• 1 is the resistance from the fixed resistor
• 1 is the resistance of the forehead
where: • 4 is the maximum resistance from the variable resistor
• 1 is the resistance of the forehead
• 1 is the resistance of the forehead
EXTREME TREATMENT MODE
Attach the blue wire.
where: • 0 is the minimum resistance from the variable resistor
• 1 is the resistance of the forehead
where: • 4 is the maximum resistance from the variable resistor
• 1 is the resistance of the forehead
“Numbers never lie,” Holmes said. “Willie Jacobs was correct that the Eshockers—even in extreme treatment mode—are not lethal. But the equations also prove that Bligh Braithwaite electrocuted Dr. Sinclair.”
“But that’s a contradiction!” I cried.
“No contradiction,” he said. “You’re making an incorrect assumption.”
“Which is?” I asked.
“I’m surprised you don’t see it. Think, Watson.”
I fumbled for an answer.
“Might there be another way to wire the resistors?”
He stared at me.
“Wrong,” he said curtly, and then, “That is a naïve suggestion.”
“Then what is my incorrect assumption?” I asked, frustrated.
“Your wiring diagram,” he pointed at my notes, “clearly shows that there are three modes of Eshocker operation. But what if Bligh Braithwaite used the Eshocker in another way, something outside the normal modes of operation?”
“The Eshocker has a fourth mode,” I stated.
“No,” Holmes said. “Your wiring diagram eliminates that possibility.”
Then what? I wanted to scream. Just tell me!
But whatever he’d worked out, he wanted me to deduce on my own, so at this point, I gave up and closed my notepad. If I waited long enough, I’d learn the answers along with everyone else.
41
A strapping fellow of eighteen with ragged hair and chipped teeth, Wiggins ruled over the Baker Street irregulars. To request his presence at 221B, I need only put the word on the street that I wanted to talk to him. Wiggins knew what “talking” meant—coins for information brought by the orphans he rounded up.
Just like Timmy.
My Samuel would not end up like Wiggins and Timmy. Even if, God forbid, something were to happen to both Mary and me, we had money in trust for him and friends who would see him safely through to adulthood. But all the same, I hoped that I would soon be reunited with my family and able to protect them once again.
Mrs. Hudson knocked on the outer door and called to me.
“He’s here, Dr. Watson. Shall I bring him in?”
Hurrying across the room and sweeping the door open, I ushered Mrs. Hudson and Wiggins into Holmes’s sitting room.
“Where’s Mr. Holmes?” Wiggins asked, peering around and fidgeting with the worn cap in his hands.
“He’s not at home.” I motioned at the boy to sit in my chair by the fire. I dared not let him sit in Holmes’s chair, not wearing those filthy rags. The boy looked and smelled as if he hadn’t washed in a month.
Mrs. Hudson wrung her hands by the door.
“Please bring Mr. Holmes back,” she said, “and let us all pray that life returns to normal. Those beasts in the river and the peculiar folk staggering around London have me scared, Doctor, and all my friends, as well. We’re afraid to go outside. We’re afraid to sleep at night.”
Wiggins looked at the holes in his shoes.
“You should ’ear what they say on the street, Mrs. ’udson,” he said. “They say we all be possessed by devils.”
“They might be right, at that,” the landlady answered, with her eyes watering, “but I tell you, if anyone can help us, it is Mr. Holmes. Doctor, please tell me that no harm has befallen our Mr. Holmes!”
“He is as you remember him,” I assured her. She continued to stand at the door, wringing her hands and not budging, so I added, “He has asked me to question Wiggins. Would you close the door as you go?”
She snapped out of her reverie, murmuring, “Yes, yes, yes, of course,” as she left.
I turned my attention to Wiggins.
“You have Timmy Dorsey safely tucked away?” I asked.
As he nodded, white flakes dropped thick as snow from his hair and fell on my favorite chair. It was the least of my worries. I told Wiggins that both Mr. Holmes and I appreciated what he was doing for Timmy.
“Timmy’s a good boy, does what ’e’s told,” Wiggins said. “Timmy’s no trouble.”
