The Ectoplasmic Man

by Daniel Stashower

  We had found it necessary to reduce our speed while Houdini pulled himself back up the rope and onto the wing of our craft. In so doing, we lost sight of Kleppini’s aeroplane. Having thus broken off the pursuit, we attempted to recover the remains of Houdini’s assailant, but several low passes over the meadow where he had fallen failed to produce any sign of the body. Though he had most assuredly been crushed to death upon impact, all traces were obscured by the tall grass.

  “Well, I guess that’s it,” Houdini said despondently when we had landed the craft at Ruggles (an experience I hope never to repeat!). “We’ve lost Kleppini, and we can’t even find the other fellow’s body. I guess we’ve lost the game.”

  “On the contrary,” said Sherlock Holmes, “our fortunes have taken a decided turn for the better.”

  “Come on, Holmes,” said Houdini, “why don’t you face the truth? It’s over!”

  In the face of what had just occurred, it is easy to see why Houdini became so dispirited, but I knew Holmes far too well to discount his seemingly ungrounded optimism.

  “How can our situation have improved, Holmes?” I asked.

  “It’s quite simple,” he began, “with the death of—”

  “Oh stop it, Holmes!” Houdini cried angrily. “What’s the point of drawing it out? Kleppini is long gone! There’s nothing more we can do!”

  Sherlock Holmes has had more than his share of doubters over the years, and it is always something of a treat to see how he manages them. I recall one occasion, many years earlier, when he had been called upon to solve the insidious Joruel Strangulations case, a mystery which hinged upon the unexplained disappearance of the murder weapon. “How is it possible for a garotte to vanish into thin air?” Inspector Gregson had demanded. “Explain that, Mr Sherlock Holmes, and you’ll have solved the case!” With a peculiar smile upon his lips, Holmes withdrew a similar garotte from his pocket, exhibited it to Gregson and, without further comment, swallowed it.

  The same smile spread across his face now as Holmes stepped to the storage barn and began pushing back the sliding door. He had barely opened it a foot when one of our two horses pushed its way out into the field.

  “That’s odd,” I said. “Where is our other horse?”

  “This barn has a back door,” Houdini said. “Maybe — good Lord! It can’t be!”

  Now it was Houdini’s turn to be astonished by the contents of the barn, for Holmes had now pushed the door completely open to reveal Herr Kleppini’s flying machine.

  “Kleppini’s ’plane!” Houdini marvelled. “What’s it doing here? Why did he come back?”

  “Obviously something occurred during the flight which caused him to change his mind about leaving the country. I think we are on safe ground — in a manner of speaking — to assume that this occurrence was the death of his employer.”

  “Why should the death of the other man cause Kleppini to return here?” I asked.

  “Why indeed? Here, Watson, we enter the heady sphere of deductive reasoning. What would cause Kleppini to arrest his own successful flight?”

  “Holmes, is this leading us anywhere?” Houdini demanded, shifting uneasily from foot to foot. “If Kleppini is still in England somewhere, shouldn’t we be chasing him?”

  “I thought it might be useful if we decided where to look.”

  “All right, go on.”

  “Early this morning,” Holmes began, as he inspected the damage Houdini had done to the wing of the other craft, “our mysterious adversary arrived at Gairstowe to discover the three of us springing a trap on Kleppini. He very sensibly concluded that his plans had been discovered, and he further realised that the only recourse was to flee the country.”

  “But what’s the point in going over this now?” Houdini asked. “This man, whoever he was, is dead now!”

  “Exactly,” Holmes agreed, “and with his death, Kleppini suddenly found himself a free agent. No longer bound by his employer’s decisions, Kleppini elected, against all logic, to return here. Why? Evidently there is something that the two of them left behind, something which Kleppini believes is worth the considerable risk of capture.”

  “The Gairstowe papers!”

  “Watson, you surpass yourself once more. That was precisely my conclusion.”

  “Then we must get to Brighton immediately!”

  “If the papers were in Brighton, Kleppini would undoubtedly have flown there. The damage to his wing was not great enough to prevent it.”

