‘Holmes,’ I said, looking from the figure in Room A to the man who stood before me, ‘If ever I have said before that your powers were miraculous, I take it back. All those occasions were, as you assured me at the time, mere trifles. This is a miracle.’
He gave an amused smile, acknowledging the double-edged compliment. ‘And yet, I fear, once the trick of it is clear you will find it quite as mundane as my other feats.’
He said, ‘As every one of you has now, I think, pointed out, it would have done no good for Rhyne to obtain a duplicate key and release Greendale during Major Bradbury’s absence, unless there was some further scheme to make it appear that the room was still occupied. The Major, at least, would have realised at once what had happened, and regardless of his own embarrassment could never have been expected to go along with the deception. Had he done so, the suspicion that would have fallen upon him and Rhyne would then have been insupportable. No, the apparent moment of Kellway’s dissolution had to happen in the presence of a witness whose testimony Sir Newnham, at least, would find utterly unimpeachable. Hence, as well as ensuring that his own shift was shared with the Major, Rhyne ensured that Garforth’s shift – that is to say Theodore Greendale’s, now attired and guised as his other personality – was paired with that of William Anderton.
‘Fortunately, they had a trick in mind – and it is so singular that I believe it must have been the kernel of the entire plan, around which all the rest of the conspiracy was built.’
Holmes crossed now to Room A, where his counterpart still sat meditating, and bent towards the floor. ‘Observe,’ he said, indicating a near-invisible strand of twine that emerged from beneath the door. ‘And perhaps one or two of you might observe the room? Major Bradbury, Miss Casimir, if you would be so kind—?’
The Major and the young woman leaned together to stare through the panel as Holmes gave the twine a sharp tug.
‘Good God!’ the Major declared, and Miss Casimir cried out too.
‘He just crumpled and disappeared!’ she said, and I noticed that her German accent suddenly sounded distinctly more Londonish. ‘I say, though,’ she added, looking more closely. ‘There is something down at the bottom there. You can hardly see it with the way this glass squashes everything.’
‘The trick relies on you, or rather on Anderton, failing to notice that fact in your general astonishment,’ Holmes confirmed. ‘What I have just done is, of course, what Greendale did a little after five a.m. on Tuesday, while you yourself, Major, were in conversation with Anderton.
‘Had Greendale and Anderton been alone, Anderton’s love of reading would have sufficed to take his attention away for long enough. Greendale must have been quite alarmed when you turned up, Major, the first of those unexpected arrivals that would in the end so thoroughly derail his plans. If there was no opportunity to execute this final stage of the trick, it would be easily discovered and could never have been repeated.
‘In this instance, though you and Anderton fell into conversation, and a little reflection must have revealed to Greendale that it could be pulled off nevertheless.
‘As I say, Greendale – or Garforth, if you prefer – did just what I have done, and caused the apparition of Kellway to vanish. Once you had all observed the room and seen it empty, he sent Anderton to fetch Sir Newnham at once. I imagine that in the excitement, Major, you may have felt the need to step outside again, just for a moment?’
Bradbury cleared his throat. ‘Can’t say I didn’t. Whole thing was a bit of a shock.’
‘Quite,’ said Holmes, with a smile he probably intended to be apologetic. ‘While briefly alone in the room, then, Greendale did this.’
This time he pulled more gently and steadily at the twine, drawing it through the large gap under the door. It brought after it a strange shape made of flimsy bamboo sticks, wire and cloth, connected with a mechanism that looked more than a little like that of a Speight’s Super-Collapsible Pocket Umbrella.
‘Upon my soul!’ declared the Major as Holmes unfolded the structure, spreading it out on the table.
It was a life-sized, unbelievably lifelike image of Holmes, executed in blacks, whites and greys. Sitting before me on the table, it was quite clearly flat as well as colourless – and yet I could see how, erected in the twilit Experiment Room, and twisted by the panoramic distortions of Sir Newnham’s patent glass, it could have passed muster as the real thing.
‘A photograph,’ Miss Casimir said, her accent recovered by now. ‘The shape has been cut out from a photograph, surely. But it is so large! How is it possible?’
‘Using a pinhole camera,’ Holmes said. ‘A less sophisticated version of the camera obscura you keep in the roof, Sir Newnham. Greendale had set one up in Garforth’s studio. He had less time than he had hoped to destroy it, and I have been able to reconstruct it from the remains.’
‘A pinhole camera projects an inverted image onto the wall of the inner chamber,’ Dr Kingsley observed.
I said, ‘An inverted image! That’s why the legs were the wrong way round!’
‘Quite so, Watson,’ said Holmes. ‘A detail which it seems slipped Greendale’s mind when it came to recreating his pose in the Experiment Room. With a large enough area of a photographic medium – let us say a linen sheet, impregnated with sufficient quantities of silver salts – one can capture a pinhole camera’s image permanently, just as one would with a conventional camera. Of course there follows the reversal of the original negative image to create a positive one, not to mention a laborious chemical process of developing and fixing, which requires among other things a chemical bath of considerable size. Greendale used an actual bathtub for the process, as did I. We had both best avoid taking a bath at home until it has been emptied and cleaned, Watson.’
