The Mammoth Book of New Sherlock Holmes Adventures (58 page)

“No indeed; our man of business pays over my allowance in gold. But – good heavens – how can you know this?”

“Yours is a strong schoolboy signature, not yet worn down by repeated use in the world, such as the signing of many cheques. After ten thousand prescriptions, Watson’s scrawl is quite indecipherable in all that follows the W. But we digress.”

Traill nervously rubbed the back of his right hand as he went on. “The devil of it is that Selina … that my elder sister talks to spirits.”

I fancied that I took his point a trifle more quickly than the severely rational Holmes. “Séances?” I said. “Mischief in dark rooms with floating tambourines, and the dead supposedly called back to this sphere to talk twaddle? It is a folly which several of my older female patients share.”

“Then I need not weary you with details. Suffice it to say that Selina suffers from a mild monomania about the ingratitude of her young brother – that is, myself. Unfortunately she has never married. When I assume formal control of our father’s fortune, her stipulated income from the estate will cease. Naturally I shall reinstate and even increase the allowance … but she is distrustful. And the spirits encourage her distrust.”

“Spirits!” snapped Holmes. “Professor Challenger’s recent monograph has quite exploded the claims of spirit mediums. You mean to say that some astral voice has whispered to this foolish woman that her brother plans to leave her destitute?”

“Not precisely, sir. On the occasion when I was present – for sisters must be humoured – the device employed was a ouija board. You may know the procedure. All those present place a finger on the planchette, and its movements spell out messages. Nonsense as a rule, but I remember Selina’s air of grim satisfaction as that sentence slowly emerged: beware an ungenerous brother. And then, the words that came horribly back to mind on my twenty-fifth birthday: fear not the hand that moves against its own kin shall suffer fire from heaven.

“And my hand did suffer, Dr Watson. When I took up the pen to sign that paper in the solicitor’s office, it burnt like fire as though in my very bones!”

I found myself at a loss. “The pen was hot?”

“No, no: it was a quill pen, a mere goose feather. Our family lawyer Mr Jarman is a trifle old-fashioned in such matters. I do not know what to think. I have made the attempt three times since, and my hand will not sign the document. Jarman is so infernally kind and sympathetic to my infirmity, but I can imagine what he thinks. Could some kind of mesmerism be in operation against me? What of the odic force? Some men of science even give credence to the spirit world – ”

“Pardon me,” said Holmes, “but with my colleague’s permission I would like to administer two simple medical tests. First, a trivial exercise in mental acuity. This lodging is 221b Baker Street, and it is the seventeenth of the month. How rapidly, Mr Traill, can you divide 221 by seventeen?”

As I marvelled and Traill took up the pencil to calculate, Holmes darted to his cupboard of chemical apparatus, returning with a heavy stone pestle and mortar. In the latter he had placed a small mirror about three inches square. Looking at Traill’s paper, he said: “Excellent. Quite correct. Now, a test of muscular reactions – kindly shatter this glass
now.
”

Traill performed the feat handily enough, with one sharp tap of the pestle, and stared in puzzlement. It resembled no medical procedure that I knew.

Holmes resumed his seat, rubbing his hands in satisfaction. “As I thought. You are not in the slightest superstitious, Mr Traill; I guessed as much from the tone in which you spoke of spirits. A mathematical result of thirteen does not make you flinch, nor did you hesitate before breaking a mirror. You are masking your real concern. Why do you consult a doctor? Because you fear madness.”

With a sob, Traill buried his face in his hands. I stepped to the gasogene and spirit-case, and mixed him a stiff brandy-and-soda with Holmes’s nodded approval. In another minute our client had composed himself, and said wryly: “I see that I have fallen among mind-readers.”

“My methods, alas, are more prosaic,” said Holmes. “Inference is a surer tool than wizardry. I now infer that there is some special circumstance you have yet to reveal to us, for I recall no history of insanity in the family of Sir Maximilian Traill.”

“You are troubled and overwrought,” I put in, “but speaking as a doctor I see no sign of madness.”

“Thank you, Dr Watson. I will begin again, and tell you of the red leech.

