The Ectoplasmic Man

by Daniel Stashower

  “But… all right, John. If you say so.”

  While I had succeeded in calming Houdini, Sherlock Holmes observed our apparent intimacy with a vaguely puzzled expression and fell silent.

  Making ourselves as comfortable as possible in the stark corridor, we settled in for what promised to be a long vigil. Within half an hour, Houdini had fallen asleep, and I feared that his snores would penetrate even into the sound-proofed chamber. For my own part, I was far too absorbed in the consequence of our watch to think of sleep. If Holmes’s suppositions were correct, Herr Kleppini had somehow — in the short time since my hasty departure from his booth — managed to contact his liaison, come up from Brighton to London, regain entrance to Gairstowe House, and conceal himself in Lord O’Neill’s study. Was such a thing possible? Could it have been done in such a limited span of time? How did Kleppini get past the guard? How did he enter the study without alerting Lord O’Neill, who must have been present if the door was open? These were but a few of the questions I pondered in those dark hours of the night, as Houdini slumbered on noisily.

  This was not the first time I had been awake all night on a watch with Holmes, but time had not inured me to its discomforts. After two hours my limbs had stiffened and my old wound throbbed miserably. No amount of stretching or shifting provided me with any relief. Holmes, conversely, seemed to thrive under such circumstances. Almost immediately he placed himself into that distant, trance-like state, wherein — though he gives the appearance of complete self-absorption — he is in fact sensitive to and alert for the very slightest outside stimuli, which would instantly impel him into action. I have seen Holmes withdraw into this meditative state on many similar occasions and, strangely enough, at the opera. Thus withdrawn, he bore the tedium of our wait far better than I as the long hours of night dragged past.

  Just as the first traces of dawn appeared through a distant window, there came the faint sound of metallic tapping, as if some distant blacksmith were hammering at his anvil. Holmes was on his feet instantly.

  “That is Kleppini,” he said, now finding it expedient to whisper. “He is opening the vault from the inside. Wake Houdini.”

  But the magician was already awake and alert, having evidently been roused by the sharp clicking of the metal ratchets.

  “He’s got the back plate off,” said Houdini, just as the first of the vault’s three large combination dials began to turn, seemingly of its own accord. “He’ll have the door open in seconds.”

  “Amazing,” I whispered.

  “Child’s play,” the magician replied, as the second and third dials spun in turn. “Holmes, can I lay first hands on him? He owes me a debt.”

  “As you wish,” said Holmes.

  Moving as if operated by spirit hands, the enormous locking handle dipped down, shooting a column of thick bolts. Slowly the heavy door pulled inward on its rails, flooding the dark passageway with uneven light. The figure of Kleppini, stooped and furtive, emerged from the chamber bathed in a corona of shadow and glare. Houdini must have moved with uncommon stealth, for I was unaware that he had left my side until he appeared before Kleppini, his hands folded across his chest, throwing a gratifying fright into the surprised villain.

  “Hello, Kleppini,” said the American. “Tonight who the fraud is we shall see.”

  Even in these remarkable circumstances, Houdini’s comment so enraged his rival that Kleppini lashed out with all his strength, striking Houdini in the stomach. As before, on the stage of the Savoy, the powerful blow had no discernible effect on Houdini. Again, the young magician simply smiled, spread his arms, and asked, “Would you care to try again?”

  Kleppini seemed inclined to do just that until Holmes and I stepped forward, I with my revolver drawn, to show that further resistance was futile.

  “Really, Harry,” I said, as he prepared to lock one of his own heavy pairs of handcuffs on Kleppini’s wrists, “you ought to be more careful about those blows to the abdomen. They’ll get you in trouble one day.”

  “Oh, come now, Doctor. I’m a man of—”

  To this day I am not certain what possessed me to look over my shoulder at that precise moment. Perhaps I heard a sound, or perhaps I saw another presence register in Kleppini’s eyes, but turning about I glimpsed a shadowy figure moving towards us. In its outstretched hand I perceived a menacing glint of steel.

