Associates of Sherlock Holmes

THE VANISHING SNAKE Jeffrey Thomas

“I am sorry to say there is no such snake in existence as a swamp adder, Mr Holmes,” I proclaimed upon being let into the sitting room of the Baker Street rooms Sherlock Holmes shared with his companion Dr John Watson, also present.

“Helen Stoner, gentlemen,” their landlady Mrs Hudson belatedly introduced me, no doubt thrown a bit by the words of greeting from this unexpected visitor. She departed, and I took a seat by the window.

Mr Holmes certainly did not require her introduction, in any case. Only a few weeks prior, he had saved me from sharing the tragic fate of my twin sister, Julia. Our own stepfather, Dr Grimesby Roylott, had connived to murder us shortly before we could marry, for fear of losing the inheritance he had been given to control upon the death of our mother, so long as her daughters lived under his care. Dr Roylott had been successful in doing away with poor Julia, by introducing a venomous snake into her room, but when he had made an attempt to do the same to me only two years later I had brought my unformed suspicions to Mr Holmes, who had not only uncovered Dr Roylott’s plot but, in repelling the serpent, had inadvertently caused it to kill its own master.

Having apparently finished a late breakfast and now enjoying a pipe while slumped back comfortably in his chair, Mr Holmes arched an eyebrow at me, clearly intrigued that his identification of the reptile had been challenged these several weeks after the investigation’s conclusion. I have no doubt the observant Mr Holmes took note of my uneasy manner, surely not so different from my greatly troubled demeanour when I had first come to him, much oppressed by strange nocturnal occurrences. I knew too well that my hair was even more shot through with white than before, though I was only thirty-two years of age. Yet with my brutal stepfather deceased, and the snake itself having been captured by Mr Holmes using a noose and locked away inside an iron safe in my stepfather’s room, I can well imagine that he wondered what there was to cause me such anxiety.

Mr Holmes said, “You speak with much conviction, Miss Stoner. Might I ask how you arrived at this certainty?”

I replied, “I should like to recount all the events that led to this conclusion, Mr Holmes. Owing to your recent involvement in my situation, I thought you would want to know of the even stranger happenings that have followed in the wake of the former. I am beyond curious to know what you will think of certain elements of these occurrences, which are so uncanny that I fear you will ultimately scoff at them.”

Mr Holmes sat up straighter in his chair and said, “It is a rare thing indeed for one of the cases I have undertaken and thought to be thoroughly resolved to not be concluded after all. You have my keenest interest, Miss Stoner. I will withhold my judgement until I have heard all. Please proceed, and leave out no detail of your account.”

“Thank you; to the best of my ability I shan’t.” Here I drew in a long breath to bolster myself. “As you will no doubt recall, Mr Holmes, you and your good friend Dr Watson here kindly saw me into the care of my maiden aunt, Miss Honoria Westphail, directly after the dreadful events that culminated in my stepfather’s death. However, in the absence of any other heir, and though I was not his blood relation, it fell upon me to address matters pertaining to his estate of Stoke Moran, and so I was obliged to return there.

“The coroner had removed my stepfather’s body quickly enough, of course, but there remained the business of the snake trapped in the heavy safe. The animal would presumably not suffocate, as my stepfather had kept it in the safe all along, so apparently it was getting sufficient air somehow. The hope was that the snake would starve to death, but then how long would that take? When would it be prudent to open the safe, using the key that stood in the lock, to ascertain whether the snake still posed a threat? These concerns were expressed to me by the police who followed up the business after your involvement.

“Before my return to Stoke Moran I gave my consent to have the safe removed from the house and for the police to deal with it as they would. Upon my arrival back at the old manor house I was visited by one of the constables who had been present when the safe was opened, and I was informed of the result.

“It seems the men who unlocked the safe had improvised weapons at hand, meaning to thrust a sod cutter’s spade into the aperture as soon as the door came open and crush the beast immediately, but they were prepared in case it should slip past this blade. Another man had a long, makeshift torch ready, to thrust in the same if need be. A third constable turned the key and at a signal cracked the door open, but before the man with the spade could attack, the man with the torch – who had glimpsed the interior by the light of his fire – begged the other to hold off. A moment later, though the three constables remained tense with caution, the door was hauled fully open.

“The snake that had killed both my sister and stepfather was gone. Or, at least, what remained was less than a carcass. The constable described to me a coil of colourless, dry matter, that when stirred with the spade proved to be comprised of a fluffy white material that broke up like ash. So unsubstantial was this matter that even the merest probing caused it to disintegrate, the ashy remnants so fine that there was ultimately left not even a residue within the safe.”

