The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes--The Martian Menace Page 12

  A shadow fell over Miss Hamilton-Bell’s features. “No, Dr Watson,” she said, “the photograph belongs to me.”

  “A paramour, perchance?”

  She shook her head. “My brother,” she murmured.

  “Dashing fellow,” I said. “Served in Afghanistan, judging by the background.”

  “Where he met his end,” she said.

  “Oh, I say – I’m sorry. I’m so dreadfully sorry. Those dashed Ghazis—”

  She interrupted. “He died in Kabul fighting the first wave of Martians,” she said, “eighteen years ago this July. I was twelve at the time, and he just twenty.” She looked up, and then smiled with a radiance at odds with her previous words.

  “And now,” she said, “who’s for more tea?”

  Chapter Sixteen

  “A Much Greater Depredation…”

  The following morning, over breakfast, I found Holmes in a sombre mood. He chewed on his toast with an air of abstraction, and I ventured to ask if he had passed a sleepless night.

  “On the contrary, my friend, I slept soundly. But I am sorely taxed by what occurred on Mars – namely, why the Arkana should have spared us when they saw fit to murder poor Challenger?”

  I shrugged as I tucked into my scrambled eggs. “Perhaps it’s what Miss Hamilton-Bell said, Holmes: our simulacra were not ready in time.”

  “Perhaps,” he said, unconvinced, and resumed his moody silence.

  After breakfast, Holmes moved to his workbench and spent some considerable time sifting through the innards of the Martian simulacra. At last he located two cylindrical units the size of fountain pens – the batteries that powered the doppelgängers – and passed one of them to me.

  “Now keep it safe about your person at all times,” he said, slipping his own into his trouser pocket.

  As a precaution, he pointed the simulacrum detector at me and pressed the stud. The light on the leading edge glowed blue. He repeated the process on himself, with the same result.

  After lunch he scrawled a note and sealed it in an envelope, then leaned from the open window and called down to an urchin loitering in the street. Fishing a shilling from his pocket, Holmes descended to meet the runner.

  “I have sent a note to Mr Wells,” he said on his return, “asking him to meet us at five at the Piccadilly Lyons’.”

  “I was thinking, Holmes, about what the Martians might want from our simulacra. They told you, rather ominously, that they would be in touch.”

  He ruminated, his gaze distant. “I too have been vexed by this very question,” he said. “I have been trying to work out how we might be of service to them, over and above rendering the obvious investigational assistance.”

  “Odd to think,” I said, “that the Martians fabricated a duplicate of your mind every bit as perspicacious as the original.”

  “Odd, Watson? I find it disturbing. Do the scientific and technological capabilities of our oppressors know no limits? If we are up against a foe who can match and even trump every human achievement and ability…” He shook his head. “It would suggest that, in order to vanquish the Arkana, we will need, as well as fortitude and pluck, a hefty dose of luck – never a commodity on which I like to rely.”

  He spent the rest of the afternoon further disassembling the mechanical men, and a little before four o’clock I was startled, while browsing the newspaper, by his sudden exclamation: “Good God, what a fool I am!” So saying, he snatched up his deerstalker from the workbench and rammed it on his head, then found his glove and slipped it on.

  A few seconds after four, he sat up suddenly and I heard the muted, guttural sound of a Martian voice issue from the receiver concealed in the deerstalker’s right ear-flap.

  Holmes raised his gloved left hand to his lips and replied, then fell silent as the controller spoke.

  Minutes later the communiqué was over and Holmes sat back in relief.

  “What the deuce did they say, Holmes?”

  “A routine call to establish our whereabouts.” He tapped the left ear-flap. “They also summoned you, or rather your simulacrum.”

  “They did?”

  “And I replied in a somewhat different tone, repeating more or less what I’d stated initially, that we were at Baker Street, and that I was between cases at the moment and awaiting further instructions.”

  “Must admit I didn’t notice the difference.” I laughed. “All Greek to me, Holmes.”

  “Fortunately, we were not summoned to do their bidding—”

  A knock at the door interrupted him.

