Sherlock Holmes--The Vanishing Man

by Philip Purser-Hallard

  ‘We’re good friends of his, Mrs Rust,’ Rhyne interjected, ‘and I can assure you we have his best interests very much at heart.’

  Further questioning elicited that Mrs Rust had no idea in what commodity Kellway travelled. Plainly there were no samples in his room, but I supposed it was possible that they were held at his employers’ office. In any case, the man must make a living somehow. The philosophy he propounded might appeal to a certain type of rich and gullible enquirer, but as far as I knew he had authored no books, conducted no lecture tours, nor purported to offer supernatural services like the wretched Constantine Skinner. Even if he could attract the charitable interest of men of substance like Beech and Speight, that could hardly equate to a regular income, and Mrs Rust had found him to be wholly reliable in that regard.

  ‘Do you still have the letter of recommendation from his Sheffield landlady?’ I asked, but as I had by now come to expect Mrs Rust could not put her hands on it amongst her other papers. She promised to send it to me care of Sir Newnham if it resurfaced.

  As Rust and I were taking our leave, she unexpectedly said, ‘He said he was family too, you know, that first one what came.’

  Rhyne and I stopped in our tracks. ‘The first who?’ Rhyne asked.

  I added, ‘I thought you said that Mr Kellway had had no visitors except for a young lady.’

  ‘I said as he hadn’t till these last few days,’ Mrs Rust said. ‘This one called around late Monday, before them lot from Richmond what came asking for him all day yesterday. I knows as it was Monday because I was washing Mr Brightlea’s best shirt what he wears to church. He said he was looking for Mr Kellway urgent, the man, I mean, not Mr Brightlea, he was at the Working Men’s Club with his darts team. He’s an abstainer, Mr Brightlea, but he does like his game of darts. He says as there’s no harm in it just so long as no money changes hands. Well, there wasn’t nothing I could tell him, was there, that man I mean, not Mr Brightlea, I don’t keep a record of where Mr Kellway says he is from day to day, I’m sure. He wasn’t polite like you gentlemen, though. I said if he was family he should go and talk to Mr Kellway’s niece.’

  ‘That was very sensible of you, Mrs Rust,’ I said. ‘Could you describe this man for us?’

  She thought that he was youngish, or at least not especially elderly; large, or at least larger than her late husband, who had been a remarkably small man; not bald like Kellway, but otherwise of no noticeable hair colour; and wearing clothes, she was certain, but ones that had left no firm impression on her mind. Her description was, in short, as useless as anything else she had given us.

  Our cab took us back to Speight’s house, where Rhyne went to find his employer and I set out to locate Holmes. I tracked him down some time later, in the camera obscura which formed part of Sir Newnham’s rooftop observatory.

  As I entered the cupola where the device was situated, I found myself in a space that seemed pitch dark after the moderate afternoon sunlight of the rooftop. As I stood, blinking stupidly, I gradually detected a dim glow filling the middle of a round, dark room, and in its centre the slim silhouette of Holmes, sitting cross-legged and gazing at the floor around him. He was surrounded by a dim pattern of coloured light, mostly green and grey, which it took me several seconds to resolve as a projection of the grounds beneath us. I could see the chemical laboratory and the Experimental Annexe, with an area of unspoiled garden beyond, then a hedge and even further on a section of the street where minuscule pedestrians and carriages could be seen hurrying by. In the green space, next to a small brown shape I supposed must be the summerhouse we had seen earlier, two tiny gardeners were engaged in digging a flowerbed, their industrious activity reminding me of beetles. It felt as if I were on a distant planet, staring at this tiny portion of England through some inconceivably powerful telescope.

  I stared entranced until Holmes’s sardonic voice aroused me from my reverie. ‘A positively godlike perspective, is it not, Watson? The light is fading now, but at noon on a sunny day the world would be one’s chessboard.’

  I said, ‘What does Sir Newnham use it for? Spying on his gardeners?’

