Виктор Пахомов – Sherlock Holmes: The Gate of Oblivion. Volume 1 (страница 1)
Sherlock Holmes: The Gate of Oblivion
Volume 1
Виктор Пахомов
© Виктор Пахомов, 2026
ISBN 978-5-0069-2444-4 (т. 1)
ISBN 978-5-0069-2445-1
Created with Ridero smart publishing system
CHAPTER 1. THE GRIEF EQUATION
Rain in London always tasted of soot.It settled on the lips with a familiar bitterness, penetrated under the heavy collars of coats and turned the cobblestone streets into dark, oily mirrors, reflecting the leaden sky.This afternoon the city seemed especially cramped, suffocating in its own fumes. But Sherlock Holmes did not notice the dampness. He stood motionless, like a statue of black granite, the tip of his umbrella stick stuck into the muddy ground of Kensal Green Cemetery.
There was a hole in front of him. A rough, geometrically imperfect hole in the ground, smelling of dampness and oblivion.The dull, final knock of the first lumps of clay on the lid of the oak coffin echoed in his mind like a malfunction in the operation of a perfectly tuned mechanism. Each fall of the earth – «boom», «boom» – cut off a piece of the past from his life that could no longer be returned.
The inscription on the tombstone, standing a little distance away, was as laconic as a medical diagnosis: «John H. Watson, MD.1852—1897.»
Holmes hated this inscription.There was no logic in it, there was no grace that he was used to finding in completed cases.Statistically, the probability of death from acute pneumonia in a forty – five – year – old man with a strong physique and the training of a military doctor was no more than fourteen percent.These numbers had been spinning around in his head for the past three days, mockingly reminding him that life is an equation into which nature sometimes throws in an irrational variable.
Watson always disdained statistics. He was a man of impulses, a bearer of that strange, chaotic warmth that Holmes had long considered only an obstacle to pure reason.Now that this warmth was nailed into a wooden box and lowered into the ground, Holmes felt the cold begin to close in around him.It was not the chill of London autumn, but something more fundamental – the entropy of meaning. The people around gradually dispersed, turning into fuzzy black spots in the fog.Inspector Lestrade walked past, clumsily and childishly hiding his reddened eyes under the brim of his bowler hat. He wanted to touch Holmes’s shoulder, to express condolences – a gesture that the detective despised – but, meeting his icy, absent gaze, he only nodded awkwardly and quickened his pace.Mrs. Hudson, whose sobs were the only living sound in this silence, was led away by the arm.
Holmes was left alone. His black – gloved hand involuntarily clutched a battered leather – bound notebook in his pocket.This was Watson’s last manuscript – several chapters of a new story, ending mid – sentence.
«Too quiet, John,» said Holmes.
His voice, usually harsh and vibrating with hidden energy, sounded dull, almost lifeless. Without the creaking of a pen at the next table, without the smell of strong «ship tobacco» and without the eternal, sometimes naive questions of a friend, the world suddenly lost its volume. Everything around me became flat, boring and meaningless.
He walked from the cemetery to Baker Street. He deliberately avoided cabs, wanting to feel the rhythm of the city that had once been his hunting ground. But London has changed. Or he himself has changed.Previously, every passerby was an open book for him.That gentleman with the cane over there is a retired clerk, judging by the callus on his index finger.The lady in the blue veil hides the family drama, as evidenced by the tear stains on the left glove.
Holmes saw these details, his brain automatically recorded them, built chains of conclusions… but the result no longer brought pleasure.It was like solving children’s puzzles by a person who knew higher mathematics.The city was choking on triviality.The crimes he saw in the eyes of people passing by were pathetic.Petty greed, adultery, absurd grievances.There is no challenge left in London. The apartment at 221B Baker Street greeted him with the smell of stale tea and dust.Mrs. Hudson, true to her habit, had already drawn the curtains, turning the living room into a kind of crypt. Holmes entered and froze on the threshold. Watson’s famous chair by the fireplace was covered with a white sheet.This was the owner’s order – she believed that it would be easier to cope with the loss.For Holmes, it looked like a ridiculous attempt to hide a corpse that still continues to decay in memory.
