The Phlogiston Protocol
(first three chapters)
Episode 1
A Lost Possession Returned
On a dreary Sunday morning in December in 1927, as the latest number of the Lancet lay neglected upon my lap, I contemplated with some satisfaction the ponderously wet snow that slithered down the window panes of the Praed Street flat I shared with Solar Pons.
My companion, standing across the room at the table that held his scientific apparatus, appeared as indifferent to the weather as I to my professional reading, his aquiline features, yet visible through a cloud of tobacco smoke, intent upon some new chemical investigation. And while no man in the Great Capital possessed a keener mind or sharper eye, his lack of discernment regarding my true nature — concealed, it is true, by every art I could bring to the task — begged explanation. Surely, if during eight years of close association the detective had penetrated the ruse, I should have been exposed, for why would he remain silent?
“Perhaps I said nothing because I saw no advantage to either of us from the revelation, nor any justification in a gentleman so questioning a friend.”
“It gratifies me that you consider me one,” I replied.
“My dear Parker, I can conceive of no reason your extra-terrestrial origin should affect our association in the least.”
“Great Scott, Pons!” I exclaimed, as the enormity of his remarks struck me. “How did you discern my thoughts? I have been silent and motionless this half hour at least! And how on Earth did you deduce that I am an alien?”
“‘How on Earth,’ indeed,” he quipped.
“But allow me to observe that you were not entirely motionless. Your eyes traveled repeatedly to the row of published accounts of our various adventures, each time followed by a look of authorial pride. All perfectly human, I do assure you. When you glanced at me, however, your expression changed to one of sly triumph, followed by bemused, indulgent affection. Evidently you had carried out a successful, but harmless, deception, and wondered at my failure to notice. It only remained to identify the particular object of my failure.”
“Extraordinary, Pons!”
“As to your cosmic antecedents, your wandering gaze came to rest even longer, as so often of late, upon the fanciful print you recently tacked above your desk. It derives, I believe, from the work of M. Flammarion, whose thoughts about life beyond our own terraqueous sphere aroused such strong objections among his colleagues of l’Académie.”
“That is hardly decisive,” I objected.
“True, but there is also your increasingly frequent correspondence with an American, whose precise hand and return address of Flagstaff in Arizona strongly suggest an astronomer. As often as you admire the celestial image on the wall, you look wistfully at the latest missive from America there upon your desk.”
I could only nod in acquiescence.
“I submit, then, that you find yourself inadvertently stranded here on Earth, perhaps for some considerable stretch of time, and are desirous of providing discreet assistance to those seeking to locate the fabled “Planet X,” no doubt your home, perhaps bringing closer the day when you may return.”
“It is as you say,” I admitted.
“Then there is the matter of density, if I may be permitted the pun. Yesterday, I noticed your footprints in the snow pressing to a depth fully one-third greater than my own, as only possible if the volume of your ostensible lungs were occupied by something as heavy as solid muscle.”
“Of course, how very simple!”
“Coupled with the fact of your survival during eight years in our shared lodging, without complaint or apparent ill effect, in an atmosphere I have poisoned beyond tolerability with the fumes of shag and cannabis, I deduced that you, in contrast to all other sentient creatures of our planet, do not truly breathe. I was able to rule out simple anosmia from your repeatedly demonstrated strength of olfactory discrimination. As a further test, I put a sufficient dose of this compound,” he indicated with a languid gesture of his long fingers a beaker holding a clear, amber liquid, “into the tea you have been drinking, to kill any mere human in seconds.”
I bowed my head in acknowledgment.
“There were other indications, taken over the years and amounting to near certainty. I might mention your complacency in the face of weather universally despised by Englishmen, which I attribute to a youth spent in a landscape of frozen ammonia. But this is trivial.”
Although only moments ago I had wondered at Pons’ apparent lack of discernment, I felt renewed admiration at this latest demonstration of his powers.
“Even so,” the detective continued, “I must confess that your deception might well have endured some little time longer had not another observer called my attention, however obliquely, to your true nature.”
