by Marvin Kaye
“Really, Holmes?” Watson asked somewhat dubiously.
“Absolutely, my good man. It is all there plainly written in black and white.”
“That it is, Mr. Holmes,” Challenger allowed, now in far better humour that his work was being accepted and even praised. “I am gratified to find you appreciating my discovery.”
“I am enjoying it immensely,” Holmes stated in all seriousness as he turned the page and began reading anew. Watson noted his friend was already a few pages ahead of him into his tome, while he was still struggling through page one of his own mammoth volume.
Challenger sat facing the two men in his chair like a statue, unmoving, his eyes firmly fixed upon the two men before him.
Every once in a while Holmes would look up, look over at the Professor, then look around the house and yard as if digesting the data. Watson merely rubbed his eyes and yearned for the straight-ahead simplicity of the articles in the Lancet.
“It does bring thoughtfulness to the mind, does it not, Mr. Holmes?” Challenger asked with obvious delight.
“Indeed it does, Professor. Like all great writing it must be taken in small doses, and digested properly, so its full impact can be properly appreciated.”
Challenger beamed, someone actually understood his work! The Professor sat back in his chair with a broad smile breaking through the darkness of his great black beard.
Of course Holmes had noticed the man lurking in the bushes. He had been watching him, and the knife he held intently, for the last few minutes—but he waited. Suddenly the intruder sprang from the bushes and ran towards the Professor. The man—certainly the assassin—held a knife, but Sherlock Holmes had his own weapon. The Great Detective allowed one immeasurable second to pass as the assassin drew closer to his target—then he acted. It all happened so fast Watson barely noticed a thing, and Challenger—whose back was towards the assassin—had absolutely no warning at all.
Once the intruder was within range and behind the Professor, ready to plunge his knife into the great man’s back, Holmes immediately flung the heavy book he had been reading in a mighty upward arc which came down precisely upon the assassin’s head with a resounding blow. It was like being hit with a cinder block, and the assassin went down to the ground unconscious and bloody.
“Holmes!” Watson shouted in shock.
“My God! What has happened?” Challenger growled. “Not another annoying newshound?”
“Not a newshound, Professor, but your assassin,” Holmes stated as he went over to examine the unconscious man. The weighty book had hit the intruder squarely in the head; he would be out for some time. “Watson, please be so kind as to ask the Professor’s wife to phone the police.”
“Of course, Holmes.” Watson set off on his errand.
“Holmes?” Challenger asked, noticing the knife on the ground near the man’s hand, which the Great Detective now picked up and examined. “I admit, I did not believe you. Now I must. How did you spot him?”
“This lovely patio garden makes a perfect location for a murder. All these bushes that surround the house offer any attacker plenty of camouflage. Of course I noticed the fellow lurking there immediately we came out here, but I knew you would require proof that there was serious danger. That is why I was so agreeable on Watson and I reading your books. That gave me time to keep track of the man and for him to launch his attack. In the end, if nothing else, your book made a most effective weapon.”
“Aye, it just proves all that research does have its uses, eh, Mr. Holmes?” Challenger’s voice enthused with joy rather than insult at the remark. “But who is he and why the attack upon my person?”
“If I am not very much mistaken he is a Serbian national, but we may find there are German masters behind him. You are working on some problems for the Admiralty on a new underwater vessel—a submersible, are you not?”
“Why yes, but that is secret. Top secret,” Challenger stated guardedly.
“My brother informed me about it. The German navy is likewise working upon such a vessel, what they call a U-boat.”
“Ah, yes, the unterseeboot. So they seek to put a stop to my work?”
“Precisely,” Holmes stated as he bound the still unconscious assassin so that he presented a neat package ready for the police. “Now perhaps you will allow the police protection that Malone and my brother have insisted upon?”
“Aye, Mr. Holmes, G.E.C. will most certainly allow it now.”
