Associates of Sherlock Holmes Page 23

  I continued with my narrative, “Mr Thurn went on to say, ‘Roylott could have had a great mind. He had immense resources of willpower and intensity, but he lacked self-discipline, and now I see how thoroughly he lacked the moral compass as well. Knowing that he had killed a man in uncontrolled fury should have been enough of an indication that he was not a man with whom to share the knowledge I held, but I am too trusting a soul and believe too much in a person seeking betterment. Yet I knew his appetites tended toward the wanton. You told me of the days and even weeks he would spend in the tents of the gypsies he permitted to encamp on this property. I am embarrassed to confess that before I manifested the animals, his first request was for me to conjure a woman for him, which I refused to do.’

  “Here, my guest paused and looked away from me as though lost in deep reflection. At last, he directed his eyes back to me.

  “He said, ‘My blindness, Miss Stoner, and my assistance in your stepfather’s plans, however unknowing on my part, shame me beyond words. Would that I had never met him, or, having done so, had never struck up a friendship with him no matter how fascinating a person he was to me, how ardent a believer in the marvels I revealed to him. I cannot undo what I have done, but the least I can do is make certain that the last of the three tulpas is destroyed. With your stepfather dead the creatures have lost the force of his will and have, in a way, been starving to death, so the tulpa of the cat may have already expired as well, but I must be sure of it. You say you feel the cheetah has taken shelter in a closed-off wing of this house? Please, will you take me there now?’

  “And so I did, first fetching the key to the door that closed off the disused wing. I also brought with me a lantern, and as I unlocked the door I whispered to Mr Thurn, ‘A portion of the roof has collapsed, and I suspect the cheetah has either crawled in through there or through a broken window, although most of them are boarded up.’

  “He said nothing, but merely stood silently and grimly beside me at the threshold as I drew the door open. I felt a terror that the great cat might at that very instant be waiting in the shadows beyond to pounce upon us, but the lamplight only showed us a long hallway stretching off into darkness. Again I whispered, ‘The damage to the roof is over the central room. With the door shut and locked it is fortunate that room does not communicate with the rest of the wing.’

  “Before I could utter more, my visitor said, ‘It is in there. I can sense it. You may close the door now, Miss Stoner, and pray lock it and leave it locked no matter what sounds you may hear from within.’

  “As I locked the door, and I will say I was greatly relieved to do so, I asked, ‘What do you intend to do now?’

  “Said he, ‘I will be taking the earliest train back to London.’

  “‘London?’ I exclaimed. ‘But you said you meant to deal with this situation somehow, Mr Thurn.’

  “He said, ‘And so is it my intention, but I must be alone and undisturbed. I created these tulpas at a great remove, and at a remove I will destroy the last of them, but it will require the greatest concentration. It is perhaps even more difficult to unmake a tulpa than to make one. You see how they persisted even if only in a declining state after the death of your stepfather, though deprived of his belief in them? Even before his death they had taken on life of their own. I must have that life back. It will be no small effort.’ Here he affected a smile, but it was a horrid mockery of such an expression. He said, ‘To think that I studied and strived all these years, only to create weapons for a murderer.’

  “‘Is there nothing I can do?’ I asked him.

  “‘If it is possible,’ he replied, ‘you must focus on the knowledge that this creature is not a flesh and blood entity. It is an illusion, and you would do best to hold onto that thought with all your power, for surely the creature has been feeding off your own belief all this time, as well.’

  “Mr Thurn bid me good afternoon then, and the last I saw of him he was walking off in the direction of the Crown Inn, so as to get a dog-cart to take him to Leatherhead, where he would take a train to London.

  “You will not be surprised when I say I did not sleep that night as I lay wondering if I had entertained a madman in my home that day. And yet, almost against my will, I could not entirely dismiss what he had told me as absolute fancy. I suppose madmen are earnest in their madness, but this gentleman seemed entirely lucid to me. Looking into his too-keen eyes was much like looking into your own, Mr Holmes.

