This Is How You Die: Stories of the Inscrutable, Infallible, Inescapable Machine of Death

by Неизвестный

  “ ‘Gentlemen,’ he began, ‘I am Silas Gould, and I am the inventor of the extraordinary device that you shall witness in operation today. On your invitations, it was referred to simply as a ‘Prognostication Device.’ In truth, the machine makes only one type of prediction. And yet, that prediction is infallibly accurate. Please allow me to demonstrate.’

  “With a sweep of his arm, he removed the cloth and revealed his machine. It was a fabulous thing, Mr. Holmes… I don’t know quite how to describe it. There were rods and tubes and gears, all in gleaming brass, which seemed to melt together at impossible angles. It was encased within an elegant frame, bolted to a wooden base. It had a front like a clock face, only instead of hands there were two openings… one round, with a needle-thin hole, and the other a horizontal slit. There was some sort of key in the back of the machine, which Gould immediately wound. This activated some mechanism, for the device began to whir and hum softly, and I could see smooth surfaces turning within it.

  “Next, Gould removed an ornately carved wooden box from the underside of the cart. Inside was a tiny cage containing a solitary white mouse. ‘Please observe carefully,’ he said, and held up his right hand. He wore a ring on his middle finger, and on the outer band there was a sharpened needle. This was used to jab the mouse on the haunch, causing the creature to squeal horribly. Gould then handed the box over to my friend Merton and returned to the machine. We soon realised the function of the circular hole, for Gould pressed his ring against it so that the blood-tinged needle entered the device.

  “The whirring sound intensified, accompanied by sudden clacking, and in a moment a slip of paper was protruding from the horizontal slit. Gould instantly snatched it up and placed it inside an envelope. To my great surprise, he came to me and pressed this into my hand. ‘Guard it carefully,’ he said. ‘Do not pass it to any of your friends, and do not let it out of your sight.’

  “Gould then addressed the room. ‘Now, gentlemen, please decide among yourselves how the mouse will be killed. Once you have made your choice, you must act upon it immediately.’

  “Our first reaction to this strange request was to laugh. But it quickly became apparent that Gould was in complete earnest. Soon my fellows were venturing suggestions as to how the deed might be done. One recommended that the maid be summoned with a bucket of water, so that the creature might be drowned. Another suggested that so long as we were involving the help, we might ask the cook for a butcher’s knife and decapitate the beast. A third was in favour of stamping the thing to death. It was a horrible thing to hear cultured men speak so freely of such matters, Mr. Holmes! All the while, Gould stood hunched like a vulture in the corner.

  “It was finally decided that it would be best not to involve any servants, so as to prevent gossip, and Merton was elected to crush the mouse’s skull with his walking stick. The cage was placed on a small table, and the deed was done with one decisive stroke.

  “When all were satisfied that the animal was quite dead, Gould turned his attention back to me. As he asked, I had kept the envelope safe and secure. ‘Open it now, Mr. Noakes. Read what is written on the paper.’ My hands were admittedly shaky—such was the strangeness of the moment and the intensity of his gaze—but I managed to insert my finger and withdraw the slip. Printed there, in black type, were the words ‘WALKING STICK.’

  “No sooner had I read these words aloud than the room erupted with intense shouts and conversation. Every man insisted on seeing the paper for himself, and many pressed Gould on how the trick was done. He insisted that there was no trick. ‘As to how it is done, I say in humility that the scientific principles are beyond you. The machine’s secret knowledge, however, is not beyond your reach! For a sum, you may all learn the manner of your own demise.’ At this, the room grew suddenly silent. Gould continued: ‘You have only to accept a small prick of the finger. A warning, however… the machine is always correct and never alters its judgments. If you do not earnestly desire to see into the future, I urge you to refrain from participating. The results are not guaranteed to be pleasant.’ ”

  “Your story is most interesting,” said Holmes. “And so far quite novel. Tell me, did any of your friends accept Gould’s offer and his price?”

  “Quite a few.”

  “And were you among them?”

  “I should say not!”

  “Did you believe the machine to be a fraud?” I asked.