Watson and Jessie Challenger ran out of the house, Jessie to embrace her husband in tears of joy and relief, the doctor to Holmes. “I called Lestrade, and he will be here soon to take the assassin away. I am sure the man will have much explaining to do.”
The Professor’s Finding:
It was now late afternoon and all the excitement of the morning was over. The assassin had been taken away by Scotland Yard and the Challenger home at Enmore Park was once again back to normal.
“You still have not finished reading my findings, Mr. Holmes, Doctor Watson,” Challenger asked in a most insistent tone. “Before you leave for London you should experience all that my research has established.”
Watson gave an audible moan and looked pleadingly at his friend, whispering, “Please, Holmes, don’t let him make me read that entire thing.”
Sherlock Holmes smiled at the doctor and looked meaningfully at Professor Challenger, “I suggest a synopsis of your findings might be best, straight from your own lips. That would be far more effective and put this entire matter into perspective far better than any mere text ever could.”
“You do not want to read the entire book?” Challenger asked, somewhat chastened.
“Well, actually no, Professor. In any event, poor Watson here would not understand it, and speaking for myself, my own abilities in astronomy and among the higher mathematics is severely limited. I am, after all, no Professor Moriarty.”
“Hah! That fraud!” Challenger boomed in anger.
“Nevertheless, a brilliant man, and his treatise upon the binomial theorem …”
“Which he stole from me!” Challenger barked, now flaring rage. “Just as he stole my notes for his much vaunted book, The Dynamics of an Asteroid!”
“Most interesting, I had no idea. Well, in any event he is long gone now,” Holmes added soothingly.
“And good riddance!”
“So what shall it be, Professor? A brief explanation? Watson and I would be most grateful to hear it.”
Challenger nodded, “So be it. Well, where to begin? The Titanic tragedy, the sinking of that magnificent ship after hitting an iceberg, the tremendous loss of life…Underlying reasons, sir, that is what I was seeking to discover since first I heard news of the great disaster. The more I thought about the tragedy, the more I could not believe such a thing possible. I tell you it galled me massively. Surely nothing so devastating had ever happened before in maritime history? So then, there had to be some reason behind it, and that reason must be exceptional. Then I came upon something extraordinary.”
Challenger stopped his narration, looking off into the sky as if he could see and hear the disaster taking place before him.
“Please continue, Professor,” Holmes prompted.
“What I found,” Challenger stated, as if giving a lecture to two of his students, “was that climatic conditions were overall responsible for what had occurred. Specifically, exceptionally strong tides allowed the iceberg field to form, and which struck the Titanic. Now icebergs have been known to be a menace in those North Atlantic waters for decades by seamen. The captain of the ship even set his course in a more southerly direction to avoid them. However, my research shows a convergence of three astronomical events which exaggerated the effects of tidal forces upon the Atlantic Ocean.” Challenger took a deep breath, then continued. “It was a unique combination of these
three astronomical events. The Moon was full on January 4, which created what we call a spring tide. That means the tide-raising forces combine to greater net effect. At the same time the Moon was at perigee—at its closest point to the Earth. This caused an eccentric orbit that enhanced the gravitational pull on our planet. The Earth was also at perihelion—its closest point to the Sun. This boosts the Sun’s gravitational influence.”
“I fail to see…” Watson blurted impatiently.
“Bear with me, doctor,” Challenger demanded in a surprisingly patient tone. “It was all due to the increased tidal force created on January 4 and the perigees of December 6 and February 2—these effects raised the sea level and that refloated hundreds of icebergs that had been held fast in the low waters off the Greenland coast. Some of them held for many years, in fact. Because of these events and the higher than normal tides, these icebergs broke free to float south, eventually to doom the unlucky ship. The Titanic blindly cruised under the pitch blackness of a dark moon that fateful night straight into a field of hundreds, if not thousands, of deadly iceberg traps. I am afraid there could have been no other result.”
“Amazing, Professor!” Watson cried, then he added sadly, “So the poor ship had no chance?”
