A Catch from the Trawl
HOLMES PUT OUT FEELERS, AS HE HAD SAID HE would, regarding our anonymous Bostonian. I did not like his use of the word: feelers. There was something too arthropodal about it for comfort, too tentacular. It put me in mind of the images of the Great Old Ones, the Elder Gods and the Outer Gods contained in various of the books that crowded the shelves in our rooms. For many of the gods, feelers was not a metaphor; rather, it was biology.
Holmes’s feelers took the form of letters to a number of recipients around London describing the Bethlem inmate in as much detail as he could. Of the venues these missives went to, most were illustrious academic institutions, including the Royal Society, the Royal Geographical Society, the Royal Academy and my alma mater the University of London. After all, an intellectual and scientist would surely seek out the company of other intellectuals and scientists. Outside the capital, Holmes contacted Camford and the better known boarding schools, where the Bostonian could have held a teaching post. At my prompting he tried our principal hospitals too, since the fellow may well have had to visit one in order to receive treatment, if his injuries had been inflicted while he was in England rather than in his homeland, or else for complications arising from them after the event. Adding to this extensive list were the major libraries and museums, and sundry gentlemen’s clubs, amongst them his brother’s favourite haunt the Diogenes.
This flurry of activity occupied the rest of the day, after which there was a lull. Come nightfall I took to my bed, Holmes to his needle and thence his violin. The scraping of bow on strings did not keep me awake but did infiltrate my dreams, becoming the yowling of a thousand cats who roamed the cobblestoned streets of a village I somehow knew to be called Ulthar. I, in my dream, had slain one of the countless cats of Ulthar – I had no idea how or why – and now its feline brethren were stalking me with malicious intent. Wherever I went along a maze of narrow lanes and alleyways, there cats waited for me, tails twitching, eyes aglow with a hunger for vengeance.
I do not recall how this nightmare ended. Either it elided into another, pleasanter but more forgettable dream or else it dwindled into nothingness. I do recall that I awoke to a becalmed Sherlock Holmes who now sat in his armchair by the window overlooking the street, knees drawn up to chin, amid a cocoon of pipe smoke. Around him lay books in haphazard profusion, the sitting-room shelves now full of gaps like missing teeth. These volumes constituted Holmes’s private library of the forbidden and the arcane, an extensive collection of grimoires, rare reference works and encyclopaedias of the abstruse, which he had accumulated steadily over the past decade and a half. It was clear he had been up all night perusing their contents.
He was in an uncommunicative state, not even deigning to answer my “good morning”, so I ate a solitary breakfast in silence, then took myself off to my practice. After an uneventful day of coughs, corns and colic I returned to Baker Street where the morose, withdrawn Holmes of the morning had been replaced by an ebullient whirlwind of energy.
“Watson! There you are! Good God, man, where have you been?”
“Where do you think I have been?” I said. “Seeing patients.”
“I have been waiting for you for hours.”
“You saw me leave with my medical bag. You know when I normally come home. How was the duration of my absence in any way unforeseeable?”
“Never mind. Never mind.” He flapped a telegram under my nose. “The trawl has brought in a catch. The president of the Royal Society, no less, the Right Honourable William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin, has replied to my enquiry. ‘Have encountered nobody matching description given,’” Holmes read from the telegram. “‘However, have met another young Yankee scientist, Nathaniel Whateley of Miskatonic University, Massachusetts. Resident in London for past two years pursuing studies here. Last encountered at Society’s Christmas function.’”
“Then this is no lead at all. Your catch is not even a tiddler.”
“But with a tiddler one may bait the hook for a larger fish. The Lord Kelvin seems to think that this Whateley might know our mystery man. Whateley hails, after all, from the same state. He is of similar age. He too is a scientist. Each of those factors increases exponentially the probability that their paths may have crossed.”
“Do they? London is a big place. So, for that matter, is Massachusetts. We do not even know that the unfortunate in Bethlem lived in London. Purfleet lies some six or seven miles outside the bounds of the metropolitan boroughs.”
“At the very least, if we can meet Nathaniel Whateley, we can interrogate him. Odds are he will have heard of a fellow New Englander with only half a face and one arm.”
