An Ensuing Evil and Others (28 page)

“What can I do for you, Sir Jelbart?” he inquired. “What brings you and your friends to my house?”

Holmes intervened immediately. “You’ll forgive me,” he said, “but when I saw your diving experiments the other day, I just had to come and meet you.”

Penwarne’s eyes narrowed. He glanced at Sir Jelbart, who was looking in astonishment at Holmes.

“I didn’t know it was generally known that I was making such experiments.”

Holmes smiled. “My dear sir, I have been reading Kleingert of Breslau s experimentations with diving equipment, and it seemed obvious you were using a machine to send compressed air to the diver.”

Harry Penwarne frowned. “Are you involved in deepsea diving, Mr. Holmes?”

“I have a little knowledge,” confessed Holmes. “Though I confess to being a mere amateur. I know that there are some new French inventions which have extended the time divers can remain underwater.”

“You mean the new compressor modification by Laplace of the Sorbonne?” inquired Penwarne.

“Exactly so. I understand that you, also, were a student at the Sorbonne?”

“I graduated from there ten years ago.”

“Pray what were you studying?”

“Marine engineering, of course.”

“I think, at that time, Dr. Marey was experimenting at the Sorbonne with his new invention, wasn’t he?”

“Dr. Marey? I do not know the gentleman.” Penwarne shook his head. “I am not a medical man, Mr. Holmes.”

Holmes looked at him sharply. “I did not say that he was a doctor of medicine.”

Penwarne’s mouth tightened.

“However, you are right. He was a physician, but his experiments were concerned with another discipline. Ten years ago, he invented the first motion pictures using a single camera.”

“Is that supposed to be of interest to me?” asked Penwarne defensively. “My study is marine engineering, sir.”

“You are possessed of a bright mind, Mr. Penwarne. You saw the potential of Marey’s camera and started your own development of it. But two years ago, Auguste and Louis Lumiere patented their cinematograph in Paris. They produced a combined camera and projector operating at sixteen frames a second. You were devastated. You were working on a similar system, but they were first with the patent. Therefore, I believe that you have turned your invention to a more dreadful use.”

“I have no idea what you mean,” protested Penwarne. His face was white now. His nervousness was selfevident. For the first time, I began to see the direction in which Holmes was leading.

“Your father was impecunious. You needed desperately to restore the family fortune; otherwise, you were faced with selling Tregriffian House to pay his debts. So a new plan came to your mind, one that would make you a mass murderer but rich. Using your projector, and a piece of film, you lured three ships to their doom. You went into the wrecking business as many folks in these parts used to do over a hundred years ago.”

“How do you claim that I managed to lure them?”

“With a film of some dancer that you probably made in Paris. Because of the angles involved to ensure the ships saw the image, you had to reflect your image via a third means. A concave mirror would bounce the image, which your projector shone onto it, across to the large rock covered with guano. That almost whitewash substance made a suitable screen on which to project it.”

“Rubbish,” snorted the now trembling Harry Penwarne. “The ships went down off the rocks. If I were able to do such a thing, how could I have collected the salvage from those wrecks?”

“You went diving there at night, with your assistant. People heard the whining and gasping of your compressed air apparatus, but being anchored behind the rocks, they did not see your boat. I presume that you went down looking only for the ship’s safe and taking cash and jewels. Perhaps you planned to lift some of the less easily negotiable materials at a later day….”

Harry Penwarne half rose from his chair, but his pale face and dark staring eyes were not on Holmes. They were staring past him.

“JeanClaude!” he cried in French. “We can bluff it out. Don’t give the game away!…”

I turned at once and saw Penwarne s manservant leveling a revolver at Holmes.

I confess that I was considered something of a crack shot when I was serving in the Northumberland Fusiliers, but until that instant I had never shot so well. I did so from my lap, for thus far only could I draw my revolver and let off a shot that impacted on the hand of JeanClaude. He cried out in pain. The gun fell from his hand. Captain Trevossow leaped forward and scooped it up to cover the manservant.

I was now covering Harry Penwarne, but the shock of the discovery of his nefarious crimes sent the young man into a state of incapability. He collapsed back in his chair.

