'No introduction is necessary, nor was any deep deduction on my part. Your portrait has been as common enough this year.'
He looked flattered. 'You know my work?'
'As it has been featured in the
Holmes agreed to travel with Wells to the Brimicombe home, near Chippenham, and he prevailed on me to accompany him, despite my reluctance to leave London, so close was I to my bereavement. But Holmes persisted, kindly. 'You know how few
of my cases involve the deeper mysteries of science, Watson. Perhaps this will be a suitable candidate for your casebook! It will be quite like old times.' And so it was, the very next day, that I found myself with my valise clambering aboard the ten-fifteen from Paddington Station. We had the carriage to ourselves, Holmes, Wells and I. Holmes wrapped himself in his grey travelling-cloak and stretched out his long legs on the cushioned seat, as Wells, in his thin, piping voice, set out the full details of the case for us.
'I have known Ralph Brimicombe since we both attended the Normal School of Science in the 'eighties,' he began, 'and I remained in friendly contact with him until his recent death. He was a rather dream-like, remote figure – oddly impractical in the details of everyday life – to the extent that I was somewhat surprised when he married, when still a student at the Normal School. But his mind always sparked with creative energy. His subjects at the School were Astronomy, Astrophysics – all that sort of thing – along with Electricity and Magnetism. Even as a student he began to develop intriguing ideas about the coupling, as he put it, between electricity and gravity. Our theories of gravity were long due for an overhaul, he claimed. And perhaps there could even be practical applications. He was a delight to debate with! – you can imagine how I found him a soul-mate.'
Holmes asked, 'A coupling?'
'Gravity, as you know, is that force which imbues our bodies with weight. Ralph became convinced that the gravity of a large mass such as the Earth could be mitigated by a suitable arrangement of large currents and magnetic fluxes. Mitigated, or reduced.'
'Reduced?' I said. 'But if that were true, the commercial possibilities would be enormous. Think of it, Holmes. If one could reduce the weight of freight goods, for example – '
'Oh, to hang with commerce and freight!' Wells exclaimed. 'Doctor Watson, Ralph Brimicombe claimed to have found a way to have removed the influence of gravity altogether. Without gravity, one could fly! He even claimed to have built a small capsule, and flown himself – alone, mind you, and without witnesses – all the way to the moon. He showed me injuries which he said were due to an exhaustion of his food and water, an exposure to the Rays of Space, and burns from the lunar Vacuum. And he gave me a small vial, of what he claimed was moon dust, as 'proof' of his journey. I have it about me.' He patted his pockets.
Holmes raised a thin eyebrow. 'And did you believe these claims?'
Wells hesitated. 'Perhaps I wished to. But not entirely. Ralph was never above exaggerating his achievements, so impatient was he for acceptance and prestige.
'But I run ahead of my account. Ralph, for all his ability, could only scrape through the examinations at the Normal School, so distracted did he become by his gravitational obsession. After that, no respectable institution would take him on, and no journal would publish the revised theories and partial experimental results he claimed.' Wells sighed. 'Perhaps Ralph's greatest tragedy was the untimely death of his father, some months after he left the Normal School. The father had made a fortune in the Transvaal, and had retired to Chippenham, only to die of recurrent malaria. He left everything, with few tiresome legal complications, to his two sons: Ralph, and the younger Tarquin. This sudden legacy made Ralph a rich man. No longer did he need to convince peers of the value of his work. Now, he could plough a lone furrow, wherever it might take him.
'Ralph returned to Wiltshire, and devoted himself to his studies. He privately published his results which – while of great interest to students of the esoteric like myself – were roundly and rudely rejected by other scientists.'
'And what of Tarquin?' Holmes asked.
'I knew Tarquin a little. I never much liked him,' Wells said. 'He was quite a contrast to Ralph. Full of vanity and self-regard, and not nearly so intelligent, though he has some smattering of an education, and, as I understand it, a crude grasp of his brother's accomplishments. Tarquin squandered his own inheritance in trying to follow his father's footsteps in Southern Africa, failed roundly, and came home pursued by debtors. Eventually his brother took him on as a species of senior assistant. Tarquin acquired equipment for Ralph's experiments, arranged apparatus and so forth. But even in this he proved less than competent, and Ralph was forced to demote him, effectively, to work as subordinate to Ralph's own engineer, a stolid local chap called Bryson.'
I remarked, 'It looked as if your lunch party took place in the midst of Ralph's apparatus.'
'Yes.' Wells smiled. 'He was fond of such spectaculars. And I must describe the purpose of that apparatus to you, for it will be of significance to your investigation.
'I have mentioned Ralph's attempts – partially successful, he claimed – to nullify gravity. But this proved possible only over a small volume. To extend his abilities – to build greater ships which might carry teams of men across the Void of Space – Ralph pursued studies of more subtle aspects of the gravitational phenomenon, notably the Equivalence between Intertial and Gravitational Mass. You see -
I held up my hands. 'I cannot speak for Holmes, but I am already baffled, Mr Wells. I know nothing of gravity, save for its slow dragging at the lower spines and arches of my patients.'
'Let me explain by analogy. Mr Holmes, can I trouble you for some coins? A sovereign and a farthing should do – there. Thank you.' He held the two coins over the carriage floor. 'Look here, Watson. The sovereign is considerably heavier than the farthing.'
'That is clear enough.'
'If I release these coins simultaneously they will fall to the floor.'
'Of course.'
'But which will arrive first? – the farthing, or the sovereign?'
Holmes looked amused. I felt that embarrassed frustration which sometimes comes over me when I cannot follow some elaborated chain of reasoning. And yet, the case seemed simple enough. 'The sovereign,' I said. 'Disregarding the resistance of the air, as the heavier of the two – '
Wells released the coins. They fell side by side, and struck the carriage floor together.
'I am no expert in Gravitational Mechanics,' Holmes chided me, 'but I do remember my Galileo, Watson.'
Wells retrieved the coins. 'lt is all to do with various Laws of Newton. Under gravity, all objects fall at the same rate, regardless of their mass. Think of it this way, Watson: if you were in a lift, and the cable snapped, you and the lift would fall together. You would feel as if you were floating, inside the lift car.'
'Briefly,' I said, 'until the shaft floor was reached.'
'Indeed. It was precisely this effect which Ralph strove to study. In the luncheon chamber I showed you, with an apparatus of coils and cones and loops, he managed to create a region of space in which – as Ralph showed us with a series of demonstrations and tricks – thanks to the adjustment of the gravity field with electrical energy, heavier objects did indeed fall more rapidly than the lighter! This was the 'Inertial Adjustor', as Ralph called it. It sounds a trivial feat – and is much less spectacular than shooting a capsule at the moon – but it is nonetheless quite remarkable. If true.'
'But you doubt it,' Holmes said. 'In fact, you employed the word 'tricks'.'
Wells sighed. 'Dear old Ralph. I do not think he lied deliberately. But his optimism and energy for his own work would sometimes cloud his critical judgement. And yet the acceptance of his theories and devices – particularly his Inertial Adjustor – were central to his life, his very mental state.'
'So central, in fact, that they led to his death.'
'Indeed,' said Wells. 'For it was in that very chamber, within the Intertial Adjustor itself, that Ralph Brimicombe died – or was killed!'
It was after three o'clock when at last we reached Chippenham. We took a trap to the Brimicombe residence, a well-appointed affair of the Regency period which had been rather allowed to run to seed.
Holmes stepped from the trap and sniffed the air. He walked to the verge of the gravel drive and inspected the lawn grass, which I noticed was discoloured here and there by small brown circles, samples of which Holmes disturbed gently with the toecap of his boot.