Sherlock Holmes nodded gravely. “No chance at all. It is a powerful theory, Professor.”
“Aye, powerful, Mr. Holmes, but no one will believe it, I am afraid. Leastways not today, nor tomorrow, but perhaps some day they will.”
“Some day,” Holmes stated, “we will possess the science to prove your calculations, then history shall record that it was the power of the Moon and tides that set into motion events that sank the ship that was called unsinkable—R.M.S. Titanic. You have done exceptional work, sir.”
Challenger beamed, “As have you and Doctor Watson. I thank you both most gratefully. You stopped an assassination attempt that surely, if successful, would have severely interfered with my work—and no doubt caused my dearest Jessie undue distress.”
“I am sure such an event would upset her most severely,” Holmes added with a slim smile, then added, “Professor, it has been a pleasure to make your acquaintance and to learn the truth behind the Titanic tragedy.”
“Not bad for an honest days work, eh, Mr. Holmes? Just wait until Malone hears of this!”
Historical Note:
Much research has been done into the sinking of R.M.S. Titanic. Books abound and theories do as well. Many are interesting but inconclusive. Challenger’s findings presented by him in this story set in 1913 had to wait almost a hundred years before being verified by science. In 1995, Fergus Wood suggested the Moon’s perigee of January 4, 1912, may have had a role in the sinking of the great ship by freeing up the icebergs from the Jakobshaun Glacier in Greenland. Further research was more recently done by Don Olson, Russell Doescher and Roger Sinnott for their article in Sky & Telescope magazine’s April 2012 issue entitled, “Did The Moon Sink The Titanic?” It offers a fascinating and very plausible theory on just what might have happened to allow the deadly iceberg to meet the ill-fated luxury liner. The rest, as they say, is history.
WE HATE THE TASTE OF JELLYFISH, by Jay Carey
The sea was white with jellyballs, and the tide was leaving them by the thousands on Sarasota’s submerged Bayfront Drive, where it was easy to pick them up. Everyone was carrying buckets or cooking pots to carry them in. It was 2048, and sometimes it seemed that the rapidly acidifying ocean was turning into a soup of jellyfish.
A mother and daughter, Silvia and Pilar Nunez, were working not far from an abandoned bus shelter, where they had already placed a couple of full pails on a bench. Both women were ankle-deep in water, scooping up the white, mushroom-shaped creatures with nets. They had to make sure there was enough water in the containers to keep the jellyfish alive until they could be dried properly. At the same time, Silvia was fretting because she thought a wave might swamp her bucket and carry the jellyfish away. Both women were wearing awkward-looking rubber boots. Jellyballs were not particularly poisonous, as jellyfish went, but no sane person liked to be stung.
The women were discussing Pilar’s romantic prospects. Or rather, Silvia was fretting about those, too, and Pilar was fending her off as best she could. She was embarrassed that her mother was speaking so freely in public. Silvia indiscreetly described one of the suitors as a loser and the other, who owned the restaurant where Pilar worked, as well-fixed and maybe not as dull as he appeared.
There were a dozen people catching jellyfish on this stretch of highway at the time, and any one of them could have known the two men personally. In fact, an old woman in a long purple-flowered skirt straightened up and said to Pilar, “You won’t have the choice for long.”
As Silvia said later to Detective Eureka Kilburn, the woman was holding her skirt up out of the water higher than she needed to, considering her age. Her lips were bright red, and her eyelids were violet. What footwear she had on you couldn’t tell, but it certainly wasn’t anything like boots. She was holding only one container, a large black pot.
Mother and daughter simply stared, not wishing to encourage her.
“Prosper Jean will be dead by Saturday,” the old woman elaborated.
The restaurant owner courting Pilar was indeed named Prosper Jean. His establishment, the Fire Pit, was the most popular in town. He’d started out delivering wild hog he’d hunted, butchered, and grilled himself. Then, as eating places all over Florida were shutting down, he took one over, adding to its menu a stew of potatoes, tomatoes, and spiced nutria that Eureka still marveled at. It was so tasty no one minded on the days there wasn’t any boar, which was just as well, as those days were becoming increasingly frequent.