He walked to the window and, without taking off his coat, pulled back the heavy curtain.Below, in the light of the gas lamps, the wet pavement shimmered.
«A person is only a temporary vessel for the mind,» he whispered, looking at his pale reflection in the glass.«So why does the absence of one vessel make the contents of another so useless?»
He turned towards the room.In the semi – darkness the corners seemed littered with shadows. His desk, lined with chemical retorts and reference books, looked abandoned.There was still a clock on the mantelpiece, which Watson forgot to wind, and the silence of its frozen mechanism pressed on his ears more than cannon fire. Holmes slowly pulled off his gloves. His fingers, long and thin, trembled – barely noticeable, but for him it was tantamount to an earthquake.
He walked over to the secretary and opened the lid.There, in a velvet tray, lay the instrument of his old, dangerous salvation – a syringe made of tempered glass and a small vial of seven percent cocaine solution.Three paths to oblivion.Three ways to stop the wheels of a car that was now spinning idle, striking sparks from its own emptiness.The first is chemistry.The second is a violin.The third is absolute, icy cynicism.
Holmes took the syringe.The coldness of the glass was almost pleasant. He remembered Watson lecturing him about this. He saw the doctor’s face – a mixture of professional indignation and deep pain for his friend. He held the needle to the light of a single candle. His entire current existence trembled in a tiny drop of transparent liquid. One injection and the gray gloom of London will disappear.Clarity will come, cold and sharp, like a razor. He will again see the world as a set of vectors and forces, and not as a cemetery of unfulfilled hopes. His finger rested on the piston.
In the silence of the room he thought he heard a barely audible clearing of throat.The same sound with which Watson usually preceded some particularly inconvenient moral. Holmes froze. His jaw clenched so that his teeth creaked. With a sharp, almost violent movement, he drove the syringe not into a vein, but into the heavy oak edge of the table.The needle crunched, breaking at the base.The liquid spread across the wood in a colorless spot.
«Surrender,» he breathed, letting go of the broken instrument.«It would be too easy a task for me.»
He turned his gaze to the mantelpiece, where among the letters there was a white envelope. Watson’s lawyer handed it over this morning.The letter was written a week before the doctor’s lungs finally refused to serve him. Holmes took it.The paper smelled of a pharmacy and that specific aroma of old paper that always accompanied Watson.
«The world needs your intelligence, Sherlock.More than you think, and certainly more than you are willing to admit.Don’t let my departure become a point in your biography. I’ve seen you fade away when you have nothing to decide.This is the worst crime you can commit – a crime against your own gift.Find a riddle that will make you open your eyes again. Look for it where others see only emptiness. Otherwise the darkness will consume you.»
Holmes slowly lowered the letter. He felt something change inside him.This was no consolation.It was an order.The last order of an officer to his soldier.
«A mystery,» he muttered, looking into the fire. – Where should I look for her, John? On these gray streets?Holmes did not sleep that night.Towards dawn he stopped in front of a map of the world hanging on the wall. His gaze was fixed on a thin strip of land in North Africa.Egypt. A country where time is frozen in stone.It was there that Professor Abdul al – Faradi found something that defied any classification. A week ago Holmes had dismissed his letter as the delirium of a mystic.Now it seemed like the only thread leading away from the labyrinth of boredom.
The preparations were short – lived. Holmes never burdened himself with unnecessary things. A small leather bag, a set of chemical reagents in a case, a magnifying glass and a trusty revolver.Mycroft arrived an hour before he was due to leave.The older brother looked even more overweight and preoccupied than usual.
«You look terrible, brother,» Mycroft stated. – A trip to Cairo will not bring you back the doctor.
«I’m not looking for a doctor, Mycroft. I’m looking for a job.
– Giza is uneasy now.Rumors of curses, crazy archaeologists.This is not your profile. You need facts, not legends.
Sherlock stopped, fastening the lock of his bag.