were corning I decided to bluff you over Bryson to be sure. I knew about his involvement with Jane; I knew he would have a motive for you to pick up – '
'And so you tried to implicate an innocent man.' I could see Holmes's cool anger building.
Wells said, 'So it is resolved. Tell me one thing.Tarquin. If not for your brother's money, why?'
He showed surprise. 'Do you not know, Bertie? The first aviator will be the most famous man in history. I wanted to be that man, to fly Ralph's craft into the air, perhaps even to other worlds.'
'But,' Wells said, 'Ralph claimed to have flown already all the way to the moon and back.'
Tarquin dismissed this with a gesture. 'Nobody believed that. I could have been first. But my brother would never have allowed it.'
'And so,' said Wells bitterly, 'you destroyed your brother and his work – rather than allow him precedence.'
There was a touch of pride in Tarquin's voice. 'At least I can say I gave my destiny my best shot, Bertie Wells. Can you say the same?'
The formalities of Tarquin Brimicombe's arrest and charging were concluded rapidly, and the three of us, without regret, took the train for London. The journey was rather strained; Wells, having enjoyed the hunt, now seemed embittered by the unravelling of the Brimicombe affair. He said, 'It is a tragedy that the equipment is so smashed up, that Ralph's note-taking was so poor, that his brother – murderer or not – is such a dullard. It will not prove possible to restore Ralph's work, I fear.'
Holmes mused, 'But the true tragedy here is that of a scientist who sacrificed his humanity – the love of his wife – for knowledge.'
Wells grew angry. 'Really. And what of you, Mr Holmes, and your dry quest for fact, fact, fact? What have you sacrificed?'
'I do not judge,' Holmes said easily. 'I merely observe.'
'At any rate,' said Wells, 'it may be many years before humans truly fly to the moon – oh, I am reminded.' He dug into a coat pocket and pulled out a small, stoppered vial. It contained a quantity of grey-black dust, like charcoal. 'I found it. Here is the 'moon dust' which Ralph gave me, the last element of his hoax.' He opened the bottle and shook a thimbleful of dust into the palms of Holmes and myself.
I poked at the grains. They were sharp-edged. The dust had a peculiar smell: 'Like wood smoke,' I opined.
'Or wet ash,' Wells suggested. 'Or gunpowder!'
Holmes frowned thoughtfully. 'I suppose the soil of the moon, never having been exposed to air, would react with the oxygen in our atmosphere. The iron contained therein – it would be like a slow burning – '
Wells collected the dust from us. He seemed angry and bitter. 'Let us give up this foolishness. What a waste this all is. How many advances of the intellect have been betrayed by the weakness of the human heart? Oh, perhaps I might make a romance of this – but that is all that is left! Here! Have done with you!' And with an impetuous gesture he opened the carriage window and shook out the vial, scattering dust along the track. Holmes raised an elegant hand, as if to stop him, but he was too late. The dust was soon gone, and Wells discarded the bottle
itself.
For the rest of the journey to Paddington, Holmes was strangely thoughtful, and said little.
The Adventure of the Touch of God – Peter Crowther
It was with a mixture of trepidation and eager anticipation that, on a cold and dank November evening, having just arrived back at our rooms in Baker Street from a day-long symposium on glandular deterioration, I greeted Sherlock Holmes's announcement that we were to journey to Harrogate.
Despite being some 200 or more miles from the capital's bustling familiarity and drudgery (two indistinguishable sides of the same tarnished coin), the trip clearly promised a return to matters of detection. For though Holmes complemented news of our impending departure with the promise of bracingYorkshire air to clean clogged and jaded tubes – of both a bronchial and a cerebral nature – I suspected an ulterior motive.
That is not to say that my good friend was not given to displays of impetuosity. Indeed, he had proven to me on many occasions that he was the very soul of immediacy. It was as though he were cognizant of his own mortality. Sometimes, I even thought that he was frightened of idleness, though he was not a man prone to fear or cowardice. Rather it was, or so it seemed, the prospect of inaction that presented the most serious affront to his sense of being. Action, or 'the game' as he liked to regard the often heinous crimes whose unravelling he was frequently called upon to master, was what he was here to do. It was for this singular reason that I so welcomed the prospect.
For myself, however, the approach was entirely different. Somewhat in contradiction to the cautious and even begrudging excitement I have already mentioned, it was my custom to regard the prospect of further nefarious activities with some
apprehension. On the occasion in question, this feeling was particularly pronounced.
'Might I at least remove my topcoat?' I enquired.
'No time for that, old fellow,' Holmes blustered. 'We are to leave within the hour. Here.' He held out to me a single sheet of paper and the envelope in which it had arrived.
Affixing my reading spectacles, I glanced at the letter and its careful and practised copperplate hand. 'Read it aloud, old fellow,' Holmes proclaimed with a pride that suggested he himself as the missive's author.
' 'My Dear Mr Sherlock Holmes,' it begins,' I said. ' 'Please forgive the brevity of this note and its undoubted intrusion on your privacy but I am in dire need of advice and assistance on a matter of grave importance.' '
' 'Grave importance', ' Holmes said, turning his back to the fire crackling in the grate. 'Capital!' He glanced across at me and waved a dismissive hand. 'Do continue, Watson.'
I returned my attention to the letter.
' 'A situation has arisen,' ' I resumed, ' 'here in Harrogate which, I feel, requires a level of experience and a depth of knowledge that I am in all honesty quite unqualified to provide, despite some thirty years with the Force.' '
'Force?' I enquired of Holmes. 'The sender is a policeman?' 'Read on, read on,' Holmes instructed, and he walked to the window and stared into the street.
I returned to the letter. ' 'We are plagued with a villain the likes of what I have never encountered,' ' I read, ' 'a madman in whose wake we now have three deaths and little or no explanation as to the reason behind them. It would be not proper for me to outline the manner of these inhuman atrocities in this letter but I feel sure that they will be of sufficient interest to warrant your visiting us at your earliest availability.' '
The letter closed with the writer's assurance that, in the event of our accepting his invitation, rooms would be arranged for us on our behalf at a nearby hostelry, and at no cost to ourselves. It was signed Gerald John Makinson, Inspector of the North Yorkshire Police.
'What do you say to that, Watson?' Holmes said, warming himself against the fire, his back arched like that of a cat.
I did not know quite what to make of it, save that the Inspector's grasp of the King's English was somewhat lacking and I told my friend as much. 'For that matter,' I added, 'who is this Makinson fellow?'
'I was introduced to him by our very own Lestrade, last June as I recall. The fellow was down in London to attend a series of presentations on the increasing use of behavioural science in law enforcement. His address was most enlightening.'
'Apparently the meeting made something of an impression,' I observed.
'And one beside that of simple grammatical impropriety,' said Holmes. He stepped away from the fire and rubbed his hands gleefully before removing his watch from a pocket in his waistcoat. He glanced at the timepiece. 'Almost five and twenty past seven,Watson.' He returned the watch and smiled, his eyes narrowing. 'There is a milk train which leaves King's Cross station at four minutes past ten o'clock. It is my intention that we be on it.'
I was about to protest, fully realizing that it would be to no avail, when Holmes turned around and strode
