Gaslight Arcanum: Uncanny Tales of Sherlock Holmes

“I am not a formally educated man, Mr. Holmes. I am well read, and I understand many things, but I do not speak any foreign languages.”

“Where would this letter be now?”

He shrugged. “Still on the table, I suppose.”

Holmes tossed several torn envelopes and creased sheets of paper upon the table of his sitting room. “These letters are unremarkable. As Felton said, they are simply correspondence from his associates about book-related nonsense.”

“So we came up empty-handed,” said Watson.

“Perhaps not.”

Holmes pulled a magnifying lens from his desk drawer. “The only other scrap of paper in Felton’s place was this blank piece I found upon his kitchen floor. That alone is significant.” He briefly studied the item. “It is, as I first suspected, a very old piece of parchment … a fragment of a much larger leaf … torn off in some haste. The creases confirm that it was folded to fit inside an envelope. Also, there are several tiny water stains, which I believe are noteworthy. Beyond these salient points, it is nothing more than a thin sheet of sheep skin … soaked and stretched, then scraped smooth to remove the hair.” He took a large beaker from the shelf. “Unless I can prove that it was torn from our missing codex.”

Holmes raised the parchment to the light. “Behold, Watson,” he said, “an invention as important to the dissemination of knowledge in its day as Gutenberg’s first printing press was in the fifteenth century! Proving what Plato wrote about the impetus of need: ‘Necessity, who is the mother of invention’!”

“How so?” laughed Watson.

“Parchment was invented in the ancient Greek city of Pergamum,” said Holmes, “where — according to The Book of Revelation — Satan was enthroned.” He crumpled the fragment and dropped it into the beaker. “In the second century B.C. Pergamum established a great library rivaling even that of Alexandria.” He added just enough water to cover the parchment and began stirring the mixture briskly. “Up until then, the collected knowledge of civilization had been transcribed on papyrus, which was produced only along the Nile delta in Alexandria; and which had been over-harvested towards local extinction. Whether due to an inability to supply the material, or a desire to shut down its rival library, Alexandria ceased exporting papyrus.”

Holmes decanted the water into a test tube. “So Pergamum invented a more than adequate substitute — one much cheaper and easier to produce than papyrus. It remains an excellent example of adaptation under changing circumstances.”

“Holmes, you amaze me!”

He waved away the compliment. “I am preparing a monograph on paper and papermaking. It will be an invaluable resource in criminal investigation, and I daresay, had it been available at the time, the Bank Holiday Blackmail Case would have been brought to a far more satisfactory conclusion!”

Holmes withdrew a vial of white crystals and tossed a few into the test tube. “Parchment allowed the great Library at Pergamum to continue operating — until Mark Antony emptied its shelves and made Cleopatra a wedding present of its 200,000 volumes. She was a conniving woman, Watson.” He removed the stopper from a reagent bottle of clear liquid and inserted a glass pipette.

“Now, let us see what this torn leaf has to tell us,” said Holmes. “Brother Eduardo insists the codex was written in blood. If at some time there was blood on this scrap of parchment, a sufficient amount of it has been dissolved into this solution. This reagent will precipitate that blood as a brownish sediment.” He added several drops and swirled the test tube.

“Nothing!” snarled Holmes. “Perfectly clean. So much for legends!”

“What if the legend is true,” asked Watson, “and all trace of the evil writing has vanished?”

“Blood does not simply vanish. Some trace would remain, and my hemoglobin test is capable of detecting blood at concentrations of barely one part in a million.” He smoothed out the parchment and blotted it dry. “Either there was no blood on this parchment to begin with, or…”

Holmes walked to the fireplace and filled his pipe. “How does one prove or disprove the supernatural?” he murmured, dropping into his chair. He took off his shoes and sat cross-legged, smoking his pipe.

Watson awoke at the call of his name. He had dropped off to sleep with The Times in his lap, while Holmes had been puffing at his pipe and, a while later, quietly puttering about his desk.

“Watson, would you mind taking care of something for me?” asked Holmes.

The doctor arose from his chair and stretched. “Run an errand? Yes, of course.”

“I have written out some instructions for you,” he said, extending a folded sheet. “Please read them and make certain everything is clear.”

Watson unfolded the sheet, glanced at his friend’s distinctive scrawl, and gasped. He looked down at Holmes sitting calmly at his desk. The detective’s left hand was wrapped with a handkerchief, his jack-knife and a saucer of dark red liquid at his elbow. Upon the blotter lay a Latin dictionary and the doctor’s service revolver.

Watson dropped the note. His body abruptly stiffened as the most abhorrent idea went racing through his mind. “No!” he cried in genuine terror. A cold sweat broke out over his face, which had gone as white as a sheet. Within seconds he began to shake involuntarily — except for his hands, which he kept tightly clenched by his sides.

Holmes realized the doctor was struggling hard to control himself: his mouth had become a pale trembling line, his eyes two coals burning with hatred. Holmes glanced at the revolver upon the desk, then quickly returned his gaze to the seething volcano of emotion standing before him. His hand moved toward the gun but Watson sprung upon it like a Bengal tiger, snatching the revolver from the desk.

Watson pressed the barrel to Holmes’ forehead and gazed into the detective’s widening eyes. “God help me,” he said, squeezing the trigger.

When the hammer fell Holmes flinched at its sharp click.

Watson dropped the gun upon the desk and crumpled to the floor where he lay sobbing uncontrollably. Holmes lifted him into a chair and handed him a glass of whiskey.

“Holmes! How could you?” he cried.

“My dear friend,” said Holmes, deep concern written upon his features, “please forgive me, but I could turn to no other for such a test. You have a heart that is genuinely good. Fair weather or foul, you are constant in your friendship, and so you have become for me a barometer by which I am able to gauge all that is noble in men.”

“I wanted to kill you! And I would have, had—”

“Had the revolver been loaded, but I have far too much respect for your prowess with a gun to—”

“Did you stop to think I could have bashed in your bloody brains with the butt of it!”

“That idea,” Holmes said resentfully, “was not written upon the parchment!” He took the empty glass from Watson’s trembling hand and moved to refill it. “Nevertheless,” he said softly, “you are right. It was a dangerous experiment … which might well have proved deadly.” He extended another whiskey to the doctor. “And it was indeed a sin to pull it on my dearest friend.”

Watson wiped his sweat-soaked face and took the glass. “You might have warned me.”

“That would have ruined the whole experiment. Besides, you would have refused to read it.”

Holmes picked up the note where Watson had dropped it. “Astonishing!” he cried. “It is blank again!” He hurried to the microscope to examine the fragment. After a minute he looked up from the eyepiece. “Not a trace of what I wrote — not even an impression made by the pen!”

Holmes walked to the fireplace, the parchment gripped tightly in his clenched fist. “Now that I know the power of the codex is genuine,” he said angrily, “I want to know why the accursed thing was not destroyed centuries ago? All those despicable crimes could have been prevented!”

After several minutes, Holmes coolly remarked, “The apostate monk who created the thing … this Brother Moriarty … in many ways, he was a Napoleon of crime. Even now, hundreds of years after his death, he dispatches his orders on these parchment leaves.”

Holmes gazed at the wrinkled page in his hand. “That miserable bookseller rotting away in jail is a pawn. Whoever mailed this page to him simply wanted to drag a red herring across the trail of my investigation. Whereas it was intended to lead me astray, it has only served to strengthen an earlier suspicion.” He shoved the parchment into the drawer of his desk and locked it. “Watson, are you recovered enough to accompany me to Longbourn?”