“My lodgings are in Highgate and – since the allowance from my father’s estate frees me from the need to seek employment – I have fallen into the habit of walking on Hampstead Heath each morning, in search of inspiration for the verses by which I hope one day to be known. (
The Yellow Book
was good enough to publish one of my triolets.) Some friends used to chaff me for being a fixed landmark at luncheon-time, when I generally enjoyed a meal of sandwiches and a bottle of Bass in the vicinity of the Highgate Ponds.” Traill shuddered. “Never again! I remember the day quite vividly: it was a warm Tuesday, perhaps six months ago …”

“Prior to your twenty-fifth birthday?” asked Holmes sharply.

“Why, yes. I sat on the grass in a reverie, idly watching someone’s great black retriever splash in and out of the water. I was thinking of foolish things … my sister’s maggot of distrust, and the structure of the sestina, and
The Pickwick Papers
– you will remember Mr Pickwick’s investigations of tittlebats and the origin of the Hampstead Ponds which lie across the heath. My thoughts were very far away from the heath. Perhaps I even dozed. Then I felt a hideous pain!”

“On the back of your right hand?” said Holmes.

“Ah, you have seen me rub it when troubled.”

“Already my methods are transparent to you,” Holmes remarked with pretended chagrin.

I leaned across to look. “There is a mark resembling a scald, or possibly an acid-burn.”

“It was the red leech, doctor. You will surely have heard of it. A repulsive, revolting creature. The thing must have crept on me from the long grass; it clung to my hand, its fangs – or whatever such vermin possess – fixed in me.”

“I know of no such leech,” I protested.

“Perhaps it is a matter which does not concern a general practitioner,” said Traill with a hint of reproach. He plucked a folded piece of paper from his wallet, and handed it to me; it was a newspaper clipping. I read aloud: “Today a warning was issued to London dwellers. Specimens of
Sanguisuga rufa,
the highly poisonous red leech of Formosa, have been observed in certain parkland areas of North London. The creature is believed to have escaped from the private collection of a naturalist and explorer. A representative of the Royal Zoological Society warned that the red leech should be strictly avoided if seen, for its bite injects toxins with long-lasting effects, which may include delusions, delirium or even insanity. The leech is characteristically some three to four inches in length, and is readily distinguished by its crimson hue.”

“Most instructive,” said Holmes dreamily.

Traill continued: “The horror was unspeakable. The leech clung to my hand, biting with a burning pain, rendering me too horrified to move. I was lucky that a doctor was passing by, who recognized the awful thing! He plucked it from my flesh with a gloved hand and threw it aside into the undergrowth. And then, straight away, on the grass of Hampstead Heath, this Dr James unpacked his surgical instruments from his black bag and cut the mouth-parts of the horrid beast out of my hand, while I averted my gaze and struggled not to cry out. ‘A narrow escape young fellow,’ he said to me. ‘If my eye had not been caught by the press report’ – and here he handed me the scrap of paper which you hold – ‘it might have gone badly for you. There is something in Providence after all.’ I thanked Dr James profusely, and at my insistence he charged me a guinea. Although he had dressed the tiny wound carefully, it was painful and slow to heal.

“And now you know why I fear madness. My mind seems unclouded, but my senses betray me – the leech-bitten hand burns like fire when I try to move against my sister’s wishes, as though her infernal spirits were real after all.”

“Quite so,” said Holmes, regarding him with intense satisfaction through half-closed eyes. “Your case, Mr Traill, presents some extraordinarily interesting and gratifying features. Would you recognize Dr James if you met him again?”

“Certainly: his great black beard and tinted glasses were most distinctive.”

This seemed to cause Holmes some private merriment. “Excellent! Yet you now consult the estimable but unfamiliar Watson, rather than the provenly knowledgeable James.”

“I confess that in my over-excitement I must have misheard the address Dr James gave to me. There is no such house-number at the street in Hampstead where I sought him.”

“Better still. The time has come to summon a cab, Watson! We can easily reach the Highgate Ponds before twilight.”

“But to what purpose?” I cried. “After six months the creature will be long gone, or dead and rotted.”

“Well, we may still amuse ourselves by catching tittlebats – as Mr Pickwick chose to call sticklebacks. The correct naming of creatures is so important, is it not?”

All through the long four-wheeler cab ride I struggled to make sense of this, while Holmes would talk of nothing but music.

