by Otto Penzler
“I see.” Behind his faceplate, Syaloch’s beak cut a sharp black curve across heaven. “Now then, Gregg, were the jewels actually in the box when it was delivered?”
“At Earth Station, you mean? Oh, yes. There are four UN Chief Inspectors involved, and HQ says they’re absolutely above suspicion. When I sent back word of the theft, they insisted on having their own quarters and so on searched, and went under scop voluntarily.”
“And your own constables on Phobos?”
“Same thing,” said the policeman grimly. “I’ve slapped on an embargo—nobody but me has left this settlement since the loss was discovered. I’ve had every room and tunnel and warehouse searched.” He tried to scratch his head, a frustrating attempt when one is in a spacesuit. “I can’t maintain those restrictions much longer. Ships are coming in and the consignees want their freight.”
“Hnachla. That puts us under a time limit, then.” Syaloch nodded to himself. “Do you know, this is a fascinating variation of the old locked room problem. A robot ship in transit is a locked room in the most classic sense.” He drifted off.
Gregg stared bleakly across the savage horizon, naked rock tumbling away under his feet, and then back over the field. Odd how tricky your vision became in airlessness, even when you had bright lights. That fellow crossing the field there, under the full glare of sun and floodlamps, was merely a stipple of shadow and luminance…what the devil was he doing, tying a shoe of all things? No, he was walking quite normally—
“I’d like to put everyone on Phobos under scop,” said Gregg with a violent note, “but the law won’t allow it unless the suspect volunteers—and only my own men have volunteered.”
“Quite rightly, my dear fellow,” said Syaloch. “One should at least have the privilege of privacy in his own skull. And it would make the investigation unbearably crude.”
“I don’t give a fertilizing damn how crude it is,” snapped Gregg. “I just want that box with the Martian crown jewels safe inside.”
“Tut-tut! Impatience has been the ruin of many a promising young police officer, as I seem to recall my spiritual ancestor of Earth pointing out to a Scotland Yard man who—hm—may even have been a physical ancestor of yours, Gregg. It seems we must try another approach. Are there any people on Phobos who might have known the jewels were aboard this ship?”
“Yes. Two men only. I’ve pretty well established that they never broke security and told anyone else till the secret was out.”
“And who are they?”
“Technicians, Hollyday and Steinmann. They were working at Earth Station when the Jane was loaded. They quit soon after—not at the same time—and came here by liner and got jobs. You can bet that their quarters have been searched!”
“Perhaps,” murmured Syaloch, “it would be worthwhile to interview the gentlemen in question.”
—
Steinmann, a thin redhead, wore truculence like a mantle; Hollyday merely looked worried. It was no evidence of guilt—everyone had been rubbed raw of late. They sat in the police office, with Gregg behind the desk and Syaloch leaning against the wall, smoking and regarding them with unreadable yellow eyes.
“Damn it, I’ve told this over and over till I’m sick of it!” Steinmann knotted his fists and gave the Martian a bloodshot stare. “I never touched the things and I don’t know who did. Hasn’t any man a right to change jobs?”
“Please,” said the detective mildly. “The better you help the sooner we can finish this work. I take it you were acquainted with the man who actually put the box aboard the ship?”
“Sure. Everybody knew John Carter. Everybody knows everybody else on a satellite station.” The Earthman stuck out his jaw. “That’s why none of us’ll take scop. We won’t blab out all our thoughts to guys we see fifty times a day. We’d go nuts!”
“I never made such a request,” said Syaloch.
“Carter was quite a good friend of mine,” volunteered Hollyday.
“Uh-huh,” grunted Gregg. “And he quit too, about the same time you fellows did, and went Earthside and hasn’t been seen since. HQ told me you and he were thick. What’d you talk about?”
“The usual.” Hollyday shrugged. “Wine, women, and song. I haven’t heard from him since I left Earth.”
“Who says Carter stole the box?” demanded Steinmann. “He just got tired of living in space and quit his job. He couldn’t have stolen the jewels—he was searched.”
