or outcroppings on either side. The servants' quarters were along the left-hand side of the first floor, which looked out onto the stables and the vegetable garden. Lord Venable's room which contained the chair were on the third floor to the rear of the house, overlooking the flower garden. "An interesting arrangement, don't you think?" Holmes asked me as we started by looking around the house. "Climbing up the wall to the top floor would be impossible without a confederate inside. That doesn't bode well for Mawther's comrade, does it?"
"I suppose not."
"And the rain of last night and the cloudy day which has left the house grounds soaked, show no signs of trampling about the house's grounds, other than the police who did their usual thorough job of mucking things up. Still, the Brighton police have the courtesy of using a special shoe for their policemen, and no other shoe marks are to be found. No, if we are to find who caused Lord Venable's injuries, we must look to the seven individuals inside the house."
Mr. Holmes, however, once inside, stopped suddenly, and began to examine the walls of the house carefully. At one point, he actually stepped off the size of the room most carefully. "Only fifteen feet." he exclaimed. "Such an extraordinary room, don't you think?"
"I see nothing odd about it." I said. "Fifteen feet is a reasonable size for a room, I should think."
"Normally, I would agree, but in this instance, I find it quite unique." Holmes said and didn't expound further, and I was left to puzzle over his interest in this sitting room's size.
We talked with the servants and I did find their situations interesting. All of them as Mawther had said were new hires, all of them were uniformly handsome, muscular and healthy as Mawther, and some of them were quite reticent about their pasts. I found myself asking more questions of them than Holmes, who seemed content enough with a query or two. And he was more interested in the night before and their quite brief acquaintance with His Lordship. He seemed to have met two of them in pubs, and two more he picked up on the streets at night it appeared. I found that more to speak to their own possible culpability, especially when they were silent upon the exact circumstances, but Holmes left it at little more than that.
Mawther champed about. "But Holmes, what about the chair?" he asked after a time.
"Yes, the chair." Holmes said. "Still, I did have to rule out all reasonable possibilities, sir, and felt that the people, who are inclined to flee as did your friend, Mr. Douglass, should get priority. Now, though, having decided that none of the regular inhabitants of this house had any hand in Lord Venable's death, we now must examine the location of his demise and see if that leads to any further deductions."
I followed Holmes to the room where Lord Venable had placed the chair.
It was indeed an extraordinary chair. Some levers near one side apparently operated the electrical aspects of it. I was quite out of my depth here, having mastered medicine instead of engineering. Holmes, however, was in his element, and I saw him measuring various parts of it.
"Mr. Mawther." Holmes asked of our young retainer, who had followed us carefully. "Should you be so kind as to give me a physical description of both His Lordship and of your friend, Mr. Douglass."
"Lord Venable was of a lesser stature." Mawther began. "He scarcely tipped the scale at seven stone, I should think and his height was five foot two. Mark was a much larger man, of course, as he dealt with the horses. He is over six foot tall and perhaps fourteen stone."
"I should imagine he finds life in a small, cramped space to be terribly uncomfortable, then." Holmes said, rather enigmatically.
"Yes, I think so." Mawther said, then gave a start. "Mr. Holmes, what are you insinuating?" he said accusingly.
"Nothing at all, as of yet." Holmes smiled. "If you would give Watson and myself some privacy here, I think I can give you your answer quite soon."
"Of course, of course." Mawther withdrew in some confusion and distress.
Holmes chuckled. "Well, that had the double benefit of both confirming my theory and ridding us of his presence." he said.
"You have a theory?" I asked.
"Yes." Holmes said. "Mr. Douglass is not missing, but is still in this very house, in a hiding place we aren't supposed to know about."
I remembered the measurements he made of the sitting room and understood its purpose. "Marvelous. So once we establish Douglass as the murderer, we can pick him up easily." I said, remembering the old gentleman Holmes had tricked out of such a hiding place in a past adventure.
"I am certain that young Douglass is innocent, but to prove that, we must establish the method of Lord Venable's death."
"And how do you propose to do that?" I asked.
"You and I, Watson, must place ourselves in the chair and activate it."
"Indeed?"
"You will remember that when Douglass came down last night, he was rumpled and in a state of partial dishabille?"
"Yes." I said.
