I spied a small dome-shaped device suspended from the ceiling just past the door, a cage of fine metal mesh. Out of this was the voice emanating. The sound must, I assumed, be conveyed from elsewhere by a system not unlike the speaking tubes used to communicate between decks on a ship.
“Step forward now,” Dr Pentecost said. “Take the lamp to illuminate your way. Prove yourselves worthy of survival. And remember: do not even think of deviating or defaulting. Sergeant-Major Hart has Miss Woolfson firmly in hand, if you get my meaning. For her sake, do exactly as is required of you, no more, no less.”
Holmes plucked the Tilley lamp from the wall, as bidden. He worked the pump with his thumb to pressurise the gas generator, the burner flared, and rapidly the mantle became more incandescent, shedding a corona of illumination several feet in all directions. He padded forward, through the doorway, into the passage.
“Well, Watson? Are you with me?”
“Yes,” I sighed. There seemed no alternative. There was none. As so many times before, I was obliged to follow Holmes into the teeth of danger.
No sooner did I join him in the passage than the door rumbled shut behind us. Holmes proceeded towards a narrow doorway that afforded access to a chamber that was somewhat broader than the passage but still narrow. It was long, too, so long that the far end was lost in darkness, beyond the reach of the lamplight. The moment we entered, a door slid across the opening at our backs, cutting off egress that way, sealing us in.
“The first test,” said Dr Pentecost. His voice now came from within the chamber, via another speaking-tube dome overhead. “A riddle that challenged the wit of Oedipus. Advance!”
The light from the Tilley lamp revealed, directly in front of us, a sheer-sided pit that straddled the width of the chamber. It was a distance of some seven or eight yards across to the patch of floor beyond, and as for the pit’s depth, Holmes determined – by dint of lowering the lamp into it to the full reach of his arm – that it was sunk at least twenty feet into the earth. The bottom was hard-packed soil.
Bridging this obstacle was a set of sturdy-looking oak beams, four in all, several inches thick. Each was embedded into the wall of the pit at both ends, just below floor-level, and the four were evenly spaced apart, the gaps between them no wider than three feet.
“Seems straightforward enough,” I said. “We are to cross the pit by means of the beams. It is merely a question of balance. The only drawback is that, should one topple, and fail to catch oneself, one is liable to break one’s neck.”
“I believe there is more to it, old fellow,” Holmes declared. He held the lamp out over the pit, inclining his whole body forward. Now I could make out a second pit that lay beyond this one, and past that, faintly, a third. Both of these pits looked identical to the first, right down to the number and situation of their beams.
“So we must do it three times in succession,” I said. “Perhaps the further two pits are even deeper, so as to increase the peril to life and limb.”
“Perhaps,” said Holmes. “But you should note, too, Watson, the carvings that adorn the chamber wall to our left.”
He swung the lamp in that direction, and by its light I discerned a design engraved into the stonework immediately adjacent the pit.
“A clue?” I wondered aloud. “Does it mean something?”
“Of course it means something,” Holmes snapped. “The question is what.”
“Could it be suggesting that we leap the pit rather than use the beams to cross? The arc of the semicircle could be said to describe the arc of a jump.”
“Even with the short run-up available to us, I cannot leap such a distance. Neither can you, I daresay. Moreover, your interpretation of the symbol is rendered debatable by the symbol that adorns the wall next to the second pit.”
The lamp’s glow made this second design just visible:
“I would be very surprised,” my companion continued, “were there not a corresponding third symbol beside the third pit, although the gloom prevents us from seeing it at present. I would be very surprised, too, if the second symbol were inviting us to leap, as you surmise about the first. Unless, that is, the use of a full circle implies that one is to perform a somersault while doing so.”
“All right, Holmes. I take the point. I am wrong about the leaping. What do you think the symbols stand for?”
“They provide a hint as to the solution to the test,” said he. “Of that there is no doubt. Dr Pentecost’s remark, as we entered this chamber, is also some sort of hint: ‘A riddle that challenged the wit of Oedipus’. The trouble is, my Classical knowledge is not as extensive as it might be.”
“You sounded authoritative enough when discussing Polyphemus the Cyclops with Buchanan.”
“It is one of the few morsels of Hellenic myth that piqued my interest at school,” Holmes said, “for the reasons I gave Buchanan at the time: it was an instance of unjust deserts. As for the rest of that portion of my education, I have forgotten much, and what I have not forgotten I remember dimly at best. Did I not tell you, in the earliest days of our acquaintance, that the brain is like a little empty attic that a man must stock with such furniture as he chooses? Useless facts must not elbow out the useful ones, and a working knowledge of ancient literature, to someone in my profession, could not be ranked amongst the latter.”
“Until now,” I said, “when it might have been of help.”
Holmes quirked his mouth to show that he appreciated the irony, even if he did not relish it. “Well,” he said, “since I am as yet incapable of fathoming this conundrum through recourse to literary data, there remains the alternative of fathoming it by more practical methods – to wit, deduction. Lying before us are four wooden beams spanning a pit. They are clearly intended to be trodden upon. But observe how their ends are not firmly secured in place with, say, right-angle braces or cement pilings. Rather, they disappear into niches that are much larger than they need to be, with inches of clearance around them in every direction. Hence it is feasible that the beams’ ends are not in fact secured at all. They are at liberty to wobble, or rotate on their axis, or possibly retract. The trick is to establish beyond doubt what form of deceit they practise, without oneself coming to harm.”
