Sherlock Holmes: The Coils of Time & Other Stories (Sherlock Holmes Adventures Book 1)

by Ralph Vaughan

  “You must go easy on Inspector Kent,” Holmes cautioned. “He is out here precisely because he is trying to help.”

  Jimmy lowered his proud head, a bit. “Sorry, guv.”

  Kent acknowledged with a curt nod.

  “Ain’t none of us seen the Ghosts yet ourselves,” Jimmy continued, “but we seen their spoor.”

  “Spoor?” Kent asked.

  “Tracks and drops,” Jimmy replied. “Queer tracks, those, all narrow and stunt-footed, and gawdalmighty the stink! About sewers mostly.”

  “I knew it!” Kent exclaimed. “The fools!”

  “Tell us about the man in black,” Holmes prompted.

  “Cor! Owd you know ‘about that bloke?”

  “Then your mates have come across reports of such a man lingering about the East End, asking questions about the Vanishments and the Ghosts, but, curiously, not seemingly interested in the causes.”

  “The man in…” Kent started to say, but Holmes silenced him with a slight gesture.

  “Aye, that’s right, Mr ‘Olmes,” Jimmy averred. “Dressed all in black, ‘e is, and with a tongue cryin’ he ain’t no London man.”

  From the description relayed by young Jimmy, there was no doubt the mysterious man in question was none other than the man who had made his escape by breaking out the Neptune’s rear window, the man who had questioned the old sailors in that haunt of all things nautical. Several residents of the Surrey side and the East End, and even some west of Aldgate, reported being approached by this man who spoke with an accent odd enough to be noticed in a city marked as the greatest confluence of accents and dialects outside of India.

  He came out of the mist or the night, or stepped from shadows to question people about the Ghosts, asking after those who had vanished. He was no journalist, for he never took notes or quested for inflammatory opinions, and he was certainly no agent of the government seeking to stem the tide of fear, for he always made himself scarce when the police were around. He spoke with a quiet and grim certainty, as if there was no doubt in his mind as to the reality of what he sought, no mystery as to its cause, no question that they were connected events. He was ever impatient with the ignorance he encountered among London’s unlettered and superstitious masses, obviously so, and yet he always lingered and listened as long as was necessary, as if he held in his heart some hidden guilt that refused to let him go until he had expatiated a measure of that guilt by listening to the horrors of the night in full.

  “Nobody knows who ‘e is,” Jimmy said. “But there’s some who feared ‘im like ‘e was a demon ‘imself.”

  “What about a name, lad?” Kent asked.

  Jimmy screwed up his face in thought. “Well, Crip done heard tell of ‘im mutterin’ when ‘e was close, not clear like, but somethin’ like ‘time seems Maddoc’s folly.’ But ‘e bein’ Maddoc or the folly…” Jimmy shrugged, then stood with crossed arms. “All’s I got, Mr ‘Olmes. ‘T’ain’t much, I reckon, but it’s what we got …”

  “Quite an admirable effort after so short a time,” Sherlock Holmes said. “We can ask no more from you and the others. See as to the division of this among your fellows.”

  Jimmy grinned widely as he caught the large silver coin. “An’ if’n we hears more, I’ll finds you.”

  Kent scowled as the lad swaggered into the darkness and mist. “God, how he murders the Queen’s English!”

  “Not a crime, fortunately,” Holmes observed, “else most of Britain and half the aristocracy would be in gaol.”

  “He’ll put that money to bad use,” Kent said. “Him and the other ‘Irregulars.’ I’m surprised you use children to nark for you.”

  “These children would prowl the streets anyway, the streets being safer than any home they might have,” Holmes explained. “I provide a purpose to their prowling, let them become, if only for awhile, agents for order. If I am doing anything wrong, it is asking them to support the social system which keeps them in their places, keeps whole generations in abject poverty. If the pittance I allow them for their valuable services is used for ill, then they are no worse off, but no one has been harmed and no windows have been broken in the night to gain needed money; but some lad might use the money for the betterment of himself or his family’s lot, and that benefits indirectly the society that scorns him.”