“Could he have hidden it somewhere for a friend to get at this end?” inquired Syaloch.
“Hidden it? Where? Those ships don’t have secret compartments.” Steinmann spoke wearily. “And he was only aboard the Jane a few minutes, just long enough to put the box where he was supposed to.” His eyes smoldered at Gregg. “Let’s face it: the only people anywhere along the line who ever had a chance to lift it were our own dear cops.”
The Inspector reddened and half rose from his seat. “Look here, you—”
“We’ve got your word that you’re innocent,” growled Steinmann. “Why should it be any better than mine?”
Syaloch waved both men back. “If you please. Brawls are unphilosophic.” His beak opened and clattered, the Martian equivalent of a smile. “Has either of you, perhaps, a theory? I am open to all ideas.”
There was a stillness. Then Hollyday mumbled: “Yes. I have one.”
Syaloch hooded his eyes and puffed quietly, waiting.
Hollyday’s grin was shaky. “Only if I’m right, you’ll never see those jewels again.”
Gregg sputtered.
“I’ve been around the Solar System a lot,” said Hollyday. “It gets lonesome out in space. You never know how big and lonesome it is till you’ve been there, all by yourself. And I’ve done just that—I’m an amateur uranium prospector, not a lucky one so far. I can’t believe we know everything about the universe, or that there’s only vacuum between the planets.”
“Are you talking about the cobblies?” snorted Gregg.
“Go ahead and call it superstition. But if you’re in space long enough…well, somehow, you know. There are beings out there—gas beings, radiation beings, whatever you want to imagine, there’s something living in space.”
“And what use would a box of jewels be to a cobbly?”
Hollyday spread his hands. “How can I tell? Maybe we bother them, scooting through their own dark kingdom with our little rockets. Stealing the crown jewels would be a good way to disrupt the Mars trade, wouldn’t it?”
Only Syaloch’s pipe broke the inward-pressing silence. But its burbling seemed quite irreverent.
“Well—” Gregg fumbled helplessly with a meteoric paperweight. “Well, Mr. Syaloch, do you want to ask any more questions?”
“Only one.” The third lids rolled back, and coldness looked out at Steinmann. “If you please, my good man, what is your hobby?”
“Huh? Chess. I play chess. What’s it to you?” Steinmann lowered his head and glared sullenly.
“Nothing else?”
“What else is there?”
Syaloch glanced at the Inspector, who nodded confirmation.
“I see. Thank you. Perhaps we can have a game sometime. I have some small skill of my own. That is all for now, gentlemen.”
They left, moving like things in the haze of a dream through the low gravity.
“Well?” Gregg’s eyes pleaded with Syaloch. “What’s next?”
“Very little. I think…yesss, while I am here I should like to watch the technicians at work. In my profession, one needs a broad knowledge of all occupations.”
Gregg sighed.
—
Ramanowitz showed the guest around. The Kim Brackney was in and being unloaded. They threaded through a hive of spacesuited men.
“The cops are going to have to raise that embargo soon,” said Ramanowitz. “Either that or admit why they’ve clamped it on. Our warehouses are busting.”
“It would be politic to do so,” nodded Syaloch. “Ah, tell me…is this
equipment standard for all stations?”
“Oh, you mean what the boys are wearing and carrying around? Sure. Same issue everywhere.”
“May I inspect it more closely?”
“Hm?” Lord, deliver me from visiting firemen! thought Ramanowitz. He waved a mechanic over to him. “Mr. Syaloch would like you to explain your outfit,” he said with ponderous sarcasm.
“Sure. Regular spacesuit here, reinforced at the seams.” The gauntleted hands moved about, pointing. “Heating coils powered from this capacitance battery. Ten-hour air supply in the tanks. These buckles, you snap your tools into them, so they won’t drift around in free fall. This little can at my belt holds paint that I spray out through this nozzle.”
“Why must spaceships be painted?” asked Syaloch. “There is nothing to corrode the metal.”