  “In any case, at about half past two in the morning my restlessness caused me at last to rise from my bed, take up my lantern and venture from my chamber, stepping quietly so as not to disturb Mrs Littledale next door. I was drawn to the locked door leading to the abandoned wing of the house. I do not know quite why, but it was as though I had sleepwalked there; that is to say, it did not seem a conscious decision. I feel now that I was acting on an intuition.

  “I leaned my head close to the panel but heard nothing beyond, even when I laid my ear against the wood. One might think I would then have gone back to my bedroom, and yet my compulsion had not been satisfied. I had brought the key with me as before, and again I unlocked the door and opened it while shining my lantern into the dreadful blackness beyond.

  “Oh that I had not done so, Mr Holmes, because I will never forget the sight that lay before me. I dare say I would not have needed my lantern to see into that long, dark passage, because the two figures situated in its centre seemed to radiate a soft, pale glow much as though bathed in moonlight. There on the floor of the hallway lay the cheetah, though I would not have recognised it as such had I not known what it was. Otherwise, I might easily have taken it for the skeleton of a large dog, impossibly imbued with life. It lay on its side, so wasted that it was a wonder it was able to raise its head. But its head was indeed raised, as it glared with a palpable malice at the man who stood over it only a few paces away.

  “That man was Mr Edward Thurn. I am embarrassed to tell you that he was without clothing, his skin appearing almost radiantly white as I have described. He was returning the animal’s gaze, but he had obviously heard me open the door and from the corner of his eye seen the glare of my lantern, for without taking his eyes off the creature he raised his left arm and pointed his finger at me. I understood what he signified by this gesture. He was commanding me to withdraw and close the door. This I did, and when I had turned the key in the lock I backed away from the door with the whole of my body shaking, for I had never in my life witnessed so ghastly a scene but for having watched my dear twin die before my very eyes. I returned to my room then and sat upon my bed, still shaking, until dawn. Only then could I summon the courage to return to the locked door and crack it open sufficiently to peer beyond. This time there was nothing to see but shadows. I experienced another intuition, and that was a certainty that the cheetah was gone forever.”

  At this point in my narrative Mr Holmes asked, “Might this nocturnal excursion have only been a dream, Miss Stoner? For I am sorry to report that your visitor Edward Thurn is no longer among the living.”

  “What’s this, Holmes?” Dr Watson said, quite surprised.

  “Really, Watson,” Mr Holmes said to him, “you must pay closer attention to the morning paper.” Here he gestured to a folded copy of that morning’s Daily Telegraph that rested nearby. “I knew the name as soon as you uttered it, Miss Stoner, but I wanted to hear your story in full before I admitted as much. Yet I suspect you are already aware of the man’s fate, for you have just now come from the place where he had taken a room in Upper Swandam Lane, have you not?”

  “You guess correctly, Mr Holmes,” said I.

  “I do not guess, Miss Stoner. I deduce. Your breathlessness when you entered this room and your agitated comportment indicated a very recent shock.”

  “I did not realise his death had already been reported in the paper. This morning when I inquired about Mr Thurn at the address given on the letter he had sent to my stepfather I was told there had been a terrifying cry
from his room at about three in the morning, and when the door was finally forced Mr Thurn was found lying dead on the bed, his eyes staring fixedly into nothingness. It was the opinion of those who saw him that his heart had given out.”

  “The cause given in the paper was apoplexy,” Mr Holmes stated. “But surely you see the dilemma here, Miss Stoner. The body of the obscure explorer and world traveller Edward Thurn was discovered at three in the morning, but you claim to have seen him standing in your very home at approximately half past two. It is impossible for him to have arrived back in London in so short a time.”

  “Precisely, Mr Holmes. It would be an impossibility under natural circumstances.”

  “Then I will propose supernatural circumstances, in keeping with your account. That it was not actually Mr Thurn you saw, but some projected essence of himself that he sent to deal with that other phantom being.”

