Sherlock Holmes--The Vanishing Man

by Philip Purser-Hallard

  He giggled again. ‘I may appear to, but I am tremendously serious. This Society is a melting pot, my dear doctor, a positive melting pot of original and innovative faiths. Did you know we have a genuine diabolist among our ranks? Mr Aldous Horst is not here tonight, but his worship of Satan and his minions is touchingly earnest. Then there is Countess Brusilova, with the scriptures she has had dictated to her by the ghosts of pagan hierarchs from the vanished continent of Hy-Brasil.’

  Small indicated a dumpy, veiled woman, of whom the hands were the only part visible; they were ropy and knotted with age. She stood nearby, leaning heavily on a stick, attended by her frighteningly stern young companion, who was in her early twenties, with delicate features and very pale blonde hair in a severe bun, and whose name I remembered was Miss Casimir.

  The cleric continued, ‘Those few who have read her books assure me that they too are terribly sincere, as far as they were able to understand them. As for Mr Beech, with his one-man religion based on evolution and the Will of Life – it is so creative of him to find a new way to scandalise convention, but of course he does it so well in his professional career that one must expect something of the same in his spiritual affairs.’

  ‘And you, Mr Small?’ I asked, tiring of this smirking litany of his fellows’ defects. ‘What is a Church of England pastor doing in such company?’ The Reverend Small’s character was so much at odds with the strait-laced, small-minded vicar whom Gideon Beech had described to us that I wondered whether the priest had been acting a part to discourage Beech’s conversation, or whether Beech had merely disdained to listen to a word Small said.

  The cleric affected an expression of indignant piety now, his face suffused with amusement nonetheless. ‘Why, Doctor, I am searching for the truth, what else? Like everybody, I am here to observe the experiments. As the Lord tells us, “Ye shall know them by their fruits.”’

  ‘I see,’ I said. ‘And how should we judge Thomas Kellway?’

  ‘I cannot say that, Dr Watson, until we know what exactly his fruits are. I will judge a tree that produces apples more favourably than one that grows mere wax imitations.’

  ‘So you believe him to be a fraud?’ I wondered. ‘Yet as a man of the cloth, you must allow that miracles are possible.’

  ‘I suppose I must, mustn’t I?’ Mr Small beamed. ‘But I am not thereby obliged to believe that anything surprising that happens is a miracle. And believing such things possible is a rather different proposition from believing that they are likely to happen in a London suburb in our modern era, and to such ordinary people as ourselves.’

  ‘Then why observe the experiments?’ I asked. ‘If you’re not expecting anything out of the ordinary to happen…’

  ‘Ah! But when I referred to my observations, I did not mean Sir Newnham’s tests, but the whole panoply of religious experimentation which surrounds us all. I am a very modern sort of a clergyman, you see. In religion as in science, experiments must be essayed and results observed, failures as well as successes. How better to perfect my own faith than to observe the various and exciting failures of those around me here?’

  I was sure there must be a clear answer to this, but being no theologian I was momentarily at a loss to put my finger on it. As I glanced around for inspiration, I saw Constantine Skinner, who was standing close by, barricaded from Holmes by a huge, enormously bearded man whose name I had not managed to remember and who, as far as I had been able to ascertain, spoke only Norwegian.

  From the glare the occult investigator was giving Small, it was plain that he had heard his every word, including his comments about Beech. ‘And I, Mr Small?’ Skinner asked, with an attempt at hauteur. ‘Am I another of your interesting failures?’ He was, as I had already seen, the sort of man for whom dismissal rankled.

  ‘Oh, Mr Skinner, I hardly know you. But an interesting failure?’ Small beamed benignly, placing the lightest possible emphasis on the word. ‘No, I can assure you, you could never be that.’

  Skinner gaped abjectly before being rescued, whether by luck or design, by Dr Kingsley, who said, ‘Oh, Dr Watson, I must ask you something.’

  We had been introduced to the doctor earlier, a tall and dapper man with a saturnine beard. He was accompanied by the Honourable Gerald Floke, whose appearance, this evening at least, was quite extraordinary.

  Kingsley continued, ‘Mr Floke has been speaking to me about the irrelevance of hair and the appendix to human survival. He has been asking which other organs an Evolved Person might dispense with. Do you have any views on the matter?’

