by David Pirie
‘What in heaven’s name is it?’ I exclaimed, putting out my hand to feel the glow.
‘No,’ said Bell. ‘Do not go near it.’ And he slammed the lid of the box shut with such force that I had to snatch my hand back.
‘But you touched it,’ I said.
‘And it hurt too. But very fortunately its power was waning. Since then I have examined it and restored it, so it is now almost as potent as when it last killed.’
Both Miller and I looked at him, baffled.
‘I will show you,’ he said. And from a compartment in the base of the box he took out a long metal handle. He placed it in an aperture in the side and slowly at first, but then more quickly he began to turn it. ‘Now observe,’ he said. ‘I will demonstrate the full extent for you, but please do not even lift your hand.’ And once again he opened the box.
The horrible head was still there but a remarkable thing was happening. For as Bell turned the handle, the light inside was getting brighter and brighter. Soon it was dazzlingly bright and we had almost to shield our eyes.
‘There is nothing alive here,’ said Bell. ‘At least in any conventional sense. Take away the trappings, which are in their way extraordinary, and you will find a dynamo, to which Hanbury gained access through Macandrew. Indeed you saw him carry it out of the Polytechnic exhibition, Doyle. The head you see is the preserved head of a reticulated python, no doubt bought from a sailor.’
‘You are not saying he did this with Macandrew’s knowledge?’ said Miller.
Bell hesitated. ‘No, I suppose I am persuaded the scientist could not have known. Inside the head you will find an electric contact which can convey up to three hundred and fifty watts of what is called alternating current, wrapped in a lethal wire. This is originated when you turn the handle, but the power is also stored and augmented by a powerful battery. Here is what killed Jenny Galton and made her corpse so strange to Doyle. It also did for Harriet Lowther when Hanbury transported it to her room. In her constant toings and froings on the dockside she had no doubt seen far more of what went on in this den than Hanbury liked. The poor woman thought she could get money from him but he lured her with the prospect of seeing the fabulous head. And she saw it all right, just like the legion of people whose clothes are upstairs. Dozens of intoxicated opium seekers were seen off here, all valuables stripped from them before being dumped through that hatch. Many were picked up a day or so later by Hanbury on the river and went to Macandrew as raw materials for his investigations. But whenever these poor victims were dragged out of the river and assessed by your pathologists, their death would always be put down to drowning or simple heart attack.’
‘But surely I have seen such displays of electricity before?’ I protested. ‘I understood them to be a kind of party trick. I thought they could do no serious harm.’
‘Yes, and your conviction is entirely erroneous, even though you share it with most of the population,’ said Bell. ‘It is true that until recently they could not. Do you know, Doyle, when the first man in Europe was killed by electric current as that poor silver-haired man was tonight?’
I shook my head.
‘Not more than four years ago, in Lyons, when a stage carpenter died at the hands of a Siemens dynamo like this one, though a great deal larger in size, for huge strides have been made in just a short time in the design of these machines. The first death in England was a year later in Birmingham in 1880 where a bandsman died, only this time it was a dynamo and a battery which he short-circuited. Of course it was only a matter of time before someone used such devices for murder and our friend Mr Hanbury may well take the dubious credit of being the first. I very much fear that where death is so efficient and reliable, there will be many more.’
It was a sobering thought. ‘So it explains the strangeness of Jenny Galton’s corpse when I saw it?’
‘Certainly,’ said Bell. ‘By that time I had suspicions, but it was her autopsy that convinced me. I had been careful to read up what little evidence we have and always the blood was extraordinarily liquid, especially in the heart, while rictus is very marked. It was not, I will admit, very pleasant to recall these effects when Hanbury was forcing me to touch it, using the cloth to keep clear himself. But even then, as I said, I did harbour certain hopes. For I had deduced that its originating power must be by hand and much time had elapsed, while despite my best efforts our poor friend with silver hair had taken considerable current. Also I could observe that the filament was not so bright, so the battery must have run lower. I did feel, therefore, that I had a chance, even if I should have preferred not to take it. And as you saw, Doyle, when I touched the thing I received only a small shock – my hair stood on end, I felt a little pain. But it was only the kind of harmless party trick you mentioned just now and which most people associate with electricity. Unfortunately, as we have seen, they will soon know better.’