Mr Holmes interrupted, “Were they certain the snake did not slip out through the bottom of the aperture once the door was cracked open, while the men were distracted and confounded by the sight of this pale coil? The glare of the torch itself may have shielded this action. My suspicion is that the dry matter was nothing more than the serpent’s molted skin.”

“That was my own initial reaction to this account, Mr Holmes, and I suggested the same to this constable, who was in fact he who had wielded the spade. He assured me that with three sets of eyes on the safe the snake could not possibly have slipped past them. And there was no other means of escape from the safe, for, had there been, surely the snake would have made use of it before. Also, he swore he could tell this was not merely a shed skin, for he had found and handled such in his youth. He and the other two could only conclude that the snake had died and become strangely desiccated or mummified due to some property of the sealed safe.”

“Unless, of course, another had entered the mansion in your absence and removed the snake, the key, as you say, still slotted in its hole.”

“One might readily wonder that, but further events I am to relate will shed a different light on that consideration.”

Mr Holmes said, “Forgive my interruption, then. Please continue.”

“Well, mysterious though this situation was, I soon turned my attention to the matter that had brought me back to Stoke Moran. My fiancé, Percy Armitage, was dear enough to already be investigating for me a means by which I might sell the estate, as I have no sentimental attachment to it. The house itself, being in such ill repair as you will recall, with the roof of the east wing even having partly collapsed, we thought might best be demolished, but we proposed to leave that decision to whomever proved interested in acquiring the property.

“Meanwhile, with the aid of my stepfather’s former housekeeper, Mrs Littledale, I intended to set about packing up the remainder of my belongings to transport back to my aunt’s home, along with whatever had belonged to my sister that I might care to retain. As for my stepfather’s possessions, I had no desire to own any of it, so poisonous had his memory become to me.

“Mr Armitage had come to meet me upon my return to Stoke Moran, to ensure that I was capable of re-entering the scene of so much horror, but once I had thoroughly reassured him he returned to his home, near Reading, where his occupation made demands on him. I planned to stay only a matter of days at the manor house, but I would be sleeping in my old room, despite the minor repairs that had been begun on it as a ruse to force me to stay in my sister’s old room and thereby make me vulnerable to my stepfather’s dangerous pet. Mrs Littledale consented to sleep in Julia’s room during my stay so that I would not be in the house alone. Though the place repulsed me, rationally I knew the threat had passed. The police had even, at my request, warned off from the property those gypsies whom my stepfather had strangely, given his violent temperament and reclusive nature, permitted and even encouraged to set up their tents on our grounds.

“There was one unresolved and perplexing matter, however, that still caused me a good deal of nervousness, so that I slept at night locked in my room and never ventured from the house after dark. You will remember that in addition to his snake, my stepfather was also in possession of a baboon and a cheetah, which rather than being penned or chained up he allowed to roam freely within the broken-down stone wall surrounding the property, doubtlessly to intimidate and ward off any curious village folk.”

Dr Watson spoke up, “Yes, you told us that a correspondent of Dr Roylott’s had sent these animals and the snake over from India. Holmes and I, much to our unpleasant surprise, crossed paths with the baboon the night we came to investigate your situation, and once we had hidden ourselves in your room we heard the cheetah sniffing around at the shuttered window.”

I said, “The constable I spoke with told me no one in the area had seen either the baboon or cheetah since that night, nor had Mrs Littledale. Only my stepfather had ever cared for them, though I myself had never actually seen him feed them, nor even seen the substantial amounts of food they should require, particularly the cheetah. My fear was that now, starving, they might harm someone, even venture towards the nearby village in the search for food. That no one had seen them suggested three possibilities to me. For one, they may have indeed left the area to seek sustenance. Or else, the gypsies, when they had been shooed off, had taken the beasts with them, for as my stepfather’s only friends they may have been more familiar with the animals than I had known. This would explain why the creatures had never attacked the gypsies. The only remaining possibility was that, weakened with hunger, the big monkey and great cat had taken shelter in the dilapidated wing of the house, having entered it through a broken window or even the caved-in roof, and now lay helpless within.

