“Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen,” he was saying as two flunkeys placed a small podium in front of him, so that he could lean at his ease while addressing his guests. “My name is John Moxton and for my sins I run this little news sheet some of you may be familiar with.”
Here he held up a newspaper that had been lying on the podium. There was a ripple of polite laughter from his guests. I had seen his ‘little news sheet’ before, of course, on the vendors’ stands as I went about my business but it had never crossed my mind to purchase it. My Daily Chronicle kept me abreast of the world’s woes and, if I needed further bad news, the Evening Standard would inform me of the further damage our four legged friends were inflicting on my Army pension. This was the first occasion I had had to actually study it and I have to say, my instinctive fears were justified.
It didn’t even look like a real newspaper. The thing was almost square and the banner The Clarion was certainly aptly named for, together with its symbol of a hand raised to an open mouth, it seemed to take up an inordinate amount of the front page. Below it was an even larger headline — CAN BRITANNIA RULE? — and a rather unflattering portrait of Her Majesty. The whole thing, to my mind, was in distinctly questionable taste and I was about to say so to Holmes when Moxton continued …
“In the two short years of our existence I think I can say we have made ourselves noticed …”
He smiled to show that he meant the remark humorously and there was another ripple of laughter around the tent.
“You’ll notice I didn’t say liked?” A louder ripple.
“Our clarion call — or should I say, our Clarion call is — ‘Let Truth Be Heard!’ And Truth, I’m afraid, is not always either pretty or popular. Either way, the people have the right to know it. But don’t let me get carried away on my favourite topic on such a festive occasion …”
As he smiled again, you could feel his audience responding to him and I was reminded of a favourite preacher with his congregation. This man had the makings of a demagogue.
“Today we are here — and thank you to all of you for taking the time out of your busy lives. I think I even see the faces of some of our friendly Fleet Street competitors, do I not? As I say, today we are here to try and tease one of her secrets out of Mother Nature.”
Here he indicated with a sweep of his arm the expanse of water behind him. As if on cue the mist had started to lift and now we could see that the loch seemed to stretch to infinity. The late afternoon light played tricks with perspective and the ripples on the surface were hypnotic if you looked at them long enough. It was only then that the truth struck me.
“Of course!” I muttered before Holmes nudged me into silence. Now I knew where we were. In my haste to get here I had taken the train to Inverness and then the pony and trap to the inn Holmes had specified, all without studying the map. The loch I had been fishing in to so little effect these last few days was …
“Loch Ness,” Moxton continued “has been the stuff of legend since the fifteenth century. The locals swear by The Great Beastie, the rest of the world has always been in more than two minds. Is it a legend of the Scots — or has it more to do with the Scotch?” Here he waited for and received the laughter he anticipated.
“Today The Clarion says ‘Let Truth Be Heard’—and I’ve invited you all here to hear and see that truth, if truth it be. Is there indeed a Loch Ness Monster?”
He paused to let the murmur of speculation echo around the room, rather like the small waves from the loch on the nearby shore. I whispered to Holmes — “Surely the fellow hasn’t brought all these people up here on an off chance? After all, there have only been a handful of so-called sightings in donkey’s years …”
“This fellow, as you call him, does nothing by chance, old fellow. Be patient.”
Having given his audience long enough to absorb his announcement, Moxton consulted a large gold fob watch.
“Five o’clock, as near as makes no difference, and my local friends tell me that this is Nessie’s feeding time and that this particular spot in the loch is where most of the sightings have taken place in recent years. Now, some of you are probably saying to yourselves — ‘What makes this American madman think that the Beast — should there be a beast — will conveniently appear to suit our convenience?’ A good question — to which I believe we have a good answer.”
He indicated a dark complexioned middle-aged man at the front of the crowd, who looked as though he might have been more at home in the boxing ring. “Professor James here hails from the Oceanographic Institute in Boston, where they have been conducting some mighty interesting experiments with the use of sonar equipment in the tracking of shoals of fish. With The Clarion’s help”—and here he made the universal sign for money with the thumb and forefinger, which drew the expected laughter — “he has adapted that equipment in a way that we hope will engage the attention of our legendary friend.”
By now the tension in the room was palpable. Even the other journalists Moxton had pointed out had dropped their pretence of being blasé. The man had all of us eating out of his hand. All of us, I should say, except one. As I turned to address my friend, I saw an expression on his face such as I have rarely observed. His eyes were blazing and the object of his gaze — John Moxton — seemed to pick up some sort of vibration, for he appeared momentarily uncomfortable and, I could almost swear, restrained himself from returning Holmes’s stare. Instead, he turned to Professor James.
“Are you ready, Professor? Shall we …?”
By now two of James’s white-coated assistants had carried out a large metal box and set it up on a table where we could all see it. It had a variety of knobs and dials and several lengths of metal cable leading down into the water. James made a series of adjustments and then turned to nod to Moxton.
“Very well, then, ladies and gentlemen — supper time!”
On cue James threw a red switch and all eyes turned to the loch. You could hear the silence from the indrawn breath. And then — nothing. Moxton, it must be confessed, seemed to thrive on the heightened tension.
“Increase the voltage,” he ordered and then, turning back to as rapt an audience as I have seen outside a theatre — “I should explain the principle of our little experiment The professor’s machine is linked to a series of cells submerged in the loch at various depths and distances. The electric current sets off underwater vibrations inaudible to human ears but which we believe will be — shall we say — disconcerting to any aquatic species such as our friend, Nessie. By way of relief it is conjectured that the ‘monster’ will seek the surface, however briefly. Professor, if we may …”
This time James threw two switches, the red one and a green one. There was a silence in which the proverbial pin would have sounded like an avalanche and then …
“There! What’s that?” There was the high-pitched squeal from an elderly lady to my left who looked as though she had never raised her voice higher than to ask for a second cup of tea. And then I swear the hair on the back of my neck rose, as I heard a sound more frightening than any that had reached my ears since that damned Dartmoor hound. It was low and reverberating and seemed to contain within it the pain of the world.
I could feel my own emotions echo around the makeshift room. And then out of the loch — perhaps two hundred yards away in the fading light — something rose from the water and was gone again.
Holmes is fond of telling me that I see but I do not observe but that image was burned into my brain right enough. It was dark, a sort of greyish black, and appeared scaly and shiny with the water running off it. Before I had time to do more than grip my friend by the arm, it appeared again a few yards further away. Or was that a second hump? The whole episode was over so quickly it was impossible to tell.