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  “I felt it would be a violation against Mr Thurn to read his correspondence, though my stepfather was beyond such consideration and undeserving of it, so I refrained from opening the letter, though I bade its deliverer to remain until I could pen a quick reply. In my message I informed Mr Thurn, without going into all the complex and unsavoury particulars, of his friend’s passing. I thought it was the decent thing to do, given that I could hardly imagine he was aware of the use his friend had planned for that venomous serpent. As I was unwilling to preserve any of my stepfather’s belongings and wanted to be rid of them, I invited Mr Thurn to come have a look at them and freely take away whatever might strike his fancy. I knew little of Mr Thurn, never having met him in person myself, but my stepfather had said he was a world traveller with an inquisitive mind and hence an avid reader, so I alluded to Dr Roylott’s library, which, though it consists of many medical texts, also contains numerous books on very esoteric and outré subjects. I sent my letter, but later in the day regretted somewhat my haste in offering Mr Thurn a look at my stepfather’s things before I could consult with my fiancé about their potential value. Chiefly, though, my regret was due to the fact that I did not intend to remain at Stoke Moran for many days and might not still be there should Mr Thurn come visiting from London.

  “That night, shortly after Mrs Littledale had retired to my sister’s former room and I to mine, a most strange and horrible sound came to us from outside the house. In her terror, which was no doubt exacerbated by the housekeeper having to sleep in the room into which Dr Roylott had introduced his snake to murder poor Julia, Mrs Littledale came pounding on my door looking quite frantic. I felt certain the weird howling cries came from either the baboon or cheetah, though I could not tell which, and I even wondered if the starving cat was attacking the monkey in its desperation. We stood paralysed, listening at the shuttered window of my room until, despite my horror, my curiosity could bear it no longer. I removed the heavy bar that secured the shutters, and cracked them open enough to peek outside.

  “It was a clear night with the moon almost full, and the grounds beyond lay silvered with its glow. On the lawn not far beyond my window a strange figure lay writhing and contorting, while arching back its neck and emitting the uncanny cries we had heard. Indistinct as it was, it could only be the baboon. The primate had always been of a darkish brown colour, and I considered that it might only be the moonlight that made the animal’s body appear so pale that it almost gave the impression of being faintly luminous. It was also of a ghastly, cadaverous aspect, and I had no doubt the pitiful beast was in the final stage of starvation.

  “We watched until the creature gave a last violent convulsion, and its terrible howl tapered away to silence. It lay still, and almost in tears Mrs Littledale begged me to close and bar the window again. We could do no more than leave the creature where it had died until we should summon someone to bear away its body on the morrow.

  “Mrs Littledale could not bring herself to return to her room alone, and in my guilt at having insisted she keep me company at Stoke Moran I permitted her to doze in the chair in my room. However, neither of us actually got much sleep for the remainder of that night.

  “In the morning I was awakened by a shriek from outside, but this time the cry was human. I went racing from the house in my nightgown to find Mrs Littledale had already dressed and ventured outside to inspect the baboon’s corpse. As I came beside her I could readily understand her cry of shock and revulsion.

  “The large monkey had decayed to an astonishing degree in a matter of hours, so that all that remained was a husk-like figure fashioned from what looked like the pale grey paper of a wasp’s nest. Even as we watched, a mere breeze caused one of its upper limbs to break off and tumble away across the grass like a chunk of ash, breaking up as it went. As we continued to gaze upon it in disbelief the animal’s dog-like head caved in, crumbled and disintegrated, until not even its long fangs remained. All was swept up and away in a cloud of fine powder in only the few minutes that we stood watching mesmerised and aghast.

  “I was, of course, reminded of what the constable had told me about the remains of the snake that had been revealed inside the safe. What ailment, affliction or poison, I wondered, might cause two such different animals to decompose in so unnatural a way?

  “All we could do now was go about our day as we had planned, my most fervent desire being to see myself rid of Stoke Moran soon.

