Regarding the Events of One Sherlock’s Scandalous St. Valentine’s Day

Regarding the Events of One
Sherlock’s Scandalous St. Valentine’s Day

Christine Danse

Published by Christine Danse at
Smashwords

Copyright 2010 Christine Danse

Cover design by Christine Danse, using
Artweaver and Picnik.com

Photograph of woman by
Patryk Choiński,
http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1294218

Photograph of cog by Martin
Walls,
http://www.sxc.hu/photo/385418

Photographs used under this
image license agreement:
http://www.sxc.hu/help/7_2

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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I arrived home an hour late from work on
Valentine's Day to find the door ajar, my wife missing, and a note
waiting for me on the mantelpiece.

I was holding a bouquet of brilliant blue
violets, Annette's favorite. I had picked them up from a small girl
on the street corner during my rush home from the Sherlock office.
Annette and I had reservations for dinner. I expected to come home
to an angry wife. Instead, I found her gone.

A swarm of thoughts buzzed in my mind.
Perhaps, in her anger, she had left me. This thought was chased by
a wave of guilt and another, more frightening thought: that she had
been kidnapped for ransom. Or perhaps she was playing a game.
Perhaps she had simply left on an errand and absentmindedly left
the door ajar behind her, as she was wont to do.

I approached the
mantelpiece rather like it was a bristling mastiff ready to spring
and bite me at any moment. With trepidation, I read the note. It
simply read,
Find me
.

A game, then! A flood of relief and
irritation washed all of the thoughts of fear and guilt from me.
What a saucy, terrible girl. Perhaps I should have married a
gentler, more obedient woman. I shook my head. No, no one could
replace Annette in my heart. She had me by the drawstrings, I'm
afraid.

The note was just that: a piece of paper
torn from her stationary with words written in her peculiar
shorthand. There was nothing else new or amiss on the mantelpiece.
She evidently wanted me to use my Bell detective skills to find
her. She was very clever. Though I was secure in my skills as a
Sherlock, I actually worried that she might outwit me.

I took the note to the
kitchen and cranked the dynamo lamp to better analyze it. I
observed a tiny smudge of grease on the page. In the dimness of the
sitting room, I had missed it at first. Indeed, on one of the torn
back corners appeared a small spot that had the distinctive odor of
engine grease. A quick trip upstairs to our bedroom confirmed my
suspicion: My spare station keys were missing from their hiding
spot. In their place was another note torn from her stationary.
This one appeared to be a code of some sort
. LTYN-7835
.

I did not have time to decipher it. Without
a doubt, she was at the police engine room. If she was
discovered--with my unauthorized spare keys, nonetheless!--I could
be out of a job. I took up my cane and the bouquet of violets and
set off at once for Scotland Yard.

The Bell detectives had a contract with the
station to operate the analytical engines at night, so it was not
uncommon to find one or more Sherlocks loitering there, smoking
pipes and reviewing casework by gaslight. Tonight, to my relief, I
found the station windows dark and the door firmly locked. If
Annette was here, then she had at least taken more care with
securing this door than ours at home.

I found the engine room to be just as quiet
and dark as the front room. However, when I approached the last of
the three silent engines, I found that a halo of heat that bespoke
very recent use still surrounded it. (The other two had already
grown cold after the day's work.) I looked in the engine's
punchcard slot and found that it was empty.

A closed box of punchcards
had been left on the table nearby--recent case studies, most
likely. I opened this, riffled through it with my index finger, and
immediately located a card buried amongst the others that was still
warm. On its subject line were the same letters and numbers on the
note I had found:
LTYN-7835
. Seeing them this time,
they struck me as more familiar, as if I had seen this code before
or something quite like it.

Although the engines had been set up with
steam power, they still retained their original crank handles. This
was to my advantage, as I did not have the preapproval to use one
tonight, and when powered by steam, they made considerable
noise.

Crank-powered, the engine
took twice as long as usual to make its calculation. At last--after
nearly five minutes of cranking--a piece of paper appeared in the
output bin. It read:
Freight car LTYN-7835
registered Thomas Harrison departing London 22:00 arriving Paris
02:30
.

A train to Paris! I dearly hoped she did not
expect me to meet her there! After I found her, I would surely have
to chide her about abusing my station as a Bell detective as well
as her own as an Ada coder (for, no doubt, it was she who coded the
punchcard). God only knew where she was now and what kind of danger
she was putting herself in!

I went immediately to the
train yard and picked my way through the rubble and tracks until I
found a faded red freight car near the end of a rather long train.
The white letters
LTYN-7835
appeared along its side. The door was open but a
foot.

"Anna?" I called, softly, as I approached. I
had spied at least one guard strolling through the yard with a hand
torch and did not fancy meeting him. I waited until I was at the
door before I called out again. "Anna, are you there?"

"Jeremy! Is that you?" came her voice, so
small and sweet, from the darkness within.

I was relieved and angered. "Annette, I have
no energy to play these games! I was looking forward to a nice,
pleasant dinner out with you. Come out at once before we are caught
and I lose my job!"

"Oh, Jeremy. I'm sorry you're upset. But I
can't."

"What do you mean?"

"I'm bound," she said.

At those words, I hoisted the train door
open wide enough to admit myself and leaped inside like a mad
thing. I could see her only barely. She was on the ground against
one of the walls with her legs stretched out, slumped so low that
she was nearly lying.

