Gaslight Grimoire: Fantastic Tales of Sherlock Holmes (35 page)

Frederick Nietzsche witters on about ‘how terrible is the laughter of the
übermensch’
— yes, I have read a book without pics of naked bints or big game! — and establishes there is blood and ice in the slightest chuckle of these superior beings. If Fathead Fred ever heard the laugh of Professor Moriarty, he would have shat blood, ice and sauerkraut into his German drawers.

“Yes-s-s,” he hissed. “Paper hats-s-s.”

From the Diary of Sir Nevil Airey Stent.

September 2: Notices are in!

My lecture — an unparalleled triumph!
The Dynamics of an Asteroid
— in the dust-bin! Moriarty’s hash — settled for good! I may draw a thick black line through the most prominent name on the List.

Now — on to other things.

Remodelling of Flamsteed House continues. All say it’s not grand enough for my position. Workmen have been in all week, installing electric lamps in every room. In my position, we must have all the modern, scientific devices. Lady Caroline fears electricity will leak from the wiring and strike dead the servants with indoor lightning. I have explained to her why this is impossible, but my dear featherhead continues to worry and has ordered the staff to wear rubber-soled shoes. They squeak about the place like angry mice.

Similarly, the Observatory must expand, keep apace, draw ahead.

At 94 inches, our newly-commissioned optical reflecting telescope shall be the biggest in the world! The ‘scopes at Birr Castle and the Lick Observatory will seem like tadpoles! I almost feel sorry for them. Almost. That’s two more off the List!

Kedgeree for breakfast, light lunch of squab and quail eggs, Dover sole and chipped potatoes for supper. Congress with Lady C. — twice! Must eat more fish.

Reviewing my life and achievements on this, my forty-fifth birthday, I concede myself well-satisfied.

All must admire me.

Looking to the planets and stars, I feel I am surveying my domain. My Queen has her Empire, but she has gifted me the skies for conquest.

Mars is winking at me, redly.

September 6: A curious happening.

Business took me to the lens-grinders’ in Seven Dials. Old Parsons’ work has been indifferent lately, and I made a personal visit to administer a metaphorical boot to the seat of his britches.

After the booting was done, I left Parsons’ shop and happened to notice the premises next door. Above a dingy window was a sign — ‘C. Cave, Naturalist and Dealer in Antiquities’. The goods on offer ran to dead birds, elephant tusks, shark-maws, fossils and the like. I’d thought this site occupied by a bakery, but must be misremembering. Cave’s premises had plainly stood for years, gradually decaying and accumulating layers of dust and dirt.

My attention was drawn to the window by a red flash, which I perceived out of the corner of my eye. A stray shaft of light had reflected off an odd object — a mass of crystal worked into the shape of an egg and brilliantly polished. It might do for a paper-weight if I were in need of such a thing, which I was not.

Then, I heard voices raised inside the emporium. One was known to me — that upstart Moriartian Ogilvy. Alone among the fraternity of astronomers, he has written in defence of
The Dynamics of an Asteroid
. His name was on the List.

I stepped back into the doorway of Parsons’, but kept my ears open. Og. was haggling with an old man — presumably, C. Cave himself — over the crystal lump, for which the proprietor was asking a sum beyond his purse. An opportunity.

Casually, I wandered into the shop.

Cave, a bent little fellow with egg in his stringy beard and a tea-cozy on his head, had the odd mannerism of wobbling his head from side to side like certain snakes. I thought for a moment that I knew him from somewhere, but must have been mistaken. He smelled worse than many of his antiquities. I say, that’s rather good — must save the line for my next refutation.

Og. was going through his pockets, scraping together coins to up his offer.

Upon seeing me, Og. said “Stent, how fortunate that it’s you,” with undue familiarity as if we were the closest of friends. “Could you extend me a small loan?”

“Five pounds,” insisted Cave. “Not a penny less.”

Og. sweated like an opium-addict without funds for his next pipe. Most extraordinary thing. I hadn’t thought he had the imagination to be so desperate.

