Hello Detective

The Hounds of Baskerville Part 7

The three of us stepped into a lab where Dr. Stapleton was inspecting a white rabbit on a table.
"Oh, back again? What's on your mind this time?" She asked rudely and unwelcomingly.
"Murder, Dr. Stapleton. Refined, cold-blooded murder." Sherlock said, as he flipped off the lights in the lab. My eyes grew wide as I watched the rabbit begin to glow in the dark.
"Will you tell little Kirsty what happened to Bluebell, or shall I?" Sherlock growled.
"Okay. What do you want?" She gave in.
"Can I borrow your microscope?" He asked, and she looked surprised by his request.
She showed him to a place where he could work, and John and I stood to the side watching carefully.
He seemed to be inspecting the contents of some white crystalline substance on the glass slide. He was trying to figure out what was in it, with little notes written to the side of different atomic names.
John had his head resting on his palm, he seemed to still be trying to wrap his head around what had just happened to him.
"Are you two okay? You look a little peaky." Dr. Stapleton said. John was still in shock, and I was sick.
I was feeling better but still threw up some this morning. At first I thought it was just some residual stomach flu, but now I was worried. Was this something else? I thought it might have been morning sickness, but I would have to have been pregnant for that to happen. But that's not possible, I just had my period... two months ago. My eyes flashed to Sherlock quickly, the possibility scaring me. Sherlock couldn't be a father, he could barely be a boyfriend. I shook my head and stopped worrying about something that might not even be true. I'll get tested when I get back into London.
"It was the GFP gene from a jellyfish, in case you're interested." She said.
"What?" I asked, snapping back into reality.
"In the rabbits." She smiled, clearly proud of her work. I nodded.
"Why?" John asked.
"Why not? It was a mix-up anyway. My daughter ended up with one of the lab specimens, so poor Bluebell had to go." She said simply.
"Your compassion is overwhelming." I smiled sarcastically.
"I know. I hate myself sometimes." She said, and she was serious.
A loud clang, caught my attention as I looked up to see Sherlock throwing the glass slide across the lab.
"It's not there!" He yelled.
"Jesus!" I jumped.
"Nothing there! It doesn't make any sense!" Sherlock yelled once more.
"What were you expecting to find?" Dr. Stapleton asked.
"A drug, of course. It has to be a drug. A hallucinogenic or a deliriant of some kind. There's no trace of anything in the sugar." He said, pacing.
"Sugar. That's what you put in his drink." I said, referring to John.
"Yes. A simple process of elimination. I saw the hound, saw it as my imagination expected me to see it. A genetically engineered monster. I think you saw it too Adelaide, the drug must have had a stronger affect on you since you were sick and caused you to collapse. I knew I couldn't believe the evidence of my own eyes, so there were seven possible reasons for it, the most possible being narcotics. Henry Knight saw it too, but you didn't John. You didn't see it. The three of us have eaten and drunk the exact same things since we got to Grimpen, apart from one thing." Sherlock said.
"John doesn't take sugar in his coffee." I finished for Sherlock, and he looked to me proudly.
"I took it from Henry's kitchen, his sugar. It's perfectly all right." Sherlock said, disappointed.
"But maybe it's not a drug." John offered.
"No, it has to be a drug. How did it get into our systems? How?" Sherlock asked, squeezing the bridge of his nose. "There has to be something. Something buried deep. Get out."
"What?" Dr. Stapleton asked, she was just as confused as I was.
"Get out, I need to go to my mind palace." Sherlock said, I rolled my eyes.
"Your what?" She asked.
"He's not going to be doing much talking for a while so we may as well go." John said, as I stood to leave.
"No, Adelaide, you stay." Sherlock said.
"Fine." I sighed, knowing that if I agreed quickly I would spare myself the long explanation.
I sat down in front of Sherlock and propped my head up on my hands. He was looking at me with that blank stare and I knew he wasn't really watching.
After a few minutes I felt myself drifting off. I couldn't have been out for more than 15 minutes before Sherlock shook me awake.
"I've got it let's go!" Sherlock said, dragging me out of my chair and out of the lab. He began to run, and I followed.
"Sherlock!" I yelled, running to catch up.
We found John and Dr. Stapleton and he began to explain.
He led us to Major Barrymore's empty office. John stood guard at the door.
"Project HOUND. I must have read about it, stored it away. An experiment in a CIA facility in Liberty, Indiana."
Dr. Stapleton sat down at the computer and tried to login and search HOUND, but the files were classified and she didn't have access to them.
"There has to be an override." I offered.
"Yeah, but that would be Major Barrymore's." Stapleton said. We looked around the office looking for any clues.
"Describe him to me." Sherlock said.
"Uh, he's a bloody martinet, a throw-back, the sort they'd have sent into Suez." Stapleton said.
"Good, excellent, old-fashioned. Traditionalist. Not the sort to use his children's name as a password. He loves his job, proud of it and this is work related. So what's at eye level?" Sherlock said, sitting and spinning in his chair.
"Lots of Thatcher biographies." I noticed.
"So that's the password?" Stapleton asked.
"No, with a man like Major Barrymore only first name terms would do." Sherlock said, beginning to type in the code.
    Margaret, he typed but you grabbed his shoulder before he pressed enter.
    "Try Maggie. Trust me just do it." I said, and he did as I said.
    "Override accepted." The computer read. I smiled and Sherlock raised an eyebrow to me.
    Sherlock began scrolling through all of the information. The names of the workers on the project were listed, and together their last name initials were HOUND.
    I looked at some of the photos on the screen and they almost made me sick.
    "Oh my god." I said, turning my face.
    "Project HOUND. A new deliriant drug which rendered its users incredibly suggestible. They wanted to use it as an anti-personnel weapon, to totally disorientate the enemy using fear and stimulus. But they shut it down and hid it away in 1986." Sherlock read.
    "Because of what it did to the subjects they tested it on... And what they did to others." I said.
    "Prolonged exposure drove them insane. Made them almost uncontrollably aggressive." Sherlock said.
    "So someone's been doing it again? Carrying on the experiments?" John asked, and it was the only possible explanation.
    "Attempting to refine it, perhaps. For the last 20 years." Sherlock said. John asked who, and I thought for a moment.
    "Cell phone." I said, thinking out loud.
    "What?" John asked.
    "It didn't struck me at the time, but cell phone isn't something you hear in England too often. It's mobile. Someone would have only said cell phone if they were used to being in America, or spent a lot of time there." I said, pointing to someone standing in the back of the photo. Sherlock had been eyeing him too.
    "He gave us his number in case we needed him." Sherlock said.
    "Oh, my god, Bob Frankland." Stapleton said, shocked. "But Bob doesn't even work on... he's a virologist. This is chemical warfare."
    "That's where he started though." I stated. "And he's never lost the certainty, the obsession that that drug really could work."
    "Nice of him to give us his number. Let's arrange a little meeting." Sherlock said, pulling the number from his coat pocket.
     As Sherlock was about to make the call, John's phone rang. He didn't seem to recognize the number, but he answered cautiously anyway.
    "Who's this?" He asked.
    "It's Louise Mortimer." He said to us. ""Louise, what's wrong?"
    "Where are you? Alright, stay there. We'll get someone to you." John said, as the call ended.
    "Henry?" I asked.
    "He's attacked her." John said.
    "Gone?" Sherlock asked, and John nodded.
    "There's only one place he'll go to. Back to where it all started." Sherlock said, now raising his phone to his ear.
    "Lestrade? Get to the Hollow. Dewer's Hollow, now! And bring a gun." Sherlock spoke commandingly into his phone.