Sherlock Holmes--The Vanishing Man

by Philip Purser-Hallard

  ‘We will come to the demonstration in a moment, Major,’ said Holmes sternly. ‘For now, I have two observations to make. Firstly, Frederick Garforth supposedly arrived at Parapluvium House that night only at eleven-thirty, an hour and a half after the shift you shared with Talbot Rhyne. By then, Greendale had of course been released from Experiment Room A and repaired to the summerhouse, where Rhyne had left the elements of his Garforth disguise. It was doubtless also Rhyne who collected and disposed of Kellway’s clothes later.

  ‘And secondly, that in arranging the shift rotas for that night, Rhyne had taken pains to pair himself with an observer who he knew could not be relied upon. Oh, I do not say that you were complicit in the deception, Major,’ Holmes added as Bradbury began spluttering in indignation, ‘merely that he could guarantee that your presence during your shift would not be constant. Rhyne and Greendale could be certain of a few moments, at least, during which the former could free the latter and release him into the grounds.’

  ‘But Kellway was still in the room!’ Gideon Beech objected, increasingly enraged by Holmes’s refusal to address this point. ‘We all saw him there for hours afterwards!’

  His anger was nothing, however, compared with Major Bradbury’s towering fury. ‘How dare you, sir!’ he blustered. ‘I’ll have you know I’ve faced down Dacoits and Thuggees, Mahdis and Mullahs, and none of those I’ve served with have ever questioned my resolve! Why, I stood watch for eight hours over my injured men during the Burmese campaign and—’

  ‘You were a younger man then, Major,’ Holmes said, ‘and the unfortunate habits you have picked up out in the East were doubtless held in check. These days you are incapable of staying a room for an hour at a time, and when confined for a similar period in a cab with Watson and myself, you left us most precipitately, to vanish into Hyde Park on an unknown mission. I of all people recognise the symptoms of addiction, Major, and I know that you consorted with all kinds of local medicine men in India, when under the corrupting influence of Colonel Sebastian Moran. I do not know to what drug it is that you have become so enthralled, whether hashish or opium or some other substance with a similar—’

  The Major was staring at Holmes, quite aghast, and frankly so was I. ‘Holmes,’ I said forcibly, ‘might I have a word?’

  He frowned. ‘Watson, I am merely observing that the Major has acquired a debilitating habit which he hides in a way which makes it quite clear he considers it shameful, and that the unreliability this habit has engendered made him the perfect choice for Rhyne’s—’

  ‘Outside, Holmes, please.’ I took him by the elbow and guided him out into the hallway, to a clamour of indignant protest from those left behind in the room. I glanced around to make sure that there were no servants there to overhear us, and told him quite firmly, ‘Holmes, Major Bradbury is not an addict.’

  Haughtily, he said, ‘Watson, I rather think that I am better placed than you to identify—’

  ‘Better placed than a doctor? I’m afraid you overreach yourself, old man. In most areas I defer to your expertise, but in this you must bow to mine. You are allowing your own unfortunate history, and perhaps the memory of the Moran affair, to cloud your judgement. Major Bradbury shows no signs of addiction that I can see.’

  ‘The man can’t sit still for the length of a meal!’ Holmes expostulated. ‘He leaves and returns with the regularity of a cuckoo popping out to announce the hour. And he does it so furtively! The man has a shameful secret, that much is quite clear, and if it is not an addiction, then—’

  ‘Holmes!’ I snapped, and then sighed. My friend’s profession had made him so eager to find a criminal explanation that he had missed a very simple medical one – one that my own professional experience made quite obvious to me. ‘My dear fellow, you and I are still relatively young men, and healthy, thank heavens. Older men sometimes experience… lapses… in bodily functions that you and I are fortunate enough to take quite for granted. Some of these, like an infirmity of the sight or limbs, may be discussed in polite company, whereas others may well make the sufferer feel ashamed or embarrassed – though quite irrationally so. It is assuredly no fault of Major Bradbury’s if nature makes certain calls on him more often these days than it did when he stood watch over those men in Burma. A man doesn’t vanish among the trees in Hyde Park to smoke hashish, Holmes.’