“That first night back I slept poorly, as one might imagine, having suffered wretched dreams about my stepfather’s pets trying to claw their way into the house. In the morning, as I was taking my breakfast, a letter came that was addressed to Dr Roylott. I accepted it, and recognised at once that it was from my stepfather’s longtime correspondent from India, Mr Edward Thurn. It did not surprise me that Mr Thurn should not yet know of Dr Roylott’s passing, but I was surprised to see that the letter bore a return address from Upper Swandam Lane, indicating that my stepfather’s old friend was now staying in London. You see, the two had become acquainted during that period in which my stepfather lived in Calcutta, where he had first met my widowed mother and where Julia and I lived until only eight years ago. It was my understanding that Dr Roylott and Mr Thurn had become friends when the latter was a patient of my stepfather, shortly before the time Dr Roylott was convicted of murdering his Indian butler in a fit of rage over some thievery, thus incurring his lengthy prison sentence. It was Mr Thurn who had shipped to Dr Roylott the baboon, cheetah, and the snake you identified as a swamp adder, Mr Holmes.

“I felt it would be a violation against Mr Thurn to read his correspondence, though my stepfather was beyond such consideration and undeserving of it, so I refrained from opening the letter, though I bade its deliverer to remain until I could pen a quick reply. In my message I informed Mr Thurn, without going into all the complex and unsavoury particulars, of his friend’s passing. I thought it was the decent thing to do, given that I could hardly imagine he was aware of the use his friend had planned for that venomous serpent. As I was unwilling to preserve any of my stepfather’s belongings and wanted to be rid of them, I invited Mr Thurn to come have a look at them and freely take away whatever might strike his fancy. I knew little of Mr Thurn, never having met him in person myself, but my stepfather had said he was a world traveller with an inquisitive mind and hence an avid reader, so I alluded to Dr Roylott’s library, which, though it consists of many medical texts, also contains numerous books on very esoteric and outré subjects. I sent my letter, but later in the day regretted somewhat my haste in offering Mr Thurn a look at my stepfather’s things before I could consult with my fiancé about their potential value. Chiefly, though, my regret was due to the fact that I did not intend to remain at Stoke Moran for many days and might not still be there should Mr Thurn come visiting from London.

“That night, shortly after Mrs Littledale had retired to my sister’s former room and I to mine, a most strange and horrible sound came to us from outside the house. In her terror, which was no doubt exacerbated by the housekeeper having to sleep in the room into which Dr Roylott had introduced his snake to murder poor Julia, Mrs Littledale came pounding on my door looking quite frantic. I felt certain the weird howling cries came from either the baboon or cheetah, though I could not tell which, and I even wondered if the starving cat was attacking the monkey in its desperation. We stood paralysed, listening at the shuttered window of my room until, despite my horror, my curiosity could bear it no longer. I removed the heavy bar that secured the shutters, and cracked them open enough to peek outside.

“It was a clear night with the moon almost full, and the grounds beyond lay silvered with its glow. On the lawn not far beyond my window a strange figure lay writhing and contorting, while arching back its neck and emitting the uncanny cries we had heard. Indistinct as it was, it could only be the baboon. The primate had always been of a darkish brown colour, and I considered that it might only be the moonlight that made the animal’s body appear so pale that it almost gave the impression of being faintly luminous. It was also of a ghastly, cadaverous aspect, and I had no doubt the pitiful beast was in the final stage of starvation.

“We watched until the creature gave a last violent convulsion, and its terrible howl tapered away to silence. It lay still, and almost in tears Mrs Littledale begged me to close and bar the window again. We could do no more than leave the creature where it had died until we should summon someone to bear away its body on the morrow.

“Mrs Littledale could not bring herself to return to her room alone, and in my guilt at having insisted she keep me company at Stoke Moran I permitted her to doze in the chair in my room. However, neither of us actually got much sleep for the remainder of that night.

“In the morning I was awakened by a shriek from outside, but this time the cry was human. I went racing from the house in my nightgown to find Mrs Littledale had already dressed and ventured outside to inspect the baboon’s corpse. As I came beside her I could readily understand her cry of shock and revulsion.

“The large monkey had decayed to an astonishing degree in a matter of hours, so that all that remained was a husk-like figure fashioned from what looked like the pale grey paper of a wasp’s nest. Even as we watched, a mere breeze caused one of its upper limbs to break off and tumble away across the grass like a chunk of ash, breaking up as it went. As we continued to gaze upon it in disbelief the animal’s dog-like head caved in, crumbled and disintegrated, until not even its long fangs remained. All was swept up and away in a cloud of fine powder in only the few minutes that we stood watching mesmerised and aghast.

“I was, of course, reminded of what the constable had told me about the remains of the snake that had been revealed inside the safe. What ailment, affliction or poison, I wondered, might cause two such different animals to decompose in so unnatural a way?

