Sherlock Holmes--The Vanishing Man

by Philip Purser-Hallard

  ‘To overcome such reluctance, I have made a standing offer of a reward of ten thousand pounds to any claimant who can successfully convince the Committee of the Society, in a simple test, of a psychic ability or corresponding phenomenon.

  ‘Such an outcome would be merely the start of the process, of course – the condition for the reward is the Committee’s satisfaction, whereas the criteria for scientific proof would be a great deal more rigorous, and could take months of repeated experiments. If any trial subject were to pass the first test, we would naturally offer all possible inducements to persuade them to stay on. However, in the three years since the reward was first offered, several dozen claimants have come forward, and none have satisfied the Committee’s credulity, let alone the strictures of experimental proof.

  ‘At least – that was certainly the case last night. It may no longer be possible to say so this morning.’

  Sir Newnham fell broodingly silent for a few moments before continuing. ‘Ten thousand is a very substantial sum, of course,’ he said. ‘It has attracted a few subjects who came close enough in the experiments to persuade some of the Committee that they were genuinely gifted. It has brought us many who are sincerely deluded, and a few overconfident fraudsters. The latter group have sometimes been remarkably ingenious. So far we’ve found out all their deceptions, but it remains a fear of mine that one day I will be taken in by some hoax.

  ‘That, then, is the background to our current quandary. I shall proceed to the more immediate events.

  ‘A little over two months ago I received a letter from a man named Thomas Kellway, who informed me that he had psychic abilities. He prefaced it with a lot of waffle, as they generally do. In any case, while Kellway’s spiel may have been about how interplanetary etheric influences had boosted certain abilities in him that are latent in all of us, his gist was that he could make an object move some distance away using the power of his mind – the technical term is “telekinesis”. Our experimental facilities can certainly put such phenomena to the test, so I invited him to come and meet me.

  ‘My first impressions of the man were favourable enough. He is a soft-spoken Yorkshireman, a fine physical specimen, perhaps fifty years old but hale and strong. Intelligent too, and articulate, with a calm, persuasive way about him. His most remarkable characteristic, though, was that he was entirely bald – not a hair on his head, not even an eyebrow, nor yet on his hands.

  ‘I found him eccentric, to be sure, but no more so than many who come our way. No more so than some in our Society, if truth be told. We encounter freemasons, theosophists, spiritualists, vegetarians – all sorts. He attended last month’s meeting of the Society, and many of them were quite taken with him. He has called at several of our houses, including mine, on a number of occasions since.

  ‘As I have said, Kellway’s particular fancies are in the cosmological line. He believes – or perhaps I should only say that he claims – that he has been remotely influenced since before his birth by superior intelligences from the second planet in our solar system.

  ‘These Venusians supposedly established a form of pre-natal psychical communion with Kellway, and under their influence he has become a more highly developed form of human being, mentally and physically superior to the rest of us – although he insists that anyone can become such with the proper discipline. An “Evolved Man” is what he calls himself – the next stage of human development – although I have also heard him use the term “Interplanetary Man”. He told me that he was born bald, hair being a useless vestige of mankind’s evolutionary past. He maintains that for similar reasons he lacks the normal vermiform appendix, though I am of course in no position to confirm that statement and I cannot imagine how he can be certain of it either.

  ‘According to Kellway, the goal of the Venusians, having raised all life on their planet to the peak of its evolutionary potential, is to assist those of us here on Earth to perfect ourselves likewise, becoming angelic paragons like the Venusians themselves. To do him justice, Kellway claims merely to be a step along that road rather than its final destination. Supposedly the Venusians were blessed in this way aeons ago by beings from Mercury, and intend that we in turn shall show the same favour to the inhabitants of Mars, each world bestowing enlightenment on the next one out from the Sun, which is the original source of these emanations of divinity.

  ‘His cosmology is rather primitive, you see, despite its modern veneer. He speaks with an occasional rather biblical turn of phrase, which I might have put down to a non-conformist upbringing were it not for these messianic pretensions of his.