“It would seem I have protected an open secret, then,” I said, ruefully shaking my head.
“Do not be alarmed,” Pons said. “Your secret remains as safe from incidental exposure or casual observers as ever it was.”
“Then who…”
“You know of my brother’s superior abilities in ratiocination. You will have noticed as well that he is unfailingly precise and deliberate in speech, as loath to waste words as physical effort.”
“I had remarked it,” I agreed.
“And in this instance he has preceded me, perhaps even before he encountered you in your own person during the affair of the club-footed cryptographer.”
“On what, then, could he base his deductions?”
“He has means at his disposal for gathering intelligence, in their way superior to those available to any other of us His Majesty’s subjects. But in the event I believe he drew primarily from the bare announcement, as I dined with him at his club, soon after you and I met, that I would share these modest lodgings. It was enough for him to perceive a human manqué.”
“I fail to see any connection, unless you provided the most minute observations…”
“I gave him none beyond your profession,” said Pons. “No, it was his familiarity with my own peculiar habits that prompted him to make a remark I took at the time for one of his rare japes at my expense.”
“What did he say, if I may enquire directly?”
“Only that sharing quarters with me surely demanded inhuman toleration. To my shame, I dismissed his peculiar choice words until other facts obtruded themselves. So well have I deserved Goethe’s reproach: “… Was vor den Augen dir liegt."
“My own pride also is not a little wounded,” I countered. “Much as I have come to admire the powers displayed by you and your brother, I have had, as I may now freely confess, some fourteen of your centuries to perfect my imposture. I dared to consider my secret impenetrable to casual observation. It is hard to find so long a labor proved vain.”
“Never reproach yourself, dear fellow; you are betrayed by no gross dereliction,” Pons assured. “But hold, it must be a matter of urgency for someone of obvious position to break the sabbath in this weather for a visit to Praed Street.”
I could easily follow his reasoning, hearing the smooth, mechanical hum of a well-maintained motorcar stop at the curb, followed by the unmistakable snow-muffled step of a chauffeur exiting to open the opposite rear door for his passenger.
“I wonder who it could be,” I remarked. “We have had no notice of a client.”
That mystery, at least, resolved itself even before Mrs. Johnson’s discreet knock to announce our visitor, for upon hearing the tread on our stair, Pons’ eyebrow had shot up in surprised recognition.
“Well, well, it seems our words have conjured the man himself,” he said, an impish smile twitching at the corner of his mouth.
I was thus somewhat prepared when the imposing form of Bancroft Pons appeared in our doorway, for only the second time during my residency. The normally languid features of my companion’s older brother bore a distinctly grim cast as he stepped forward, and we saw that he carried a plainly wrapped parcel the size of a massive tome. Directly the door closed behind him, and to our mutual surprise, Bancroft ignored his relative and set the parcel on the desk beside me.
Removing the wrapping, he said simply, “Dr. Parker, I believe this is yours.”
At his slight, encouraging gesture, I removed the wrapping paper to discover an ordinary pasteboard carton such as might contain folded shirts new from the tailor. Opening this and brushing aside a cushioning layer of wood shavings discovered a squarish object wrapped in muslin. With quickening beats in both hearts, I peeled away the fabric.
My gasp of astonishment, although physically simulated, was nonetheless entirely sincere, for despite a lapse of more than 400 years since it last lay in my hands, I recognized my property immediately.
Episode 2
Bearding the Dragon
The cover of the book was some later addition not of my making, but there could be no mistaking the pages themselves, wrought over months with the single-minded, loving care of a lonely exile. The bouquet of aged vellum wafted from the book to pierce through the centuries, and I found myself transported in an instant to Milano at the glorious height of that city’s fame.
Having satisfied himself as to my reaction, Bancroft availed himself of his brother’s preferred armchair, drawing it closer to the fire before settling his considerable bulk upon it.
“I see it has some sentimental value,” he remarked.
