Sherlock Holmes: The Coils of Time & Other Stories (Sherlock Holmes Adventures Book 1) (6 page)

Chapter VII

The Relevance of Time

The Royal College of Science is a stately four-storey terracotta building with fine sgraffito decorations in the Italian fashion fronting Exhibition Road, across from the Post Office, and adjoining the South Kensington Museum.  After a quick two-minute walk from the South Kensington Railway Station, Sherlock Holmes and Inspector Kent found themselves standing outside the silent dark rising structure, dim in the faint illumination from the rows of widely spaced gaslamps, with the shadows of tall gaunt trees thrown across its southern façade.

“They may know something about Maddoc here,” Kent admitted, “but at this hour…”

“There is always someone in residence beyond the servants,” Holmes explained, pushing through the gate and striding to the door.

Kent followed.  He flinched a little when Holmes used the heavy brass knocker, not because it was extraordinarily loud but because it so sharply shattered the perfect silence permeating the neighbourhood.  The darkness of the façade and the narrow black windows, disturbingly like the vacant eyes of a corpse in Pennyfields, played upon Kent’s nerves.  Or, maybe, he told himself, it was because he could not shake the feeling they were being covertly observed, a sensation that had refuse to let go of him ever since Holmes’ brat had vanished back into the stygian night.

Presently a dim light appeared small and indistinct through the windows, bobbing along like a banshee-light across the moors.  The heavy door opened, and the light became a hooded candle in the hand of a lad about sixteen years of age.  He wore an aura of sleepiness about him like a thin veil.

“Yes, sir,” he said tremulously, gazing from man to man upon the step.  “What is it?  How may I help you?”

“Inspector Kent of Scotland Yard.” He showed his identification and warrant. “And this is Mr Sherlock Holmes.  We’d like to speak to someone in authority, if there’s anyone in.”

“Cor,” the lad breathed.  “Sherlock Holmes!  But…”

“Yes, yes,” Holmes snapped impatiently.  “As it turns out, the report of my death was highly exaggerated.  Now, my good lad, is there anyone we may speak to in authority at this ungodly hour?”

“Yes, I’m sorry, Mr Holmes, please follow me,” the boy said.  “Mr Dawning, the Rector’s assistant is working late.  I’m sure he’ll be glad to speak with you, both of you, about anything you wish.”

Kent frowned in the darkness as they followed the boy and his wavering candle through the twenty-year-old edifice, which, though as stately as ever, was, like a grand dowager, was beginning to show its age, reluctantly.  The boy’s reaction to Holmes’ reappearance in London grated upon Kent’s sensibilities.  Ever since Holmes’ friend Watson had starting putting some of their cases into print, the public had become obsessed with these amateur detectives infesting London, to the detriment of the official police.  While Kent had to admit that Sherlock Holmes was probably the best of the bunch, far ahead of such as Martin Hewitt or Sebastian Zambra, their activities had contributed more to the denigration of New Scotland Yard’s official investigators in the public mind than any other factor.

Though Kent had identified himself as an agent of the official police, the lad had immediately fixated upon the tall lean figure of Holmes.  Well did Kent remember the great pall that settled upon London when the
Times
carried Holmes’ death-notice in 1891, and the foolishness which attended Watson’s publication of their final adventure in the
Strand Magazine
last year, with men in black armbands and women in veils, as if the death of Holmes were not then two years past.

They were conducted into an office not very large or appointed, but adequate to the needs of the job of a minor administrator in a teaching facility.  The man behind the desk, working by the light of a double-lamp, was of middle years, thin with the aesthetic pallor so common to those hide from the sun behind stacks of books.  Introductions were made, the boy withdrew, everyone sat, and Kent explained the reason for their nocturnal visit.

“Maddoc, you say?” mused Assistant Rector Dawning.  “I believe we have had a few students by that name, but it seems to me one was a fellow generally similar to the man you described.  He did well enough in his studies, but he was an argumentative sort, with that off-putting bluntness and contrariness you so often encounter in the Welsh.  He was graduated, if I remember correctly, but hardly with honours.  That I remember him at all, gentlemen, is no doubt due to his row with Hinton.”