  “Later that day my Percy once more travelled to Surrey to discuss with me the progress made on divesting ourselves of Stoke Moran, and we also discussed our plans to move our wedding from May to June because of the strenuous occurrences of late. We thought to enjoy a quiet afternoon together at the estate now that my vile-tempered stepfather no longer dwelt there, but his shadow still lay heavily upon us, all the more so when I related to my fiancé the strange spectacle the housekeeper and I had witnessed the night before and our discovery that very morning. Mr Armitage was at a loss as to any explanation, his only half-heartened suggestion being that someone, perhaps one of the expelled gypsies, had placed a papier-mâché effigy upon the spot where the monkey had perished in the night. I do not think he held any more faith in this theory than I did. In any case, I also told him of my note to Mr Edward Thurn, and my fiancé expressed no regret regarding the offer I had extended, though he was concerned as to whether Mr Thurn truly had been ignorant of Dr Roylott’s intentions in wanting that poisonous snake sent to him from India. I assured him I could not conceive of my stepfather confiding in an accomplice when there was no need to do so, and that surely Mr Thurn only believed he was supplementing my eccentric stepfather’s existing menagerie.

  “Mr Armitage departed in the early evening, leaving me and Mrs Littledale alone at Stoke Moran once more. The night, however, proved uneventful and Mrs Littledale slept in her own room, though I dreamed that the cheetah, bony and ghastly pale, circled the house all night looking for a way in.

  “The following day I was sitting on my sister’s bed leafing through some of her books and feeling very dispirited by my recollection of the terror and confusion that had preceded her death when Mrs Littledale sought me out to say we had a visitor. When she gave me his name I told her to have him brought to me in one of the seldom-used sitting rooms in the central portion of the mansion. It was none other than Mr Edward Thurn, who greeted me very cordially and took a seat opposite me while Mrs Littledale went to prepare tea. I had previously formed no mental image of the man, but his appearance, except for his shortness of stature, did not surprise me. He was thin but appeared healthy, his age difficult to ascertain – I would say anywhere from late forties to perhaps sixty – his black hair less grey than my own. His face was very brown, leathery, and deeply creased by much exposure to the sun, with exceedingly keen dark eyes couched in fleshy folds. I should think at a distance he might be taken for a man of the Orient. He wore good clothes that had seen better days.

  “He said to me, ‘I believe I had a presentiment that things were not well with your stepfather, and that was part of my reason for returning to England. I only just arrived several days ago and immediately wrote that letter you received, to let him know. I am terribly sorry to learn of the death of my good friend, Dr Roylott, and I am sorry for your loss as well, Miss Stoner. I know he had acted as a devoted father to you and your twin since you were very small children.’

  “Unable to stopper the bitterness that rose to my lips, I replied, ‘He never told you of her passing? Small wonder. My twin, Julia, expired two years ago, Mr Thurn. She was murdered by your friend, my devoted stepfather.’

  “‘What is this you say?’ my visitor cried. His expression of surprise and dismay appeared utterly genuine to me.

  “‘It is a long, strange story,’ I forewarned him, and I proceeded to tell it in all its details, naturally including your own involvement, gentlemen. Mr Thurn sat riveted and was plainly disturbed by what I had to report of his long-time friend’s murder of my sister,
his plot to murder me as well and his own accidental death by the very serpent my guest had shipped from India.

  “Mr Thurn turned his face away and said in an odd, quiet tone, ‘But I never actually shipped him that snake. Nor the baboon or cheetah.’

  “‘You did not?’ said I. ‘But if not you, then who?’

  “He said, ‘I am responsible for providing those creatures to him, but not in the way you imagine. It would be very difficult to make you understand, but in all fairness it is my duty to try, after the ordeals you have suffered. Yet first I must explain to some degree about myself.’ He turned his eyes back on me, and if they had been of a piercing quality before I nearly squirmed under their gaze now. I trembled at their unnerving intensity and yet, as though hypnotised, I could not look away. There was a quality to them that suggested the man possessed an immense reservoir of internal power. I will stress, however, that this did not strike me necessarily as an evil force, but as a power such as electricity held in reserve.

