The Manifestations of Sherlock Holmes

by James Lovegrove

  Dodson was a small, sallow-complexioned individual with thinning mousy hair and an unprepossessing face, which seemed set in a permanent sneer. Some childhood disease – polio, I adjudged – had left him with a withered left leg, a defect he had remedied by fixing an elaborate metal brace to the limb, which cunningly utilised pistons and springs to lend support and an almost full range of motion. He came towards us with scarcely a limp, the brace creaking ever so slightly as he walked.

  “Gentlemen,” he said, his hands hidden behind his back, “how may I be of assistance?”

  “You may assist us,” replied Holmes, “by confessing, Mr Dodson, to at least three counts of premeditated, cold-blooded murder. It will go easier on you, and save us all a great deal of bother, if you do.”

  To Dodson’s credit, he scarcely even batted an eyelid. Instead, he whipped his hands out from behind him. In one was a kind of claw-like gauntlet, which he slipped over the other. It hissed with power as he flexed the fingers.

  Reaching for Holmes with this device, he attempted to grasp my friend’s neck.

  I swiftly interposed myself between the two of them, raising an arm so that Dodson’s gauntlet clamped onto my wrist rather than around Holmes’s throat. The pressure Dodson brought to bear on me was immense, and inflicted considerable pain – but not, of course, any harm.

  I grinned at the man, and he in return frowned in dismay.

  “Dash it all,” he cried. “Your bones should be powder by now, your wrist as narrow as a pipe cleaner.”

  “Luck of the draw,” I said, and punched him unconscious.

  * * *

  Beneath the workshop, accessible via a trapdoor, lay another workshop, a secondary lair where Dodson stored contraptions he had developed, which lent him the abilities of any physical Category you might care to name. There was a submersible kit, a kind of diving apparatus which allowed him to remain underwater for a significant span of time, breathing through a tube connected to a canister of compressed oxygen. There was a flying pack, which used rocket propulsion to suspend him in the air and enable him to flit through the skies guided by rudimentary batlike wings. There was a mate to the gauntlet, which gave him a grip strength equivalent to that of the mightiest Hercules. There was even a prototype of what appeared to be a pair of steam-powered, wheeled boots with which he would be able to propel himself along, somewhat like an ice skater, but as fast as a Mercury.

  Dodson, when he came round, was reluctant to talk at first. Holmes, however, menaced him with my revolver, and soon enough his tongue loosened.

  Not only had Dodson been crippled by polio when he was a small boy, he had also been born Typical. Throughout his formative years, his lack of Category had eaten at him. He was jealous of his schoolmates as they discovered their various abilities, especially those who were fleet of foot or who could lift great weights. He was taunted for his sickliness and his Typicality. The jibes sank in deep and fuelled a lifelong misanthropy.

  Finding that he had an aptitude for engineering, Dodson turned it into a vocation. He was highly proficient at it, something of a genius. Yet still resentment of others simmered away inside. The establishment, although it paid him well for the work he did building bridges and steam engines and factory machinery, never respected him the way it had the likes of Brunel and Telford. He did not move in the right circles, alienated from society by his normality, his freakish lack of powers. He should have been lauded and laureled; instead, he was kept at arm’s length and treated with a grudging toleration at best.

  So he decided to put his one skill – his “only God-given talent,” in his words – to use in a different field. He would make himself indispensable to the great and good by volunteering to do their dirty work for them, at a fee. He would become a freelance assassin, tailoring his methods of execution so as to direct suspicion away from whoever hired him and onto other parties, incriminating them by the very gifts he resented.

  As Holmes pressed him further, Dodson admitted that he was behind Sir Hugh Lanchester’s death and that his paymaster was none other than Amos Pilkington, Sir Hugh’s erstwhile business associate. “Since I’m likely to be feeling the hangman’s noose,” he said, “I may as well tell all. Besides, I bet it was Pilkington who gave me up, wasn’t it? Drunkard like that. Just the sort to turn on you when the chips are down.”

  “As a matter of fact, it was the Earl of Bracewell,” said Holmes.

