Free The Innsmouth Heritage and Other Sequels by Brian Stableford Page B

took a certain shameful delight in the expression of irritation that flitted across Sherlock’s finely-chiseled features: the frustration of ignorance.
“I took it to the Museum in the end,” the great detective admitted. “Pearsall suggested that it might be an image of Oannes, the Babylonian god of wisdom. Fotherington disagreed.”
“Fotherington is undoubtedly correct,” Mycroft declared. “He sent you to me, of course—without offering any hypothesis of his own.”
“He did,” Sherlock admitted. “And he told me, rather impolitely, to leave Watson out of it.”
“He was right to do so,” Mycroft said. And to notify the Secretary in advance, he added, although he did not say the words aloud.
“Excuse me, sir,” said the sailor, “but I’m rather out of my depth here. Perhaps you might explain what that thing is, if you know, and why it was sent to Captain Pye...and whether it will finish me the way it finished him. I have to admit, sir, that Rockaby seemed to have near as much hatred of me as he had of the captain towards the end, even though we were friends once and always near neighbors. I don’t mind admitting, sir, that I’m frightened.” That was obvious, although John Chevaucheux was plainly a man who did not easily give in to fear, especially of the superstitious kind.
“Alas, I cannot give you any guarantee of future safety, Mr. Chevaucheux,” Mycroft said, already fearing that the only guarantees to be found were of the opposite kind, “but you will lose nothing by surrendering this object to me, and it might be of some small service to the Diogenes Club if you were to tell me your story, as you’ve doubtless already told it to Doctor Watson and my brother.” Sherlock shifted uneasily. Mycroft knew that his brother had hoped for more, even if he had not expected it—but Sherlock and he were two of a kind, and knew what duty they owed to the accumulation of knowledge.
The seaman nodded. “Telling it has done me good, sir,” he said, “so I don’t mind telling it again. It’s much clearer in my head than it was—and I’m less hesitant now that I know there are men in the world prepared to take it seriously. I’ll understand if you can’t help me, but I’m grateful to Mr. Sherlock for having tried.”
Anticipating a long story, Mycroft settled back into his chair— but he could not make himself comfortable.
“You’ll doubtless have judged from my name that I’m of French descent,” said Chevaucheux, “although my family has been in England for a century and a half. We’ve always been seafarers. My father sailed with Dan Pye in the old clippers, and my grandfather was a middy in Nelson’s navy. Captain Pye used to tell me that he and I were kin, by virtue of the fact that the Normans who came to England with William the Conqueror were so-called because they were descended from Norsemen, like the Vikings who colonized the north of England hundreds of years earlier. I tell you this because Sam Rockaby was a man of a very different stripe from either of us, although his family live no more than a day’s ride from mine, and mine no more than an hour on the railway from Dan Pye’s.
“Captain Pye’s wife and children are lodged in Poole, my own on Durlston Head in Swanage, near the Tilly Whim caves. Rockaby’s folk hail from a hamlet south of Worth Matravers, near the western cliffs of Saint Aldhelm’s Head. To folk like his, everyone’s a foreigner whose people weren’t clinging to that shore before the Romans came, and no one’s a true seaman whose people didn’t learn to navigate the channel in coracles or hollowed-out canoes. Doctor Watson tells me that every man has something of the sea in his blood, because that’s where all land-based life came from, but I don’t know about that. All I know is that the likes of Rockaby laugh into their cupped hands when they hear men like Dan Pye and Jack Chevaucheux say that the sea is in our blood.
“Mr. Sherlock tells me