The Mammoth Book of New Sherlock Holmes Adventures

quarter of an hour went miserably past.

Then – 'A long shot, Watson, a very long shot!' cried my friend, and pounced. From a pocket of his cape he had produced a pair of steel forceps, and from another a large pill-box. Now something red glistened in the forceps' grip, and in a trice the thing was safely boxed. Traill, who had given an involuntary cry, backed away a step or two with an expression of revulsion.

'Another of the vile creatures?'

'I fancy it is the same,' Holmes murmured. And not a word more would he utter until we were installed in a convenient public house which supplied us with smoking-hot whisky toddies. 'It is villainy, Mr Traill,' he said then. 'One final test remains. I experimented not long ago with a certain apparatus, without fully comprehending its possibilities in scientific detection…'

It was late night in Baker Street, and the gas-mantles burnt fitfully. A smell of ozone tinged the air, mingled with a more familiar chemical reek. Holmes, as he linked up an extensive battery of wet cells, expounded with fanciful enthusiasm on the alternating-current electrical transmission proposals of one Mr Nikola Tesla in the Americas, and of how in the early years of the new century he fully expected electric lighting to be plumbed into our lodgings, like the present gas-pipes. I smiled at his eagerness.

At length the preparations were complete. 'You must refrain from touching any part of the equipment,' Holmes now warned. 'The electrical potential which drives this cathode-ray tube is dangerously high. Do you recognize the device, Watson? The evacuated glass, the tungsten target electrode within? It has already been employed in the United States, in connection with your own line of work.'

The tangle of glassware, the trailing wires and the eerie glow from the tube made up an effect wholly unfamiliar to me, reminiscent perhaps of some new scientific romance by Mr H.G. Wells. It was only very gingerly that young Traill placed his right hand where Holmes directed.

'I have seen something a little like this before,' he mused. 'Old Wilfrid Jarman's brother dabbles in electrical experiments. He vexed Selina once with a tedious demonstration of a model dynamo.'

'Healing rays?' I asked. 'Earlier in the day we spoke of Mesmerism, which according to my recollection was a charlatan's ploy to heal by what he called animal magnetism. Has electrical science made this real at last?'

'Not precisely, Watson. The apparatus of Herr Doktor Rontgen does not heal, but lights the way for the healer. In years to come, I fancy it will be remembered as the greatest scientific discovery of the present decade.'

'But I see nothing happening.'

'That is what you may expect when there is nothing to see. – No, Mr Traill, I must entreat you to remain quite still. The rays of Rontgen, which he has named for algebra's unknown quantity X, do not impinge on the human eye. That faint glow which you may discern is not the true glow, but secondary fluorescence in the glass.'

I pondered this, while Holmes kept a wary eye on his pocket-watch. 'Very well,' he said at last. 'You may lift your hand now, but have a care…' And he took up the mysterious sealed envelope on which Traill's hand had rested. 'What the eye cannot see, a photographic plate can still record. I must retreat to the darkroom and – lift the veil of the spirits. Kindly entertain our guest, Watson.'

Traill and I stared at each other, lost in a mental darkness deeper than that of any photographic darkroom. Infuriatingly, I knew that to Holmes this night-shrouded terrain of crime was brilliantly lit by the invisible rays of his deductive power.

Nor was I much the wiser when morning came. Holmes, dancing-eyed and evasive, had bundled Traill into a homeward-bound hansom and directed him to return to Baker Street after breakfast, when the case would be resolved.Then he had settled into his favourite chair with his pipe and a pound of the vilest shag tobacco: I found him in the identical position when I arose from sleep.

Over breakfast, he unbent a trifle. 'Well,Watson, what do you make of our case?'

'Very little… I had thought,' I ventured, 'that you would dissect or analyse the leech itself and perhaps identify its toxins.'

'The naked eye sufficed.' He pulled the red thing from his dressing-gown pocket and tossed it casually on to my plate of kippers, causing me to recoil in horror. 'As you may readily discern for yourself, it has been artfully made from rubber.'