  Kent shook his head and sighed. “I did not take you for a social crusader, Mr Holmes.”

  “My field is crime and all its ramifications, Inspector,” Holmes replied. “That includes, of course, its causes.”

  “Crime cannot be ended by giving away money.”

  “Obviously not,” Holmes agreed. “But, at the same time, it is painfully clear poverty is the root of most crime plaguing our metropolis. People steal because they are in need, murder because they want to possess. If the root of crime could be done away with, not by gifting money but by actually bettering their lot in life, then London would be almost crime free.”

  Kent chuckled. “You would do men like us out of a job, Mr Holmes.”

  “Not at all, Inspector,” Holmes countered. “Negating the crimes of necessity would only make our jobs more interesting and rewarding, for there would remain the misdeeds of those born to do evil.” He thought of the glint in the eyes of Colonel Moran earlier. “Evil will always be with us, for it is a part of us.”

  “Do you think Maddoc is the dark man’s name?” Kent asked.

  “Maddoc is a name of Welsh origin and our man’s speech does mark him as coming from that region,” Holmes conceded.

  “And what about what he was heard muttering?” Kent asked. “What do you make of that?”

  “Not much, I fear,” Holmes replied after a moment. “No, nothing.”

  “What I’m worried about is the scope of the Vanishments,” Kent said, frowning at Holmes’ uncharacteristic hesitancy. “I knew the problem was more widespread than my superiors were ready to admit, but it seems your little Irregulars have ranged the whole of London and found it everywhere, followed closely by this Maddoc. If we can get hold of him, I’m sure we can lay both the Vanishments and the East End Ghosts to rest, and find young Dunning to boot.”

  “I sincerely wish it were that easy, Inspector,” Holmes said, “but Maddoc is not the remedy of the plague, though he may turn out to be the cause.”

  Kent shook his head. “I don’t follow you.”

  “He is searching as desperately as are we, but from an opposite tact,” Holmes explained. “We are trying to find and perhaps rescue William Dunning by penetrating the veil of ignorance covering the Vanishments. He appears to be tracking the source of the Vanishments by enquiring after the victims and following the appearances of the Ghosts.”

  “As if he possesses a certainty of knowledge,” Kent murmured. “But how does that make him the cause of either the Ghosts or the Vanishments, or both? If they are as linked as we suspect.”

  “If I had any doubt before, the common link of Maddoc sealed the connection,” Holmes replied. “As to his role, consider the state of the man we observed in the Neptune – haggard, vexed and near as I have seen a man be to total physical and mental collapse, yet still on his feet, still pushing on, still striving against imminent peril. What propels him, Inspector?”

  “What propels any of us, Mr Holmes?” Kent countered. “Duty. A sense of moral rightness. It could be the same with this Maddoc.”

  “I think not, Inspector,” Holmes countered. “In his doggedness, Maddoc is no ordinary man, but rare is the man who can distance himself from the emotions and motivations of his species. We do what we do because it is our calling, but Maddoc is a scientist, a mechanic of sorts. He can only be propelled by an acknowledgement of responsibility, a sense of guilt, an assumption of moral obligation.”

  “How could responsibility rest upon his shoulders?”

  “That is unclear at the moment, but if we find Maddoc, all may become clear.”

  “Then,” Inspector Kent said resolutely, “it is time we stopped chasing
Ghosts and pursued a flesh-and-blood quarry.

  Chapter VII

  The Relevance of Time

  The Royal College of Science is a stately four-storey terracotta building with fine sgraffito decorations in the Italian fashion fronting Exhibition Road, across from the Post Office, and adjoining the South Kensington Museum. After a quick two-minute walk from the South Kensington Railway Station, Sherlock Holmes and Inspector Kent found themselves standing outside the silent dark rising structure, dim in the faint illumination from the rows of widely spaced gaslamps, with the shadows of tall gaunt trees thrown across its southern façade.

  “They may know something about Maddoc here,” Kent admitted, “but at this hour…”

  “There is always someone in residence beyond the servants,” Holmes explained, pushing through the gate and striding to the door.

