The Mammoth Book of New Sherlock Holmes Adventures

by Mike Ashley (ed)

  "How the deuce can you know how long ..."

  "When our quarry vanished, Watson, did you not observe a sudden lurch within the image on the Vitascope screen?"

  I shook my head. "I saw only James Phillimore ... and then the place where he wasn't."

  "Ah! But just before he vanished, the clock on the tower behind him read ten seventeen. And then, at the precise instant after he vanished, the clock abruptly jumped to ten twenty-one. The newsboy's posture shifted instantaneously from one position to quite a different one. All the other people and vehicles in the tableau vanished as well ... and were replaced by others. Georges Méliès learned the same trick by accident, Watson. He was photographing traffic in Paris when the mechanism of his camera jammed. The traffic kept moving whilst Méliès endeavoured to restart his apparatus. Afterwards, when Méliès

  developed his film and projected it, he was astonished to see a Parisian omnibus abruptly transform itself into a hearse."

  By now we had reached West Fifty-Eighth Street; Holmes paid the cabman, and we alighted. I had never been here before, yet I recognized the place: the buildings, the newsboy underneath the street-lamp, even the clock-dial on the distant tower were just as I had marked them on the Vitascope screen ... except with colours added to Mr Edison's photographic palette of greys. As our cab departed, I remarked to Holmes: "Then the man in the Vitascope film cannot be James Phillimore at all, Holmes."

  My friend's jaw tightened. "No, Watson. He is Phillimore to the life. In every particular, the man whom we saw is identical to his cabinet photograph. I committed the portrait to memory in 1875, Watson. I shall never forget those dundrearies! Our quarry is even wearing the same suit: pin-stripe, of a cut and design favoured by tailors in Savile Row some thirty years ago. I interviewed the two Leamington bankers who were present when Phillimore vanished: they assured me that the suit he wore in his portrait is the one that Phillimore was wearing on the morning when he vanished."

  "Very few suitings last for thirty-one years," I remarked.

  "And very few men can vanish for three decades and return without growing a day older," Holmes replied. "Yet our quarry is just such a man."

  The day was warm, yet I felt suddenly cold. "Holmes, is it possible that James Phillimore has slipped sidelong in Time? I recall the original case: there was evidence of some sort of circular vortex in Phillimore's house. Can a man fall through a hole in Warwickshire in 1875, and emerge in Manhattan in 1906? It would explain why Phillimore has not aged, and why his suit has not become more worn."

  We were standing outside a greystone edifice at Number 1789, Broadway. A brass plate near the entrance informed us that this was the home of something called "The Cosmopolitan. A Hearst Publication". Sherlock Holmes tapped his fore-finger alongside his nose, as if taking me into a confidence. "Ignore the newsboy, Watson, and humour me in a charade."

  Holmes strode purposefully to the exact spot where the Vitascope apparatus had stood. "This is a good place to start Watson," said my friend in a loud voice, "if we intend to collect the reward."

  I did not take his meaning, but I played along: "Yes! Certainly! A good deal of money is at stake."

  Sherlock Holmes now took out a tape-measure, and began making precise measurements of the kerb and the pavement, all the while muttering about a large reward. He seemed wholly unaware of the newsboy, who was observing Holmes's every movement with the keenest attention. When he was unable to contain his curiosity any longer, the urchin spoke in thick American tones: "Wutcha lookin' fer, cul?"

  "Go away, lad," said Holmes. "Can't you see that we're busy? The officers of the Edison Film Company have engaged us to investigate a serious incident of vandalism, and ..."

  "I know wutcher aftuh," said the boy conspiratorially. His mouth was crammed full of some glutinous substance which he chewed furiously whilst he spoke, thus obscuring his diction all the more. "You're lookin' for the jasper who jiggered that camera, ain'tcher?"

  Holmes looked up from his measurements. "The Edison Film Company have offered a substantial reward for information leading to the arrest of the man who damaged one of their kinetographic ..."

  "How much?" said the boy. "That reward, I mean."

  "We have no intention of paying good money for idle rumours," said Holmes. "Since you clearly did not witness the incident ..."