Having passed the lamp to me, Holmes went from the leftmost of the four beams to the rightmost, placing one foot tentatively down on each and gradually adding more and more of his weight. In every instance, no sooner was significant pressure put on the beam than it began to display unsteadiness, twisting clockwise or anticlockwise.
“Yes, all are mounted at either end on unseen gimbals,” he concluded. “Each works along a single axis, the roll axis.”
“Then, surely, more than ever a keen sense of balance is called for,” I said.
“I would say that even a tightrope walker would not be able to thread his way across these beams. Their precariousness is too great. A tightrope at least allows for a certain amount of instability. It has elasticity and it can sway, which the acrobat may exploit to his advantage, to compensate for any instability of his own, whereas these beams will pitch over and decant their occupant off them at the least wavering. This entire contraption has one express purpose: to prevent safe passage across.”
“But that is ridiculous. An impossible test.”
“Quite. Nevertheless there must be a solution, for why else would…?”
Holmes’s voice trailed off and a sudden gleam of inspiration entered his eyes.
“Of course!” he ejaculated. “I remember now. The riddle Oedipus was confronted with. The riddle of the Sphinx.”
“The Sphinx? Is that not an Ancient Egyptian beast? As in the giant effigy made of stone next to the Pyramids at Giza? Yet Oedipus is from Hellenic myth: the lame-footed tragic hero who inadvertently killed his father and married his mother. How are the two associated?”
“The Greeks had a Sphinx of their own, Watson. Like the Egyptians’ Sphinx this one was a composite beast, a human head on a lion’s body, bu
t differed in so far as it was female and had the wings of a bird as well. It was in the habit of bearding unwary travellers on the outskirts of the city of Thebes and posing them a riddle. Should they fail to answer correctly, the Sphinx would strangle and devour them. The most famous of its riddles, and the one Oedipus successfully solved, runs as follows: ‘What is the creature that goes on four legs in the morning, two legs in the daytime and three legs in the evening?’”
“The answer being…?”
“Man,” said Holmes. “As infants, in the morning of our lives, we crawl on all fours. Thereafter we walk on two legs, until with old age, in our twilight days, we require the help of a walking stick to get around – a third, artificial leg. When Oedipus unravelled the riddle, the Sphinx, infuriated, hurled itself off a cliff.”
“I see.” Now that he had mentioned it, I did recall the riddle. It surfaced from the dark recesses of memory, where it had been lodged alongside heaps of other childhood trivia. “And you are convinced it applies here?”
“The symbols on the wall at least confirm that I am on the right track. The first can be taken to depict the rising sun showing itself over the horizon in the east. The second, the sun at midday, at its zenith. If I am right, the third symbol will be a reflection of the first, with the semicircle at the opposite end of the line, denoting sunset.”
“But does that tell us how to traverse each set of beams?”
“It must do.”
“Should we crawl across these ones here like babes, then?”
“That cannot be so. Whether we go upright or on all fours, the beams are no less apt to tip over. No, it will be something else. Something more cunning than that.” Holmes ruminated for several moments. “Hum! Yes. Elysians graduate in pairs, is that not the case? Hannah mentioned as much in her last letter. Two of them are singled out each time. And here are you and I, likewise a pair. It cannot be irrelevant. What if, on the contrary, it is crucial?”
After a further moment of contemplation, he turned to me.
“Watson, I believe I have it.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CROSSING THE BEAMS
“It is elegantly simple,” said Holmes. “We cross the beams together, using all four of them, one foot upon each.”
“How will that help? They will still be unsteady.”
“I reckon not. I reckon they are constructed so that pressure on all four will deactivate the gimbals. Here my knowledge of safecracking and lock-picking, which is extensive if not comprehensive, comes into play. I envisage the gimbals as being perched atop notched wheels like the tumblers in a safe. Individually the wheels may move freely, rotating on spindles when weight is placed upon the gimbals above, which are joined to them by drive cams. When all the beams are depressed at once, however, the wheel notches align, allowing a ‘fence’ – a kind of cylindrical bar mounted on springs – to rise up and lock the gimbals in place with pins. In other words, when sufficient downward force is applied to the beams simultaneously, it triggers an immobilising mechanism that prevents them from rolling.”
“That is only your theory.”
“Yet it is a sound theory, I feel, and one worth putting to the assay.”
“And if you are wrong?”
“I am not. Trust me.”
I did trust him. I always had and always would.
That said, it was not without trepidation that I lined myself up before the right-hand two beams while Holmes did likewise before the left-hand two.
“Carefully now,” he said. “The moment of truth. We must each place both of our feet simultaneously on adjacent beams. A small, artfully executed jump. Are you ready?”
I steeled myself. The pit seemed, at that moment, preternaturally deep. It yawned below me like a bottomless crevasse.
“On my cue,” said Holmes. “Three. Two. One. Go.”