Lots of people knew that Prosper Jean had been courting his waitress, Pilar Nunez. More surprising was that he did die by Saturday—on Saturday, in fact.
* * * *
“It was amazing,” said Silvia down at the police station on the day of the funeral. She didn’t sound amazed, though. She sounded angry. Prosper was only thirty years old, she said, vigorous and healthy. It was true that he was on the heavy side, but he was bulky rather than fat. There was no reason he should have died.
Silvia Nunez had aged a lot in the past decade. Detective Eureka Kilburn remembered her younger face so clearly that the odd triangular lines above her eyebrows and the deep wrinkles at the corners of her mouth looked as if they’d been drawn on by an inexpert make-up artist. Eureka wondered what exactly had brought her down to the station. “What bothers you?” she asked. “The death? Or the prediction?”
“The doctor put heart failure as the cause of death.”
Det. Kilburn nodded. Dr. Fogarty had told her that the heart had stopped beating for no discernible reason. It couldn’t have been a heart attack of any type. Kidneys, lungs, liver were all fine. The tox screen showed nothing. Up north that might have been a red flag. Down here, it was assumed that living in Florida had killed him. Prosper Jean’s restaurant was a success, and his situation seemed to be a salutary one, considering—but the stuff you had to consider these days was pretty bad: hotter and hotter days, constant flooding, swarms of jellyfish, etc., etc.
“Do you think anyone can really foretell the future?” said Silvia.
“Offhand I would say it was a lucky guess. Of course she may have been a health professional.” Although Eureka had an idea of who the old woman might have been, and she did not qualify.
“You think so?”
“Well, no.” The detective frowned. Coincidences happened all the time—crazier coincidences than that. But still…. “It’s hard even for professionals to guess the exact day someone is going to die.”
“It’s spooky.”
These words were so perfunctory Det. Kilburn knew that the reason for the visit was not skittishness over a possible occult event. “I can’t do anything about that,”
she said with a smile.
“There was a fierce rivalry for my daughter between Prosper Jean and another man,” said Silvia, finally getting to the point. “And I have heard of untraceable poisons…”
“It’s not they are really untraceable. It’s that the traces disappear by the time anyone looks for them. Or maybe we can’t afford the test.”
Silvia ignored her. “My daughter may be worried that her surviving admirer was involved in the other’s death. Prosper fired him just a few days before he died, and he was really angry.”
She looked at Det. Kilburn significantly.
“I see,” said Eureka. “And who is the young man causing all this worry?” She did not point out that it seemed to be the mother who was doing the worrying.
His name was Sami Roy, and Silvia was not a fan. He was in his mid-twenties. He used to do odd jobs at the restaurant, and even after he was fired he hung around trying to talk to Pilar. He had soulful black eyes and a full sensuous mouth that young girls were taken in by. Some people said the longish black hair that waved away from his face was like a picture of Jesus. Silvia considered this blasphemy. Sami’s character was an example to no one. He spent most of his time daydreaming and the rest of it drinking. He was not a serious person.
“And now it turns out he might be capable of violence,” she added. “My daughter is my life. I’m afraid the shock of Prosper’s death will drive her into his arms. Maybe you could stop by the funeral and check things out?”
Det. Kilburn asked Silvia to look at some pictures first. It took her only a few minutes to create a photo line-up around a woman named Mizwillah, who’d recently opened a shop called The Third Eye. Eureka marveled at the images in the line-up as she turned the screen toward Silvia. How wonderful it would be if the electricity were always up and running like this.
Silvia immediately identified Mizwillah as the old woman in the purple-flowered skirt, then said nervously, “I’ll go on ahead. I have to meet my daughter before the funeral. There’s no reason to tell her I’ve stopped by, is there?”