Read The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: The Whitechapel Horrors for Free Online Page A

has as good an idea of breakfast as a Scotchwoman.”
    — The Naval Treaty
    W atson awoke shortly after noon to find tea waiting for him in the front room, brought up with the Sunday newspapers by Mrs. Hudson, who had heard him stirring. Holmes was nowhere to be found.
    “Gone these few hours since,” announced Mrs. Hudson as she shook her head disgustedly. “Don’t ask me where, I don’t know. I never know where he goes or when he’ll be back. Hardly pecked at his breakfast, and such a nice one too. My best Sunday table with kippers and eggs just like he likes them, and that marmalade he favors — costs a pretty penny, I can tell you. And him? He gulps some coffee down and is off! Hardly half a cup!” She shook her head some more and actually waggled a finger at him. “Out till all hours of the night, the both of you! You’re as bad as he is, sometimes!”
    Watson stood there like a shamefaced schoolboy.
    “I expect he’ll miss his dinner too!” she said accusingly, as if it were Watson’s fault.
    “I don’t know, I’m sure, Mrs. Hudson,” he mumbled. “No doubt he’ll do his best to return in time.”
    She sniffed. “Well, I have my church meeting to attend and I won’t hold up dinner, so if he’s not back in time for it, he’ll just have to go without. Now, drink that tea before it gets cold, and there’s fresh scones there under the warmer, and try not to get crumbs on the floor!”
    “Yes, Mrs. Hudson. Thank you very much indeed.”
    “And the two of you tracked mud in last night,” she charged as she exited the room, closing the door on the last few words of her parting sentence. “All over the stair runner, it was!”
    “Sorry, Mrs. Hudson, I assure you,” he called to the closed door as he attacked the tea and scones.
    The remainder of the afternoon was spent with the newspapers, which were full of the Whitechapel murder and fairly screamed with the horror of it all. The leader in The Star , lurid as it was, was more restrained than some, and far more accurate than others:
    A REVOLTING MURDER
    A WOMAN FOUND HORRIBLYM
    MUTILATED IN WHITECHAPEL
    GHASTLY CRIMES BY A MANIAC
A Policeman Discovers a Woman Lying in the Gutter with Her Throat Cut — After She Has Been Removed to the Hospital She Is Found to Be Disemboweled 11
    London’s popular press could be forgiven for indulging in sensationalism in this particular instance, for it was indeed a sensational occurrence. Victorian England had never experienced such a horrible, vicious crime. Such a thing was virtually unknown, unthinkable. Murders were indeed committed, but generally in connection with a robbery or as a result of a personal dispute. But rarely was the victim a woman, even of the lowest order. No Englishman would treat a woman so cruelly. If this kind of depravity existed at all, it existed on the Continent — in Germany or France or Italy. That was to be expected of foreigners, after all. But to have such a thing happen on home soil was simply without precedent. The public, highborn and low, was deeply shocked, and the popular press accurately reflected that view. 12
    The day was waning, the shadows deepening, and Watson was dozing over the cricket scores when Holmes’s footstep was heard on the stairs at last. Watson awoke with a start as the door crashed open; Holmes cast him the briefest of dark glances upon entering.
    “I should be both eternally and internally grateful for a good stiff one, if you would be so kind,” he said. “The day has been entirely fruitless.”
    Watson bestirred himself and crossed over to the tantalus and gasogene as Holmes made for his room, removing his suit coat. 13
    “What have you been about?” Watson called over his shoulder as he fussed with the drinks.
    “I have been about totally frustrated is what I have been about,” Holmes shouted irritably. He emerged a minute or so later in his favorite dressing gown, and took the whiskey and soda that Watson handed him, nodding his thanks