“Hinton?” Kent enquired.

“Charles Howard Hinton, a mathematician,” Dawning supplied.  “He’s a bit of a trouble-maker himself, quite opinionated about his particular domain of mathematics.”  He looked at Holmes expectantly.  “He has published several papers upon the higher dimensions of geometry.”

“My field is the investigation of crime; my specialities are those sciences most likely to aid me in bringing the criminal to ground,” Holmes explained.  “Mathematics has only served to provide a foe who was, quite literally, nearly the death of me.”

“What was the nature of the row between Maddoc and Hinton?” Kent asked.

“I recall only its bitterness, the vituperous nature of the exchange,” Dawning replied.  “I do recall, however, that it had something to do with one of Hinton’s papers about the higher dimensions of geometry and the nature of time.”

“Do you know how we may contact Professor Hinton.?” Kent asked.

“Mr Hinton is no longer associated with this institution,” Dawning answered, “but I do believe he has returned to London.”  He consulted a large leather-bound ledger, wrote down an address on a piece of handy foolscap and handed it to Kent.  “Yes, he does not live far from here.  And now, gentlemen, if there is nothing else you require of me, I have work I must continue.”

The two men departed the Royal College of Science, walked to Princess Mews, then down Imperial Institute Road, past the imposing Renaissance edifice of the Imperial Institute itself, to Queen’s Gate where they hailed a passing hansom. In less than ten minutes they were deposited outside 93 Cheyne Walk in Chelsea, a long, riverside walk lined with trees and parkways along the water, with a row of red-brick Queen Anne or Georgian houses, some with wrought-iron gates and projecting covered porches, on the other.  The darkness of the Thames was clothed with mist, but its murmur was like a quiet nocturne in their ears.

“When you see a corner of London as quiet and peaceful as this,” Kent remarked, “it is hard to imagine anything might be amiss in the world.”

“Yes, it does lull a part of the mind,” Holmes admitted, “but it chills another portion, for the ancient adage about the depth of still waters is quite true when it comes to the souls of our fellow men.  A respectable façade all too often blinds us to the evil beneath.”  He surveyed their surroundings.  “Still, it is a pleasant area, with many literary and artistic connections.  Interesting, perhaps odd, that a mathematician concerned with complex functions of geometry should residence himself amongst the likes of Carlyle, Whistler, Rossetti, Swineburn and Eliot; but, then, given the esoteric nature of the mathematical realms which he explores, perhaps not.”

“Mathematics, esoteric?” Kent questioned.  “What’s so esoteric about the times table, or two plus two equalling four?  Or devising railway timetables, for that matter?”

“I have not read Hinton’s papers, but Assistant Rector Dawning’s use of the term ‘higher dimensions of geometry’ is sufficient warning we are not dealing with the simple arithmetic of a public school education,” Holmes explained.

“Higher dimensions?” Kent said with a little derisive snort.  “What does that mean anyway?  And how does it pertain to our quest?  What we need from him is not a blasted numbers lesson, but whether he knows the whereabouts of Maddoc, or even if he is indeed the same Maddoc we seek.”

“One would almost suspect you of harbouring a strain of Welsh yourself, Inspector,” Holmes said with a slight smile.  “We will rouse Mr Charles Hinton and determine from him all that, and hopefully more.”

Their knocking upon the door was answered by a man in his early forties, clad in a dark dressing gown and carrying an untrimmed oil lamp.  He opened the door a crack, confirmed that he was Charles Howard Hinton, and demanded to know the identities of his late visitors.  When Inspector Kent presented his identification papers and named his companion, the door was opened and they were admitted.  They were shown into a sitting room and the gaslamps turned up.

“So, what do you want?” Hinton demanded.

“Do you know a man named Maddoc?” Kent asked.

Hinton scowled.  “I will admit that I know a charlatan and a fraud named Maddoc – Moesen Maddoc.  If that’s all you came to ask, then I’ll thank you to leave.”

