“Please.” My voice, which had grown stronger through our brief exchange, now faltered again. “I’m listening.”
He shifted in his seat, leaned back, and then proceeded in a tone more suited for oratory than conversation. “My home,” he began, spreading his hands to indicate the space beyond the library. “This secluded estate in which you find yourself stands near the brink of the Reichenbach Falls, less than a quarter mile from the site of your death. It’s a wild place, but the location suits my work. The river powers my generators, just as the hills and valleys power my mind. When I am wrestling with a problem, I wander the valleys, climb the cliffs, and contemplate the wonder of the first creator. I find answers in His works, but four weeks ago, while walking a path above the falls, I found a note resting on a boulder, held there by a cigarette case.” He paused, inviting comment.
I gave it: “You found my letter to Watson?”
“Yes. That was the salutation: ‘My Dear Watson’.”
“But that letter contained instructions, not an admission of suicide.”
He smiled, showing rows of straight, white teeth, so perfectly aligned they might have been carved from marble. “No? Perhaps not in so many words, but it did speak of a final act and the pain it would cause friends and family. And it gave the location of documents, instructions for the disposition of your estate.”
I could have explained those points, but there was a more pressing concern. “The letter,” I said. “Did you take it?”
“No. I left it on the boulder, with your cigarette case. I left your walking stick as well. It was clear you had left it to mark the location, to make it easier for your ‘Dear Watson’ to find your final testament. And there was no need for me to take the document. I have perfect recall. One look and I owned the form and content of the note: the names, details, tone, penmanship. That night, after pulling you from the flood, I drafted a letter in a hand and voice identical to yours. I sent it to your brother. It was a perfect forgery, though the minuteness of your hand required me to employ the use of a pantograph device. I tend to write large. Indeed, I do everything large. The sins of the father visited upon the child.” He smiled again, more broadly than before; giving the impression that he had just revealed something about his origins. I might have asked for clarification, but the matter of his forgery was more pressing.
“So you wrote to my brother,” I said, trying to get ahead of the story. “Instructing him to send supplies.”
“And money,” he added. “Some of which I used to purchase those few things your brother did not provide.”
“So Mycroft knows I’m alive?”
“He does. But I have — that is to say, you have — sworn him to secrecy. The rest of the world believes you are dead.” He sat back, studying me as if from a great distance. “It was suicide, to be sure. But a martyr’s suicide. You trailed a criminal to the brink of the falls, threw him over the edge, then leaped after him.”
“I did not leap. I lost balance.”
“Yes, it often comes to that, a loss of balance. My father—” He turned away abruptly, cocking his head as if listening to a voice behind his chair. But there was no one there, only a wall of books and an empty doorway. He raised a hand, cupped it to his ear, listened a moment longer, and then turned again to face me. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I must go.” He stood, and once again I was struck by the impression of size. He was a man of average height with the poise of a dark god.
“Shall I wait here?” I asked.
“No.” He started toward the door, but then he paused, gripping the back of his chair as if clinging to a cliff. He looked back at me. “This conversation is over. Indeed, I fear I’ve already explained too much.”
“But I still have questions.”
“Yes. I’m sure you do. I would expect no less. But this meeting is over. A carriage will take you into town. From there, you can arrange passage—”
“You mentioned a test.”
“I did.” Again, he started toward the door.
“So I assume it has begun,” I said. “This meeting is part of it, as is my dismissal. You tell me I can leave, but it’s really a challenge … a challenge for me to stay. Am I correct?”
He paused within the doorway. “I give you my leave, Mr. Holmes. You may take it as you wish.” He bowed, deeper than before, then left me alone with the servant.
I pushed up from the chair. “One moment!” I advanced toward the ropes. “One last question!” The vertigo came again. I felt myself falling, and then….
“No, sir!” Giant hands grabbed my shoulder, turned me toward the door. “Not that way.” The servant led me from the chair, directing me back the way I had come.
The ground floor hall was lighted now, with electric sconces illuminating the line of paintings that I had hurried past on my way to meet my mysterious saviour. Most of the art depicted scenes similar to those in the upstairs hall, but one was different, the portrait of a man with delicate features, rendered in the romantic style of the Regency Era. It depicted a young scholar seated amid old-world ruins: a crumbling arch, fallen walls, distant mountains. A journal lay open on his lap. He held a finger to his head, thinking as he peered from the painted canvas: wide brown eyes, straight nose, pensive lips, pale skin. I knew those features, having seen them before in the faces of God in the upstairs paintings. But there was something else….
I stepped closer, reading the inscription:
“Posthumous Portrait”
by M Adam 1872
after J. Severn 1845
The servant watched from the library arch, peering at me from around the doorframe. The lights were still on behind its massive head, but, as the opening stood at a right angle to the hall, I could not see the room, only the light spilling from the arch.
“Do you need anything?” the servant asked.
I pointed to the painting of the young scholar. “Who is this?” I asked.
“The master’s father, sir.”
So that was it. M Adam’s paintings of God the creator had been modelled on the likeness of his own father. Yet I sensed there was more meaning here, a more poignant connection.
“What was the father’s name?” I asked
“It was Victor, sir.”
“Victor Adam?”
“No, sir,” the servant said. “Adam is what the master calls himself. It is not a family name. The father was Victor Frankenstein.”
Yes, that was it!
I looked at the face in the painting, recognizing the wan complexion of the audacious Genovese student whose autobiography had caused a sensation in the early part of the century.
I knew the story.
Victor Frankenstein had died on board an arctic vessel. He had been 27, widowed, childless, and obsessed with tracking down and destroying an artificial man of his own design.
I considered these things, wondering if it were possible that my host, the man who had restored my life, might be the artificial man described in the young scholar’s book. But that artificial man — or creature, for surely such a thing could not be considered a man — had supposedly died in the arctic along with his creator. And even if the creature had survived, the events recounted in the scholar’s book had taken place over a century ago. The creature, if it still lived, would hardly resemble the hearty, dark-skinned man I had just met in the library. And there was something else, the matter of size. One of the most striking details from the scholar’s book had been the creature’s stature — eight feet tall, according to the text.
The man I had just met was of average height. Or so he had seemed.
“Excuse me, sir.” The servant sounded impatient. “May I help you to your room?”