  By now comprehension dawned on Holmes’s face – and with it some embarrassment of his own. ‘I see. Yes indeed, old fellow, I do see. I suppose we should give the poor man the benefit of the doubt. That… explanation… would certainly fit the facts.’

  ‘And is not one that Major Bradbury would be pleased to have made public,’ I reminded him.

  ‘Well, no. Although as you say, somewhat irrationally so. Still… I owe the Major an apology,’ he reflected.

  ‘Perhaps it would be best to avoid the subject for the moment,’ I suggested.

  ‘Very well,’ agreed Holmes. ‘Perhaps it is time for my demonstration.’

  We re-entered the room, to find Major Bradbury still fuming and everybody else bemused. Grandly, Holmes announced, ‘I am afraid that we have allowed ourselves to be distracted by a peripheral issue. If we assume, as it seems we must, that Major Bradbury was forgivably absent from the Experimental Annexe for a short period during his watch, there is a far greater question to be answered. If, during that brief lapse, Rhyne did indeed release Theodore Greendale – or, as you called him at the time, Thomas Kellway – from Experiment Room A, then who was in there, under clear observation, for the remainder of the night, and what happened to that person between five o’clock and five minutes past five?’

  ‘Damned right,’ snapped Bradbury. ‘If the fellow was let out, it wasn’t during my watch.’

  ‘As far as I can see, Holmes, none of this is any more explicable than it was at the start,’ said Sir Newnham. ‘Whoever Kellway really was, to vanish from that room yet seem to be still there is just as impossible as vanishing altogether, isn’t it?’

  I said, ‘I fear Sir Newnham’s right, Holmes. As we discovered, every theory that could explain the facts must entail some impossibility, and that’s what we come back to. We’ve heard your theory, but the impossibility is still just as much there.’

  He favoured us all with one of his most superior smiles. ‘I must beg your indulgence – Miss Casimir, gentlemen. Pray follow me to the Experimental Annexe, and all will shortly become clear.’

  We found the Annexe anteroom already lit, with Anderton in attendance. Next to him on the low round table lay the cane that Holmes had brought with him. Solemnly, Holmes picked it up and told us, ‘We must replicate the conditions of the night in question, as far as possible. As you know I am already wearing the jacket that Theodore Greendale affected as Kellway. His Kellway cane is still in my rooms at Baker Street, but this one, which he used as Garforth, will suffice for our purposes. We know that Greendale had an accomplice to let him out of the room, and Major Bradbury would have left Rhyne alone there for merely a minute or two. May I ask you, Sir Newnham, to give your room keys to Anderton, and then that you all retire as a body to the chemistry laboratory for two minutes?’

  I felt a little hurt that Holmes had taken the butler into his confidence in preference to myself, but I knew his penchant for the theatrical, and also how much he enjoyed seeing me respond to it as part of his audience. If he really had solved the riddle of Kellway’s disappearance, I supposed that I could not begrudge him that.

  ‘But we can all see that Rhyne could have let Kellway out, if he had a key,’ Bradbury protested – tacitly accepting, I noticed, that he had indeed been absent from the room for a time. ‘It’s what came after that’s the mystery.’

  ‘The mystery,’ Holmes promised, ‘will be clear very soon.’

  He stepped into Experiment Room A. By now the sky outside was dark, and the lighting was very similar to that which Holmes and I had observed with Skinner present, on the night of the dinner. Room B was lit up as before, and the tabl
e with its box still stood in its place – the billiard ball that was the nominal focus of the experiment still, I assumed, lying undisturbed within. ‘Anderton,’ he said, ‘for form’s sake, please lock the door.’

  Anderton swung the door to and locked it, then stepped back to stand beside the table. We all peered in turn through the glass panel. Though the room was murky as before, we could all see Holmes sitting in the lotus position, just as he had been two nights previously – and just as I had seen him, albeit in better light, in our rooms that afternoon. This time, however, he was facing me. He looked up at me and winked.

  When we had all had a chance to observe the subject, Anderton said, ‘If you wouldn’t mind stepping outside, miss and sirs?’