  “Make of it what you will, Mr Holmes. It is all beyond me.”

  He clicked his pipe stem against his teeth, then pondered aloud, “Of course there is no such thing as a swamp adder. What was I thinking?”

  “With all respect to Miss Stoner, whose own trustworthiness I do not doubt,” Dr Watson said to his friend, “if one were to entertain for even a moment such outrageous notions, surely a man as hateful as Grimesby Roylott would not be capable of the mental feats this Thurn fellow claimed were required for their collaboration.”

  Lowering his pipe, Mr Holmes replied, “But Roylott was, in some ways, well suited to such an exercise, being that he felt he answered to no man or God, and that his mental acuity entitled him to power. There is no richer soil for the growth of evil than the supposition that one is superior to one’s fellow human beings. Mind, there are those who, being cognisant of their greater-than-average intelligence, will utilise it for the betterment of others as if it were a resource they had received in unfair quantity. But too many hoard their intelligence, and allow it to deform their self-conception into something superhuman, when in fact ‘inhuman’ would be the better designation. Unfortunately, Roylott was not a singular specimen; this world teems with his ilk.”

  “True enough,” said Dr Watson. “But all that aside, you are the most rational of men, and surely you cannot believe in ghosts and hobgoblins.”

  “There are more things in heaven and earth, Watson, than are dreamt of in my philosophy. There is only one matter I am certain of.”

  “And what is that, Holmes?”

  “One day, truly, I must travel to Tibet.”

  I rose from my chair so as to excuse myself, saying, “I am meeting my fiancé soon, Mr Holmes, so I will take my leave. Perhaps, as you muse upon the events I have recounted, you will come to some other explanation that escapes me, and if so I hope you will share it with me. Until that time, I extend to you the same invitation I did to poor Mr Thurn, who I fear may not only have died from the strain of battling his final monster, but may even have hoped to do so, to atone for the sins he felt he had committed.”

  “You are offering me your stepfather’s books, then?” enquired Holmes. “It is kind of you, and, as you mentioned there were some of an esoteric nature, I wonder if they might shed further light on these mysterious events, but I suggest that despite your reluctance to retain any of your stepfather’s belongings you keep them and read them yourself, Miss Stoner. You have a sharp and inquisitive mind, and perhaps it is you who will one day better explain to me what transpired at Stoke Moran. And, might I say, I hope your next home proves less haunted.”

  I reached my hand to the sitting room door. “I repeat that my only hope is to soon put Stoke Moran behind me once and for all. A good day to you, gentlemen.”

  A FAMILY RESEMBLANCE

  Simon Bucher-Jones

  Mycroft Holmes, Sherlock’s older, and perhaps smarter, brother was introduced to the canon in “The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter” (The Strand, 1893, thereafter, The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes). It has long been a regret of mine that no meeting between Mycroft and Professor Moriarty had come to light, and, while this story only supplies this at, as it were, one remove, I trust that this meeting of brothers throws light on the characters and on their respective siblings.

  —Simon Bucher-Jones

  Being an account extracted from the Papers of Mycroft Holmes, released under the sixty-year rule and subject to such elisions as have been deemed necessary for National Security. Mycroft appears to have had a near-perfect memory, but he augmented – and perhaps to a degree even produced – this effect, in practice, by writing memoranda of his day’s activity each night including a verbatim account of his conversations.

  A CONVERSATION AT THE DIOGENES CLUB

  There have been some interesting, though somewhat juvenile to my way of thinking, monographs out of Vienna in the last year1 – which speak to the central problem of humanity – that is, why it is so difficult for a rational man to deal with those who merely regard themselves as rational.

  Take my brother for example. There will be, I am sure, as our knowledge of the mind and body develop beyond that of Aristotle and the Edinburgh school of dissection-inclined materialists, a specific diagnosis that defines a man who oscillates between frantic activity and reptilian inaction. If the late Robert Louis Stevenson2 had been more astute, he might have determined that the divide in man was not good and evil, but energy and lethargy, or extroversion and introspection. An introspective evil is more akin to an introspective good than it is unlike it, and an active force in the world, whether for good or evil, must move in similar ways albeit to different aims.

