The Mammoth Book of New Sherlock Holmes Adventures - Mike Ashley [274]
Of a sudden, I shuddered once more. “The fact remains, Holmes, that we saw a man vanish into thin air.”
“We saw nothing of the kind, Watson. Are you aware of the French illusionist Georges Méliès? He works his conjuror’s tricks inside a kinetoscope. Our quarry Phillimore knows the same dodge.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Did it seem to you, Watson, that Phillimore’s eyes on the Vitascope screen were looking directly at us in the orchestra-stalls? I thought the same thing … for a moment. But such a thing is impossible. When we observe a moving-picture, we see only what the camera saw. Phillimore did not see us, did not salute us. He was looking directly into the lens of the camera, whilst saluting the cameraman … and through the camera’s borrowed gaze we fancied that he looked at us.”
“But, Holmes! We saw him vanish… like a phantasm!”
“Watson, no. A kinetographic camera records movements not only through space, but through time. I think I know why Phillimore saluted: to distract the cameraman’s attention towards his right arm, and away from his left.”
“His left hand carried an umbrella,” I recalled.
“Quite so, Watson. And did you mark what he did with it? Just before he disappeared, Phillimore seemed to aim the shaft of his umbrella directly towards us. In fact, he extended it towards the camera.”
“And then he vanished, Holmes!”
“No. He merely cut out a fragment of time. That is, he thrust the tip of his umbrella into the camera’s mechanism – thereby jamming it – then withdrew his umbrella and walked away. The cameraman required precisely four minutes to unjam the mechanism.”
“How the deuce can you know how long …”
“When our quarry vanished, Watson, did you not observe a sudden lurch within the image on the Vitascope screen?”
I shook my head. “I saw only James Phillimore … and then the place where he wasn’t.”
“Ah! But just before he vanished, the clock on the tower behind him read ten seventeen. And then, at the precise instant after he vanished, the clock abruptly jumped to ten twenty-one. The newsboy’s posture shifted instantaneously from one position to quite a different one. All the other people and vehicles in the tableau vanished as well … and were replaced by others. Georges Méliès learned the same trick by accident, Watson. He was photographing traffic in Paris when the mechanism of his camera jammed. The traffic kept moving whilst Méliès endeavoured to restart his apparatus. Afterwards, when Méliès developed his film and projected it, he was astonished to see a Parisian omnibus abruptly transform itself into a hearse.”
By now we had reached West Fifty-Eighth Street; Holmes paid the cabman, and we alighted. I had never been here before, yet I recognized the place: the buildings, the newsboy underneath the street-lamp, even the clock-dial on the distant tower were just as I had marked them on the Vitascope screen … except with colours added to Mr Edison’s photographic palette of greys. As our cab departed, I remarked to Holmes: “Then the man in the Vitascope film cannot be James Phillimore at all, Holmes.”
My friend’s jaw tightened. “No, Watson. He is Phillimore to the life. In every particular, the man whom we saw is identical to his cabinet photograph. I committed the portrait to memory in 1875, Watson. I shall never forget those dundrearies! Our quarry is even wearing the same suit: pin-stripe, of a cut and design favoured by tailors in Savile Row some thirty years ago. I interviewed the two Leamington bankers who were present when Phillimore vanished: they assured me that the suit he wore in his portrait is the one that Phillimore was wearing on the morning when he vanished.”
“Very few suitings last for thirty-one years,” I remarked.
“And very few men can vanish for three decades