Rhyne said, ‘Oh, undoubtedly, if he sticks around. That doesn’t seem likely, though. He’s perfectly within his rights to take the money and go.’
‘He’ll go back to his own name, grow his hair back and never be identified,’ Sir Newnham predicted gloomily. ‘Beech will get the Society to reshape as he wishes, Skinner can claim a successfully concluded case, the Countess and Miss Casimir get a whole new story for gulling the public, and Floke and his clique… well, they’ll probably believe Kellway’s ascended to Venus again. They’ll have built a church to him by the end of the century.’
‘I have to say this is one of the most outlandish cases that Holmes and I have been embroiled in,’ I mused, ‘not excepting those involving gigantic rats, hounds and cormorants. Aside from explaining Kellway’s original vanishing, I’m completely baffled as to why, if this whole situation is a hoax – whether it started out as an attempt to take control of the Society, or merely to claim the reward money – he has not appeared himself to deliver the coup de grace, rather than sending this young proxy in his stead. It appears that it will be effective, but it could have fatally weakened the conspirators’ case.’
Speight shuddered. ‘My only thought on that score, Dr Watson, and it is a sordid one, is that the trick was one that could only be carried off by killing Kellway and somehow smuggling out his body. Holmes joked about his having left in small pieces through the window, and perhaps that is what happened. Perhaps the original Kellway was a harmless madman, despicably taken advantage of and done away with by a ruthless group of conspirators. And yet, despite my low opinion of the man, I find it hard to imagine Gideon Beech resorting to cold-blooded murder. He thinks too highly of himself for that.’
Privately I agreed with Sir Newnham on that point, but I felt that I should prepare him for disappointment. ‘I have learned,’ I said, ‘that men who might present the most harmless fronts to the world are capable of hatching devilish plots against their own children, whilst those whom one might believe utterly without compunction can display the most unexpected scruples. But this is Holmes’s area of expertise, and I’ll see he’s told of these latest developments. I shall ask him to discuss the matter with you as soon as can be managed.’
Sir Newnham said, ‘I have arranged for the Society to convene at four o’clock at Parapluvium House, with this purported Kellway present, so that the matter can be decided; though I fear the Committee’s minds are made up and that any discussion of the matter will be a travesty. Four o’clock, Dr Watson. I would very much appreciate it if Mr Holmes could join us there. Come, Rhyne, we should go home and prepare.’
‘You go on ahead, Sir Newnham,’ Rhyne suggested. ‘I have to place an order with Cavendish’s, for those electrical components you were wanting. The specifications are complicated, and it’s a short walk to Oxford Street. I’ll join you by four.’
The three of us parted our ways, and I returned thoughtfully to 221B Baker Street, where a small boy was energetically beating the hall-carpet on the front steps.
‘Is Mr Holmes in… Danny?’ I hazarded.
‘I’m Ronnie, sir,’ the boy told me cheerily. ‘Yes, sir. He’s upstairs, sir, and he said as you was to come right up.’
I thanked him, tipped him a halfpenny, and left him to his task. Though his zeal was commendable, he was using a broom rather than a beater, and one which by the looks of it had recently been used to sweep up the excess soot released into Mrs Hudson’s room, so that the overall effect was not one of improved cleanliness.
Upstairs I found Holmes pacing back and forth as best he could in the constrained space, and chuckling to himself as he smoked his pipe. ‘My dear fellow!’ he cried when he saw me, with an air of extreme good humour. ‘I am delighted to see you home at last. I have cracked it, Watson – I know how the thing was done, and what’s more I have done it myself. The crucial thing in science is that the results of an experiment should be reproducible, as Sir Newnham would tell us if he were here.’
‘He was here,’ I said, a little sourly. ‘As was I. I can’t say I approve of your new staffing arrangements, Holmes. I can only hope they’re short-lived.’
‘Ah! Well, that too is an experiment, of a different kind,’ he said jovially. ‘Though perhaps it is one which we might venture not to repeat, once Mrs Hudson has returned home.’
