Sherlock Holmes in Orbit Read online

  “But why was the box buried under the mound?” I asked. “It shows something of the pathology of that man, that he would do such a thing. Pure egotism. I, of course, did not know what I would find under that pile of stones, but when I realized that it had been erected no more than twenty years earlier, I began to grasp what was going on.

  “The Dolgorukys were murdered as part of this elaborate deception. When the time came, one of his minions contrived to deliver the fraudulent testament and ring to Countess Dolgoruky. They even made certain that she had read about my exploits, and perhaps convinced her mother to return to England. Oh, Watson, I must say this was a delicious trick!”

  And he burst into the loudest, longest laugh I had ever heard.

  THE ADVENTURE OF THE FIELD THEOREMSby Vonda N. McIntyre

  Holmes laughed like a Bedlam escapee.

  Considerably startled by his outburst, I lowered my Times, where I had been engrossed in an article about a new geometrical pattern discovered in the fields of Surrey. I had not yet decided whether to bring it to Holmes’s attention.

  “What amuses you so, Holmes?”

  No interesting case had challenged Holmes of late, and I wondered, fearfully, if boredom had led him to take up, once again, the habit of cocaine.

  Holmes’s laughter died, and an expression of thoughtful distress replaced the levity. His eyes revealed none of the languorous excitement of the drug.

  “I am amused by the delusions of our species, Watson,” Holmes said. “Amusing on the surface, but, on reflection, distressing.”

  I waited for his explanation.

  “Can you not discern the reason for my amusement, Watson—and my distress? I should think it perfectly obvious.”

  I considered. Should he encounter an article written particularly for its humorous content, he would pass straight over it, finding it as useless to him as the orbits of the planets. The description of some brutal crime surely would not amuse him. A trace of Moriarty would raise him to anger or plunge him into despair.

  “Ah,” I said, certain I had divined the truth. “You have read an account of a crime, I beg your pardon, the resolution of a crime, and you have seen the failings in the analysis. But,” I pointed out, somewhat disturbed by my friend’s indifference to the deeper ramifications, “that would indicate the arrest of an innocent victim, Holmes. Surely you should have some other reaction than laughter.”

  “Surely I should,” Holmes said, “if that were the explanation. It is not.” He shook the paper. “Here is a comment by Conan Doyle on Houdini’s recent performance.”

  “Quite impressive it was, too,” I said. ‘Thrilling, I would say. Did Sir Arthur find the performance compelling?” “Conan Doyle,” Holmes said with saturnine animosity, “attributes Houdini’s achievements to,” Holmes sneered, “‘mediumistic powers.’”

  “His achievements do strain credulity,” I said mildly. “Pah!” Holmes said. “That is the point, Watson, the entire and complete point! Would you pay good money to see him fail to escape from a sealed coffin?”

  “I suppose that I would not,” I admitted.

  “Were Houdini to tell you his methods, you would reply, ‘But that is so simple! Anyone could achieve the same effect—using your methods!’ “

  As Holmes often heard the same remark after explaining his methods, I began to understand his outburst.

  “I would say nothing of the sort,” I said. “I should say, instead, that he had brought the technique of stage magicianship to as near an exact science as it ever will be brought in this world.”

  Holmes recognized my comment with a brief smile, for I had often said as much to him about his practice of detection.

  “But it is true, Watson,” Holmes said, serious once more. “Anyone could achieve the same effect—were they willing to dedicate their lives to developing the methods, to studying the methods, to perfecting the methods! Then it is ‘so simple.’ “

  When Holmes deigned to lead an amazed observer through his deductive reasoning, the observer’s reaction was invariably the same: His methods were “perfectly obvious”; anyone, including the observer, could duplicate them with ease.

  “Conan Doyle claims friendship with Houdini,” Holmes said in disgust, “and yet he insults his friend. He dismisses Houdini’s hard work and ingenuity. Despite Houdini’s denials, Conan Doyle attributes Houdini’s success to the supernatural. As if Houdini himself had very little to do with it! What a great fool, this Conan Doyle.”

