Pooley scanned the pages in search of inspiration. Almost at once he spied out a little series of lines printed on the lower left-hand corner of the sixth page. “Aha,” said Jim, “a code, possibly masonic.” He recalled a discussion he had recently had with Professor Slocombe about what the ancient termed The Science of Numerology. The scholar was convinced that the answer to most if not all of existence could be divined by the study of numerical equivalents. It was all down to breaking the code. The Professor had, of course, said a great deal more at the time, but that was the general gist which Jim managed to take in. No knowledge was ever wasted upon the lad, for as his father, like Omally’s, had told him somewhat obscurely when he was a lad, “a dead bird never falls out of the nest.”
So here was a little offering, possibly a secret code, printed for the benefit of that dark order, The Bookie Brotherhood, who, as any good punter knows, are always tipped the wink in advance. Pooley turned quickly to the front page and his heart jumped for joy. It was true. He had Bob the bookie’s Sporting Life. Oh, happy day.
“I’ve cracked it,” said Jim Pooley to the assortment of Brentford wildlife which watched him from the surrounding trees. The squirrels shook their heads and nudged one another. The pigeons turned their beaked faces aside and tittered into their wings. They had seen all this many times before. “Eighteen lines,” Jim began, “three groups of six, thick ones and thin ones, now how exactly does this work? Six six six, what might it mean?”
Pooley ran his Biro down the list of runners for the first race, six horses. The first thick line in the first group was number four. It was an outsider, the odds were enormous. Still it was worth a try. If he got it wrong today he could always steal Bob’s paper again on the morrow. Jim scribbled the horse’s name on to a betting-slip and applied himself to the next race. For the fourth, fifth, and sixth races, he returned to the three groups of lines and selected the second thick bar in each sequence. Satisfied that, even if he was incorrect, he had at least performed this daily task with speed and alacrity, Jim took out his exercise book and made an attempt to calculate his potential winnings. The eventual figure was so large that the last row of noughts flowed off the edge of the page. Pooley folded his betting-slip into his breastpocket and tucked away his exercise book. “That will do nicely thank you,” he said, leaning back upon the bench to enjoy the air.
Professor Slocombe sat taking a late breakfast with his Victorian guest. Mr Sherlock Holmes ate sparingly as he studied the day’s newspaper. “I see,” he said at length, as he pushed the tabloid aside, “that very little has changed since my day.”
“Come now, Holmes,” said the Professor. “More strides forward have been taken this century than during the previous five.”
“I think not.”
“And what of technological advancement, telecommunications, space travel? We possess sciences now that in your day were undreamed of.”
“And what of poverty, squalor, and cruelty? What of injustice, intolerance, and greed? Has your age of wonder succeeded in abolishing those?”
Professor Slocombe shook his head. “Sadly, no,” said he.
“Then little has changed. If anything, these horrors have been intensified. Details which I read here would never have been made public knowledge in my time. But if what I see is typical, and such I have no reason to disbelieve, then I am appalled to find that with the resources you now possess, little has been done.”
Professor Slocombe was for once lost for words, and chewed ruefully upon a piece of toast.
“And so I am prompted to ask,” Holmes continued, “your reason for stranding me in this most dismal age.”
The toast caught in the old man’s throat and he collapsed red-faced into a violent fit of coughing.
“Come now,” said Holmes, patting him gently upon the back, “surely you did not think to deceive me with your display of apparent surprise at my arrival? My favourite cigarettes are in your case and my tobacco in the humidor. You serve me with a Ninety-two Vamberry, by now surely a priceless vintage. I could enumerate another twenty-three such facts regarding the ‘singular case of the reanimated detective’, but I do not believe it to be necessary. Why have you called me here, Professor?”
The scholar took a sip of coffee and dabbed at his lips with a napkin. He rose carefully from his chair and took himself over to the French windows, where he stood, his back to the detective, staring out into his wonderful garden. “It is a bad business,” he said, without turning.
“I have no doubt of that.”