  “At the time, I did not know what to believe. Possibly it was mere coincidence. Or I had been deceived somehow, through sleight of hand. I am a natural sceptic, Mr. Holmes. Others declined to participate because they believed I was in on the trick from the beginning… that I had planned it out with Gould and Merton. But several of them did take Gould’s offer. Large sums of money changed hands. Certainly, Gould himself was very serious. He cleaned the ring fastidiously with iodine between each use.”

  “And were the results made public?”

  “A few. One fellow passed around a slip reading ‘HEART FAILURE,’ while another brandished ‘TRAMPLED BY A MULE.’ That got the others laughing—as if it were some sort of morbid party game! But Gould never laughed, and neither did I. For I saw the look on Merton’s face when he read his own slip and knew him well enough to understand that it was neither an act nor a joke. I still do not know what was written on his slip. I am not sure that I want to know.”

  Holmes had by this time lit his favourite briar pipe and begun puffing at it with characteristic intensity. His posture had changed noticeably on Noakes’s description of the slips of paper, although our guest remained oblivious. “It is a fine yarn,” Holmes said. “But there must be more to the tale, or else you would not be here today.”

  Noakes fidgeted with the box in his lap. “As I have said, I declined to use the machine myself. In addition to my private wariness, I am rather close with my purse. Nevertheless, Gould insisted on shaking my hand before he left. As he did so, I felt a sharp pain. Somehow, the ring had become turned around on his finger so that it faced inward, causing the needle to scratch my palm! Gould immediately apologised before removing the ring and slipping it into his pocket.

  “I was unsettled, of course, but I kept my feelings to myself. The party did not last long after that. The atmosphere was markedly queer, and Merton himself was quiet and his face had become very pale. I returned to my home, and by supper I had resolved to put the entire affair out of my mind. Alas, it was not to be. As I dined with my wife, we were interrupted by a knock at the door. To my great and unpleasant surprise, it was Gould. He wore a long woollen coat and carried with him a medium-sized briefcase. My instinct was to turn him away at once, but he insisted on speaking with me privately.

  “We withdrew to my study, and he began to speak in an ingratiating tone. ‘As an apology for my thoughtlessness with the ring,’ he said, ‘I took the liberty of giving your blood to the machine.’ Those were his precise words, Mr. Holmes! ‘I had intended to offer you the results of your test gratis… and so I shall. But I suggest, in the strongest terms, that you read the paper right away.’

  “I had half a mind to refuse… to eject him from my home and threaten to summon the police if he should return. But I found that once the slip of paper was in my hand, I could not stop myself from reading it. Some fatalistic power compelled me. And there, printed in the same capital letters as I had seen previously, were the words ‘GARROTED THURSDAY NEXT.’

  “You can imagine my dismayed reaction, gentlemen. But Gould did not wait for me to make any response. ‘Do not despair, Mr. Noakes!’ he cried. ‘It is true that the machine is infallible if it is left to its own devices… but I am its master! I can avert this fate on your behalf.’ ”

  “I presume,” interrupted Holmes, “that this benevolence came with a price.”

  Noakes nodded. “A sum greater by far than any he had exacted from my friends. I accused him of blackmail, of course. I threatened to call the police.

  “ ‘You may call the police,’ said he. ‘B
ut it will not help your situation. Right now, I am a mere messenger. Should I be officially detained, you shall still die and I will be clearly acquitted. You must ask yourself what is more worth having, Mr. Noakes… the treasure in your vault or the air in your lungs.’

  “ ‘It is all a trick, or else a coincidence,’ I said, although I did not believe it. ‘You cannot expect me to stake my fortune on a party entertainment!’

  “ ‘I do not expect it,’ he said. ‘That is why I have brought you a small gift, so that you may have complete confidence that my words are true.’

  “He opened his case then, and produced two items. The first was a sealed envelope of the type he had handed me at the party. The second was a small cage containing another little white mouse. ‘The blood of this animal has been fed into the machine, and the result is printed on the slip of paper contained within that envelope. I will leave you now. Once I am gone, you can decide for yourself how the vermin will be killed. Be as ingenious and unpredictable as you like. Once the creature is dead, open the envelope. If the words printed inside do not match the death, then I am a fraud and you need have no fear. If, however, the words and the death match, then I am telling the truth, and you have no choice but to rely on my assistance.