“I cannot believe it!” cried the astounded Sir Jelbart. “What made you suspect young Harry?”

“When I realized that he was using a compressed air machine on his boat, as I said. Also, when you told me about noticing his bloodshot eyes. It’s a condition caused by breaking blood vessels in the eye, a hazard of deepsea diving that has not been overcome yet.”

Sir Jelbart shook his head. “Astounding,” he muttered.

“You were absolutely right in your theory, Sir Jelbart. The only problem I had was to discover how it was done. A search of the house will probably supply the evidence,” Holmes said airily. “You will find cameras, projectors, the electrical batteries he ferried out to the cave to work the projector, and above all, the film of the young woman dancing.”

“What was the meaning of the broken glass, Mr. Holmes?” asked Captain Trevossow. “Why was it broken?”

“Previously, no one had noticed the mirror that Penwarne had erected to reflect the image where it was needed, so that it could be seen from the ships. He was able to row to the rock and retrieve it at his leisure. Last night, however, he realized someone was near the rocks investigating. Our rockets gave us away. To destroy the evidence of the concave mirror, he used a rifle or pistol to shatter it to save time in rowing across from where he had the camera. He switched off his projector, dismantled it, and hurried home in his boat with his accomplice, JeanClaude. In his rush, he forgot to take the used Leclanche battery.”

As Holmes predicted, in a cellar of the old house, an entire laboratory was discovered with Penwarne’s experiments and models of cameras and projectors and various pieces of film he had shot.

Holmes spent a long time examining them with intense interest.

“In many ways, our friend Penwarne’s development of the camera, projector, and the film he used seems more advanced than Lumiere’s. The coated celluloid is inspirational. In other circumstances, Penwarne might have been a genius and pioneer of this new cinematography and made his fortune. Instead, like all twisted genius, he resorted to crime. Doubtless, he and his accomplice will make that early morning walk to meet the end of a hemp rope at Bodmin Moor. When all is said and done, he was stupid.”

I frowned. “Why stupid, Holmes?”

“Because the most successful criminal is one who does not draw attention to himself or his crime. A naked siren dancing on a rock—why, that is enough to bring all manner of interested persons rushing to this isolated part of Cornwall. The supernatural always entices people like moths are enticed to a candle. Sooner or later, he would have been discovered.”

“But you discovered him the sooner, Holmes,” I pointed out.

“It required no great mental effort on my part, dear fellow. I fear that people will think the less of my powers of deduction if they perceive this as a case of which I am proud. Therefore, I entreat you not to publish any account of it until after I have shuffled off this mortal coil.”

He gave a deep sigh.

“Now, I hope, we can return to our cottage and suffer no more interruptions. After all, I am down here to rest from such activities. Once again, my dear Watson, I think we may dismiss the matter from our mind, and go back with a clear conscience to the study of those Chaldean roots that are surely to be traced in the Cornish branch of the great Celtic speech.”

THE KIDNAPPING OF MYCROFT HOLMES

I
was watching the face of my estimable friend, Sherlock Holmes, who sat opposite me at the breakfast table. He was examining the telegraph that Mrs. Hudson had brought up with the tea tray, his features mirroring his perplexity. The tea was left untouched.

“Some bad news, Holmes?” I ventured, no longer able to contain my curiosity.

He glanced up and blinked. Then he held out the flimsy sheet of paper toward me. “A most singular communication from my brother, Mycroft.”

I took the telegraph and read:
Should anything happen to me, do not trust the man who is Gentle. If I disappear, look for me near the Lump of Goats in the land of the Race of Ciar
.—
Mycroft
.

I started to chuckle. “Is he fond of a tipple, this brother of yours?” I said. “It sounds as though he were the worse for a glass or two when he wrote it.”

But Holmes s face was serious, and he seemed concerned. “You do not know Mycroft. It is some cipher that I must solve. He must be in trouble if he cannot telegraph me in plain language.”

Holmes retired to his armchair, and soon I became aware of the wreath of smoke rising slowly from his pipe. It reminded me that I was short on tobacco and so, finishing my breakfast, I went out to the local tobacconist. I also bought a newspaper. When I returned, barely fifteen minutes later, I found Holmes in a high state of agitation.

