by George Mann
“Indeed,” I said in what I trust was a glacial tone, intended to impress upon your brother that he and I moved in significantly different social circles and that he should be more respectful of authority and the natural order of things. “If it was a social occasion I would have offered sherry.”
“Alcohol is another chemical with a depressive effect on the nervous system,” he said dismissively. “I rarely drink it until I have finished with a case.” He was frowning, and running his fingers along the cracked leather of the armchair. “You are the third… no, the fourth owner of this armchair, I perceive. The second owner kept a small reptile.”
“You can tell that just from sitting there?” I asked, genuinely amazed.
He shrugged. “There are flecks of scale in the creases of the leather – not obvious to the eye, but noticeable to the trained observer. Now, please tell me what I can do for you. Be brief, if you can. Politicians are, in my experience, rarely brief, but I would appreciate the attempt. I am currently working to save the life of a man who has been sent, through the post, a freshly severed finger that resembles in every respect his own left ring finger, down to the presence of a healed scar across the knuckle and a supposedly unique wedding band he designed himself.”
“I presume it isn’t his own finger?” I asked, intrigued despite myself.
“No, not unless said finger is severed at some stage in the future and then sent back through time – a possibility I am ruling as unlikely, despite the recently published scientific romance by Mr Wells.”
“Funny you should mention Mr Wells,” I said, feeling a shiver run through me, “as this is very much the kind of story that he might write.” I took a deep breath. “I need you, Mr Holmes, to solve the mystery of the death of what might turn out to be the first Martian ambassador to this country.”
My study was silent for some moments.
“If there is one thing that politicians are worse at than brevity, it is humour. I assume therefore that you are not trying to be funny.” He stared at me with a raised eyebrow. “You have, I presume, been approached by something or someone that claims to be a representative of whatever authority is in charge on the planet Mars. Given the recent observations made by Percival Lowell of canals on the Red Planet, and indications of planned vegetation along the side of those canals, it seems a reasonable assumption that life might exist there. There is no logical reason why we should be the only planet in the cosmos harbouring intelligent life. If such intelligent life exists there, and if they are advanced enough to cross the gulf of space between us – two large and unprovable assumptions, by the way – then they would naturally attempt to forge a diplomatic alliance with whatever they perceive to be the ruling group.”
“Naturally, the British,” I said.
Holmes smiled a thin smile. “You may wish to check that this presumptive Martian ambassador has not made approaches to the Germans, the Russians, the French and, at a stretch, the Americans as well. They may be covering their bets.” He shrugged. “It occurs to me that Mars orbits further away from the sun than the Earth and is thus obviously much colder, despite its angry red hue. Any inhabitants are likely to be biologically very different from us.”
“Indeed,” I said, “and this is the crux of the problem.”
“Start from the beginning,” he said. “Leave nothing out, even if it seems to be unimportant. I have found that the relevance of facts to an investigation is often in inverse ratio to their apparent importance – a paradox around which I intend writing a small monograph at some stage.”
“Very well.” I closed my eyes and steepled my hands on the blotter in front of me, the better to recollect the sequence of events. “We were approached by—”
“We?” he snapped. “Be precise!”
“The Foreign Office, of which I am the head,” I said heavily, “was approached by a man named Darius Trethewey. He is, as far as we can ascertain, an entrepreneur and businessman who invests in scientific developments. He told us an apparently incredible story about having received messages via some medium that he would only describe as an ‘etheric force’, detected by some device invented by an inventor of his acquaintance—”
“Ha!” Holmes interjected.
“I’m sorry?” I am rarely, if ever, interrupted by anyone who works for me, and the relative novelty of the experience does not make it any more pleasant.
“My friend, Dr Watson, once compiled a list of my strengths and weaknesses. It was his opinion that I had no knowledge of philosophy or astronomy. He was wrong, of course, as he so often is, but I find it strange that we have here a case that involves both natural philosophy and astronomy together.”
“A shame you’ll never be able to tell him about it,” I said.
“If you wish to find out more about the ‘etheric force’ you could do worse than seek out the recently published works of Heinrich Hertz and Oliver Lodge. Rather than ‘etheric force’, the currently accepted term for the phenomenon is, I believe, ‘Hertzian waves’, which rather seems a shame as ‘Lodgian waves’ has a certain ring to it.”
“Yes,” I said, “the Germans do seem to have a habit of self-aggrandisement that the British lack. Anyway, this Darius Trethewey told us that he had been, for some months, in regular communication with an entity on Mars. In the end his Martian interlocutor asked to send a representative to Earth – to England in particular – to discuss the possibility of a mutual trade treaty. After some discussion, of which your brother was a part, we agreed.”
“I feel sure that Mr Trethewey refused to let you examine, or even see, his equipment?”
“Correct. He cited intellectual property rights and pending patents.”
“Of course he did.” Holmes nodded. “I presume my brother was suspicious?”
“He was. He muttered something about once having been asked by his superiors to negotiate a treaty with the spirit realm, which he refused to elaborate on.”