“And thus be able to furnish us with a name. Where does Whateley live?”
“Kelvin avers, albeit without much certainty, that he resides in Pimlico.”
“No address?”
“None. But at least we have somewhere to start. Let us sally forth and hail a hansom. The game, as you so often have me declare in your stories, is afoot.”
* * *
Pimlico I have always found a dark, odd backwater of London. It seems defined not by what it is but by what it is not. It is neither Westminster nor Belgravia nor Chelsea, but rather occupies a trapezoidal space bounded by those three well-heeled and desirable boroughs and, to the south, by the Thames, as though it were created merely to fill a gap in the capital’s geography, like some sort of architectural patch. Its Regency-style terraces, for all their white frontages, look drab and forlorn, its treeless streets joyless.
This impression I found all the more marked as our cab clattered towards its destination beneath a sinking, reddening sun. Children in broken shoes darted across the unswept roadway, yelling and shrieking. Curtains billowed listlessly from half-open windows. Unseen dogs desultorily barked.
“How do we go about finding Whateley’s house?” I asked. “Are we simply to knock on doors until we chance upon the correct one?”
“More or less,” came the reply. “There is, at times, no substitute for good old-fashioned legwork. Come!”
For the next hour Holmes and I travelled from house to house, asking at each whether a Nathaniel Whateley lived there and, failing that, if the occupants knew of a young American gentleman by that name in the vicinity. It was dull, dispiriting work, and often as not we were greeted with a gruff rebuke. Polite though we were, some of the householders seemed to regard our presence on their doorstep as an imposition, while others, mistaking us for rent collectors or bailiffs, were frankly hostile.
Just as I was abandoning all hope of success, Holmes proposed a change of tack. Spying a band of urchins loitering on a corner, he said to me, “It is a truth universally acknowledged amongst gold prospectors that the least promising-looking terrain can yield the most profitable seams.”
I doubted this was demonstrable fact, yet nonetheless I followed him as he approached the assembled ragamuffins and queried them about Whateley.
One lad, perhaps the grubbiest-faced of them all, piped up. “The Yank, you say? I know where you can find ’im.”
“Nathaniel Whateley?” said Holmes. “You’re sure?”
“If that’s ’is name,” said the lad with a shrug. “Ain’t many Yanks as live around ’ere. Something of a toff, ’e is, for an American. Dresses nice. Shoes always shiny. Lobs me the odd penny now and then.”
“Ah. Then doubtless you will not vouchsafe his whereabouts without a suitable inducement.”
“If you mean do I want paying to tell you what you want to know, you’re not wrong, sir.”
“Watson? Give the boy something.”
I delved into my pocket. “Here. A shilling.” The urchin stretched out a smut-blackened paw. “No,” I said, snatching the coin out of his reach. “It is yours only if you lead us to the right house.”
“Sixpence now, sixpence if it’s the right ’ouse. Take it or leave it.”
“He’s a hard bargainer, this youngster, Watson,” said Holmes. “I wouldn’t haggle further lest we lose his patronage altogether.”
The boy led us to a four-storey terraced house hard by the river, a building that was better kempt than most of its neighbours but still somewhat down-at-heel. In answer to our knock, the door was opened by a maid, who affirmed that Mr Nathaniel Whateley did live there but was not at home. I flipped a second sixpence towards our young guide, who caught the coin in mid-air and made it disappear into the pocket of his threadbare poplin jacket. A moment later, the boy himself disappeared, scurrying off down an alleyway.
“When is Mr Whateley expected back?” Holmes asked the maid.
“That I can’t say, sir,” replied she. “You’d have to ask Mrs Owen, my mistress. It’s her house. Mr Whateley just rents part of it.”
“Then may we see Mrs Owen?”
The maid withdrew into the house, and a few moments later a middle-aged woman came bustling out to take her place. Holmes presented his card, which she peered at with a sceptical eye before scrutinising his face and mine.
“I’ve heard of you, Mr Holmes,” said she eventually. “Who hasn’t? I thought you died in Switzerland.”