It was in 1492 that I sought the aid of the pre-eminent man of science and invention then known. How well he understood my plight! Alas, he offered no hope but in patience, patience while this Earth-bound race improved its art at a pace commensurate with its own understanding.
Having delivered his unwelcome judgment, the famous polymath offered at least this comfort: I might set down all that I could of the world I had left, and share the knowledge with him. This I did, in my own language, remaining eight months under his roof, writing and illustrating the history of my world and its people, and assisting the master at his dissections. Thus I discovered a penchant for human anatomy and healing, which became both a calling and a way to make the long years bearable.
And so I waited more than four centuries to the present day. My hope of returning home began to revive in recent decades, as I watched unmistakable signs that the people of this planet might soon learn how to leave it, if only they could contrive to survive their own growing numbers and destructive power.
Some of this history I communicated to the brothers, adding that ordinary bandits had relieved me of the book, as well as other valuables, on my journey north through the Dolomites.
“How did you come by this?” I asked, unfolding a leaf on which I had endeavoured to represent some astronomical observations.
“It arrived by special courier an hour since.”
“The two Americans awaiting us in your car,” Pons said.
“Just so,” Bancroft responded. “They had it from a wealthy New Yorker, some manner of amateur antiquarian, I collect.”
Seeing my look of inquiry, Pons deigned to explain his deduction.
“Surely, you noted the impression upon Bancroft’s left boot from a walking stick, a sword-cane, I rather fancy, carried by a man of letters, a lawyer perhaps.
“Pons, this is too much,” I cried.
“Not at all. Who but an intellectual could plausibly effect a walking stick in this age, and how would such a man justify it but with a weapon, particularly if he were employed on secret and possibly dangerous errands?”
“What of the other, then?” I asked.
“The red-haired chemist with broad shoulders? My brother is not a small man, but even so, the bench in the car he habitually uses would suffice for two additional passengers of average proportions. Yet they were so pressed together that a gentleman was obliged to importune upon his neighbor’s footwear.
“When three people share the back seat of an automobile, the smallest of them invariably takes the center place; the youngest child, the lady of the party, and so on. The other man, then, was the larger, notably in the shoulders to so discommode his companion’s arms. The odors of iodine, ammonium nitrate and sulfur, distinct enough even for my diminished senses to make out clinging to Bancroft’s coat, proclaim the chemist, while the long hair on his sleeve betrays the man’s complexion. His dapper companion would hardly suffer his own coif to reach such a state.”
“And how do you make that they are American?”
“You hold the evidence in your hand,” said Pons.
“Surely not from my book!”
“The box, dear fellow, the box! On it we read ‘H.M. Copland, N.Y.,’ most probably the name of a department store in New York, the box being convenient to hand for packing the book. Even the shavings with which you have decorated our carpet are an American product known by the rather grandiose name ‘Excelsior.’”
“Pray do not be tedious, Solar,” Bancroft said testily. “Time does not serve us, and you have a call to make before setting off for the Continent.”
“What, today?” I asked.
“You must both be in Paris before nightfall,” Bancroft said. “My office will see to your locum tenens, Doctor, but you will oblige me by packing your bag directly. You need take only the most essential items, but some portable weaponry will not come amiss. I will just telephone for a cab as you begin.”
This he did while Pons and I retrieved the bags we both habitually kept ready from our respective bedchambers, to which I added my service revolver and Pons his Webley & Scott.
Returning to the sitting room, Pons desired his brother to explain our task.
“For, as you say, we should not like to keep General Brooks and Colonel Mayfair waiting.”
“Please, Solar, even here we must exercise discretion!”
“Very well. Then their principal…?”
“Awaits in Limehouse. He will accompany you as long as needed for a resolution of the case.”
“And what is the case? Beyond the obvious international scope of an impending crisis and the potentially unearthly nature of the danger?” Pons prompted.
“There is little enough, in all conscience, but much can be inferred,” Bancroft answered. “I and others have detected unmistakable signs of a cabal originating from the ruins of the late German Empire, men bent on restoring it in the most monstrously brutal form imaginable. I need not add that such a project, even in failure, can have no good effect on Europe.”
