Two Hundred and Twenty-One Baker Streets (20 page)

“My dear fellow, you were superb! Nerves of steel! Bravo! Bravo!”

I hazarded a glance to where the figure had stood, but it was no longer there.

“They appear every six hours and for a duration of five minutes to five hours. That gust you felt was his instantaneous departure, a rush of air filling the vacuum he vacated.”

I poured myself a large brandy.

“Holmes, what in God’s name is going on? What was that... thing?”

“I call them ‘phantoms,’ what else? They manifested shortly after you left.”

“
They
? You mean there’s more than one?”

“They appear singly, but by observing their differing body shapes and gait, I have been able to distinguish at least three distinct individuals.”

“What are they? What do they want?”

“I do not know, and it is quite exhilarating! For now, they seem content to observe, but with their level of technology, I can scarcely surmise their further intentions.”

“Are you enjoying this?”

“Absolutely. How often are we engaged to solve the mysteries of others? Now we have one of our very own, right here!”

Holmes crossed to where his ‘phantom’ had been standing and dropped into a crouch, lightly brushing the carpet with his fingertips.

“See, the nap has been compressed where he stood, meaning our visitor has mass. And when he disappears there is the rush of air, meaning he occupies space as well. Hah! Have you ever known anything like it?”

I finished my brandy in one gulp.

“Yes, I believe I have.”

“Watson?”

I poured us both another and motioned for him to sit.

Cradling his glass, Holmes gave me a wry smile.

“The floor is yours, Doctor. I am all ears.”

For the next hour or so, I regaled him with the story of my sojourn to Longbourn, sparing no details, including my conversation with Mrs. Darcy and the spectral visitation of my fever dream.

After I’d finished, he sat in silence for a few moments, letting the data bed in. His eyes flashed across at the clock.

“We have a little over four hours before the next shift arrives. We can do it! Yes, by Heaven, I believe we can.”

I was, by this point, completely confused.

“Do what, Holmes?”

Holmes sprang to his feet.

“Snare ourselves a phantom!”

“And how do you propose we do that?”

But I was talking to myself. Holmes had already left the room and crossed the hallway into mine. I followed after, to find my bedroom was now home to a jumble of boxes and crates containing an assorted array of odd-looking equipment. On my bed lay a dozen lengths of quartz crystal, three feet long, encased in finely wrought copper cages. The crystals themselves had copper wires running through them and exiting at either end in delicate plumes. They were clearly meant to be attached to something, but what, I could not imagine.

“What is all this, Holmes?”

“A missing-persons case.”

Holmes scooped up the nearest box and carried it through to the next room. With little option but to comply, I followed suit.

“You were right, Watson, she is a housekeeper. Her name is Mrs. Watchett, and her employer has disappeared, from inside a locked room, no less.

“Certain aspects of the case piqued my interest and I thought it would pass the time until your return.”

We passed each other on the landing as we carried the cargo to and fro, continuing the conversation as we went.

“It was most perplexing. The more I understood, the less sense it made. I could find no trace of foul play. Neither Mrs. Watchett nor any of his other friends stood to gain a great deal from the man’s passing. There were no romantic entanglements or unsavoury habits that could have lead to blackmail or murder.”

“You know Holmes, people do sometimes just walk out of their lives. The pressure and responsibility of work or family life can make them simply snap.”

“But not this fellow,” said Holmes. “He was driven. Dedicated. His closest friend, Philby, said that on the night before his disappearance, he had arranged a dinner party for his friends. He spoke to them about his discovery and even demonstrated a working model which they dismissed as clever trickery.

“Philby said his friend took affront to this and was intent on proving them all wrong. They never saw him again after that night.”

I paused to help Holmes with a particularly heavy crate.

“Mrs. Watchett let me read her employer’s journals, and it all fell into place. He had not disappeared at all. He occupied the same space, but not the same time. What we are carrying in these boxes are, in truth, the spare components of a time machine.”

I stopped dead in my tracks.

“Don’t be absurd. Time travel? Such a thing isn’t possible!”