"It was occasioned by Douglass getting dressed after determining Lord Venable was dead, and before going downstairs." Holmes said. "Both of them were quite nude when the chair was operated."
"So you want the two of us to...get disrobed?" I said, aghast.
"And further, my dear Watson, I need you to trust me enough to sit where Lord Venable was found, in the chair itself." Holmes said. "I will take the position indicated by the footmarks on the space in front of the chair."
"I thought those were for the placement of the seated person." I said.
"If you'll look, you'll notice that the feet are too far forward for that." Holmes indicated. "You could not place your feet flat in those marks and sit properly in the chair.
"But do you really need to put us in harm's way?" I asked.
"My dear Watson, I guarantee that you will not suffer any harm." Holmes said. "In fact, I am the one more likely to be injured by this chair if it operates as I suspect."
"Then why was Lord Venable killed instead of Douglass?" I asked.
"Because Douglass placed him in the chair." Holmes said. "Now, you and I must disrobe and put ourselves into the position."
"You are certain you understand the position?" I said.
"Yes, in fact, my understanding is why I am now convinced Douglass is no murderer." Holmes said. "I must make some adjustments to the chair's mechanism, though, to accommodate my larger frame." Holmes fiddled with the chair while I gingerly began to undress. Holmes is very efficient, by the time I had struggled out of my clothing and my undergarments, Holmes was done with the chair and matched me in stripping out of his own more abbreviated underclothes.
I had seen Holmes body on a good many occasions, but found myself studying him. He was tall and thin, of course, but his body was well-exercised and sturdy. He showed little of the damage of his former dependence upon cocaine for relief between cases, and his patronage of the athletic club near our Baker Street quarters was as regular as his caseload permitted. A fine flower of English gentleman was my feeling, able to fight in the Boer War or dance at a royal ball with equal equanimity.
For myself, I feared my love of my meals and the rather sedentary life of a not-too-busy medical man was showing in my girth and my musculature. I could have built myself up again upon need, but the need had not materialized. I felt that the reason I had the chair was that Holmes wished to preserve me having to stand while the chair's mechanism was running.
"Now, dear Watson, have a seat in those grooves that the chair's seat has to guide your position so carefully." Holmes said. "And I shall place my own feet upon the marks and my hands upon these places indicated. You will find the starting mechanism just to your right, if you will throw the switch and then place your hands upon the knobs of the arm-rests, we shall see this machine in operation and confirm young Douglass' complete innocence."
Did as he instructed and my pushing of the lever into the "on" position was an alarming experience. First was the humming of the machinery into position, then the hum increased in pitch and tone. And then the machinery began to move.
Holmes and I both found ourselves immediately imprisoned into position. For myself, shoulders, wrists and ankles were caught, my legs were spread apart somewhat. Holmes, however, had the more elaborate mechanisms working on him. His hands and feet were imprisoned, but so was a broad band around his hips.
"Very interesting." Holmes said. "This broad band at my thighs matches those on Lord Venable."
"But are you safe, then?" I asked in alarm. "If this machine killed Lord Venable, will it not do the same to you."
"Lord Venable died of a heart attack." Holmes reminded me. "My body is nearly twenty years younger than his was upon his demise, and my heart is quite strong by virtue of my active life style. Ahh, now here we go."
And Holmes was lifted bodily into the air by the machine. I was bemused by his motions, the machine pivoted him around so that he was moved into a sitting position in mid-air. For myself, I had to gasp as I felt a machine slide between my legs and some soft, sibilant feathers or silken velveteen (I could not discern which) began to caress my testicles. The experience was extremely pleasant, like some misguided masseuse who once worked upon myself in the Turkish bath one day, until I disabused him of the idea that I wished him to limber anything more than my stiffer muscles, and not the source of my manhood. Here, though, I could not protest to this steel and electric monstrosity, and was left feeling my male organ beginning to stir.
"My word." Holmes said. "This machine is certainly thorough." A tube had exuded and was now inserting itself into Holmes' anus.
"What is it doing to you, giving you an enema?" I asked.
"Not at all, merely a lubrication of my nether parts." Holmes observed.
"Whatever for?" I wanted to know.