‘If she can be persuaded to return home, after the chaos those wretched imps have wreaked here,’ I replied gloomily. I told him of what Lestrade and I had learned from Jonas Flatley, and of my discoveries in the hansom cab, and gave him the best summary I could of all I had learned from Speight about Kellway’s miraculous return, its ramifications for the Society and its implications for Sir Newnham himself. Recounting all the details required some elaboration, and by the time I had finished our four o’clock appointment at Parapluvium House was fast approaching.
‘Capital, Watson!’ exclaimed Holmes after I had told him everything. ‘A most satisfactory account, my dear fellow. It seems that we may expect a persuasive resolution to this matter shortly. I must say I am delighted by this new appearance of Kellway’s, though I confess I have been expecting something of the kind.’
‘Kellway’s emerging to claim the money is what this case has been lacking from the beginning,’ I agreed, ‘but I can’t say I expected an impostor to arrive in his place.’
‘That is because you have not been paying sufficient attention, my dear Watson. Some representation by proxy was inevitable, although it has taken a most stimulating form.’
‘I am glad that you find it so,’ I told him. ‘I’m afraid Sir Newnham is less sanguine, particularly about your approach to the case. He’s also most exercised about this imminent Committee vote.’
‘I hardly think it will come to that, Watson. Still, we must away to Parapluvium House at once, naturally. Pray be so kind as to have one of the Irregulars hail a cab for us. You may also ask them to dismantle this,’ he said, waving a dismissive hand at the structure which had so dominated his attention over the past day. ‘That is perhaps a task better suited to their talents than those they have been attempting of late. They should bundle the whole lot up for dispatch to Inspector Lestrade, care of Scotland Yard. It may be required as evidence at the trial.’
‘There’ll be a trial, then?’ I asked, but Holmes merely waved me away.
I went downstairs and found a small clutch of children surrounding a raw fowl that must have been delivered by the butcher’s boy. One of them was saying, ‘My mum always boils ours in beer, with the greens. D’you think we should stuff it first, or after?’
Mrs Hudson’s larder-door stood open, and when they realised I was present the children all gazed at me with guilty faces and tried to hide marzipan-sticky hands. I told them supper would not be required that evening, and sent Ronnie to summon a cab.
By the time I had explained their other task, Holmes had joined me, wearing a jacket which it took me a moment to place as the one that Kellway had left behind in the Experiment Room.
‘Well, Watson,’ he said, brandishing a cane that I recognised as Frederick Garforth’s. ‘Our carriage awaits, and so does the Evolved Man. It seems we are all set for the end of our first interplanetary adventure.’
Second Excerpt from Discoverer of the Esoteric Wisdoms by Carpenter
Kristina Casimir, the young German woman who would become Irina’s constant companion during this late phase of her earthly existence, first appeared in her life in June 1893. She attended a séance given by Irina at Francesco Ribisi’s London townhouse, as a guest of Ribisi’s friend Mariella van Houten. Ribisi had been pioneering a use of an early form of the Ouija board, and asserted that through it he had been receiving a series of spectral dictations, which would later form the basis of his book The Seven Worlds Within Our Own.
Since her stroke, Irina had become physically frail and more than usually elliptical in her speech, and she probably hoped that this new technique might allow her to automate some elements of her mediumistic pra
ctice. Despite her normal reluctance to embrace novel approaches, she sat as a full participant in the séance and, much to the surprise of all present, received what appeared to be a number of unusually clear communications from a spirit calling itself ‘Hanuman’, the name that had earlier been revealed to her as that of the last High Hierarch of Hy-Brasil. She would later publish these in a pamphlet entitled ‘New (Old) Revelations from the Hindmost Keeper of the Inner Lantern’, with the help of Kristina Casimir, whom the messages had explicitly instructed her to choose for the task.
According to her own statements, Casimir came from Coblenz, from an academic family who had encouraged her intelligence and desire for learning as long as they followed a conventional course, but had been scandalised at her burgeoning interest in esotericism. She had, she always stated, made use of an independent income left to her by an aunt to emigrate to England, hoping to join the circles of occultists surrounding the famous Countess Brusilova.