  “Easy on,” I said. “Sir Arthur is an intelligent man, a brave man. An inspired man! His imagination is every bit as exalted as that of Wells! His Professor Challenger stories compare favorably to War of the Worlds?’

  “I never read fiction,” Holmes said. “A failing for which you berate me continually. If I did read fiction, I would not doubly waste my time with the scientific romances you find so compelling. Nor am I interested in the mad fantasies of a spiritualist.” Holmes scowled through a dense cloud of pipe smoke. “The man photographs fairies in his garden.”

  “You are too much the materialist, Holmes,” I said. “With my own eyes I saw amazing things, unbelievable things, in Afghanistan—”

  “Ancient sleight of hand. Snake charming. The rope trick!” He laughed again, though without the hysterical overtones of his previous outburst. “Ah, Watson, I envy you your innocence.”

  I was about to object to his implications when he stayed my comment by holding up one hand.

  “Mrs. Hudson—”

  “—with our tea,” I said. “Hardly deserves the word ‘deduction,’ as her footsteps are plainly audible, and it is, after all, tea-time—”

  “—to announce a client.”

  Mrs. Hudson, our landlady, knocked and opened the door. “Gentleman to see you, Mr. Holmes,” she said. “Shall I set an extra cup?”

  The figure of a man loomed behind her in the shadows. “Thank you, Mrs. Hudson,” Holmes said. “That would be most kind.”

  Mrs. Hudson placed a calling card on the tray by the doorway. Holmes rose to his feet, but did not trouble to read the card. As our visitor entered, I rose as well and made to greet him, but Holmes spoke first.

  “I observe, Dr. Conan Doyle,” Holmes said coolly, “that you were called abruptly into the fields, and have spent the morning investigating the mystery of the damaged crops. Investigating without success, I might add. Has a new field theorem appeared?”

  Conan Doyle laughed heartily, his voice booming from his powerful chest.

  “So you’ve introduced me already, John!” he said to me. “You were looking out the window when my carriage arrived, I’ve no doubt.” He smiled at Holmes. “Not such a clever deduction, Mr. Holmes.” He wrinkled his noble brow and said to me, “But how did you know I’ve just come to town, and how did you know of my involvement with the field theorems?”

  “I’m afraid I had no idea you were our visitor, Sir Arthur,” I said. “I did not even know we had a visitor until Holmes surmised your approach.”

  Sir Arthur chuckled. “I understand,” he said. “Bad manners, revealing the tricks of the trade. Even those as simple as prior knowledge.”

  Holmes concealed his annoyance; I doubt anyone who knew him less well than I would have noticed it. He gazed steadily at Sir Arthur. We seldom had visitors taller than Holmes, but Sir Arthur Conan Doyle exceeds six feet by four inches. Unlike my friend Holmes, who remained slender, indeed gaunt, even during his occasional periods of slothful depression, Sir Arthur dominated the room with his hearty presence.

  “How did you know about our visitor, Holmes?” I asked, trying to salvage the introductions.

  “I heard Sir Arthur’s carriage arrive,” he said dismissively, “as you would have done had you been paying attention.”

  Though somewhat put off by his attitude, I continued. “And Sir Arthur’s outing? His identity?”

  “My face is hardly unknown,” Sir Arthur said. “Why, my likeness was in the Times only last week, accompanying a revie
w—”

  “I never read the literary section of the Times,” Holmes said. “As Watson will attest.” He pointed the stem of his pipe at Sir Arthur’s pants cuffs. “You are a fastidious man, Sir Arthur. You dress well, and carefully. Your shave this morning was leisurely and complete. Your mustache is freshly trimmed. Had you planned your excursion, you would surely have worn suitable clothing. Therefore, your presence was required on short notice. You have wiped the mud of the fields from your boots, but you have left a smear on the polish. You have confronted a puzzle that has distracted you from your customary appearance, which I can easily see—anyone could easily see—is impeccable. As to the nature of the puzzle, unripe seed-heads of Triticum aestivum have attached themselves to your trouser cuffs. I am in no doubt that you investigated the vandalism plaguing fields in Surrey.”