Who would do that, I wondered, with Mrs Hudson gone? It was not a task I would care to trust to the Irregulars.
‘Cutting out my image and fixing its shape with wire was child’s play in comparison,’ he went on. I could see that in fact Holmes had cut out a larger outline around his own figure, then folded it back over the wire and sewn it in place. ‘You will understand that I was obliged to follow precisely the method Greendale used, employing the same equipment as far as was practical, or I could not have known for certain that it was possible at all. As it is, I was fortunate that this morning was a bright one – without sufficient light I could never have created an image clear enough to pass muster. Greendale, of course, had been sure to rent a studio space with very adequate windows for the purpose.
‘In summary, by the time Greendale was finished he had an image of himself as Kellway which was as large and, under the right circumstances, quite as convincing as the one you see before you now – all thanks to modern photographical processes. Not so much an Evolved Man, perhaps, as a Developed one.’
Holmes then showed us how the photograph was stiffened at the edges with a loop of wire, exactly like the one we had found among the burned cloth and wood in Garforth’s bathtub. With practice the arrangement of bamboo canes which held it upright took only a moment to set up, and could be collapsed with a single twitch of the twine attached to their central rod.
He then unclipped the unnervingly large photograph from the frame and with a quick twist of his wrists folded it up into a flat shape a third of its previous size, which he passed to me. Removing from his back the jacket that Theodore Greendale had worn as Kellway, he showed us how this triple loop could be slipped through the long tear in the lining, to sit snugly against the wearer’s back without noticeably distorting the garment’s fit.
‘This is how Kellway smuggled it into the room,’ Holmes said. ‘Garforth’s jacket, which Theodore successfully destroyed before Simon arrived, must have had a similar tear in the lining so he could conceal it after he removed it. As for the framework…’ He gave it a shake and it folded neatly into a bundle of bamboo sticks, which again he passed to me. He then unscrewed the top of the cane, revealing the filed-off stump of the blade, and I slipped the bundle into the body of the walking stick, which he then screwed shut.
‘As I have said, this is Theodore Greendale’s Garforth cane,’ he said, ‘which he was clubbed to death with.’ Beech flinched again at the reminder, while Small looked quite fascinated. ‘I fancy that the blade of his Kellway cane was broken by sheer accident some time ago, and this one was modified recently to match its useful deficiency. This specimen was almost the last piece of evidence Theodore had left to destroy, regrettably for him. At that point it still contained the frame, which he had concealed there after its use in the disappearing trick.
‘It was only after Simon Greendale spoke to Talbot Rhyne that he came to realise its significance, and by then he had abandoned it at the scene of the crime. That is how this mechanism came to fall into my hands. I fancy that it is of Rhyne’s own design.’
‘I’ve heard back from my men at Victoria,’ said Lestrade, who had just stepped outside to speak to a policeman. ‘The valise was already gone – picked up by a lady, the porters said. We’ll keep a look out for this Rhyne, but I don’t think we’re going to find him,’ he finished gloomily.
And so it proved. Although Simon Greendale was found guilty of the manslaughter of his uncle, of the assault of the two footmen and of conspiracy to defraud, and still serves a life sentence for the first of these, Talbot Rhyne evaded justice and has not been seen since.
For Sherlock Holmes, though, the case had never been about punishing a criminal. As he had made clear to Sir Newnham at their first meeting, his interest lay in explaining the inexplicable, and he could pride himself that once again he had eliminated the impossible from the realm of the admissible. Though the work of the Society for the Scientific Investigation of Psychical Phenomena continues as rigorously as ever under Sir Newnham Speight, Holmes takes occasional satisfaction in noting that the ten-thousand-pound reward for demonstrating such phenomena remains unclaimed.
I have not reminded him of Constantine Skinner’s words when he examined the scene of Kellway’s disappearance. Skinner’s overwrought description of a ‘hollow, flapping image’ collapsing and being drawn away through a void seemed fanciful to us both at the time. Its similarity to the true facts of the case sits too uneasily with me to make light of it, yet I know that Holmes would dismiss the coincidence at once.
‘And yet it could have been otherwise,’ he said to me on one occasion when the subject of Sir Newnham’s Society had arisen. We were once again in our sitting room, drinking tea from a pot supplied by the redoubtable Mrs Hudson – who had, after much pleading from myself, a large and apologetic bouquet from Holmes and a small fortune paid to an agency for domestics to come and clean up the depredations of the Irregulars, eventually consented to forgive us and return home.
He explained, ‘Talbot Rhyne and Theodore Greendale devised a conjuring trick that fooled some very keen observers. We cannot be sure that Kellway’s reappearance would have been handled as flawlessly as his vanishing, but it is quite possible that, had Simon Greendale not so inconveniently intervened in their scheme, the affair of the Interplanetary Man would have gone down in scientific history.’
‘They didn’t care about the science, though,’ I pointed out. ‘They were only after the money.’