“Isn’t it? How about an English village, living two hundred years behind the times? Or a spectral figure clothed in a science we cannot yet comprehend?

“Absurd or not. I can only follow where the data leads. Think, Watson, of all the scientific advances we have today and are yet to come. Someone has to be the first to discover them. To break ground in the realm of the unknown. Why is this any different?”

I paused for thought, attempting to formulate an argument, but as ever, I could not fault Holmes’ logic.

“So, I assume you have a plan?”

“Of sorts. From the time traveller’s notes, I have determined that in order to move through time, one must first establish a zone of temporal grace. A bubble, if you will, of real time, that will shield you from the march of years beyond. If not, you would wither and die of old age in moments. We shall do the same with this room. Trapping the phantom within.”

“Holmes, it’s just struck me. You’ve not once mentioned this fellow’s name. Who is he?”

“Of course, his name. His name is...”

Holmes stopped, and for the first time I saw a flash of genuine confusion cross his face; and something else. Fear. Holmes was afraid.

“Watson, for the life of me, I do not know! My mind betrays me. How could I have taken the case without even knowing his name? Now I think back, even Mrs. Watchett did not name him. I have always simply thought of him as the time traveller.”

I laid a reassuring hand on his arm.

“Holmes, I am with you through thick and thin, you know that. But I sense there are facets and angles to all of this that we cannot yet perceive, and it would be a dangerous falsehood to think we have a grip on them.

“Our world, right now is quicksand. We must tread carefully.”

Holmes’ mood lightened a little.

“Thank you, Watson. You are my rock, as always, but for now, tempus fugit! We have much to do and little enough time to do it in!”

The hours passed in a flurry of activity as Holmes unpacked the eccentric array of items and began piecing them together using the missing man’s notes as a guide. I, in turn, was primarily relegated to heavy lifting and the pouring of drinks.

A little before midnight, we slumped into our seats, joints and heads aching. In front of the hearth lay a grey metal box, the size of a tea chest. Its upper surface was encrusted with switches, dials and gauges, while its bottom edges were fringed with sockets out of which snaked a plethora of cables wired up to the caged crystals in each corner of the room.

“Holmes, if this snare of your works, and we truly trap a phantom, won’t we be in the room with it?”

“Yes, but I’m afraid there’s no other way if we are going to try and communicate with it. If things should go awry, however, do you have your revolver to hand?”

I reached over and patted the pocket of my jacket, which was draped over the back of the settee.

“It goes without saying.”

A sudden short breeze sent the gas lamps guttering. “Watson, we are not alone.”

As coolly as possible, I slid my jacket down beside me and reached inside for my pistol.

Holmes leant forwards and smartly flipped a sequence of switches. Dials glowed and the box began to admit a low, bass hum. In each corner of the room, the crystals too were suffused with a soft white light.

“Watson, observe!”

I followed Holmes gaze. Back by the window, apparently the phantom’s favourite spot, its chameleon-like camouflage was failing. The images of the room it had wrapped itself in had begun to warp and distort like a funhouse hall of mirrors.

With a final frantic shimmer, it dissipated and the true phantom was revealed.

“Good Lord!” I heard Holmes exclaim, in a whisper.

My estimation had been correct, the being before us was easily seven feet tall and humanoid. It was wearing what I could perceive as a skin-tight, one-piece suit. Grey, but shot through, head-to-foot, with intricate silver thread. The thread itself swam like smoke over its surface, which swirled and whirled, creating intricate patterns before breaking apart to recombine in even more elaborate designs. The only constant were the geometric shapes imprinted on the forearms, which the phantom kept stabbing at with growing agitation.

Each hand had only three fingers and a thumb, long and slender, with four joints each. The index finger was half the length again of the others and it was with this our visitor was urgently pressing the symbols on his arm.

Its face and the few exposed parts of its body were also humanoid, but the skin was a pastel, pale green, almost yellow, rather like the belly of a turtle. Its eyes were twice the size of normal, with deep purple irises, but no whites to speak of. It bore a wide, lipless mouth filled with small, flat teeth. There was no nose, but two small oval vents edged with cartilage.