  I considered for a moment. Distasteful though the topic was, it was an interesting medical question. I said, ‘The tonsils and adenoids, I would think – the benefits to the system of both are minimal. There are a number of small muscles, like those which allow some people to waggle their ears, which are not generally used and have no practical application when they are. Fingernails and toenails are fairly dispensable, I suppose, and – ah, I can think of certain other structures.’ Carried away with my train of thought I had been about to mention the mammary papillae of the male of the species, but given the nearby presence of the Countess and Miss Casimir, I demurred from so risqué an observation.

  Kingsley’s mouth turned up slightly, and he said, ‘Quite so,’ in a manner that reminded me irresistibly of Holmes. Like many of those present, the doctor exuded a strong personality, but he seemed to me a rational man, as if his medical background served to insulate him from some of the more outlandish excesses of his fellows. Or perhaps it merely seemed that way to me because the background was one I shared.

  He said, ‘Of course, one might take an even firmer line. Many organs in the human body are duplicated. This is useful in cases where one of them fails or is damaged, but there are individuals who live perfectly fulfilling lives with only one of the pair. Might not a truly efficient Evolved Man be organised on a monolithic basis, with a one-lunged, one-kidneyed torso atop a single leg, sprouting a single arm, and surmounted by a cyclopean head sporting a single ear and a single nostril?’

  I smiled at his flight of fancy but he had, I suspect intentionally, provoked the Honourable Gerald Floke to earnest protest. ‘But that would hardly be the peak of human perfection, would it, Doctor?’ the young man expostulated.

  At another time Floke might have been rather handsome, after the fashion of a thoroughbred racing-hound puppy. Tonight, however, his head was completely shaven, including his eyebrows (but not, I noticed, his eyelashes), and the skin was red and sore, suggesting that this state was both recent and uncustomary.

  He continued, ‘Why, such a grotesque creature wouldn’t be a man at all. Perhaps the Venusians, or another of the races on our neighbouring worlds, might have developed in that way, but an Evolved Man must be the ultimate expression of earthly humanity. As Thomas Kellway is.’ He said the name with some reverence.

  ‘Young Gerald, I believe,’ the insinuating parson said in my ear, ‘is in the early stages of formulating yet another novel creed.’

  ‘It’s him we must imitate if we’re to become Evolved ourselves,’ Floke insisted, ‘and elevate the rest of mankind. I’m rather hopeful that we have a channel of communication that will allow him to show us the way, but if not then the rest of us will just have to work it out between us.’

  ‘The way?’ I asked him, confused. ‘The way to Venus?’

  ‘The Way of Kellway,’ Vortigern Small murmured. ‘Or Kellwayism? Kellwianity, possibly?’

  ‘The way to evolve!’ insisted Floke, an evangelical light shining in his eyes. ‘To attain that higher plane of enlightenment – sphere of enlightenment, I should say,’ he added with a hasty glance across the room at Gideon Beech, who apparently had not heard. ‘To ascend through the spheres towards the supreme effulgence of the Sun itself!’

  ‘The shaving is a kind of Imitatio Christi, I think,’ Small said quietly. ‘But he is perhaps not so discriminating about which aspects of his new messiah he emulates.’

&nb
sp; ‘So will you do it, Dr Kingsley?’ the shaven young man cajoled. ‘You’ve said I wouldn’t miss it, and it would bring me closer to the ideal state.’ When the Doctor snorted in amusement and shook his head, Floke appealed to me. ‘What about you, Dr Watson? Will you remove my appendix?’

  I was quite taken aback. ‘That would hardly be a good idea, Mr Floke,’ I replied. ‘It’s true that the body doesn’t really need it, but the surgery bears risks of its own. It’s quite inadvisable except in cases of medical emergency. No good doctor would carry out such an unnecessary procedure, and a bad one could hardly be trusted with it.’ Floke looked crestfallen, so I added, ‘You wouldn’t want to die of septicaemia before you’ve transcended the earthly sphere, would you?’

  ‘No. No, that would be dreadful.’ Floke still looked distressed.

  I took advantage of the moment to ask, ‘What of the eyelashes, by the way, Dr Kingsley? They might be considered an example of hair with a function. Does Mr Kellway have those?’