‘Of course,’ said Holmes. ‘Rhyne was a skilled inventor, but no scientist. Science is the progressive discovery of the truth, and a deception can never be part of that. The experiment would have proven irreplicable, and the matter would in the end have been entered into the annals as an example of a famous, perhaps an inexplicable, hoax. But it was the work of an exceptional criminal mind nonetheless.’
‘Theodore Greendale?’ I said. ‘I hadn’t thought of him as such, after he got himself killed in such an ignominious way.’
‘And yet the more I consider the matter,’ said Holmes, ‘the more I doubt whether Greendale was its prime instigator. Rhyne was an excellent engineer; the collapsing framework was based on his own modification of his employer’s design, and I can only suppose that the pinhole camera scheme was also his, inspired by Parapluvium House’s camera obscura and dark rooms. Nothing in Theodore Greendale’s prior career suggests a comparable degree of technical knowledge. No, I would not be altogether surprised if his contribution were merely the skill in disguise and impersonation, and Rhyne were the true architect of the enterprise.’
‘I thought your view was that Rhyne was coerced into cooperating with Theodore as he was with Simon,’ I said. ‘Though I was never quite sure how.’
‘I said that partly to spare Sir Newnham’s feelings,’ Holmes admitted. ‘It was clear that Rhyne’s betrayal had hit him hard, for certainly he was a charismatic young person. It may indeed be that he joined Sir Newnham’s service with the intention of robbing him – it might even be the true reason for the loss of the summerhouse key, and that unusual depth of clearance beneath the Experiment Room doors – but if so he was playing a long game. Indeed, he must have been motivated by something other than greed, as there would surely be easier ways for a millionaire’s trusted intimate to extort ten thousand pounds, or even more. Was he seeking pure entertainment, or revenge for some imagined wrong? I fear we will never know.
‘And yet, if he was the scheme’s chief mover, then he is one of the most promising young criminals I have yet encountered, and certainly one of the most ingenious. And not, I think, without his own abilities at disguise.’
‘Really?’ I was surprised. ‘I would have thought there were quite enough disguises in that whole affair already. I mean, with Theodore posing as Garforth and both Greendales pretending to be Kellway.’
‘Perhaps, Watson, perhaps. And yet… we never did find out, did we, who the young woman was who Mrs Rust saw visiting Kellway, and who claimed to be his niece? Nor did we identify the lady who collected Rhyne’s luggage from Victoria, nor she who the footman mistook for the ghost of Anne Heybourne, haunting the stair to Sir Newnham’s study. That would have been around the time that Rhyne was borrowing the keys for copying. He would not have wanted to run the risk of being seen to do so – or of being recognised, at least.’
‘You’re suggesting that Rhyne was some kind of female impersonator?’ I was astonished. ‘Well, I suppose he could have if he’d wanted to. He had quite a feminine sort of face, as I recall. And his hands were very delicate.’
Holmes gave me an unreadable smile. ‘Dear Watson,’ he said fondly. ‘I do believe that it has never occurred to you how difficult it is for a vast proportion of our population to find a fulfilling outlet for their intellectual capabilities.’
I frowned. ‘Well, whatever his disadvantages, Rhyne fell on his feet with Sir Newnham. Which makes his betrayal all the more unconscionable.’
‘Indeed. Well,’ he added, crossing to the window, and looking out at the throngs passing along Baker Street, ‘perhaps we have seen the last of Talbot Rhyne, and perhaps we have not. Yet there is more than one way for a man to vanish, even in this city of millions.’
And I fear that he is right. For all that Sherlock Holmes or I have been able to discover, Talbot Rhyne might as well be on the surface of a distant planet.
Letter from Mrs Charlotte Webster (née Haborn)
to Mrs Amelia Meadows (née North)
King’s Shelton
19th September 1896
My dearest Amy,
I write to you in haste, for much of my attention is required here – not simply for poor Johnny, who has the chicken pox and for whose sake I came to stay with Mama and Papa in the country while Maurice trains with his regiment – oh, but I am muddling myself up, and must begin again.
Leaving Johnny aside (for in truth his nurse is more than capable of handling such a straightforward ailment), I have momentous news, which I must beg you to keep quiet for now until the family decide upon how we are to let the world know of it: for Letty has come back to us!
You will scarcely credit it, I know, after so long, but it is true. She arrived yesterday, just as she left – utterly unexpectedly, on a trap from the station, with a suitcase in hand. Papa is quite overjoyed, and Mama, though cold and unforgiving in her presence, has privately broken down in tears and confessed to me her relief.
For her part Letty has been moody and unpredictable, and she stubbornly refuses to say where she has been or what she has been doing these three-and-a-half years. We had quite given her up, presuming her to be married to some wastrel at best – but perhaps more likely dead, or mad like poor Great-Uncle Jeremiah Haborn of whom she was so fond, and who used to encourage her so.
For my part, I am ready to forgive, not merely the anguish she inflicted on us that April and during the years since, but even all the things she put us through in her childhood – her experiments and inventions, her madcap schemes, her daring lies – merely for the pleasure of having her home with us once more. After such a long time that I had almost forgotten her dear face, it is so good to see it again – even though her hair has been shorn so short that, I swear, she looks just like a boy.