“Good, good. It’s best that I not know where he’s hiding, so here—” I pulled a generous amount of coins from my pocket and gave them to Wiggins. “Get Timmy and bring him to the Whitechapel Lunatic Asylum.”
Licking his lips, Wiggins slipped the coins into a trouser pocket. Then his eyes darkened, and he frowned. Wiggins was like that: he could be eager to please, yet just as quickly turn as hard as any man I’ve ever known. Street life did not amount to much of a life. It hardened a man.
“You ain’t gonna throw Timmy into the asylum?” Wiggins asked with an edge to his voice.
“Don’t worry about that!” I exclaimed. “Never, I can assure you! Timmy knows what we need, and he knows what to expect when he arrives at the asylum. Now be off, for there’s no time to waste!”
In a flurry of dirt and white dandruff, Wiggins jumped from the chair and hurried to the door. I heard him bound down the stairs, and soon after, the outer door to 221B shut with a click.
Quickly, I hailed a carriage and asked the driver to drop me near Osborn Street. From there, I headed on foot to the asylum, where Holmes waited for me in Dr. Sinclair’s treatment room.
The light from the gas lamps illuminated the lines and dark circles beneath Holmes’s eyes. He’d neither slept nor eaten well for days.
I pictured Dr. Sinclair’s remains on the chair of the right Eshocker. I pictured his brains dripping from the ceiling. Despite vigorous scrubbing, blood stains splotched the chair and the box holding the electric mechanisms. Stains flowered like fungal growths on the ceiling, the supplies cabinet, and the floor.
“Both nurses, as well as the cleaners, did what they could,” Holmes said, “but what happened in this room is not easy to erase.” He gestured at one Eshocker, then the other.
“While we wait for Timmy and the animals,” he continued, “I’m curious, Doctor, if you’ve analyzed the equations I gave to you and if you have yet deduced the nature of this crime. I believe that I gave you sufficient information.”
His eyes twinkled. He enjoyed giving me puzzles and watching my face as I tried to solve them. I found it unnerving, as if I always had to prove myself to him.
Why couldn’t he just tell me what he had deduced? Why must we play these games?
On the other hand, when I did logically arrive at the correct conclusion—or minimally, offer a guess that satisfied him—it gave me a jolt of pride and a sense of accomplishment that I rarely felt elsewhere.
And so, as I always did, I played along.
“Dr. Sinclair’s Eshockers, even in extreme treatment mode, could not murder anyone,” I said. “To tamper with the Eshocker such that it electrocuted Dr. Sinclair would have required knowledge of the equipment’s inner workings. But aside from Dr. Sinclair, only a handful of insane patients who helped him construct the Eshockers knew about their inner workings. Willie Jacobs and Bligh Braithwaite both seem to possess sufficient knowledge about the Eshockers to rewire them. And yet, the Eshocker used to kill Dr. Sinclair had not been rewired. According to both Jacobs and Braithwaite, the wiring conformed to its standard configuration.” I paused, considering the puzzle and staring at the bloodstained Eshocker, where Holmes stood.
Abruptly, he lifted a shoe, struck a match, and lit a cigarette. He puffed steadily, his eyes focused on me, with the expression of a professor quizzing his prize
student. I didn’t feel equal to the task.
“There is another possibility,” he finally said. “Simple logic, Watson.”
I’d been so focused on his equations and the alternating current and the milliamperes and the three modes of operation that I’d not seen the obvious. Remove the clutter. See the simplicity.
“Could the killer,” I said, “have rewired the Eshocker, murdered Sinclair, then returned the wiring to its original configuration? Is this the answer?”
He flicked ashes to the floor, where a day ago, Sinclair’s ashes and blood had coagulated into a blackened pulp.
“Is it?” he shot back at me. “Think, Dr. Watson. How could Braithwaite have done that?”
“W-why, I don’t know!” I exclaimed. “I’m not an electrician, Holmes, and I know very little about electrotherapies.”
“But to figure this out,” he countered, “you don’t need knowledge of electricity or electrotherapies.” He burst out laughing, then apologized. “I am sorry. I don’t mean to upset you. It’s just so simple. Logic, my dear fellow.”