“All we could do now was go about our day as we had planned, my most fervent desire being to see myself rid of Stoke Moran soon.

“Later that day my Percy once more travelled to Surrey to discuss with me the progress made on divesting ourselves of Stoke Moran, and we also discussed our plans to move our wedding from May to June because of the strenuous occurrences of late. We thought to enjoy a quiet afternoon together at the estate now that my vile-tempered stepfather no longer dwelt there, but his shadow still lay heavily upon us, all the more so when I related to my fiancé the strange spectacle the housekeeper and I had witnessed the night before and our discovery that very morning. Mr Armitage was at a loss as to any explanation, his only half-heartened suggestion being that someone, perhaps one of the expelled gypsies, had placed a papier-mâché effigy upon the spot where the monkey had perished in the night. I do not think he held any more faith in this theory than I did. In any case, I also told him of my note to Mr Edward Thurn, and my fiancé expressed no regret regarding the offer I had extended, though he was concerned as to whether Mr Thurn truly had been ignorant of Dr Roylott’s intentions in wanting that poisonous snake sent to him from India. I assured him I could not conceive of my stepfather confiding in an accomplice when there was no need to do so, and that surely Mr Thurn only believed he was supplementing my eccentric stepfather’s existing menagerie.

“Mr Armitage departed in the early evening, leaving me and Mrs Littledale alone at Stoke Moran once more. The night, however, proved uneventful and Mrs Littledale slept in her own room, though I dreamed that the cheetah, bony and ghastly pale, circled the house all night looking for a way in.

“The following day I was sitting on my sister’s bed leafing through some of her books and feeling very dispirited by my recollection of the terror and confusion that had preceded her death when Mrs Littledale sought me out to say we had a visitor. When she gave me his name I told her to have him brought to me in one of the seldom-used sitting rooms in the central portion of the mansion. It was none other than Mr Edward Thurn, who greeted me very cordially and took a seat opposite me while Mrs Littledale went to prepare tea. I had previously formed no mental image of the man, but his appearance, except for his shortness of stature, did not surprise me. He was thin but appeared healthy, his age difficult to ascertain – I would say anywhere from late forties to perhaps sixty – his black hair less grey than my own. His face was very brown, leathery, and deeply creased by much exposure to the sun, with exceedingly keen dark eyes couched in fleshy folds. I should think at a distance he might be taken for a man of the Orient. He wore good clothes that had seen better days.

“He said to me, ‘I believe I had a presentiment that things were not well with your stepfather, and that was part of my reason for returning to England. I only just arrived several days ago and immediately wrote that letter you received, to let him know. I am terribly sorry to learn of the death of my good friend, Dr Roylott, and I am sorry for your loss as well, Miss Stoner. I know he had acted as a devoted father to you and your twin since you were very small children.’

“Unable to stopper the bitterness that rose to my lips, I replied, ‘He never told you of her passing? Small wonder. My twin, Julia, expired two years ago, Mr Thurn. She was murdered by your friend, my devoted stepfather.’

“‘What is this you say?’ my visitor cried. His expression of surprise and dismay appeared utterly genuine to me.

“‘It is a long, strange story,’ I forewarned him, and I proceeded to tell it in all its details, naturally including your own involvement, gentlemen. Mr Thurn sat riveted and was plainly disturbed by what I had to report of his long-time friend’s murder of my sister, his plot to murder me as well and his own accidental death by the very serpent my guest had shipped from India.

“Mr Thurn turned his face away and said in an odd, quiet tone, ‘But I never actually shipped him that snake. Nor the baboon or cheetah.’

“‘You did not?’ said I. ‘But if not you, then who?’

“He said, ‘I am responsible for providing those creatures to him, but not in the way you imagine. It would be very difficult to make you understand, but in all fairness it is my duty to try, after the ordeals you have suffered. Yet first I must explain to some degree about myself.’ He turned his eyes back on me, and if they had been of a piercing quality before I nearly squirmed under their gaze now. I trembled at their unnerving intensity and yet, as though hypnotised, I could not look away. There was a quality to them that suggested the man possessed an immense reservoir of internal power. I will stress, however, that this did not strike me necessarily as an evil force, but as a power such as electricity held in reserve.