Kent scowled at the man’s rudeness, but neither he nor Holmes made any move to leave.  Instead he described the man they had seen at the Neptune.

“Yes, that’s Maddoc all right.”  He leaned forward and grinned.  “Tell me the fool did something illegal and is on his way to Dartmoor in Devon.”

“Not as far as we know,” Kent answered.  “At this point, we merely want to talk to him in connection with some investigations we have undertaken.”

Hinton grunted noncommittally.

“There would seem to exist between the two of you more than the usual amount of animosity,” Holmes observed, “more than one would expect from a disagreement about theories of mathematics.  Were his beliefs concerning the higher dimensions of geometry really so at variance with yours as to engender such hatred?”

Hinton levelled a steely stare at his visitors and asked:  “Do either of you gentlemen believe in the possibility of travel in the fourth dimension?”

“Fourth dimension?” Kent exclaimed.  “What the deuce do you mean by that?”

“I believe Professor Hinton is referring to time as a dimension, a view gathering acceptance currently among men of science and philosophy,” Holmes said.

“Quite right, Mr Holmes,” Hinton agreed.  “We believe in the three common dimension of space – length, breadth and height – because we can so easily see them with our eyes, perceive them with our sense of touch.  Understand, though, that in doing so, we accept two universes which we cannot perceive, that being the universe of the line – one dimensional – and the plane – expanse in two dimensions.  We cannot see either of those universes, nor could any possible inhabitants of  the lower dimensions perceive us, or each other, for that matter.

“For example, an inhabitant of the one-dimensional universe, let us call it Lineland, would know the cosmos only an endless line,” Hinton continued.  “Any existence beyond that line would be utterly inconceivable to our little lineman, but rotate his universe at right angles to itself, and you have a two-dimensional universe as familiar to Euclid as to any schoolboy who has studied plane geometry – Flatland.  The lives of the inhabitants of Flatland, be they triangular women, square men or pentagonal priests,  would be as an open book to us, gentlemen, observers from the Third Dimension, a universe lifted at a right angle from their own.  To them, we would be as gods, able to see into their homes and beings from a direction they cannot imagine; if we attempted to physically pass through Flatland, we would be perceived only as a series of circles and ovals of changing size.”

Kent leaned back in his chair and blew out a puff of air.

Hinton laughed.  “I understand your consternation, Inspector.  Your turmoil is no different than that felt by any schoolboy under my tutelage when asked to proceed beyond the limits of vision and common sense.”

“Now that you have worked up to the dimensions of our visible universe,” Holmes said dryly, “your next step presumably would be to rotate it by a right angle to itself.”

“Very good, Mr Holmes,” said Hinton, as if the consulting detective were a student bright enough to follow  a complex lesson.  “A fourth dimension extended from our common three, the dimension of Time.  Some people, even learned men, appear to think that the Fourth Dimension is in some way different from the three which we know.  But there is nothing mysterious at all about it.  It is just an ordinary dimension tilted up in some way, which with our bodily organs we cannot point to.  A point extended becomes a line; turn a line and you have a square; lift a square and you have a cube; turn a cube as common as a gaming die in a direction we cannot imagine, and you have what I have termed a hyper-cube, a fourth-dimensional cube.”

“Quite fascinating, Professor Hinton,” Holmes commented, “but valuable only as an exercise to the mental faculties.”

“I quite agree, Mr Holmes.”

“What about Maddoc?” Kent demanded.

Hinton’s features again twisted into a savage scowl.  “That Welsh mechanic!”

“The source of the contention, then,” Holmes said calmly, subtly motioning Kent to back off, “is that Maddoc did not view it as a mental exercise, but as a means to a practical end?”

“He utterly twisted my research and my words away from their intent,” Hinton explained.  “The visualisation of Time as a fourth dimension to our common three is a means to an end, that end being the expansion of human consciousness.  I did not democratise the once-ethereal realms of higher geometry simply so a mechanic with a dangerous smattering of mathematics and physics could develop an engine to power a machine.  A base machine, gentlemen!  A Time Machine!”