8 June 1881

I was busy with a cadaver, tracing the optic nerve from the eye through its foramen to the brain, when the two men interrupted my work. They were from London and had the bearing of military men.

Indeed, the short bull of a man, with greying red hair that poked in clumps from under his derby, introduced himself as such. “Sergeant James O’Grady of her Queen’s Own Rifles at your service, sir.” He had bright blue eyes and a freckled face that was toughened from years in the sun. His broad girth and strong musculature was such that I would have liked to have him on my rugby team.

The second man was nearly six feet tall and elegantly dressed in fawn-colored trousers, a black frock coat, and a grey jacket. I immediately recognized the ribbon of the Victoria Cross on his lapel and, almost as a reflex, stood at full attention. He did not offer to shake hands. His lips barely moved as he introduced himself, displaying the finest example of the British stiff upper lip I had ever witnessed. “Colonel Sir Cameron Beachy-Edwards.” I judged him to be at least sixty years of age. He was pale and slender, almost to the point of emaciation, as if he had suffered some terrible disease, such as typhus or dysentery.

The colonel didn’t waste time or words. “Conduct us to the morgue.”

I nodded. “Follow me,” I said. We immediately set off down the corridor to a flight of wooden stairs, then through a door, smudgy with many hands that had handled body parts, into the cold, damp basement morgue. It was no surprise to see Dr. Bell already folding back the sheet that covered our deceased patient. I studied the bearded and scarred face once again. Who was it?

Sergeant O’Grady took up station by the door while the colonel stood with his hands clasped, staring at the dead face. Then, he minutely examined the dense scars on the man’s face and the palms of the dead man’s hands.

“Oh, dear God, it’s Foley.”

Foley?! I staggered back, away from that dreadfully maimed body. Was that why he seemed so familiar? Could he be Declan Foley? Foley is not an uncommon name, but my mam was a Foley and said Declan was a relative, perhaps a distant cousin. When he was stationed in Edinburgh, he often came to our house for Mam’s cooking. One Christmas he brought a huge ham with sauces and a dessert. I was very young at the time and clung to him like he was my real father. I would run all the way to the castle to watch when he drilled the troops for the noon gun ceremony. I called him ‘uncle’ and loved it when he tossed me into the air and always caught me on the way down. He took me on long walks and to the museum, where told me the names of all the stuffed animals and where they were from. He was an amateur scientist as well as a soldier. When I last saw Uncle Declan, he wore his red officer’s coat and a sword. He was off to the war in Afghanistan. I had often dreamed of him, gallantly slashing the heathen with his sword for the Queen and country. When pa was away on a drunken spree, I would frequently yearn for Uncle Declan’s strong protective arms. The last we had heard, the poor man had died during a battle. This couldn’t be...

The colonel wiped his eyes, seemed to be overcome by emotion, but gathered himself. “He was a lieutenant in command of a troop of Gurkha border guards while gathering intelligence in Baluchistan when he was captured by the Russians. Recently, we learned that the fiends turned him over to Moslem women who pinned him to the ground with stakes driven through his hands then propped his jaws open with a stick. Those sadistic women took turns squatting over his face and urinating into his mouth. Most men drown during this bizarre ritual, but Lt. Foley and another intelligence officer survived. Foley did not return to his regiment. Little is known about the other man, but we think he killed an officer of the Okhrana, took his identity, and disappeared into Russia,” Colonel Beachy-Edwards said.

“What a horrible story! What happened to poor Foley?” I asked.

“He wandered around Eastern Europe. Recently, we learned that he came home and entered Cambridge under a pseudonym to study geology. Needless to say, Declan was a changed man as a result of the torture,” the colonel said.

I studied the dead man’s features. “Oh, my God! It is Uncle Declan!” I exclaimed.

“You knew this man?”

“My mother’s relative, Declan Foley, was reported missing in action a few years ago. We assumed he was dead.”

“As we did, too.”

“But surely, he would’ve contacted us once he returned from...”

“Actually, Declan avoided family and old friends once he returned, changed his name, and dedicated himself to his study of geology. As I said, he was a changed man.”

“I still can’t believe...”

Dr. Bell cleared his throat. “Come here, laddie, and take another look.”

“Aye.” I studied the bearded, well-tanned face of the corpse. It was much more wrinkled and leathery than I remembered. There were new scars, but I saw the resemblance to my mam.

Aye, it was definitely him. He had the high cheek bones and the grey eyes of a Foley. He even had the same heart-shaped face as my mam. We had failed to save him. My eyes wandered to the stumps of his legs. Tears came to my eyes.

Dr. Bell saw I was deeply affected. “’Tis him, aye?” he asked.

“Aye.” I answered. “Dr. Bell, what did we do wrong? Why couldn’t we save him?”

“We tried, laddie. We did everything in our power. There is no reason to feel shame.”

I felt as if my uncle had been delivered to me for a reason. I swore I would - I must - find his assassin to redeem myself for our failure to save his life. The best surgeon in Scotland had been unable to save him. My years of study seemed futile. I would try to honor him. “Dr. Bell, we must discover his killer,” I said.

“Aye.” Dr. Bell said, “We will try... I am sorry, laddie. Were you and Declan close?”

“My father... Well, you know about my father. When I was a young lad, Declan was like a father to me, and I called him ‘uncle.’ Mam and I always looked forward to his visits. Oh, how my mam’s face lit up when he appeared in the doorway. She loved him so.”

“Then, we shall do everything in our power to solve his murder.”

“Aye, thank you, sir.” I brushed away my tears.

