Gaslight Arcanum: Uncanny Tales of Sherlock Holmes

“Absolutely.”

“Good. Because their proximity to you might very well be a matter of life and death.”

Then the hatch was sealed tight. A series of clanks, a jerking sensation, the crane lifted the Castor off the deck. A swaying movement, and I spied through the thick portholes that we were swung over the guardrail and dangled over the ocean; such a searing blue at that moment.

“Castor and Pollux,” I whispered, every fibre tensing. “The heavenly twins.”

“Not only that. In most classical legends Pollux is immortal. Whereas—” he patted the curving iron wall in front of him. “— Castor is a mere mortal. And capable of death.”

The shudders transmitted along the hawser to the diving bell were disconcertingly fierce. The sounds of the crane motors were very loud. In truth, louder than I deemed possible. Until, that is, the diving bell reached the sea. With a flurry of bubbles it sank beneath the surface. White froth gave way to clear turquoise.

Swiftly, the vessel descended. Silent now. An iron calf slipping free of its hulking mother on the surface.

“Don’t neglect to breathe, Watson.”

I realized I was holding my breath. “Thank you, Holmes.”

“Fresh air is pumped through the inlet hose above our heads.”

“Hardly fresh.” I managed a grim smile. “It reeks of coal smoke and tickles the back of the throat so.”

“At least it is wholesome … if decidedly pungent.”

The light began to fade as we sank deeper. I took stock of my surroundings. The interior of the cylinder offered little more room than the interior of a hansom cab. Indeed, we sat side by side. Between us hung the cable of the telephone. The handset had been clipped to the wall within easy reach.

And down we went. Darker … darker … darker…. The vessel swayed slightly. My stomach lightened a little, as when descending by elevator. I clenched my fists upon my lap until the knuckles turned white.

“Don’t be alarmed,” Holmes said. “The barometric pressure of the interior remains the same as that of sea- level.”

“Then we will be spared the bends and nitrogen narcosis. The former is agonizing. The latter intoxicates and induces hallucination.”

“Ah! You know about the medical perils of deep-sea diving.”

“When a former army doctor sits beside a naval doctor at his club you can imagine the topics of conversation over the glasses of port.” I clicked my tongue “And now I tell you this so as to distract myself from the knowledge that we are descending over five hundred feet to the ocean floor. In a blessed tin can!”

Holmes leaned forward, eager to witness what lay beyond the glass. The water had dulled from bright turquoise to blue. To deep blue. A pink jelly-fish floated by. A globular sac from which delicate filaments descended. Altogether a beautiful creature. Totally unlike the viscous remains of jelly-fish one finds washed ashore.

Holmes read a dial set between the portholes. “Sixty fathoms. Two thirds of the way there, Watson.”

“Dear Lord.”

“Soon we should see the shipwreck. And shortly, thereafter, this vessel’s twin.”

“Twin?” I echoed. “Which reminds me. I thought the twin sisters we encountered today were decidedly odd.”

“Ah-ha. So we are two minds with a single thought.”

“And no doubt you deduced far more than I could from their dress, speech and retinue of subtle clues.”

“Supposition at the moment, Watson, rather than deduction. Before I make any pronouncement on the sisters, or the singular voice emerging from the telephone, I need to see just who is in residence in the Pollux. Which, if I’m not mistaken, is coming into view below.”

He’d no sooner uttered the words when a shadow raced from the darkness beyond the porthole glass. Silently, it rushed by.

“What the devil was that?” I asked in surprise.

“Possibly a dolphin or a shark…” He pressed his fingertips together as he considered. “Although I doubt it very much.”

The mystifying remark didn’t ease my trepidation. And that trepidation turned into one of overt alarm when a clang sounded against the side of the diving bell. The entire structure lurched, forcing us to hold tight to a brass rail in front of us.

“Some denizen of the deep doesn’t want us here,” observed Holmes.

“Here it comes again.”

The dark shape torpedoed from the gloom surrounding the diving bell. Once more it struck the iron cylinder.

“We should inform Captain Smeaton,” I ventured.

“In which case he’ll winch us back up forthwith. No, we must see the occupant of the Pollux. That is vital, if we are to explain what is happening here.”

Darkly, I murmured, “Barstow didn’t want us to call on him. He promised our destruction if we tried.”

“Yes, he did, didn’t he?” Holmes watched the cylinder resolve itself in the gloom beneath us. “So why does he — or what he has become — desire to remain hidden away on the seabed?”

“Hypothetically speaking, Holmes?”

“While we are in a speculative frame of mind: Barstow described his surroundings for us via the telephone. Be so good as to repeat his description.”

“Let me see: Green. Yes, his words were ‘all is green’.”

“Continue, pray.”

“And he made much of the wreck’s funnel. How it loomed over him. A grave-marker as he put it.”

“What color is the seawater down here. Green?”

“No, it’s black.”

“Indeed, Watson. And as for the ship’s funnel? A great monolith of a structure?”

“Where is the funnel? I don’t see one.”

“Because there is no funnel. At least there isn’t one fixed to the wreck. It must have become detached as the ship foundered years ago.”

“So why did Barstow describe the wreck in such a way?”

“Evidently, Barstow cannot see the wreck as it really is, sans funnel. Nor can he see that the water at this depth is black — not green.”

“So who did the voice belong to that we heard coming from the speaker?”

“It belongs to whoever is responsible for the deaths of those two men yesterday. And who will be responsible for our deaths today, if our wits aren’t sharp enough.” He clapped his hands together. “Pah! See the wreck. It’s a jumble of scrap metal covered in weed. Barstow’s description belonged to someone who has never seen a wreck on the ocean bed before. Instead, they based their description on pictures of ships that they see on sitting room walls.”

“To repeat myself, Holmes, who did the voice actually belong to?”

“Ah, that can wait, Watson. Our descent is slowing. Soon we will look into Barstow’s lair.” He shot me a glance. “His tomb?”

The crane operator stopped paying out the hawser as we bumped against the bottom. Just a yard or so away lay the diving bell — the twin of the one we now sat in. Though confoundedly gloomy down here I could make out some detail. Kelp grew from the iron cylinder. The rounded shape was suggestive of some monstrous skull covered with flowing hair. Spars from the wreck had enclosed the diving bell like the bars of a cage, trapping it that fateful day five years ago. A grip so tight that the haulage gear had snapped the hawser as it strove to raise the doomed submersible to the surface.

Those black waters would reveal little. Not until Holmes closed a switch. The moment he did so, a light sprang from the lamp fixed to our craft.

“Now we can see who resides inside the Pollux.” Holmes took a deep breath as his keen eyes made an assessment. “Are we of the same opinion of the occupant?”

Likewise, I took a steadying breath. I peered through our porthole and into the porthole of the craft trapped by the stricken bullion carrier, Fitzwilliam. “Now I see. But I don’t understand how he