“Well, sir, we just call it paint. It’s really gunk, to seal any leaks in the hull till we can install a new plate, or to mark any other kind of damage. Meteor punctures and so on.” The mechanic pressed a trigger and a thin, almost invisible stream jetted out, solidifying as it hit the ground.
“But it cannot readily be seen, can it?” objected the Martian. “I, at least, find it difficult to see clearly in airlessness.”
“That’s right. Light doesn’t diffuse, so…well, anyhow, the stuff is radioactive—not enough to be dangerous, just enough so that the repair crew can spot the place with a Geiger counter.”
“I understand. What is the half-life?”
“Oh, I’m not sure. Six months, maybe? It’s supposed to remain detectable for a year.”
“Thank you.” Syaloch stalked off. Ramanowitz had to jump to keep up with those long legs.
“Do you think Carter may have hid the box in his paint can?” suggested the human.
“No, hardly. The can is too small, and I assume he was searched thoroughly.” Syaloch stopped and bowed. “You have been very kind and patient, Mr. Ramanowitz. I am finished now, and can find the Inspector myself.”
“What for?”
“To tell him he can lift the embargo, of course.” Syaloch made a harsh sibilance. “And then I must get the next boat to Mars. If I hurry, I can attend the concert in Sabaeus tonight.” His voice grew dreamy. “They will be premiering Hanyech’s Variations on a Theme by Mendelssohn, transcribed to the Royal Chlannach scale. It should be most unusual.”
—
It was three days afterward that the letter came. Syaloch excused himself and kept an illustrious client squatting while he read it. Then he nodded to the other Martian. “You will be interested to know, sir, that the Estimable Diadems have arrived at Phobos and are being returned at this moment.”
The client, a Cabinet Minister from the House of Actives, blinked. “Pardon, Free-hatched Syaloch, but what have you to do with that?”
“Oh…I am a friend of the Featherless police chief. He thought I might like to know.”
“Hraa. Were you not on Phobos recently?”
“A minor case.” The detective folded the letter carefully, sprinkled it with salt, and ate it. Martians are fond of paper, especially official Earth stationery with high rag content. “Now, sir, you were saying—?”
The parliamentarian responded absently. He would not dream of violating privacy—no, never—but if he had X-ray vision he would have read:
“Dear Syaloch,
“You were absolutely right. Your locked room problem is solved. We’ve got the jewels back, everything is in fine shape, and the same boat which brings you this letter will deliver them to the vaults. It’s too bad the public can never know the facts—two planets ought to be grateful to you—but I’ll supply that much thanks all by myself, and insist that any bill you care to send be paid in full. Even if the Assembly had to make a special appropriation, which I’m afraid it will.
“I admit your idea of lifting the embargo at once looked pretty wild to me, but it worked. I had our boys out, of course, scouring Phobos with Geigers, but Hollyday found the box before we did. Which saved us a lot of trouble, to be sure. I arrested him as he came back into the settlement, and he had the box among his ore samples. He has confessed, and you were right all along the line.
“What was that thing you quoted at me, the saying of that Earthman you admire so much? ‘When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be true.’ Something like that. It certainly applies to this case.
“As you decided, the box must have been taken to the ship at Earth Station and left there—no other possibility existed. Carter figured it out in half a minute when he was ordered to take the thing out and put it aboard the Jane. He went inside, all right, but still had the box when he emerged. In that uncertain light nobody saw him put it ‘down’ between four girders right next to the hatch. Or as you remarked, if the jewels are not in the ship, and yet not away from the ship, they must be on the ship. Gravitation would hold them in place. When the Jane blasted off, acceleration pressure slid the box back, but of course the waffle-iron pattern kept it from being lost; it fetched up against the after rib and stayed there. All the way to Mars! But the ship’s gravity held it securely enough even in free fall, since both were on the same orbit.
“Hollyday says that Carter told him all about it. Carter couldn’t go to Mars himself without being suspected and watched every minute once the jewels were discovered missing. He needed a confederate. Hollyday went to Phobos and took up prospecting as a cover for the search he’d later be making for the jewels.
