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"Where is my proof, Watson? As that intelligent young inspector trenchantly remarked, it is all supposition."
"And if it were not?"
Holmes sighed and picked up his violin and bow. "He is a supreme artist whom the world could ill afford to lose. Do not quote my words, Watson, to any of your church-going friends, but I am forced to the belief that art is above morality. If Sarasate, before my eyes and in this very room, strangled you to death, Watson, for your musical insensitivity, while an accomplice of his obstructed my interference with a loaded pistol, and then wrote a detailed statement of the crime, signed with the name of Pablo Martin Melitón de Sarasate y Navascuéz, I should be constrained to close my eyes to the act, destroy the statement, deposit your body in the gutter of Baker Street and remain silent while the police pursued their investigations. So much is the great artist above the moral principles that oppress lesser men. And now, Watson, pour yourself more of that noble brandy and listen to my own rendering of that piece by Sarasate. I warrant you will find it less than masterly but surely the excellence of the intention will gleam through." And so he stood, arranged his music stand, tucked his fiddle beneath his chin and began reverently to saw.
The Adventure of the Inertial Adjustor by Stephen Baxter
Stephen Baxter is a six-time nominee for the Hugo Award, and a wi
H. G. Wells is a towering figure in the history of science fiction. His work was pivotal in defining many of the themes-time travel, space exploration, alien invasion, invisibility, genetic engineering-that would be mined by later writers. He was also a famous political activist, and his work demonstrates the power of science fiction to grapple with contemporary issues (War of the Worlds was an attack on European colonialism, The Time Machine a broadside against the British class system). Wells is also important to science fiction fans because he published the first rulebook for tabletop wargaming, which was instrumental in the development of pen & pencil role-playing games (such as Dungeons & Dragons) and the immensely popular computer versions that followed. Wells, who spent his later years frustrated at his inability to change the world, would no doubt be astounded to see what a vast influence his thought and writings have had, though he'd probably also be astounded to see, four hundred years after Galileo, how many people still believe that more weight causes an object to fall faster. Wells appears as a principal character in our next Sherlock Holmes case, an adventure like something right out of a scientific romance.
Our visitor was perhaps twenty-eight: a short, broad-shouldered young man, a little prone to fat, the voice high and thin, and he moved with a bright, bird-like bounce. His face, under thi
This visitor had presented Holmes with a set of rather grainy photographs, taken with one of the New York Kodaks which are so popular. Holmes was inspecting these with his lens. The visitor, with some malicious glee, was challenging Holmes to deduce, from the evidence of each photograph, the elements of some unusual situation, after the ma
Holmes passed me the next print. "See here, Watson. What can you make of that?"
This appeared more promising-and, I observed, the visitor was somewhat more serious about it. At first glance it seemed to me an undistinguished portrait of a commonplace luncheon party-although it was set in unusual surroundings, the table and guests being all but engulfed by bulky electrical equipment, wires and cylinders and coils and cones, and in the background I could make out the fittings of a workshop: a steam lathe, metal turners, acetylene welding equipment, a sheet-metal stamp and the like. I ventured, "I observe that our visitor this evening was a guest at the lunch. I do not know these others-"
"They are the Brimicombes, of Wiltshire," said the visitor. "My hosts that day: two brothers, Ralph and Tarquin. Ralph is an old college friend of mine. The brothers work together-or did so-on mechanical and electrical inventions."
"It was a su
"Yes," said Holmes with tolerant patience, "but what of the sausage itself?"
I looked again. The sausage sat on its own plate, the centrepiece of the meal. "It is a succulent specimen. Is it German?"
Holmes sighed. "Watson, that is no sausage, German or otherwise. It is evidently a prank, of dubious taste, served on their guests by these Brimicombes."
The visitor laughed. "You have it, Mr Holmes. You should have seen our faces when that giant concoction crawled off its plate and across the tablecloth!"
"A man of your profession should recognise the beast, Watson. It is an aquatic a
"Great Heaven," I cried, "it is a giant leech!"
"You ca
"But how can this be, Holmes? Is it some freak of nature?"
"Of nature-or Man's science," Holmes mused. "Consider the influences acting on that wretched leech. It is drawn towards flatness by the force of the gravity of the Earth; that much we know. And its collapse to a pancake is resisted only by its internal strength. But it is hard to believe a creature as gross as this specimen would even be able to sustain its own form. Why, then, has it evolved such a magnitude? What gives it the strength to hold itself up, to move?" He eyed his visitor sharply. "Or perhaps we should ask, what is reducing the force which drags it down?"
The visitor clapped his hands in delight. "You have it, sir!"
Holmes handed back the photograph. "Indeed. And perhaps you might care to set out the particulars of the case."
Confused, I asked, "Are you so sure you have a case at all, Holmes?"
"Oh, yes," he said gravely. "For did our visitor not speak of the work of these Brimicombe brothers in the past tense? Evidently something has disturbed the equilibrium of their fraternal lives; and you would not be here, sir, if that were not something serious."