Sherlock Holmes and the Red Demon (Fesler-Lampert Minnesota Heritage)

by Larry Millett

s I sit at my writing desk, a thick fog swirling outside the windows of 221 B Baker Street, I am haunted by fantastic images of that terrible day, September 1, 1894. These phantasms dance before me like the flames in a hearth, illuminating numerous incidents of heroism and disaster amid the cruel majesty of Nature's fury. I see a locomotive roaring through a deadly veil of black smoke, its occupants working feverishly to reach a doomed village ... I see the agonized faces fleeing before a whirlwind of fire ... I see Sherlock Holmes's look of astonishment as his deerstalker flies from his head and instantly ignites into flames ... I see two gaunt figures upon a great burning trestle, locked in mortal combat while all around the very air seems to be on fire ... But most of all, I see the twisted, charred bodies of the dead, lying like crushed black flowers in an eerie white wasteland of rubble and ash. And now, as I turn to the concluding chapters of this story, which is surely the most tragic adventure of Sherlock Holmes's career, I pray that I shall at last be able to exorcise these demons of memory which have plagued me for so long.