  “ ‘Please recall that you have only two days to consider my offer, Mr. Noakes. I will return on Wednesday night, and if I am not received with my payment in full, you will not see me again. By the following day, it will be too late for me to intervene.’ Then he left without saying another word.

  “That was yesterday evening, Mr. Holmes, and I have not eaten nor slept since. I have spoken of the matter to no one but yourself—not even my own wife, whom I sent to stay with her sister for the remainder of the week.”

  Holmes now rose and considered the man on the settee with keen intensity. “May I presume,” he said, “that you have brought Gould’s mouse to me alive, and the envelope undisturbed?” he asked.

  “You presume correctly.” Noakes removed the white cloth from his parcel, revealing it to be a simple brown paper box with a hole-studded lid. From his waistcoat pocket, he withdrew a small white envelope sealed with crimson wax. “I cannot trust myself in this affair,” he said. “There is too much at stake! I dare not chance that I have been tricked in some unfathomable way. Nor can I swear, with unshakable confidence, that my mind is not an open book to a clever person such as yourself—so that my future acts can be anticipated, no matter how ingenious I believe myself to be. I have read of your exploits, Mr. Holmes. You are not so easily duped. I hand over these ‘gifts’ to you, in the hope that you will be able to settle the truth of the matter.”

  Holmes puffed at his briar and regarded the proffered items. At last he took the envelope and carried it to his desk, where he examined it carefully with his glass. Satisfied, he handed it over to me. “Guard this carefully, Watson.” He then proceeded to take the parcel from Noakes’s trembling hand and removed the small cage containing the mouse. “This is a distasteful business,” he said, regarding the tiny creature, “but it must be done.” Setting the cage down next to my half-finished breakfast, Holmes retrieved a small chalkboard from behind a pile of rolled maps and assorted papers. This he placed atop the mantel, using chalk to number the board one through six.

  “We shall use the suggestions of your friends to begin,” he said, continuing to write as he spoke. “Drowning, decapitation, and crushing with a stick. That makes three. Number four shall be suffocation by vacuum… number five, exposure to a poison of my own devising… and I think Mrs. Hudson’s cat will do for number six. She is continually boasting that it is a prize mouser.” Once he had finished writing out each method next to a corresponding number, he went back to his desk drawer and fetched out a single six-sided die. Without preamble, he cast it upon the floor, and we all leaned down to see what had come up.

  “Watson,” Holmes said flatly. “In my room, in the bottom drawer of my large dresser, you will find a bell jar with an attached pump. Kindly fetch it here.”

  It did not take the mouse long to perish in Holmes’s experimental vacuum chamber. The creature’s pink paws scrabbled at the glass for a short time, and then it began to urgently prod at the connecting tube with its muzzle. After a while, it began to twist and writhe, limbs and tail twitching in the most horrific fashion. When it finally grew still, Holmes insisted on waiting for an additional five minutes before restoring air to the jar and lifting the glass from its base. He pressed a narrow finger against the creature’s tiny side. “Watson,” he said softly, “will you please open the envelope and tell us what is written there.”

  With trembling fingers, I broke the seal and extricated the little slip of paper. Seeing the solitary word printed there, I felt my chest violently constrict and the blood drain from my face. “ASPHYXIATION,” I read in a hoarse monotone.

  Noakes’s knees abruptly gave way and he fell heavily back onto the settee. Slumped over, he clutched his handkerchief and mopped at his sweaty brow. “Then all is lost,” he whispered. “I have no choice but to yield to Gould’s demands.”

  Holmes gave him a sharp look, his brow beetling in annoyance. “I have not yet rendered my opinion on this case, Mr. Noakes. Tell me, do you have the other slip of paper from Mr. Gould—the one detailing your supposed demise?” Noakes fumbled once more in his waistcoat pocket and produced a crumpled slip of paper. Holmes took it and went over it thoroughly with his glass. He then took the second slip from my hands and examined it likewise.