  We did so, and kicked our heels impatiently in Sir Newnham’s chemical laboratory. I peered at the flasks and bottles on their racks, and tried to remember the labels I had seen on the collection Holmes had been keeping in our bathtub.

  ‘I don’t know who he thinks he is,’ Gideon Beech snapped after a few moments. ‘Showing off like this. Such a sense of self-importance the man has.’

  ‘It’s justified, I think,’ said Constantine Skinner, rather surprisingly. ‘I think he may be a genius.’ Miss Casimir made a dismissive sound.

  ‘I just wonder what it is he plans to do,’ Sir Newnham said gloomily. ‘I almost feel as if I’ll be paying out that reward after all.’

  After the stipulated two minutes we trooped back into the antechamber. Anderton gestured in the direction of Room A, where we once again took turns to look through the glass panel at Holmes, still sitting in his meditative pose.

  This time he had no wink for me. I thought there was something different about his position, too – were his legs the other way round from how they had been before? If I had had his powers of observation I would never have needed to ask the question – I would have noted and memorised his previous posture automatically – but having just my own, I struggled to remember.

  We all finished our inspection. ‘Well?’ Beech demanded. ‘What in the name of perdition is this supposed to prove? The man hasn’t moved an inch, whereas from what he insists on having the gall to tell us, Kellway—’

  ‘Kellway had left the room in the interim, and was already in the process of changing to become Garforth,’ Holmes’s voice confirmed.

  It had not come from Room A.

  We turned to gape as one, as Holmes opened the door of Room B and walked out of it, tossing the billiard ball idly in one hand.

  Dumbfounded, I turned to look back at the glass panel. Holmes sat, his meditations serenely undisturbed, on the floor of Room A. I saw, in a sudden jolt of confusion, that that Holmes was wearing his own jacket and shoes.

  ‘Does this feat of bilocation match the one you saw in Sind, Major?’ the Holmes in the antechamber asked idly. He was still wearing Kellway’s shoes and jacket, and the cane was tucked under his arm. ‘Is it sufficient revelation for you to marvel at, Mr Floke? And Sir Newnham – does it qualify for your ten-thousand-pound reward?’

  Excerpt from The Inter-Planetary Columbus: A Novel (1896), by Graeme M. Harcourt

  At the moment that Professor Weltraum’s machine rendered me incorporeal, I felt myself seized as if by a giant hand and taken up bodily into the sky. I saw the laboratory recede beneath me, and the wing of the house, and then the whole of Asphodel Manor, laid out like a living plan upon a table. In the space of a few breaths – though I had no need for breath in my insubstantial state – I beheld the whole of England’s coastline as I had seen it in maps, obscured here and there by cloud but quite distinct, as the sun came into view beyond a horizon that I now saw quite clearly was curved, like the edge of a marble.

  A moment later, the whole globe was a diminishing sphere, from which I was plummeting at immense speed. It became a disc, and then a mere point in the sky, distinguished from the stars by the bluish tinge of its oceans.

  Though lacking eyes or head I found that I was able to direct my attention at will, and so I turned my gaze ahead to see where I was being taken. Ahead of me, a white star was expanding just as our Earth had contracted, growing from a point to a circle and then filling out to become a sphere, a pale globe such as might be held by the marble statue of some eminent explorer, swathed in pearly stuff that I soon understood to be cloud. With a shock I recognised the planet Venus.

  Still at the same reckless speed, I found myself plunged into that cloud and towards the ground beneath. I thought I would be dashed to pieces upon the alien earth, forgetting for the moment my bodiless state, but instead I was set down as gently as a kitten in its mother’s jaws, and finally the invisible grip on me relaxed.

  I resumed my accustomed physical frame, not through any act of volition, but as an object no longer held aloft will tumble to the ground. I discovered myself to be in a landscape shrouded with mist, yet not shadowed by it, for the mist itself glowed with a warm yellow light, illuminating all around me, although further away objects became hazy as they faded into the light.

  I stood on a grassy plain next to a grove of trees of an unknown kind, each bearing golden fruit that glowed with its own internal light. In the tree sat a bird, of about the size of a dove, and it too gleamed with a luminescence of its own that was wonderful to see.

