Sherlock Holmes: The Coils of Time & Other Stories (Sherlock Holmes Adventures Book 1) by Ralph Vaughan

had not possessed prior to his disappearance.  His clothes were covered with dust and torn in a few places where previously they had been whole.
    “Carry him into the sitting room,” Holmes instructed.  “He needs a brandy.”
    “As do I,” Kent gulped, gathering the man into his arms and following Holmes out of the laboratory.
    They laid the injured, exhausted man out on a chesterfield.  While Holmes administered brandy to Maddoc, Kent administered two whiskeys to himself in quick succession.  The Welsh inventor sputtered as the fiery liquid coursed its way down his throat.  He opened his eyes and gazed at Holmes and Kent uncomprehendingly.
    “You…both of you…you were at the Neptune…”
    “Holmes, how could he know that when you were then disguised as a lascar?”  Kent demanded, still searching for trickery of any kind.
    “The ears,” Maddoc explained weakly.  “Even in the best of disguises, the ears are usually left alone.”
    “Exceptionally observant,” Holmes murmured.
    “And in my laboratory,” Maddoc continued.  “Before…”
    “That’s right,” Holmes said.
    “So long ago…”
    “How long?”  Holmes asked.  “Months?”
    “I had to get back to…” He paused and gazed at Holmes with widening eyes. “Then you know…”
    “About your infernal machine?  Yes!” snapped Kent.  “I still do not understand it, but I can no longer deny it.”
    “And we know about the Morlocks as well,” Holmes said.  “The Morlocks in London came from here did they not?”
    “That’s right, from here, but not here and now.”  He forced himself to sit up and to take another brandy from Holmes.  “Who are you?  What are you doing here?”
    “I am Inspector Charles Kent of Scotland Yard.”
    “Sherlock Holmes.”
    “As to explanations, young man,” Kent said, “you owe them to us, not us to you.”
    “I expect you were seeking the same as I was when you were at the Neptune,” Maddoc said.  “The source of the East End Ghosts and the Vanishments.”
    “They have the same source,” Holmes suggested.  “The colony of Morlocks now dwelling in London’s sewers.”
    “We were looking for William Dunning,” Kent clarified.  “And, as far as I am concerned, we still are.”
    “How did you get from the Neptune to here?” Maddoc asked.
    With an economy of words, Holmes told Maddoc something of the trail that had led them across London to Richmond.  By then, Maddoc had finished his third brandy, and the colour was beginning to return to his pallid cheeks; his hands still trembled, but ever so slightly.
    “Wells,” Maddoc mused.  “I forgave him for writing ‘The Chronic Argonauts,’ and should humanity survive, I suppose I shall forgive him ‘The Time Machine’ as well.”
    “What do you mean?” Kent demanded.
    “Maddoc has seen the future of man,” Holmes said, “and has found a future without man.”
    “You mean that preposterous fable of Morlocks and Eloi?”
    “Nothing so distant as that,” Holmes replied.  “You have seen a time much closer to our own, have you not, Mr Maddoc, and very much darker than that which you related to Mr Wells and your other dinner guests.”
    “You are unfortunately correct, Mr Holmes.”
    “The dinner party story was a lie?”
    “Not all of it,” Maddoc countered, “but a goodly portion.”
    “What, then, is the truth?”
    “If Wells kept an accurate shorthand of the tale I told, and I am sure he did, as he always does,” Maddoc began, “then you know something of my first journey into the future.”
    “First?” Kent blurted.
    “Inspector, please,” Holmes cautioned.
    “I told my guests of sheepish Eloi burdened under the yoke of the cannibalistic Morlocks,” Maddoc continued.  “Actually, the far future is not so dominated by the Morlocks as I gave them to believe.  The Eloi fight back, and savagely, at times pursuing the Morlocks into their underground warrens, where they attempt to destroy their great