BELL CHIMES IN
Sherlock has been to see one of his fathers, now he needs to talk to the other. He wakes the following morning, thinking of what they must discuss. It is a Thursday. He doesn’t teach summer school classes this day of the week, and Bell is usually already out the door by now, visiting clients, so the boy expects to get some work done around the shop. He’ll talk to his master after Big Ben strikes noon. But as he gains consciousness, Holmes hears the old man fussing about in the laboratory, knocking over torts and flasks, and banging impatiently on powders as he works with his mortar and pestle. It is obvious, from all this racket, that the alchemist is experimenting. When Sigerson Bell has a chemical idea he is like a dog worrying a meaty bone. He hears nothing and sees nothing, except his ideas and the components — the chemicals or alkaloids — he is mixing and matching. Sherlock hears him gently cursing in his polite manner and knows his master’s mind is tightly engaged and far away.
Holmes quietly opens one of the doors of his wardrobe and peeks out. There is Bell across the room, facing his work, humming a violin concerto, punctuating it with a few of those benign but deeply-felt oaths.
“Sir?”
Bell’s head swivels around as if his neck were made of rubber. When it comes to rest, it seems to almost be on backwards. There is a look of horror on his face, as if he has been interrupted while performing a very personal act. The boy can see two huge flasks about five feet apart and between them all sorts of tubes and little homemade turbines and burning Bunsen lamps. Something is being turned to liquid in one flask and impelled toward the other at tremendous speed under white-hot pressure. There are rocks and powders and a couple of croaking frogs nearby, obviously the items he is attempting to transform into something else. At this very moment there is an explosion. It shakes the shop and all the equipment in front of the alchemist smashes and is propelled toward the ceiling. The force of the explosion is so great that the old man is slammed backward, landing at Sherlock’s feet.
It takes everything a few seconds to settle.
“Sir, are you all right?”
The old man climbs to his feet and shoves his assistant to the side. In three or four bounds he is back at the scene of his experiment, holding something in his hand. It is glowing. It looks like gold.
“Eureka!” Bell shouts and begins to perform a jig. He turns, takes Sherlock by the hands, and dances with him too, then suddenly stops, looking guilty.
“Sir? What is it? What have you done?”
“Oh … nothing.” He takes the material in his hand and holds it behind his back.
“That looks like a nugget of gold.”
“Gold! … Nonsense! What are you accusing me of, sir!” He is attempting to sound angry, but it isn’t very convincing.
“Have you transformed something into gold?”
“That … would be magic! That would be a groundbreaking, earth-shattering, God-like feat, a wondrous event in the history of mankind to be cherished by all who live upon our green earth, and would make the man who did it a living legend, though he would be expected to be humble about it, regardless of the fact that it would be, as I’ve noted, an unparalleled feat … so … no, sir, I have not done that of which you speak!” He turns quickly, rushes to a shelf, sets the material in his strongbox, and locks it.
“But sir —”
“Do we not have a lesson today? Violin? Chemistry? Bellitsu?”
“Yes, sir, but really, I just wanted to talk.”
“Talk! By all means, let us talk!” He pulls up a chair and motions for Sherlock to sit at the table, then secures a stool for himself and lights upon it, putting his chin in his hands and looking lovingly at the boy. “Commence!”
“It’s about Hemsworth.”
“Ah, yes, we spoke briefly of him yesterday. Are you sure he is innocent? The question worries me, you know.”
“It does?”
“Yes.”
“Me too.”
“Ah … thus, our chat?”
“You know I looked into it. All I wanted to do was investigate the crime scene and provide some evidence that might help Hemsworth before the magistrates, since it seemed, at first, that he may not have committed the crime. It did not appear fair that he should hang. I wanted to keep a distance from events, like you know I’ve been trying to do lately, even after I found some things at the scene that might help him. But Irene —”
“Ah!”
“And Beatrice —”
“Aha!”
“Please, sir, do not ‘Aha!’ me upon that subject.”
“Yes, my boy, I am sorry.”
“Miss Leckie was merely interested, merely helpful. Miss Doyle, whom you know convinced me to become involved in the first place, went further. She felt, after I returned from the scene, that we were close to truly helping Hemsworth … so I investigated more. Now I am concerned that I went further than I should have.”
“Because it was due to your thorough intervention that His Highness was freed.”
“Yes.”
“Indeed, you should have been sure about this before you went to the police, and not listening to feminine types capable of swaying you. Hemsworth had a great deal of motivation to commit this crime, my boy, did he not? One cannot get over that, despite any circumstantial evidence to the contrary. I have heard rumors for many years that he is a little, shall we say, wild, a little loony, a cup and saucer short of a full tea set; that he is even cruel, at times, to others. Perhaps something happened to him on one of his many journeys? I am sure you are learning about him too. He is not a very nice man, is he?”
“No, sir, he doesn’t seem to be, and he appears to have secrets.”
“Well, he is a magician … though of the theatrical, sleight-of-hand sort, not a real one.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“He doesn’t know real magic.”
“Like those who … turn substances into gold?”
“You, my boy, are far too clever for your own good,” replies Bell angrily.
“I am sorry, sir.”
Bell sighs and then grins. “Do not be. Pressure me! Seek the truth! Put my rear end to the wall, young man, press my buttocks against —”
“I will, sir, but not today. I need to know, now, what to do about this.”
“You have little choice but to do something.”
“Yes, sir, I wish I could leave it alone, but I am afraid that I have made a terrible mistake. I am at a loss as to where to start. I have already been to the crime scene — twice. That may have served only to lead me in the wrong direction. I have also been told, in no uncertain terms, never to go back there. It will be closely guarded from now on.”
“Hmm. Here we have Hemsworth, the man who appears to have done it, the perfect candidate, anyway … but nothing to tie him to it.”
“Yes, that is curious, my boy. Did Nottingham just vanish? You saw the scene. Were there really just his spectacles, blood, and bits of flesh, there? Is that all that was left of him?”
“Yes, that was all. How do you make someone disappear like that, master?”
“More than just some one. Mrs. Nottingham has vanished as well, has she not?”
They both think for a moment.
“Sir, do you really believe that you can transform substances into gold? If you can do that, couldn’t someone, using real magic, make a human being disappear?”
“I believe that anything is possible. Anything! You know that. I teach you that, my boy! We are turning you into gold!”
“But do you think Hemsworth made Nottingham vanish? I mean really vanish.”
“I think you are barking up the wrong tree … though you may be in the forest.”
“I don’t follow you.”
“I might have believed Nottingham could make someone disappear. He was a clever man, that one. But I don’t think Hemsworth is that good. He would use a slightly more down-to-earth method, shall we say. Did you notice anything unusual at the crime scene, anything really strange? Did you have any sense that something bizarre was concocted there?”
“Well, you know, sir, from the papers, about Mr. Riyah, who owns the hotel? I believe he was noted briefly in yesterday’s news.”
“I found him in an inner chamber.”
“An inner chamber? Well … that’s not terribly surprising, I suppose. Whether this studio was let to Hemsworth or Nottingham, magicians like that sort of thing. Intrigue and mystery, you know!”
Suddenly something dawns on Sherlock. “But there was another place down there.”
“Another place?”
“A second chamber, deeper under the building … and … and I heard noises coming from it … like something was alive down —”
Sigerson Bell stands bolt upright. “The dragon!”
“It couldn’t be, sir.”
“You saw it onstage! How real did it look? How real!?”
“You don’t think … something like that killed the Wizard of Nottingham?”
The old man’s eyes are on fire.
“I don’t know, my boy, but if something like that did … it devoured him too.”