“You will, in fact, find that they were affected in some way. Houses converted to electricity still retain intact gas connections. It would be practical for an assailant to restore the flow of gas from the electric chandelier, once a gasolier, into the sealed room. Dr Butlin will confirm that the markings on M. Marcel’s face match those of M. LeBlanc. Those pocks upon the skin have been produced by the application of gas masks so widely used in the last war. Once the gas had produced the desired effect, LeBlanc would have opened the vent located high on the wall and concealed by a grill after conversion to electricity. I am sure a search of the ventilation grill will reveal the gas masks stashed inside. LeBlanc would have needed to remain in the room to appear as a victim. Perhaps he intended to open the window to vent more of the gas but he was overcome by lingering fumes. When M. Marcel awoke he was overcome by the ghastly horror to which he thought was provoked by some aspect of his spirit trance gone awry, and as he is a man of most unimpeachable character would have been compelled to confess to a crime to which he had no direct knowledge or involvement.” As all present were too astounded to comment, I continued. “LeBlanc absconded from the hospital, no doubt in possession of the papers containing the signatures of Tsu Ling, Lady Spivey, and Colonel Mills along with personal effects such as keys to homes, safes, and bank boxes. From his haul of items it would have been easy to forge papers of any kind to gain access to a fortune in documents or cash.”
“Documents,” Lestrade conceded reluctantly. “Madame Ling and Colonel Mills were involved in the tariff negotiations between our government and the Chinese.”
“The scoundrel,” Doyle said. “Profaning the art of spiritualism for villainous purposes.”
“We will have no way to track LeBlanc at this point. He could be halfway across the continent,” Watson said.
Doyle thought for a moment and said, “Perhaps there is a way….”
“I must object, Mr Holmes!” Lestrade protested. “This is highly unorthodox.”
“Unorthodox situations often beg the use of unorthodox methods, Inspector. Unless you have a viable alternate suggestion as to how to proceed in finding a criminal whom you have allowed to escape, I suggest you let the doctors proceed.”
I held the paper out for Lestrade to sign and instructed him to include the name of a deceased loved one. He passed the paper to Doctors Doyle and Watson, who did the same. The lamp was extinguished, plunging the cell into shadow. However, the sounds of rain outside of the barred window and shouts of distraught prisoners echoing through the halls all seemed to recede as M. Marcel began the process of placing his subjects and then himself into a state of mesmerism. I intended to remain awake as vigilant observer to the process.
“We will all now concentrate deeply. Visualize a place of safety, recall times of contentment spent with loved ones who have departed,” Marcel began.
“This nonsense will never work on me,” were the last words uttered by Lestrade before his face hit the table.
Marcel continued in a commanding, yet soothing voice. “Let all cares escape your mind, you will be relaxed, yearning for peaceful rest, you are safe, you are relaxed, you are in the presence of those you have loved, you are safe…”
The repetition of Marcel’s phrases had the desired effect on Watson and Doyle and, as they surrendered to the medium’s suggestions, Marcel grew quiet and I saw a new countenance come over him. His contorted facial expression unwound and he seemed to enter into a conversation that at once seemed to be with himself but fractured into different personas.
“Father and Dr Watson, so nice to see you again.” Marcel continued in a different voice. “We are in their presence.”
“Where are you, son?” Conan Doyle murmured.
“We are so many, we are safe. The war is over?”
“The war is over,” Marcel said to himself. “Is your Colonel Mills with you?”
“He is here,” Marcel answered himself.
I felt the temperature in the room drop precipitously. Beads of perspiration appeared on Marcel’s face. Watson and Doyle seemed to listen intensely with eyes closed and grew restless. Lestrade began to snore.
“Can you help us?” Doyle muttered.
Marcel reached for the pen and papers and began writing furiously. “This is what we know…” As he wrote, his voice changed and became soft with a feminine quality and he recited numbers as I quickly fed him more sheets of paper to keep up with his scribbling. “17, 11, 4, A, 3…20, 12, 9…WHI, 308, 0, 27.”