“I take it you have learned something that changed their ambition from mere vaporings.”
“I have no patience with this occult humbug, Solar, but there is no shortage of credulous villains, some of them better provided with cunning and money than with decency. We have detected a change in the movements of certain key figures, and indications that they have created a weapon of unimagined destructive power somewhere in Asia, and mean to use it within the month.
“These are dangerous waters, Solar, perhaps more so than you have ever encountered. You will have some help, but I dare not call openly on the resources of the War Office.”
“Then who?”
“You will apply directly to the proprietor of Sam Lee Imports within the hour. He possesses intelligence essential to ultimately defeating the threat, but he has refused to share it for any amount of money.”
“What arguments did you make?” Pons asked.
“We have tried the survival of the world he hopes to subjugate, but that consideration left him unmoved.”
“What then are we to offer as inducement for his cooperation?” I asked.
“Obviously, the volume in your hand,” Pons said.
“Say, rather, the volume and its author,” Bancroft corrected. “For the former is of little use without the latter to make clear its meaning.”
“Of what use can it be to him?” I objected. “It tells of nothing he may hope to find on Earth, nor anything I could not tell directly, since it came from my hand.”
“The Si Fan must tell you that himself,” Bancroft answered. “Do as he asks. Then, armed with the information he gives you, find the agent in Paris who will tell you where to pick up the trail. It will be best if the particulars do not find their way back to Whitehall.”
“Then the game is truly afoot and we will delay no longer.”
“Should we not disguise ourselves as before?” I asked, remembering our previous encounter with the ageless mandarin.
“Come, come, Parker! A stratagem that failed us so signally before hardly deserves repetition,” Pons chided. “The situation calls for the direct approach.”
“You may well be expected,” Bancroft said. “My presence in London is essential, so I cannot accompany you. The Americans and I will leave here by cab, and you will have the car for the journey to Limehouse. My driver will take you to Croydon directly your business there is finished.”
Donning our coats and hats, the three of us left the flat and descended the stairs, the precious book in its muslin wrapping safe in my innocuous travel kit. I had time to give only the briefest instructions to Mrs. Johnson, but mindful of the need for discretion, I said nothing of an intended return date. Indeed, I could hardly have done so, being then in complete ignorance on that point myself.
In front of 7B we made the exchange, the men Pons had described so exactly emerging from Bancroft’s Bentley to enter the waiting cab with their host, while Pons and I took their places.
And so, despite the uncounted monstrous deeds that could be laid at his door, we set out to win the cooperation of the most infamous criminal on two continents. Dread at the encounter occupied my thoughts as we descended toward the Thames, unrelieved by the cheerless sight of streets empty even of churchgoers in the vile, grey snow that had brought me secret contentment one hour earlier.
Pons sat slouched in his wonted posture, tugging at his earlobe as he pondered the task before us, and so we rode in silence until the driver halted before a nondescript warehouse and the familiar sign proclaiming a fictitious merchant. We had taken but a few steps toward the worn and unwelcoming red door when Pons put an arm before me and halted, a finger to his lips. His quick eyes interrogated the empty street before motioning me to continue.
At the door Pons halted again, this time staying my arm as I reached for the electric bell. With a jerk of his chin he bade me look to my left.
Bancroft Pons, when he deigned to stand, had a head’s advantage over most men, yet the giant who had appeared silently at my side would have towered over even him. And where Bancroft’s stillness spoke of indolence, this man’s easy poise resembled that of a stalking tiger, ready to dispatch its prey with irresistible force at any instant.
The giant wore a gray trench coat, but his head was bare. His curiously gold-flecked eyes stood out in our colourless surroundings, answering my companion’s gaze with equal calm.
“Well, Doctor. Shall we go in?” Pons offered.
But he was not addressing me.