  ‘Oh, it is little more than an expensive toy,’ said Holmes. ‘Its scientific value is chiefly as an illustration of a principle, and even for that purpose a simpler device would make the matter clearer. A tiny aperture in a flat surface can be used to project an image horizontally, but for such an angel’s-eye view as this one needs a complex arrangement of mirrors and lenses. It is housed in the canopy above us. See, it can be rotated to show any part of the grounds.’

  He demonstrated this, and as the field of view moved the light swirled around our feet until I could see the gables at the front of the house, and the drive beneath, where a carriage no bigger than a child’s wooden engine was being welcomed by a footman the size of a tin soldier.

  ‘I believe that is the Countess Brusilova arriving,’ Holmes observed as a tiny figure hesitantly emerged, accompanied by a taller, stronger woman.

  ‘It’s a shame the contraption does not work at night,’ I observed. ‘Somebody might have seen Kellway making his escape.’

  ‘The moon was half-full that night,’ said Holmes. ‘If someone had sufficiently sharp eyes, and had accustomed himself to the dimness… But no, as far as we know nobody was up here at the time, though we might make discreet enquiries just in case. I have said such devices have limited scientific usefulness, Watson, but imagine their application to law enforcement. A network of towers built across London, their summits bearing chambers like this one, each with its own policeman watching the world beneath… What a deterrent such an arrangement would be to crime! Though also, I dare say, to any amount of legitimate business for which a person might desire privacy.’

  I could see that the peculiar sensation of omniscience the camera obscura created had brought on one of Holmes’s whimsically philosophical moods. I brought him down to earth with a brisk account of Rhyne’s and my observations at Kellway’s lodgings.

  ‘So by his landlady’s account Kellway has relatives and a job,’ Holmes observed. ‘Not to mention a harmless skin condition. It is not what I expected of an Evolved Man.’

  ‘He seems to have precious little else to his name,’ I said. ‘No esoteric texts or magical paraphernalia. No shaving apparatus, for that matter, which supports the alopecia idea. But I did find this.’

  We had to step out onto the leads for me to show him the eyelash, which I did once I had ensured that nobody else was around on the roof. ‘Come, Watson,’ he said after he had examined it, ‘I want to look at that summerhouse.’

  An iron fire-escape staircase led down from the roof, and we descended by that route. I said, ‘Alopecia takes time to render a person entirely bald, but it does not discriminate between eyelashes and other hair. If Kellway has eyelashes, then his baldness is not due to alopecia.’

  ‘If a man told me that he was hairless all over, it is the first thing I should look at, after his scalp and eyebrows,’ Holmes said. ‘I should then have to find some excuse to peer inside his ears or nose. However, perhaps not everybody would be so quick to remark on the presence of a perfectly familiar facial feature.’

  ‘I would,’ I said. ‘But an alopecia patient’s baldness is a symptom, and I’m a doctor.’

  ‘Then we should speak to Sir Newnham’s friend Dr Kingsley,’ Holmes decided. ‘It is entirely possible that nobody else will even have noticed whether the man had lashes.’

  I sighed. ‘It’s also possible it’s not even Kellway’s eyelash. He’s been living there ten weeks, but Mrs Rust is not an enthusiastic cleaner. I’m not even convinced she heard him say he had alopecia, rather than jumping to her own conclusions. As evidence, it’s useless.’

  ‘Perhaps, but we can make one deduction from it. We may presume that Kellway did not tell his landlady that he was bald as a result of being subjected to accelerated evolution by intelligences from the planet Venus. I suspect that information at least would have stuck in her mind
.’

  I nodded slowly. ‘So his claim to be an Evolved Man is one he only makes in company such as Speight’s and Beech’s, not to the world at large. That suggests a deliberate deception.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Holmes said again. ‘Or merely reticence about an account he knew she would be unlikely to accept. Then again, Kellway’s assertion is that his hair has been lost because it lacks a useful function, yet eyelashes are helpful in protecting the eyes from dust and other foreign bodies. They might be considered essential, where other hair is a mere evolutionary vestige. Perhaps he is an Evolved Man after all. And who are we, Watson, to judge the honesty of a specimen of a superior race?’