  "I seen him!" boasted the newsboy. "I seen the whole thing!" Now he began to re-enact the whole affair, in broad movements, taking by turns the roles of James Phillimore, the Edison cameraman, and even the camera itself. "There was one o' them camera fellers here, takin' pitchers. A dude came along, swingin' his umbreller, see? He looked like the kind of a guy who would make trouble just fer the sport of it. Sure enough, I seen him poke his umbrelly into that camera there. He pulled it out again, and then he walked away laughin'. The umbrella weren't damaged, but the camera started racketin' loud enough to wake yer dead granny. The cameraman started cussin', and he had to stop the camera. I seen him fiddle it fer a coupla minutes, and then he started it up again." The boy's face split into a broad grin. "Do I get the reward?"

  "Not unless you can tell me the culprit's name and address," said Sherlock Holmes, pocketing his tape-measure and drawing forth his jotting-book. Somehow a five-dollar banknote had gone astray from Holmes's note-case and was now protruding — by accident, surely — from the leaves of his jotter. "If you can offer us some useful information ..."

  "That's them!" said the boy, stabbing a grimy finger towards the book as Holmes opened it.

  I looked over his shoulder, and was amused to see what my friend had been sketching so industriously during our cab-journey. In the pages of his jotting-book, Holmes had drawn two large portraits that I recognized as likenesses of our adversaries from bygone adventures: Professor Moriarty and Colonel Moran. Between these two, scarcely more than an afterthought, was a small and hastily scribbled rendition of James Phillimore. Yet the newsboy now ignored the large conspicuous drawings of Moriarty and Moran, and pointed unerringly at the tiny likeness of Phillimore. "That's them!" he said triumphantly. "That's both o' them!"

  For once, Sherlock Holmes seemed confused ... but he regained his composure swiftly enough to withdraw the jotting-book an instant before the freckled urchin tried to snatch the banknote within. "Both of them, you say?" asked Holmes.

  The newsboy nodded. "You heard me, boss.That guy wit' the umbreller: after he wrecked the camera, I seen him walk into that buildin' over there." The newsboy nodded towards the offices of the Cosmopolitan. "The cameraman left, an' I kept peddlin' my papers, see? Then, mebbe half an hour later, the umbrella man comes out again. Only this time there's two of him."

  Holmes and I exchanged glances. "Can it be that there are two James Phillimores?" I wondered aloud.

  "There were, 'coz I seen 'em," the newsboy replied. "Like they could o' been twins ... an' that there's pitcher o' both o' them." The boy tapped his hand against the jotting-book, leaving ink-stained finger-prints upon the drawing of James Phillimore. "Same suit, same hat, same lip-spinach, the works. Only difference was, one twin had an umbreller and one twin didn't." As he spoke, the newsboy's fingers gravitated towards the stray banknote, but Holmes kept this just out of reach.

  "And did you see where he ... where they went, lad?" Holmes enquired.

  The newsboy's eyes gleamed greedily. "What's it worth t'yuh?" he asked.

  "Five dollars," said Holmes. "But I want the truth, mind!" He brandished the sketch of James Phillimore again. "Where did this man go?"

  "There was two of him, I tol' yuh ... so y'ought to pay double," said the newsboy.

  Holmes sighed, and pressed two fivers into the newsboy's eager hands. "Now, then!"

  "I seen 'em get into a cab," the boy reported. "Just b'fore the door closed, I heard one o' the twins — the one `thout an umbreller — tell the driver to take 'em both to Madison Square."

  Thus it chanced that, five minutes later, Sherlock Holmes and I were in another cab hastening towards Madison S
quare: a place unknown to us, yet which the cab-driver assured us he knew intimately.

  " 'Pon my word, Watson," Holmes declared, as our cab went south on Broadway, "but this mystery gets stranger every moment. Thirty-one years ago, James Phillimore stepped through a doorway and ceased to exist. This morning he returned from the void: not a day older, and none the worse for his absence. And now it seems that he has become identical twins."

  "Do you suppose the newsboy told the truth, Holmes?" I pondered. "He might have lied to us, just to claim a reward."

  “I think not, Watson." Once more Holmes produced his jotter, revealing the thumb-nail portrait of James Phillimore flanked either side by the two colossi of Moriarty and Moran. "A liar posing as an eyewitness would have claimed to recognize the first likeness he saw. Our newspaper johnny went right past the two largest and most obvious portraits in my impromptu rogues' gallery — he did not recognize them, Watson — and he seized upon the smaller study that he did recognize: our quarry James Phillimore ... who now appears to have borrowed a trick from the amoeba and split himself into identical twins."

