The Looking-Glass World
HOLMES WAS IRATE. I HAD ANTICIPATED THAT. From his sickbed he raged at me for several minutes, and I took it, head bent, hands behind back, like a contrite schoolboy summoned to the headmaster’s study over some infraction of the rules.
“In my defence,” I said, when the tempest had abated, “you failed to convey quite how insidious the Triophidian Crown is.”
“Perhaps I ought to have been clearer about that,” Holmes said, recanting somewhat. “I thought that a paragon of probity such as yourself would have sufficient moral fibre not to give in to the crown’s enticements. I misjudged. That does not, however, alter the fact that I have lost a powerful weapon in my arsenal. I mean not just the crown but the Irregulars. Both are irreplaceable, and I fear that their loss will come back to bite us at a later date.” He sighed. “Regardless, I shall soldier on. Tell me again what W’gnns said about the nightgaunt.”
I had prefaced the bad news about the crown with the good news that the Irregulars had identified where the nightgaunt had flown to. Now I repeated the rather vague directions W’gnns had furnished.
“Fetch me my atlas of Britain, would you?” Holmes said.
In the sitting room I went to the section of bookshelf where he kept non-occult works of reference – it formed a comparatively small portion of his total collection – and took down the volume requested, returning with it to his bedroom. Holmes leafed through until he came to a map of London and environs. After some study, he jabbed a forefinger at the page.
“There,” said he. “‘Due east. Where the city peters out. Where the river merges with the land.’ W’gnns could very well have been talking about Rainham Marshes. The place matches all three criteria.”
“But it’s a barren, largely uninhabited area. It covers several hundred acres. I am loath to use the cliché ‘a needle in a haystack’, but…”
“You are looking at the problem the wrong way, Watson. Yes, Rainham Marshes is a wilderness, but that makes our task easier, not harder.”
“How so?”
“Let us presume the nightgaunt was acting under instruction. I think we can both agree that that is more probable than not. The targeting of the inmate, the fact that he was specifically singled out for abduction, invites no other reasonable interpretation of the data. Bear in mind, too, the condition in which the man was first found – covered in scratches and bruises – and where he was found, namely near Purfleet.”
He pointed to the small town on the map. It lay adjacent to Rainham Marshes.
“Does this not suggest to you that our abductee was, immediately prior to his consignment to Bethlem, an escapee?” he said. “That the nightgaunt brought him back to where he had been previously held against his will? That it was carrying out a retrieval?”
“Gracious!” I exclaimed. “Yes. I see that now. He must have picked up his superficial injuries during his escape.”
“They seem consistent with the kind of damage one might sustain while fleeing through inhospitable terrain, stark naked, in a state of blind panic, tripping, falling repeatedly, treading barefoot on sharp stones, forcing one’s way through clumps of reeds and thorn bushes. He was doing it in pitch darkness, what is more.”
“How can you know that?”
“Gregson said the man was discovered by a farmhand early in the morning. That implies he made his escape during the night. The night in question was overcast, the moon at its newest. There would have been virtually no natural light by which to see his way. Little wonder he stumbled so often.”
“So prior to that he was being held in some sort of dwelling?”
“And has been reinstalled there now by the nightgaunt, or rather by its master. Such was my suspicion all along but I needed confirmation, which the Irregulars have provided. Happily for us, the paucity of human habitation in the marshes means we will have many fewer locations to check, many fewer doors to knock on.”
“When do you propose we commence doing so?” I enquired.
“If I said ‘right away’ you would certainly chastise me for it,” Holmes said.
“And justly so. You are still not strong enough yet.” His outburst of some minutes beforehand, however, told me that Holmes was well on the way to recovery. A day ago he would never have been up to such an effort.
“Then first thing tomorrow morning,” he said.
“Too soon. The day after tomorrow, maybe.”
“Tomorrow noon. That is my final offer.”
I had no alternative but to accept this compromise. I counted myself victorious, and assuredly Holmes did likewise.
* * *
Holmes was dressed, shaved, and tucking into breakfast when I tumbled out of bed the next morning. He looked much improved, although still far from hale. I, for my part, ached all over from my rough treatment by the snake men, my ribs in particular feeling tender. That was bad enough, but worse was the throbbing of my head. It was as though I had spent the previous evening drinking heavily.
“A Triophidian Crown hangover,” my friend observed as, with a shaky hand, I helped myself to a cup of tea. “All the unpleasantness of a traditional hangover but with none of the enjoyment that engenders it.”
“For your sake it may be no bad thing that that damned artefact is now in the snake men’s possession. You will no longer have to put up with feeling like this the morning after.”
