The Lost Casebooks of Sherlock Holmes (105 page)

Chamberlain was a broad-shouldered young man with a flop of pale gold hair aslant his forehead and penetrating blue eyes. He was, I suppose, the type who might be handsome to a shopgirl or a maidservant, perhaps because there was a common look to him that brought him within every female's grasp. Yet the more one looked at him, the more his youthfulness came into question. He was like a modern French painting, best seen from a distance, since cracks and crevices appear on closer inspection. As I studied him during his performance, I thought that after all he was not so much a young man as the ideal of what an indulgent old woman might think a young man should be. In this, at least, I was to be proved right. Quite probably he would never see forty again and must have spent some time each day concealing the fact. Perhaps his appearance alone would not have mattered quite so much had it not been for his voice, or rather its confident twang. It was not so much an accent as a distortion of his speech, which might equally well have been acquired in the stockyards of Chicago or the dock-side of Liverpool. It seemed to me that he had no real voice at all, merely a self-confident nasal bray.

Presently the audience fell silent, as if it knew that we had come to the serious business of the evening. Whatever flippancy had been evident in Chamberlain until now, he became as solemn and as insinuating as the Reverend Mr. Milner could ever have been in the pulpit of his Wesleyan Railway Mission.

We were introduced to Madame Elvira, a shrewish little person with ginger hair. She was wearing a dress of electric blue with white ruffs. It seems that she was blessed with gifts of many kinds, including ‘second sight,' which may have been the least of her accomplishments, if Professor Chamberlain were to be believed.

‘Madame Elvira was born in the Middle West, where her ancestry included Indian blood from the tribes who fought at Fort Duquesne a century and more ago. She lived many years of her childhood as a friend of those tribes with the most happy results. By long practice and sympathetic attention she has attuned her spirit to those of the dead warriors and chiefs by whom messages from the beyond are so often brought to us.'

‘Which is to say,' remarked Holmes softly, ‘that Madame Elvira has very probably never been further west than the terminus of the Hammersmith railway.'

The professor explained that a man whom Madame Elvira had never seen nor heard of might write his name upon a card. The card would then be handed to the professor, who would stare at it long enough and hard enough to fix the image of the signature in his mind. Twenty feet or more away from him, Madame Elvira would sit at a typewriter with her back to him. She would be blindfolded by volunteers from the audience. The image in the mind of the professor would then be transmitted to that of his protegée, before our eyes. She would type it correctly on a sheet of paper without removing her blindfold. Rarely in the past had she been mistaken and even then only in a syllable or so.

The professor called for several more volunteers to do the blindfolding and see fair play. He was down among the audience now, handing out several dozen blank cards to those of us in the front rows. On these we were to write our names and individual seat numbers. When the cards had been gathered in, he invited a woman in the first row to stand upon the stage and shuffle them like playing cards so that there could be no question of any prearranged order. Then he sprang back behind the footlights. Madame Elvira sat patiently at her table before the typewriter. Her back was toward Professor Chamberlain and the audience as she clenched and stretched her fingers, no doubt in preparation for her task. Two other women were still blindfolding her to their satisfaction.

The professor in his swallowtail evening coat addressed his public in his confident twang.

‘Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. In a moment we shall come to the highlight of our evening and our seance will begin, as soon as the two good ladies who have volunteered to ensure that my partner cannot by any means see me or any clue I might give her have completed their task. We have all heard of cheats in the thoughtreading profession who signal to one another, haven't we? Eyes right for hearts, left for diamonds, up for clubs, and down for spades. One wink for an ace, two for a court card. We know all about that, don't we? Of course we do! And we aren't having it here, are we? Of course we aren't! What you see before you now is genuine second sight, authentic mindreading. It may succeed, it may fail. One thing you may depend upon, ladies and gentlemen, is that it is entirely genuine.'

He had all the panache of a man who sends you a dishonored bill with a note to say that payment is guaranteed.

