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“He underestimated me – and both
underestimated you, it seems.”
    And there was the smallest touch of defiance
in her voice as she replied, “Men do. Yourself included, it
seems.”
    The snapping hiss of the electricity ceased.
I opened my eyes to see them kneeling around me, in the horror of
that nighted cavern: Holmes and Carnaki, holding their electrical
rods to either of my hands, and Miss Delapore looking into my eyes.
Somehow despite the darkness I could see her clearly, could see
into her golden eyes, as one can in dreams. What she said to me I
do not remember, lost as it was in the shock and cold when Carnaki
touched the switch…
     
    *
     
    I opened my eyes to summer morning. My head
ached; when I brought my hand up to touch it, I saw that my wrists
were bruised and chafed, as if I had been bound. “You were off your
head for much of the night,” said Holmes, sitting beside the bed.
“We feared you would do yourself an injury – indeed, you gave us
great cause for concern.”
    I looked around me at the simple wall-paper
and white curtains of my bedroom at the Cross of Gold in High Clum.
I stammered, “I don't remember what happened…”
    “Fever,” said Carnaki, coming into the room
with a slender young lady whom I instantly recognized from the
miniature Burnwell Colby had showed us as Miss Judith Delapore. “I
have never seen so rapid a rise of temperature in so short a time;
you must have taken quite a severe chill.”
    I shook my head, wondering what it was about
Miss Delapore's haggard calm, about her golden-hazel eyes, that
filled me with such uneasy horror. “I remember nothing,” I said.
“Dreams… Your uncle came here, I believe,” I added, after Holmes
had introduced the young lady. “At least … I believe it was your
uncle…” Why was I so certain that the wizened, twisted little man
who had come to my room – whom I believed had come to my room –
yesterday had been Carstairs Delapore? I could recall nothing of
what he had said. Only his eyes…
    “It was my uncle,” said Miss Delapore, and as
I looked at her again I realized that she wore mourning. “You
remember nothing of why he came here yesterday? For before he could
mention the visit to anyone at the Priory…” And here she glanced
across at Holmes; “He fell down the stairs there, and died at the
bottom.”
    I expressed my horrified condolences, while
trying to suppress an inexplicable sense of deepest relief that I
somehow associated with dreams I had had while delirious. After
inclining her head in thanks, Miss Delapore turned to Holmes, and
held out to him him a box of stout red cardboard, tied up with
string. “As I promised,” she said.
    I lay back, overcome again by a terrible
exhaustion – as much of the spirit, it seemed, as of the body.
While Carnaki prepared a sedative draught for me Holmes walked Miss
Delapore out to our mutual parlor, and I heard the outer door
open.
    “I have heard much of your deductive
abilities, Mr. Holmes,” said the young woman's voice, barely heard
through the half-open bedroom door. “How did you know that my
uncle, who must have come here to take you as my grandfather took
Burnwell, had seized upon your friend instead?”
    “There was no deduction necessary, Miss
Delapore,” said Holmes. “I know Watson – and I know what I have
heard of your uncle. Would Carstairs Delapore have come down into
danger, to see what he could do for an injured man?”
    “Do not think ill of my family, Mr. Holmes,”
said Miss Delapore, after a time of silence. “The way which leads
down the six thousand stairs cannot be sealed. It must always have
a guardian. That is the nature of such things. And it is always
easier to find a venal successor who is willing to trade to Them
the things They want – the blood They crave – in exchange for gifts
and services, than to find one willing to serve a lonely
guardianship solely that the world above may remain safe. They
feared Lord Rupert – if