“Oh, normal use of the crown was no great hardship,” Holmes said airily. “It might leave me a bit listless, nothing a shot of cocaine could not rectify. You should try that remedy yourself. It will fix you up in no time.”
“Thank you, but this is all the stimulant I require,” I said, indicating my tea. “That and some of those poached eggs I see, and a rasher or two of bacon.”
“While you partake of Mrs Hudson’s cuisine – which, as we all know, is as good as any Scotchwoman’s, at least where breakfast is concerned – you might want to cast an eye over this.”
Holmes thrust an envelope across the table to me. It had already been unsealed and inside was a letter on Diogenes Club headed notepaper, along with a newspaper clipping.
“From your brother?” I said.
“Your powers of deduction do you credit.”
The letter was a terse covering note:
Sherlock
Thought you might be interested in the enclosed. The name Zachariah Conroy having bubbled to the surface of my brain during your visit the other day, I then belatedly recalled coming across a mention of it in the Arkham Gazette a couple of years back. It has taken some while to unearth the relevant article from my archives, a task undertaken during infrequent bulls between dealing with affairs of state. Not much to go on but I hope it is of some pertinence.
Mycroft
The clipping, slightly yellowed with age, was dated Saturday 11th February 1893, and read as follows:
We at the Gazette have become accustomed to unconventional and indeed bizarre experiments being conducted in the science halls of Miskatonic University, and will no doubt be reporting on such to our readers for many years to come.
Here, however, for your delectation, is news of yet another singularity originating from that august institution of which we Arkhamites are so proud and by which we are often so baffled. One Zachariah Conroy, a freshman pursuing a degree in biology, asserts that he has successfully transplanted the consciousness of a parrot into the brain of a capuchin monkey.
Said primate now passes its days seated upon a perch in a cage, flapping its arms and pecking at sunflower seeds, all courtesy of a process which young Conroy has grandiosely dubbed “Intercranial Cognition Transference”. The practicalities of this method are unclear, beyond a reliance upon certain serums of its inventor’s own devising.
Conroy’s professors admit to being unconvinced both by the outcome of the experiment and by its instigator’s less than crystalline elucidation of its workings. One such eminent academic, an emeritus professor by the name of Nordstrom, has told this newspaper that he sincerely doubts Conroy has accomplished that which he asserts to have accomplished.
“It smacks to me of fraud,” says the venerable greybeard. “One can train a monkey to behave more or less however one wishes, even to the point of mimicking avian characteristics.
“Conroy is considered a bright student with good prospects,” Nordstrom adds, “but he has an unfortunate predisposition towards precocity, unorthodoxy, and even at times impertinence. He may well go far in his chosen discipline, but only if he learns to temper his more wilful inclinations.”
It sounds to us as though young Conroy is more prankster than prodigy. He certainly seems to be making a monkey out of faculty members!
“The tone is facetious,” Holmes said when I looked up after finishing the piece. “Nevertheless the content intrigues.”
“You do not believe Conroy actually did what he says? Inserted the consciousness of a bird into a monkey? It is preposterous.”
“Who is to say what is and is not preposterous these days, Watson? You and I have met with more than our fair share of situations to which the average member of the public would apply that adjective. Yet the reality of such events is not in question.”
“But that is the paranormal. Conroy alleges to have performed a miracle of science, which is not the same thing. Science deals in empirical absolutes, predicated upon the proving of theory by fact. Had Conroy said he had magically pulled off this bird-to-monkey transfer, I might at least have given it a second thought. But scientifically?”
“Such is the looking-glass world in which you and I find ourselves,” said Holmes with a smile. “We doubt science but have implicit faith in the supernatural. Ask yourself, though, what if Conroy did use eldritch means but passed them off as science, so as not to raise too many eyebrows?”
“No more eyebrows than he already raised. Granted, it is possible, but when all is said and done, what is the point of the whole exercise? What does anyone stand to gain from creating a birdlike monkey, beyond its curiosity value?”
“Which might be considerable. Such a unique animal could fetch a tidy sum from zoos or private collectors. Equally, as Conroy is ostensibly a scientist, might this experiment of his not be a prototype? A first step along the road to something greater and more ambitious? That is the way with science, after all. Demonstrate that it can be done under laboratory conditions, then widen one’s scope.”
Holmes reached for his clay pipe and the Persian slipper in which he kept his tobacco.
“At any rate,” he said, stuffing strands of coarse black shag into the pipe bowl with practised ease, “Zachariah Conroy has become decidedly more interesting than he was previously.” He struck a match. “I am looking forward more than ever to our expedition this afternoon, should the object of it turn out to be that selfsame young man.”