“As you showed me, when the ship was within a thousand miles of this dock, Phobos gravity would be stronger than her own. Every spacejack knows that the robot ships don’t start decelerating till they’re quite close; that they are then almost straight above the surface; and that the side with the radio mast and manhatch—the side on which Carter had placed the box—is rotated around to face the station. The centrifugal force of rotation threw the box away from the ship, and was in a direction toward Phobos rather than away from it. Carter knew that this rotation is slow and easy, so the force wasn’t enough to accelerate the box to escape velocity and lose it in space. It would have to fall down toward the satellite. Phobos Station being on the side opposite Mars, there was no danger that the loot would keep going till it hit the planet.
“So the crown jewels tumbled onto Phobos, just as you deduced. Of course Carter had given the box a quick radioactive spray as he laid it in place, and Hollyday used that to track it down among all those rocks and crevices. In point of fact, its path curved clear around this moon, so it landed about five miles from the station.
“Steinmann has been after me to know why you quizzed him about his hobby. You forgot to tell me that, but I figured it out for myself and told him. He or Hollyday had to be involved, since nobody else knew about the cargo, and the guilty person had to have some excuse to go out and look for the box. Chess playing doesn’t furnish that kind of alibi. Am I right? At least, my deduction proves I’ve been studying the same canon you go by. Incidentally, Steinmann asks if you’d care to take him on the next time he has planet leave.
“Hollyday knows where Carter is hiding, and we’ve radioed the information back to Earth. Trouble is, we can’t prosecute either of them without admitting the facts. Oh, well, there are such things as blacklists.
“Will have to close this now to make the boat. I’ll be seeing you soon—not professionally, I hope!
Admiring regards,
Inspector Gregg”
But as it happened, the Cabinet minister did not possess X-ray eyes. He dismissed unprofitable speculation and outlined his problem. Somebody, somewhere in Sabaeus, was farniking the krats, and there was an alarming zaksnautry among the hyukus. It sounded to Syaloch like an interesting case.
Sherlock Among the Spirits
ANONYMOUS
EVIDENCE STRONGLY SUGGESTS that Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936) was a great fan of Sherlock Holmes and Arthur Conan Doyle. In addition to being a popular and successful author, notably
for his five volumes of stories about Father Brown, Chesterton was an illustrator whose caricatures were published in many magazines and books, and he frequently made Holmes the subject of his colored inks.
Early in his life he turned from most artistic pursuits to write in many genres, including poetry, journalism, detective fiction, religion, biography, and art and literary criticism, becoming a profoundly influential voice in both religious thought and literature, founding the important and eponymous magazine, G. K.’s Weekly (1925–1936) after editing its predecessor, The New Witness, for seven years.
In its pages were theological and political articles by such significant authors as H. G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw, but also pieces about spiritualism, the great late-life preoccupation of Conan Doyle. Chesterton had been involved in this area of study himself, and he published this anonymous parody of Holmes and his encounter with a medium. It has been speculated that Chesterton himself wrote it, but there is no evidence to definitively state that this is true.
“Sherlock Among the Spirits” was first published in the August 15, 1925, issue of G. K.’s Weekly.
SHERLOCK AMONG THE SPIRITS
Anonymous
THE SPIRITUALIST SÉANCE, which my friend Conan Doyle had induced me to hold in my old rooms in Baker Street, was just over. It had been a tremendous revelation. The medium, Dr. Magog, whom I assumed from the first to be a charlatan (for my training had been strictly scientific and rational), because of his long white hair and beard and his Lithuanian name, astounded me with the accuracy of his suggestions. He even converted Sir Arthur’s other friend Dr. Challenger, whom readers of the Strand Magazine may remember as having discovered a world of prehistoric animals, whose manners and demeanour he seemed to share. He had begun by having grave doubts, which he expressed by hurling the table to the end of the room and dancing on several of the enquirers after truth; but half way through the proceedings he burst into sobs that shook the building.
