“And now you are trying to recover the Pollux and the man’s body?”
“Indeed we are, Doctor Watson.” He nodded to where a hawser ran along a steel channel to a fixing point on deck. Barnacles and brown kelp sheathed the hawser. “That’s from the Pollux. We recovered it three days ago.”
“It’s still attached to the diving bell?”
The captain nodded his grey head. “The Pollux is held down there on the seabed. Probably the old wreck’s doing. Even so, we made fast the cable on deck here. I’m going to do my damndest to haul that diving bell out of Davy Jones’s locker and bring the blasted thing back to dry land, so help me.” His hands shook as a powerful emotion took charge. “Or it’ll be the death of me in trying.”
I looked to Holmes for some explanation. After all, a salvage operation? Surely that’s a matter that doesn’t require the intervention of the world’s greatest consulting detective.
“Yesterday,” Holmes said, “The diving bell’s twin went in search of its sibling.”
I turned to the vessel that so much resembled the boiler of a locomotive. On the side of that great iron cylinder was painted, in white, the name Castor. “And did it find its twin?”
“It did. The diving bell returned without apparent incident. However, the crew of two were, on the opening of the hatch, found to be quite dead.”
“Quite dead!” thundered the Captain. “They died of fright. Just take one look at their faces!”
“What I require of my friend, Doctor Watson, is to examine the deceased. If you will kindly take us to the bodies.”
“Holmes?” I regarded him with surprise. “A post mortem?”
“The simple cause of death will be sufficient, Watson.”
“I can’t Holmes.”
“You must, and quickly.”
“Not unless I am authorised by the local constabulary, or the coroner.”
“You must tell me how they died, Watson.”
“Holmes, I protest. I shall be breaking the law.”
“Oh, but you must, Watson. Because I am to be—” he struck the side of the diving bell, “—this vessel’s next passenger!”
Before I could stutter a reply a sailor approached. “Captain! It’s started again! The sounds are coming up the line!” His eyes were round with fear. “And it’s trying to make words!”
That expression of dread on the man’s face communicated a thrill of fear to my very veins. ‘What’s happening, Holmes? What sounds?”
“We’re in receipt of another telephone call.” His deep-set eyes locked onto mine. “It hails from ninety fathoms down. And it’s coming from the Pollux!”
Upon passing through a door marked Control Room, we were greeted by a remarkable sight.
Three men in officer’s uniforms gathered before telephony apparatus on a table. Fixed to the wall, immediately in front of them, was a horn of the type that amplifies the music from a gramophone. Nearby, two young women stood with their arms round each other, like children frightened of a thunderstorm. Both were dressed in black muslin. Both had lustrous, dark eyes set into bone-white faces. And both faces were identical.
Twins. That much was evident.
The occupants of the room stared at the horn on the wall. Their eyes were open wide, their expressions radiated absolute horror. Faces quivered. They hardly dared breathe, lest a quick intake of breath would invite sudden, and brutal, destruction.
Holmes strode toward the gathering. “Are the sounds the same as before?”
An officer with a clipped red beard answered, but he couldn’t take his bulging eyes from the speaker horn. “They began the same … in the last few minutes; however, they’ve begun to change.”
A second officer added, “As if it’s trying to form words.”
The third cried, “Sir! What if it really is him? After all this time!”
“Keep your nerve, Jessup. Remember that ladies are present.” Captain Smeaton tilted his head in the direction of the two women. Then he said, “Doctor Watson. Allow me to introduce you to Mrs. Katrina Barstow, widow of George Barstow, and her sister, Miss Claudine Millwood.”
“Evidently,” murmured Holmes, “this isn’t the occasion for formal introductions.”
For the women in black disregarded me; they hugged each other tight, desperate for some degree of comfort amid the horror.
“A series of clicks.” Holmes tilted his head to one side as he listened. “Almost like the sound produced on a telephone speaker when a thunderstorm is approaching.”
Jessup cried, “Or the sound of his bones. They’ve begun moving about the Pollux!”
Captain Smeaton spoke calmly. “Go below to your cabin, Jessup.”
Jessup fled from his post, and fled gratefully it seemed to me.
More clicks issued from the horn. The women moaned with dismay. Mrs. Barstow pressed a handkerchief against her mouth as if to stifle a scream.
Captain Smeaton explained, “After the hawser was recovered from the seabed, my crew secured it to a deck bollard. One of the ship’s apprentices did what he was routinely supposed to do. He attached the Pollux’s telephone wire to this telephone apparatus.”
Holmes turned to the Captain. “And that’s when you began to hear unusual sounds?”
“Unusual?” exclaimed the red-bearded officer. “Terrible sounds, sir. They come back to you in your dreams.”
I listened to the leaden clicking. Very much the sound of old bone striking against yet more bone. “Forgive me, if I ask the obvious. But do you maintain that the telephone line connects this apparatus with that in the diving bell, which has lain on the seabed for five years?”
“Yes, Doctor Watson. I fear I do.” Captain Smeaton shuddered. “And I wish circumstances did not require me to make such a claim.”
“And those clicks are transmitted up the wire from…” I refrained from adding “Barstow’s tomb.”
Sherlock Holmes turned to me quickly. “Ha! There you have it, Watson. That which cannot be. Is.”
“Then it is a fault with the mechanism. Surely?”
“Would I have come aboard this ship, Watson, to attend to an electrical fault? They did not mistake me for a telephony engineer.”
“But dash it all, Holmes—”
Then it issued from the horn. A deep voice. Wordless. Full of pain, regret, and an unquestionable longing.
“Urrr … hmm … ahhh…”
Ice dashed through my veins. Freezing me into absolute stillness. “That sound…”