‘I have here fifty cards, ladies and gentlemen, each with the number of a seat and the name of a customer. I shall look at each in turn because, you understand, in order that second sight may operate it is necessary that another person should first see them and transmit them. But I shall do more than that. It is when thoughts are transferred in this way that the mind is most open to messages from the spirit world. For that reason, I shall also repeat to you whatever messages come to my mind as I hold the card before me. I cannot promise you there will be such messages, of course. I am in the hands of those beyond the veil who transmit them. What vulgar people call ghosts. However, whatever messages I have for those who have written these cards shall be relayed to them.'

Beside me I heard Holmes emit a despairing sigh. Professor Chamberlain had not finished.

‘Blindfolded though she be, Madame Elvira has a magic touch with a typewriter. On that machine she will print out the name from each card as it appears in her mind. A copy shall be given to the lady or gentleman whose name and seat number appears upon it, thus putting her performance beyond any suspicion of trickery.'

He was staring at the first card, as if to fix it in his mind. He closed his eyes.

‘I address the gentleman who wrote this card—for it is a gentleman in this case. Now, sir, while Madame Elvira sees in her own mind the very image that has just left mine, my thoughts are wandering, open to whatever message may be waiting for you in the world of the spirits. That world is infinite and we, in our finiteness, may not easily interpret its signals.… I have something. I do not say I understand it, but the letters of the message begin to form in my mind. I see the word ‘Death.' What follows? Now it comes to me.
Death is but some means of reawakening.…
Wait, there is more!
Think nothing joyful unless innocent.…
'

‘Intolerable rubbish!' said Holmes
sotto voce
.

Chamberlain opened his eyes. It was possible to hear the brief rattle of the typewriter keys, the ting of its bell, and the whiz of the paper being drawn clear. A volunteer from the audience who had helped to blindfold the girl brought the writing to him. Chamberlain came forward to the footlights.

‘The number of the seat is twenty-four and the gentleman sitting in it is Mr. Charles Smith. The messages from another world are also typewritten upon the card.'

There was a murmur of expectation. Chamberlain stabbed a finger dramatically through the limelight, towards seat twenty-four.

‘Am I right, sir?'

I could just catch a murmur and a nod.

‘Have I ever met you before, air? Are we known to one another?' Another murmur and a shaking of the head.

‘Do you understand how the message applies to you?'

A briefer, less certain nod. An assistant or runner carried the piece of typed paper to the man who had been named, as if it were a prize. This seaside entertainment began to intrigue me. Holmes affected boredom. We went through a dozen names, each embellished by strange ‘messages' from the hereafter that combined the impenetrably obscure and the blindingly self-evident. If it was a trick, I could not make out how the devil it was done. The girl could see nothing and yet she was never wrong.

The minutes passed and now he had taken another card at which he was staring. I heard him say, ‘A message is coming clearly to me but from very far off. I beg you will keep silence, ladies and gentlemen.… Perhaps it is directed to a professional gentleman, a man of learning. It is in two parts … or even three.… I hear the first one.
Knowledge protects its opposite.…
And then,
Experience brings understanding.…
Wait, there is one more!
Time precedes oblivion.…
Ladies and gentlemen, the meaning of much of this is hidden from me, but I have faith that it will be clear in some way to the recipient.'

‘That experience brings understanding is clear enough to a baboon!' said Holmes quietly beside me. ‘And unless I am much mistaken, my dear Watson, you are about to win a prize in a monkey show.'

The typewriter rattled and the paper was brought back.

‘The number of the seat is thirty-one and the customer is Mr. John Watson! Am I right, sir?'

‘Yes!' I called back abruptly. ‘And I have never met you before.'

‘Congratulations,' said Holmes acidly. ‘Why is it that I am the only one to see how the trick is done?'

This rigmarole continued on the stage. Then, without warning, Holmes began to mutter each correct name even before Madame Elvira could begin to type it. I was alarmed that he might be overheard and that we might be identified as spies. Presently, however, we received another instruction from the hereafter.
Triumph in false strife makes power destroy itself
. This was followed at once and even more dramatically by
I pledge my name for truth
.