"Why, my dear Watson, it is quite simple." Holmes said. "This machine is a French concept of sexual excess. It intends to place me upon your lap and insert your maleness up into my sphincter."
"But Holmes." I said. "We can't permit this?"
"We must, if we are to prove Douglass' innocence." said Holmes. "We must see to what extent this machine will take this little game."
"But...but it means to place you on my lap." I said. My own penis was quite erect now, to my helpless horror. "And in my current tumescent position, I fear that you are about to suffer an injury I have no wish to inflict upon you?"
"An injury?" Holmes said as the machine began to lower him. "I doubt that, Watson. An indignity, assuredly, a discomfort, possibly. But given the long comradeship we have shared, I misdoubt that anything more will occur here."
Holmes' anus contacted my glans and I moaned. Such a warm hotness, such as I had not experienced since the passing of my dear wife some years before. I had known, in a medical way, that having sexual relations in this way was possible, and even pursued avidly by some, but until I felt that hot softness engulf my tower of manhood had I thought of it in anything but a doctor's disinterest, now I was experiencing it, and the delight was sweet, so sweet indeed. Had it been a stranger there instead of Holmes, I doubt I would have felt such a flowering of passion's fruit in my heart, but this was my friend, and now I was sharing this with him.
"Ahh, ahh, ahh, ahhh!" was Holmes' only vocalization as his body settled down upon my lap, my entire length imbedded within him. "Now it begins in earnest, I think. The machine will not be gentle with us, I fear, my dear Watson, know that I hold you blameless in this entire, take the joy it gives you without guilt."
"I shall, I shall!" I gasped as the machinery began to bob Holmes' entire body up and down upon me. "This is quite pleasurable to me, I must confess!"
"It is a normal...uh!...physical reaction to the circumstances." Holmes gasped. "If it helps you, I am also...uh!...finding this to be more exciting than I had thought."
"Oh, Holmes!" I gave myself to the joy racing through my body. The machine was speeding up in its movement of Holmes above me. He was also gasping and groaning in undeniable pleasure as my prong was driven up into him to the very base each time, and the revolution of the cog which moved him up and down was a speed of nearly a hundred revolutions per minute. This is the athletic movements of a young man with his lover, as you can imagine, a rate I had not managed for myself in my long years of marriage, and only for short periods of time with my hand when I pleasured myself. Now I had the delight of my cock buried inside Holmes' bowels, my sexual senses were being stimulated to the maximum, I was in a state of passion I had rarely reached, and this one was enhanced by the steady and unchanging rhythm of the machinery, Holmes was also moaning, his cock, I could see as it bounced up and down in the machine's movements, saw it dripping long stringy ropes of clear precome down to swing about and land upon his legs as it bounced, until he was coated with the strands and the very air was ripe with the odor of his sexuality, the smell filled my nostrils and ignited my pleasure.
"Oh, Holmes, I...uhhhh!...I am nearing my...uhh!...my finish!" I maundered out. "I...cannot...hold back...much longer?"
"Watson!" Holmes groaned. "Do not keep...yourself from...your joy. Give it...to me...your friend...without stinting!"
"I shall, I shall!" I moaned. "I cannot bear it longer. I must...I must ejaculate!"
"Spend yourself, spend yourself now!" Holmes guttered out. "I shall join you now, I shall!"
"Ah-huh, uh, guh!" I felt orgasm like a spider upon my spine! "Here it comes!"
"Ah-HAH-HAH-AH-HAH-HUHHHHH!" Holmes' sperm splattered the wall of the small niche the chair occupied, Holmes was spurting his hot pearls of manhood about the chamber.
I had made Holmes ejaculate, I knew, for he had no stimulation other than my manhood inside himself, I knew the joys the prostate could deliver when stroked by the virility of another, and I knew that, too, this only occurred when the passive partner relishes the joining. Holmes wanted me to have sexual intercourse with him, he wanted it enough to ignite his delight here, in this dreadful machine, because it was me that he was joined with.
And in that delirium of discovery, I climbed the Mt. Kilimanjaro of my ecstasy and I burst upwards into Holmes, him thrashing and moaning in the bonds of the machinery, and I was hunching upwards as I could within the confines of the chair. I was rapturous, I was senseless...I was done, left gasping and wheezing as the chair held me upright, for without it, I should have fallen over.