  After a minute of this, Holmes went to his overstuffed bookshelf and pried out a folio containing dozens of photographs. He riffled through these until, with a small “Aha!” of triumph, he located the image he was seeking and handed it to Noakes. “Is this the man you know as Silas Gould?”

  Noakes looked blankly at the image. “But this man is clean shaven.”

  Holmes used his hand to cover the portrait’s nose and lower face. “Look carefully, now… focus on the eyes.”

  Noakes squinted. “It could be the same man. But only the eyes. The nose and face are entirely different.”

  “That is easily accomplished through the use of prosthetics and a false beard,” said Holmes. “I have employed many such disguises myself.”

  “If it is the same man, what then? Is he known to you? Am I safe?”

  “Perhaps,” said Holmes. “Perhaps not.” Moving quickly to his writing desk, he took a pencil and began to scribble on a loose piece of paper.

  “For the time being, let us assume that your life is in danger. When you leave here, take the third cab that answers your hail and go directly to Scotland Yard. Ask to see Inspector Lestrade and give him this note from me. Tell him that Sherlock Holmes believes that a credible threat has been made against you and that you require protection until this coming Friday. I will come for you before then if I am not unavoidably detained.”

  “But what of Gould?” protested Noakes, even as Holmes pressed the note into his hand. “He claimed I would not be safe, even with the police!”

  “A fabrication,” said Holmes. “Meant to dissuade you from taking the very course of action that I am now counselling.”

  Noakes sighed heavily. “I will trust in your judgment, Mr. Holmes, and do as you say. But before I leave here, I must put the question to you plainly. Do you believe that there is help for me, or has my fate been written in stone?”

  Holmes waved a dismissive hand. “That is a question for philosophers, which I am patently not. I do not think, however, that your death will come at the hands of a mad strangler, not while you are in Lestrade’s custody, at any rate. He can be counted on to keep you alive for at least the little time that I require. Now, do not delay—there is much work yet to be done.”

  In a matter of moments, Noakes was hurried to his feet and bustled out the door with his hat and coat. Once we were alone, I immediately beset Holmes with questions. But he merely held up his long-fingered hands in deflection. “First and foremost, I think a fresh plug of tobacco
is in order.”

  Soon the smouldering briar was comfortably settled in the cusp of Holmes’s hand, and he began to pace across the room.

  “The first thing to catch my attention was the name Silas Gould,” he said at last. “It put me in mind of Titus Gould, an alias formerly employed by one Dr. Argus Locarde. The name will not be familiar to you, Watson, but he was a minor player in the organisation of the late Professor Moriarty, an extortion artist, and a petty thief to boot. A mere minnow in the grand scheme of things, but canny enough to wriggle through our net. I keep up a file on him, of course, but he’s been quiet till now. He has reestablished himself as a medical practitioner, specialising in muscular disorders for well-to-do gentlemen.”

  “This Locarde sounds a shady enough character,” said I. “And I see the coincidence of the alias. Yet it seems a rather thin thread on which to hang a man, particularly if he’s as slippery as you say.”

  “Granted, which is why we must be certain of his involvement before we take his name to the police. But the thread is perhaps not so tenuous as you might think. Have a look at this, my friend.”

  Holmes went to his private safe now and retrieved two small panes of glass fitted within a custom-tooled frame. Between them was a small slip of paper, the sight of which caused my heart rate to increase. “This,” Holmes pronounced, “was found on the site of my final struggle with Moriarty atop the Reichenbach Falls, alongside his billfold and other objects of small consequence that became dislodged in the intensity of our battle. I thought it unaccountably curious, a piece of the puzzle that did not fit—and so I preserved it. Tell me, what do you observe?”

  I turned the glass over in my hands and read the words printed on the slip: “FALL INTO WATER.” “Why, it’s the same as the others!” I exclaimed.

  “It is, and it is not,” Holmes said with evident savour. “To the prediction for the mouse, it is identical in every way. To the prediction for Mr. Noakes, on the other hand, there are distinct differences. The ink and paper stock are the same, yes. But the letters were not made by the same machine, nor were the slips cut by the same blade. An untrained eye would pass over these variances, but I have made it my business to be aware of such minutiae.”