  A rational being, as Hume might define one,3 determines the modes in which his brain best functions and, having so determined, constructs a mechanism to permit the world to encroach upon that functioning as little as possible, as is commensurate with making a rational supportive contribution to the maintaining of that mechanism. We pay a debt to society, in so much and so far as society is necessary for us, either as a value in itself, or as a means to permit our protection from mere anarchy or worse. Where the mechanism forms a join with the irrational world it may become partly irrational, but that contact should be limited so as to prevent such contamination.

  An irrational being, however effective it may be in one or more of its modes, risks everything in tearing itself apart when those modes do not suffice and, by working first in high gear and then in low, is always vulnerable to the specks of grit the world may throw into the delicate cogs of the vulnerable mind. Now I amend my path to minimise such dust, and by preserving the mechanism – under glass as it were – ensure its maximal utility. I wake, dress, attend my office, perform such tasks as are necessary, lunch at my club – whose silence suits the rumination over the morning’s data with a view to the creation of the afternoon’s synthesis. The daily task successfully dispatched I spend the evenings in equally splendid isolation. After a quiet sojourn once more at the Diogenes, I return to my lodgings – a grace and favour apartment in Admiralty Arch, courtesy of the Foreign Office – perfectly positioned to minimise unnecessary perambulations. I wash, I sleep – rarely dreaming (so far as I can determine) – and I repeat. All is as it should be. A working mind in a working body.

  My brother, as you will perhaps have heard, gads about. He wastes time. He has created a useful tool in the Baker Street Irregulars, and yet he cannot bring himself to rely upon them consistently, but must always be running about in this disguise or that. Such tactics are effective no doubt among the unobserving criminal classes, or the Scotland Yarders, and no doubt there is a minor satisfaction in the perpetual surprise of his Boswell, but there came a time when he ran afoul of one of the bigger fish, who was less taken in by the ribbons of weed wrapped around the caddisfly larva and saw it for the plump dragonfly morsel it was in potential. That bigger fish was your brother – oh please don’t bother to deny it. I know you have protested the professor’s innocence in the newspapers, but between these four walls we both have good reason to look with some alarm at our families’
wilder members, have we not?

  My brother too is also unafraid to break the law, for a supposedly good cause – a short-sighted moral position which has required me to intervene on his behalf with the authorities more often than I suppose he supposes. Yours did so for reasons of his own, about which I will not speculate.

  That my brother does much that is good is undeniable. That he does the most good he could do is hardly likely. If he were to train his mind to wider questions – to address through support of social legislation by the government of the day towards the underlying causes of crime, to watch as I watch for the broader threat, and the less obvious larceny – he would be, in time perhaps, as indispensable as myself. Still, they tell me I shouldn’t expect old heads on young shoulders.

  What has he been up to lately, you ask? Well, certainly – it is the hour when visitors are permitted to discourse here in the Stranger’s Room, and I can perceive you will need time to consider my last chess move. I have no objection to making my observations on my brother more specific.

  If you were to believe that the accounts of the ingenious Watson4 represent the norm or status quo of my brother’s activities, rather than a subset selected by their suitability for publication, you might conclude that the cases that come to my brother’s attention invariably begin with an impassioned plea from a caller at their Baker Street rooms. Perhaps a masked member of the nobility, or a governess singularly attractive for her class. However, Watson has not given publicity to the fact that Sherlock, like a little dog eager for scraps, has taken to calling monthly on the detectives of the Yard in a carefully timed “wander” through their offices that takes in each in turn without permitting the others to observe his interest. Thus he gains an early insight into cases yet to be from his minute observations of their environs and his picking up of casual gossip, to which the common constable is not immune. It is generally at around three-forty or so on the third Wednesday of the month that he calls upon Inspector Lestrade.