  He was still in a merry mood, evidently. As we passed through the grounds, I said, ‘Speaking of medical matters, I’ve remembered something about epilepsy. Before a seizure, some patients report seeing patterns of light and colour, an illusion produced by the disorder in the brain. That sounds very like Skinner’s auras, don’t you think?’

  We had come now to the little summerhouse, where the beetle-sized gardeners, now quite human in their bulk and solidity, were still laying down soil in the flowerbed. ‘It is not locked,’ Holmes observed as we reached the outbuilding. ‘Well, there is no reason why it should be, during the daytime at least. We must ask Anderton whether it is secured at night.’

  We went inside. The wooden cabin held two deck chairs and very little else. Where once it would have given a fine panorama across the lawns to the rear elevation of the house, its vista was now marred by the Experimental Annexe, the chemistry laboratories and the greenhouses. It did not look as if it was much used. Holmes ignored the view, however, and instead began inspecting the chairs, the floor and walls.

  I said, ‘Are you supposing that Anderton forgot to lock the door after the cat incident, and that Kellway escaped from the Annexe that way? Because Anderton was quite clear that he did lock up, and even if he’s wrong I don’t see how anyone could have predicted that.’ Unless, I thought, Anderton was in on the conspiracy as well, but we had discounted that idea twice already.

  ‘I have no such theory at present,’ Holmes replied, peering into a dark corner. ‘A-ha!’ He pulled out his own tweezers, and after a moment’s work held up between them a small length of dark thread. ‘See, Watson,’ he said, showing me the protruding nail it had been caught on. ‘Someone has been here. Somebody wearing clothing of a dark material.’

  ‘That could have been practically anybody, Holmes,’ I pointed out reasonably. ‘And at any time, too.’

  ‘I fancy it has at least been in recent weeks. Over the summer the thread would have faded in the sun.’ Sombrely he added, ‘All data are valuable, Watson. We simply need to understand how they all fit together.’

  As he led the way back to the house, I was left with the perturbing impression that my friend had at the moment no more lucid an understanding of the case than I had.

  The Morning Chronicle

  16th May 1887

  Our correspondent has learned of a most discomfiting incident that has befallen a renowned scientist and innovator whose name (though the reader will not find it issuing from our Revolutionary-Spooling Finger-Powered Type-Writer) is familiar in households up and down the country as the originator of many a household boon.

  It seems that the magnate in question, who the breath of rumour tells us may even now be under consideration for a knighthood, was last week accosted in the street by a distressed older gentleman who accused him of the most preposterous crimes. This gentleman contended, with many imprecations on the inventor’s head and implorations to the passing public, that the man trucked with the Devil and that each of his machines was worked by tiny homunculi living within, all of whom were the ghosts of dead persons whom the gentleman had known personally, and moreover that he (the accosted) owed him (the accoster) a sizeable sum of money, which he would see repaid with menaces if necessary.

  To this most lamentable and conspicuous scene the police eventually arrived, but they were beaten a little to the mark by the gentleman’s friends, who helped him back to his residence, not altogether with his approval or acquiescence. One of these friends, recognised by some of those present at the scene as a peer of quite recent creation, from a family ‘not exactly high-born’, was heard to apologise to the inventor for the behaviour of his uncle, who had for some time been suffering from the most distressing delusions on the subject which he had so importunately raised.

  His interlocutor, though much embarrassed, accepted this account of the matter along with the apology, and the disquiet appears to have been laid to rest.

  We hear that the old gentleman is now visiting the countryside for his health, and is not expected to return to London this season.

  Not one of Langdale Pike’s best efforts, but suggestive nonetheless. – S.H.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  After failing to make an appearance during the afternoon, Frederick Garforth continued to absent himself from supper at Parapluvium House. Rhyne informed us that, along with a message to Sir Newnham regretting his non-attendance, the artist had sent apologies to Holmes and myself, promising to call on us the next morning in Baker Street.

  By way of making up for his guest’s absence, Speight showed us one of Garforth’s paintings which he had purchased and hung in one of the smaller guest bedrooms. It was, as Anderton had suggested, a frank study of a woman in a state of undress, executed in a sickly orangish hue. Although I do not pretend to any expertise in art I found it repellent.