  Dr Kingsley looked surprised. ‘I confess I hadn’t noticed. Floke?’

  Floke looked alarmed by the question, but said firmly, ‘Of course he doesn’t. He has no hair, he told us so.’

  He blinked in realisation and touched his own eyelashes with a fingertip. I added hastily, ‘Please don’t pluck your eyelashes, Mr Floke. They can take a very long time to grow back, and there is again a risk of infection, though not normally a fatal one.’

  I could tell that he was unconvinced. Feeling rather awkward, I elected to circulate.

  Had Garforth attended as planned there would have been fourteen of us at the party, including our host, and I wondered how many of those present were sufficiently superstitious as to take alarm at our new number. Bradbury was holding forth to Skinner, while Beech similarly expounded at a rather peevish Sir Newnham. Being unable to join Holmes, who was annoyingly conversing with the Norwegian in his own tongue, I instead gravitated towards Talbot Rhyne, whom the forbidding Miss Casimir was addressing in somewhat Germanic English, apparently on behalf of Countess Brusilova.

  ‘But Mr Rhyne, a person has not to be “dead”, to use that distasteful term, to speak through a medium,’ Miss Casimir told him. ‘The Countess has held séances where the yet unborn souls have spoken through her, and the spirits of animals, as well as those of living men and women. Myself, I communicated with my grandmother on her deathbed through the Countess’s mediumship, as clearly as on the telephone. And she was in Coblenz.’

  Rhyne said, ‘Well, Coblenz,’ as if this were rather an everyday achievement. ‘Venus is another matter, though, surely? The distance alone…’

  ‘Not in the least,’ began Miss Casimir, but she was interrupted by the Countess herself.

  ‘Distance is an illusion,’ the old lady declared, her voice quavering and accented far more thickly than her companion’s. ‘A desperate failing of human perception.’ Rhyne and Miss Casimir waited respectfully for her to elaborate on this, but she stayed silent.

  The younger woman resumed her discourse. ‘For the Countess, the matter was merely of attuning her psychic resonance to the interplanetary etheric vibrations described to her by Thomas. Her earliest attempts did not succeed – she first channelled entities from the Moon and Mercury, before she was able to fully direct her attention on Venus – but Palú-Odranel, the Venusian with whom she established finally a sympathetic resonance, could reassure us that Thomas was alive and well, and benefiting greatly from the youthful atmosphere in that blessed sphere.’

  ‘I… see,’ said Rhyne. I sensed that his willingness to accommodate extraordinary possibilities might be nearing its limits.

  I asked the old lady, ‘So in your view, Countess Brusilova, we’ve nothing to worry about? Kellway is safe?’

  ‘Safer than anyone in this sphere, certainly,’ Miss Casimir replied for her employer, who remained as silent as if I had not been there. ‘And the fact that we, through the Countess’s mediumship, can communicate with him is invaluable to us. The Countess intends further séances where we can instruct ourselves from his wisdom. She hopes that they will attract large crowds.’ Paying large fees too, I had no doubt.

  Nearby Gideon Beech was affirming, ‘But of course this news must be promulgated more widely! Surely all of us, however myopic, must wish a prodigy like this announced to the world at large, regardless of whether we take the proper view of the matter or assuage our fears of the unknown with some cowardly obfuscation of the obvious.’

  ‘Don’t be so reckless, Beech,’ Sir Newnham said irritably. ‘Such a precipitate announcement, before we have a definitive explanation of what happened, risks all our reputations.’

  Beech scoffed. ‘Oh really, Speight. If reputation is your lodestone, we can keep your name out of it altogether. I am due to be interviewed by a reporter from one of our less pusillanimous newspapers on Friday – an arrangement preceding this whole business, of course, but a fortuitous one nevertheless. The young man was good enough to approach me at my home on Monday morning, asking some fascinating questions about many overlooked aspects of my life, this Society included, and I arranged to meet him again later, to talk them through in the detail they warrant. I’ll certainly bring this matter to the laddie’s attention – he’s a promising young fellow.’