It looked up at us from its work and I saw what I can only term as dread in its eyes. It was terrified of us. It chattered to itself, its voice sounding as if someone were plucking at a harp with a dinner fork.

Holmes stepped forwards, his hand on my forearm, urging me to keep my revolver low and out of sight for now.

“We mean you no harm. We merely wish to talk. Do you understand me?”

In response, the phantom spurred on its attempts, tapping frantically at its forearm.

“Holmes, I do believe it is more afraid of us that we are of it.”

“Quite, so but if we cannot communicate, it will all be for naught!”

The phantom chirruped again in a less discordant fashion and I swear I saw it smile.

Behind us, the metal box began emitting a discordant grinding noise as black smoke issued from the sockets. Their connections to the crystals broke, in a cascade of orange sparks.

“It’s doing something to the device!”

Holmes’ cry came too late as the phantom vanished, leaving only the now-familiar dash of displaced air.

We quickly yanked the cables from the box, which had given up the ghost. The room reeked of burnt metal. A pall of acrid smoke hung in the air. I flung wide the windows to save our breath.

“Damn! Damn and blast!”

“There was nothing more we could do, Holmes. We tried.”

I studied the charred ruin.

“Can it be repaired?”

“Not by me. The only one who might is whatshisname, who’s disappeared into God knows when!”

“And he won’t be very amenable to assist us when he sees what we’ve done to his device!”

A flicker of a smile twitched at the corner of Holmes’ mouth before exploding in a great guffaw of laughter. It proved infectious, and seconds later, we were both laughing like fools. It was the rain clearing the air after a storm.

There was a knock at the door.

“Mrs. Hudson?”

“Visiting a friend in Worthing.”

We quickly regained our composure. I crossed to the door, retrieving my revolver en route while Holmes straightened his waistcoat and jacket.

He gave me a short nod and I opened the door.

There was another phantom.

“Dr. Watson?”

His voice sounded artificial. Smooth, flawless and perfectly enunciated, it did not quite match the movement of his lips.

“May I come in?”

“By all means.”

I stepped back, keeping my gun to my side, hidden behind my leg.

The visitor stooped to enter. He was a different kettle of fish to our previous guest. His suit was black, not grey, chased through with gold thread instead of silver. His skin colour was a darker green than the other, and heavily lined. He gave the impression of being an older, senior figure.

Holmes gestured for him to sit.

“Please, be seated.”

Despite his size, he comfortably folded himself into the chair.

“Mr. Holmes, this is a great pleasure. I have long been an admirer of yours.”

“Then you have me at a disadvantage, Mr...?”

“My name in my native tongue does not translate easily. You may know me by occupation instead. I am the Curator.”

“Curator of what?” I enquired.

“Of all that remains of the human race. Of you. Its fiction.”

I was dumbstruck.

The seconds that followed after were an eternity.

Holmes smiled serenely and nodded, as if the secrets of the universe has just been revealed to him.

“Of course... of course we are.”

“It may be awkward to explain, but I will do my best to put it in terms you can comprehend.”

“Don’t be so damn patronising!” I snapped.

“Lower your hackles, Watson. There’s no need to so defensive. From what we have seen thus far, I imagine there are concepts and technologies at work that even
I
may be hardpressed to comprehend.”

“There is no easy way to say this,” said the Curator. “So I will come to straight to the point. The human race is extinct. We estimate it has been so for over two hundred and fifty thousand years.”

“How did it happen? How did they die?”

Holmes hid it well, but there was no denying the crack of emotion in his voice.

“We are not entirely sure. Possibly war, or radical environmental change, but we cannot say with any certainty. There is evidence they went to the stars, but we have never encountered them on our travels.

“Fortunately we were able to salvage a good deal of their literary and historical works from data banks that were preserved underground.”

“Data banks?” I asked.

“Mechanical libraries. Machine memories. We are in one now.”