  ‘It was decided early in our Society’s existence, however, that we would judge our subjects on the practical results of our experiments, not on their own beliefs. I agreed with Kellway that we would conduct a trial to prove or disprove his ability. We agreed the form that this experiment would take, which is our standard one for telekinesis, though with a few modifications. The date was set for yesterday.

  ‘Kellway would be locked in an otherwise empty room, next to another, similar room, also locked, which would also be empty but for three things: a table, a closed wooden box on top of it, and an ordinary billiard ball placed inside the box. The intervening wall would mean that Kellway would be unable even to see the experimental materials. His task would be to open the box in the next-door room and remove the ball, using nothing but the power of his mind.

  ‘The Experimental Annexe was built to my own specifications, two years ago. I hope you will take the opportunity to inspect it yourself, Mr Holmes. In the meantime, allow me to describe it to you.

  ‘It is reached from the house via a passage from my chemical laboratories, or from the grounds through an external door. Both of these doors are located in the antechamber which adjoins the three Experiment Rooms, which are in a row next to one another and are designated A, B and C. The experiment required that Kellway occupy Room A, with the experimental materials in Room B. Each room is a cube, eight feet by eight feet by eight feet, with a large glass panel in the door and a window at the top of the far wall. The windows can be opened for comfort during hot weather, but they are narrow and barred, as well as high. A cat might squeeze through one of them perhaps, but not a man. The doors are of a design normally used in store-rooms, which can only be locked and unlocked from the outside, and the lock’s manufacturers advertise it as unpickable. There are no connecting doors between the three rooms, of course – that would hardly serve the purposes of the experiment. Have I been clear enough, Mr Holmes?’

  Holmes said, ‘I believe I can visualise the arrangement. I, too, hope that I will be able to examine it in person before long. Pray continue.’

  ‘Well, Kellway told me that he could accomplish the task, but he had certain stipulations. He spoke of charging up his psychical energy like a battery, until he had a sufficiency of it to perform the task – those may not have been his precise words, but that was his drift. This would, he insisted, take many hours of meditation to do. This process would have to begin at sunset, with Venus still visible in the sky. He added that experience had shown him that direct artificial light would interfere with the frequency of his psychic vibrations, and would render the experiment futile.

  ‘I need not say that this rang alarm bells for me – in my experience, a subject who prefers to work in the dark has something to hide. However, it transpired that Kellway had no objection to Room B being well lit, nor the anteroom, merely his own room. Each has its own independent electric light, so the box on its table would be illuminated clearly throughout, while Kellway himself would be visible, though not strongly lit, by the brightness from the anteroom. Given the aim of the experiment, I felt that, provided we could observe the experimental materials, it would be less important to see exactly what Kellway was doing. After some consultation with the members of the Society Committee, I agreed to his stipulations.

  ‘Last evening, therefore, at seven o’clock, nine members of the Society, including the two of us, asse
mbled in the Experimental Annexe at my house, along with Mr Kellway and a couple of attendants. We all observed as the experimental materials were placed in Room B, the middle room. I locked the door, leaving the light on. The table and closed box were clearly visible through the glass of the door. At half-past seven, with Venus twenty minutes away from setting by the almanac, Kellway entered the unlit Room A. Again I locked him in myself. Room C was to play no part in the experiment and was never unlocked, or for that matter lit.

  ‘Kellway took off his shoes and jacket and began his meditations. We could see him dimly in the light from the antechamber, sitting in what is called the lotus position. From the moment I turned the key he could not have escaped the room by normal means – he would have needed to slither under the door or float through solid brick. Even the window was locked shut, it being a cold night.

  ‘At eight o’clock, as we had arranged, we all left the room except the first pair of observers. Our standard practice for protracted sessions such as these is that Rhyne here, who serves as secretary to the Committee, draws up a rota of such observers. As I say, it is less usual for such events to occur overnight, but fortunately my house is large and I have no family, so my staff were able to arrange accommodation for those who needed it.