“It was early in his career,” Holmes said with a smile, “when I was fifteen years old. We were in Ireland, at the invitation of a peer with a strong interest in spiritualism who had suggested he was able to reliably contact ghosts and that they could be used as secret agents for the British Empire. It was, of course, a complete confidence trick meant to defraud the British government out of thousands of pounds. In a sense, I think Mycroft’s exposure of that fraud boosted his career.” He waved a hand. “But enough of my family history – please continue.”
“Mr Trethewey suggested that the Martian ambassador travel to Earth incognito by some means, on which he was very vague. For various reasons both we and the Martians wanted to avoid the freak-show that a public announcement would inevitably create, and so the ambassador was to be brought to the Foreign Office in a covered carriage and smuggled in through the back entrance for an initial meeting, at which the ground rules and agendas for subsequent meetings would be agreed. The date was set for one week later.”
“Not very much time to arrange a major diplomatic visit, albeit a secret one,” Holmes observed.
“Something about the relative positions of the two planets being favourable,” I said.
“Or, alternatively, a means of putting you off-guard and unable to make a full range of security arrangements.”
I nodded. “The thought had occurred. Well, to be frank, it occurred to your brother. So, on the night in question – and it was night, at the request of the ambassador – we waited in the main ballroom in the Foreign Office building in Whitehall.”
“Did you choose the location?”
“No – Mr Trethewey gave us the dimensions of the space the ambassador would need. The ballroom was the only space large enough. I confess I did wonder if the ambassador was going to be something like a whale, or an elephant.”
“Quite possible. Go on.”
“There were only five of us – myself, your brother and three members of my staff.” I paused, recollecting the strange events of that evening. “Two others had been dispa
tched to the back door to arrange for the introduction of the Martian ambassador into the building. None of us knew what to expect, apart from the fact that the ambassador had – via Mr Trethewey – insisted that there be no steps or stairs between his entrance and where the meeting was to take place. It wasn’t that unusual – to be fair, your brother makes much the same request. I had arranged for refreshment – some wine, some cheese and crackers – just in case the ambassador was hungry. Anyway, we heard a rumbling sound approaching the ballroom. It grew louder and louder, and we realised that something was being wheeled down the corridor that led to a curtained-off area at the rear of the room. Eventually the curtains were pulled aside, and the most bizarre contraption was pushed in. It was, in the words of Gilbert and Sullivan, ‘something between a large bathing machine and a very small second-class carriage’, comprising a rectangular iron frame, studded with massive rivet-heads, holding vast sheets of glass in place. At least, the front two-thirds was glassed, while the back third was entirely ironwork, covered in strange mechanical devices. It resembled an enormous fish tank, of the kind one might see in the aquarium at the London Zoological Gardens, except that it moved on numerous iron wheels set close to the ground. My two staff members were pushing it, while Darius Trethewey – a tall man with a black handlebar moustache and bushy eyebrows, resplendent in evening dress, top hat and opera cloak – strode along beside it. I confess I winced as I contemplated the effect of that weight and those wheels on the black and white marble tiles that comprise the ballroom floor.”
“Tiles?” Holmes queried. “How large?”
Your brother can be a very irritating man. “Does it matter?” I snapped.
“I am not yet in a position to say. Indulge me.”
“Tile-sized. Perhaps two feet square.”
“And was there any smell that you could detect?”
“A smell. Is that relevant?”
“I have no idea. Was there?”
“A sharp, disagreeable odour, like that of tincture of iodine, but darker, if that makes any sense. May I proceed?”
He nodded. “And apart from the rumbling of the wheels, was there any other noise made?”
“It sounded,” I said cautiously, trying to be precise, “like several steam locomotives all moving at once, but at different speeds. There was a metallic clattering, as of wheels going over points, and a hissing and wheezing as the various pistons worked and as pressure valves were released.”
“Instructive,” he said. “It all sounds very contemporary. One might have expected Martians to have developed a different technology from ours – perhaps even a more advanced one.”
I was shocked. “Mr Holmes – this world of ours, in the age of Victoria, is the pinnacle of scientific and engineering development. I cannot imagine that any of it could be improved upon.”
“I look forward to you explaining that to those rail passengers whose shirts or dresses are covered in soot at the end of their journeys,” he snorted, “or whose eyes have been burned by glowing embers, or the pedestrians in our towns and cities who regularly have to step across, around or sometimes in piles of horse dung left on the street. I’m sure they could suggest some improvements.”
I was about to remonstrate with him, but bit my tongue. This was not the time. “The inside of this contraption,” I went on stiffly, “appeared to be filled with a brownish gas that swirled around, partially obscuring but partially revealing the Martian ambassador himself.”
“Probably bromine,” Holmes mused to himself, “judging by the smell. Odd.” He waved a hand at me. “Please – continue.”
