I have said that the man in the picture stood within its background. No longer. Looking directly at Sherlock Holmes, the silent image of James Phillimore strode boldly to the foreground of the image. With a brief sidelong glance before resuming his gaze in Holmes's direction, he traversed West Fifty-Eighth Street, stepped onto the kerb of the near side, and placed his well-shod feet firmly atop the pavement whilst he raised his umbrella, and pointed it squarely at Holmes. Now I too leaped out of my chair.
The other simulacra within the Vitascope screen took no notice of James Phillimore, but continued their own exits and entrances at both sides of the rectangular image. At the centre of the screen, the left hand of James Phillimore silently aimed his umbrella into the audience: directly towards the head of Sherlock Holmes. At the same time, Phillimore raised his right hand to his brow in a sardonic salute.
At that instant, James Phillimore vanished!
There was no question of a trap-door beneath him. With my own eyes, I had seen Mr James Phillimore disappear into thin air. On the Vitascope screen, the people and conveyances of West Fifty-Eighth Street maintained their kinetographic cavalcade, utterly oblivious to the fact that a man had vanished from their midst.
"Quickly, Watson!" In a trice, Sherlock Holmes bounded into the theatre's gangway and made a dash for the nearest exit. And once again, as so often in the past, I found myself following at his heels, in pursuit of our quarry.
"James Phillimore is in Manhattan, Watson, for that kinetograph was photographed today!" Holmes declared as we pelted through the lobby of the Edisonia Amusement Hall. "I have promised the officers of the Continental Insurance Company that I shall be aboard tomorrow's train to San Francisco, and I am honour-bound to keep that pledge. Therefore we have a trifle less than sixteen hours in which to find a man who has eluded me for thirty-one years. Watson, come! The game is afoot!"
We raced out of the theatre, emerging into Broadway. My friend made haste to flag down a passing hansom. Holmes instructed the cabman to convey us to Broadway and Fifty-Eighth, the scene of Phillimore's latest disappearance. The cabman whisked up his reins, and a moment later the pursuit of Phillimore had begun.
"There must be some mistake, surely," I said to my companion, as we settled into the seat and our hansom proceeded northwards through difficult traffic. "How can you be certain that the Vitascope we saw was photographed today?"
"It was obvious, Watson. You saw the newsboy in the image? The caption scrawled across his hoardings duplicated the headline in today's New York Herald."
I still was utterly astounded at having seen a man vanish. "But are you certain that the man on the screen was really James Phillimore? We are in Manhattan, Holmes: perhaps this fellow was an American who bears a chance resemblance to Phillimore."
Sherlock Holmes shook his head. He had withdrawn a jotting-book from his pocket, and was busily sketching within this as
he spoke. "Depend upon it, Watson: that man on the Vitascope screen was an Englishman."
"How can you be certain, Holmes?"
"No man can hide his heritage, Watson. I can tell an American from an Englishman by the arrangement of his boot-laces: the man we saw just now was British… or else he has an English valet to tie his shoes for him. And did you observe the salute that Phillimore gave as he vanished?" Holmes duplicated it now – cocking his right elbow, Holmes's hand went to his forehead: the upper edges of his finger-tips went flat against his brow, whilst his thumb pointed downwards. "That is how a soldier in the British army salutes… as you know full well from your own campaign in Afghanistan." Now Holmes saluted again; once more the hand went to his brow, but this time his fingers were parallel to the ground, and his thumb pointed rearwards. "This is the American military salute, Watson: it is also the salute of our own Royal Navy. When I investigated Phillimore's background in 1875, I found no record of military service.Yet he must have been a boy once, and boys play at being soldiers. They learn their drill from observing real soldiers, and copying them."
Holmes was right: the man in the Vitascope had displayed a British salute.
"Furthermore," Holmes went on, sketching furiously in his jotter as our cab progressed, "did you remark, Watson, that the man on the screen briefly glanced to one side?"
"Of course." I nodded. "As he stepped off the kerb into the road, he glanced sideways to see if there was oncoming traffic."
"Quite so, Watson. But he glanced to the right. That is as we do in England. In American roads, and European ones, a pedestrian glances first to the left. An Englishman acquires the foreign habit when he has spent some time outside our Empire. But the man on the screen, Watson, turned the wrong way: he is accustomed to British thoroughfares, and has only recently arrived in the United States."
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 Mélies? 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."