"Vonda N. McIntyre - The Adventure of the Field Theorems" - читать интересную книгу автора (McIntyre Vonda N)

Holmes had clipped and filed the articles, and painstakingly redrawn the figures. He suspected that if
the patterns were the consequence of a natural force, some common element could be derived from a
comparison of the designs.
One morning, I had come into the sitting room to find him surrounded by crumpled paper. The acrid
bite of smoke thickened the air, and the Persian slipper in which Holmes kept his shag lay overturned on
the mantel among the last few scattered shreds of tobacco.
"I have it, Watson!" Holmes had waved a drawing, annotated in his hand. "I believe this to be the basic
pattern, from which all other field theorems are derived!"
His brother, Mycroft, speedily dismantled his proof, and took him to task for failing to complete
several lemmas associated with the problem. Holmes, chagrined to have made such an elementary (to
Holmes), and uncharacteristic, mistake, appeared to lose interest in the field theorems. But it was clear
from his comments to Sir Arthur that they had never completely vanished from his attention.
***


After packing quickly, Holmes and I accompanied Sir Arthur to the station, where we boarded the
train to Undershaw, his estate in Hindhead, Surrey.
"Tell me, Sir Arthur," Holmes said, as our train moved swiftly across the green and gold late-summer
countryside, "how came you to be involved in this investigation?"
I wondered if Holmes were put out. The mystery had begun in early summer. Here it was nearly
harvest time before anyone called for the world's only consulting detective.
"It is my tenants who have been most troubled by the phenomenon," said Sir Arthur, recovered from
his earlier shock. "Fascinating as the field theorems may be, they do damage the crops. And I feel
responsible for what has happened. I cannot have my tenants lose their livelihoods because of my
actions."
"So you feel the vandalism is directed at you," said I. Sir Arthur had involved himself in several criminal
cases, generally on the side of a suspect he felt to be innocent. His efforts differed from those of Holmes
in that Holmes never ended his cases with ill-advised legal wrangles. No doubt one of Sir Arthur's less
grateful supplicants was venting his rage against some imagined slight.
"Vandalism?" Sir Arthur said. "No, this is far more important, more complex, than vandalism. It's
obvious that someone is trying to contact me from the other side."
"The other side?" I asked. "Of Surrey? Surely it would be easier to use the post."
Sir Arthur leaned toward me, serious and intense. "Not the other side of the country. The other side
of... life and death."
Holmes barked with laughter. I sighed quietly. Intelligent and accomplished as my friend is, he
occasionally overlooks proprieties. Holmes will always choose truth over politeness.
"You believe," Holmes said to Sir Arthur, "that a seance brought about these field theorems? The
crushed crops are the country equivalent of ectoplasm and levitating silver trumpets?"
The scorn in Holmes's voice was plain, but Sir Arthur replied calmly. He has, of course, faced disbelief
innumerable times since his conversion to spiritualism.
"Exactly so," he said, his eyes shining with hope. "Our loved ones on the other side desire to
communicate with us. What better way to attract our attention than to offer us knowledge beyond our
reach? Knowledge that cannot be confined within an ordinary seance cabinet? We might commune with
the genius of Newton!"
"I did not realize," Holmes said, "that your family has a connection to that of Sir Isaac Newton."
"I did not intend to claim such a connection," Sir Arthur said, drawing himself stiffly upright. Holmes
could make light of his spiritual beliefs, of his perceptions, but an insult to the familial dignity fell beyond
the pale.
"Of course not!" I said hurriedly. "No one could imagine that you did."
I hoped that, for once, Holmes would not comment on the contradiction inherent in my statement.