“Watson,” he cried as I entered, “thank God you have returned. I need you to accompany me on a short trip.”

“Whatever is the matter, dear fellow?” I demanded, never having seen him moved to such emotion before.

“You’ll need an overnight case,” he went on, not heeding my question, “and pack your service revolver. I fear that there may be difficult times ahead.”

“Where are we off to?” I inquired.

“Dublin,” he said shortly.

“To Ireland?” I was astonished. “Whatever for?”

He turned to me with a haunted look in his eyes. “I received another telegraph but ten minutes ago. It is my brother, Mycroft. He has been kidnapped.”

It seems that I should pause in my narrative to make some explanation of those matters that Holmes was always reticent about my sharing with the English public in the accounts I made of his adventures. Of course, to the discerning eye, many clues as to the nature of Holmess background have been plainly visible in my chronicles, although it was at his insistence that I never clearly spelled them out. I refer to the fact that Sherlock Holmes is Irish or, to be more precise, AngloIrish. Holmes had, however, a fear of prejudice, and this was not without cause. Therefore, I have promised him (and stipulated to my executors) that my accounts of those cases directly concerned with his background, such as the one I am about to relate, will not be released until one hundred years after his death.

Sherlock Holmes was of the Holmes family of Galway, which settled in Ireland in the seventeenth century. His uncle, Robert Holmes, was the famous Galway barrister whom the Irish have to thank for the organization of their National Schools. The Sherlock family on his mothers side, after which he was named, arrived in Meath at the time of Henry IFs invasion of Ireland. He achieved distinction at Trinity College, Dublin, before winning a scholarship to Oxford—emulating his equally brilliant friend from Dublin, Oscar Wilde. His Irish background led to his interest in the Celtic languages and his subsequent authorship of such monographs as
Chaldean Roots in the Ancient Cornish Language
.

It was shortly after we met that I realized the acuteness of his ear in linguistic manners.

“Watson,” he had said reflectively. “A name very common in northeast Ulster. I detect a County Down diction. You are probably descended from the old Scottish family of Mac Bhaididh, for that is usually Anglicized as Watson or MacWhatty or MacQuatt.”

“Astounding, Holmes!” I gasped. “How did you know? I began my education in England at the age of seven!”

“Elementary, my dear Watson.” He smiled mischievously. “You still retain the rising inflection at the ends of sentences. The musical rhythm of an accent is harder to displace than pronunciation.”

It may also be remembered that Holmess two greatest antagonists—Professor Moriarty and Colonel Moran—shared his Irish background. Indeed, like seems to have attracted like. Had I a gold sovereign for every time someone with an Irish name and background crossed our path, I would be a rich man. Take our landlady, Mrs. Hudson. Many visitors who lacked a fine ear mistook her as Scottish, and Holmes (who was possessed of a perverse sense of humor) was not loath to play up this charade. She was, in actuality, an Irish lady who had been married to one of the numerous Hudsons of Kilbaha in County Kerry.

I make this brief digression merely so that the background to this extraordinary story may be more fully appreciated.

Holmes had been summoned to Dublin that day—a little over a year since we’d first met—by a laconic telegraph that read:
Mycroft kidnapped. Meet me at Merrion Square. Superintendent Mallon, DMP
. He explained that his brother, Mycroft, had his rooms in Merrion Square. DMP stood for the Dublin Metropolitan Police.

Having caught the nightboat train at Paddington, we arrived at Kingstown, the port near Dublin, in the early hours of Saturday morning May 6, 1882. I make mention of the date for the sake of the more historically minded reader, as this was an historic time for Ireland and its relations with Britain. During the journey—a wild, dark trip across the stormblown Irish sea spent mainly in the first class lounge nursing whiskeys to keep down the mal de mer—Holmes told me something of his brother, Mycroft. Mycroft was seven years older than Holmes, a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, who had decided to make his career in Dublin Castle, the seat of the imperial administration in Ireland. He worked in the fiscal department of the Under Secretary, a permanent official who was head of the Civil Service. According to Holmes, his brother was possessed of a brilliant mind but was indolent and not given to sports or physical exercise and so was heavy in build.