Sherlock Holmes and the Engineer's Thumb 1 | Page 8

Jack Maitland
It was early on a Saturday morning when my dear friend and colleague Sherlock
Holmes awoke me from a deep slumber with such zeal and crude joy as is only
employed by him when something so grizzly, with such a foul narrative arrives upon
our doorstep.
Sensing this monumental urgency I rushed downstairs, diving into my worn dressing
gown I proceeded into our front room aptly named the base. The fires were freshly
stoked and I could see, from that warming light a figure occupying my brand new
recliner of which I’d purchased from Argos a few days prior.
I took the seat which would usually be our clients as my rightful place had been so
wrongfully stolen. Sitting there felt strange. I could feel all of our past clients almost,
there pleas and begs becoming audible yet for the sake of the bedraggled gentlemen
across our table. From there I could watch the strangest dialogue occur.
“I saw it at about 6AM!” The strange, strange man cried.
“What exactly did you see, I need something to work with” Responded Holmes rather
abruptly.
“This!” He screeched as he drew a bloodied rag containing a sausage like object and
threw it down upon our newly polished table. It shone so vibrantly in the faint glow of
the fire like a brown gem but swiftly it was seeped red with the liquid spilling from the
cloth. I was uneased by this but it couldn't have been what i’d assumed it to be, it
wasn’t very… clotted.
Sherlock unwrapped this, thing, to find of all things a thumb. To accompany this
strange revelation harmoniously Holmes then picked utp the mangled finger and held
it to the light of our fire ( I couldn’t understand that, it was the 21st century and we
hal electric lighting but he insisted we’d use primitive things like, fire). It was very
worse for wear as the stump was twisted and frayed, leaving parts of bone and
sinew left to the scrutiny of my eye.
To further my sheer astonishment he proceeded to inhale deeply running his nose
across the dismembered digit to no avail save noting that e could detect the stale,
sickening aroma of grease commonly used in engineering and it also had the
pungent stench of madness quickly followed by a flurry of questions by our visitor
whom had made himself known as Edmund Fitzgerald, a resident of the area.
Holmes asked how he came across it and in an uneasing response he started
screeching as loud as his lungs could bare that the thumb found him whilst waving
his right arm in the air keeping his left firmly mounted to his lap, out of sight.
Sherlock still shocked remarked that this, he presumed, concluded the interrogation,
shaking hands with this madman before me, the same hand which he waved in the
air no less. Next, he practically charged out of the house with his left arm slid firmly
in his trouser pocket babbling in some incomprehensible dialect.
I had noticed however that his tanned thumb which lay before me had the same
jaundice tinge as Fitzgerald’s skin, most chillingly of all, I had caught the strangest
smear of a red substance around his left hand pocket, given away by the gray that