  Kent followed. He flinched a little when Holmes used the heavy brass knocker, not because it was extraordinarily loud but because it so sharply shattered the perfect silence permeating the neighbourhood. The darkness of the façade and the narrow black windows, disturbingly like the vacant eyes of a corpse in Pennyfields, played upon Kent’s nerves. Or, maybe, he told himself, it was because he could not shake the feeling they were being covertly observed, a sensation that had refuse to let go of him ever since Holmes’ brat had vanished back into the stygian night.

  Presently a dim light appeared small and indistinct through the windows, bobbing along like a banshee-light across the moors. The heavy door opened, and the light became a hooded candle in the hand of a lad about sixteen years of age. He wore an aura of sleepiness about him like a thin veil.

  “Yes, sir,” he said tremulously, gazing from man to man upon the step. “What is it? How may I help you?”

  “Inspector Kent of Scotland Yard.” He showed his identification and warrant. “And this is Mr Sherlock Holmes. We’d like to speak to someone in authority, if there’s anyone in.”

  “Cor,” the lad breathed. “Sherlock Holmes! But…”

  “Yes, yes,” Holmes snapped impatiently. “As it turns out, the report of my death was highly exaggerated. Now, my good lad, is there anyone we may speak to in authority at this ungodly hour?”

  “Yes, I’m sorry, Mr Holmes, please follow me,” the boy said. “Mr Dawning, the Rector’s assistant is working late. I’m sure he’ll be glad to speak with you, both of you, about anything you wish.”

  Kent frowned in the darkness as they followed the boy and his wavering candle through the twenty-year-old edifice, which, though as stately as ever, was, like a grand dowager, was beginning to show its age, reluctantly. The boy’s reaction to Holmes’ reappearance in London grated upon Kent’s sensibilities. Ever since Holmes’ friend Watson had starting putting some of their cases into print, the public had become obsessed with these amateur detectives infesting London, to the detriment of the official police. While Kent had to admit that Sherlock Holmes was probably the best of the bunch, far ahead of such as Martin Hewitt or Sebastian Zambra, their activities had contributed more to the denigration of New Scotland Yard’s official investigators in the public mind than any other factor.

  Though Kent had identified himself as an agent of the official police, the lad had immediately fixated upon the tall lean figure of Holmes. Well did Kent remember the great pall that settled upon London when the Times carried Holmes’ death-notice in 1891, and the foolishness which attended Watson’s publication of their final adventure in the Strand Magazine last year, with men in black armbands and women in veils, as if the death of Holmes were not then two years past.

  They were conducted into an office not very large or appointed, but adequate to the needs of the job of a minor administrator in a teaching facility. The man behind the desk, working by the light of a double-lamp, was of middle years, thin with the aesthetic pallor so common to those hide from the sun behind stacks of books. Introductions were made, the boy withdrew, everyone sat, and Kent explained the reason for their nocturnal visit.

  “Maddoc, you say?” mused Assistant Rector Dawning. “I believe we have had a few students by that name, but it seems to me one was a fellow generally similar to the man you described. He did well enough in his studies, but he was an argumentative sort, with that off-putting bluntness and contrariness you so often encounter in the Welsh. He was graduated, if I remember correctly, but hardly with honours. That I remember him at all, gentlemen, is no doubt due to his row with Hinton.”

  “Hinton?” Kent enquired.

  “Charles Howard Hinton, a mathematician,” Dawning supplied. “He’s a bit of a trouble-maker himself, quite opinionated about his particular domain of mathematics.” He looked at Holmes expectantly. “He has published several papers upon the higher dimensions of geometry.”

  “My field is the investigation of crime; my specialities are those sciences most likely to aid me in bringing the criminal to ground,” Holmes explained. “Mathematics has only served to provide a foe who was, quite literally, nearly the death of me.”

  “What was the nature of the row between Maddoc and Hinton?” Kent asked.

  “I recall only its bitterness, the vituperous nature of the exchange,” Dawning replied. “I do recall, however, that it had something to do with one of Hinton’s papers about the higher dimensions of geometry and the nature of time.”