  The southward traffic along Broadway was more congenial than its northbound counterpart had been, and soon we turned eastward and arrived at the crossroads of Madison Avenue and East Twenty-Seventh Street. Here awaited us a green

  quadrangle of parkland which, of a certainty, must be Madison Square. I paid the cabman, and I had no sooner alighted on the kerb than the hand of Sherlock Holmes was at my shoulder: "Watson! Look!"

  I turned, and looked ... and thought I must be seeing double.

  At the far end of the park stood two identical men. Both were dressed in pin-striped suiting, of an outmoded cut. Both wore moustaches and dundreary whiskers.

  Both of them were James Phillimore.

  In swift movements of his lithe muscular limbs, Sherlock Holmes crossed the quad. In consequence of my Jezail wound, I was unable to keep pace with him. Thus I was still several yards from our quarry when Holmes approached them and asked: "Have I the honour of addressing Mr James Phillimore and Mr James Phillimore?"

  Both men laughed in unison. "You have that honour, sir," said one, in British tones.

  "You have indeed," said his twin, in an American accent.

  Now I came huffapuffing up to join them, and I made a strange discovery. The two James Phillimores were not identical. One of them — the Englishman — was in his early thirties: of a certainty, the same man whose likeness we had witnessed in the Vitascope. But the American was in his sixties. He was also, I saw now, some three inches shorter than his British confederate, and slightly fuller of physique. The American's eyes were light blue, whilst the Englishman's eyes had irises of a queer pale hue which I can only describe as horn-coloured. His face was long and lantern-jawed, whereas the American's face was nearer square-shaped. The strong resemblance of the two men was due to the fact that they were dressed in matching outfits, and their faces sported identical side-whiskers and similar moustaches of chestnut-coloured hair.

  Remembering Holmes's words, I glanced at both men's shoes. Neither one's footwear matched the other man's, nor did their boot-laces. The eyelets of the older man's shoes were laced criss-cross, in what I gather to be the American manner. The younger man's boots were laced straight across the instep, in the familiar British form.

  "Might as well take these off, don't you think?" asked the Englishman. He reached up to his face, and plucked off his own whiskers ... leaving only a few stray wisps of crepe hair still stuck in place with spirit-gum.

  The American laughed. "Yes, I was getting hot in these." He snatched away his own set of side-whiskers. His moustaches remained in place, and they appeared to be the genuine articles. But now, in the bright sunlight of Madison Square, I noticed a faint chestnut-coloured stain along the edges of his collar: the American's hair was naturally white, and he had dyed it brown in order to match the colouring of his British companion.

  And yet, even without their disguises, there was a certain kindred quality in these two editions of James Phillimore, a look of keen intelligence within the countenance of both men ... which suggested that — despite their outer discrepancies — these two men might indeed be identical twins of the mind.

  The southwest corner of Madison Square's quadrangle was truncated, creating a space in which a row of park benches were secluded from the traffic of nursemaids and perambulators. My friend beckoned the three of us to join him there. "I am Sherlock Holmes, and this is my associate Dr Watson," he announced to the counterfeit twins. "Please have the goodness to reveal your true names, and the reason for this peculiar hoax."

  The American bowed before seating himself. "Might as well tell it all, since no harm's done. My name is Ambrose Bierce, and I am the Washington correspondent for Mr Hearst's Cosmopolitan. Perhaps you've read my column 'The Passing Show'?"

  "I have not" Holmes transferred his attentions to the younger man. "And you, sir?"

  The lantern-jawed Englishman smiled. "My name is Aleister Crowley."

  "Ambrose and Aleister." Holmes sniffed. "Two unusual names, with the same initial. What is the connexion between you two, pray?"

  The two culprits exchanged shamefaced glances. "We may as well spill the works," the American ventured to his cohort, with a grin. "It's too good a joke to keep to ourselves."

  "Very well," said the long-faced Englishman. He turned to confront Sherlock Holmes, and began to explain: "My name at birth was Edward Crowley, Junior."

