#Victor Hatherley's immune system is god tier

[mariana-oconnor]

The Engineer's Thumb pt 3

Last we left off, Mr Victor Hatherley, hydraulic engineer and secret giant panda, was accounting how he had ignored very clear and present warnings, almost been crushed to death, had his thumb hacked off by a cleaver and very likely contracted sepsis in a ghost house.

“Here is an advertisement which will interest you,” said he. “It appeared in all the papers about a year ago. Listen to this: “‘Lost, on the 9th inst., Mr. Jeremiah Hayling, aged twenty-six, a hydraulic engineer. Left his lodgings at ten o'clock at night, and has not been heard of since.'"

RIP Mr Hayling. I hope you died quickly and not in the squishing chamber.

"It is quite clear that the colonel was a cool and desperate man,"

But is he actually a colonel? That's the real question.

There were Sherlock Holmes, the hydraulic engineer, Inspector Bradstreet, of Scotland Yard, a plain-clothes man, and myself.

Ah yes, my dear companions: Sherlock Holmes, Inspector Bradstreet, and *checks hands*... a hydraulic engineer.

How come Victor doesn't get a name here? Hey, ACD, did you forget a character's name in the middle of a story and just couldn't be bothered to look a few paragraphs upwards? I get that Ctrl+F wasn't possible back then, but these short stories aren't that long.

“And you think that they brought you back all that way when you were unconscious?”

I am 90% sure they did not touch him while he was unconscious, they just took him on the carriage in one big circle until they were right back near the station again, and he just woke up where he fell.

“Oh, we shall soon clear up all that,” said Bradstreet. “Well, I have drawn my circle, and I only wish I knew at what point upon it the folk that we are in search of are to be found.”

Right in the middle. Bet you. I mean, you're a fictional character and even if you weren't this was over a century ago. But I bet you metaphysically.

“Oh, yes, you can. This is my point.” He placed his finger in the centre of the circle. “This is where we shall find them.” “But the twelve-mile drive?” gasped Hatherley.

Knew it! Also, ACD remembered Victor's surname, excellent. Very proud of you! He's been really carefully ignoring it for the last few paragraphs, just not using dialogue tags or saying 'my patient'. Took a minute, but he got there.

“None at all,” said Holmes. “They are coiners on a large scale, and have used the machine to form the amalgam which has taken the place of silver.”

Hey, and I was right about what they were doing. Boom.

Interesting thought... did Hatherley realise this when he was poking around in the press and found the metallic deposits? Because his whole 'I'd like to talk to you about your Fuller's Earth' thing, if he knew about the forgery, sounds a little like 'Hey, how about you cut me in on this', or maybe the opening stages of some blackmailing.

But I'm maligning his character with no evidence. I just wish I knew how he thought that was going to play out. Was he dumb enough to think that nothing illegal was going on? But if he knew something illegal was going on, why call them out on it like that.

But the inspector was mistaken, for those criminals were not destined to fall into the hands of justice.

Again? Holmes has to be the least successful literary detective of all time when it comes to actually catching criminals. Was there not even a convenient shipwreck this time? Although it makes sense they wouldn't stick around when Hatherley's run off with enough information and evidence to get them caught.

As we rolled into Eyford Station we saw a gigantic column of smoke which streamed up from behind a small clump of trees in the neighbourhood and hung like an immense ostrich feather over the landscape.

So, either they're burning the evidence, or they've accidentally burnt themselves to death and that's why they didn't come after Victor - because they were too busy being on fire.

“Dr. Becher's.” “Tell me,” broke in the engineer, “is Dr. Becher a German, very thin, with a long, sharp nose?” The station-master laughed heartily. “No, sir, Dr. Becher is an Englishman..."

Becher certainly looks more like a Germanic name than an English name. Also, is this guy really a doctor? And if he's a medical doctor and he lives right next door, then why didn't the station guard last night see Hatherley's bleeding thumbless hand and say 'oh, there's a doctor just 'round the corner. You should have him take a look at that!'

I'm a little confused on the timeline, too. This is all the same day, right. They leave for Berkshire 3 hours after Mr Hatherley finishes his tale, which he tells on the same day he arrives on the train after having lost his thumb. So last night, when the building was on fire, was the night when he was first unconscious, and then sitting at the station waiting for a train. The fire should have been visible from the station if it's that close, and Hatherley didn't get on a train until the morning, so... did no one notice the fire right next door, or did they just not care?

Maybe the fire just wasn't big enough to be seen during the night, so no one outside noticed it until after Victor had left in the morning. Doesn't explain why the guard didn't suggest Victor take his missing thumb to the nearby medical professional, though.

"There can be no question that it was your oil-lamp which, when it was crushed in the press, set fire to the wooden walls, though no doubt they were too excited in the chase after you to observe it at the time."

I forgot about the oil lamp. It's doing a pretty good job of getting rid of the evidence, though.

Early that morning a peasant had met a cart containing several people and some very bulky boxes driving rapidly in the direction of Reading.