  “With luck, that will be Mrs Hudson bearing Wells’s reply. Be a good fellow and see what he says, will you, Watson?”

  I thanked Mrs Hudson, took the note, and read it aloud.

  “Dear Sir, I will be delighted to resume our acquaintance at said time and place. Your humble servant, Herbert Wells.”

  “Capital, Watson.”

  “Do you think you can convince Wells to come over to our side?” I asked.

  “I am certain of it. After the affair two years ago, his latent animosity towards the Martians will be primed, needing only the lighting of the touch paper – in this case, the evidence of the simulacra and our personal testimonies – to ignite him to action. I perceive in Wells a person of boundless mental energy and enthusiasm, which need only to be channelled. He will, I hope, prove a worthy ally.”

  I sensed a slight note of circumspection in his tone. “However…?” I said.

  “We must approach the meeting with caution, Watson. There is always the possibility that the Martians have done the same with Wells as they have with ourselves. Namely, that they have replaced him with a simulacrum. We will go armed with our electrical guns and Miss Hamilton-Bell’s detection device.”

  Thus equipped, we made our way to Piccadilly.

  * * *

  Wells was already seated at a booth at the back of the tea room, spooning vegetable soup with a gusto suggesting near starvation. He climbed to his feet, wiping his straggling moustache, as we joined him.

  “Mr Holmes, Dr Watson,” he said in his high-pitched voice, shaking our hands, “a delight to meet you again.”

  “Likewise,” said Holmes, taking a seat and ordering tea for two from the waitress.

  I had quite forgotten how short of stature Mr Wells was, with a disproportionately bulky torso tapering down to spindly legs. His head was large, broad across the brow, and his deep-set eyes somewhat melancholy. Also, as he re-seated himself behind the table, I thought I detected a look of suspicion in his regard of Holmes and myself.

  Which, I concluded, was entirely understandable. We had discovered his part, two years ago, in the death of the Martian ambassador. He had every reason to be wary of our motives in arranging this meeting.

  While I busied myself with the tea, Holmes slipped the detection device from his pocket beneath the lip of the table and was directing it at Wells. He pressed the stud, and I was relieved to see a red light illuminate the hem of the tablecloth.

  “And how is Miss Fairfield – or rather,” Holmes corrected himself, “should I be asking after the well-being of Mrs Wells? When last we met, you were on the verge of matrimony, as I recall.”

  Wells winced and stared into the puddle of his soup. “I’m afraid things went rather downhill on that front, Mr Holmes.”

  “Oh,” I said, “I’m sorry to hear that, old chap.”

  Wells dabbed at his soup with a chunk of bread and chewed the sodden mass with little enthusiasm. “After her recent success—”

  “Success?” I enquired.

  “Under the name of Rebecca West,” Holmes said, “Miss Fairfield has published a series of articles to much acclaim.”

  “That’s correct, Mr Holmes. And I rather think that the praise went to her head. Added to which, my own failure in that department… I suppose there was resentment on both sides. I must admit that I felt a degree of envy of Cicely’s success, and she was irked by this.”

  “You broke off the
engagement?” Holmes asked.

  “Not I,” said Wells. “That was entirely Cicely’s doing. You see, there was someone else.”

  “I say, I am sorry,” I said.

  Wells sighed. “There was this fellow employed at the embassy as a scientific advisor. I wouldn’t have minded so much – well, that’s a lie, I would have minded whoever had turned Cicely’s head – but the fact was that this chap was in his fifties, apparently, and dashed ugly to boot.”

  Holmes murmured his commiserations, somewhat unconvincingly, I thought.

  “Still,” I said, “one must put it down to experience and soldier on, what?”

  Wells’s weak smile suggested that he’d heard this platitude more than once before, and had failed to be convinced.

  “But I am sure that you gentlemen did not come here to listen to my tale of romantic woe,” he said. “How might I be of assistance?”

  “It is,” Holmes began, “a somewhat delicate matter. We have of late come into some intelligence regarding our Martian… friends.”

  This had the effect of provoking Wells.

