Lot 249 by Arthur Conan Doyle

Lot No. 249 by Arthur Conan Doyle
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Old College, Oxford, in the last years of the nineteenth century. A young medical student named Abercrombie Smith shares a stair with a fellow he barely knows — a brilliant scholar of Eastern languages, whose rooms are crowded with the relics of a dead civilisation, and whose company he has been quietly warned against. Something is wrong with the sound that comes through the wall at night: a low, monotonous muttering, the same words over and over, in no language Smith can place. Enemies begin to suffer, one by one, in ways that leave no mark and no explanation. And in the corner of that cluttered room stands a thing purchased at auction, numbered like an item in a catalogue, upright, ancient, and — Smith is almost certain — not quite as still as it should be.

"Lot No. 249" was written by Arthur Conan Doyle and first published in Harper's Magazine in September 1892.

Doyle is best remembered as the creator of Sherlock Holmes, but he wrote extensively in the supernatural and horror genres throughout his career. He died in 1930, having remained a committed spiritualist to the end of his life.O