“Tell me, then, and be done with it,” I retorted.
“I will give you one final clue,” he said. “There was no way to rewire the Eshocker itself to kill Dr. Sinclair. And now, you can deduce the rest.”
If the Eshocker hadn’t been rewired at all… then what?
I snapped my fingers.
“I have it!” I exclaimed. “The killer added something to the Eshocker. But then, what did he do with it after killing Dr. Sinclair? Where did this added component or whatever you have in mind, Holmes—where did it go?”
“Ah, and that is the answer and the question all in one,” my friend said, glowing.
At that moment, Timmy stepped into Dr. Sinclair’s outer office, hauling via rope two small lambs and a calf. The animals barely squeezed through the doorway. Resisting the tugging of the ropes around their necks, they bleated and lowed as if being tortured.
“Get in ’ere, you stupid bleaters!” Timmy barked, and then followed with a stream of cursing. He wrenched the beasts through the open treatment room door, as well.
Appalled by the spectacle, I stood, speechless, but Holmes rushed over to Timmy.
“So Mr. Waltham delivered, as promised. I had faith he would do so,” Holmes said. “You had no difficulties at the market?”
“No, sir,” Timmy said. “Mr. Waltham’s infected animals was waitin’ as you said. They gave me trouble, though, in comin’ ’ere. I be glad to ’ave Wiggins with me.”
“Watson, help him,” Holmes demanded.
I broke from my trance and grabbed a rope from Timmy. Holmes took another, and the boy held onto the third rope.
“What kind of trouble did you run into?” Holmes asked the boy.
“We got a cart an’ loaded the animals on, but they was crazed, these beasts, an’ kept fallin’ and makin’ messes and tryin’ to run in circles. They ain’t well, these bleaters.”
“I see,” Holmes said, but his mind had already raced onward. He handed me his rope, shut and locked the door, and withdrew a vial containing a swab coated in brown sludge from his coat pocket.
“This is the brain matter I collected from an infected man nearby. You recall the fellow, Watson.”
Remembering the man from whom we’d obtained the brain matter, I shuddered. He’d been bald with an indentation like a crater on the top of his head. The sludge had filled the crater, slopping over as the man tilted his head.
“We’re taking this with us to the dissecting rooms at the Royal London Hospital,” Holmes told me, sticking the vial back into his pocket, “along with these animals after Eshocking.”
Timmy’s eyes widened.
“You’re goin’ to Eshock ’em?” he said.
“Yes,” I said, “apparently so. We have to study the brain tissues, Timmy, of infected animals, of Eshocked animals, of this man we encountered who was infected so badly I fear he is dead by now.”
Knowing little about the study of brain tissues, it occurred to me that the bit of gore in Holmes’s vial might not contain living cells at all. Of what use would it be?
We tied the ropes of one lamb and the calf to the left Eshocker.
Timmy and I lifted the remaining lamb onto the chair of the right Eshocker. We had to prop the animal horizontally across the seat. Holmes secured the right wrist strap around the tops of the lamb’s front legs. He secured the other wrist strap around both of the hind legs. All three animals bleated and lowed something horrible.
Of the three of us, only Timmy seemed comfortable mistreating the animals in this way. I felt cruel, and by the sick look on Holmes’s face, he felt the same way.
“Let’s get this over with,” I muttered. “This is a bit much, Holmes.”
“I grant you it’s difficult,” he answered, “but if we don’t examine these brain tissues, we may never find out what causes the neural psychosis. We may never find out how to make you better.”
“We’re grasping at nothing,” I retorted.
“We are not!” he exclaimed. “I never grasp at anything, Watson, without a reason.”
You protest too much, I thought. This time, Holmes, you’re not sure what you’re up against or how to fix it. Never had my faith in Holmes been this low.
But I did as he asked, as did Timmy, because if anyone could save London and its people, it was Sherlock Holmes.
The lamb in the Eshocker chair struggled to break free, but Dr. Sinclair had built his machines well. He’d built them so no neural psychotic, no matter how violent, could break free—and neither could a lamb.
