To sit in silence in the company of a beautiful woman was a skill I had never attained. “So much water,” I said stupidly.
She did not respond.
“Judging from the dimensions of the cascade, I would guess you were right to put it at ten thousand gallons per second. Now, given that an inch of rain equals a foot of snow, roughly speaking, the mountaintop above must be melting one hundred twenty thousand gallons of snow a second. Impressive.”
She showed no sign of being impressed.
“Science, you see,” I said, lamely trying to coax her into the conversation. “I’m a scientist. I took a first in maths and physics at Cambridge.”
“It must have been fascinating.”
I nodded deeply. “Yes. Yes, it was. Everything bows to science.”
“Not everything,” she replied, looking into my eyes. “There are mysteries science cannot plumb.”
I wagged a finger at her. “Cannot, or simply
has
not? Think of lightning. A century ago, it was the hammer of God. Now it’s just electricity. And since science has harnessed lightning, well, we have the hammer of God, now, don’t we?”
“Do we?”
“Do you know that once at Cambridge, I used a tesla tube to shock a plenary worm back to life? Dead one moment, shocked the next, and alive the third. How’s that for science? It penetrates even the mystery of death!”
A ghost seemed to pass between us, and Anna looked away toward the falls and rubbed a tear from her eye.
I was such a fool. “It must be hard,” I ventured, watching her.
Still, she did not look at me, but only said, “Yes.” Then her back straightened, and she stared toward the head of the falls. “Looks like … Is something going on up there?”
I trained my eyes on the spot—great shoulders of black stone with the water pouring over them. “What is it?”
Anna pointed, her eyes narrowing. “Don’t you see that motion, up there beside the falls? Something big.”
I squinted and put a hand visorlike above my eyes, but still could make nothing out. “Probably a stag. They’ve got their winter velvet now and—”
“It’s not a stag. It’s … a man. No, two men—and they’re … they’re fighting!”
“Are you sure … ?” The mist in the cauldron was building, and it started to draw its veil across us.
Anna waved it irritably away, her eyes pinned to the top of the cliff. “What if … what if one of them fell?”
Still I looked, honestly looked, but I saw no one. “Anna, let’s head back to the hansom.”
“You think I’m seeing things,” she accused, though she still did not turn her eyes away.
“I don’t know what you’re seeing … but even if they are up there, you can’t—there’s nothing we can—”
“Oh, no!” she said, grabbing my arm. “One of them is falling! A man is falling.”
I turned in terror, looking to the falls, and it seemed indeed that something was plunging down the cascade—perhaps a log or a boulder broken loose … or a man. We watched the dark shape descend, wreathed in foam. Then it struck in the cauldron. Standing now, we peered into the boiling water, half expecting a head to pop up, or an arm or leg—something. There was only the whiteness.
“You saw, didn’t you?” Anna asked.
I nodded slowly. “I saw something fall. Something large—but it may not have been a man.”
“It
was
a man. I know it was.” She looked to the top of the
cliff and shielded her eyes. “The other man is gone. He’s—he’s a murderer … .”
“Only if …” I stopped. It was no good trying to speak reason. “I’ll go down. I’ll stand by the bank, maybe find a log or something to extend out if … if the man comes to the surface … but …” I ambled away, down to the wild pool.
What if she was right and a man struggled in the water or, perhaps, tumbled, dead, in the churning stuff? The thought was horrible. But what if she was wrong and this was just a ghost of her father, long gone?
I stood by the cauldron for perhaps ten minutes. Aside from the roar and mist and foam, there was nothing. By the time I returned to Anna, her eyes were wide and rimmed with tears, and she seemed to be staring at something ten thousand miles away.
“Let’s go, Anna,” I said gently, taking her hand. She followed me as if in a trance, up the narrow trail to the road, and up again into the hansom cab. I climbed to the driver’s seat above, took a deep breath, and then snapped the reins. This time, the horse did not quarrel, but only plodded away down the road.
I felt numb and cold, as if a shadow had been cast over me and Anna—not just darkness but evil. There had been something very wrong at those falls, some angry and undying presence. It was more than the blackness of the place, the merciless pounding, the convulsing mist—more even than the terrible suggestion of death or the terrible reality of it. Something pernicious haunted that place. Its claws were still in me.
We had gone half a mile down the road when Anna cried out, “Stop the cart! Stop it!”
I pulled up on the reins, and the horse plodded to a halt.