  I found that I was terribly hungry and thirsty after my earlier labours and the rigours of my interplanetary journey, and so faint I was like to fall down dead. Yet I was cautious to pluck the fruit, strange as it was to me. I hesitated, fearing for my life if I ate yet also if I did not, and then I heard a voice say to me, ‘Eat of the fruit and be easy, for there is nothing in this world that can do harm to you.’ And I realised that it was the bird that had spoken.

  Encouraged by the bird I therefore plucked the fruit and ate it, and found it wonderfully satisfying, like eating the rays of the sun itself. And as I finished I looked up and saw, standing beside me, three beings of light, each shaped like a man yet shining so intently within that I could scarcely bear to look at them.

  I would later learn that such self-illumination is the natural state of most of that world’s organisms, bathed as they are in the mist that forms the greater part of the planet’s atmosphere. Unlike our earthly mist it is a conducting and permeating medium, collecting the light of the sun that falls on the surface and distributing it around that globe so that there is no part of its surface that is not suffused by its luminous nimbus. Thus is the life-giving power of the sun diffused across the whole of that world, until it becomes incorporated into its food, its water and thus its very flora and fauna.

  Under its influence the life of that planet has evolved far beyond the sophistication of our own world’s life forms, and many of the animals and indeed the plants have reached a level of sapience not unlike some of our less developed human races. The intelligence of the Venusians themselves is far beyond anything one could encounter, except in the most exceptionally evolved specimens of our race.

  Transcribed from a copy of the novel held by Camden public library, acquired by them in May 1896. – S.H.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  ‘Holmes,’ I said, looking from the figure in Room A to the man who stood before me, ‘If ever I have said before that your powers were miraculous, I take it back. All those occasions were, as you assured me at the time, mere trifles. This is a miracle.’

  He gave an amused smile, acknowledging the double-edged compliment. ‘And yet, I fear, once the trick of it is clear you will find it quite as mundane as my other feats.’

  He said, ‘As every one of you has now, I think, pointed out, it would have done no good for Rhyne to obtain a duplicate key and release Greendale during Major Bradbury’s absence, unless there was some further scheme to make it appear that the room was still occupied. The Major, at least, would have realised at once what had happened, and regardless of his own embarrassment could never have been expected to go along with the deception. Had he done so, the suspicion that would have fallen upon him and Rhyne wo
uld then have been insupportable. No, the apparent moment of Kellway’s dissolution had to happen in the presence of a witness whose testimony Sir Newnham, at least, would find utterly unimpeachable. Hence, as well as ensuring that his own shift was shared with the Major, Rhyne ensured that Garforth’s shift – that is to say Theodore Greendale’s, now attired and guised as his other personality – was paired with that of William Anderton.

  ‘Fortunately, they had a trick in mind – and it is so singular that I believe it must have been the kernel of the entire plan, around which all the rest of the conspiracy was built.’

  Holmes crossed now to Room A, where his counterpart still sat meditating, and bent towards the floor. ‘Observe,’ he said, indicating a near-invisible strand of twine that emerged from beneath the door. ‘And perhaps one or two of you might observe the room? Major Bradbury, Miss Casimir, if you would be so kind—?’

  The Major and the young woman leaned together to stare through the panel as Holmes gave the twine a sharp tug.

  ‘Good God!’ the Major declared, and Miss Casimir cried out too.

  ‘He just crumpled and disappeared!’ she said, and I noticed that her German accent suddenly sounded distinctly more Londonish. ‘I say, though,’ she added, looking more closely. ‘There is something down at the bottom there. You can hardly see it with the way this glass squashes everything.’

  ‘The trick relies on you, or rather on Anderton, failing to notice that fact in your general astonishment,’ Holmes confirmed. ‘What I have just done is, of course, what Greendale did a little after five a.m. on Tuesday, while you yourself, Major, were in conversation with Anderton.

  ‘Had Greendale and Anderton been alone, Anderton’s love of reading would have sufficed to take his attention away for long enough. Greendale must have been quite alarmed when you turned up, Major, the first of those unexpected arrivals that would in the end so thoroughly derail his plans. If there was no opportunity to execute this final stage of the trick, it would be easily discovered and could never have been repeated.