The Lazarus Machine

Chapter 39

The address in Lambeth was about three times the size of their home on Baker Street, but less well-maintained.  The exterior was chipping and the first of the stone steps wobbled when John prodded it with his cane.  It wasn't entirely dilapidated, for the windows shone and the walk was swept, just somewhat neglected.

"I feel I must warn you, John.  The Professor is one of the few men in existence whose genius nearly matches my own.  His genius borders on madness."  Sherlock mounted the front steps two at a time and used the knocker. 

"So, if you are the more intelligent, does that make you mad?"  John says this with a teasing grin, surprising Sherlock into a wide smile.

"Some seem to think so."  Sherlock winked and John felt a little guilty for thinking him mad on the morning of their wedding.  Was that only yesterday?  Granted, he had just cause, but Sherlock was a vivid, brilliant man and shouldn't need to explain his reasons for the things he did.

The door opened on an ancient man, skeletal and hunched over with a sunken chest.

"Is he at home, Marley?" Sherlock asked.

"Yes, sir, tinkering away with his latest contraption."

"Excellent.  We'll find him in a good mood, then."

"Very, sir."

The elderly butler took their overcoats and left them to find their own way.  Sherlock seemed to be a frequent enough visitor that he familiar with the butler and had the run of the household.

"What is that humming, Sherlock?"  John asked as soon as they were alone in the foyer.  Sherlock turned as he opened a door to their left, eyes alight.

"That is bound to be his latest machine.  This should be exciting!  Come along, John."

John entered the next room after his husband, but he was stopped by the utterly stunning clutter of the room.  Large globes hung from the ceiling in what John surmised was a model of the solar system.  Books and loose papers were stacked in piles three feet deep in corners despite an abundance of bookshelves.  The shelving held other things, notably taxidermied animals John had never seen in his life and pickled punks, two headed pigs, six-legged cats and the like.  Glass eyes stared out from the shelving as well, often on their own and not encased in any skull.

Bones littered the place, too, but in a way that suggested something crawled up to the hearth and was allowed to die there.  There was no smell beyond the typical coal smoke and dust and paper smell of a library, so John supposed that could not be true.

Sherlock walked confidently through the mess as if he'd seen it all before and opened a door on the far side of the room.

"He's what one might call a theoretical anatomist.  Taught me everything I know about the subject.  He was the only lecturer at university worth listening to, but of course they quietly tossed him out a few years ago."

John didn't ask what for; he wasn't sure he really wanted to know.

Sherlock disappeared through the door, leaving John to follow or not.  John bravely threw himself into the next room, breath held in a mixture of dread and anticipation.

"Good afternoon, Professor!" Sherlock called above the oppressive humming.  It made the fine hairs along John's skin stand up and a strange pressure throbbed through the rest of him.

"Holmes, lad, good to see you, good to see you!  Give me a few minutes and I'll be right with you."

John still couldn't see the man for he was hidden by a huge machine that took up the center of the room.  It consisted of huge glass disks, spinning with a crank, brass globes, glass cylinders, and metal tubing.  There was a definite chemical smell in this room, as well as the acrid scent of burnt hair.  That smell was coming from the body of a dog on a nearby rolling table.