‘The seat is number thirty-two and the occupant is Mr. Sherlock Holmes.'

His name meant nothing to the performers or their audience, I think, though I believe I heard a laugh from someone who perhaps thought him to be a wag playing a joke on the professor.

‘Am I right, sir?'

‘Indeed you are,' said Holmes in his most charming manner, ‘and, of course, I have never had the pleasure of your acquaintance until now.'

The scrap of typing was brought and he thrust it into his pocket.

The rest of the performance was a variant of this game. Cards were drawn from a pack and correctly guessed at. Once or twice Madame Elvira even pronounced in advance which card a volunteer would draw. Yet in all this there was nothing much beyond the manipulation of a deck of cards as a skilled poker cheat might have done it. The deck was torn from a manufacturer's wrapper each time, but that would not prevent it being tampered with. The whole thing reeked of the gaming saloon.

All the same, the audience seemed well pleased. Yet the second-sight act had soon become what they call ‘dead lead' to them. A moment later they were noisily applauding the return of the mesmerized when young men stooped, were kicked, and turned round to thank their assailant, as ‘Dr. Mesmer' had commanded them in advance, or young women barked like dogs and scuffled on all fours. This was far superior to messages from ‘the beyond' that sounded as if they might have a profound meaning and yet tortured the brain unendurably in any attempt to draw common sense from them.

I was ready to leave long before the end of the show, but Holmes seemed determined to see it through to the finish. Afterwards we took a final stroll along the deck of the Chain Pier while a crescent moon formed a thin path of pale glittering light all the way to Boulogne. I took the scrap of paper with my name typed upon it, screwed it up, and was about to throw it over the rail into the water.

‘No!' said Holmes sharply. ‘That is our first trophy of the battle.'

‘A trophy of a wasted evening!'

He chuckled at this.

‘A trophy of time well spent. You really could not see how it was done?'

‘I suppose there was a trick,' I said grudgingly. ‘All I saw was the fellow staring at a card, mumbling so-called philosophical remarks about knowledge, power, and staking one's soul for truth. Then the girl typed out the answer—the name on the card and the messages. Professor Chamberlain cannot have been a muscle-twitcher, that much is evident, for she could not see him. As for those spoken messages, how could there be a meaning in all that foolish babble?'

‘Very easily, my dear fellow. In the first place, he talked a great deal, but only the messages from the spirit world were important.'

‘Did you hear mine? Knowledge protects its opposite. Experience brings understanding. Time precedes oblivion.'

‘Quite so. The kind of gibberish that seems to the simple-minded to be the wisdom of the ages. It quite occupies one in trying to decipher it while the real trick is pulled. Our Professor Chamberlain is a clever fellow, make no mistake of that. A clever fellow, although a ruffian and a fraud.'

‘Then there is a message in the gibberish?'

He threw back his head and laughed.

‘Oh, there is, Watson! Indeed there is. Try the first letter of each word in your own message. Knowledge protects its own. Experience breeds understanding. Time precedes oblivion.'

‘
K
-
P
-
I
-
O
.
X
-
B
-
U
.
T
-
P
-
O
. It makes worse gibberish than ever.'

‘I confess that it took me until the third attempt to work it out. All the same it is a commonplace device. Now, replace each letter with the one in the alphabet which precedes it.'

‘
J
-
O
-
H
-
N
.
W
-
A
-
T
-
S
-
O
-
N
.'

‘Just so. John Watson. She could not see him, therefore it had to be a spoken code. Even then, the girl could not possibly have deciphered his endless verbiage; therefore, the clue must be contained in a few of the words. What else could provide it but those messages from the beyond? She is, I imagine, a simple soul, therefore the method must be consistent. The first letter of each word seemed likely. As I listened, I realized that it was not the first letter but that the number of words in the spirit messages exactly matched the number of letters in the customer's name. Ten in your case. Chamberlain did not, you observe, choose long names. I believe mine was the longest. Interesting, by the way, that it appeared to mean nothing to him. I daresay he has been abroad or in the colonies.'