The Ectoplasmic Man (21 page)

“What did you say, Holmes?” Houdini shouted, pulling off his leather helmet. Whatever Holmes had said was lost to me in the rush of wind and the din of the engine, but Houdini was closer to him and was evidently better able to pick it out.

“I know,” Houdini responded as Holmes repeated himself, “but outrunning them isn’t good enough! We must find a way to stop them!” He peered off towards the other aircraft. “Maybe we should have left Watson behind after all, we’re too heavy for any manouvering… wait!” he cried, suddenly struck with an inspiration. “Can you really fly this thing, Holmes?”

Holmes made a reply, and though I still could not hear, I suspect it was indignant.

“Then come up here and take the control,” Houdini shouted. “Remember, pull in and out to work the elevator, turn the wheel for the rudder. Come on! Change places with me!”

“Wait!” I shouted. “Don’t! The wind will carry you to your death!” Holmes could not hear me, though I doubt he would have heeded my warning if he had. Limited as my understanding of our craft was, I knew enough to realise that once Holmes left the sheltering dead space of the wing, he laid himself bare to the very forces which kept the plane aloft. I
doubted that even he could long withstand them.

Taking hold of two of the wooden spars, Holmes slowly pulled himself to a standing position on the lower wing. The wind blasted through the folds of his cloak, carrying his deerstalker cap over the edge of the wing. The journey from where he stood to the control was one of only four steps, but each of those steps was a peril of unsteady footing and savage wind, threatening at every moment to carry him overboard. Tentatively making his way inch by inch, handhold by handhold, Holmes managed at length to lay hands on the wheel and lower himself into Houdini’s seat, while the young magician slipped out beneath and took his place on the exposed wing.

Very little would have surprised me at this point, for I was well convinced that the pair of them had gone insane, but even so I could make no sense of it as Houdini busily fastened a length of rope to two of the sturdier cross-spars. What could he be planning?

Holmes’s newly acquired aviation skills served him well as he pointed our craft directly towards Kleppini’s and began to overtake it. At the same time, Houdini had lashed his own ankles together with the other end of the rope and, heedless of this impediment, was crawling out to the front edge of the wing on his hands and knees. Despite the dubious precaution of the rope, I feared at every instant that Houdini would be swept off the wing, and twice he was forced to flatten himself against the surface as a particularly bitter gust tore across him. Still he worked doggedly, carrying the rope along the cross-spars for a purpose I could not yet fathom.

We were by now flying directly over Kleppini’s aircraft, and it was then that Houdini performed one of those rare acts of bravery which, even as it inspires admiration, raises the dark spectre of the Juggernaut. For Houdini rolled his body to the extreme forward edge of the wing, carefully tested the rope about his ankles, and then gently lowered himself off the wing and into empty space.

Supported only by the one strand of rope around his feet, Houdini spun and swayed like a child’s toy head down in the wind. Undaunted, he lowered himself still further, his body bent double to work hand over hand along the rope. This was the attitude he had devised for his open-air strait-jacket escapes, but I fancy that even that ordeal was pale compared to this. Dangling like a fish on a hook, he might at any moment break free and plummet to the far distant earth.

Holmes was doing his best to compensate for our now wildly uneven distribution of weight, but even so our craft was listing forward dangerously, so that I had to brace myself more firmly against the supports or be spilled forward off the wing. The forward tilt of the aeroplane left me only too well situated to see that Houdini was now trying to swing himself towards the wing of the craft below. This proved nearly impossible, for though the two aeroplanes were flying almost parallel, Houdini had to contend not only with the violent wind, but also with the unsteady dips and waverings of our imbalanced craft.

After several maddeningly near misses, Houdini did at last manage to grab hold of the extreme lower edge of Kleppini’s wing. Working with a strength born of desperation, Houdini pulled himself in under the wing and began tearing away at the fabric beneath. It was clear that, like punching a hole in a child’s kite, Houdini intended to cripple the aircraft by ripping through its wing. Of necessity, Houdini was completely taken up with his precarious task, which left him oblivious to a new and more menacing danger.

Though Kleppini was occupied in flying his aircraft, the large man in the red muffler, our mysterious foe, had spotted Houdini and was inching his way along the wing towards him. I was certain that if he reached the spot where Houdini hung by the slender cord, my friend’s life would be forfeit.

I shouted to Holmes, but he could not hear me, and evidently he was
so busy trying to keep our aeroplane level that he had not observed the new danger.

In times of extreme stress, a man’s mind makes peculiar leaps. No sooner had I perceived this new threat to Houdini than I found myself doing precisely what I had thought so parlous only moments before. I released my supports and pulled myself out onto the unsheltered wing of the aeroplane.

I will not pretend that some previously untapped well of bravery guided my actions, for I literally quaked with fear as I crawled forward, the wind tugging at me, my chest on fire, but I knew that I had either to act or watch Houdini be sent to his death some three hundred feet below.

Gripping the edge of the wing with one hand, I aimed my revolver as best I could with the other. The man in the red muffler had nearly reached Houdini by now, but the American, still clinging to the underside of the bottom wing, could not even see his attacker crawling along the top.

Both aeroplanes were now dipping and swaying wildly from imbalance, making careful aim impossible, but as the big man brandished a hunting knife within inches of Houdini’s lifeline, I steadied and fired.

My bullet did not find its mark, but it must have passed close enough to alarm Houdini’s attacker, for he whirled about, grasping inside his coat for his own revolver. This action proved unwise, for as he took his hand from the support he was shunted over the edge of the inclined wing.

I shall never forget how he clawed at the air as he fell, how his legs thrashed in the empty space; but soon he was beyond sight, beyond sound and beyond help.