“Mr Thurn began, ‘You may wonder, as I wonder now myself, how Dr Roylott and I could be such close friends, and yet even after all our years of association with him, you and I were blind to the full picture of his nature. We were similar in that we both possessed questing minds and restless spirits that led us to seek fulfilment beyond the conventional precincts of man. That is, of European man. I travelled widely in my restlessness, beginning in my youth, without even quite knowing at first if my quest was a spiritual one. I encountered your stepfather in India, yes, but it was not due to my being a patient of his, as he led you to believe. It was in prison that we met, after he had been convicted of killing his servant. My own crime was of a political nature, but I have more than once run afoul of local law in my travels, since I have often journeyed to places that were prohibited and seen things I was, as an outsider, not meant to see.

“‘I was released from prison much before Dr Roylott, and I resumed my travels, going on to the holy temple of Badrinath, taking my cue from the Portuguese Jesuits Andrade and Marques and masquerading as a Hindu on pilgrimage. After some time in that region I travelled on to Tibet, entering it through the Mana Pass in the Himalayas.’”

Here Mr Holmes cut in, “Are you sure this fellow was not deceiving you, Miss Stoner? Tibet has forbidden foreigners from crossing its borders for the past three decades. Violating that ban by entering through such a conspicuous point of ingress as the Mana Pass leaves me suspicious.”

I replied, “I can only relate what I was told, Mr Holmes, and he did say that he had been turned back in an earlier attempt. But Mr Thurn informed me, without any apparent boastfulness, that he was masterful at disguise.”

“He rather reminds me of you in that regard,” Dr Watson said to his friend.

“He also claimed rather provocatively that he had developed the means of going unseen, though he did not elaborate on what he meant by that.”

Mr Holmes said, “The thought of his actually succeeding in penetrating Tibet is intriguing. I have long desired to travel there myself, and one day may attempt it. But again I apologise. Please resume your account.”

I did so. “Mr Thurn went on with his personal history, saying, ‘Though anyone who aids a foreigner who has infiltrated Tibet runs the risk of punishment, including death, I nevertheless met people who, having lived all their lives in so isolated a region, were as fascinated by me as I was by them. I spent two years in Tibet, during which I devoted most of my time to the study of Buddhism. I was fortunate in impressing with my earnestness a gomchen, a Tibetan hermit said to be capable of working wonders, who at great risk accepted me as his secret student. It was he who taught me how to conjure seemingly living entities with my mind.’

“‘I do not understand,’ I told him.

“He said, ‘I warned you that it would be difficult for you to accept. Nevertheless, what I am telling you is the truth. It is possible for one to materialise a form the Tibetans call a tulpa, which is a manifestation of thought with the appearance of a living being, brought about through intensely focused concentration. It is an illusion, but not a delusion; a hallucination so convincing that not only does the conjurer himself witness it but, ideally, it would be visible to others as well, this phantom construction as perceptible as an authentic material entity. A tulpa might even, ultimately, take on a personality of its own and defy its master’s direction, living so to speak as an independent being.’

“‘Are you suggesting,’ I said, ‘that the snake…’

“‘Not only the snake,’ he answered. ‘I manifested the baboon and the cheetah, too, purely through the power of thought. They were not sent physically from India. It was my mind that sent them here at Dr Roylott’s behest. During our correspondence after I had left Tibet I told your stepfather of my experiences there and my own success in conjuring tulpas, and he was thoroughly intrigued. We devised an experiment: would I be able to manifest a tulpa remotely, by transmitting the power of my thoughts to his location in England, with the doctor acting as a sort of receiver to supplement my efforts? Would it be possible to create a tulpa through such a joint effort? Oh, of course the conjurations were mostly mine, but your stepfather’s belief in my efforts, and his concentration on the subjects we chose as our models, helped enable them to manifest, and after they had done so it was mostly through Dr Roylott’s own will that these forms were sustained. With these things, belief is all, a belief more complex than the blind faith of religion, because one is always aware that the object of belief is an illusion.

“‘First I created the baboon, based on mental images of creatures I had seen in South Africa. Shortly after, I manifested the cat, patterned after the Asiatic cheetah. It was not until later that Roylott specifically requested a dangerous serpent. I did question why he should want this particular creature, and his response was that it would render our ongoing experiment all the more fascinating. Would a mouse, for instance, seemingly struck by the fangs of this snake believe so in the creature’s veracity and its non-existent poison that it would perish as a result? Have you heard of the aborigines of Australia and their bone pointing? How one of them so cursed will die purely from their belief in the magic?’

“‘This is preposterous,’ I protested. ‘This snake drank milk, proving that it required sustenance as a physical creature. It could not have been an illusion. I am not calling you a liar, sir, and I believe at least that you yourself believe in such things, but my stepfather must have acquired actual animals from another source if not from you.’