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw Skinner slipping from the room. I glanced around to see whether anyone else was absent, and realised that Bradbury was also missing. A moment later, however, the Major returned and started to regale Floke and Kingsley with his reminiscences of the accomplishments of a yogi in Bangalore.

  Thinking to mention Skinner’s departure to Holmes, I circled the room until I found him again. He was now listening to the Reverend Small as the cleric quizzed Miss Casimir in wondering innocence about the Countess’s beliefs.

  ‘I must say, Miss Casimir,’ said Small, ‘I understood that the Countess’s devotion was to ancient wisdom, not to such up-to-date fads as the theory of evolution. I thought that her efforts were devoted to rebuilding the primordial religion of Hy-Brasil, in which the true names of all things in the universe were revealed, and are now available to those fortunate enough to be able to, ahem, recover that primeval knowledge. Such gnosis represents a full and accurate picture of the universe, as I recall. And yet as far as I can remember from our many chats in the past, neither she nor you have ever mentioned planetary spheres as entities that might have any effect on our lives, nor indeed as places that might be visited. Indeed, one of the Countess’s many pamphlets opposes the astrologers’ idea that celestial bodies might have any influence on our destinies.’

  ‘I say, though, Miss Casimir,’ said Floke, who had been listening in increasing concern, ‘that can’t be right, can it? Because you were telling me the Countess had been talking to Thomas Kellway. And he’s on another planet, you know, and only got there because of the Venusians’ influence.’

  ‘What Mr Small says is true,’ Miss Casimir agreed smoothly, ‘but before now the public has been ready for the Countess to reveal only a small part of the wisdom of holy Hy-Brasil. There is much more yet to be disclosed.’

  ‘Is that so? Goodness me.’ Small smiled with needle-sharp gentleness. ‘Because I had also understood that this ancient and changeless knowledge held that Man is perfectible in his own right, without the assistance of external influences, if only we can recapture that lost transcendence of the Hy-Brasilians. If that be the case, Miss Casimir, what need for influences from Venus?’

  Unexpectedly the Countess croaked, ‘Yet knowledge is itself an emanation, on the spectrum of the psychic aether.’ Again she refused to be drawn further on the remark, whose significance to the discussion was questionable.

  Miss Casimir sighed. ‘Naturally, what holds on the Earth must hold equally in the other spheres. It may be that the Venusians like the Countess’s guide have kept aspects of primordial knowledge that temporarily have been lost to our world – though the knowledge itself must always be the same. What is true in one sphere must
be true in all.’

  ‘Indeed.’ Vortigern Small’s smile became positively beatific. ‘And yet it’s almost as if – you must forgive the observation, my dear lady – this permanent, complete and immutable record to which the Countess has so miraculously been granted her unique access is being amended suddenly and rather hastily in response to the things the people around her want to hear. I know young Gerald here was exceedingly pleased to learn that he had found in the Countess – and her Venusian mentor, of course – the perfect conduit to learn more from Mr Kellway of the world to which he has travelled and the wisdom he has gained there. That was what you wanted to hear, wasn’t it, Gerald?’

  The red blotches on Floke’s face had spread to cover most of it, and his eyes bulged froglike from his hairless face. ‘My God!’ he spluttered. ‘My God! If you’re deceiving us – if you’re claiming falsely to speak for Thomas Kellway, just so you can make yourselves some money – well, I shall – I’ll…’ He seemed to remember belatedly that, regardless of his level of evolutionary development, he remained a gentleman, and finished rather tamely, ‘Well, I shall have to ask Sir Newnham to remove you from his house at once, for a start. And then I might actually have to call the police.’

  ‘The Countess has had the police called on to attend her before,’ Miss Casimir said coolly, ‘by better men than you. She is a guest in Sir Newnham’s house, and while he extends to her his hospitality, we will stay. If you choose not to remain here while the Countess is in the house, that is your affair, Mr Floke – but you will then be cutting yourself off from further communication with Mr Kellway. You must do whatever you think is the best.’

  She turned dismissively and took the Countess’s arm in hers. As they crossed the room I heard the Countess observe rather gloomily, ‘We think we choose, but we are deceived. Our minds are borne on the shoulders of animals.’

  Floke stared silently after them, his nostrils flared with rage. The Reverend Small took a sip of his sherry and winked at me in sheer devilment.