A S
LEIGHT
U
NSEEN

I
n the most extraordinary way, the unfortunate death of the man in the red muffler would soon lead to the successful resolution of our case. If not for his demise, and at precisely the moment and manner in which it occurred, we may never have recovered the Gairstowe letters. This fact, however, was not immediately apparent. My first impression, directly following the hideous incident, was that all of our efforts had been in vain.

We had found it necessary to reduce our speed while Houdini pulled himself back up the rope and onto the wing of our craft. In so doing, we lost sight of Kleppini’s aeroplane. Having thus broken off the pursuit, we attempted to recover the remains of Houdini’s assailant, but several low passes over the meadow where he had fallen failed to produce any sign of the body. Though he had most assuredly been crushed to death upon impact, all traces were obscured by the tall grass.

“Well, I guess that’s it,” Houdini said despondently when we had landed the craft at Ruggles (an experience I hope never to repeat!). “We’ve lost Kleppini, and we can’t even find the other fellow’s body. I guess we’ve lost the game.”

“On the contrary,” said Sherlock Holmes, “our fortunes have taken a decided turn for the better.”

“Come on, Holmes,” said Houdini, “why don’t you face the truth? It’s over!”

In the face of what had just occurred, it is easy to see why Houdini became so dispirited, but I knew Holmes far too well to discount his seemingly ungrounded optimism.

“How can our situation have improved, Holmes?” I asked.

“It’s quite simple,” he began, “with the death of—”

“Oh stop it, Holmes!” Houdini cried angrily. “What’s the point of drawing it out? Kleppini is long gone! There’s nothing more we can do!”

Sherlock Holmes has had more than his share of doubters over the years, and it is always something of a treat to see how he manages them. I recall one occasion, many years earlier, when he had been called upon to solve the insidious Joruel Strangulations case, a mystery which hinged upon the unexplained disappearance of the murder weapon. “How is it possible for a garotte to vanish into thin air?” Inspector Gregson had demanded. “Explain that, Mr Sherlock Holmes, and you’ll have solved the case!” With a peculiar smile upon his lips, Holmes withdrew a similar garotte from his pocket, exhibited it to Gregson and, without further comment, swallowed it.

The same smile spread across his face now as Holmes stepped to the storage barn and began pushing back the sliding door. He had barely opened it a foot when one of our two horses pushed its way out into the field.

“That’s odd,” I said. “Where is our other horse?”

“This barn has a back door,” Houdini said. “Maybe — good Lord! It can’t be!”

Now it was Houdini’s turn to be astonished by the contents of the barn, for Holmes had now pushed the door completely open to reveal Herr Kleppini’s flying machine.

“Kleppini’s ’plane!” Houdini marvelled. “What’s it doing here? Why did he come back?”

“Obviously something occurred during the flight which caused him to change his mind about leaving the country. I think we are on safe ground — in a manner of speaking — to assume that this occurrence was the death of his employer.”

“Why should the death of the other man cause Kleppini to return here?” I asked.

“Why indeed? Here, Watson, we enter the heady sphere of deductive reasoning. What would cause Kleppini to arrest his own successful flight?”

“Holmes, is this leading us anywhere?” Houdini demanded, shifting uneasily from foot to foot. “If Kleppini is still in England somewhere, shouldn’t we be chasing him?”

“I thought it might be useful if we decided where to look.”

“All right, go on.”

“Early this morning,” Holmes began, as he inspected the damage Houdini had done to the wing of the other craft, “our mysterious adversary arrived at Gairstowe to discover the three of us springing a trap on Kleppini. He very sensibly concluded that his plans had been discovered, and he further realised that the only recourse was to flee the country.”

“But what’s the point in going over this now?” Houdini asked. “This man, whoever he was, is dead now!”

“Exactly,” Holmes agreed, “and with his death, Kleppini suddenly found himself a free agent. No longer bound by his employer’s decisions, Kleppini elected, against all logic, to return here. Why? Evidently there is something that the two of them left behind, something which Kleppini believes is worth the considerable risk of capture.”

“The Gairstowe papers!”

“Watson, you surpass yourself once more. That was precisely my conclusion.”

“Then we must get to Brighton immediately!”

“If the papers were in Brighton, Kleppini would undoubtedly have flown there. The damage to his wing was not great enough to prevent it.”

“But... then where are they?”

“I believe we shall find Kleppini and the papers at the Savoy.”

“My theatre?” cried Houdini. “But why there?”

“I think I know,” I said. “You forget that Kleppini’s interest in this crime was to create the illusion of your guilt. How better to further that illusion than to place the stolen documents in your possession? That’s it, isn’t it, Holmes? We must get to the Savoy immediately!”

Sherlock Holmes neither confirmed nor contradicted my conclusion, leaving me with the uneasy feeling that the problem was a good deal more complex than I had divined.

“Look,” said he, “here is Kleppini’s horse and the milk cart. He must have taken one of our horses, but if we hitch the other to the cart we may yet arrive at the theatre before him.”

“One thing bothers me, Holmes,” said Houdini. “My assistant Franz spends most of his time at the theatre, and he’s always on the look out for intruders.”

“We are aware of that,” Holmes said ruefully, recalling our last encounter with Franz.

“Well, you’ve seen what Kleppini is capable of I’m just afraid that… if Franz gets in the way …”

“Don’t worry,” I tried to reassure him, “we’ll get there in time.”

I must say that neither of us was entirely convinced by my assurances, and Houdini fell grimly silent throughout the whole of our journey to the Savoy.

With Holmes at the reins we made startlingly good time even when we reached inner London, for he regarded the congestion of city streets as little more than a mathematical problem. This led to some highly
inventive driving techniques, and I doubt that he had endeared himself to the London traffic constabulary by the time we finally reached the Savoy.