“‘Miss Stoner,’ he said, with his black eyes burning into me, ‘snakes do not care to drink milk. If your stepfather put a saucer of milk in front of it, it was only a prop to help him continue to think of the snake as an actual creature, and a loyal pet. Summoning a snake by whistling? As a snake does not hear as we do, I am doubtful one might be trained in such a manner. Again, something Roylott did only to convince himself that his snake was real and obedient to him. I hardly believe that an actual snake could climb a bell pull, so as to lower itself to your sister’s bed and back again, but this snake did so because your stepfather imagined that it could. In as much as he was able, he was controlling those beasts. Why, I ask you, do you think the baboon and cheetah, which could easily have passed over the wall of your property here, did not do so? And, incidentally, there is no such animal as a swamp adder. Oh, infrequently the African swamp viper may be called that, but its venom is not nearly as toxic as that I imagined for the cobra-like snake I invented for Dr Roylott. Creating an animal that did not truly exist, based on the attributes of a number of snakes, was another aspect of the proposed experiment. I gave it the fanciful name of swamp adder, and it is interesting to learn that the appellation suggested itself spontaneously to the sensitive mind of your friend Mr Holmes.’

“I said, ‘But if my stepfather knew all along that the snake was not real, why then did he himself succumb to its bite when it was frightened by Mr Holmes back into Dr Roylott’s chamber?’

“Mr Thurn said gravely, ‘In order for the snake to successfully kill you, Miss Stoner, at that moment your stepfather believed in its existence with all of his might. Without my level of training, he could not balance his belief with his awareness of the illusion. His instinctual fear of a snake attacking him leant the manifestation potency. No poison entered him. It was his own mind that killed him.’

“‘Yet how,’ I asked, ‘would this have worked on my sister, who never knew it was a snake that attacked her? She could not die of imagined poisoning if she did not take in the illusion of a snake at more than a glance. She referred to it only as a speckled band.’

“He said, ‘Grimesby Roylott was a man of great willpower; it is why our experiment was so successful. His will that your sister should die transmitted itself to her mind, almost in the way of a powerful hypnotic suggestion. It was not the snake that killed her, not even an illusory snake, so much as the sheer malevolent force of his own mind. He had no fear of puncture wounds being found on her flesh, because there would be none. You told me your first impression regarding your sister’s demise was that she had died of fear. This was essentially true.

“‘Those three animals were extensions of your stepfather’s will; that is why they were sustained and were so convincing. And from what I have now learned from you, seeing my complicated old friend in a new light, I suspect it was not only to frighten villagers away from his property that he let the baboon and cheetah roam free, but to frighten you and your sister from venturing outside. To keep you prisoners here. I cannot help but wonder if it was not only the money he would lose once you two should marry that caused him to react in so brutal a manner, but fear that you two, upon going into the world, would inform others of his behaviours.’

“My visitor’s speculation caused me great discomfort, and you will forgive me if I do not elaborate,” I said, with my eyes averted from Mr Holmes and Dr Watson. I could utter no more on the subject of this personal distress. On the occasion that we had first met I had exposed the marks of Dr Roylott’s fingers on the flesh of my wrist, and the great fear of my stepfather I had evinced had likely suggested to Mr Holmes and Dr Watson abuses that, as gentlemen, they had not pressed me to discuss.

I continued with my narrative, “Mr Thurn went on to say, ‘Roylott could have had a great mind. He had immense resources of willpower and intensity, but he lacked self-discipline, and now I see how thoroughly he lacked the moral compass as well. Knowing that he had killed a man in uncontrolled fury should have been enough of an indication that he was not a man with whom to share the knowledge I held, but I am too trusting a soul and believe too much in a person seeking betterment. Yet I knew his appetites tended toward the wanton. You told me of the days and even weeks he would spend in the tents of the gypsies he permitted to encamp on this property. I am embarrassed to confess that before I manifested the animals, his first request was for me to conjure a woman for him, which I refused to do.’

“Here, my guest paused and looked away from me as though lost in deep reflection. At last, he directed his eyes back to me.

“He said, ‘My blindness, Miss Stoner, and my assistance in your stepfather’s plans, however unknowing on my part, shame me beyond words. Would that I had never met him, or, having done so, had never struck up a friendship with him no matter how fascinating a person he was to me, how ardent a believer in the marvels I revealed to him. I cannot undo what I have done, but the least I can do is make certain that the last of the three tulpas is destroyed. With your stepfather dead the creatures have lost the force of his will and have, in a way, been starving to death, so the tulpa of the cat may have already expired as well, but I must be sure of it. You say you feel the cheetah has taken shelter in a closed-off wing of this house? Please, will you take me there now?’