  “But... then where are they?”

  “I believe we shall find Kleppini and the papers at the Savoy.”

  “My theatre?” cried Houdini. “But why there?”

  “I think I know,” I said. “You forget that Kleppini’s interest in this crime was to create the illusion of your guilt. How better to further that illusion than to place the stolen documents in your possession? That’s it, isn’t it, Holmes? We must get to the Savoy immediately!”

  Sherlock Holmes neither confirmed nor contradicted my conclusion, leaving me with the uneasy feeling that the problem was a good deal more complex than I had divined.

  “Look,” said he, “here is Kleppini’s horse and the milk cart. He must have taken one of our horses, but if we hitch the other to the cart we may yet arrive at the theatre before him.”

  “One thing bothers me, Holmes,” said Houdini. “My assistant Franz spends most of his time at the theatre, and he’s always on the look out for intruders.”

  “We are aware of that,” Holmes said ruefully, recalling our last encounter with Franz.

  “Well, you’ve seen what Kleppini is capable of I’m just afraid that… if Franz gets in the way …”

  “Don’t worry,” I tried to reassure him, “we’ll get there in time.”

  I must say that neither of us was entirely convinced by my assurances, and Houdini fell grimly silent throughout the whole of our journey to the Savoy.

  With Holmes at the reins we made startlingly good time even when we reached inner London, for he regarded the congestion of city streets as little more than a mathematical problem. This led to some highly inventive driving techniques, and I doubt that he had endeared himself to the London traffic constabulary by the time we finally reached the Savoy.

  “Look at this!” Houdini snorted, jumping down from the cart before one of his own theatre posters. “It says ’Postponed Indefinitely’, right across my face! I’ll demand an official apology before I’m through!”

  “There will be time for that later,” Holmes said quickly. “I see that Kleppini has already arrived.” He pointed to the locks on two of the main doors to the theatre, which bore signs of tampering.

  Houdini bent over the locks. “Look at these scratches,” he said disdainfully, “and he calls himself an escape artist! I’m surprised he got them open at all! Well, never mind that now—” He withdrew a metal tool and snapped open the doors with two brisk motions. “Hurry! We must see if Franz is all right!”

  Holmes took hold of the young magician’s arm and pulled him back through the door. “Wait,” he said, “we mustn’t just charge in, like your President Roosevelt. If we hope to discover where the papers are concealed we must use stealth. I suggest you go around to the stage door and enter through the wings. Watson will go up through the house and I shall search the dressing-rooms.”

  “We’ll sneak up on him, eh? All right, Holmes. Good luck!”

  Holmes turned to me as the young American slipped around the side of the building. “Watson, are you quite sure you are able to continue? I observe that you have been favouring your right side.”

  “So have you,” I returned, stepping into the lobby of the theatre. “It appears we have both received injuries.”

  “That’s true,” Holmes admitted, rubbing at his own ribs. “Very well, we shall bind up our wounds after the battle. For the time being, stay close to the ground and do not show yourself. Kleppini must be allowed to reveal where he has placed the letters. Work your way down the centre aisl
e and keep hidden until I call for you. In his desperation to recover the letters, there is no telling what Kleppini might do.”

  “But what about Franz? Are we too late to help him?”

  “I fear so,” said Holmes, vanishing into a corridor which led to the dressing-rooms.

  Left alone in the darkened lobby of the theatre, I gathered my resolve and crept to the closed doors of the house itself. Opening one of the doors as silently as possible, I dropped to my hands and knees and crawled into the centre aisle. My attention was immediately drawn to a small figure in the middle of the vast stage, bent over the broken remains of Houdini’s Water Torture Cell.

  I crept closer, but already I could see that the figure was Kleppini. He was tearing away at the panels of oriental scrollwork about the base of the cell, muttering loud curses as he did so. When this destructive examination did not yield up the letters, Kleppini rose to his feet, gave an angry cry, and toppled the cabinet onto its side. The stage fairly shook as the heavy oaken cabinet fell, shattering its remaining panels of glass and sending bits and shards skittering across the stage.

