“How dare you, Sir!” came a voice from inside, deep and loud, the sort of voice a boulder might possess if given speech. “Nobody dismisses the work of George Edward Challenger and leaves the room with his teeth still in his mouth!” The man was a giant. Never had I seen a man with a head so damnably large! If he kept it full he must be a clever man indeed. The rest of his body was built to carry such an intimidating skull, huge and muscular, with a paunch that showed his appetite was as big as the rest of him.
“Don’t be a barbarian!” cried a high-pitched voice from the shadows beneath a desk. The giant’s opponent was his opposite in almost every way. Though not particularly short he was wiry and spare, with gangly limbs that looked worryingly snappable when seen within a few feet of Challenger’s massive hands. The man’s small, pink face peered out, myopic eyes squinting through thick spectacles, a moustache twitching in fright like the whiskers of a dormouse. “I was merely theorising!”
“Theorising?” Challenger climbed atop another desk, holding his arms up in the air like a gorilla championing its right to be dominant male. “What a lily-livered little flea you are, Cavor! Stand up for yourself like a man.”
“I’d rather not,” the man cried, “for if I do you’ll most certainly bash my head in!”
“Gentlemen!” cried a third man, coming out from behind the cover of one of the bookshelves. This man was not dissimilar to Cavor, though considerably older and more dishevelled. He wore fingerless gloves and his pince-nez were as crooked as his colourful bow tie. “We really don’t have time for these sorts of childish shenanigans. I have left my work at a critical stage in order to attend this meeting and I think the least the rest of you could do would be to keep matters brief and to the point.”
“Work?” scoffed a fourth voice. This next man was more urbane in appearance, though his red cheeks and clenched fists suggested he had a temper as quick to flare as Challenger’s. Given his advanced years, one couldn’t in all conscience encourage anger in him. He was eighty if he was a day, and as frail as one would expect of someone that age. “You’re an idiot, Perry, and little more than an engineer. Why we indulge your presence at these meetings I’ll never know!”
“Engineer?” Perry raised his wool-wrapped fists and adopted a pugilistic stance. “How dare you! At least my work has a practical application! The Perry Thumping Jenny! The Perry Force Wand! The Perry Hound Vaccination Pipe! What have you got to show for yourself, eh Lindenbrook?”
“I have travelled to the very centre of the Earth!” Lindenbrook countered.
“So you say,” Perry replied. “But where’s the evidence, eh? You impressed those fools in Hamburg, but you don’t impress me!”
“Please, Sirs.” The caretaker stepped into the middle of the room and raised his hands in a placatory fashion. “Your first guests have arrived and the Reading Room is hardly the place for fisticuffs. With all respect to your combined intelligence, you stand to damage countless centuries of learning with every blow.”
“Aye,” said Challenger, looking over to Holmes and I, “well, perhaps we can continue our discussion later, Cavor. It would hardly be seemly to brawl in front of our illustrious guests.”
The small man stayed under the table. He was muttering to himself and running his finger through the dust on the floor. Challenger shook his head in despair and made his way over to us. “Ignore Mr Cavor. He is often stricken by a sudden need to indulge in formulae. He’ll always have his head in the clouds.”
“Surely that would make it lighter than air?” the aforementioned Cavor asked, seemingly of nobody in particular.
“My name is George Edward Challenger,” Challenger announced, grasping each of us firmly by the hand. “Leading anthropologist and one of the finest scientific minds of our age.”
“We’re lucky to make your acquaintance,” I replied, with a hint of humour.
“Indeed you are,” he replied, with none of that humour returned. “Allow me to introduce my colleagues.” He gestured towards Lindenbrook. “This is Professor Lindenbrook, specialises in antiquarian study, cryptology and geology. You may be familiar with his name from a story published thirty odd years ago. He claimed to have visited the centre of the Earth with his nephew.”
Holmes raised his eyebrow.
“No? Says he saw prehistoric creatures there,” Challenger continued.
“I feel sure I would recall such a tale,” Holmes replied, in a manner that was surprisingly polite.
“You would, wouldn’t you?” Challenger replied with a smile. “But then, despite an initial flurry of interest in Hamburg—the most naive city in the world it would seem—the scientific journals have not seen fit to trouble the professor for more information.”
“Arrogant ape,” Lindenbrook spluttered. “I know what I saw! I will not be mocked in this manner!”
Challenger simply smiled and grabbed the man in his thick arms. “Oh hush, Professor! We don’t think you’re mad really.” He winked at us over the old man’s shoulder. “It’s a shame you don’t have the forcefulness of George Edward Challenger. I can assure you, if I’d seen the things you claim to have done then the world would be my oyster!”
“Insufferable man,” Lindenbrook replied, trying to release himself from what was not so much an embrace as a wrestling manoeuvre.
“Abner Perry,” announced the scruffy man, extending his woollen-clad hands to Holmes and I in turn, “inventor, logician and dreamer.” He gave a little laugh and grasped his lapels, which promptly ejected twin plumes of dust.
“Jumped-up blacksmith!” Lindenbrook insisted, finally breaking free of Challenger’s grip.
Perry chose not to rise to the bait this time, but simply removed a small metal canister from his pocket. “You are familiar no doubt with the Perry Canine Remonstration Pod?” He raised it to his lips and blew into it. “Somewhere a dog is very sorry for being so boisterous. If only it worked on professors.”
He took out a long piece of pipe and extended it, a telescopic midsection stretching to several feet. “Or the Perry Dust Vaporisation Baton? It requires an acid jar by way of a power source, but fries dust in hard-to-reach places. It smells like the final circle of Hell, but I find it stops the housekeeper from offering her notice quite so often.”
A small glass bottle followed. He uncorked it, took a sip and replaced it in his jacket pocket.
“And that?” I asked. “The Perry Effervescent Tonic?”
“In a way,” he replied. “My doctor insists I take it to keep me regular. I suffer from a nervous bowel.”
“And finally,” Challenger interrupted, “we have Mr Cavor, the thin wastrel you saw me remonstrating with when you came in. He’s a physicist and shortly to be owner of a broken neck unless he watches his tongue around me.”
“The issue of gravity should be a small one,” muttered Cavor, still under the desk, “if only the correct ratio could be maintained.”
“Come out, Cavor!” bellowed Challenger, kicking at the leg of the table and knocking the physicist out of his daydream. “We have company.”
“Oh yes!” said Cavor. “Company—yes.” He stepped out and walked up to us. I was somewhat startled to realise he was considerably younger than I had assumed. Perhaps no more than thirty. His thick moustache, light hair and manner had led me to assume him much older. “Company,” he said again, looking at us both. “I’m sorry, do I know you?”
“Dr John Watson,” I said, extending my hand, “and this is my colleague Sherlock Holmes.”
He shook my hand. “I don’t think I do,” he said. “I’d remember a name like Sherlock, certainly. Is it about the rent?”