We leapt, landing in concert, and all at once there was a set of loud, significant clicks from within the beams’ mountings, at either edge of the pit. Through my boot soles I felt both beams beneath me give a tiny shudder, then become fixed and stable.
“What now?” I said, damping down a sigh of relief.
“We shuffle,” said Holmes. “We may not walk as normal, since any variance in our cumulative weight might release the immobilising mechanism and free up the gimbals once more. Slide your feet forwards. But slowly, slowly… And, it goes without saying, do not lose your footing. Should you do so, we could both be unseated.”
Like a cross-country skier I shunted my feet alternately along the beams, keeping pace with Holmes. After perhaps twenty seconds – although it felt infinitely longer – we arrived at the other end. With my companion verbally choreographing our movements as before, we jumped off the beams in unison.
“Admirably done, Watson,” said he. “Two more crossings remain.”
“I presume the second and third pits are to be traversed in much the same fashion.”
“Much the same, yet different. Remember, man ‘goes on two legs’ at the midday of his life. So logic dictates that for the second pit we may avail ourselves of only two of the beams in total. The system of notched wheels will be rigged so that the gimbals will not lock otherwise.”
“I see. So we are to share two beams at once?”
“Which makes life somewhat harder. I shall go first. You must alight directly behind me. The beams will not achieve stability until the weight of two people is brought to bear on them.”
“Which pair of adjacent beams are we to cross?” I asked.
“I suspect it does not make any difference,” came the reply. “If there were a choice to be made but no clue to indicate as much, that would not be fair, and if nothing else I think Sir Philip likes to play fair with those graduating. Shall we try the central pair?”
Holmes, with the utmost delicacy, positioned himself atop the two centremost beams. He extended both arms sideways, his legs shaking slightly as he strove to counteract the beams’ treacherous tendency to revolve. With brow furrowed in concentration, he inched forwards until there was room for me to accompany him.
“Hurry, old friend,” he said. “Maintaining my balance like this is trickier than it looks.”
No sooner was I aboard the beams too than, as Holmes had forecast, they locked themselves in place under our combined weight. Thereupon, like a couple of dancers in a chorus line, my friend and I moved in procession over the gulf of the pit. All the while I kept the Tilley lamp aloft in one hand, feeling the heat from its burner bathing the side of my face.
At the other end of the beams, Holmes cautioned me to keep still. “Once I dismount, the gimbals will unlock. Simply stand firm. I will help you over the threshold.”
He stepped lightly onto the next patch of floor, and at the selfsame moment the beams suddenly became shivering, unsettled things beneath me, like skittish animals.
“Pass over the lamp.”
I handed it to him, and he set it down and reached for me with both arms.
“Give me your hands.”
The beams’ uncertainty intensified; that or I was losing my poise. Either way, my legs were trembling, and no amount of frantic swaying back and forth or windmilling of the arms was remedying the situation. I knew I was going to fall. I could feel it happening and was helpless to prevent it.
Both beams rolled over at once, in towards each other. My feet slipped off. My legs shot together. I plummeted.
I stopped plummeting. Two exceptionally powerful hands had clamped themselves about my wrists, arresting my descent. For a brief moment Holmes was supporting my entire weight with just the strength of his body alone, a remarkable feat of physicality. His teeth were clenched, his neck a writhe of sinews.
My feet scrabbled for purchase on the pit’s side. My toecaps found no hold on the stonework. However, by flattening my soles against the masonry I was able to gain a bit of traction and relieve Holmes of at least some of the burden of my bulk. He hauled upwards with all his might. I assisted by “walking” up th
e side of the pit. Together – although he did most of the work – we contrived to get me onto solid ground. Thereafter, I sank to my knees, panting hard, heart racing.
“A near thing,” Holmes observed.
“Too near,” I said, mopping my forehead. “Shall we endeavour not to let that happen again?”
“We can do our best, old man, but there is still one pit left .”
The lamp’s radiance picked out a third carved symbol on the wall beside the final pit. In accordance with Holmes’s earlier postulation it was indeed an inversion of the first:
“Sunset,” he said. “Three legs.”
“How on earth do we manage a crossing on three legs? Do we tie one of my ankles to yours, as in a three-legged race?”
“I think it is a little more straightforward than that. We go in procession like last time, but across three beams rather than two. Where my right foot goes, your left foot does as well. Do you concur?”
I could not gainsay the proposition. Holmes had been proven correct twice so far. He would surely be correct a third time.
And so it transpired. We started each with his outside foot upon a beam, Holmes’s left upon the first beam in the row, my right upon the third. Then each added his inside foot to the middle beam between the other two. Accordingly all three beams stabilised, and off we went. Both of us gained the other side without incident, springing off synchronously onto the furthermost section of floor.
There, another steel door awaited, closed.
“My congratulations,” said Dr Pentecost. “You struggled there briefly, but redeemed yourselves.”
“Ah, the godlike voice from on high,” said Holmes. “He speaks again.”
“He does,” said the classicist.
“And can hear us, it seems. The speaking-tubes work both ways, carrying sound to and from whatever eyrie you are nesting in, Doctor.”
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