The Mammoth Book of New Sherlock Holmes Adventures

Wells frowned.

'They were rather odd, Mr Wells,' I said.

'We can imagine the effect of the distorted gravity of that chamber on generations of insects and animals,' Holmes said. 'A mouse, for instance, being small, would need the lightest of limbs to support its reduced weight.'

Wells saw it. 'And they would evolve in that direction, according to the principles of Darwin – of course! Succeeding generations would develop attenuated limbs. Insects like your ant, Watson, could grow to a large size. But larger animals would be dragged more strongly to the ground. A horse, for example, might need legs as thick as an elephant's to support its weight.'

'You have it,' said Holmes. 'But I doubt if there was time, or resource, for Ralph to study more than a generation or two of the higher animals. There was only his wife's unlucky labrador to use as test subject. And when Watson opens the envelope in his pocket, he will find the assay of the urine samples from that animal to display excessive levels of calcium.'

That startled me. I retrieved and opened the envelope, and was not surprised – I know the man! – to find the results just as Holmes had predicted.

'The calcium is from the bones of the animal,' Holmes said. 'Trapped by Ralph in a region in which it needed to support less weight, the bitch's musculature and bone structure must have become progressively weaker, with bone calcium being washed out in urine. The same phenomenon is observed in patients suffering excessive bed rest, and I saw certain indications of the syndrome in those discoloured patches of lawn.'

'Then the means of his death,' Wells said, 'must indeed be related to Ralph Brimicombe's successful modification of gravity itself.'

'Certainly,' said Holmes. 'And similarly related are the motive behind the crime, and the opportunity.'

Wells grew excited. 'You've solved it, Holmes? What a remarkable man you are!'

'For the morrow,' Holmes said. 'For now, let us enjoy the hospitality of the landlord, and each other's company. I too enjoyed your Time Machine, Wells.'

He seemed flattered. 'Thank you.'

'Especially your depiction of the crumbling of our foolish civilization. Although I am not convinced you had thought it through far enough. Our degradation, when it comes, will surely be more dramatic and complete.'

'Oh, indeed? Then let me set you a challenge, Mr Holmes. What if I were to transport you, through time, to some remote future – as remote as the era of the great lizards – let us say, tens of millions of years. How would you deduce the former existence of mankind?'

My friend rested his legs comfortably on a stool and tamped his pipe. 'A pretty question. We must remember first that everything humans construct will revert to simpler chemicals over time. One must only inspect the decay of the Egyptian pyramids to see that, and they are young compared to the geologic epochs you evoke. None of our concrete or steel or glass will last even a million years.'

'But,' said Wells, 'perhaps some human remains might be preserved in volcanic ash, as at Pompeii and Herculaneum. These remains might have artifacts in close proximity, such as jewellery or surgical tools. And geologists of the future will surely find a layer of ash and lead and zinc to mark the presence of our once-noble civilization – '

But Holmes did not agree -

And on they talked, H.G. Wells and Sherlock Holmes together, in a thickening haze of tobacco smoke and beer fumes, until my own poor head was spinning with the concepts they juggled.

The next morning, we made once more for the Brimicombe home. Holmes asked for Tarquin.

The younger Brimicombe entered the drawing room, sat comfortably and crossed his legs.

Holmes regarded him, equally at his ease. 'This case has reminded me of a truism I personally find easy to forget: how little people truly understand of the world around us. You demonstrated this, Watson, with your failure to predict the correct fall of my sovereign and farthing, even though it is but an example of a process you must observe a hundred times a day. And yet it takes a man of genius – a Galileo – to be the first to perform a clear and decisive experiment in such a matter.You are no genius, Mr Brimicombe, and still less so is the engineer, Bryson. And yet you studied your brother's work; your grasp of the theory is the greater, and your understanding of the behaviour of objects inside the Inertial Adjustor is bound to be wider than poor Bryson's.'

Ralph stared at Holmes, the fingers of one hand trembling slightly.

Holmes rested his hands behind his head. 'After all, it was a drop of only ten feet or so. Even Watson here could survive a fall like that – perhaps with bruises and broken bones. But it was not Ralph's fall that killed him, was it? Tarquin, what was the mass of the capsule?'

'About ten tons.'

'Perhaps a hundred times Ralph's mass. And so – in the peculiar conditions of the Inertial Adjustor – it fell to the floor a hundred times faster than Ralph.'

And then, in a flash, I saw it all. Unlike my friendly lift cabin of Wells's analogy, the capsule would drive rapidly to the floor, engulfing Ralph. My unwelcome imagination ran away with the point: I saw the complex ceiling of the capsule smashing into Ralph's staring face, a fraction of a second before the careening metal hit his body and he burst like a balloon…

Tarquin buried his eyes in the palm of his hand. 'I live with the image. Why are you telling me this?'

For answer, Holmes turned to Wells. 'Mr Wells, let us test your own powers of observation. What is the single most startling aspect of the case?'

He frowned. 'When we first visited the Inertial Adjustor chamber with Tarquin, I recall looking into the capsule, and scanning the floor and couch for signs of Ralph's death.'

'But,' Holmes said, 'the evidence of Ralph's demise bizarre, grotesque – were fixed to the ceiling not the floor.'

'Yes. Tarquin told me to look up – just as later, now I think on it, you, Mr Holmes, had to tell the engineer Bryson to raise his head, and his face twisted in horror.' He studied Holmes. 'So, a breaking of the symmetry at last. Tarquin knew where to look; Bryson did not. What does that tell us?'

Holmes said, 'By looking down, by seeking traces of Ralph on the couch, the floor, we demonstrated we had not understood what had happened to Ralph. We had to be shown – as had Bryson! If Bryson had sought to murder Ralph he would have chosen some other method. Only someone who has studied the properties of a gravity field changed by the Inertial Adjustor would know immediately how cutting that cable would kill Ralph.'

Tarquin sat very still, eyes covered. 'Someone like me, you mean?'

Wells said, 'Is that an admission, Tarquin?'

Tarquin lifted his face to Holmes, looking thoughtful. 'You do not have any proof. And there is a counter- argument. Bryson could have stopped me, before I cut through the cable. The fact that he did not is evidence of his guilt!'

'But he was not there,' Holmes said evenly. 'As you arranged.'

Tarquin guffawed. 'He was taking breakfast with my sister-in-law! How could I arrange such a thing?'

'There is the matter of Bryson's breakfast egg, which took unusually long to cook,' Holmes said.

'Your egg again, Holmes!' Wells cried.

'On that morning,' said Holmes, 'and that morning alone, you, Mr Brimicombe, collected fresh eggs from the coop. I checked with the housekeeper. The eggs used for breakfast here are customarily a day or more old. As you surely learned as a child fond of the hens, Tarquin, a fresh egg takes appreciably longer to cook than one that is a day or more old. A fresh egg has a volume of clear albumen solution trapped in layers of dense egg white around the yolk. These layers make the egg sit up in the frying pan. After some days the albumen layers degenerate, and the more watery egg will flatten out, and is more easily cooked.'

Wells gasped. 'My word, Holmes. Is there no limit to your intelligence?'

'Oh,' said Brimicombe, 'but this is – '

'Mr Brimicombe,' Holmes said steadily, 'you are not a habitual criminal. When I call in the police they will find all the proof any court in the land could require. Do you doubt that?'

Tarquin Brimicombe considered for a while, and then said: 'Perhaps not.' He gave Holmes a grin, like a good loser on the playing field. 'Maybe I tried to be too clever; I thought I was home clear anyway, but when I knew you