'Good heavens!' I studied the ugly worm more closely, and was struck by a thought. 'Holmes, you suspected this artificial leech from the outset, or the excursion to Hampstead Heath would have been futile. What gave you the clue? And has Trail! deceived us – are we the butts of some youthful jest?'

Holmes smiled languidly. 'In a moment you will be telling me how obvious and elementary was the reasoning that led me to distrust that repulsive object. Look again at the newspaper cutting.'

I took it from his hand and examined it once more, to no avail.

'Setting aside the fact that the type fount does not correspond to that of any British newspaper known to me (the work of a jobbing printer, no doubt)… setting aside the extreme unlikelihood that such a striking report should have escaped my eye and failed to be pasted into our own celebrated index volume… may I direct your attention to this red leech's scientific name?'

'Sanguisuga rufa,' I repeated. 'Which I should say means something like 'red bloodsucker'.'

'You are no taxonomer, Watson, but you are a doctor – or, as some country folk still call the profession, a leech. Can you bring to mind the Latin name for the leech once used in medicine?'

'Hirudo medicinalis, of course. Oh! That is strange…'

'In fact, Sanguisuga is not a scientific class name. It is poetic. It was used of leeches by Pliny. Our villain, who may or may not be 'Dr James', knows his Latin but not – if I may so phrase it – his leechcraft.'

I said: 'How obvious and elem… that is, ingeniously reasoned!'

Holmes inclined his head ironically. 'Here is our client at the door. Good morning, Mr Traill! Dr Watson has just been explaining with great erudition that your red leech is a fake – a rubber toy. And now the chase leads us to Theobald's Road, to the law office of Jarman, Fittlewell and Coggs, where today you will at last claim your inheritance. Watson, that excellent revolver of yours might well be of use.'

'My reconstruction,' said Holmes as our cab rattled through a dismal London fog, 'is a trifle grisly. There you were, Mr Trail, arguably somewhat drowsy from the compounded effects of warm weather, literary reveries and a bottle of Bass. Your habit of picnicking near the Highgate Ponds is well known to your friends – even, I dare say, your sister?'

'That is so. In fact, Selina has publicly twitted me more than once for what she calls my shiftless habits.'

'Thus the miscreant 'Dr James', whose appearance is a transparent disguise but whose true surname I fancy I know, had little difficulty in locating you. It was easy for him to approach you stealthily from behind and drop or place this little monstrosity upon the back of your hand as you sprawled on the grass.' He displayed the leech once more.

'The thing still revolts me,' Traill muttered.

'Its underside seems to have been coated with dark treacle: that would provide a convincingly unpleasant- looking and adhesive slime. But in addition, the 'mouth' section was dipped in some corrosive like oil of vitriol – see how it is eaten away? That was what you felt.'

Again Traill convulsively massaged the back of his hand. 'But, Mr Holmes, what was the purpose of this horrid trick? It strikes me that your investigations have made matters worse! Before, I could blame my hand's infirmity on the leech poison. Now you have eliminated that possibility and left me with nothing but madness.'

'Not at all. You will be pleased to hear that the apparatus of Rontgen pronounces you sane. We have eliminated the impossible story of the leech. There remains another, highly improbable explanation, which we will shortly confirm as true. By the way, may I assume that either Wilfrid Jarman or his brother was present on the occasion when that planchette spelt out such a disquieting message?'

'Yes, Basil was there. The brother.'

'The brother who dabbles in electrical devices. I wonder if he applied his ingenuity to enlivening those seances. In any case, according to my researches, it is far from difficult for a determined hand to influence the oracle of the ouija board. But here we are! Watson, I am sure you have change for the cabman.'

Jarman, Fittlewell and Coggs, solicitors and commissioners of oaths, occupied a fourth-floor set of offices. Without a great deal of ado we were shown into the large, dim room where Wilfrid Jarman awaited. He was a plump and kindly looking man in late middle age, whose baldness and pince-nez spectacles were slightly