Shortly after this, Inspector Miller’s men returned to report that they had searched the whole place and found it was entirely empty of people other than the stupefied opium smokers. ‘Well,’ said the Inspector, ‘we will have to begin clearing it out and I hate to think of half what we will find, but at least I will arrange for this contraption to go back where it came from at once. And we must make sure Macandrew does not let it out of his sight again.’
I cannot say I was sorry to walk up those steps for the last time and climb into the police cab Miller had arranged for us. Bell and he had some further words together and then we were on our way. ‘We will visit Macandrew ourselves,’ said Bell, looking at his watch. ‘But before we do we have earned some refreshment. It is not late and I have seen a satisfactory coffee house at Norfolk Street on the other side of the river. Let us take half an hour there.’
I knew the Doctor far too well to find this suggestion anything but highly unusual. He would surely want to compare notes with Macandrew and it was not his way to interrupt a case in its closing stages. I was also aware that he had been curiously silent on the matter which most concerned me, so I was not surprised when we sat down and he produced a few letters from his pocket.
‘I was able to go through what was there quite carefully,’ he said. ‘The police will find much of it interesting. Without our guidance they would not have made anything of these. But you will.’
And he handed them to me.
The letters, dated several months earlier, were very much like the ones I had received, though he had made no attempt to disguise his hand, and rather than being posted it looked from the envelopes as if they had been brought to Hanbury by a mutual acquaintance, presumably a seaman. I picked up the first, addressed to Charles Hanbury, and this is what I read:
Your name is one often mentioned by seamen here as a fellow who will take on the out-of-the-way task if the price is right. I wish you to find the right Paphians for some amusement so I can play a trick upon a very dear friend. I have some girls in mind but you must find them out, write me of their particulars, and I will instruct you what to tell them to say and do when my friend comes calling. I would also like you to find an establishment with a child so we can play that joke upon him. You will be paid well, all the better since you may have to perform some tidying up for I don’t want the girls to give trouble. If you agree, more particulars will follow.
My eye raced to the signature.
An American gentleman
And the address was a forwarding agent in Chicago.
Bell looked at me long and hard. ‘So we may conclude he is not here?’
My hand was trembling and I was glad that he had left this until we were alone.
‘But is it not possible,’ I said, glancing at the dates, ‘that this, too, is some blind? He would surely want to observe and enjoy my discomfort himself, never associating with Hanbury but staying in the shadows. These are very old letters, after all, and I have felt such a sense of him throughout this.’
‘No doubt you have,’ said Bell grimly. ‘I have too. Who knows what pleasure he would ha
ve in the process we have just witnessed. It is so much what he looks for. The future of death. There is something more barbarous about that box of Hanbury’s than the ugliest blade, for at least you have to drive that home.’
‘Yet you say it is just coincidence that our enemy found this man?’ I said bitterly, for in talking of such things I knew we were both thinking again of the beach and its message.
‘I say no such thing,’ said Bell. ‘The legend of Hanbury’s serpent head must have spread. No doubt he relished the power it gave him. And … Cream—’ He hesitated a little before he spoke the name. It was a name I suppose we both tried not to speak for it seemed as if the mere act of pronouncing it gave its owner power and also summoned up so much old pain, ‘would have heard these stories and sensed that a man like Hanbury, who undoubtedly had a reputation as a killer on many waterfronts, was someone he could use. I accept some doubts remain, Doyle, they always will. But my advice is that he has been playing at a distance.
‘And,’ he continued, ‘I must apologise where I doubted you. I was wrong. My only defence is that I know the way he would like you to go, so perhaps I erred on the side of concern. I ask your forgiveness for that.’