In the bleak grey of late afternoon, Hampstead Heath was at its most desolate. A thin, cold rain continued to fall. The three of us trudged through wet grass on our fool’s errand.

“I must ask you for a supreme effort of memory, Mr Traill,” declared Holmes as the ponds came into view. “You must cast your mind back to that Tuesday in the spring. Remember the pattern of trees you saw as you sat on the ground; remember the dog that pranced in the water. We must know the exact place, to within a few feet.”

Traill roamed around dubiously. “It all looks different at this time of year,” he muttered. “Perhaps near here.”

“Squat on your heels to obtain the same perspective as when you sat,” suggested Holmes. After a few such reluctant experiments, our client indicated that he was as close as memory would take him.

“Then that patch of hawthorn must be our goal – the leech’s last known domicile,” Holmes observed. “Note, Watson, that this picnic-spot is several yards from the beaten path. The good Dr James must have been quite long-sighted, to see and recognize that leech.”

“He might easily have been taking a short cut across the grass,” I replied.

“Again the voice of reason pours cold water on my fanciful deductions!” said Holmes cheerfully. As he spoke, he methodically prodded the hawthorn bushes with his walking-stick, and turned over the sodden mass of fallen leaves beneath. He seemed oblivious to the chill drizzle, now made worse by a steadily rising wind from the east. A quarter of an hour went miserably past.

Then – “A long shot, Watson, a very long shot!” cried my friend, and pounced. From a pocket of his cape he had produced a pair of steel forceps, and from another a large pill-box. Now something red glistened in the forceps’ grip, and in a trice the thing was safely boxed. Traill, who had given an involuntary cry, backed away a step or two with an expression of revulsion.

“
Another
of the vile creatures?”

“I fancy it is the same,” Holmes murmured. And not a word more would he utter until we were installed in a convenient public house which supplied us with smoking-hot whisky toddies. “It is villainy, Mr Traill,” he said then. “One final test remains. I experimented not long ago with a certain apparatus, without fully comprehending its possibilities in scientific detection …”

It was late night in Baker Street, and the gas-mantles burnt fitfully. A smell of ozone tinged the air, mingled with a more familiar chemical reek. Holmes, as he linked up an extensive battery of wet cells, expounded with fanciful enthusiasm on the alternating-current electrical transmission proposals of one Mr Nikola Tesla in the Americas, and of how in the early years of the new century he fully expected electric lighting to be plumbed into our lodgings, like the present gas-pipes. I smiled at his eagerness.

At length the preparations were complete. “You must refrain from touching any part of the equipment,” Holmes now warned. “The electrical potential which drives this cathode-ray tube is dangerously high. Do you recognize the device, Watson? The evacuated glass, the tungsten target electrode within? It has already been employed in the United States, in connection with your own line of work.”

The tangle of glassware, the trailing wires and the eerie glow from the tube made up an effect wholly unfamiliar to me, reminiscent perhaps of some new scientific romance by Mr H.G. Wells. It was only very gingerly that young Traill placed his right hand where Holmes directed.

“I have seen something a little like this before,” he mused. “Old Wilfrid Jarman’s brother dabbles in electrical experiments. He vexed Selina once with a tedious demonstration of a model dynamo.”

“Healing rays?” I asked. “Earlier in the day we spoke of Mesmerism, which according to my recollection was a charlatan’s ploy to heal by what he called animal magnetism. Has electrical science made this real at last?”

“Not precisely, Watson. The apparatus of Herr Doktor Röntgen does not heal, but lights the way for the healer. In years to come, I fancy it will be remembered as the greatest scientific discovery of the present decade.”

“But I see nothing happening.”

“That is what you may expect when there is nothing to see. – No, Mr Traill, I must entreat you to remain quite still. The rays of Röntgen, which he has named for algebra’s unknown quantity X, do not impinge on the human eye. That faint glow which you may discern is not the true glow, but secondary fluorescence in the glass.”

I pondered this, while Holmes kept a wary eye on his pocket-watch. “Very well,” he said at last. “You may lift your hand now, but have a care …” And he took up the mysterious sealed envelope on which Traill’s hand had rested. “What the eye cannot see, a photographic plate can still record. I must retreat to the darkroom and – lift the veil of the spirits. Kindly entertain our guest, Watson.”