The reader should know that Casimir is a divisive influence among the followers of Brusilovan Wisdom, and there have been many who disbelieve this account of her origins, suggesting that she was a fraudulent occultist, perhaps of British birth, who used this false background to insinuate herself into Irina’s confidence. Certainly much interest has been taken in the mechanics of the séance at which her services were recommended to Irina, and the question of how far one of the participants might have been able to direct the planchette’s movement on the board.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
We were ushered into the drawing room at Parapluvium House to find that most of those involved with the case were already present. While Holmes had a quiet word with Anderton, who stood in attendance, I greeted Sir Newnham, who stood uncomfortably by the window, looking quite isolated in his own domain.
‘I am glad to see Mr Holmes here at last,’ he told me, sincerely. ‘I can only pray that his presence is not too late.’
I scanned the room. Dr Kingsley stood at a discreet distance from his host, with an air of clinical detachment whose underlying sentiments I could not read. The gigantic Norwegian, whose name I supposed I now had little chance of discovering, was moodily staring out of the window. Countess Brusilova sat on a wicker chair next to him, temporarily abandoned by Miss Casimir. The latter had joined a group being held court to by Gideon Beech, including Constantine Skinner, Gerald Floke and two others, equally shaven. For a moment I supposed that one of them might be the false Kellway, but both were slight, weak-chinned specimens like Floke himself, one of whom wore eyeglasses, giving the lie to any suggestion of superior evolutionary development. Vortigern Small, who sidled up to me immediately, pointed them out to me as Felix Herrisham and Lord St Andrews.
The clergyman had a fretful look on his face. ‘Dr Watson, might I beseech a word? The vote – that is to say, Mr Beech – intolerable, of course – I very much regret…’
‘It isn’t likely to come to that, Mr Small,’ I told him, hoping that Holmes had been right to say so. ‘Holmes expects a conclusion to this affair quite soon.’
‘I see. Well… that is excellent, of course.’ Small sounded rather doubtful. ‘But if I may ask… a conclusion of what nature?’
‘That,’ I said wearily, ‘is for Sherlock Holmes alone to know, for now. The rest of us can only wait to be instructed.’
Major Bradbury, who I had seen briefly in the hallway as we arrived, now rejoined the group in the drawing room. Unlike Skinner, Miss Casimir and the bald young men – and, I supposed, Holmes and myself – he appeared to be the guest of no particular Committee member, but I supposed he had as much right as anybody else here to learn the outcome of the experiment.
Holmes finished talking to Anderton, who left the room quietly, and strode over to speak to Sir Newnham. Before he could reach him, however, Gideon Beech clapped his hands and called for silence. ‘Ladies,’ he declared, beaming at Miss Casimir, ‘and also, regrettably, gentlemen. You all know for what momentous reason we are here, and how it is that I have become the humble stimulus for such a happening. By the grace of all the divinities that shape our evolutionary ends, for the first time in this Society’s otherwise insipid history we have in our midst the living proof of a miracle defying all the pusillanimous strictures and shibboleths of our conventional science.’
I will not weary you, my patient reader, with all that issued from the playwright’s mouth along these lines. Suffice to say that Kellway’s reappearance was, in his view, an unprecedented prodigy certain to rewrite all the annals of science, metaphysics and theology in favour of the religion of the Will of Life, and that among the myriad outcomes of this revision, one of the most profound and satisfying would be the increased prominence, in all these histories, of Gideon Beech, Esquire.
Eventually he said, ‘But all of this depends on acquiring through the stagnant channels of authority sufficient authentication of this miracle to convey its validity to the honest British public, with their servile deference to any self-appointed expert. And so we must, in the plodding habit of the English – honouring your exceptional presence by tactful omission, ladies – vote on the matter in Committee, so that the respectable formalities can be observed. To which end—’
‘Oh, for God’s sake get on with it, Beech!’ cried Major Bradbury, who had been listening with increasing restlessness and who now at last lost all semblance of restraint. ‘Damn it man, call in Kellway and let’s all have a look at him!’