  This ill-treatment of Houdini’s prized illusion seemed to give Kleppini a great deal of pleasure, for he stood gloating for a long moment before his eye was drawn to something amid the wreckage.

  “Ah ha!” he cried aloud, plucking a bundle of papers from the underside of the cabinet. “I have it!” He eagerly began to untie the ribbon around the packet.

  “Dear me!” said Sherlock Holmes, stepping onto the stage. “Look at all of this broken glass! What a mess you’ve made!”

  Kleppini whirled about. “Stay away from me!” he snarled, though his voice betrayed both surprise and fear. “Stay back!”

  “Shall I find a push broom?” Holmes asked. “It shouldn’t take a moment.”

  “I’m warning you! Stay back!” The little man fumbled in his pocket and withdrew a long-bladed knife.

  “Splendid,” said Holmes unconcernedly, “but do promise to straighten up before you leave. After all, it isn’t fair that—”

  In another moment I’m certain that Holmes would have engineered Kleppini’s capture, but at precisely that unfortunate instant, Inspector Lestrade strode blithely across the darkened stage from the opposite side, and before the hapless policeman became aware of the danger, Kleppini had seized him from behind.

  “Now you’ll have to let me go,” Kleppini called, backing Lestrade up to a wall, “or I’ll kill this C.I.D. man!”

  “I can see that I’ve come at a bad time—” Lestrade began.

  “Quiet!” snapped Kleppini, encircling Lestrade’s throat with one arm and drawing the knife close with the other. “Now, Mr Holmes, don’t get any ideas about sneaking up on me!” He looked about nervously, even as I searched frantically for some means of capturing him. “Where is your friend, that Dr Watson?” Kleppini demanded suspiciously. “And where is Houdini? Answer me!”

  Holmes gave a tragic cry and buried his head in his hands. When he looked up a moment later, his eyes were brimming with tears. “All right, then,” he cried, his voice quivering, “I can’t hide it any longer! Houdini is dead! One of the struts broke as he was climbing back into the aeroplane!”

  Holmes was always at ease on the stage, and it was clear that his performance thoroughly convinced not only Kleppini, but Lestrade as well.

  “Houdini is dead?” Lestrade repeated. “That’s a terrible shame—”

  “Quiet!” Kleppini shouted again, tightening his hold around the inspector’s neck. “So, he fell out of his plane, did he? Good, that saves me a bit of trouble.” He took a step away from the wall. “Now if you’ll just stand aside, this gentleman and I will be on our way.”

  All this time I had been looking so desperately for a way to lend assistance that I hadn’t noticed Kleppini’s grave error. When he had backed Lestrade up to the wall, he had unwittingly chosen the wall used in Houdini’s Walking-Through-a-Brick-Wall illusion. This worked very much to our advantage, for as Kleppini took a step away from the wall, Houdini suddenly appeared in the space behind him and brought a heavy vase crashing down on his head. This effectively ended our long pursuit.

  This time there had been no screens to shield Houdini’s illusion from my eyes, as there had been when we first saw it some days earlier. And while I freely admit that it was very dark in the theatre, and that my line of sight was not ideal, I feel I must record my distinct impression that Houdini passed neither over nor under the solid brick wall, but rather directly through it.

  I was still marvelling over this apparent impossibility while Lestrade collected himself and thanked the young magician. “It’s a good job you weren’t really dead, Mr Houdini,” the inspector said. “I’m certainly your debt. I can see that Holmes was right about you from the start.”

  “Thank you, Inspector,” Houdini said with a bow. “It was my pleasure to help. Here, you’d better use these handcuffs on Kleppini when he wakes up… Oh, on second thought, I guess your cuffs will be good enough for him.”

  Holmes and I came forward and examined the oblivious figure Kleppini. “It looks as if you’ll have him in a cell by the time he recovers,” Holmes said. “But tell me, Lestrade, what brought you down to the Savoy at this hour of the morning?”