Anna spilled from the compartment, dress and hair streaming back from her as she ran past the horse and clambered down the slope toward the water. She was screaming.
I leaped down from the seat and rushed after her. Was she going to drown herself? “Stop! Anna!”
With a last desperate wail, Anna flung herself into the whitewater.
“No! Anna!” I shouted, vaulting down the slope. I thought she was gone forever, but then I saw her head rise above the waves. There was something in her arms—something heavy—a body: bloodless skin drawn tight over bone. The man was stripped of overcoat and shirtsleeves, flesh scratched by stones. He had been boiled white in frozen waves.
Anna struggled to turn him over, then stared incredulously into the man’s aquiline face. “It’s not my father! It’s not my father!”
Scrambling down the bank, I plunged into the river—so cold!—and grabbed under the man’s arms. A groan escaped his lips, perhaps the sound of life or perhaps merely air forced from dead lungs. With my hands beneath his armpits and my feet wedged between stones, I hauled the body up out of the water and laid it on solid ground.
Anna staggered up behind me. “It’s not my father!”
“No, of course not,” I snapped, kneeling beside the man. “Wake up! Wake up, whoever you are.” I slapped his cheeks—wretched cheeks scratched by stones and fish-belly white. “Wake up! Are you alive?”
The eyelids of the battered man quivered and then slid back, and I stared into eyes more brilliant than any I had ever seen. The man sputtered water from his mouth and gasped, “I’m alive!” He blinked. His wrinkled fingers patted my hand as if to comfort me. “I am alive.”
I leaned toward him and studied his face. He was a man in
his fourth decade, with a serious expression and eyes that beamed blue beneath tangled brows. Perhaps I should have checked his vital signs—looked for bleeding or broken bones—but I could only blurt, “Who are you?”
“What?” he asked.
“Who are you?” I repeated. “What’s your name?”
Those radiant eyes grew dim. “I don’t know.”
CALL ME SILENCE
I
’m staring into a face—a young face with black hair and eyebrows and dripping whiskers that might someday amount to a beard. The face stares back at me. Is this a mirror?
The face asks, “Who are you?”
“What?”
“Who are you?”
A face in a mirror wouldn’t ask
who are you?
but
who am I?
“I don’t know.”
The face considers me in amusement or annoyance. “What do you mean, you don’t know?”
I raise my hand between us. My fingers are slim but strong, the middle one marked with a deep callus above the final knuckle. My skin is white and mottled with scars, like stains from acid. “I’m old,” I realize. It’s not a pleasant thought.
“You’re more than old,” the young man says, “you’re washed up—literally.” He gaped at the left side of my head. “You’ve got a big knot just here. Concussed, I should think, and in shock, and likely half frozen.” He unbuttons his woolen coat—a peculiar gray color, with a tag that includes an upside-down
h
as in Russian. Shrugging quickly, he shucks his coat and lays it over me. I only just realize that I’m lying down. “So—you don’t remember anything about how you got in the river—?”
River? Yes, I hear it now, just to my left—chattering over stones. “No. I don’t remember.”
The young man gives a grim nod and clamps two fingers on my wrist. “Pulse seems slow—but at least you’ve got one. Yes, I’d say shock, most definitely. Let me see your pocketbook.”
Without waiting for a response, he rifles through my pockets. Perhaps he’s a thief—except that a thief wouldn’t lend his coat.
“What does it say?” asks a new voice—a woman’s. I shift my head, seeing now beyond the shoulder of the man a young, beautiful face, framed by dripping blond locks. Worry knits her brow. “What does the pocketbook say?”
The man holds up empty hands. “Says nothing. No pocketbook, no identification except …” He tugs at the collar of my shirt and turns it outward. “What’s this? ‘Harold Silence, clothier, London.’” A lopsided smile grows across his face. “Harold Silence?”
“That’s his tailor. Not him,” says the woman.
“Still, we’ve got to call him something. Mind if we call you Harold Silence?”
Harold Silence. It’s a name, I suppose, as good as any other. “For now, no, I don’t mind.” Though it certainly doesn’t seem like my name.
“Right, then, Harold. I should check the rest of you—for injuries, you know?”
“You should call him Mr. Silence,” the young woman urges.
“Mr. Silence? No. What about Harry, or H.S., or just Silence?”
“Whatever you want,” I say. “But, um—what are your names?”
The young man splays a hand on his chest and says, “I’m
Master Thomas Carnacki, scientist and student of the world. This”—he gestures over his shoulder—“is Miss Anna Schmidt.”