Beech gave an aggrieved smile. ‘Very well, Major. I have been attempting to prepare you for the historic nature of what you are about to see, but if you have not the patience for that, then so be it. Miss Casimir, if you would…?’
Demurely, the Countess’s companion left the room for a moment, then returned, leading a young man in an awkwardly fitting suit. Though bald, he was built to a far more formidable frame than Floke and his cronies. I had heard Thomas Kellway described so many times by now that this younger individual, with his remarkable resemblance to somebody I had never even seen, looked hauntingly familiar. Certainly Speight’s account of Kellway’s magnetic personality applied equally to this man, to whom every eye was drawn as he entered the room. Despite his pleasant demeanour, something about his appearance made me shudder.
The man whom Beech had introduced as Kellway smiled and spread his hands, and said, ‘My friends. Mr Beech has asked me to tell you my story today.’ His voice was light and held an echo of laughter, and though his words held little hint of dialect, his accent was the purest Yorkshire. ‘During the three earthly days since I was last in this house I have, as you know, spent many years on the second planet of our star, bathed in the life-giving light of the sun, and hence have regained the appearance I had as a young man, though I believe I have grown in wisdom beyond the years of any here present.’
I heard Major Bradbury whistle. ‘Upon my soul,’ he muttered. ‘I wonder whether the creatures would have me.’
The Yorkshireman went on. ‘You knew already that I have, since ere my birth, been guided by benevolent intelligences from the world that we call Venus, whose influence has been to me every kind of care, from a gardener cultivating a seedling to a tutor instructing a beloved pupil. Thanks to their patronage I have been allowed to develop such mental disciplines as are required to evolve beyond the mundane bounds that constrict the remainder of Mankind, so that I may, in turn, teach all our people to become Evolved Men… and Women,’ he added, with a smile at Miss Casimir, and I wondered whether their newfound alliance was wholly confined to enlisting his endorsement for the Countess.
‘It is as an effect of this development – and quite an accidental one, I assure you, since my patrons have little interest in what we would call parlour tricks – that I have also developed certain abilities, of the kind that Man’s limited scientific understanding in our age calls psychical.
‘When I informed Sir Newnham that these peripheral gifts of mine included the ability to move objects placed in a room next-door to me, I was being discreet, and I a
dmit a little mischievous. Such action at a distance I have discovered to be a challenging exercise, and difficult to achieve with any precision, especially without a view of those objects. I could have asked to be shut in your Room C, whence I would have been able to see the box, but I knew of an easier and more surprising way.
‘My plan was not to reach out with my mind beyond the wall to move the objects there, but simply to step through the wall into Room B, and there remove the ball from the box, then knock upon the door to be set free. I thought that such would be a powerful enough demonstration, if any there were, to earn Sir Newnham’s ten thousand pounds. From your nodding I can see that many of you agree.
‘I was telling all the truth when I said that to effect this feat I would need some hours of meditation, to elevate my psychical state to the appropriate point. When I spoke to Sir Newnham, he compared the process to the charging of an electrical battery, and those of you of a scientific inclination may appreciate the analogy. Once I had reached a certain level of what one might call “psychical charge”, I would be able to vanish from Room A and reappear in Room B in the twinkling of an eye.
‘Such a plan, I thought, would be simplicity itself. I had performed similar acts in private for my own amusement, watched with tolerant resignation by my Venusian tutors as a teacher might indulge the tricks of a child. Yet this time their response was different.
‘For, at the moment when I made myself incorporeal, I found myself seized as by a giant hand and dragged bodily up into the heavens. I saw the Experiment Room recede beneath me, and the Annexe, and then the whole of Parapluvium House, laid out like a living plan upon a table. In the space of a few breaths – had I the need for breath in my insubstantial state – I saw the whole of England’s coastline as I have seen it in maps, obscured here and there by cloud but quite clear, as the sun came into view beyond a horizon that I now saw quite clearly was curved, like the edge of a billiard ball…’
Sherlock Holmes--The Vanishing Man Page 20