  “Do you know how we may contact Professor Hinton.?” Kent asked.

  “Mr Hinton is no longer associated with this institution,” Dawning answered, “but I do believe he has returned to London.” He consulted a large leather-bound ledger, wrote down an address on a piece of handy foolscap and handed it to Kent. “Yes, he does not live far from here. And now, gentlemen, if there is nothing else you require of me, I have work I must continue.”

  The two men departed the Royal College of Science, walked to Princess Mews, then down Imperial Institute Road, past the imposing Renaissance edifice of the Imperial Institute itself, to Queen’s Gate where they hailed a passing hansom. In less than ten minutes they were deposited outside 93 Cheyne Walk in Chelsea, a long, riverside walk lined with trees and parkways along the water, with a row of red-brick Queen Anne or Georgian houses, some with wrought-iron gates and projecting covered porches, on the other. The darkness of the Thames was clothed with mist, but its murmur was like a quiet nocturne in their ears.

  “When you see a corner of London as quiet and peaceful as this,” Kent remarked, “it is hard to imagine anything might be amiss in the world.”

  “Yes, it does lull a part of the mind,” Holmes admitted, “but it chills another portion, for the ancient adage about the depth of still waters is quite true when it comes to the souls of our fellow men. A respectable façade all too often blinds us to the evil beneath.” He surveyed their surroundings. “Still, it is a pleasant area, with many literary and artistic connections. Interesting, perhaps odd, that a mathematician concerned with complex functions of geometry should residence himself amongst the likes of Carlyle, Whistler, Rossetti, Swineburn and Eliot; but, then, given the esoteric nature of the mathematical realms which he explores, perhaps not.”

  “Mathematics, esoteric?” Kent questioned. “What’s so esoteric about the times table, or two plus two equalling four? Or devising railway timetables, for that matter?”

  “I have not read Hinton’s papers, but Assistant Rector Dawning’s use of the term ‘higher dimensions of geometry’ is sufficient warning we are not dealing with the simple arithmetic of a public school education,” Holmes explained.

  “Higher dimensions?” Kent said with a little derisive snort. “What does that mean anyway? And how does it pertain to our quest? What we need from him is not a blasted numbers lesson, but whether he knows the whereabouts of Maddoc, or even if he is indeed the same Maddoc we seek.”

  “One would almost suspect you of harbouring a strain of Welsh yourself, Inspector,” Holmes said with a slight smile. “We will rouse Mr Charles Hinton and determine from him all that, and hopefully more.”

&
nbsp; Their knocking upon the door was answered by a man in his early forties, clad in a dark dressing gown and carrying an untrimmed oil lamp. He opened the door a crack, confirmed that he was Charles Howard Hinton, and demanded to know the identities of his late visitors. When Inspector Kent presented his identification papers and named his companion, the door was opened and they were admitted. They were shown into a sitting room and the gaslamps turned up.

  “So, what do you want?” Hinton demanded.

  “Do you know a man named Maddoc?” Kent asked.

  Hinton scowled. “I will admit that I know a charlatan and a fraud named Maddoc – Moesen Maddoc. If that’s all you came to ask, then I’ll thank you to leave.”

  Kent scowled at the man’s rudeness, but neither he nor Holmes made any move to leave. Instead he described the man they had seen at the Neptune.

  “Yes, that’s Maddoc all right.” He leaned forward and grinned. “Tell me the fool did something illegal and is on his way to Dartmoor in Devon.”

  “Not as far as we know,” Kent answered. “At this point, we merely want to talk to him in connection with some investigations we have undertaken.”

  Hinton grunted noncommittally.

  “There would seem to exist between the two of you more than the usual amount of animosity,” Holmes observed, “more than one would expect from a disagreement about theories of mathematics. Were his beliefs concerning the higher dimensions of geometry really so at variance with yours as to engender such hatred?”

  Hinton levelled a steely stare at his visitors and asked: “Do either of you gentlemen believe in the possibility of travel in the fourth dimension?”