I hesitated, remembering the feeling of unreality that had passed over all of us as we saw the form within the tank. “The… being… inside was like a human being – two arms, two legs and a head, but its limbs were thinner and its hands and feet were much larger, like paddles. Its bald head was elongated to a point at the back. Its skin – what I could see of it beneath the covering it wore – was of a reddish hue, and its eyes were entirely black – no iris, no cornea, just pools of darkness. It sat on a chair of odd design – metallic, and comprising sweeping curves rather than straight lines.”
“All of the things you have described could have been the result of disguise, of course – make-up on the skin, gloves over the hands, a head-covering coloured to match the make-up, and scleral lenses of the type recently demonstrated by German ophthalmologist Adolf Fick.”
“Of course.”
“And its clothes?”
“Black hessian, I believe – very flexible, with straps and buckles.”
He fixed me with his penetrating stare. “I presume you had one of your men ready to sample the gas in the tank?”
“Indeed.” I smiled, acknowledging Holmes’s grasp of the sordid realities of diplomatic work. “We had anticipated some kind of sealed container, given what we know already from scientific observations about conditions on Mars. Indeed, the Royal Society had already anticipated the possibility of a semi-aquatic race on that planet, given the existence of the canals that have been observed. The flipper-like hands and feet would tend to confirm that those markings are actually canals.”
“Classic circular thinking,” he snorted. “Canals have been observed on Mars therefore Martians would be semi-aquatic in appearance; this Martian is semi-aquatic in appearance therefore the markings that have been observed must be canals.”
I ignored his retort. “One of my men was standing by with a diamond-tipped drill. Unobtrusively, he came up behind the tank while we were talking, drilled a hole, took a sample of the gas and then sealed the hole over again with a glass patch and glue. The noise of the pistons and valves covered his activities. He was not detected. Believe me, we were not taking this ambassador for granted.”
“And have the results come back?”
“Yes. The gas is bromine, as you suggest. The entire tank was filled with it, meaning that no human could be inside pretending to be the ambassador. This was, as far as everything we could see and the test told us, a real creature inside a poisonous atmosphere.”
“I shall reserve judgement about that. You say you talked with the ambassador? There was, then, an exchange of information?”
“Of sorts. I welcomed him – it – and gave our names. It then introduced itself with a string of platitudes of the kind that are regularly given during such encounters – how glorious a moment this was, how historic, how both worlds will benefit, and so on, and so on. Tedious stuff, but it has to be said.”
“This creature’s voice – what did it sound like?”
“Crackly, as if it was passing through a phonograph.”
“Did you see its mouth move?”
“Yes. Its teeth were pointed, and its tongue black.”
“Again, effects easily produced. Did it move around inside the tank?”
“It shifted a little, from time to time, easing its weight on the chair, and it moved its hands to punctuate its words.”
“And did it give you a name?”
“It told us that its name was unpronounceable in our language, and that we should just call it ‘Ambassador’.”
Holmes smiled. “A slip – very careless.”
“What do you mean?”
He shrugged, and looked away. “I will explain later. Did these pleasantries lead to anything more substantive?”
“We agreed on areas for further discussion – mutual trade, exchange of diplomatic staff, how borders might be managed and travel arranged.”
“And how long did this all take?”
“Several hours.”
He nodded. “I presume that there were frequent pauses, repetitions and requests for explanation?”
“Indeed. Again, not unusual in diplomatic discussion that crosses a language barrier. When we came to a natural break the ambassador suggested we call a temporary halt to proceedings and restart them the next day. Or, rather, the next night.” I fixed Holmes with a stare. “I am aware that we come across as being, perh
aps, unduly credulous, but the thought was in the back of my mind all the time that this might be a trick. I was waiting for the ambassador to ask for money for some reason, at which time I would have called its bluff, but the subject was never mentioned. Indeed, the ambassador mentioned that its planet had many resources such as gold and diamonds just lying around on the surface, and it offered us whatever we wanted.”
“And what was Mr Darius Trethewey doing all this time?”
“He stood beside the tank, not speaking, not touching it, but watching events with interest. At the end he bowed, and asked for the help of my personnel in getting the ambassador’s receptacle – that’s how he phrased it – to the waiting carriage.”
“I assume it was a large and heavily reinforced carriage with more than four wheels,” Holmes said. “Your men followed it?”
“Back to a house outside London owned by Mr Trethewey. They could not see past the high walls around the grounds, but from the sounds they believe the tank was unloaded and moved inside a coach house.”
“And on the next night?”
“The ambassador returned, with Mr Trethewey, in much the same way as the night before. We picked up our discussions where we had left off. The matters we talked about were more detailed, including details of what technical ideas might be exchanged, what musical or artistic performances could be mounted on both planets, and so on. The ambassador claimed that the Martians were an older race than ours, and implied that there were many wonders that were ours for the asking.”
“Yes, they call it ‘baiting the hook’,” Holmes said dismissively. “I presume the same clanking and hissing noises were there again.”
“From the devices producing a breathable atmosphere and environment for the ambassador, yes.”