“And so I did, first fetching the key to the door that closed off the disused wing. I also brought with me a lantern, and as I unlocked the door I whispered to Mr Thurn, ‘A portion of the roof has collapsed, and I suspect the cheetah has either crawled in through there or through a broken window, although most of them are boarded up.’

“He said nothing, but merely stood silently and grimly beside me at the threshold as I drew the door open. I felt a terror that the great cat might at that very instant be waiting in the shadows beyond to pounce upon us, but the lamplight only showed us a long hallway stretching off into darkness. Again I whispered, ‘The damage to the roof is over the central room. With the door shut and locked it is fortunate that room does not communicate with the rest of the wing.’

“Before I could utter more, my visitor said, ‘It is in there. I can sense it. You may close the door now, Miss Stoner, and pray lock it and leave it locked no matter what sounds you may hear from within.’

“As I locked the door, and I will say I was greatly relieved to do so, I asked, ‘What do you intend to do now?’

“Said he, ‘I will be taking the earliest train back to London.’

“‘London?’ I exclaimed. ‘But you said you meant to deal with this situation somehow, Mr Thurn.’

“He said, ‘And so is it my intention, but I must be alone and undisturbed. I created these tulpas at a great remove, and at a remove I will destroy the last of them, but it will require the greatest concentration. It is perhaps even more difficult to unmake a tulpa than to make one. You see how they persisted even if only in a declining state after the death of your stepfather, though deprived of his belief in them? Even before his death they had taken on life of their own. I must have that life back. It will be no small effort.’ Here he affected a smile, but it was a horrid mockery of such an expression. He said, ‘To think that I studied and strived all these years, only to create weapons for a murderer.’

“‘Is there nothing I can do?’ I asked him.

“‘If it is possible,’ he replied, ‘you must focus on the knowledge that this creature is not a flesh and blood entity. It is an illusion, and you would do best to hold onto that thought with all your power, for surely the creature has been feeding off your own belief all this time, as well.’

“Mr Thurn bid me good afternoon then, and the last I saw of him he was walking off in the direction of the Crown Inn, so as to get a dog-cart to take him to Leatherhead, where he would take a train to London.

“You will not be surprised when I say I did not sleep that night as I lay wondering if I had entertained a madman in my home that day. And yet, almost against my will, I could not entirely dismiss what he had told me as absolute fancy. I suppose madmen are earnest in their madness, but this gentleman seemed entirely lucid to me. Looking into his too-keen eyes was much like looking into your own, Mr Holmes.

“In any case, at about half past two in the morning my restlessness caused me at last to rise from my bed, take up my lantern and venture from my chamber, stepping quietly so as not to disturb Mrs Littledale next door. I was drawn to the locked door leading to the abandoned wing of the house. I do not know quite why, but it was as though I had sleepwalked there; that is to say, it did not seem a conscious decision. I feel now that I was acting on an intuition.

“I leaned my head close to the panel but heard nothing beyond, even when I laid my ear against the wood. One might think I would then have gone back to my bedroom, and yet my compulsion had not been satisfied. I had brought the key with me as before, and again I unlocked the door and opened it while shining my lantern into the dreadful blackness beyond.

“Oh that I had not done so, Mr Holmes, because I will never forget the sight that lay before me. I dare say I would not have needed my lantern to see into that long, dark passage, because the two figures situated in its centre seemed to radiate a soft, pale glow much as though bathed in moonlight. There on the floor of the hallway lay the cheetah, though I would not have recognised it as such had I not known what it was. Otherwise, I might easily have taken it for the skeleton of a large dog, impossibly imbued with life. It lay on its side, so wasted that it was a wonder it was able to raise its head. But its head was indeed raised, as it glared with a palpable malice at the man who stood over it only a few paces away.

“That man was Mr Edward Thurn. I am embarrassed to tell you that he was without clothing, his skin appearing almost radiantly white as I have described. He was returning the animal’s gaze, but he had obviously heard me open the door and from the corner of his eye seen the glare of my lantern, for without taking his eyes off the creature he raised his left arm and pointed his finger at me. I understood what he signified by this gesture. He was commanding me to withdraw and close the door. This I did, and when I had turned the key in the lock I backed away from the door with the whole of my body shaking, for I had never in my life witnessed so ghastly a scene but for having watched my dear twin die before my very eyes. I returned to my room then and sat upon my bed, still shaking, until dawn. Only then could I summon the courage to return to the locked door and crack it open sufficiently to peer beyond. This time there was nothing to see but shadows. I experienced another intuition, and that was a certainty that the cheetah was gone forever.”