  “Amazing,” Conan Doyle whispered, his ruddy face paling. “Absolutely amazing.”

  I could see that Holmes was both pleased by Conan Doyle’s reaction, and surprised that Sir Arthur did not laugh again and announce that his methods were simplicity itself.

  Holmes finished his recitation. “That you have failed to solve the mystery is self-evident—else why come to me?”

  Sir Arthur staggered. Leaping forward to support him, I helped him to a chair. I was astonished to perceive any weakness in a man of his constitution. He was quite in shock. Fortunately, Mrs. Hudson chose that moment to arrive with the tea. A good hot cup, fortified with brandy from the sideboard, revived Sir Arthur considerably.

  “I do apologize,” he said. “I’ve spent the morning in the presence of strangeness beyond any I’ve ever before witnessed. As you divined, Mr. Holmes, the experience has distracted me. To perceive your supernatural talents so soon thereafter—!”

  He took a deep draught of his tea. I refilled his cup, including rather more brandy. Sir Arthur sipped his tea, and let warm, pungent steam rise around his face. His color improved.

  “ ‘Supernatural?’ “ Holmes mused. “Well-honed, certainly. Extraordinary, even. But not in the least supernatural.”

  Sir Arthur replied. “If John did not tell you who I am, and you did not recognize my face, then you could only have discovered my name by—reading my mind!”

  “I read your name,” Holmes said dryly, “from the head of your walking stick, where it is quite clearly engraved.”

  Since the end of spring, the newspapers had been full of articles about mysterious damage to growing crops. Wheat stalks were crushed in great circles intersected by lines and angles, as if a cyclone had touched down to give mere humans a lesson in celestial geometry. Though the phenomena were often accompanied by strange lights in the sky, the weather was invariably fair. If the lights were lightning, it was lightning unaccompanied by thunder! No wind or rain occurred to cause any damage, much less damage in perfect geometrical form.

  Many suggestions had been put forth as to the cause of the unexplained diagrams, from hailstorms to electromagnetic disturbances, but blame had not yet been fixed. The patterns were the mystery of the year; the press, in a misinterpretation of modem physics in general and the theory of Maxwell in particular, had taken to calling the devices “field theorems.”

  Holmes had clipped and filed the articles, and painstakingly redrawn the figures. He suspected that if the patterns were the consequence of a natural force, some common element could be derived from a comparison of the designs.

  One morning, I had come into the sitting room to find him surrounded by crumpled paper. The acrid bite of smoke thickened the air, and the Persian slipper in which Holmes kept his shag lay overturned on the mantel among the last few scattered shreds of tobacco.

  “I have it, Watson!” Holmes had waved a drawing, annotated in his hand. “I believe this to be the basic pattern, from which all other field theorems are derived!”

  His brother, Mycroft, speedily dismantled his proof, and took him to task for failing to complete several lemmas associated with the problem. Holmes, chagrined to have made such an elementary (to Holmes), and uncharacteristic, mistake, appeared to lose interest in the field theorems. But it was clear from his comments to Sir Arthur that they had never completely vanished from his attention.

  After packing quickly, Holmes and I accompanied Sir Arthur to the station, where we boarded the train to Undershaw, his estate in Hindhead, Surrey.

  “Tell me, Sir Arthur,” Holmes said, as our train moved swiftly across the green and gold late-summer countryside, “how came you to be involved in this investigation?”

  I wondered if Holmes were put out. The mystery had begun in early summer. Here it was nearly harvest time before anyone called for the world’s only consulting detective.

  “It is my tenants who have been most troubled by the phenomenon,” said Sir Arthur, recovered from his earlier shock. “Fascinating as the field theorems may be, they do damage the crops. And I feel responsible for what has happened. I cannot have my tenants lose their livelihoods because of my actions.”

  “So you feel the vandalism is directed at you,” said I. Sir Arthur had involved himself in several criminal cases, generally on the side of a suspect he felt to be innocent. His efforts differed from those of Holmes in that Holmes never ended his cases with ill-advised legal wrangles. No doubt one of Sir Arthur’s less grateful supplicants was venting his rage against some imagined slight.

