To all whom it may concern,
It is with no small amount of difficulty, dear readers, that I write about this matter at all, much less ask for assistance - but I fear I am over my head alone now.
No doubt you all recall the strange sound that echoed over London, some few weeks ago now? It was a clap so loud as to nearly rattle the windows, as though from a cannon, and was followed by another identical noise several seconds later. The police investigated, but could find no cannon or source capable of producing such a sound, nor were they able to even determine the location it might have emanated from, and like everyone else dismissed it as a curiosity within days.
However, my dear friend and lodging mate, being in a lull of work, was not so easily satisfied, and took to inquiring about the strange sounds himself. If you have read my previous articles, I expect you are all familiar with him as well - none other than the famous detective himself, Mr. Sherlock Holmes! Though he first pursued it as a way to pass the time, Holmes quickly became engrossed in the matter and related a few of his findings to me.
It seems that not only the London area but the whole of southern England heard the double cannonade at roughly the same time, and the strange sounds may even have been audible across the Channel or further! From this, he deduced that the noise was clearly not that of a cannon or anything man-made at all, but must have been the passage of some sort of meteoric or heavenly object, traveling through the sky above our country at some tremendous velocity!
Though I found this conclusion astonishing myself, Holmes sniffed and dismissed it as "elementary" when I expressed as much to him, and continued to reveal that he was more interested in the few accounts he had received that had NOT heard the same sounds. According to his contacts in Devonshire, not two but three close reports had been heard in that area. Holmes theorized, over dinner, that this was due to the impact of the strange object somewhere in that area, and that he had made arrangements to visit and attempt to find it the next day.
At the time, I thought of the matter as nothing but a diversion for my friend's unquenchable intellect, and, being busy myself with some patients at the time, encouraged him to pursue it as a hobby. How I wish now that I had never spoken those words!
Holmes returned from Devonshire in a dark, brooding mood, and confided to me that he had found what he believed to be the object's site of impact, but the object itself had been removed before his arrival, and he was having difficulties in tracking its location as it had become somehow entangled with the mysterious death of a farmhand, somewhere near the Baskerville Estate (which you will surely all remember from our adventures with Sir Henry there).
Over the next week the detective dipped further and further into the case, as he usually does, but also seemed... different, somehow, less talkative and more agitated than normal. He rebuffed all my efforts to sooth him or take his mind away from the matter, even for a minute, and began to receive strange packages and letters at all hours. He showed me few of these, and only one that made any sense to me, a message from a man he knew in Bristol stating that they, too, had heard mysterious cannon-like sounds some weeks prior. At last Holmes arranged to travel to Bristol, and from there to the villages of Midwich and Severnford in Sussex, where he suspected the mysterious object had been taken. Or so he told me, at least - he also urged me not to come myself, and assured me that he would be back within the week.
It has been two weeks since, and Sherlock Holmes has neither returned nor been heard from. Two days ago I received word from the manager of the Severnford Inn that Holmes had never even arrived there. Yesterday, I confess I became anxious enough to examine his notes and correspondence, and found within them all manner of incomprehensible writings and jots pertaining to secret societies meeting in the parks of London, the alignments of the stars, cities of devilish beings in caves and reefs, gates to 'other worlds,' prophecies of doom, and all sorts of superstitious nonsense - but nothing in the manner of the scientific deductions my friend has been known to make in such cases.
I find myself at a loss, and so concerned for his safety that I have written to you all. If anyone has information pertaining to this case, or is willing or able to assist me in finding Mr. Holmes and getting to the truth of this matter, I beg you to contact me at this address, giving your name, occupation and whatever connections to the matter you may have. I have a dark feeling that whatever is happening may reach far beyond what I have found, but whatever comes, I will not shrink from it.
Most Sincerely,
Dr. John H. Watson
