Hello Detective

The Hounds of Baskerville Part 6

Sherlock rushed into the pub. Who was he yelling at? I suddenly sneezed before stepping into the pub.
"Oh, nice to see you too." A voice said... Lestrade? What the hell was he doing here?
"I'm on holiday, would you believe?" Lestrade said.
"No, I wouldn't." Sherlock said.
"I heard you were in the area. What are you up to? And I thought you were sick?" Lestrade asked me.
"I am sick, Greg. Apparently Sherlock can't function if I'm not in a ten foot radius of him." I smiled.
"I can believe that. What are you up to? Are you after this Hound of Hell, like on the telly?" Lestrade asked.
"I'm waiting for an explanation, Inspector, why are you here?" Sherlock asked, rudely.
"I've told you, I'm on holiday." Greg smiled.
"You're brown as a nut. You're clearly just back from holiday." Sherlock said.
"I fancied another one." Lestrade retorted.
"Oh, this is Mycroft, isn't it?" Sherlock said his name with such dislike.
"Now look..." Lestrade began to explain, as he reached for his beer on the counter.
"One mention of Baskerville and he sends down my handler to spy on me, incognito. Is that why you're calling yourself 'Greg'?" Sherlock asked, everyone raised an eyebrow at him.
"That's his name." I said, rudely.
"Is it?" Sherlock asked confused.
"Yes. If you'd ever bothered to find out. Look I'm not your handler, she is. And I just don't do what your brother tells me." Lestrade said, taking another sip of his beer.
"Actually, you could be just the man we want." John said.
"Why?" Sherlock asked, John reached in his pocket and pulled out something. My eyes widened as I noticed what it was.
"This fell out of your pocket last night, Adelaide. I saw you pinch it when we were checking in." John said showing Sherlock the receipt.
"Yeah, I thought it was an awful lot of meat for a vegetarian restaurant." I said.
"Excellent." Sherlock smiled.
"A nice, scary inspector and sergeant from Scotland Yard, who can put in a few calls, might come in very handy." John said.
John rang the bell at the counter and Billy and Gary the shop owners came out. They sat across from Lestrade and I at a table as we looked through their books.
I noticed Sherlock hand John a cup of coffee.
"What's this?" John asked.
"Coffee. I made coffee." Sherlock said.
"You never make coffee." John pointed out.
"I just did. Don't you want it?" Sherlock asked with a puppy dog look.
"You don't have to keep apologising. Thanks." John said, taking the cup out of pity. I didn't know what Sherlock was planning, but it was definitely something. John took a sip and then made a face.
"I don't take sugar." John said, Sherlock sighed. John took another sip to make Sherlock feel better.
I looked back down to the papers I was examining.
"These records go back nearly two months." I began.
"Is that when you had the idea, after the TV show went out?" Lestrade finished.
"It's me. It was me." Billy said, guiltily. "I'm sorry Gary. I couldn't help it. I had a bacon sandwich at Cal's wedding and one thing led to another."
I noticed Sherlock smiling and I was doing the same.
"Nice try." I smirked.
"Look, we were just trying to give things a bit of a boost, you know? Let a great big dog run wild up on the moor, it was heaven-sent. It was like us having our own Loch Ness monster." Gary said.
"And where do you keep it?" Lestrade asked.
"There's an old mine shaft. It's not too far. He was alright there." Gary said.
"Was?" I asked, raising an eyebrow.
"We couldn't control the bloody thing. It was vicious. And then, a month ago, Billy took him to the vet and, you know..." Gary said.
"He's dead?" John asked.
"Put down." Gary nodded.
"Yeah, no choice, so it's over." Billy said. I stared at him, examining him. He looked nervous. He was lying.
"It was just a joke, you know." Gary said quietly.
"Yeah, hilarious." Lestrade said sarcastically, he stood from the table. "You've nearly driven a man out of his mind."
Lestrade left the room, John soon followed. I noticed Sherlock looking in John's now empty cup as I stood. I took one more look at Billy as I left the room. He was definitely lying.
"What are you up to?" I whispered to Sherlock on our way out the door.
"Shh." He whispered back and nodded with a 'I'll tell you later' kind of nod.
"So, you believe them about having the dog destroyed?" Lestrade  asked Sherlock once we were all outside.
"No reason not to." Sherlock said. I kept to myself about my gut feeling telling me the opposite.
"Hopefully there was no harm done. I'm not quite sure what I'd charge them with, anyway. I'll have a word with the local force. Alright, that's that, then. Catch you later. I'll see you monday, Adelaide?" Lestrade asked.
"Expect so." I smiled and nodded as Lestrade left.
"So that was their dog that people saw out on the moor?" John asked.
"Looks like it." Sherlock said.
"But that wasn't what you saw, that wasn't just an ordinary dog." John said.
"No, it was immense. It had burning red eyes and it was glowing. It's whole body was glowing." Sherlock said those words as if he didn't even believe them himself. "I've got a theory, but I need to get back into Baskerville to test it."
"How? Can't pull off the ID trick again." John said, and he was right.
"Might not have to." Sherlock said, raising his phone to his ear and beginning to speak, "Hello, brother, dear. How are you?"