The woman curtsies slightly and gives a blushing smile.
“Now for a diagnosis.” Master Thomas Carnacki leans toward me, sets his fingertips on my skull, and probes through my hair. He seems surprised to find no damage except at the left temple—
“Ahh! Blast!” I cry, recoiling.
“It’s this whole left side of your head,” young Thomas says. “I’m surprised you’re even conscious—”
“Or alive,” Anna blurts.
I’m panting from pain, and there’s a claxon in my skull. It isn’t just my head that hurts, either: “There’s … there’s something wrong with my arm.”
“In time, my friend,” Thomas replies. He gingerly draws back the coat he has laid over me and gently probes the sides of my neck, my collarbone, my shoulders, my upper arms. More pain erupts.
“Broken left arm,” Thomas says.
My eyes clamp shut, but they seep tears as Thomas continues his inspection. He finds bruises, abrasions, and a few weeping wounds, each of which he grimly itemizes.
At last he sighs. “Well, Harry—”
“Please, call me Silence.”
“Well, Silence, you’ve got some nasty knocks—head and arm, here and there. We’ll splint your arm—we can use my kerchief for ties—”
“And what about the napkins, from the picnic basket?” Anna volunteered.
“Those, too, and we’ll find sticks for braces. Other than that, though, there’s not much we can do for you out here.
We’ll take you in our hansom to Meiringen, find a doctor … maybe even somebody who knows you.”
“Thank you,” I say. “I owe you my life.”
“Not that you remember any of it,” the young man replies with a smile and a shrug. “But—hey—it’s like your first day on earth. Clean slate. Happy birthday!”
He’s a sardonic young man, this “scientist and student of the world.” As he gathers the cloths for my splint, I see a shiny Christ College ring on the third finger of his right hand. So, Thomas is a recent graduate of Cambridge. The adjacent pinky also wears a school ring, but it is much more battered, and it bears the crest of St. Petersburg Polytechnic—perhaps his father’s alma mater. The man must be dead, now, or he would have worn the ring himself. The small diameter of the Russian ring indicates that the older Carnacki was a small man, perhaps due to deprivation. It might be the reason he left Russia and came to England.
Yes, Thomas Carnacki puts on a brash face, but his glib outside shields troubled things within. “Off to fetch some sticks,” he says.
And what of Anna Schmidt? She has a German name and face, but her voice is inflected with London, Paris, Rome … . She could as easily be Anna Banks or Anna Chaillot or Anna Morenzi. Her outside, also, does not match her inside. She defers to Thomas in outward ways, but as he looks for splint sticks, she searches his rucksack, only to neatly replace the contents before he returns. And now that he is back, working on my splint, she frets about how cold and wretched I look, so that Thomas volunteers his own clothes, and Anna praises him for his insight and generosity.
She is playing him. Perhaps he even realizes it.
Thomas draws the last cloth napkin tight over the splint. “Is that too snug?”
“It’s fine.”
Anna comes up to hover behind him, her eyes shifting between us. “Do you think you can walk?”
“I don’t know”—I’m so tired of saying that—“I’ll try.” Anna rewards me with a smile, and I see how easy it would be to be played by her.
“Then, up we go,” Thomas says as he and Anna lift me to my feet. I stagger, but these young people are strong. They lead me to their carriage—a black hansom with room for two within and a driver’s seat above and behind. A few jolting steps up bring me into the compartment.
“Do you need help?” Anna asks sweetly.
“I’ll manage.”
She hands me a neat stack of clothes that she has produced from Thomas’s rucksack. “We’ll give you a few moments’ privacy.” She and Thomas turn and step away from the carriage.
At first, I stare stupidly at the stack of clothes in my hands. Then, shaking off my torpor, I examine them: A shirt that had been tailored for the young man—five years back judging by its nap and the wear beneath the arms; ah, the label confirms it. Thomas’s father must have lived then, to buy a shirt like this for a young man entering university. The shirt that Thomas currently wears is newer—perhaps a year old—but not tailored. So, there was not much money when this new shirt was bought, which places the death of the father from one to five years back. The trousers give an even graver comment—for the cuffs at the bottom have been let out, leaving the smallest possible hem. These had been the pants of Thomas’s father, adjusted by an inexpert hand—perhaps his mother, or he himself. Judging by the fading of the pants,
the cuffs, and the portion still tucked under, I would say these trousers had been altered in the last year.