  ‘The reason for using two observers at a time is of course to reduce the risk of human error or collusion with the subject. As a general rule in such cases, the observers are not constantly peering through the glass at the subject, as naturally this tends to distract them. Our normal approach is that the observers look through the doors at timed intervals of five minutes, one checking on the subject while the other confirms the status of the experimental materials. Nobody enters the rooms, of course – they remain locked.

  ‘On this occasion the first two observers were Dr Peter Kingsley – a gentleman of your profession, Dr Watson, who is my neighbour in Richmond – and Professor Elias Scaverson, one of our more distinguished scientific members. Between observations they spent most of the time playing cribbage, and they reported nothing unusual or amiss. At ten o’clock Rhyne here relieved them, along with Major Bradbury; and so we continued throughout the night, with pairs of individuals taking two-hour shifts, until the four to six o’clock shift this morning.

  ‘The observers at that time were Frederick Garforth, the artist, and my butler, Anderton. Unlike myself and Rhyne, Anderton is an honorary rather than a full member of the Society, as, if truth be told, he has little interest in scientific matters, but he has helped make up our numbers on several past occasions, and I would trust him as an impartial observer above a number of our regular members. At a little before ten to five Major Bradbury, having woken early in a companionable mood, joined them once again. At ten minutes to five, five to five and five o’clock, Garforth and Anderton looked into the rooms as usual and saw, as before, the box sitting undisturbed upon the table in Room B, and Kellway meditating with great concentration in Room A.

  ‘At five minutes past five they checked again, and Garforth cried out that Kellway had vanished. Bradbury and Anderton immediately checked his observation and confirmed it. Thomas Kellway had disappeared, Mr Holmes, from a locked room, leaving behind him not a trace of his passing.’

  Schedule and Plan for an Experimental Test of Telekinesis

  The Psychic Experimental Annexe, Parapluvium House,

  14th & 15th September 1896

  SUBJECT: Thos. Kellway

  SCHEDULE:

  7 p.m. to 8 p.m. START OF EXPERIMENT.

  Setting-Up and Locking of Experiment Rooms. All Society Members welcome to attend. NB: Venus sets 7.49 p.m.

  8 p.m. to 10 p.m. FIRST OBSERVATION:

  Dr Kingsley, Prof. Scaverson.

  10 p.m. to 12 p.m. SECOND OBSERVATION:

  Major Bradbury, Mr Rhyne.

  12 p.m. to 2 a.m. THIRD OBSERVATION:

  Revd Small, Mr Beech.

  2 a.m. to 4 a.m. FOURTH OBSERVATION:

  Lord Jermaine, Mr McInnery.

  4 a.m. to 6 a.m. FIFTH OBSERVATION:

  Mr Garforth, Wm. Anderton.

  6 a.m. to 8 a.m. SIXTH OBSERVATION:

  Sir Newnham Speight, Hon. Mr Floke.

  8 a.m. onwards END OF EXPERIMENT.

  Release of Mr Kellway, followed by Breakfast and Discussion of Results. All Society Members welcome to attend.

  CHAPTER TWO

  I whistled, and Holmes, who had been listening intently throughout all of this, was equally impressed. He said, ‘I had hopes that you were leading up to some spectacular revelation, Sir Newnham, and you have not disappointed me. Please tell us the rest. What happened next?’

  ‘Well,’ said Speight. ‘After Bradbury and Anderton had reassured Garforth that his eyes were not deceiving him, Anderton came to find me at once.

  ‘I was already awake and mostly dressed, as I was to take the sixth and final shift. I sent Anderton to knock up Rhyne, and went down to the Annexe straight away. I would have been there by ten past five. Bradbury and Garforth were waiting for us in the anteroom, and had nothing new to report. When we arrived I unlocked the door to Room A and the three of us searched it together – not that there’s anywhere in that bare space where Kellway could possibly have concealed himself. We also checked on Room B, but found the billiard ball still inside the box.’

  ‘Did you check the third room?’ Holmes asked.