Marcel concluded the séance by writing these three sequences of numbers. Exhausted, he let the pen slip from his hand and slumped backward in his chair. All were asleep and only I had retained my conscious faculties. I went to the door, calling for the jailer, but no one came. I shook Lestrade briskly by the shoulders to rouse him.
“You see, no effect whatsoever,” Lestrade said, as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred. He then noticed the slumbering men at the table. “What is this?”
“There is no time for discussion, Lestrade.” I spread the papers across the table.
“Look at this scrawl. Looks to be a bunch of gibberish.”
“No, the numbers must have significance. The first sequence of numbers I recognize as account numbers at the Royal Bank. The second sequence would seem to be a combination to a lock.”
The close of the banking day was drawing near. By now, LeBlanc would have forged documents containing signatures of Colonel Mills, Lady Spivey, and Tsu Ling. He would have access to a fortune in money and perhaps secret treaties. Yet even the shifty LeBlanc could not be in several locations at once: he was not at Spivey House, but he would have to act fast to raid the residences of Colonel Mills and Madame Ling and attempt to access the Spivey bank accounts, knowing that once discovered he would need to make a rapid getaway. I beat my fist upon the table rousing Doctors Doyle and Watson and M. Marcel from their comas. “If the first sequence of numbers is the bank account of Lady Spivey then the second must be the combination to Madame Ling’s strong box containing the documents. But what is this third sequence? It is too long to be the combination of a lock and too short to be an account number at a bank.”
“It’s quite elementary, Mr Holmes.” Lestrade said. “It’s a telephone number.”
I cursed my ignorance of the telephone system. I snatched the keys to the cell from Lestrade’s belt, opened the door and ran down the hall with the bewildered crowd following. We burst into an office and Lestrade elbowed aside a desk sergeant and handed me the phone. Imagining that shouting would make my voice travel faster to the operator on the line, I bellowed the numbers of the exchange into the contraption.
A woman on the other end answered, her voice oddly sedate, far off, “Royal Bank, Cavendish Square, how may I help you?”
I thrust the receiver into Lestrade’s hands. “Dispatch all of your men to Cavendish Square! Have the guards at the bank lock all of the doors. Detain everyone within.”
Lestrade, to his credit, sprang into action, barking orders into the telephone and at the sergeant in an efficient, focused manner, devoid of his usual fluster.
“We will hope to have LeBlanc trapped within the bank,” I said. Lestrade nodded assent but the woman on the telephone was still speaking. He put the receiver back to his ear and seemed to become perplexed. “The party on the line requests to speak to ‘Binky?’’’
“That would be me,” Watson said, reaching for the phone.
“Well, I hope you had your fun with all this hocus pocus, Dr Doyle. It is perfectly clear that M. Marcel already knew the bank codes and phone number and this…charade…has given ample time for his accomplice to gain a head start on his pursuers,” Lestrade said.
Doyle and Marcel began to protest but I raised a hand to silence them. Watson had grown pale, and held the phone limply as a tear glistened on his pallid cheek.
* * * *
From there I must conclude my account because I have run out of facts. All else is speculation and I leave it
to the reader to draw his own conclusions:
LeBlanc was caught red-handed with a draft of the Chinese treaty and the cash from the Spivey account. He was charged with both treason (Lestrade was correct in the assumption that neither Marcel nor LeBlanc were Frenchmen) and murder. Marcel was held as an accomplice for many months, but with only circumstantial evidence against him, he was released. The notoriety from the case only served to enhance his career as a spirit medium. Watson and Doyle would say little more of the experience of the séance at the prison other than to attest that the voice uttered by M. Marcel was that of Doyle’s son, Adrien, lost in the war, and that the phone conversation Watson had was with his late wife Mary: beloved, and taken early from this life years before the events described.
—Sherlock Holmes
Sussex Downs, November 1927
Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine, Volume 15 Page 18
