“Watson, there is a great mystery here, a mystery beyond solution!”
I was absolutely astounded. I was dumbfounded. In my entire association with Holmes, I had never heard him use the words “a mystery beyond solution.” Shocked speechless, I sat down and waited for what might come next. Holmes did not keep me in suspense, but began speaking at once, in slow, carefully measured words.
“Watson,” he said, “I bring to your attention the incredible circumstance of the great speed with which Mr. Fletcher transited from Woking to Cheltenham.”
I found my voice and replied.
“Great speed you say?” A distance of 20 miles, covered in one hour and 10 minutes. Any fast horse or coach can do that.”
“Not so Watson, not so. It is true the distance covered was only 20 miles. But the time, Watson, the time! The time required was not 70 minutes, but only 10 minutes.”
At Holmes’s request I had carefully verified the times involved. Mr. Fletcher was last seen in Woking by a reliable witness, shortly before 11:00 P.M., and on his own account, based on the church bell’s ringing, he was abducted at 11:00 P.M. According to the police report he was clocked into Cheltenham jail at 12:10 A.M. that same evening. I had personally checked both the church’s and the jail’s clocks, they were both correct, and more important, since a difference in time was involved, they agreed with each other to the minute.
“Only ten minutes Holmes? How can you say that? Upon my word, something is wrong with your mathematics.”
This just slipped out, I had not planned to be disrespectful, and besides I knew Holmes was an expert mathematician. I was never a whiz at mathematics, but it seemed perfectly plain to me, that one hour plus ten minutes later was 70 minutes. Holmes was an expert at mathematics, and I had never known him to be wrong, so while he waited I took paper and pen in hand, and wrote it down. One hour was sixty minutes, sixty plus ten was seventy, and 12:10 A.M. minus 11:00 P.M. was one hour and ten minutes, or seventy minutes. There it was, in black and white, and figures don’t lie.
My statement about his mathematics being wrong must have luckily run off Holmes like water off the proverbial duck’s back, because he immediately spoke on, in good spirits, without the least sign of annoyance.
“Right you are, Watson, right you are. Figures do not lie, but they can deceive.” He paused for a moment, and then fixing me with his piercing direct gaze, said this.
“Are you familiar with the concept of Daylight Savings Time?”
“No, I must say I am not. But I expect to be enlightened soon enough.”
“Yes old boy, you are correct, you are about to be enlightened regarding Daylight Savings Time. For your information Daylight Savings Time is a means of providing more useful daylight hours. In early spring when morning begins to come earlier, a date and time are selected on which timepieces are set forward one hour. For late fall the process is reversed. In the common vernacular, by this method of time keeping adjustment, time springs forward in the spring, and falls backwards in the fall. You are not familiar with it, because at present these time changes are limited to official agencies. All jails are of course affected.”
This information made my head swim, and I said so. Holmes replied, “just stay with it, old boy, just stay with it.” And he went on about Daylight Savings Time.
“The date and time selected to advance the time is by coincidence the same as Mr. Fletcher’s abduction. At exactly 11:00 P.M. the clock at Cheltenham jail was set forward one hour, from 11:00 P.M. to 12 midnight. When Mr. Fletcher was clocked in there, at 12:10 A.M., only ten minutes had passed, because the real, astronomical time elapsed was from 11:00 P.M. to 11:10 P.M., just ten minutes. Mr. Fletcher transited from Woking to Cheltenham, a distance of 20 miles, in 10 minutes. Ten minutes is one sixth of an hour, and so Mr. Fletcher’s minimum speed must have been six times 20, or 120 miles per hour.”
Here Holmes paused a moment, to reflect on the even more amazing thing he was about to say next, and then went on.
“I say minimum speed, because there is the matter of the times elapsed. Time elapsed in Woking during his abduction, and time elapsed at Cheltenham, before he was clocked in at the jail. These elapsed times must be subtracted from the ten minutes that were available for him to transit from Woking to Cheltenham. Altogether I estimate only five minutes were available, perhaps even less, for him to travel from Woking to Cheltenham. The five minutes travel time makes his speed to have been 240 miles per hour.”
“But,” I protested, “even the fastest steam train travels at less than 100 miles per hour, and there are no train tracks between Woking and Cheltenham. There is no earthly way of doing anything like that, no earthly way of going anywhere near that fast.”
“Precisely, my dear fellow, precisely. You have hit the nail right on the head, as usual. No earthly way…”
I was nonplused by this amazing revelation from Holmes, rendered entirely speechless. Based on what he had told me, his logic was impeccable, his conclusion flawlessly inevitable. This was an example in action of Holmes’s famous dictum: “When all other possibilities have been logically excluded, what remains is necessarily the truth, no matter how unlikely it seems.”
Holmes saw I was struggling to accept the truth he had arrived at, astounding and impossible as it was. Evidently he decided it was better to unload the whole nine yards on me at once, rather than proceed bit by bit. There was still more to come, something even more astonishing, and come it did.
Holmes paused a moment, took a draw on his pipe, and looked at me to see if I was ready for his next and final revelation. Evidently satisfied, he began speaking, this time softly, in a low voice, as if to cushion the shock value of his words, or so that no one else could hear them.
“Watson, has it ever occurred to you, that there may be life, intelligent life, on other worlds?” This greatly surprised me, coming from a person who I knew had no use whatsoever for astronomy, but then this was a time of surprises, no doubt about it.
“Can’t say I have. Never gave the matter any thought. No reason to.”
“Exactly, old boy, exactly so. No reason. Very few people have any reason, and even fewer have any cause to do so. Unfortunate Mr. Fletcher was one such. His experience was very disturbing, very disturbing indeed. I don’t think they meant him any harm, and they did not intend he should die. But nevertheless that was the result.”
“But Holmes, who do you mean by they?”
“By they, Watson, I mean, to quote from Mr. Fletcher’s statement, the ‘little grey men with big egg shaped heads, no hair, noses or ears, and very large oval eyes, all black’” Holmes continued on.
“Their actions in this matter do not show a higher intelligence, but only a more advanced state of technology. They obviously desired secrecy, yet their actions readily brought this matter to the attention of the authorities, and to us. No doubt the last thing they intended. There was no intention to harm Mr. Fletcher, and yet he is dead.”
“But” I said, “what was this whole affair about? Why did they abduct him in the first place?”
“Obviously their purpose was to obtain Mr. Fletcher’s semen, and evidently they were successful in this. It was intended that Mr. Fletcher would recover from the experience in a locality where he was not known, making him and his strange story less credible when he communicated it to the authorities. In this they were also successful.”
“But why should this experience have resulted in Mr. Fletcher killing himself?”