The West End Horror by Nicholas Meyer

sound like? They sound like–” And then we heard the queerest succession of grunts and growls, alternately sounding like squeaks and a beehive.
    “Oh, yes, yes! I see what you mean! That’s much better!” the high, piping voice exclaimed. “Yes, I think I can do that.”
    “Good.”
    Miss Terry, having amused herself sufficiently, knocked peremptorily on the door and opened it without waiting for a response.
    “I’m sorry to disturb you, my dears,” she adopted a business-like, matter-of-fact tone, “but here are the two gentlemen who wished to see Sir Arthur.” What a little actress she was!
    The spacious quarters into which we were shown indeed suggested an ideal retreat after a strenuous night’s work in the theatre. Dominating the place was a long oak table at which thirty guests might easily put in a pleasant hour or two over several cold birds and bottles.
    At the far end of the table, beneath portraits of David Garrick and Edmund Kean, two figures sat cloistered together, looking like conspirators interrupted in the midst of an anarchist plot.
    The taller of the two was a melancholy man in his late fifties, with cavernously hollow cheeks, long grey hair, piercing eyes of an indeterminate colour, and a studiously grave demeanour. He rose courteously and bowed as we entered. Over his shoulders was carelessly draped a massive maroon cloak, which lent to his distinguished appearance an appropriately theatrical touch.
    Sir Arthur Sullivan rose, as well. He was not nearly so tall as Henry Irving, nor as dramatic in his costume. He wore his expensive clothes unaffectedly, as one who is used to fine things, and though a trifle stout, was possessed of dark, slightly Semitic good looks. His sad eyes were a lustrous brown and reminded me forcibly of a cow’s as they peered myopically through the pince-nez that rested familiarly on the bridge of his nose. Like Gilbert, he affected large sidewhiskers, and their effect, I judged, was to make him seem older than he really was. He held his right hand at an unnatural angle throughout our conversation, pressing it against his stomach. Altogether there was in his face and in his bearing that which did not suggest a healthy man.
    “Gentlemen,” said Irving in his odd nasal voice, “we are sorry to have kept you waiting.”
    “And we are equally sorry to interrupt your business.”
    “I’ve been with the police most of the morning,” Sullivan informed us sadly as we shook hands. “I don’t know what I can say to you that I haven’t told them. May I ask at whose behest you come to see me?”
    Suddenly he gasped and clutched spasmodically at his side, turning quite pale. Irving caught him tenderly as he stumbled, breaking the fall, and gently lowered him into a chair. He whispered his thanks to the actor, then turned, catching his breath, and repeated his question.
    “We are here at the behest of justice,” Holmes informed him, ignoring, for the moment, his seizure. “More prosaically, we were asked to look into the matter by Mr. Bernard Shaw.”
    The reaction of the two men to this piece of intelligence was startling. Sullivan knit his brows, perplexed, while Irving straightened up abruptly, his face clouding over, rendering his appearance more sombre than it was already.
    “Shaw?” he cried, his courtly attitude slipping a little as he darted a glance at Ellen Terry. “Nellie, is this any of your doing?”
    “Henry, dearest, I give you my word I know nothing about it,” Miss Terry replied, obviously taken aback. “I met these gentlemen only moments ago in the lobby.”
    Irving started ominously down the length of the table. As he walked–or rather, shuffled–I was struck by his manner of thrusting his right shoulder forward, and I had to smile at Miss Terry’s pet name for him.
    “I give you warning, Nellie–” he spoke at the door–”I give you fair warning. I will not have that degenerate in this theatre–”
    “He’s not a degenerate, Henry.