Was the word 'peasant' still used in the 1890s? Really? It's a very medieval/dark ages kind of word.

It should at least take them a while to set up again. They're going to need to build another person-squishing machine, and given that they're clearly not very good at hydraulics, I assume they have to kidnap someone to do that for them. Or maybe they just have a diagram that they can follow, but they don't know how it works. And they've left behind all the raw materials, so they'll have to get their hands on that again.

The firemen had been much perturbed at the strange arrangements which they had found within, and still more so by discovering a newly severed human thumb upon a window-sill of the second floor.

The firemen are very sensible people. Although I find it weird that the thumb survived on the windowsill, given that fire was billowing out of the windows in the description earlier.

How our hydraulic engineer had been conveyed from the garden to the spot where he recovered his senses might have remained forever a mystery were it not for the soft mould, which told us a very plain tale. He had evidently been carried down by two persons, one of whom had remarkably small feet and the other unusually large ones. On the whole, it was most probable that the silent Englishman, being less bold or less murderous than his companion, had assisted the woman to bear the unconscious man out of the way of danger.

OK, so they did move him. I was pretty sure that they just didn't find him and he was too out of it on blood loss and adrenaline to know where he'd ended up. Mainly this seems like a really stupid thing for them to do, though. Clearly they've already killed one hydraulics engineer, leaving Victor alive to run away and tell people seems kind of dumb at this point. Obviously not murdering people is the right thing to do, but in this situation it's also a dumb move. No one worked out you killed the last one... eh, what's one more?

“Well,” said our engineer ruefully as we took our seats to return once more to London, “it has been a pretty business for me! I have lost my thumb and I have lost a fifty-guinea fee, and what have I gained?” “Experience,” said Holmes, laughing. “Indirectly it may be of value, you know; you have only to put it into words to gain the reputation of being excellent company for the remainder of your existence.”

#LifeLessons #LearningExperience

Such a fun story of how he was almost crushed to death and had his thumb chopped off by violent criminals who are still at large!

Yeah, that'll get people to buy you drinks, for sure. Although as previously discussed, you probably won't be alive to enjoy them. And you're going to have to relearn how to do things with only one opposable thumb if you don't die of sepsis. But maybe next time someone tries to warn you three times to not do something, you'll actually listen. Or you can get enough XP to increase your wisdom score and not end up in a situation like this again.

I wonder how many other hydraulic engineers Fritz went on to murder. It was probably fine.

[faithful-grigori]

“#The Engineer's Thumb, #Which actually was seen again, #so I was wrong about that one, #If he doesn't die from sepsis, #Victor Hatherley's immune system is god tier”

The Engineer's Thumb pt 3

Last we left off, Mr Victor Hatherley, hydraulic engineer and secret giant panda, was accounting how he had ignored very clear and present warnings, almost been crushed to death, had his thumb hacked off by a cleaver and very likely contracted sepsis in a ghost house.

“Here is an advertisement which will interest you,” said he. “It appeared in all the papers about a year ago. Listen to this: “‘Lost, on the 9th inst., Mr. Jeremiah Hayling, aged twenty-six, a hydraulic engineer. Left his lodgings at ten o'clock at night, and has not been heard of since.'"

RIP Mr Hayling. I hope you died quickly and not in the squishing chamber.

"It is quite clear that the colonel was a cool and desperate man,"

But is he actually a colonel? That's the real question.

There were Sherlock Holmes, the hydraulic engineer, Inspector Bradstreet, of Scotland Yard, a plain-clothes man, and myself.

Ah yes, my dear companions: Sherlock Holmes, Inspector Bradstreet, and *checks hands*... a hydraulic engineer.

How come Victor doesn't get a name here? Hey, ACD, did you forget a character's name in the middle of a story and just couldn't be bothered to look a few paragraphs upwards? I get that Ctrl+F wasn't possible back then, but these short stories aren't that long.

“And you think that they brought you back all that way when you were unconscious?”

I am 90% sure they did not touch him while he was unconscious, they just took him on the carriage in one big circle until they were right back near the station again, and he just woke up where he fell.

“Oh, we shall soon clear up all that,” said Bradstreet. “Well, I have drawn my circle, and I only wish I knew at what point upon it the folk that we are in search of are to be found.”

Right in the middle. Bet you. I mean, you're a fictional character and even if you weren't this was over a century ago. But I bet you metaphysically.

“Oh, yes, you can. This is my point.” He placed his finger in the centre of the circle. “This is where we shall find them.” “But the twelve-mile drive?” gasped Hatherley.

Knew it! Also, ACD remembered Victor's surname, excellent. Very proud of you! He's been really carefully ignoring it for the last few paragraphs, just not using dialogue tags or saying 'my patient'. Took a minute, but he got there.

“None at all,” said Holmes. “They are coiners on a large scale, and have used the machine to form the amalgam which has taken the place of silver.”

Hey, and I was right about what they were doing. Boom.

