The Impossible Rather than the Improbable
THE ENTIRE THIRD FLOOR OF THE EAST WING LIVED up to the hospital’s nickname. All along the corridor inmates were moaning and fretting in their cells, agitated to a markedly higher degree than during our previous visit. The one whom I had last seen tethered to his bedpost by a chain was now straining at his leash, mouth agape in a perpetual silent scream of anguish. The iron collar was chafing the skin of his neck so much it had drawn blood. Other inmates bayed like wolves, and two attendants were struggling to install one fellow in a straitjacket. He fought them every inch of the way, gnashing his teeth, trying to inflict bites. His lips were coated in a froth of sputum like a rabid animal’s.
Dr Joshi did his best to maintain a sanguine, phlegmatic air, despite the pandemonium around us. “You must understand,” he said, voice raised above the din, “an escape of this nature is all but unheard of. We are scrupulous about keeping inmates under lock and key at all times, the passive ones just as much as the aggressive ones. In this instance, as you shall see, the precaution was more or less redundant.”
That was indeed the case, for the door to the scarred man’s cell stood ajar but hardly in a manner that suggested it had been opened in the usual way. Rather, it hung askew from its hinges, one of which was snapped clean through, the other twisted at an angle.
“The door has been forced,” said Dr Joshi.
“You don’t say,” murmured Holmes, squinting at both hinges.
“A deed requiring some considerable strength.”
“Superhuman strength, one might call it.”
“Well, quite. It is on record that ordinary men are capable of extraordinary physical feats under the right provocation. Fear, panic, or the desire to rescue a loved one from peril inspires a surge of vitality, which lends unaccustomed might to the muscles. That, I am sure, is what occurred here. The inmate, overcome by a sudden, powerful mania, wrenched the door practically off its mounting. We may also infer that McBride rushed in to restrain him and the inmate hurled him through the window. Thereafter, the man fled, exiting the building by a somewhat unorthodox method.”
“Of what nature?”
“There is a window at the far end of this corridor. You can probably just discern it from here. It, too, is broken like the one in the cell. My assumption is that the inmate gained egress through it and shinned down a nearby drainpipe to the ground.”
“That, all told, is a perfectly plausible scenario,” said Holmes, “and one I would endorse. I recommend that you use it in any report you give about this incident, Doctor. You have elucidated the facts most satisfactorily.”
The alienist’s anxious face relaxed a little and something like a smile played upon his lips.
“If I may,” Holmes continued, “I should like to examine the cell itself in detail, purely for my own gratification. You doubtless have other matters to attend to – overseeing the recapture of your escapee amongst them – and I would not wish to impose any further upon your time.”
“You are asking me to leave you unchaperoned.”
“For a mere ten minutes or so. As I said, your summation of events cannot be anything but accurate. I, however, am a punctilious sort who likes all his ‘i’s dotted and ‘t’s crossed. I crave your indulgence to do just that.”
When it suited his purposes, Holmes could deploy a remarkable suavity that almost always got him his way. Now was no exception. Dr Joshi prevaricated for scarcely a moment before giving his assent.
“Very well, Mr Holmes. Conduct your examination. Then, if you would, depart.”
“You are too kind, Doctor.”
As the alienist hastened away, Holmes stepped around the crooked door and into the cell. I followed, and was relieved that the walls offered some insulation from the caterwauling of the madmen around us. Their clamour had begun to grate upon my nerves.
“You do not credit Dr Joshi’s interpretation of the evidence,” I said.
“Not for one instant, but it seemed prudent to reinforce what he already believed. Now he has something to tell the board of trustees and, if necessary, the press. Confirmation of his assumptions from Sherlock Holmes, if not authoritative, is at least emboldening.”
I gazed around at the words of R’lyehian scrawled upon the floor and walls in charcoal. The same three phrases recurred, as before, but there were, I reckoned, more of them than last time. Zachariah Conroy, if it was he, had kept himself busy since our visit.
Holmes, meanwhile, inspected the shattered window. With gimlet-eyed attention he ran a hand carefully over the jutting glass shards and splintered wood. A light breeze wafted in, stirring the tails of his topcoat.
“Ah!” he declared. His fingers had alighted upon a morsel of something adhering to the apex of one of the shards. He plucked it free and held it out to me. “Watson, what do you make of this?”
I peered. “It would seem to be a scrap of leather. Black leather. From an item of apparel? McBride’s shoe perhaps? A fragment could have been torn off as he hurtled through the window.”
“Could have been, but for the fact that the leather of his shoes is brown, not black, and the shoes themselves are, as far as I could tell when I observed his body just now, intact. The uppers were a little scuffed but exhibited no more than the usual wear and tear. Moreover, note the softness of this substance.” He waggled the scrap in the air. It had a pliant, jelly-like consistency. “It is not cured. It is fresh tissue, until very recently part of a living creature.”