“I am not altogether certain at present as to what steps can be taken. There is very much I have to know. I cannot face it alone.”
Holmes took out his greasy, black clay pipe from the inner pocket of his dressing-gown and filled it from the Professor’s humidor. “So,” said he, “once more we are to work together.”
“Let me show you something and then you can decide.” Professor Slocombe lead his gaunt visitor through the study door, along the elegant hall, and up the main staircase. Holmes followed the ancient up several more flights of stairs, noting well the narrow shoulders and fragile hands of the man. The Professor had not aged by a single day since last they met so very long ago.
The two were now nearly amongst the gables of the great house, and the final staircase debouched into an extraordinary room, perfectly round, and some ten or twelve feet in diameter. It was bare of furniture save for a large, circular table with a white marble top which stood at its centre and an assortment of cranks and pulleys which hung above it. The walls were painted the darkest of blacks and there was not a window to be seen. Holmes nodded approvingly, and the Professor said, “Of course, a camera obscura. This simple device enables me to keep a close eye upon most of the parish without the trouble of leaving my house. Would you be so kind as to close the door?”
Holmes did so, and the room plunged into darkness. There was a sharp click, followed by the sound of moving pulleys, and clattering chains. A blurred image appeared upon the table-top, cast down through the system of prisms linked to the uppermost lens mounted upon the Professor’s roof. Slowly the image was brought into focus: it was a bird’s-eye view of the Memorial Library. Before this, draped across the bench, lay Jim Pooley, evidently fast asleep. The Professor cranked away and the rooftop lens turned, the image upon the table swam up towards the High Street. It passed over Norman’s corner-shop and the two observers were momentarily stunned by the sight of the shopkeeper alone in his backyard, apparently breaking up paving-stones with his bare hands.
“Most probably Dimac,” Professor Slocombe explained. “It has come to be something of the vogue in Brentford.”
“I favour Barritso, as you well know,” said Holmes.
“Now,” said Professor Slocombe, as he swung the lens up to its highest mounting and passed the image along the borders of the Brentford Triangle, “what do you see?”
Holmes cradled his chin in his right hand and watched the moving picture with great interest. “Some trick of the light, surely?”
“But what do you see?”
Holmes plucked at a neat sideburn. “I see a faint curtain of light enclosing the parish boundaries.”
“And what do you take it to be?”
Holmes shook his head. “Some natural phenomenon perhaps? Something akin to the aurora borealis?”
“I think not.” The Professor closed the rooftop aperture and the room fell once more into darkness. Holmes heard the sound of a key turning in a lock, and a thin line of wan light spread into the room from a previously concealed doorway. “This is a somewhat private chamber,” the Professor whispered as he led the detective through the opening and into a gabled gallery set in the very eaves of the roof. What light there was entered through chinks between the slates. The old man struck flame to an enamelled oil-lamp, and the golden light threw a long and cluttered garret into perspective. It was lined on either side with tall, dark filing cabinets. Bundles of bound documents, some evidently of great age, were stacked upon and about these, or spilled out from half-opened drawers.
“As you can observe, I have been following the course of this particular investigation for a good many years.”
Holmes ran his finger lightly over the waxen paper of a crumbling document exposing a seal imprinted with the date 1703. “And all this has been amassed to the furtherance of one single goal?”
The Professor nodded. “It is the product of many lifetimes’ work and yet now, with all this behind me, I am still lost for a solution to the matter now closely pressing upon us.”
“But what is it, Professor? What have you found and what do you yet seek? Tell me how I might aid you, you have but to ask.”
“What I have here is evidence. But it is evidence of a most unique nature, for it is evidence of a crime which is yet to be committed; the greatest crime of them all. I have my case together and I can predict fairly accurately as to what will occur and when, but I have yet to come up with a solution as to a way that I might prevent it happening.”
“But what is it?”
“Armageddon. The apocalypse,” said Professor Slocombe. “The coming of the millennium. Did you think that I would have gone to all this trouble for anything less?”
Sherlock Holmes shook his head slowly. “I suppose not,” said he.