“Of course, my dear fellow,” I said. His face lifted, and his palm came out. “But first I must conclude my own business. My good man, I should like to purchase that
curious crystal
in your window.”

Og. looked as if he had been punched in the gut.

“Five pounds,” said Cave.

“Stent, I say, you can’t … well, that is … I mean, dash it…”

“Yes, Ogilvy, was there something?”

I drew out my wallet and handed over five pounds. Cave entered the sale in an ancient register, then fussed about extracting the object from the window.

I looked at Og. He tried unsuccessfully to cover fury and disappointment.

“Now about that loan,” I said, wallet still open.

“Doesn’t matter now,” he said — and left the shop, setting the bell above the door a-jangle.

Another name off the List!

Cave came back with the object, cradled in black velvet. It struck me that I need only say I’d changed my mind to reclaim my outlay. But Og. might creep back and get the blessed thing after all. Couldn’t have that.

Cave held up the crystal and said something about ‘the inner light’. Strange phrase. He meant the refraction, of course, but a lecture on optics would have been out of place in this circumstance. No fee would be forthcoming, and it doesn’t do to cheapen the currency of scholarship by dishing out lectures
gratis
.

I took the thing away with me. Perhaps I can use it as a paper-weight after all.

Roast boar with apricots at the Lord Mayor’s. Congress with Lady Caroline in the carriage on the way home. Whoosh!

September 7: An odd day.

Luncheon at Simpson’s in the Strand with Jedwood, my publisher. Cream of turbot, hock of ham, peppered pear. An acceptable muscadet, porter, sherry. The
Refutation
pamphlet is shifting briskly, and J. is eager for more. Pity Moriarty hasn’t fired other literary clay pigeons I could blast to bits. J. proposes a collection of
Refutations
and suggests I consider expanding the arena of combat, to launch my intellectual ballista against other so-called great minds of the age. J. is a dolt — he doesn’t understand the List, or that it is as important to choose the proper enemies as the proper friends. Nevertheless, I’m tempted. Tom Huxley, Darwin’s old bulldog, could do with having
his
ears boxed for a change. And I didn’t care for the way George Stokes hovered over Lady Caroline at the last Royal Society formal. Those Navier-Stokes equations have their tiny little cracks.

Most extraordinary thing. As J. and I were leaving the restaurant, a wild-haired, sun-burned fellow accosted us in the street, gabbling “The Martians are coming, the Martians are coming!” Ever since Schiaparelli put about that nonsense about canals, there has been debate about how one should address the notional inhabitants of the planet Mars. I am firmly of the belief that ‘Marsian’ is the only acceptable term. I took the trouble to correct the moonatic on this point, but he was in no condition to listen. He grabbed my lapels with greasy fingers and breathed gin in my face. He called me by name, which was discomforting. “Sir Nevil,” he said, “keep watching the skies! Look to the Red Planet! Look into the Crystal Egg!”

J. summoned a hefty constable, who laid a hand on the madman’s shoulder. The fellow writhed in the grasp of the law, and a look of heightened terror passed over his face. It is no wonder men of his stripe should fear the police, but the extent of his pantomime of fright struck me as excessive even for his situation. Curiously, the constable seemed humpbacked, tailored uniform emphasizing rather than concealing a pronounced lump on one shoulder. I assumed the Metropolitan Police imposed strict physical requirements on their recruits. Perhaps this fellow’s condition has worsened in recent years? Something was not quite right about his hump, which I could swear wobbled like a jelly on a plate. His eyes were glassy and his face pale — indeed, our lawful officer was evidently in as poor a shape as our degenerate semi-assailant.

“Don’t let them take me,” begged the madman, “they wraps round you … and they bites … and they sucks your brains … and you ain’t you no more. I’ve seen it!”

“Let’s … be … ‘avin … you … my … lad,” said the policeman, voice like a prolonged death rattle, monotonous and expressionless. “You … don’t … want … to … be … a … botherin’… these … gentlemen…”

The madman’s face contorted in a silent scream.

There was something peculiarly hideous about the constable’s voice, as if he were a music hall dummy manipulated by a wicked ventriloquist.