I was, I will admit, somewhat consoled by these words, for the Doctor rarely apologised. As to the other matter, I had to acknowledge relief, for a part of me would have dreaded Cream appearing here in case he threatened the family for which I held such affection. ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘So we have some chance of rejoining the attack?’
The Doctor took a sip of tea. ‘Perhaps he has provided us with a way.’
THE POOL OF WILL
Bell would not speak very much further of his plan. But I know he was pleased by the fact that he had obtained a forwarding agent in Chicago from the letters to Hanbury.
‘I intend also,’ he said, ‘to write to Inspector Miller and try to introduce him to the subject of what lies behind these letters. He knows what Hanbury was and I think he will be sympathetic. He is a potential ally in this matter, as no policeman in Edinburgh has ever been.’
Naturally I had expected Macandrew to be a little chastened by all these events when we called on him shortly after this conversation. It was, after all, his dynamo that had sent people to their deaths, and his appetite for ‘materials’ that had furnished Hanbury with a ready income.
But he opened the door with as wide a smile as I had yet seen and proved to be more animated than ever. ‘My dear Dr Bell, and Dr Doyle,’ he said, according me the title for almost the first time. ‘Come in, I was told you were on your way. This is a remarkable case you have uncovered.’
He ushered us into the warm and well-appointed hall, and thence to the elegant drawing room, waving away a maid who had evidently appeared rather tardily as we sat down.
‘I had no idea Hanbury was capable of such underhand things. He always made himself extremely useful to me, as you know. And I was happy for him to store the equipment when I did not need it.’
‘You have your dynamo back, I take it,’ said the Doctor politely, observing Macandrew extremely closely.
‘Why yes,’ said Macandrew. ‘I will make sure from now that it is either here or at the Polytechnic. I gather he had rigged up some trick with the thing.’ And he took us over to it, only now when the box was opened it looked positively dull, just some wires and metal and the green light filament. And I marvelled a little at Hanbury’s skill, for it had taken a kind of brilliance to transform this thing, though perhaps the Chinese helped him. The head of the serpent was, it is true, the crowning touch, but all the detail of the apparatus had been effectively disguised too and the use of coloured paper to cover it was ingenious.
‘It was a very clever trick,’ said Bell, who had noted Macandrew’s blithe dismissal. ‘He was an evil man but it took imagination.’
His words were obviously carefully chosen for, even though Macandrew smiled, I could see a slight irritation. ‘I am a scientist,’ he said. ‘And I have no time for conjuring tricks. Now, can I offer you both some refreshment for I believe you have had a gruelling evening?’
‘No,’ said the Doctor. ‘We have had something to sustain us and I came really to discuss your use of what Hanbury provided. Perhaps you could show us.’
‘Of course,’ said Macandrew, getting up. ‘I would be delighted. You of all people would understand that aspect of my work. And I wished you to come and see my laboratory in any case.’
He showed us down the stairs and soon we were in his work place with its tank and dissecting tables and the Doctor was looking around with interest. ‘So tell me,’ he said after a while. ‘How is it that Hanbury brought odd specimens of the river to you?’
‘Oh,’ said Macandrew, ‘there are many men who help me with the equipment. I asked them to find me a rough hand who knew the river, had a boat and would not mind picking out the more grisly kinds of materials I needed. They soon directed me to Hanbury and he seemed ideal.’
‘I see,’ said Bell, ‘and what did he bring you at first?’
‘Why, animals that had drowned in the first instance. Cats, a dog or two. But I told him I would pay well for bodies provided they were legitimately obtained. And so on occasions he would bring them too, always with the paperwork. Naturally I insisted on that.’
‘And, in the course of these duties, did he ever have access to these premises for I know you are away a great deal?’
Macandrew looked uninterested. ‘Yes, my lecturing takes me everywhere, and on a few occasions I can recall he had the keys for he was delivering.’