  “The posh devil.” Dodson snorted in disgust. “Got that girl pregnant. Couldn’t handle the potential disgrace to his family name.”

  “I ingratiated myself with him at his club last night,” Holmes said. “Challenged him to a few frames of billiards. Beat him soundly, even though he kept trying to force my cue ball to swerve whenever I struck it. There’s only so much topspin that a feeble nudge from a Mover’s mind can counteract, however. Before long, he lost his temper and started yelling at me, calling me all sorts of names. A very sore loser. He became so enraged, just as I wanted, that the moment I mentioned the actress you killed for him, he blurted out that she was a harlot and better off dead and he was glad she had died before she could give birth to his illegitimate off spring – although that is a politer phrase than the actual one he used to describe the child. This was in full view of his fellow club members, and I must say the effect was electric. Consternation. Pandemonium. His Grace had, with a few rash, poorly chosen words, all but admitted culpability for a capital offence, and before an audience of his peers, what’s more, none of whom had a particular affection for him, given that he was a known cheat and cozener. After that, he turned on you pretty quickly, Mr Dodson.”

  “Why am I surprised? Anything to save his own skin.”

  “And here we are,” Holmes concluded. “Watson and I will be escorting you to the nearest police station, where you will be free to confess your role in the three murders I have ascribed to you and any others I may have missed out. I shall be especially keen for you to absolve Charlie Gartside of blame for Sir Hugh’s death. Although the man has yet to be arrested, I reckon it’s only a matter of time before Scotland Yard put two and two together and bring him in. With luck, we can forestall that unfortunate occurrence.”

  As we dragged the defeated, crestfallen Dodson out of his workshop, he said, “I understand that you, Mr Holmes, are a Typical, like me. That’s what Dr Watson writes in the stories he publishes about you.”

  “And it’s the truth.”

  “How do you bear it? How can you stand being a weakling compared with everyone else? Doesn’t it fill you with hatred?”

  “If it ever did,” said Holmes, “I am long past caring. I may not be a Hercules, an Achilles, a Cassandra, even an Olfactory, but I have compensated in my own way. I have not been consumed with bitterness about what I am not, but rather been consumed with desire to be the best I can be, given my limitations. Mother Nature bestows her several gifts upon us. Some are glorious and enviable and come without effort. Others, like mine, need work but are no less potent once fully realised.”

  “You make it sound so… so straightforward.”

  “That’s because it is,” said Holmes. “I like to think I now inhabit a unique Category, my very own, a denomination in which the developed powers of ratiocination and analytical reasoning are the sole qualifying criteria.”

  “And does it have a name, this special, one-man Category of yours?” said Dodson with mockery and just a touch of condescension.

  “It does,” said my friend phlegmatically. “Because there is nothing difficult about it, other than the application of intellect and observation, which are available to all, I have dubbed it with an appropriately simple and universal title.”

  “Which is?”

  “Elementary, Dodson. Elementary.”

  THE ADVENTURE OF THE CHALLENGING PROFESSOR

  Written exclusively for this collection

  Professor George Edward Challenger is Conan Doyle’s next best-known recurring protagonist after Sherlock Holmes, coming a comforta
ble second in the rankings ahead of Brigadier Gerard and Sir Nigel Loring. However, with the exception of The Lost World, the stories in which he features are seldom read these days.

  This may be because he is a fairly obnoxious figure – brash, bombastic, braggartly – and also because neither of the other Challenger novels, The Poison Belt and The Land of Mist, is particularly gripping, certainly not as much fun as his encounter with cavemen and dinosaurs on that remote South American plateau. The same goes for both of the Challenger short stories, although “When the World Screamed” is a neat enough piece of speculative fiction and has its chilling moments.

  The idea of having Holmes and Challenger meet tickled me. How would these two rather arrogant men, each convinced of his own superiority, deal with the other? And could they overcome the antagonism that would inevitably arise from such a clash of egos and arrive at some sort of mutual understanding? Might they even somehow, against all the odds, become friends?