  There was no time to shout. Nor can I remember a conscious impulse to take action. I pushed my companions to the ground just as the blue flame of gunfire darted out from the gloom. I had not moved quickly enough to save myself. I felt a sickening impact in my chest which knocked me to the ground, leaving me but dimly aware of the sound of my own name being shouted as darkness enveloped me.

  Eighteen

  ANOTHER ASTONISHING RECOVERY

  I have often observed that when the victim of a serious physical trauma regains consciousness, he frequently has difficulty recalling who he is and how he came to be injured. In my case, however, there was no such lapse of memory, for no sooner had I come awake than I became aware of Sherlock Holmes and Harry Houdini, crouched on either side of me, engaged in a strident argument as to whether or not my feet should be elevated.

  So, although I had no idea how long I had been unconscious — or indeed how I chanced to have regained consciousness at all — I knew immediately that I was still lying in the corridor outside of Lord O’Neill’s study, and I knew also that I had been the recipient of a bullet to the chest. Curiously, I felt none the worse for this.

  “You don’t understand, Holmes,” Houdini was saying, “Mama always said that when someone takes a faint — look Holmes! He’s coming around! He’s all right!”

  “The bullet...” I croaked feebly, feeling some pain in my chest as I spoke. “I was shot....”

  “Yes, you were, Doctor,” said Houdini gravely, “and you should be dead. Stepping in front of bullets is risky stuff. I lost a good friend that way. I’d hate to lose another.” *

  “I don’t follow you… I was shot…?”

  “Here, I’ll show you,” said the conjuror, patting me on the shoulder. “This is what saved your life.” He held up what was left of the kit of lock-picking tools I had been carrying. It looked like a sprung mantel-clock: Twisted metal tools protruded at wild angles from its burst leather folds. Several of the tools clattered to the floor as Houdini unfolded the kit to show where a small calibre bullet had lodged in a cluster of mutilated instruments.

  My years with Sherlock Holmes have brought me close to death more times than I can or care to remember, but I don’t know that I’d ever had the risks illustrated quite so pointedly.

  “I’m a very fortunate man,” was all I could manage to say.

  “You certainly are,” Houdini agreed, examining the tool kit with an odd mixture of wonder and relish. “Hit square in the centre. No wonder the impact knocked you out.”

  “I’m very fortunate,” I echoed stuporously, “very fortunate.”

  “Yes, I’m glad those tools turned out good for something. But next time try to duck, John. You nearly gave Holmes here a heart failure!”

  Holmes did, in fact, look stricken. His face had gone deathly pale, and I have seldom beheld such agitation in his features.

  “Watson,” he said, clearing his throat uncertainly, “I — I should never have forgiven myself if you had been shot just then. I have grown insensitive to danger, and what is worse, I think nothing of imperilling your life as freely as my own. Perhaps—” he looked away from me, “perhaps you were correct earlier. Perhaps it would be best if our association — at least our professional one — were severed.”

  “Come now, Holmes,” I said, painfully drawing myself up into a sitting position, “what I said earlier was said in anger. It was just one of the little emotional outcries which you are so fond of upbraiding me for. And as for the risks attached to your profession, I have always been aware of them. I like to think that my presence in your investigations reduces those dangers some
what.”

  “That’s certainly true this time, Holmes,” Houdini acknowledged. “We might both have bought it if not for the doctor. I see now why he is so valuable to you.”

  “Invaluable,” Holmes corrected brusquely, and in that moment I forgave him for my humiliation in Brighton.

  “Really now, gentlemen,” I said, “it’s almost as if — my God! Where is Kleppini?”

  “He slipped away, of course. That’s why you were shot.”

  “Both of them are gone? How long was I unconscious?”

  “Only for a moment, but — Watson! Wait! You are not well enough!” But I was already running down the corridor.

  Though my medical instincts warned that I might have cracked a few ribs, I pressed on, ignoring the daggers of pain in my chest. We had come too far, and had far too much at stake, to be thwarted by my weakness.