  “Mr Thurn began, ‘You may wonder, as I wonder now myself, how Dr Roylott and I could be such close friends, and yet even after all our years of association with him, you and I were blind to the full picture of his nature. We were similar in that we both possessed questing minds and restless spirits that led us to seek fulfilment beyond the conventional precincts of man. That is, of European man. I travelled widely in my restlessness, beginning in my youth, without even quite knowing at first if my quest was a spiritual one. I encountered your stepfather in India, yes, but it was not due to my being a patient of his, as he led you to believe. It was in prison that we met, after he had been convicted of killing his servant. My own crime was of a political nature, but I have more than once run afoul of local law in my travels, since I have often journeyed to places that were prohibited and seen things I was, as an outsider, not meant to see.

  “‘I was released from prison much before Dr Roylott, and I resumed my travels, going on to the holy temple of Badrinath, taking my cue from the Portuguese Jesuits Andrade and Marques and masquerading as a Hindu on pilgrimage. After some time in that region I travelled on to Tibet, entering it through the Mana Pass in the Himalayas.’”

  Here Mr Holmes cut in, “Are you sure this fellow was not deceiving you, Miss Stoner? Tibet has forbidden foreigners from crossing its borders for the past three decades. Violating that ban by entering through such a conspicuous point of ingress as the Mana Pass leaves me suspicious.”

  I replied, “I can only relate what I was told, Mr Holmes, and he did say that he had been turned back in an earlier attempt. But Mr Thurn informed me, without any apparent boastfulness, that he was masterful at disguise.”

  “He rather reminds me of you in that regard,” Dr Watson said to his friend.

  “He also claimed rather provocatively that he had developed the means of going unseen, though he did not elaborate on what he meant by that.”

  Mr Holmes said, “The thought of his actually succeeding in penetrating Tibet is intriguing. I have long desired to travel there myself, and one day may attempt it. But again I apologise. Please resume your account.”

  I did so. “Mr Thurn went on with his personal history, saying, ‘Though anyone who aids a foreigner who has infiltrated Tibet runs the risk of punishment, including death, I nevertheless met people who, having lived all their lives in so isolated a region, were as fascinated by me as I was by them. I spent two years in Tibet, during which I devoted most of my time to the study of Buddhism. I was fortunate in impressing with my earnestness a gomchen, a Tibetan hermit said to be capable of working wonders, who at great risk accepted me as his secret student. It was he who taught me how to conjure seemingly living entities with my mind.’

  “‘I do not understand,’ I told him.

  “He said, ‘I warned you that it would be difficult for you to accept. Nevertheless, what I am telling you is the truth. It is possible for one to materialise a form the Tibetans call a tulpa, which is a manifestation of thought with the appearance of a living being, brought about through intensely focused concentration. It is an illusion, but not a delusion; a hallucination so convincing that not only does the conjurer himself witness it but, ideally, it would be visible to others as well, this phantom construction as perceptible as an authentic material entity. A tulpa might even, ultimately, take on a personality of its own and defy its master’s direction, living so to speak as an independent being.’

  “‘Are you suggesting,’ I said, ‘that the snake…’

  “‘Not only the snake,’ he answered. ‘I manifested the baboon and the cheetah, too, purely through the power of thought. They were not sent physically from India. It was my mind that sent them here at Dr Roylott’s behest. During our correspondence after I had left Tibet I told your stepfather of my experiences there and my own success in conjuring tulpas, and he was thoroughly intrigued. We devised an experiment: would I be able to manifest a tulpa remotely, by transmitting the power of my thoughts to his location in England, with the doctor acting as a sort of receiver to supplement my efforts? Would it be possible to create a tulpa through such a joint effort? Oh, of course the conjurations were mostly mine, but your stepfather’s belief in my efforts, and his concentration on the subjects we chose as our models, helped enable them to manifest, and after they had done so it was mostly through Dr Roylott’s own will that these forms were sustained. With these things, belief is all, a belief more complex than the blind faith of religion, because one is always aware that the object of belief is an illusion.