  The Adventure of the Challenging Professor

  1

  The month of July 1909 was particularly hot and humid, and I was glad of the opportunity to escape London and travel down to Eastbourne to visit my old friend Sherlock Holmes. In such weather the capital was a hellish place, as stuffy and airless as a Kew glasshouse. The sea breezes of the Sussex coast afforded welcome relief.

  Holmes and I spent a pleasant couple of days walking across the Downs, partaking of ale in rural pubs, and indulging in reminiscence. My friend was at that time almost fully retired from his career in detection, although now and then a case might present itself which he found too intriguing to pass up.

  So it was that on the third afternoon of my stay, not long after lunchtime, a client arrived at Holmes’s small farm overlooking the Channel. His coming was presaged by thunderclouds amassing on the horizon, a climatic phenomenon which proved, in the event, an apposite backdrop for so tempestuous a personality.

  An automobile shuddered to a halt in the driveway to the house, and out stepped its lone occupant, an enormous, lushly bearded fellow.

  “Sherlock Holmes!” he bellowed as he strode up to the front door. “Is this the house of Sherlock Holmes? Do I have the right place?”

  Holmes emerged from the property to meet the caller, I following. From the drawing-room window I had gained an impression of the man’s size, but at close proximity he was even larger and more imposing than I had first appreciated. His barrel chest was as great in circumference as the trunk of an oak. The blue-grey eyes which peered out from beneath his beetling black brows were as penetrating and masterful as Holmes’s own, if not more so. His hair was coal-black with shimmering hints of blue like a magpie’s plumage, while his hands looked every bit as powerful as a gorilla’s paws.

  I had a pretty shrewd idea already who this character was, for just the previous year someone closely matching his description had caused a sensation after returning from an expedition to South America where he claimed to have discovered a mist-shrouded plateau inhabited by ape-men and dinosaurs. While presenting his findings to the members of the Zoological Institute and guests at the Queen’s Hall in Regent Street, he had unleashed a wild animal upon the assembled company of fine gentlemen and ladies, said beast terrorising all present before it escaped via a window. Thereafter his face had been in the papers and a whiff of scandal had attached itself to his already controversial name.

  “Professor Challenger, I presume,” Holmes said.

  “You’re Holmes?” Challenger wrung Holmes’s hand briefly but so forcefully that my friend could not help but wince. It cannot be denied that Challenger seemed somewhat unimpressed. Perhaps he was expecting someone younger, less gaunt, more hearty – someone, in other words, more like himself.

  “The very same.” If Holmes noticed the leery look Challenger gave him, he did not remark upon it. “And this is my colleague Dr Watson.”

  I, too, suffered the not inconsiderable discomfort of a handshake from Professor Challenger. It felt as though every metacarpal in my right hand had been broken.

  “I am honoured finally to make your acquaintance,” Holmes continued. “One has heard so much about the intrepid George Challenger and his dogged – some might say relentless – pursuit of scientific knowledge. I gather you have lately relocated to this county from London, for which reason I fully anticipated that one day your path and mine might—”

  “Yes, yes,” Challenger said brusquely. He was, it would appear, not enamoured of the social niceties. “I have just driven all the way over from Rotherfield. I am hot and tired, and my fund of patience, never deep at the best of times, is running perilously dry. Are you going to invite me in?”

  “Of course. Step this way, sir.”

  No sooner was Challenger ensconced in one of the drawing-room chairs than he launched into an explanation for his visit. “There has been a death at my house, The Briars. My resident assistant, young chap by the name of Richard Montclair. Dreadful business. Happened this very morning, at breakfast time.”

  “I am sorry to hear that,” said Holmes. “I can only infer, because you have come to consult me, that an aura of suspicion hangs over the death.”

  “Yes, but before I go any further, I must beg an assurance of discretion from you. There are certain facts in the matter which I would prefer not to become common knowledge.”

  “You have my solemn word that everything which passes between us in connection with this affair will be held in the strictest of confidence. That goes for Watson, too.”

  “He shan’t be writing this up and publishing it?” Challenger said, with a stern glance in my direction. The sentence may have been phrased as a question but it was patently a threat.