“Artistic licence on Watson’s part. It was merely a walking holiday during which I took a nasty spill down a rock face. He transformed this into a fatality. The newspapers have since reported my continued existence.”
“You are no ghost, that’s for sure. But I still don’t know whether I should let you in.”
“Why ever not, my dear woman?”
“Well, for one thing, Mr Whateley is not at home.” “So the maid told us. It is a pity.”
“Nor have I been informed by him to expect visitors.”
“We have come unannounced. If he is not present, we shall trouble you no further. Might I prevail upon you, however, to tell us when he is due to return, so that we may arrange to call another time?”
Mrs Owen cast a furtive glance back into the shadowy interior of the house. “That,” she said, “I cannot say. It is…” Conflicting emotions were plainly visible upon her face. “Mr Whateley’s current whereabouts are unknown to me. It is, to be frank, somewhat worrisome.”
“How so?”
“He is usually so reliable. He is apt to disappear from time to time, but never fails to give notice beforehand. He’s a naturalist, you see. Often he takes himself off on field trips, either into the countryside or to the Continent. He always lets me know when he is scheduled to return, and he is sure to leave sufficient money if he is to be away when the rent falls due. Quite punctilious about that, is Mr Whateley. One hears about Americans being brash and arrogant, but not he. I would not call him a kind man, but he is steady and reputable. I have not minded keeping house for him, and there are precious few tenants I can say that about.”
“When did he go?” Holmes asked.
Mrs Owen still seemed unsure how much more she should reveal and if she had not revealed too much already. She struck me as being hewn from the same marble as our own Mrs Hudson. For a woman like her, discretion was her watchword.
“Maybe you should come in, gentlemen,” she said, relenting. “You have a certain reputation, Mr Holmes; it might be to my advantage to confide in you.”
As we crossed the threshold I darted a look at Holmes, as if to say, See? Your literary fame opens doors, and whom do you have to thank?
He saw the look but studiously ignored it.
* * *
Mrs Owen sat us down in her sitting room, which formed part of a small suite of rooms at the rear of the house that was her exclusive domain; the rest was her tenant’s. A handkerchief was in her hands and she wrung it as we talked, as though transferring her inner tensions into that lace-trimmed square of cloth.
“As I said, Mr Whateley is often away, seeking out specimens for his collection. He is seldom gone long. I think the month he spent in Egypt was his lengthiest absence, but normally it’s a fortnight at most. I always know he is about to leave because he tells me as much. Sometimes he will even lay out his prospective itinerary. ‘Dover to Calais, then south-east through Germany into Austria-Hungary and onward to the Carpathians.’ That’s the sort of thing. If he is delayed on his way home, he will wire to let me know. However…”
There was a lot of weight in that however, a depth of disquiet.
“Go on,” said Holmes.
“Wednesday last, he just vanished. It was mid-morning. I heard him gather his hat and coat from the stand in the hallway, and then he was out the front door without so much as a goodbye.”
“Nothing precipitated this event?”
“Nothing as I can recall. Nothing occurred that was out of routine. No, wait. Come to think of it, he did receive a parcel that morning, by the first post.”
Holmes’s eyebrows arched. “A parcel containing what?”
“How should I know? It was addressed to him, not me. I brought it to him in his study along with the rest of his correspondence, as is my wont, and left him to it.”
“Does Whateley often receive such parcels?”
“Not frequently. Usually it will be a book he has ordered.”
“What were the parcel’s dimensions?”
“I should say not more than a few inches on each side.”
“Be more exact, if you will.”
“Perhaps ten long, eight wide, one thick. That’s the best I can estimate.”
“Then it could well have been another book.”
“I suppose so.”
“Plain brown paper, fastened with string.”
“And there was a return address?”
“Not that I saw.”
“Do you still by any chance have the paper? The string?”
“Mr Whateley threw them in the wastepaper basket,” said Mrs Owen, “which I emptied into the dustbin the next day. The dustcart has come by since.”
“That is a pity,” said Holmes. “Much could have been gleaned from the handwriting, the knots used, the way the paper was folded… Do you think that whatever was in the parcel may have caused Mr Whateley to depart with such haste?”