  “Friends? They’re no friends of mine, Mr Holmes. Oh, I might work for the ambassador, but there’s no love lost in my regard for the Martians, considering what they’re doing to our world.”

  Holmes leaned forward. “And what might that be?” he asked.

  Wells licked his lips and looked around the tea room as if wary of eavesdroppers. In lowered tones he said, “I’ve been a member of the Fabians for some good time now, and it’s public knowledge that Mr and Mrs Webb are openly antagonistic to the Martians and their regime on Earth.”

  “Yes,” said Holmes, “I read a recent interview with Mrs Webb in the London Illustrated News, in which she expressed her concern about the financial management of our economy, and the Martians’ influence upon it.”

  “She was being diplomatic in that interview,” Wells said bitterly, “for fear of unduly antagonising the Martians. Did you know,” he hurried on in hushed tones, “that the Martians are milking our economy dry? And not only ours, but the French and Americans, too.”

  He sat back and cast another weary glance around the room. “But I must be careful in my denunciation of our oppressors,” he said, “given my position at the embassy…”

  Holmes leaned forward. “The desperate economic straits you describe are not the half of it, my friend.” He paused deliberately. “If you only knew the true state of affairs.”

  “The true state? What do you mean?”

  “I mean,” Holmes said, “that the financial plight of our country, indeed our planet, is but the precursor to a much greater depredation.”

  Mr Wells looked from Holmes to myself. His face had turned quite pale.

  When he spoke, it was almost a whisper. “How do you know this?”

  “We have ample evidence,” Holmes said, “and our own experience. We recently set foot on the very soil of the red planet. There we were subject to a series of travails in which our very lives were threatened, and a friend of mine met his end at the hands of the Martians. We learned, from a young woman working to bring the Martian oppression to an end, exactly what the situation is.”

  “Can you tell me more?” Wells asked.

  “Better still,” he said, “I can show you physical evidence of the Martians’ perfidy.”

  Holmes finished his tea and then, in the same furtive manner as Wells, cast a glance around the room. “We cannot be too careful. Watson and I will leave for Baker Street post-haste, and I suggest that in ten minutes you should set out for the same destination – taking a circuitous route and perhaps changing cabs more than once in the process.”

  Wells nodded. “Understood.”

  Holmes settled our bill, and as we left the tea rooms I said, “Do you really think we’re in danger of being followed, Holmes?”

  “I hope not, but I fear we might be. I am taking no chances. What we must remember, Watson, is that powerful oppressors sow division amid those they seek to cow – and one of the weapons they use to do so is the promise of power and money. I have absolutely no doubt that there are, living among us, benighted souls working against their kind for the reward of filthy lucre.”

  On that sombre note, we hailed a cab and made haste to Baker Street.

  Chapter Seventeen

  A Little Game at Wells’s Expense

  Once again in our rooms, Holmes lifted my doppelgänger’s skin by the scruff of the neck and carried it into the adjoining bedroom, and the sight of it hanging from his hand like an old dressing-gown turned my stomach. He returned and arranged the skin of the second simulacrum in the wing-back armchair. It presented a forlorn, withered sight as it sat with its back to the door, its sunken head reposing on the antimacassar, its empty eye sockets staring at the mantelshelf: a ghastly version of Sherlock Holmes robbed of all vitality.

  “Whatever are you doing, Holmes?”

  “A little game at Wells’s expense,” he said, “all the more to shock him into realising the terrible extent of the Martians’ oppression.”

  “I would have thought the sight of the pair lying side by side on the hearth rug would have proved convincing enough, Holmes, but have it your way.”

  “I will repair to the bedroom and leave the door ajar, then observe his reaction as he beholds my double.”

  “I hope his heart is strong.”

  “If it isn’t, then you’ll be on hand to render medical assistance,” he said. “How is your cardiovascular knowledge these days, Watson?”

  I deigned not to reply. Sometimes, I reflected, my friend’s sense of humour was mordant in the extreme.

  In due course Mrs Hudson announced that we had a visitor, a gentleman by the name of Wells.