"Mr. Holmes? Mr. Holmes?" came the voices of several men. I blinked to clear my eyes of the tears that had formed in my rapture, and I looked to see Mawther, and with him, three policemen. They had come to the house for some reason and heard our cries of delight, and come up to witness our use of the chair.
"This is outrageous!" One of the policemen declared. "This is a most unseemly display, not to mention the tampering with evidence in a criminal trial."
"Quite the contrary." Holmes gasped as he gestured. "If one of you will be so kind as to turn off the machine."
Mawther did so and the humming slowed down. As it did, the bonds holding us released themselves and withdrew back into the chair and the walls, freeing us.
"Whatever do you mean?" A second policeman wanted to know.
"There is no criminal trial here, as there was no murder." Holmes said. "Young Douglass was not an assailant, and indeed, was a victim of Lord Venable. Lord Venable tricked him into placing himself within this machine and then died in its operation, leaving Douglass bewildered and helpless. He had to figure out how to turn off the machine and then free himself, free Lord Venable, probably attempted to resuscitate him, and then left him most charitably in the chair which had confined him."
"In the chair?" Mawther said.
"Yes, it was Douglass who occupied the position Watson did in our little experiment." Holmes had found his breath and his state of dishabille didn't seem to faze him as he explained to the gaping onlookers. "The marks on my own flesh, you will note, match those on Lord Venable's body. You will see upon Watson's own body that he bears a quite different set of markings." I looked and saw that I did have marks upon my wrists, ankles and shoulder blades where I had been restrained. Holmes' thighs were indeed bearing a rather prominent set of marks.
"What was charitable about that?" the policeman demanded.
"I had to shift the machine's sizes to match my frame." Holmes went on. I am a similar height to Douglass, if he had been in the frame that had me impaled upon Watson's manhood, I shouldn't have had to move a thing. No, Lord Venable tricked him into disrobing and placing himself in the chair, and naked before him, into pressing that lever. From that point on, the only thing that Douglass experienced can be described as, is that of rape. Lord Venable forced himself upon the strong young stableman, using him for his sexual pleasure. But Lord Venable's heart wasn't strong enough to bear up under the machine's exertions, and suffered a quite normal effect of sexual excess, that he had a heart attack. Poor Douglass couldn't think of what to do, but he felt that putting Lord Venable in the chair would spare him at least some of the humiliation at his own cost, that of being the passive sexual partner in a homosexual liaison.
"He's right." I put in, determined to be of some use here. "I watched Holmes lengthen the machine's arms to hold him. A big man such as Douglass is described to me would never have been trapped in the machine, it would have missed his arms as it reached for him."
The policemen conferred. "If you are willing to give affidavits to that effect, I suppose we can take this as authoritative." one of them said. "Given Mr. Holmes' undying devotion to the truth upon all occasions, and with the knowledge that there have been times he has turned his own client over to the authorities, we can forgive him his unorthodox approach here."
"And now, Mr. Mawther, if you will be so kind as to bring Mr. Douglass out of his hiding place." Holmes said. "I should like to confirm some minor details with him in this matter before we return to London."
Mawther didn't pretend to misunderstand. "I'll bring him here at once." he said with immense relief. "I knew he was innocent, I knew it."
We arrived back in London in the early morning hours and retired to our respective beds. I awoke about sundown and joined Holmes for supper.
"A most interesting case." Holmes said. "I had heard something about the chair Lord Venable had obtained, but considered it to be more myth than fact. I shall have to revise my opinions about the course of modern technology. Perhaps one day, nobody shall bother with sex at all, but rather will have a machine to nurse his potency upon demand."
"I am sure I should not prefer that." I said.
Holmes looked at me and I felt myself blush. Rather than taunt me, he smiled. "I find the old-fashioned method to be preferable myself, I should think. In fact, if you are quite restored after our little adventure, perhaps we should reacquaint ourselves with the manner in which nature intended that we should express our sexual needs."
I nodded, then started, "You don't mean, Holmes?" I asked him imperfectly.
"I do indeed." Holmes said. "That is, if you would like to."
"I most assuredly would." I enthused.
And I followed Holmes into his room, my heart pounding in my breast, as the sun sank and night fell upon London once again.
THE END
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