  “Vandalism?” Sir Arthur said. “No, this is far more important, more complex, than vandalism. It’s obvious that someone is trying to contact me from the other side.”

  “The other side?” I asked. “Of Surrey? Surely it would be easier to use the post.”

  Sir Arthur leaned toward me, serious and intense. “Not the other side of the country. The other side of ... life and death.”

  Holmes barked with laughter. I sighed quietly. Intelligent and accomplished as my friend is, he occasionally overlooks proprieties. Holmes will always choose truth over politeness.

  “You believe,” Holmes said to Sir Arthur, “that a séance brought about these field theorems? The crushed crops are the country equivalent of ectoplasm and levitating silver trumpets?”

  The scorn in Holmes’s voice was plain, but Sir Arthur replied calmly. He has, of course, faced disbelief innumerable times since his conversion to spiritualism.

  “Exactly so,” he said, his eyes shining with hope. “Our loved ones on the other side desire to communicate with us. What better way to attract our attention than to offer us knowledge beyond our reach? Knowledge that cannot be confined within an ordinary séance cabinet? We might commune with the genius of Newton!”

  “I did not realize,” Holmes said, “that your family has a connection to that of Sir Isaac Newton.”

  “I did not intend to claim such a connection,” Sir Arthur said, drawing himself stiffly upright. Holmes could make light of his spiritual beliefs, of his perceptions, but an insult to the familial dignity fell beyond the pale.

  “Of course not!” I said hurriedly. “No one could imagine that you did.”

  I hoped that, for once, Holmes would not comment on the contradiction inherent in my statement.

  Holmes gazed with hooded eyes at Sir Arthur, and held his silence.

  “It’s well known that entities from diverse places and times—not only relatives—communicate from the other side,” I said. “How extraordinary it would be, were Isaac Newton to return, after nearly two centuries of pure thought!”

  “ ‘Extraordinary,’ “ Holmes muttered, “would hardly be the word for it.” He fastened his gaze upon Sir Arthur. “Dr. Conan Doyle,” he said, “if you believe spirits are the cause of this odd phenomenon—why did you engage me to investigate?”

  “Because, Mr. Holmes, if you cannot lay the cause to any worldly agent, then the only possible explanation is a spiritual one. ‘When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth!’ You will help me prove my case.”

  “I see,” Holmes said. “You have engaged me to el
iminate causes more impossible than the visitations of spirits. You have engaged me ... to fail.”

  “I would not have put it so,” Sir Arthur said.

  The trip continued in rather strained silence. Sir Arthur fell into a restless doze. Holmes stared at the passing landscape, his long limbs taut with unspent energy. After an eternity, we reached the Hindhead station. I roused Sir Arthur, who awoke with a great gasp of breath.

  “Ma’am!” he cried, then came to himself and apologized most sincerely. “I was dreaming,” he said. “My dear, late mother came to me. She encourages us to proceed!”

  Holmes made no reply.

  Sir Arthur’s carriage, drawn by a pair of fine bays, awaited us.

  “The automobile can’t be started, sir,” the driver said. “We’ve sent to London for the mechanic.”

  “Very well, James,” Sir Arthur said. He shook his head as we climbed into the carriage. “The motor was quite astonishingly reliable when first I bought it. But recently it has broken down more often than it has run.”

  The comment drew Holmes’s attention. “When, exactly, did it begin to fail?”

  “Eight weeks past,” Sir Arthur said.

  “At the same time the field theorems began to appear,” Holmes said thoughtfully.

  Sir Arthur chuckled. “Why, Mr. Holmes, surely you don’t believe the spirits would try to communicate by breaking my autocar!”

  “No, Sir Arthur, you are quite correct. I do not believe the spirits would try to communicate by breaking your autocar.” “Merely a coincidence.”

  “I do not believe in coincidences.”

  Holmes was anxious to inspect the field theorems as soon as we arrived at Undershaw, but by then it was full dark. Sir Arthur showed the strain of a long and taxing day. He promised that we should leap out of bed before dawn and be at his tenant’s field as the first rays of the morning sun touched the dewdrops of night.