  Holmes, when we were out of earshot of Sir Newnham, confided his agreement. ‘It is in the modern style,’ he said, ‘which will naturally antagonise a traditionalist such as yourself, Watson, but I regret that it is also a very shoddy example of the type. It is kind of Sir Newnham to buy a painting by an acquaintance who, I imagine, would otherwise have been unable to sell it. Garforth is evidently not a young man, but he must have come rather late to painting as a means of expression. I have not seen his name in the galleries or catalogues – although it is, I think, distantly familiar from somewhere.’

  We gathered with Speight’s other guests for drinks in the drawing room, which had resisted the inventor’s modernising influence over the other rooms in the house, and retained its original Regency charm. Skinner was there, holding his glass awkwardly, his eyes flickering away whenever I looked at him, and so was Beech, drinking only water, and discoursing at length about teetotalism and other topics as they pertained to himself. Holmes and I were introduced to Major Bradbury, a florid, choleric man approaching his seventies, whose stiffness of bearing I thought owed more to rheumatism than to his military training.

  ‘Can’t imagine what Speight thinks he’s doing, involving you fellows in this business,’ he told us frankly. ‘Skinner either, come to that. You’re not going to find Kellway where he’s gone.’

  ‘You believe he’s dead, then?’ I asked.

  Bradbury snorted his disagreement. ‘If the fellow was dead, there’d be a body. He’s gone exactly where he expected to – to Venus. Only way we’ll see him again is if he finds his way back. Not sure I’d bother if I were him, eh?’ He barked a short laugh.

  ‘Did Kellway inform you of his likely departure, Major?’ Holmes asked. His face was studiedly grave, and I could see that he was at pains not to be witty on the subject. ‘We understood that the purpose of the experiment was to test his powers of telekinesis, not of translocation.’

  ‘Quite right,’ the Major confirmed shortly. ‘Fellow couldn’t transcend the earthly sphere on demand, could he? But he was expecting it to happen sooner or later, when he reached the necessary level of spiritual elevation. That last bit of meditation must’ve done the trick, I expect. I knew a guru in Calcutta who did exactly the same. Retired into a cave to meditate for sixty days and his followers walled him in. Huge pile of rubble they built. No way a man could have moved it on his own, and no other way out of the cave either – I looked over it myself. They came back two months later and took the walls
down – not a trace of him. No body, no bones. He’d gone somewhere, and not in any usual way either. What do you make of that, Holmes, eh?’

  ‘With no opportunity to examine the interior of the cave myself, nor to compare the composition of the wall at the beginning and end of the sixty days, very little,’ said Holmes. ‘That is the advantage of a controlled experiment.’

  ‘Well, Kellway gave us a pretty clear demonstration of a psychic phenomenon on his way out,’ Bradbury opined. ‘Just wasn’t the one we were expecting, that’s all.’ He had evidently recovered from his state of shock of the previous morning.

  ‘Perhaps so,’ said Holmes smoothly. ‘This is what Sir Newnham has asked me to confirm.’

  ‘I suppose you’ll find a way to be sceptical about it,’ Bradbury huffed. ‘At least Skinner understands there’s more to the world than what we Westerners call reason. They know all about that in the East, you know.’

  ‘Major Bradbury has his little fads,’ confided a high-pitched voice to my left, with a conspiratorial giggle. I turned to see the Reverend Vortigern Small, a man of a size to suit his name, dressed in dark clerical skirts and a white collar and bands.

  While Bradbury continued to regale Holmes with his anecdote, the priest drew me aside. ‘I would be hard pressed to call the Major a student of Eastern religion, because in all honesty I am not sure the poor man understands the difference between a Sufi and a swami, but he is terrifically keen spectator of it. If somebody told him that Methodism had originated on the banks of the Indus, I feel sure he would be knocking at the doors of the nearest chapel, begging for enlightenment. Not that I would condone any such practical joke, of course.’

  I said, ‘You treat these things lightly, for a man of the cloth.’ Small projected an air of self-effacing unworldliness which concealed a deeply irreverent sense of humour and, I was beginning to see, a very definite streak of malice.