  ‘For form’s sake, yes. It was perfectly empty. There are also some cupboards in the anteroom where experimental equipment is stored, and when Rhyne joined us he suggested searching those as well, in case Kellway had somehow… Well, we were all at a loss for an explanation, and by now I’m afraid we were clutching at straws. Nothing had been disturbed in any case, and of course there was no sign of Kellway.

  ‘We roused the rest of the household, and assembled the Society members in the Experimental Annexe. Nobody could explain how Kellway had left a room that was, for all reasonable purposes, sealed tight, nor where he might be now. Of course, by that I mean that nobody was able to offer a conventional explanation. Inevitably, several of those present were inclined to take a supernatural view of the affair.

  ‘For my own part I am sceptical enough to believe for now that this is an unprecedented hoax, though as to its mechanics I am just as much perplexed as everybody else. In fact I have been half-expecting Kellway to stroll in and claim the reward, but when I left Richmond this afternoon he had not yet reappeared.

  ‘This, then, is the problem I came to put before you, Mr Holmes. How did Thomas Kellway escape from that room, where is he now, and does the Society for the Scientific Investigation of Psychical Phenomena owe him ten thousand pounds?’

  ‘A most attractive problem, indeed,’ Holmes said. ‘Although I fear the possibilities that Mr Rhyne outlined at first are extreme ones. If Kellway has indeed vanished away, there is no more reason to suppose him on Venus than anywhere else – indeed, I venture to suggest that the feat of transporting oneself instantaneously and intangibly from one place to another would be no less marvellous if one’s destination were Putney Common. And if Kellway is a hoaxer, I venture that he is more liable to prove a talented practitioner than an unprecedented genius, though I admit the effect he has produced is an exceptional one.

  ‘I have a few questions, Sir Newnham, if I may. To begin with, where were the keys to the Experiment Rooms kept during the procedure? I mean the keys to the windows as well as the doors.’

  ‘My housekeeper, Mrs Catton, keeps one set,’ Speight said, ‘which she is meticulous in locking away when they are out of use. The other was on my key-chain, which I keep on my person. When the Annexe is not in use, that set remains in the safe in my study, to which only Rhyne and myself have the combination. The windows all use the same key, and that is on a ring with the three door-keys.’

  ‘Was your key-chain on your person while you were asleep?’ Holmes asked, somewhat sceptically.

  ‘No – it was not, of course,’ agreed Sir Newnham. ‘It was on my night-stand in my r
oom – I always place it there at night, and I remember seizing it in haste on my way down to the Annexe. It was, however, within two feet of me, and I am an unusually light sleeper, as my manservant will be able to confirm. I tend to wake several times during the night, and last night was no exception. I cannot see that anyone could have entered my room and borrowed the chain without my being aware of it.’

  Holmes proceeded with his questioning. ‘You said that the experiment rooms were empty other than Kellway and the table, box and ball, but you then told us that Kellway took his shoes and jacket in with him. Precisely, please, what was in Room A?’

  ‘Precisely? Well, Kellway himself, of course. The light bulb and a coat-hook are the only fixtures. Normally we provide a chair for the subjects, but Kellway insisted he had no need of that. He took in the clothes he was wearing, naturally, including his jacket and shoes. I believe he also had with him a walking-cane.’

  ‘What was in his jacket?’ I asked.

  ‘A highly pertinent point,’ said Holmes. ‘I trust that you at least searched his pockets for suspicious items.’

  ‘We do so as a matter of routine,’ Sir Newnham said, seeming a little hurt. ‘As I said, we have been troubled by pranksters in the past. I don’t believe we found anything out of the ordinary, though. What did he have on him, Rhyne?’

  His secretary said, ‘A pocket book containing cards and notes, some loose change, a handkerchief, a door-key. That’s all.’

  ‘No cigarettes or tobacco?’ Holmes asked. ‘No matches?’

  ‘Kellway’s a strict non-smoker,’ Rhyne said. ‘It’s one of his fads. But, gentlemen, if you know of something a chap could hide in his clothes that would let him disappear from a locked room – or to move an object in an adjacent room, for that matter, since that’s what we were expecting – I’ll be astonished to hear of it.’