"Wait!" she said, as I began to stride
toward her. "You will need to light the lamp first so that you can
see. There."

I looked down and saw a gas lamp only a few
feet away. When I stooped toward the thing, my hand brushed a box
of Lucifers on the ground next to it. After I had fumbled the light
on, I turned to my wife (eyes watering from the acrid smoke of the
Lucifer) and was nearly breathless as I took in my first real view
of her.

Her dark ringlets floated all about her head
like a doll's, and her face was made up as sweet and innocent as
one. She wore a corset; my favorite, the black one with fair lace.
The mound of her breasts curved from the top of this, as soft and
fair as baby's flesh. She wore her patent leather buckle boots,
polished to a shine. But that was all.

She wore no shirt, no dress, no
undergarments. She was naked from her waist to her shins--all
smooth, alabaster skin. Her legs were splayed open, displaying the
voluptuous, white curves of her womanhood. She had shaved.

I believe I must have blanched a solid shade
of white. She smiled at me. "Are those for me?" she asked, and I
realized she meant the bouquet of violets, which I had left on the
ground next to the lamp.

When I began to approach her again, she
said, "Wait!" but I ignored her this time. I reached for her
wrists, which were bound to a rope that hung from the freight car's
ceiling, but I had hardly touched the massive knots before
something struck me soundly and sharply against the shin. I cried
out and recoiled several feet.

A small steamdroid brandished a metal baton
at me with obvious menace. I recognized it as Annette's gardening
droid, though it was not holding its usual tools. "What is the
meaning of this!" I cried.

"I asked you to wait," she said. "It will
not let you unbind me yet."

I struggled for words. "Your droid-- I
don't-- When will it?"

"When I am pleased," she said, pinning me
with her dark eyes. How she exerted such a powerful presence
clothed only in a corset and boots, bound by her wrists on the
ground, was beyond my understanding.

"I don't understand. Do you mean..." I found
the word so profane and absurd. "...sexually?" Annette was a very
rude girl with the mind and spirit of an adventuress. Alarmingly,
she seemed to enjoy the act of intercourse more than I. "Will it
not let me touch you?" I asked, eyeing the droid. It stood on its
four squat little legs at her side, something akin to a large,
angry crab. I was not keen on being bludgeoned again.

"No," she said. "Not until I am
satisfied."

My exasperation was obvious. "If I cannot
touch you, then how can I satisfy you?"

"My physician said it is important for a
woman's health for her to experience paroxysm. He kindly sold me
the apparatus that can trigger it."

I stared at her as if she was daft. At that
moment, the hiss and rumble of the train's engine reached our car,
which lurched. The train was departing for Paris!

Immediately, I sprang for her again. I was
met with a cry of "Watch out!" and another smack from the
steamdroid's baton. This time, it struck my left forearm.

"Ow!" I howled, cradling my limb. "Woman,
you're crazy! What do you want me to do?"

"Drop your pants and hold yourself."

I sputtered, "Excuse me?"

"I won't give it the order to treat me until
you drop your pants and hold yourself."

I realized that the "it" she was referring
to was the droid. It occurred to me then that the baton it held was
crudely phallic in shape. I began to object, but the car lurched
again as it began to move. Annette was stubborn--very stubborn--and
I knew that if I did not submit to her demand, we would soon be in
Paris.

I nearly fell over while dropping my
trousers. "Sit, you silly thing!" she said. The car shook, I lost
my balance, and I found that I had no choice but to fall into a
sitting position on the floor of the car. Indeed, I landed just in
time to catch the gaslamp, which bounced and began to tip onto its
side.

Embarrassingly, I was already erect from the
sight of her. She smiled broadly, evidently pleased at this
reaction. Oh, that look! Dark embers burned in those irises. Forget
dinner, forget Paris, forget the silly droid with its bludgeoning
stick--right then, I only wanted to kneel over her low, curved
form, grasp that rope in my hands, and thrust myself between those
welcomingly parted legs!

Her eyes traveled from my cock to my face.
Her expression was patiently impatient. I opened my mouth to
object--I could almost feel her around me, under me--but thought
better of it as the car jolted and brought me back to my
predicament. I hesitated, then wrapped my hand around my cock and
looked at her. I tried to pretend I was merely holding it to guide
it into her wet flesh.

Apparently, it was not enough for Annette.
"Don't just sit there. Jerk it," she said.

I was alarmed. "That's obscene! My palms
will grow fur!"

"Of course they won't! Now, try it. Pretend
you are milking a cow."

I muttered that I had never milked a cow in
my life, and didn't believe that it was anything like this, anyway.
I looked down at my member in my hand, remembering how my mother
had chastised me if ever I had reached below my waist. Yet, I was
in such a bind, I had no choice.

I went slowly at first and very loosely,
believing that perhaps the act would not truly count as long as I
was barely gripping it. The light touch recalled to me Annette's
hand brushing over my cock, teasingly. I remembered thinking that
she was such a saucy girl, waking me from a doze like that. In the
memory, I stirred and rubbed my thumb over her generous lower lip;
she licked it, quickly and lightly. Her dark eyes sparkled from
beneath a fringe of curly hair.

Reflexively, I began to squeeze my shaft. My
eyes, which had closed, now sprang open again in horror mingled
with a sudden, urgent pleasure. A gasp escaped from me.