Dr. Bell, touched by my emotion, gently held my shoulder. “There, there, laddie. There, there.”

“Thank you, sir. Sorry about that.”

“Don’t mention it. But remember, you are a physician; buck up and keep a professional demeanor.” Dr. Bell replaced the sheet covering the corpse. “Let us adjourn to more comfortable surroundings. My cook makes an excellent breakfast tea.”

It was in this moment when I most appreciated Dr. Bell and felt guilty that I complained about his abuse.

At Dr. Bell’s house, O’Grady and I wolfed down boiled eggs, buttered toast with jam, and a rasher of bacon, while Dr. Bell and the colonel sipped tea. The colonel lit a cigar. “Who is Dr. Hutton?” he asked.

Dr. Bell took down from his bookshelf a heavy volume, Theory of the Earth by Dr. James Hutton. “Dr. Hutton was trained as a physician, but spent his entire life studying geology to prove that the earth was made over millions of years, not in the biblical six days.”

“Balderdash. Sounds like one of those Darwinians. That goes against all authority.”

O’Grady lifted his hand. “Sir, if I may be so bold. Lieutenant Foley was born a Roman Catholic, but, ever in search of the truth, he became an atheist and often talked about inciting the peasants to overthrow the Russian tsar if he could prove to them that the tsar’s power was not derived from God.”

“Perhaps Foley found something at the quarry that proved Dr. Hutton’s theory,” Dr. Bell said. He blew a cloud of pipe smoke and leaped from his chair. “Let us go there. Doyle, call James to bring up the landau,” said Bell. He also took a telescope in a long case and one of his fine English shotguns. “We may see grouse on the moor,” he muttered, while stuffing cartridges into a pocket. It was not the season for bird shooting.

The day was overcast with a fine mist but not enough rain to put up the folding top of the chaise. We spun along in fine style to the abandoned quarry, three miles outside of Edinburgh. “James, stop here,” Dr. Bell commanded. We were perhaps two hundred yards from the granite face of the open quarry.

He intently scrutinized the exposed rock with the telescope. After a few moments, he passed the instrument to the colonel. “See the horizontal lines of the granite overlying the vertical lines of limestone. According to Dr. Hutton, the granite was formed over millions of years by upheaval of the earth on top of the limestone.”

“Doesn’t prove a damn thing,” the colonel said, handing the telescope to me.

I trained the instrument, first on the granite, then on the underlying limestone. After a bit of focusing, I saw the tracing of a lizard-like animal, exactly like that of the sketch in Foley’s clenched fist. “There, a fossil. I’d like to take a closer look,” I said, and began moving towards the face of the cliff. The others followed, stumbling over rocks and uneven ground.

I was nearly fifty yards away when the entire cliff face dissolved in a terrific explosion. The force of the blast sent us to the ground beneath a rain of pebbles and clouds of dust.

I was still dazed when I heard Dr. Bell. “After him!” he shouted.

A figure ran for all he was worth high atop the cliff. O’Grady went off like a scared hare and disappeared among the trees on the hill. The colonel followed but after a few steps, slowed and sank to the ground.

I followed the professor around the hill towards the road. It seemed longer, but in a matter of minutes, we met O’Grady and glimpsed a dark figure on a dappled, light grey horse pounding away towards the city. Dr. Bell fired two shots after the man, but the distance was too great for his light loads of bird shot.

I trained the telescope on the retreating figure. “There is something wrong with the animal’s right rear leg!” I shouted.

We criss-crossed the rough ground until Dr. Bell found hoof prints. “Aha! Here is a perfect print. Doyle, you are correct. The shoe in this print has a loose nail. We will find our man and I will wager that he is in the theology department.”

Colonel Beachy-Edwards limped back to the chaise while the three of us explored the blasted rock face of the old quarry. Except for a faint imprint of a fish’s tail, there was no sign of the fossil that my poor uncle had sketched.

After we presented our findings to the local police, the colonel and O’Grady took the next train to London. “You fellows have things well in hand,” the colonel said as he waved goodbye.

Dr. Bell’s close friend, Detective Willie McGregor found the dappled, grey horse with a sore right rear hoof at the second farrier he visited. He sent a message to say it was, as Bell had predicted, owned by Ian Stewart, an anti-Darwinian professor of theology.

Upon receiving the detective’s message, we hurried to meet him at the professor’s door. There was no response to our knock, but after butting the door open with my shoulder, we found Stewart attempting to escape by the back window of his flat.

He was wild-eyed and, at first, denied all knowledge of the explosion or of Foley.

“Hold his hands, please, Mr. Doyle.” Dr. Bell said. I grabbed Stewart’s hands. Under the careful gaze of detective McGregor, Bell scraped beneath the nail of Stewart’s index finger with the blade of his penknife. He soon collected grains of powder on a slip of paper. “There,” he said. “Gun powder of the type used for blasting.”

The man wilted and admitted that Foley had come to him asking for the whereabouts of Dr. Hutton’s cliff, with evidence that the world was millions of years old.

“He was clearly mad - mad as a hatter. He planned to take proof that God didn’t make the world in six days to that atheist Karl Marx. In doing so, he aimed to give Marx the proof he needed to destroy the divine right of kings and emperors to rule. He wanted nothing less than to shake up all of Europe, dethrone the royals, and start a revolution.”

My God! I thought to myself. This was not the Uncle Declan I knew. He had changed into a truly dangerous man; it was no wonder he was murdered.

Detective McGregor questioned Stewart further until the man admitted to the deliberate murder of Lt. Foley to “...save the world from these godless communist lunatics.”