  Dawn was already burning off the night fog as I hurried down the marble steps towards the front gates. Holmes and Houdini were at my heels by the time I reached the sentry-post. “Turks!” I cried, trying painfully to catch my breath. “Has anyone passed this way?”

  “You mean apart from you gentlemen?”

  “Yes, of course! Think, man!”

  “Well, the morning staff isn’t in yet, so there’s only been the milk-delivery cart—”

  “The milk cart!” Holmes cried. “Of course! That must be it! Which way did it go?”

  “Why, up the road, same as always.”

  Holmes ran to the centre of the road and threw himself down to examine the tracks. “Ah ha! We may yet catch them! We have two horses to their one! Quick! Our trap is over here!” He leapt up onto the box as Houdini and I scrambled into the back seat. “What an exemplary dolt I’ve been! I should have guessed the milk cart straight away! That explains those irregular footprints in the study!”

  “How?” I asked, but Holmes cracked the reins and I was thrown against the back seat.

  Holmes was an accomplished driver of nearly every manner of horse-drawn vehicle, and he soon had our small trap travelling at a speed I wouldn’t have dreamed possible. The pursuit took us along a narrow and turning road, making our breakneck pace all the more hazardous. At several bends, our trap careened wildly onto two wheels, but each time Houdini and I managed to throw our weight against the opposite side, bringing us flush once more.

  On and on we clattered, tree branches and fence posts flashing past at a dizzying rate, the thundering hooves of the horses throwing up a choking cloud of dirt, until at last we rounded a particularly harrowing turn and caught sight of our quarry some little distance ahead.

  Observing our pursuit, the driver of the milk cart whipped more speed out of his horse, but Holmes was rapidly closing the distance between us.

  “We’ve almost got them, Holmes!” Houdini cried excitedly. “Faster!Go faster!”

  Holmes shot him a dry look. “Sound thinking,” he murmured.

  As we drew nearer, I could see two men aboard the milk cart. The driver was Kleppini, and the second, a much larger man, was the mysterious figure who had followed me through Oxford Circus. Then, as before, he had covered his features with a large hat and a long red muffler, making identification impossible even as we pulled to within a few yards of them.

  “Stop!” Holmes shouted above the din of the hooves and the clanking of the steel milk canisters. “Don’t force us to shoot the horse!”

  If the two men heard, they gave no response. Instead, the one in the red muffler crawled into the rear of his cart and seized one of the larger milk canisters. It was clear that he intended to throw it.

  “Look out, Holmes!” I cried, “he’ll trip our horses!” Holmes pulled up sharply, but it was too late. The can was hurled directly beneath the hooves of our pair. The horses reared up violently, causing our trap to crash over onto its side in a great chaos of cracking wood and panicking horses. Houdini and I were thrown into the brush by the side of the road. Holmes, although he had been pitched forward between the horses, had managed to escape injury by clinging to the wooden cross-harness. Though we were unscathed, the chase was at an end. To add to our frustration, we could see Kleppini waving his hat gleefully as the milk cart sped out of sight.

  “Is everyone all right?” asked Holmes, rubbing at his side where, I later learned, he too had cracked a rib. “Watson, you’d best see to the horses.”

  “They’re fine, Holmes. Just shaken is all.”

  “But this buggy is ruined,” Houdini said. “Both axles are broken.”

  “Then we shall have to continue the pursuit on horseback.”

  “But surely we’ve lost them by now?”

  “No doubt, but I fancy I know where they are headed.” Holmes turned to the escape artist. “Houdini, your Voisin is housed at Ruggles, is it not?”

  “How did you know about that?”

  “Our elusive friends have been making use of a similar model. That is where they are going now, unless I am very much mistaken. We shall unhitch the horses and take a more direct course across the fields. Then, if you are amenable, we may continue the pursuit from Ruggles.”

  “This is going to be some chase.” Houdini chortled, rubbing his hands together.

  “But what is Ruggles?” I asked, as Holmes helped me up onto one of the horses. “What is a Voisin?”

  The two ignored my questions. “Well, Houdini?” Holmes prompted, waiting to help Houdini onto a horse.