  “Oh yes, right,” Lestrade’s face became suddenly grave. “I had come down here to place Mr Houdini back under arrest, but under the circumstances, we have some bad news.” He withdrew a long red muffler from his coat pocket. “It seems your assistant Franz was found dead in the middle of an open field early this morning. He appears to have fallen from a great height. We can’t make any sense of it, can you?”

  Twenty-One

  THE SCIENCE OF DEDUCTION

  The Prince of Wales put a match to the bundle, lit a cigar from the flames, and dropped the burning packet onto a tray. As the paper browned and curled about the royal seal, His Royal Highness sat back in his chair and heaved a sigh of relief.

  “I can’t tell you what a burden you’ve lifted from me, Mr Holmes,” he said. “Those letters would have been my ruin. And from what Lord O’Neill tells me, that would have been the least of it.”

  “That’s true,” the secretary agreed. “The Germans are ready to seize upon any pretext to increase their hostilities towards us. If those letters had come to light we may never have smoothed it over. As it is, Herr Osey was summoned to Berlin quite abruptly after the murder of the Countess Valenka was discovered. There are troubled times ahead, I’m afraid, but we may be thankful that this incident will not exacerbate them.” He paused as the butler wheeled in a tea-trolley and then withdrew. “I’ve asked you and Dr Watson to Gairstowe this morning so that you might give us the full details of your investigation. Several points remain unclear.”

  “Yes,” the prince said eagerly, “let’s have some tea and you may tell us all about it. I must say I’m full of questions about the case.”

  Sherlock Holmes rose from his chair as readily as the plaster encasing his ribs would permit. Taking a cup of tea from the trolley, he began to pace the room in a most awkward fashion, teacup in one hand, cane in the other.

  “Holmes, hadn’t you better sit down?” I asked, for I knew that the plastering of my own ribs had made walking a trial, even with a cane.

  “No, Watson. We have been laid by the heels in our rooms for days. This is our first excursion and I intend to stretch myself out a bit. Now then” — he turned to the prince — “I believe that most of the facts are known to you. You must tell me which specific details want clarification.”

  “Well, for one thing, I’ve been intrigued as to how the letters were actually taken from this room. We were under the impression that the door is impassable.”

  “It is,” Holmes returned. “Watson and I have that on the very best authority. But as it happened, the door was open when the thief entered the room.”

  “Impossible!” Lord O’Neill cried. “Unless the countess—?”

  “No, not the countess,” Ho
lmes answered, trying to hold his saucer and cane in one hand while lifting the teacup to his lips with the other. “Let us think back to my initial examination of this room. You may remember that I was disturbed by the unlikely grouping of footprints found behind the desk. Their origin was also of particular interest to me, as I found that I could not trace the source of the mud.”

  “Do you mean to say that you know every mud puddle in London?” the prince asked. “I don’t believe it!”

  “I see that Your Highness had a walk in the palace gardens this morning,” Holmes said quietly. “How are the roses coming on?”

  “Touché!” the prince cried, waving his cigar. “Do go on.”

  “While I was examining these footprints, Lord O’Neill became somewhat agitated because there was no milk for the tea.”

  The secretary gave an embarrassed laugh. “My word, what a memory for detail you have! You can’t tell me that milk has any bearing on the theft? It is such an insignificant detail!”

  “I was once able to solve a murder by measuring the depth to which the parsley had sunk in the butter on a hot summer day. After that I am hard put to call anything an insignificant detail.”

  “Your point is taken,” Lord O’Neill said, “but how does the lack of milk for my tea relate to the theft?”

  “I was struck by the fact that you should run short by mid-morning, when your kitchen staff receives a large delivery at the start of each day. Considering that you had given a reception for the Prince of Wales only one night previously, this oversight seemed all the more unlikely.” Having managed to drink his tea while pacing with his cane, Holmes was now endeavouring to fill his pipe. “I began to seek out possible reasons for this shortage,” he resumed, ignoring the bits of tobacco which fell in his wake. “But none occurred to me until much later, as we were chasing Franz and Kleppini’s milk cart.”

  “I’m afraid I still don’t see exactly how this bears on the crime,” I admitted. “Was Franz driving the milk cart during the actual theft?”