‘And then he provided you with corpses, did he not?’ said Bell quietly.
‘Yes,’ said Macandrew, going to a filing drawer. ‘But as I have said I always paid well, and insisted he had the necessary permissions. Here they are.’
He handed Bell a sheaf of papers.
‘Yes I see,’ said Bell, studying them. ‘He went to a little trouble. And yet these are presumably forgeries.’
‘I could have no idea of that,’ said Macandrew, still standing beside him. ‘And I appeal to you as a man of science, Dr Bell. I have a great interest in certain causes of death. Drowning, and also heart attack. This is of course a sideline, not my main field I fully admit, but I am a polymath and such experiments may do us much good in the end. As the police recognised from these papers, I had no reason to question the sound provenance of what was brought here. Even now I feel sure some of them are genuine.’
‘I doubt that,’ said Bell, handing them back. ‘And now are you aware of what in fact had happened to them?’
‘In general, of course,’ said Macandrew, replacing the files. ‘I have no idea of the details.’
‘Then,’ said Bell with a stillness I always knew masked anger, ‘let me tell you the details. They were derelicts, mainly, people who would not be missed, people who had some misfortune in their lives or were merely hopelessly poor and lured by a pipe of opium. They were stunned or killed by your electrical device, stripped of some clothing and any meagre valuables they might have had and sent down a trapdoor into the freezing river. Such were the deaths feeding what you call your “sideline”.’
Macandrew did not answer at once; he was quite aware of the Doctor’s point. ‘Well, it is a debate,’ he said at last. ‘I had no part in what you describe, though it is true I benefited. But after all, you yourself say these people will be missed by nobody. And unless you, Dr Bell, go out into the East End and save such people by distributing your money to them, there is no point in lecturing anyone else. I fully accept it is not possible or desirable to obtain scientific material in the way you describe, but even so I am happy to find another Hanbury. I will merely check his paperwork more thoroughly, for nothing can or should stand in the way of science.’ He looked rather pleased with this speech and I was a little surprised that the Doctor seemed to concede ground too.
‘Ah yes,’ said Bell, his tone lightening, ‘the way of science. Well, there is something to be said for that. And you make yo
ur point well, so let us leave it there. Now it had slipped my mind, but I meant to tell you that I have myself a small scientific experiment, that has been exercising my curiosity, and I wish to discuss it with you particularly, while I inspect your chambers below. Can we go down?’
‘I would be delighted,’ said Macandrew, getting up with a great smile. ‘Let us now officially say the present discussion is at an end. And the scientific one, infinitely more interesting in my view, and I suspect yours too, begins.’
He led us through the door down the stone staircase into the basement below. It was strange on this evening to be once again in a riverside establishment heading down to the water. When I had been here before I had felt impressed and important at being part of the advance of science. Now, as I thought back to that horrible room of clothes in the den and to Hanbury’s evil box, I found the connection between the two riverside establishments unnerving, especially since they were inextricably linked by a grisly trade in cadavers. As we descended I looked again at the dim light of Macandrew’s special carbon filaments, and found that they had become far less comforting than the gas I was used to.
We walked down along the dank tunnel and Bell stopped at the flood chamber. ‘You use this for experiments on equipment, I understand,’ he said. And I recalled then how interested he had been when I described it to him.
‘Yes,’ said Macandrew, leading the way in as Bell followed. There was not much room and, rather to my irritation, Bell stood blocking the doorway without even glancing back at me, forcing me to linger in the tunnel. ‘What has been on my mind, to be truthful,’ said Bell, ‘is Hanbury’s trap. Because on occasions he wanted his victims to be drowned as you wished, he would no doubt have to calculate how long they would survive and where in the river he was likely to find their corpses the next day. In some ways, indeed, his work was quite close to your study of how far the lungs survive in water. A tricky business. No doubt sometimes he missed them, which would have vexed him.’