Holmes and Timmy unscrewed the top of the Eshocker box, and the detective examined the wiring, then announced that it was in “Hospital mode at 2.66 milliamperes, the minimum dose of current, and ready to go.”
With a flourish, he turned the machine on.
Zzzapp.
Muted bleating, wild struggling on the chair—
Holmes turned off the machine, counted softly to himself, then switched it on again, and—
Zzzapp.
This time, the lamb shrieked, and the chair rocked as the poor animal desperately tried to break free of its restraints.
“Holmes,” I cried, “really, must we do this?”
“The duration of the treatment,” Holmes said, “is equal to the dose.”
“What?” I said.
“It’s not just the milliamperes, Watson, not just the amount of alternating current, the resistors, and all the rest. The duration of the treatment also matters. We don’t want to apply a current high enough to kill an animal, or say, a person. Yet we’ve seen the creatures, in larger form, flit in and out of view right before our eyes—”
“At the warehouse when Fitzgerald broke the gate, the rift, that held the creatures from entering our world—”
“Yes,” Holmes said, “and during the performance of Bellini’s Norma at Swallowhead Spring, when we saw the same thing happen. Therefore, it is logical to assume that the creatures are—dare I say it?—flitting in and out of view—”
“In and out of our world,” I exclaimed, “though how such a thing is possible, I cannot fathom!”
Again, Holmes turned off the machine, and after a short while, switched it on.
Zzzapp.
The lamb shrieked until it lost its breath, and its eyes rolled. Its neck snapped back and forth, and its body convulsed.
Timmy burst out crying, and apologizing quickly to Holmes for leaving, I gathered the boy and ushered him from the treatment room.
“Sit in Dr. Sinclair’s office for now,” I suggested.
Miss Klune appeared at the door. I shooed her away, telling her that this was “official government business.”
I ran back into the treatment room and begged Holmes to stop, but he stared me down.
“Control yourself, Doctor,” he said. “I am not torturing this animal. The treatment is no different from what Willie Jacobs received, what Bligh Braithwaite received, what countles
s paying customers receive in those dens. Why, I myself have received this treatment—and much more—in the den on Thrawl Street.”
“We can make the choice for ourselves,” I told him, “while these poor beasts in our care cannot.”
“They are all infected, Doctor, and will die whatever happens in this treatment room. Keep that in mind. The minute doses of current I’m applying do not hurt human patients, and hence, I assume they will not hurt these beasts. You’re a medical man. Act like one.”
He glared at me so intensely that I blanched, feeling like a schoolboy who has been chastised by his master. I fell silent and let him continue with his “treatment” of the infected lamb, who still bleated and struggled upon the chair.
“Take note,” Holmes said, “that I’m increasing the alternating current to four milliamperes.”
With that, he turned the machine back on, and…
Zzzapp.
Again, Holmes turned off the machine, counted softly, and switched it on again.
Zzzapp.
The lamb continued to bleat and struggle within the restraints.
“Increasing to six milliamperes,” Holmes proclaimed, and then he went through the whole wretched procedure again.
“Nothing,” he concluded. “The beast remains sick. No change in its behavior. See how it hangs its head, rolling its eyes. Look at the cast of the eyes. Red and gray. No, this beast is still infected.” He paused and looked at me. “I suggest you join Timmy in the outer room, Watson, if you are not prepared to watch what I am about to do.”
“Which is?” I asked as coldness ran down my spine.
“Twenty-five milliamperes could kill the beast,” my friend said thoughtfully, “yet twelve milliamperes might do the trick. If necessary, we’ll push extreme treatment to the high end, to the full sixteen milliamperes. But for the sake of the lamb, we’ll do extreme treatment at twelve milliamperes of alternating current first. Pulse it. Kill the microscopic creatures that are here now. Let more flit into the brain from the otherworld. Pulse the alternating current. Kill them. Repeat.”
Not waiting for me to agree or disagree, he turned to the open Eshocker box, attached the blue wire that turned hospital mode into extreme treatment, and adjusted the handle on the variable resistor.
Sherlock Holmes vs. Cthulhu Page 26