Interesting thought... did Hatherley realise this when he was poking around in the press and found the metallic deposits? Because his whole 'I'd like to talk to you about your Fuller's Earth' thing, if he knew about the forgery, sounds a little like 'Hey, how about you cut me in on this', or maybe the opening stages of some blackmailing.

But I'm maligning his character with no evidence. I just wish I knew how he thought that was going to play out. Was he dumb enough to think that nothing illegal was going on? But if he knew something illegal was going on, why call them out on it like that.

But the inspector was mistaken, for those criminals were not destined to fall into the hands of justice.

Again? Holmes has to be the least successful literary detective of all time when it comes to actually catching criminals. Was there not even a convenient shipwreck this time? Although it makes sense they wouldn't stick around when Hatherley's run off with enough information and evidence to get them caught.

As we rolled into Eyford Station we saw a gigantic column of smoke which streamed up from behind a small clump of trees in the neighbourhood and hung like an immense ostrich feather over the landscape.

So, either they're burning the evidence, or they've accidentally burnt themselves to death and that's why they didn't come after Victor - because they were too busy being on fire.

“Dr. Becher's.” “Tell me,” broke in the engineer, “is Dr. Becher a German, very thin, with a long, sharp nose?” The station-master laughed heartily. “No, sir, Dr. Becher is an Englishman..."

Becher certainly looks more like a Germanic name than an English name. Also, is this guy really a doctor? And if he's a medical doctor and he lives right next door, then why didn't the station guard last night see Hatherley's bleeding thumbless hand and say 'oh, there's a doctor just 'round the corner. You should have him take a look at that!'

I'm a little confused on the timeline, too. This is all the same day, right. They leave for Berkshire 3 hours after Mr Hatherley finishes his tale, which he tells on the same day he arrives on the train after having lost his thumb. So last night, when the building was on fire, was the night when he was first unconscious, and then sitting at the station waiting for a train. The fire should have been visible from the station if it's that close, and Hatherley didn't get on a train until the morning, so... did no one notice the fire right next door, or did they just not care?

Maybe the fire just wasn't big enough to be seen during the night, so no one outside noticed it until after Victor had left in the morning. Doesn't explain why the guard didn't suggest Victor take his missing thumb to the nearby medical professional, though.

"There can be no question that it was your oil-lamp which, when it was crushed in the press, set fire to the wooden walls, though no doubt they were too excited in the chase after you to observe it at the time."

I forgot about the oil lamp. It's doing a pretty good job of getting rid of the evidence, though.

Early that morning a peasant had met a cart containing several people and some very bulky boxes driving rapidly in the direction of Reading.

Was the word 'peasant' still used in the 1890s? Really? It's a very medieval/dark ages kind of word.

It should at least take them a while to set up again. They're going to need to build another person-squishing machine, and given that they're clearly not very good at hydraulics, I assume they have to kidnap someone to do that for them. Or maybe they just have a diagram that they can follow, but they don't know how it works. And they've left behind all the raw materials, so they'll have to get their hands on that again.

The firemen had been much perturbed at the strange arrangements which they had found within, and still more so by discovering a newly severed human thumb upon a window-sill of the second floor.

The firemen are very sensible people. Although I find it weird that the thumb survived on the windowsill, given that fire was billowing out of the windows in the description earlier.

How our hydraulic engineer had been conveyed from the garden to the spot where he recovered his senses might have remained forever a mystery were it not for the soft mould, which told us a very plain tale. He had evidently been carried down by two persons, one of whom had remarkably small feet and the other unusually large ones. On the whole, it was most probable that the silent Englishman, being less bold or less murderous than his companion, had assisted the woman to bear the unconscious man out of the way of danger.

OK, so they did move him. I was pretty sure that they just didn't find him and he was too out of it on blood loss and adrenaline to know where he'd ended up. Mainly this seems like a really stupid thing for them to do, though. Clearly they've already killed one hydraulics engineer, leaving Victor alive to run away and tell people seems kind of dumb at this point. Obviously not murdering people is the right thing to do, but in this situation it's also a dumb move. No one worked out you killed the last one... eh, what's one more?

“Well,” said our engineer ruefully as we took our seats to return once more to London, “it has been a pretty business for me! I have lost my thumb and I have lost a fifty-guinea fee, and what have I gained?” “Experience,” said Holmes, laughing. “Indirectly it may be of value, you know; you have only to put it into words to gain the reputation of being excellent company for the remainder of your existence.”

#LifeLessons #LearningExperience

Such a fun story of how he was almost crushed to death and had his thumb chopped off by violent criminals who are still at large!

Yeah, that'll get people to buy you drinks, for sure. Although as previously discussed, you probably won't be alive to enjoy them. And you're going to have to relearn how to do things with only one opposable thumb if you don't die of sepsis. But maybe next time someone tries to warn you three times to not do something, you'll actually listen. Or you can get enough XP to increase your wisdom score and not end up in a situation like this again.

I wonder how many other hydraulic engineers Fritz went on to murder. It was probably fine.