  “Not if you so desire, Professor,” I said, and I have chosen to respect his injunction in part. I am writing up this account of the case, but purely for my own satisfaction. The manuscript will be stored with others of its ilk in my tin despatch-box at Cox and Co. and will never see print, at least not in my lifetime.

  “Very well. I am satisfied. You are no doubt aware, Mr Holmes, that I returned last year from exploring the ‘lost world’ in Brazil with certain colleagues.”

  “Professor Summerlee, Lord Motson and the journalist Edward Malone,” said Holmes. “I believe that together the four of you brought back a fortune in blue diamonds.”

  “Ah yes. Those. Really I wish the other three had been somewhat more circumspect about mentioning the diamonds to others. I was all for keeping that aspect of the expedition a secret. I receive all manner of begging letters these days, and I cannot walk down the street without some chancer waylaying me and asking for a handout.”

  “Your share of the booty amounted to some fifty thousand pounds, as I recall. A tidy sum.”

  “A scientist cannot live on sponsorship alone. Now, might I be allowed to elucidate the circumstances of poor Montclair’s demise?”

  “Pray do.”

  “You will have read in the press about the ruckus which ensued after I displayed one of the live specimens we returned with.”

  “‘One of’?” echoed Holmes. “I was under the impression that you brought back only a single creature.”

  “Yes, well, so I claimed,” said Challenger, “but it was something of a lie.”

  “The animal was a species of flying lizard, was it not?” I interjected.

  “Hah!” roared Challenger, venting his disdain for my query with an ejaculation that bore the force of a hurricane.

  At that moment, aptly, thunder rumbled over the Channel.

  “Flying lizard!” he snorted. “It was a pterodactyl, Doctor. A wondrous thing. Ten-foot wingspan. Beak like a dagger. Talons the rival of any big cat’s. Such a shame some damn fool left the window open at the Queen’s Hall and the wretched thing got away. Despite my best efforts I never was able to recapture it. It was last seen heading in a south-westerly direction, and one can only assume it’s back in its homeland by now, more’s the pity. It’ll have found its way there like a migrating bir
d.”

  “There is another, then,” said Holmes. “A second prehistoric specimen, the existence of which, in light of events at the Zoological Institute, you decided to conceal from the rest of the world.”

  “If people had found out, I would surely have been ordered to destroy it,” said Challenger. “Nor was it just any animal, either. It was a second pterodactyl, a female and a mate for the first. I planned on breeding them. Think what that would have meant! An entire family of pterodactyls. An extinct species being raised in captivity, studied throughout its lifespan, from egg to maturity to death. Think of the advancements that that would bring in the fields of biology, palaeontology and ornithology.”

  “And this other pterodactyl you chose to keep at your home?”

  “Under lock and key in a room dedicated to its containment. And that room is where, alas, Montclair met his unfortunate end.”

  “At the hands of the pterodactyl, one assumes. Or rather, at the beak and talons.”

  Professor Challenger gave a sombre nod. I doubted a man like him, so convinced of his own rightness, could show remorse openly, but there was nonetheless a distinct ruefulness in his demeanour.

  “Indeed. The bird got free from its cage and attacked him. Montclair didn’t stand a chance. A pterodactyl is one of the world’s great avian predators, if not the greatest, as fearless as it is lethal. He whom it fixes its sights on is unlikely to survive.”

  “Thus far, nothing you have told us would suggest that Montclair’s death was anything but a tragic accident,” said Holmes. “Anyone who consorts with large, untamed animals must know he is taking a risk.”

  “That is true,” Challenger allowed, “but allow me to furnish you with a few further details.”

  “I would be grateful if you would.”

  “Montclair is – I should say was – a graduate of Camford who came to me highly recommended by his dons. He was a very presentable young man with an abiding interest in, and strong aptitude for, the sciences. He was helping me catalogue my notes on the approximately one hundred and fifty new species I identified on the plateau. Among his other duties was feeding the pterodactyl, a task he undertook every morning and evening. This entailed entering the room in which it was kept and passing a slab of raw beef through the slot in its cage for it to consume.”