At this point in my narrative Mr Holmes asked, “Might this nocturnal excursion have only been a dream, Miss Stoner? For I am sorry to report that your visitor Edward Thurn is no longer among the living.”

“What’s this, Holmes?” Dr Watson said, quite surprised.

“Really, Watson,” Mr Holmes said to him, “you must pay closer attention to the morning paper.” Here he gestured to a folded copy of that morning’s Daily Telegraph that rested nearby. “I knew the name as soon as you uttered it, Miss Stoner, but I wanted to hear your story in full before I admitted as much. Yet I suspect you are already aware of the man’s fate, for you have just now come from the place where he had taken a room in Upper Swandam Lane, have you not?”

“You guess correctly, Mr Holmes,” said I.

“I do not guess, Miss Stoner. I deduce. Your breathlessness when you entered this room and your agitated comportment indicated a very recent shock.”

“I did not realise his death had already been reported in the paper. This morning when I inquired about Mr Thurn at the address given on the letter he had sent to my stepfather I was told there had been a terrifying cry from his room at about three in the morning, and when the door was finally forced Mr Thurn was found lying dead on the bed, his eyes staring fixedly into nothingness. It was the opinion of those who saw him that his heart had given out.”

“The cause given in the paper was apoplexy,” Mr Holmes stated. “But surely you see the dilemma here, Miss Stoner. The body of the obscure explorer and world traveller Edward Thurn was discovered at three in the morning, but you claim to have seen him standing in your very home at approximately half past two. It is impossible for him to have arrived back in London in so short a time.”

“Precisely, Mr Holmes. It would be an impossibility under natural circumstances.”

“Then I will propose supernatural circumstances, in keeping with your account. That it was not actually Mr Thurn you saw, but some projected essence of himself that he sent to deal with that other phantom being.”

“Make of it what you will, Mr Holmes. It is all beyond me.”

He clicked his pipe stem against his teeth, then pondered aloud, “Of course there is no such thing as a swamp adder. What was I thinking?”

“With all respect to Miss Stoner, whose own trustworthiness I do not doubt,” Dr Watson said to his friend, “if one were to entertain for even a moment such outrageous notions, surely a man as hateful as Grimesby Roylott would not be capable of the mental feats this Thurn fellow claimed were required for their collaboration.”

Lowering his pipe, Mr Holmes replied, “But Roylott was, in some ways, well suited to such an exercise, being that he felt he answered to no man or God, and that his mental acuity entitled him to power. There is no richer soil for the growth of evil than the supposition that one is superior to one’s fellow human beings. Mind, there are those who, being cognisant of their greater-than-average intelligence, will utilise it for the betterment of others as if it were a resource they had received in unfair quantity. But too many hoard their intelligence, and allow it to deform their self-conception into something superhuman, when in fact ‘inhuman’ would be the better designation. Unfortunately, Roylott was not a singular specimen; this world teems with his ilk.”

“True enough,” said Dr Watson. “But all that aside, you are the most rational of men, and surely you cannot believe in ghosts and hobgoblins.”

“There are more things in heaven and earth, Watson, than are dreamt of in my philosophy. There is only one matter I am certain of.”

“And what is that, Holmes?”

“One day, truly, I must travel to Tibet.”

I rose from my chair so as to excuse myself, saying, “I am meeting my fiancé soon, Mr Holmes, so I will take my leave. Perhaps, as you muse upon the events I have recounted, you will come to some other explanation that escapes me, and if so I hope you will share it with me. Until that time, I extend to you the same invitation I did to poor Mr Thurn, who I fear may not only have died from the strain of battling his final monster, but may even have hoped to do so, to atone for the sins he felt he had committed.”

“You are offering me your stepfather’s books, then?” enquired Holmes. “It is kind of you, and, as you mentioned there were some of an esoteric nature, I wonder if they might shed further light on these mysterious events, but I suggest that despite your reluctance to retain any of your stepfather’s belongings you keep them and read them yourself, Miss Stoner. You have a sharp and inquisitive mind, and perhaps it is you who will one day better explain to me what transpired at Stoke Moran. And, might I say, I hope your next home proves less haunted.”

I reached my hand to the sitting room door. “I repeat that my only hope is to soon put Stoke Moran behind me once and for all. A good day to you, gentlemen.”