“I do not like where this is heading.”
“Neither do I. Yet the conclusion seems indisputable. Our inmate did not escape. He was abducted.”
“By whom?”
“The more accurate relative pronoun would be ‘what’. Unfortunately, in our abstruse line of work we often find ourselves looking not for any human agency but rather an inhuman one. That dictum you have ascribed to me about ‘eliminating the impossible’ seldom applies in our lives. We are far more likely to pursue the impossible than the improbable in our quest for truth. The impossible in this instance would be a beast capable of flight and possessed of a rudimentary sentience, one large and powerful enough to carry off a fully grown man, one that is nocturnal in its habits… Have I narrowed down the species for you yet?”
“It could be any one of a number. A byakhee springs to mind.”
“It is unsurprising that byakhees should be at the forefront of your thoughts, in light of our recent conversation. This piece of flesh, however, does not bear the hallmarks of that creature. Its stretchiness and flexibility to me suggest that it originates from a wing, and a byakhee’s wing is rigid and diaphanous like a wasp’s. We must consider a more bat-like candidate, I feel. Still none the wiser? Well, let us take a look at the other window Dr Joshi mentioned, the one via which the missing man allegedly removed himself from the premises.”
We traversed the remaining length of the corridor to the far end. On the way we were subjected to a barrage of howls and hectoring by the inmates. One of them, the resident of the furthermost cell along, hopped up and down and flapped his arms at us. I could not help but think that he was enacting, in his muddled, incoherent way, the passage of a winged creature in flight.
“We would appear to be in the company of an eyewitness,” said Holmes. “Did you see it, my good man? Did you see what entered through this window?”
The inmate continued hopping and flapping, oblivious to my companion’s entreaty. His boggling, unfocused eyes suggested he was far past the bounds of sanity.
“Entered?” I said. “But Dr Joshi said it was out of this window that the inmate went. He said nothing about something else coming in.”
“Oh, Watson, Watson! Dr Joshi was only speculating. Against blatant evidence to the contrary, what is more. Behold the glass on the floor here. Look how much there is of it. This is one of the most basic deductions anyone can make. A child could tell that the window was broken from the outside, not the inside. Even a Scotland Yarder.”
“Oh. Oh yes.”
“Making the window a point of ingress, not egress.” Holmes leaned out, craning his neck left and right. “There is, as Dr Joshi said, a drainpipe, but it is a good five yards distant. Conceivably one might leap from the window ledge, catch hold of it and clamber down, but it is not a risk I would wish to take. It is highly likely one would fall short of the drainpipe or fail to gain purchase upon it, with the inevitable disastrous consequences.”
“No face. No face.”
This, a muffled muttering, came from the cell opposite that of the flight-mimicking man. Its occupant stood erect at the door, as if at attention, with both hands clasped over his face.
“Like so,” the inmate said. “No face. How do I see? How do I smell? How do I eat? How do I talk? I have no face.”
“You have no face?” asked Holmes. “Or something you have seen has no face?”
“I cannot see. I did not see.” The man, for all the calm solemnity with which he spoke, was riven with fear. Every tendon in his frame was taut, like a wire under tension. “No face.”
Holmes pressed him further, to no avail. The inmate was lost in a sort of confused, dissociative state whereby he was identifying with a thing he had seen while denying he had ever seen it.
Abandoning the attempt, Holmes said, “Neither he nor his companion across the corridor is supplying what might be called unimpeachable testimony, but each in his way confirms my hypothesis, as does the condition of the window. A flying creature burst in, proceeded along the corridor, pulled open the door to a particular cell, and made off with the occupant, but not before slaying McBride, who courageously went to the inmate’s assistance. The aperture the beast created by throwing the attendant outside became a convenient means of departure, although in the process a tiny piece of its leathery wing was torn off. The monster in question is faceless, with a black cartilaginous hide and—”
“A nightgaunt,” I said, at last putting the pieces of the puzzle together.
“About time, old friend. A nightgaunt indeed. That is our culprit. At any rate, that is the instrument of the inmate’s abduction but not, I would suggest, the instigator. Nightgaunts, as a rule, shun mankind. They haunt remote, desolate spots and tend to kill any person who intrudes upon their territory. Yet it has been known for them to be trained to follow commands, like a falcon or gundog. If caught young enough and raised with the right regimen of punishment and reward, they are biddable.”
“Someone sent a tame nightgaunt to kidnap Conroy.”
“That is my reading of the situation,” said Holmes. “What remains to be established is who that someone might be.”
