Read A Study in Sable for Free Online Page A

although I must confess I am just as pleased you did not bring the birds.”
    â€œThey are not to be trusted if they become bored while we read through dry tomes,” Sarah confessed with some chagrin, selecting abook from the pile. “Unfortunately they have a great deal in common with precocious children. We left them with some puzzles containing their favorite treats, which can neither be hammered open nor pried open. They were greatly enjoying themselves when we left, and when they tire of that, Suki will bring them their tea and they’ll nap.”
    â€œAh, Suki! She’ll keep them out of mischief.” Lord Alderscroft chuckled. He had met Suki, an orphan with similar telepathic abilities to Nan’s that the girls had found working as a kind of slave for a fraud of a fortune-teller. Suki had been so grateful to be rescued that there was nothing she would not have done for Nan and Sarah, and as another street brat, she had no compunction about wading into any potential threat, fists and feet flailing. She was fearless with the birds as well, and they were fond of her, so she had joined them in their flat as a sort of apprentice. She found going to school a great deal more onerous than serving as their maid, an affinity which occasionally exasperated Nan.
    The flat they all lived in was paid for by Lord Alderscroft, who kept the girls on a sort of retainer to perform investigations for him. He had found it extremely useful to have them at hand when he needed someone whose talents were psychical rather than magical. Or someone who was female, and likely to be more overlooked than a male.
They
were grateful for useful employment. As they had both decided, the conventional life of a governess, a shopgirl, a teacher or a nurse was not something either of them was suited for.
    â€œI will confess I feared for my books around those inquisitive beaks,” he replied. “I will leave you to your researches, and I wish you great good luck in them.”
    â€œHis books are the last thing he needed to be concerned about,” Nan chuckled when he had left. “The birds know better now than to harm anything made of paper. It would be his
secrets
he needs to think about. Whenever they find that there is a hiding place for something, they are unrelenting about getting into it and discovering what is hidden there.”
    John Watson laughed. “I can think of one instance where they would have saved Holmes a great deal of effort.”
    With that, they all settled down to perusing the books. Many were handwritten, although there were some that had been printed. Nothing untoward was reported in the area where the Berkeley Square house now stood before the house was built, nor for many decades thereafter. Then Sarah, who was reading a volume that started about 1800, looked up with an expression of triumph on her face. “I think I may have it,” she said. “The gentleman who owned the house when this book was written is said here to have had an interest in Roman antiquities of the English occupation. Around 1805 he went on several trips to excavate some himself. And in December of 1805, I find a mention of an
uncanny occurrence.
I think we may have pinpointed our culprit.”
    Nan’s brows furrowed. “He certainly could have brought back something he shouldn’t have,” she admitted, “But wouldn’t the artifact be long gone by now?”
    â€œThe size and danger of a haunting is in no way related to the size of the thing the haunting is tied to,” Sarah replied with authority. “It
is,
however, related to the amount of power invested in the object.”
    â€œA ceremonial amulet, for instance?” Mary Watson exclaimed. “Something small and easily mislaid, perhaps even fallen in a crack between floorboards?”
    â€œI would suspect you of having Nan’s power of mind reading, you are following my thought so closely,” Sarah replied.