“Mind … ‘ow … you … go … sirs!”

The policeman lifted the madman — not a small individual, by the way — one-handed. He marched off stiff-legged, bearing his whimpering prisoner down the Strand. As he walked, his hump seemed to
shift
under blue serge, as if it were a separate entity. I had a sense of evil eyes cast at me.

J. asked me if I had any idea who the maniac was.

He had something of a military mien, I thought — though come down in the world, perhaps having frazzled his brains out in some sunstruck corner of Empire. It came to me that I
had
seen him before — perhaps in the audience at one of my many popular lectures, perhaps skulking on the street waiting for the chance to accost me. J. pointed out that he had known who I was, but — of course — everyone in England knows the Astronomer Royal.

“It should definitely be ‘Marsian’,” I insisted. “The precedents are many and I can recall them in order…”

J. remembered he had forgotten another appointment — with a lesser author — and left, before I could fully convince him. Must send him my monograph on planetary possessives. Some still rail against ‘Mercurial’ and ‘Jupiteric’, though a consensus is nearly reached on ‘Moonian’ and ‘Venutian’. By the end of this century, we shall have definitively colonized the sunnar system for proper naming!

September 7,
later
.

I had thought to dispel completely the unpleasant memory of this afternoon’s strange encounter … but the words of the madman resounded.

By some happenstance, this was literally true.

The long-necked cabbie who conveyed me back to Greenwich bade me a jovial farewell with “keep watching the skies, sir.” An unusual turn of phrase to hear twice in one day, perhaps — but a sentiment naturally addressed to a famous astronomer in the vicinity of the biggest telescope in the land.

Galvani, the Italian foreman of the gang who have completed — at last! — the electrification of Flamsteed House, handed me a sheaf of wiring diagrams marked ‘for the attention of the householder’ and clearly said “
look to the Red Plan, et
… es essential for to understan’ the current en the house”. There was, indeed, a red plan in the sheaf, but it seemed to me he had stressed the first part of his sentence, which echoed the words of the madman, and thrown away the second, which conveyed his particular meaning.

Then, before supper, I was passing the kitchens and happened to overhear Mrs. Huddersfield, the new house-keeper, tell the butler to “look into the crystal”, referring to our fresh stock of Waterford glassware, a scant instant before Polly, the new under-maid, exclaimed “egg!” in answer to a question about the secret ingredient of the face-paste which keeps her complexion clear. To my ears, these separate voices melded to produce a single sentence, the madman’s “
look into the Crystal Egg”
.

Lady Caroline is at her sister’s, and I dined alone, unable to concentrate on supper. Every detail of the business on the Strand resurfaced in my mind.

I was shocked out of my reverie only by the sweetness of dessert — and looked down into a crystal bowl to see a quivering scarlet blancmange, with a curiously eye-like glacé cherry at its summit. In its color, the dish reminded me of the planet Mars, and, in its movement, the somehow-unnatural hump of the strangely-spoken police constable.

Only then did I remember the paperweight snatched out from the grasp of the odious Ogilvy yesterday.

A mass of crystal, in the shape of an egg!

A Crystal Egg! Could the madman of the Strand have been referring to this item of bric-a-brac?

Unable to finish my dessert for thinking.

September 7 —
still later
: a great discovery!

After supper, I repaired to my study, where I keep my collection of antique and exotic optical and astronomical equipment: telescopes, sextants, orreries and the like. Signor Galvani’s men have disturbed them greatly while seeing to the electrification of the room.

A new reflecting telescope arrived this morning, a bulky cabinet affair on trestles, with an aperture where a separate lens must presumably be attached. It is an unfamiliar design — a presentation, in honor of my achievements in mapping the night skies, from an august body who call themselves the Red Planet League. I have had had my secretary respond with an autographed photograph and a note of thanks. Entering the study, I saw at once that the workmen had mistaken this gift for a species of lamp, and wired it up to the mains. I would be inclined to chide Galvani most severely, had this error not nudged me on the path to discovery.