Episode 3
Elements Unknown
As Bancroft surmised, we were expected. The door opened to reveal a small, diffident man in the immaculate cotton tunic of a Chinese servant, who looked up in astonishment at seeing the American towering over us all. Behind the servant, two massive dacoits waited expressionless, armed with curving blades in their waist sashes. Behind them, the narrow corridor disappeared into darkness.
“Mr. Pons? My master awaits,” the smaller man said bowing deeply from the waist.
There being too little width to permit any other arrangement, we followed in a queue as the dacoits penetrated some distance into the building, although we passed no visible openings along the way. They reached a door whose edges betrayed a cold glimmer of gaslight. This the leader opened and stepped through, waiting as we filed onto a broad landing at the head of a staircase, the same that I had trod not a few times in nightmares. We made our way down past another intermediate landing, into a world where daylight became a mere memory.
Our descent ended at a wider corridor where the close air carried moans of despair from cells to either side. Pons visibly stiffened at the evidence of horrors, while the implacable American emitted a brief, ominous trilling sound from between tightened jaws.
An antechamber and another inconspicuous door at last brought us into the richly decorated salon where the master waited, ensconced on a gilt throne amid wraiths of jasmine-scented smoke. The slightest flick of his left hand revealed a fearsome talon, dismissing the dacoits.
“Welcome, gentlemen,” he said in his polite, flawless enunciation, utterly devoid of sincerity. “Li Po, bring tea.”
The mandarin only smiled slightly as we visitors declined the proffered chairs and porcelain cups.
“Very well,” he said, dismissing his man. “I see you have brought the book. Be so good as to open it upon the table.”
At Pons’s cautious nod, I took a step forward drawing the book from my bag and set it on an ornate stand whose small, glossy surface disappeared under the open volume.
“This can be of no use to you,” I said.
“Perhaps you will allow me to make that judgement. Please read from the text before us.”
The open page happened to contain a minute description of a common leafy vegetable unique to my home. I read some few sentences to the impassive listeners, none of whom could make the least pretense at understanding the words.
“Thank you, Doctor,” said our host. “You will oblige me by translating what you have read. It may surprise you to know that I have the means of verifying your accuracy.”
With an offended glance at the evil genius, I commenced to render the words into English. This seemed to satisfy him, and he bowed his head in acknowledgement.
“What will you do with the book?” I demanded.
“I have no interest in your nostalgic scribblings, Dr. Parker. It has served only to confirm my surmise as to your origin.”
He said this without particular malice; only a cold, calculating view toward his chosen ends.
“I know now I was not mistaken. You can now do me a valuable service.”
“I will not further any criminal enterprise, no matter the personal cost.”
“Criminal? I see you have adopted this country’s arrogant, parochial morality, as well as its barbaric manners,” he taunted. “In any case, I do not ask you to betray England’s king or its sentimental laws.”
Another gesture of his grotesquely elongated nail brought the servant forward, bearing a flat lacquered box, which he presented to me with an obsequious bow.
“Please examine the document within.”
Lifting the lid I found a commonplace vade mecum such as any schoolboy might possess.
“German,” remarked Pons softly, noting the manufacture.
The cover bore no inscription, and opening to the first page revealed a text written in now-faded pencil using an inelegant but perfectly regular continental hand. But the words conveyed nothing to me.
“What does this mean?” I asked, handing the book to Pons. “I can make nothing of it.”
“It is not, as one should say, a natural language,” Pons said after a cursory examination, turning over the first few leaves. “Yet its meaning is clear enough.”
He handed it to our new friend, who nodded in agreement.
“It is written in Alteutonic, a linguistic conceit that proposes to unite the various Germanic peoples,” the detective explained. “It is a poor relation of the Esperanto, lacking any serious following. The text appears to be a manifesto espousing a radical view of that race’s destiny.”
“I can assure you gentleman that I do not share the opinions of the raving madman who wrote them,” said the mandarin in a conciliatory tone. “Only the latter pages interest me. If you would, I have marked the relevant places.”