“I am loath to say. As I told you, I handed him the parcel and left him to it. Next thing I knew, a few minutes later, he was making his hasty exit.”
“Taking the parcel’s contents with him?”
“Presumably. I have since found nothing in his study that was not there before.”
“And he gave you no indication where he was going?”
“None. He was not back by suppertime. Nor was he in bed when Kitty – that’s the maid – brought him up his tea the next morning. The door to his room was ajar, the bed unslept-in. That was when I started to become anxious.”
“Understandably, given his regular habits. And you have not seen him since?”
“Neither hide nor hair,” said Mrs Owen, shaking her head. “Not for nearly a week now.”
“Singular,” said Holmes. “Tell me, does Mr Whateley receive guests here?”
“Hardly ever. I have a rule about visitors, female ones in particular. They may call but they may not stay past nightfall. In Mr Whateley’s case it has not been a problem. He is a well-spoken, presentable man, distinguished, but somewhat aloof. He has engaged in no romantic entanglements that I know of, nor does he seem to have many friends.”
“So you have not by any chance seen him in the company of a fellow approximately his own age, with grotesque disfigurements?”
The landlady frowned. “What kind of disfigurements?”
“Severe scarring here.” Holmes indicated the left side of his face. “And missing a hand on the same side.”
Mrs Owen laughed sharply. “No. I think I should remember such an individual had I laid eyes on him.”
“I am sure you would. I felt it worth asking.”
“Mr Holmes…” Mrs Owen paused, then forged ahead. “Your arrival at my door asking after Mr Whateley, coupled with his unaccountable disappearance, inclines me to think that my concerns about him are well-founded. That is why I am going to share with you a detail of his life that I would ordinarily keep to myself, as it may have some bearing on the situation. It somewhat undermines the portrait I have painted of him thus far, you see.”
She drew a deep breath before continuing.
“Mr Whateley is a model tenant, yes. I have no complaints about him. I am none too fond of the way he has commandeered my attic, but I am prepared to overlook it. Perhaps I am just squeamish.”
Holmes’s eyes narrowed in curiosity but he said nothing. I could see him filing away this remark for later exploration.
“All the same,” Mrs Owen continued, “he does have one peculiar characteristic which has always perturbed me. He talks to himself.”
“Not so strange,” I said. “As a naturalist, he must spend a considerable amount of time alone in the wild, stalking and trapping his quarry. I imagine he has got into the habit of talking to himself simply so as to hear a human voice. Besides, the profession tends to attract eccentrics.”
“I grant you that, Doctor. I myself murmur under my breath every now and then, and I have even been known to speak to my late husband, before I remember that he is no longer with me. But what I am describing is hardly the same. Mr Whateley conducts conversations. I have overheard him on several occasions.”
“Conversations?” said Holmes.
“Long, sometimes disputatious conversations. It is as though he is using one of those newfangled devices – what are they called? A telephone. He is speaking to someone not present in the room. There is the to-and-fro of dialogue but only his side is audible. There are pauses between his statements, as though he is listening to an interlocutor. At times he seems to be answering the other’s question, or posing one himself. I don’t know what to make of it. The queerest aspect of the phenomenon is that the party to whom he speaks would appear to have a name. A double-barrelled one, and Irish at that.”
Holmes’s mouth turned up at the corners in a smirk. “Irish indeed,” he murmured.
“Reilly-Logue,” said Mrs Owen. “That is what Mr Whateley calls him.”
The smirk vanished. “Reilly-Logue? You are quite certain that is the name?”
“That or something very like. I’m hard pressed to account for it.”
I could not see why Holmes found “Reilly-Logue” so noteworthy. Yet he was bent forward now in an attitude of quivering agitation. Evidently he had made a connection I had not.
I repeated the name a few times in my head, hoping it might strike a chord.
Reilly-Logue, Reilly-Logue…
Then it came to me.
R’luhlloig.
“Mrs Owen,” said Holmes, “you have been so forthcoming already that I can scarcely bring myself to beg another indulgence of you, yet I shall. You mentioned that Whateley has ‘commandeered’ your attic.”
“Yes, as a workplace. He keeps his collection of specimens there.”