I laughed, I didn't know how he managed it, but we were back at the gate to Baskerville.
"I need to see Major Barrymore as soon as we get inside." Sherlock said.
"Right." John said.
"Which means you'll have to start the search for the hound alone. In the labs, Stapleton's first." Sherlock told John.
"Well, can't Adelaide help me?" John asked.
"No, I need her to distract Dr. Frankland, he seems to be a big fan." Sherlock said, turning back to me.
We were now inside Major Barrymore's office, asking for access for an experiment. As instructed, John went to look in the labs.
"Oh, you know I'd love to. I'd love to give you unlimited access to this place. Why not?" He said sarcastically.
"It's a simple enough request, Major." Sherlock said, he hadn't completely filled me in on his plan yet, but i knew he was using John as a guinea pig.
"I've never heard of anything so bizarre." Barrymore growled.
"You're to give me 24 hours, it's what I've negotiated..." Sherlock began.
"Not a second more. I may have to comply with this order, but I don't have to like it. I don't know what the hell you expect to find here, anyway." Major said.
"Perhaps the truth." Sherlock said, now standing in the door to leave.
"About what?" Major asked before answering his own question. "Oh, I see. The big coat should have told me. You're one of the conspiracy lot, aren't you? Well, then, go ahead, seek them out, the monsters, the death rays, the aliens."
"Have you got any of those?" Sherlock asked, after he had rolled his eyes. "Oh, just wondering."
"A couple. Crash landed here in the '60s." Barrymore began, leaning forward in his chair. "We call them Abbott and Costello. Good luck Mr. Holmes." Sherlock rolled his eyes as he closed the door, were right behind him.
    I followed Sherlock into an empty lab with some monitors.
    "Are you ever going to tell me what you're up to?" I asked Sherlock.
    "You'll see soon." He smirked and left the room. He returned in about 15 minutes, and I glanced down to one of the monitors. John was entering a lab with empty cages downstairs.
    "And it seems our guinea pig is in place." I said, looking to Sherlock. He raised an eyebrow at me.
    "Oh come on, it doesn't take a genius to figure out what you're doing. What did you put in his drink this morning?"
    "Sugar. To see if that's what made the two of us react in the Hollow." Sherlock said, pulling out his phone and placing it above the microphone that projects to the lab John was in.
    I switched on the lights to the lab and Sherlock played some hound-ish noises.
"You know if you're wrong about his sugar thing, John will probably kill you for putting him through this." I said.
"I don't doubt it, but right now it's the only logical explanation." Sherlock said.
We watched John react as any human would in this situation. Nothing so far to suggest anything out of the ordinary. Sherlock started to switch up the noises, and I cut his key card access. He tried to leave the room countless times, each time the machine read 'Access Denied". After his last attempt I cut the lights to the lab.
John pulled a flashlight out of his pocket, he rubbed his eyes. Clearly something was affecting him, but I still had doubts it was the sugar. John walked around the lab carefully inspecting the cages. Just as Sherlock had planned, John found the cage with the door bent back.
"You're evil, you know that." I said to Sherlock, jokingly. He raised an eyebrow and played growling noises through the speaker.
Sherlock's phone began to ring and I picked it up to hand it to him.
"No, let it go to voicemail this time." He said.
I watched John go into one of the cages, now terrified. Sherlock took the time to call John and put it on speakerphone.
"It's here. It's in here with me." John whispered.
"Where are you?" Sherlock asked casually.
"Get me out, Sherlock, you've got to get me out." John whispered. "The big lab, the first lab that we saw."
John heard another growl. Sherlock motioned to I that he was going to go get him, and that I was to turn on the lights when he found him.
"John?" Sherlock asked into the phone.
"Now, Sherlock! Please!" John said.
"Alright, I'll find you. Keep talking." Sherlock said.
"I can't it'll find me." John said, fear still in his voice.
"Keep talking. What are you seeing?" Sherlock asked.
"I don't know, but I can hear it now." John said.
"Can you see it?" Sherlock asked.
"No, I can't." John said, and you played more growling sounds. "I can see it." John said suddenly.
Sherlock ripped the sheet off of the cage and as instructed, I switched the lights back on.
"Are you alright, John?" Sherlock asked, pulling John out of the cage.
"Jesus Christ! It was the hound!" John yelled, still spooked. "Sherlock, it was here, I swear it, it must... Did you see it? You must have!"
John was rambling like a loonatic.
"It's alright, it's okay now." Sherlock said, calmingly.
"No, it's not! It's not okay!" John screamed. " I saw it, I was wrong!"
"Hm, well, let's not jump to conclusions." Sherlock said.
"What?" John asked, angrily.
"What did you see?" Sherlock tested him.
"I told you, I saw the hound." John argued.
"Huge red eyes, glowing?" Sherlock asked.
"Yes." John said.
"No." Sherlock said, smiling and shaking his head.
"What?" John asked.
"I made up the bit about glowing. You saw what you expected to see because I told you. You have been drugged. We have all been drugged." Sherlock said.
"Drugged?" John asked, he looked as if he was about to take a swing at Sherlock, so I quickly rushed down to the lab just in case.
Sherlock and John were walking out of the lab when I arrived. Sherlock nodded to me, and I knew exactly where we were headed.