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“The Germans have advanced the effectiveness of their artillery, sir,” the Prime Minister spat with no little amount of disgust.

Sherlock Holmes was upon the brink of an inquiry when his brother explained the meaning of the grisly artifact.

“Sherlock,” he began, “Mrs. Challenger recently discovered a hidden notebook belonging to her husband wherein he had enthusiastically experimented with a formula, of his own invention, for a new lightweight steel alloy dozens of times stronger than what is currently possible.”

I broke my long silence.

“I don’t understand,” I said, frankly. “It was my impression that Professor Challenger’s expertise was, uh, rather is, zoology. How could a zoologist conceive of such a sophisticated formula?”

“My George has a restless mind, Dr. Watson. He rarely sleeps and constantly studies. I dare say, one day, he may well know just about everything,” Mrs. Challenger smiled proudly, making her look younger and even more charming by some dozen years.

Sherlock Holmes rubbed his squared, prominent chin.

“The lady hardly exaggerates, my dear fellow,” his long white finger morbidly traced around the helmet’s bullet hole. “I’ve read Challenger’s monographs on the practical applications of chemistry and physics with keen interest. Regardless of how he is ridiculed by his colleagues, they can’t hold a candle to him. George Edward Challenger may well be the greatest scientific mind in all of Europe, if not the world.”

The Prime Minister reinstated himself into the proceedings.

“A rather clumsy and discourteous scientific mind, I’ll wager,” he growled, peering at Mycroft Holmes.

“Yes, gentlemen,” he explained to us, “it appears that Professor Challenger’s actual formula resided purely within his own head.”

“My George memorized everything,” the lady sparkled. “He claimed it considerably reduced the clutter of his filing cabinets.”

Sherlock Holmes moved to the window, putting a match to another cigarette.

“Allow me to refresh my own memory,” his eyes took on a momentarily pensive aspect. “After Challenger returned from South America, he proposed to prove his claims of having discovered a hellish plateau, a lost world — if you will — still populated by the surviving denizens from the ancient Age of the Dinosaurs. As I recall, Challenger delivered such authentication by exhibiting, in person, a pterodactyl which he had captured and brought back alive to London.”

Mrs. Challenger moved to my friend, her dark doe-like eyes suddenly tragic.

“That’s exactly as it happened, Mr. Holmes,” her fine porcelain features flushed with feminine ferocity. “But the creature escaped and the assembly of scientists almost immediately pronounced it a hoax. Two of my husband’s most trusted colleagues, dear old Summerlee and young Mr. Malone of the Daily Gazette — both of them sworn eye-witnesses — were ridiculed into professional and public exile. My husband was furious. Even with such a temper like his, I don’t think I ever saw him so close to cold-blooded murder as he was toward the entire academic community in those weeks that followed. In the end, George vowed that he’d go back to that primordial purgatory and, once and for all time, return with positive proof of its reality for the entire world to witness.”

The heavy silence in the room was remindful of a wake. The dear lady fought back tears, more of outrage than of sorrow. Sherlock Holmes extinguished his cigarette and smiled at her kindly, if sadly.

“Madam, what you ask is impossible,” he spoke to her as if they were alone together in the room. “Surely you must see that I am at my own limits, considering my age, and for me to even begin such a journey would be madness. It is my opinion that your brave, brilliant husband met an honorable end to his noble life somewhere upon that mysterious plateau. There are no existing maps or charts of this lost world. No way to even find it, let alone search for clues, now some two years old, of his possible whereabouts. I very much regret that services