  “‘First I created the baboon, based on mental images of creatures I had seen in South Africa. Shortly after, I manifested the cat, patterned after the Asiatic cheetah. It was not until later that Roylott specifically requested a dangerous serpent. I did question why he should want this particular creature, and his response was that it would render our ongoing experiment all the more fascinating. Would a mouse, for instance, seemingly struck by the fangs of this snake believe so in the creature’s veracity and its non-existent poison that it would perish as a result? Have you heard of the aborigines of Australia and their bone pointing? How one of them so cursed will die purely from their belief in the magic?’

  “‘This is preposterous,’ I protested. ‘This snake drank milk, proving that it required sustenance as a physical creature. It could not have been an illusion. I am not calling you a liar, sir, and I believe at least that you yourself believe in such things, but my stepfather must have acquired actual animals from another source if not from you.’

  “‘Miss Stoner,’ he said, with his black eyes burning into me, ‘snakes do not care to drink milk. If your stepfather put a saucer of milk in front of it, it was only a prop to help him continue to think of the snake as an actual creature, and a loyal pet. Summoning a snake by whistling? As a snake does not hear as we do, I am doubtful one might be trained in such a manner. Again, something Roylott did only to convince himself that his snake was real and obedient to him. I hardly believe that an actual snake could climb a bell pull, so as to lower itself to your sister’s bed and back again, but this snake did so because your stepfather imagined that it could. In as much as he was able, he was controlling those beasts. Why, I ask you, do you think the baboon and cheetah, which could easily have passed over the wall of your property here, did not do so? And, incidentally, there is no such animal as a swamp adder. Oh, infrequently the African swamp viper may be called that, but its venom is not nearly as toxic as that I imagined for the cobra-like snake I invented for Dr Roylott. Creating an animal that did not truly exist, based on the attributes of a number of snakes, was another aspect of the proposed experiment. I gave it the fanciful name of swamp adder, and it is interesting to learn that the appellation suggested itself spontaneously to the sensitive mind of your friend Mr Holmes.’

  “I said, ‘But if my stepfather knew all along that the snake was not real, why then did he himself succumb to its bite when it was frightened by Mr Holmes back into Dr Roylott’s chamber?’

&nbs
p; “Mr Thurn said gravely, ‘In order for the snake to successfully kill you, Miss Stoner, at that moment your stepfather believed in its existence with all of his might. Without my level of training, he could not balance his belief with his awareness of the illusion. His instinctual fear of a snake attacking him leant the manifestation potency. No poison entered him. It was his own mind that killed him.’

  “‘Yet how,’ I asked, ‘would this have worked on my sister, who never knew it was a snake that attacked her? She could not die of imagined poisoning if she did not take in the illusion of a snake at more than a glance. She referred to it only as a speckled band.’

  “He said, ‘Grimesby Roylott was a man of great willpower; it is why our experiment was so successful. His will that your sister should die transmitted itself to her mind, almost in the way of a powerful hypnotic suggestion. It was not the snake that killed her, not even an illusory snake, so much as the sheer malevolent force of his own mind. He had no fear of puncture wounds being found on her flesh, because there would be none. You told me your first impression regarding your sister’s demise was that she had died of fear. This was essentially true.

  “‘Those three animals were extensions of your stepfather’s will; that is why they were sustained and were so convincing. And from what I have now learned from you, seeing my complicated old friend in a new light, I suspect it was not only to frighten villagers away from his property that he let the baboon and cheetah roam free, but to frighten you and your sister from venturing outside. To keep you prisoners here. I cannot help but wonder if it was not only the money he would lose once you two should marry that caused him to react in so brutal a manner, but fear that you two, upon going into the world, would inform others of his behaviours.’

  “My visitor’s speculation caused me great discomfort, and you will forgive me if I do not elaborate,” I said, with my eyes averted from Mr Holmes and Dr Watson. I could utter no more on the subject of this personal distress. On the occasion that we had first met I had exposed the marks of Dr Roylott’s fingers on the flesh of my wrist, and the great fear of my stepfather I had evinced had likely suggested to Mr Holmes and Dr Watson abuses that, as gentlemen, they had not pressed me to discuss.