I took back the notebook and turned to the first of several places distinguished by a silken red threads close to the binding. And there I found a partial explanation for our bewildering exercise: a score of pages covered in words belonging to no Earthly tongue, familiar enough to me, though I had never seen them before.
“Who has written this?” I asked, having recovered from my momentary astonishment.
The enthroned one permitted himself the hint of a smile and said, “I see I have surprised you. Yes, there is another of your kind among us. Precisely where, I do not know, but I will set you on the correct path in due course. Now, you will translate the words before you. A simple verbal report will do.”
Surmising the presence on an amanuensis concealed behind a curtain, I did his bidding. It was a matter of half an hour to expound the content, a brief description of certain chemical processes known on my world, but not to be found or easily reproduced in the relatively dense, oxygen-rich atmosphere of a planet so near its sun. I gave an honest account, noting with some concern that the particular compound described, if actually produced and administered, would have a radical effect on a normal human constitution.
“With this I consider your part of the bargain fulfilled. I may add that I have another source for what I seek,” the ruthless scholar said, “but I choose not to trust the information obtained directly from that source, as you will shortly appreciate. If you would consult the following section …”
I turned past another lengthy section written in the anomalous Germanic to a next page marked by a thread. What I found set a cap to the series of astounding revelations that day, for there was a plan for a machine used by my people to render useable heat from the interstitial matter of space itself. Yet the device as described included modifications whose precise purpose escaped me until I had examined the instructions more closely. This exercise only increased my horror.
“The machine described here, it must never be used on Earth,” I said. “Such an attempt in this atmosphere must surely incinerate the entire surface!”
“So I had surmised. Yet the writer and his associates believe they can so direct its force as to make a weapon which no power known could deflect. The inevitable catastrophe does not serve my purpose.”
“We will stop them,” the American rumbled.
“Quite,” said Pons. “What assistance can you offer?”
The ubiquitous servant reappeared with yet another box, this time a small, crude, unpainted object presented to Pons with both hands and another bow. It contained a man’s ring, as of some fraternal order, bearing a curious device of a circle inscribed with a cross whose four limbs bent at the ends to follow the circle.
Pons again passed the ring to the American.
“The Thulians? This is all?” the giant said accusingly. “Their hand in this was already obvious.”
“No doubt, but I can give you more. It is no less than the name of the land where you can find their secret base. Even I cannot tell how to find it exactly, or to penetrate so far once located. You may attempt it at your hazard, aided by others with more precise information.”
The servant yet again, this time with a simple folded piece of paper offered to Pons. He unfolded it, read the contents at a glance, nodded, and handed the paper back.
“Li Po will see you out,” said the villain, gesturing with a talon-like finger.
“Very well,” Pons said. “We will consider our terms satisfied. Parker, you may retrieve your manuscript. Come, gentlemen, let us leave this place.”
The servant preceded us to the door, which he opened to reveal our waiting dacoits, seemingly unmoved since we last saw them. I gathered the precious book, leaving the Germanic abomination in its place, and joined my companions.
At the door, the American turned and fixed the villain with a look of quiet menace.
“Shih nien mo i chien, chin jih pa shih chün,” he said.
The mandarin’s icy laughter echoed after us far into the corridor.
Outside the counterfeit warehouse, even the dull, steely gray of a London winter afternoon came as a release from Hell. The outer door having shut behind us, we all three stood for a moment breathing the air of freedom. We then rejoined Bancroft’s patient driver, whose front bench I was obliged to share due to the towering American’s size.
Once settled in their places, the detective spoke to his neighbor.
“I much regret I do not possess the Chinese, Doctor. May I know the meaning of the words you addressed to that vile monster?”
As the motorcar began its way toward our next rendezvous at the aerodrome, our friend gazed thoughtfully through the window for a moment before replying.
“Poetry, Mr. Pons, just poetry.”
Pons appeared satisfied with that answer and asked for no more particular translation.
I needed none, having heard the words from the author’s lips a thousand years hence:
A decade long have I honed this sword;
Behold, it is ready for you!
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