“How’s it coming?” Thomas calls from nearby.
“Fine,” I reply, setting to work to strip off my ruined clothes and don these instead. “Just a bit awkward.”
“Take your time,” Anna says.
I don’t, quickly pulling off my soaked rags and pulling on my comrade’s clothes. The splint is tight in the sleeve, but I manage. There are even shoes, slightly large for me, but serviceable. A glance out the hansom window shows my comrades deep in conversation. I take a moment to check the basket they have left in the corner. It holds remnants of a baguette, a brick of Gruyere, a half-drunk bottle of Burgundy, a Scots dirk, and—something else … . Beneath the cloth in the basket, there is a map of Meiringen, Switzerland. A hotel is circled, and a route marked out, leading into the mountains to a place called Reichenbach Falls, also circled. The time of 2 P.M. is written there in a man’s hand. Beside it is a notation in dark script, the ink smudging at each terminal of the letters as if the writer had perseverated on each one: THE FINAL PROBLEM.
“About finished?” Thomas calls.
I fold the page, slide it back under the cloth, and say, “Yes, all finished.”
Thomas approaches the hansom. “Well, let’s get back to town so a doctor can look to your arm and your head.” He opens the carriage door, and I offer him his greatcoat, folded neatly. He takes it, unfurls it, and slips it on, all the while studying me with amused suspicion. Then Thomas steps back, and Anna piles in, pretty in her dripping white lace and blushing cheeks. She takes the seat beside me.
“Ah, you look better,” she says. “Warm and presentable and alive.”
“Better than cold and repulsive and dead.” Outside the window, Thomas pats the mare with a fretful hand that shows he has no experience with horses. “I have big shoes to fill,” I say, and lift one of my feet.
“Well, you know what they say about big shoes …” Anna remarks suggestively.
What
do
they say? That you must walk a mile in a man’s shoes? That a man must get his foot in the door? That a man’s shoe size correlates with … ? But surely not Anna—not this prim German, if indeed she is what she purports to be.
“We’ll get you to Meiringen and to help.”
“Medical,” I ask wryly, “or psychological?”
“Yes.”
The carriage dips as Thomas mounts to the driver’s seat, snaps the reins, and cajoles a little motion out of the horse. The mare sets off at a walking pace down the trail, dragging the hansom behind.
“He’s not the best horseman,” Anna confides.
They’re charming, these turtledoves, though I doubt Thomas and Anna have known each other long. They are still sizing each other up, from shoe size to skull size.
Oh, I don’t even like to think of what my skull size currently is.
Who am I?
The thought of finding out sends a chill through me. What sort of man must I be to end up in a river in Switzerland? I almost prefer not knowing. I glance out the windows at the rugged cliff on one side and the plunge to whitewater on the other.
Anna meanwhile appraises me. “You really have no idea who you are?”
I shake my head grimly.
“Well, you’re a Londoner, for starters—”
“Ah, yes. The accent …”
“A man of letters, which your slender hands show.”
“A right-handed man of letters,” I add as I point to the pen callus on my middle finger.
Anna flashes a smile. “Who needs memory when there is deduction? Surely the whole of your life is written on you.”
“Read on.”
“What of these?” Anna asks, turning my hand over and finding a few irregular blotches on the skin. “Burns? But not from fire … from acid!”
She is right, of course. But why would I have acid-burned hands? I withdraw them uncomfortably and avert my eyes, but Anna is not done with her game.
“Your hair has only just begun to thin on top,” Anna says, adding, “Baldness is becoming in an older man.”
“As you say, I am
becoming
bald.”
“A clever fellow, you are. Aware of the shape of things.” Anna brightened, nodding decisively. “And in your mid-forties, I would guess.”
“A medical person, are you?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “A keen observer is all. You are slightly taller than Thomas, who is slightly taller than I, and so you must be five foot eleven.”
“And ten stone, soaking wet.”
She proceeds as if I haven’t spoken. “You are a man of importance.”
“Now, how do you know that?”
She lifts her eyebrows. “How else would you have ended up in the river?”
“I don’t see your meaning.”
“Someone was stalking you. Only important men get stalked.”
“Stalking me?”
Her mouth drops open. “Oh … we didn’t tell you, did we … ?”
“Tell me what?”
Anna pauses, and her eyes flit as if seeking escape. “Apparently … someone threw you … or pushed you … from the top of the Reichenbach Falls.”