  Holmes slipped into the adjoining room, and I crossed to the door and met Wells on the threshold, shaking his hand and asking if he’d care for a drink.

  “A brandy, perhaps?” I suggested – to fortify him against the shock in store.

  “Do you know what?” he said. “I think I will, but just a peg.”

  I poured three small measures – assuming Holmes would wish to join us – and, entering into the spirit of the venture, passed Wells the glass and gestured to the vacant armchair beside the hearth. “Take a seat, old man.”

  He moved around the wing-back chair containing the simulacrum, then stopped dead as he looked down at Holmes’s double.

  His reaction was not quite what I had expected.

  He smiled, sat down and stared with interest – but not the expected shock – at the simulacrum. “I see they’ve immortalised Holmes, too – but how the blazes did you get your hands on this? A damaged specimen, perhaps?”

  Holmes stepped from the bedroom, having observed Wells’s anticlimactic reaction. “A damaged specimen?” Holmes echoed. “What on earth do you mean?”

  Wells gestured at the deflated doppelgänger. “This,” he said, peering more closely at it. “It doesn’t seem of the best quality.”

  Holmes took the brandy I proffered and knocked back a mouthful. “You’ve seen one of these before?”

  “Oh, I know all about them,” Wells said.

  I exchanged a worried glance with Holmes. “You do?” he said. “You see,” Wells explained, “just the other day I happened to be crossing the courtyard of the embassy as a tripod was delivering a large packing crate. The ambassador hurried from the building to supervise the delivery, and I was about to leave them to it when I heard a tremendous crash. The crate had fallen from the elevator platform, hit the ground and split open, spilling its contents. Imagine my surprise when I saw what had tumbled out.”

  “And just what was it?” I asked.

  “A lifelike dummy of Lloyd George,” Wells said. “I asked Grulvax-Xenxa-Goran what it was all about, and he told me that the dummy was bound for the docking station at Battersea, whence it would be transported to Mars to feature in an exhibition of Great Britain’s great and good. It had been delivered to the embassy for a last inspectio
n before it was despatched.” He took a mouthful of brandy, adding, “But I thought you summoned me here to show me evidence of Martian evil?”

  I glanced at my friend. His expression was grim.

  Without a word, Holmes entered the adjoining room and returned clutching my simulacrum. He dropped it on the rug at Wells’s feet, and pointed to the piles of wire littering the workbench across the room.

  “They are not ‘dummies’, as you called them, and they are not destined, along with Lloyd George, to grace some exhibition on Mars about Great Britain’s eminent personages.”

  Wells blinked. “They’re not?”

  “I’m afraid that Grulvax-Xenxa-Goran pulled the wool over your eyes,” said Holmes. “What you accidentally beheld, when the crate split open, was the mechanical simulacrum destined to replace the real flesh-and-blood Lloyd George.”

  Wells swallowed, then gestured mutely at the simulacra. “And these?”

  “Mechanical doppelgängers intended by the Martians to replace us on Earth following our murders on Mars,” Holmes said, and went on to outline, in detail, our recent travails on the red planet.

  Wells sat, stunned, when Holmes had finished speaking. At last he spoke up. “And you say that the Martians have been killing prominent humans and replacing them with, with…” Again he gestured at the simulacra.

  “The better to assist the takeover of our planet when the Martian warlords deem that the time is right,” Holmes supplied.

  Wells uttered an oath, shaking his head in wonder. “I knew that the Martians were far from the altruistic benefactors they liked to make themselves out to be,” he said, “but never in my wildest dreams did I think that… that…” He stammered to a halt.

  He looked from me to Holmes. “And when might the takeover commence?” he asked.

  Holmes shook his head. “That we don’t know, but we were hoping…”

  “Go on.”

  Holmes drained his brandy. “There is a resistance movement, Mr Wells. We are in contact with one of its members, the woman whose doppelgänger accompanied us to Mars. Also, there are Arkana Martians who sympathise with our plight and oppose what their fellows are doing. But in order to defeat the might of the Martians, we need to recruit new members in all walks of life—”