Tony Richards - The Astonishing Adventures of Sherlock Holmes in the Twenty-First Century

“Then there is this business of these flaws appearing and then disappearing in the mirrors.”

“I’m not aware of any of them disappearing , Holmes-san.”

“Then take a look behind you,” said the great detective.

And when Minoshi spun around and peered into the empty elevator cage, the circular mark on the mirror was gone.

“When I first saw one,” Holmes was saying, “I suspected there might be a hidden camera back there, if you recall. Yet I saw no indication in the Sutomocha offices that there was any means of spying inside these rooms. It is no human being who is watching.”

“What then?” his companion blurted.

“It is the hotel itself.”

They both came to a dead halt a bare moment later, and not simply because of what the great detective had just said. They were almost at the door to room 3009.

And it was wide open, despite the fact that Minoshi had shut it firmly when they’d left.

“Courage, lieutenant,” Holmes murmured. “We must display that quality in spades if we are going to confront the true perpetrator of this case.”

He glanced around at Minoshi, expecting her to look dismayed. But her features had hardened to a rigid mask, and she was nodding.

Nothing happened when they went into the room, nor when they wandered purposefully around it. So finally, Sherlock Holmes sat down on the edge of the blackened bed, patting the space beside him to indicate that Minoshi should do the same.

“Are you sure that this is wise?” she asked.

“It appears that we are alone for the moment,” Sherlock nodded. “But be sure to get back to your feet the instant anything shows up.”

And when she asked him why, he told her, “It will soon become apparent.”

Holmes stared around at his surroundings, letting out an odd, disjointed grunting noise.

“I mentioned marsh gas before. D’you know anything about it?”

“I have never seen it for myself, but I have read about it.”

“Then you know it floats in vagrant patches, and it often glows. People in the olden times believed that they were seeing spectral beings, and called them ‘will-o’-the-wisp’ or ‘ghost lights’.”

“Ignis fatuus, to use the Latin term. ‘Foolish fire.’”

“Yes indeed. I am impressed. There are several reasons why they glow. One is phosphates mixed in with the gas. Another is something called a piezoelectrical charge, generated by—”

“Quartz, silicon, or arsenic in the ground below.”

“For heaven’s sake, lieutenant, do you have to be so damnably smart? Or keep on interrupting me, for that matter?”

The great detective’s tone was slightly cross, and yet there was a faint smile playing on his lips. Minoshi saw that.

“My apologies, Holmes-san,” she said, her chin ducking, “but I always talk a lot when I am nervous. Tell me, what does ignis fatuus have to do with this hotel?”

Holmes tipped his head back for a while, apparently inspecting the ceiling once again, but in truth arranging his own thoughts.

“It is simply that when I saw that brief recording of the ‘ghost’ I was put in mind of glowing marsh gas, and I wondered if it had a similar cause. Could it be, I wondered, not a spirit I was looking at, but electricity in its raw form?”

He rubbed at his nose before continuing.

“Consider the nature of this place, lieutenant. It ought to be staffed, but it is not. It should properly be full of human beings hard at work, but there are only transient guests. It looks after itself, in fact, performing all the functions of a regular hotel. It is self-contained and self-sufficient. And under those conditions, I have come to understand it has attained a rudimentary form of consciousness.”

“It’s come alive?” Haruko gasped.

“Indeed. The walls of this place have become its flesh. The elevators have become its pumping organs. And the electric current running through its wires—”

“Its life blood, sir?”

“Not merely that. More like the embodiment of its raw, living soul.”

Holmes paused to let that sink in, since poor Haruko had practically gone cross-eyed.

“Consider this, however. It must be a rather simple form of life, and it is very new. In human terms, an infant.”

“Yes, I see that!”

“And like any infant, it despises being lonely and ignored. It wants to mix with people and it wants to play, and doesn’t even understand the harm that it might do.”

“But surely, when it saw the couple burning—?”

“It was given pause and it withdrew a while, which is precisely the reason it has not so far approached us. But – being a child – it will try again before long, hoping for a happier result than last time.”

“It is foolish, then.”

“Only in the sense it knows no better. It behaves like any human child.”

The lighting around them flickered for a moment. Holmes’ face lifted, his demeanour turning very grave.

“Ah, we’d better both get up.”

They did that. There was, almost simultaneously, a crackling noise behind them and they turned, to be confronted by a most profoundly chilling sight. There was an electrical outlet in the wall in that direction. And streaming from it was a small torrent of sparks. As Holmes and Minoshi watched, they began forming themselves into a vaguely realised shape.

The great detective pursed his lips.

“And now you have the evidence of your own eyes, lieutenant. This case is solved, do you not agree? And having solved it, I suggest that we make ourselves scarce. We have no need to make this thing’s acquaintance.”

Which was when there was a hefty bang behind them. The room’s door had just slammed shut.

You did not use the swipe-card to get out of here. There was simply a handle, which Holmes tugged at, but which would not budge. He pounded at the woodwork, then he rammed it with his shoulder. None of which had any effect in the least.

“Step out of the way, Holmes-san!” he heard Minoshi yell.

And when he turned to look at her, she’d dropped into some kind of fighting stance, her fists raised and her knees bent. Whatever she was planning, she had better do it fast. The electric creature was half-formed – you could already see its arms and legs.

What happened next astonished him. Haruko Minoshi let out the most frightful piercing shriek, threw herself some four feet up into the air and lashed out at the door with her right foot. He thought she’d simply hurt herself, but her kick was rewarded with a deafening, resounding crack, and a massive split appeared directly down the centre of the woodwork.

“Goju-kai karate,” Minoshi explained, once she’d come back to earth. “I have a third dan blackbelt.”

He could scarcely believe what he had seen, but Holmes speedily recovered his wits and began to prise the two separate sections of the wood apart.

As soon as they were back out in the corridor, they ran towards the elevators. Except that nothing happened when they pressed the buttons. All the indicator lights were out. The hotel was apparently obstructing them.

“Where’s the fire door?” Holmes yelled.

But he had already been told, hadn’t he? The fire doors – which were of a far heavier construction than the door Minoshi had broken – had already been locked. Only not by any electronic means. He found himself staring at a conventional keyhole.

Holmes glanced round at the lieutenant’s hairstyle, which was done up in a tight, neat bun.

“Are you wearing hairpins, lieutenant?”

Haruko saw what he was driving at, and quickly handed him one.

“When you’ve been around the criminal classes for as long as I have, you are bound to pick up certain of their tricks.” Holmes paused in the act of bending the thin wire into shape. “Are your constables still on guard below us?”