  The young American shuffled his feet uncomfortably. “Uh... I’ve... I’ve never ridden a horse before,” he admitted.

  “Then you shall be in excellent care with Watson,” said Holmes, giving him a leg-up behind me. “Simply think of it as an exercise in leverage and balance. Come along, Watson! There isn’t a moment to lose!”

  Holmes swung himself onto the bare back of the other horse — a white charger — and led us off the road and through a cluster of trees. I did not know where we were headed, but I had more than enough to occupy me as we threaded through the trees and then galloped into a clearing on the other side. Houdini proved an unsteady horseman, given to sudden and awkward shifts of position which threatened to unseat us both. I myself was never much of a bareback rider, so my nervous passenger and painful ribs made matters all the more difficult as I struggled to keep apace with Holmes.

  Charging through the early dawn, we seemed distinctly at odds with the peaceful countryside about us. The still blanket of morning seemed to pull back an inch or so as we thundered past, and then close up again behind, leaving no witness to our passing except a young stable boy, who paused in his early chores just long enough to salute.

  We were indeed an odd cavalry: Holmes taking the point, his sharp profile jutting out above the noble head of his mount, I urging my horse along behind him, and Houdini continuing his unsettling gyrations at the stern. The path we followed — notable for its disregard of topography — was determined entirely by Holmes’s bulldog sense of direction. This led us across streams, up hillsides, over fences and, at one point, through a startled fold of lambs.

  Proceeding in this rather frantic manner, it was not long before we caught sight of three large storage barns grouped behind a tall wooden derrick and a short length of railroad track, the purpose of which I could not guess. We made for the barns, though nothing in their appearance enlightened me as to how they would advance our pursuit. Were we changing horses?

  “Hurry!” Holmes shouted. “There is the milk cart! We have just missed them!”

  Houdini leapt off the back of our mount before I had even slowed, rolling briskly down an incline and dashing towards the nearest of the three barns. Holmes was close behind, and together they pulled back the heavy sliding doors. Bringing my horse to a halt before the opening, I peered uncertainly into the barn.

  Though it was then four days since I had met Houdini and our remarkable adventure had begun, nothing in that brief but tumultuous time had prepared me for what lay within the barn. The very sight of it froze the blood in my veins. I looked f
rom the magician to the detective in stark disbelief.

  “Yes, Watson,” said Sherlock Holmes, “it is a flying machine.”

  *Houdini may be referring to Chung Ling Soo, the oriental conjuror (actually an American) who was shot to death while performing his famous bullet-catching trick.

  Nineteen

  FLIGHT

  Readers of the present day may find some amusement in my fear of aeroplanes. We have now, after all, seen aeroplanes applied to both commercial and military endeavours, and their design and capability improve with each passing year. Why then should a man of science, such as myself, regard them with such intense trepidation?

  Simply put, I have lived the bulk of my life under Victoria, and in that simpler but by no means unenlightened time, the idea of flight was considered an impossibility, the fanciful theorising of undisciplined minds. When, in 1903, the Wright brothers proved otherwise, there came a grudging acceptance of the principles of aviation, but also a conviction that flight itself was best left to young daredevils and fools, preferably those possessed of neither family nor debts. I am an old man now, and I have seen this phenomenon mature into a commonplace, but I still cannot shake off the notion that man was never meant to fly.

  These sentiments, now given lie by the passing of seventeen years, seemed on that morning to be a question of life or death. For it was obvious to me, as Holmes and Houdini pushed the fearsome contraption forward on its bicycle wheels, that it was their intention to continue our pursuit of Kleppini in the sky. For me, this prospect held all the attraction of a visit to hell.

  “Holmes, have you abandoned your senses?” I asked as he and Houdini rolled the aircraft towards the tower construct I had noted earlier. “Houdini, do you seriously propose that we are to soar off into the heavens?” I took a few tentative steps after them. “It is preposterous!”

  “Come on, John,” Houdini said. “I rode a horse just now, didn’t I?”

  “It’s — it’s hardly the same thing!”