  "Named after your father," I murmured, but Crowley shot a glance of the most withering scorn in my direction as soon as I said this.

  "Named for my mother's husband," he corrected me. "At the time of my birth, my mother Emily Bishop Crowley resided at number 30, Clarendon Square, in Leamington, Warwickshire. I was born there on 12 October, 1875."

  "Shortly after the disappearance of James Phillimore," said Sherlock Holmes, nodding sagely. "Come, what else?"

  "As to my birth," ventured Ambrose Bierce, "that calamity occurred in Ohio, in 1842. Nine siblings preceded me. For some

  reason, it amused my father to afflict all his offspring with names employing the initial letter 'A'. Our dramatis personce, in the order of appearance, reads as follows: Abigail, Amelia, Ann, Addison, Aurelius, Augustus, Almeda, Andrew, Albert ... and Ambrose."

  "What has this to do with James Phillimore, then?" asked Holmes.

  "I was just coming to that," said Ambrose Bierce. "In my thirtieth year, in the company of a wife whom I never loved,

  I emigrated to England and became a writer for Tom Hood's Fun magazine and The Lantern. My wife and I lived at first in London, but during the spring of 1874 we set up housekeeping at Number 20 South Parade, in ..."

  "... in Leamington,Warwickshire," Holmes finished for him. "Watson, I recall the general topography of Leamington Spa

  from my sojourn there in 1875. Clarendon Square and the South Parade are scarcely a mile apart. Directly between them is Tavistock Street ... and the house from which James Phillimore performed his disappearance. Which was indeed a performance ... was it not, Mr Bierce?"

  Ambrose Bierce nodded sadly. "I shall say nothing against the character of Mrs Crowley, except to observe that — like myself -

  she was trapped in a loveless marriage. Suffice it to report that she and I ... consoled each other during the spring and summer of 1875."

  I began to see where this was leading. There was a physical resemblance between Bierce and Crowley that transcended their identical costumes. And if Ambrose Bierce had known Emily Crowley some eight or ten months before the birth of her son Aleister, then it was quite possible that ...

  "The house in Tavistock Street, Bierce," said Sherlock Holmes impatiently. "Was this the scene of your trysts?"

  Bierce nodded once more. "Leased by me from the estate-agents. A false identity was advisable, of course ..."

  "And so you took the name James Phillimore?"

  "I did." said Bierce. "Edward Crowley was a strait-laced man wh
o considered all forms of entertainment to be highly immoral. He avoided restaurants, theatres, and music-halls ... and forbade his wife to visit such emporia. My own wife Mollie was of similar demeanour. On the other hand, Mr James Phillimore and his female companion — do I make myself clear, sir? — gave much custom to Leamington's pleasure-palaces. At some point during this period, Emily Crowley found herself with child."

  Bierce paused a moment, then resumed: "In May of 1875, my wife departed for California ... taking our two infant sons with her. Tom Hood — my literary sponsor in England — had died a few months previously. By late August, Mrs Crowley's expectant condition was approaching its climax, and — as she had no intention of leaving her husband — I felt it politic to return to America."

  This time it was my turn to serve as questioner: "But what about Mr Phillimore's strange disappearance?" I asked. "The signs of the peculiar vortex ..."

  Ambrose Bierce threw his head back and laughed. "I have always been intrigued by the idea that there might be holes in the universe — vacua, if you will — capable of swallowing a man whole, so that he vanishes without a trace. I have written several stories on the subject. I have already decided that — when my time comes to call it quits — I shall vanish into one of the holes in the universe, and leave no mortal remains. So when it came time for me to abandon my Tavistock residence — and my Phillimore identity — I fancied that it might be amusing to stage-manage such a vanishment. And then to watch the results from a distance, in the safety of my own persona."

  Sherlock Holmes shifted his posture on the bench. "Now I understand a detail which has baffled me these thirty years", he nodded. "The weather in Warwickshire was fair for two weeks before Phillimore vanished, with no rain at all. Yet Phillimore somehow tracked mud into his own house, even though he

  stepped outside for only a moment. Had I not been so untrained in the art of detection in those early days, I should have noticed that the muddy trail within the house had no corresponding source in the gutters without. Now I comprehend: the muddy footprints in the antechamber were set there in advance, moulded from clay."