Smiles, what smiles there could be on such an unnatural day shriveled like poisoned trees. Open doors shut, and shades came down on windows. Groups of people dispersed, and people vanished indoors. The Hound continued it’s bizarre walk, each stride the twin of the last, every dull yellow gas lamp gleaming over it’s chrome skin and morphine fangs the same as the one before.

The Hound had come to Baker Street.

Holmes puffed contemplatively, chewing thoughtfully on the stem of his pipe. Tobacco smoke rose like a silent halo around his graying hair, A cheery fire burned in the hearth not far from him, and a small pile of pipe ash had built up carelessly on the armrest of his threadbare red easy chair.

“What do you make of it Watson – arsenic?”

“What?”

“The sky. You might observe that it has turned a most curious color. Do you think it’s arsenic from the new synthesizing plant?”

“I don’t know. If it is, might it not be wise to get away from the window?”

“Excellent idea. Do we have any more chestnuts?”

“No, I think you ate the last of them.”

“In that case, perhaps some late evening music?”

Holmes gently took his prized violin from the top shelf of the cabinet beside the hearth. Long, pale fingers wrapped expertly around the bow, he raised it to strike a note when the air was pierced by a scream of tortured metal.

“Good God Holmes, was that you?”

“No.” he said, dragging himself to his feet with the aid of the cane, and moved towards the window. He path across the careworn rug was interrupted by a scream in earnest. The scream continued for a second longer, and then was cut short suddenly. Silence echoed through the room, all cheer suddenly drained out of it as if by a hypodermic needle.

I reached the window a moment after Holmes, in time to see something monstrous and alien leap from the cabin of a horse and carriage. A limb body hung in it’s metal jaws, dripping with lethal doses of morphine. The body stirred feebly, and a joint in the chromo torso twisted once, hard, and the body was still. The horses must have been screaming, but I couldn’t hear them from here, though I could see them thrashing, foaming, rending at their harnesses. The… the thing grabbed them, struggled for no more than a second, and then they too, were silent. The whole thing was over in perhaps ten second, and then it fell into it’s monotonous step, paws gripping firmly the slick cobblestones. The policeman who tailed it made a halfhearted attempt to push he carriage and the corpses to the side of the road, and then gave up and ran to take his place at the Hound’s side.