SOURCES:
"The Adventure of the Creeping Man" by Arthur Conan Doyle
 

DESCRIPTION: “...I could see that something was coming along the passage, something dark and crouching.  Then suddenly it emerged into the light, and I saw that it was he.  He was crawling, Mr. Holmes -- crawling!  He was not quite on his hands  and knees.  I should rather say on his hands and feet, with his face sunk between his hands.  Yet he seemed to move with ease.  I was so paralyzed by the sight that it was not until he had reached my door that I was able to step forward and ask if I could assist him.  His answer was extraordinary.  He sprang up, spat out some atrocious word at me, and hurried on past me, and down the staircase. (“The Adventure of the Creeping Man” by A. Conan Doyle)

NOTES: Professor Presbury has assumed this monstrous form by injecting himself with monkey glands, a search for a youth serum.

HISTORY: A. Conan Doyle's most science fictiony of the Sherlock Holmes stories, it is based on actual cases of research. Doyle also tips his hat to Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde as well as "The Murder in the Rue Morgue" by Edgar Allan Poe. The best scene in the story is when the hideous face appears in the window. Granada Television adapted the story in their version of The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes in 1991, starring Charles Kay as Professor Presbury.

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