Sherlock Holmes Great War Parodies and Pastiches II Read online

  “It was written clearly on his coat collar. I noticed it when he stooped to pick up his handkerchief. So simple, Watson.”

  P.S.—I have since heard that Private Jones is a member of Corporal Holmes’s section!!

  (Strand Magazine, please copy.)

  A Study in Handwriting

  Ring Lardner

  Illustrations by Quin Hall

  The Chicago Tribune’s “In the Wake of the News” column has been a mainstay in the paper since 1907. Although primarily devoted to sports, columnists are permitted to ruminate on anything, as Ring Lardner (1885-1933) did in the March 19 issue. Perhaps inspired by an actual letter he received, Ring used this opportunity to poke a little fun at his own expense. Quin Hall (1884-1968) had a long career as a newspaper illustrator and cartoonist (Punkin’ Head Pete and The Doolittles).

  “I cannot rejoice over the ever-increasing popularity of the typewriter,” said Sherlock Holmes, as he lounged in the most comfortable chair provided by our Baker Street landlady, and refilled, for the sixth time within an hour, a particularly malodorous pipe. “It is spoiling one of the most absorbing ways of studying the human race. One can judge from a typewritten letter very little concerning its author; merely whether or not he is an expert with the machine. But a man’s handwriting will tell the careful student the writer’s likes and dislikes as plainly as he could state them himself, to say nothing of his occupation, his characteristics, his immense thoughts, his—”

  “Do you mean to state,” I interrupted, “that you can accurately describe a man’s vocation, his traits, his opinions, by a study of his handwriting?”

  “Just so,” returned my companion with a smile, “and if you would look into it, I am sure you would find it as interesting a study as your medicine and surgery.”

  “I am sure I would find it all bosh,” I returned shortly.

  “Try it and see,” said Holmes, and thrusting his long, tapering fingers into the inside pocket of his lounging coat, he drew forth a letter. “Glance at this,” handing it to me, “and tell me what you learn of the writer.”

  I spread the missive on my knee and looked at it for perhaps five minutes. It was written on hotel stationery in a graceful, legible hand, and read:

  “Editor Chicago Tribune: Of all the silly tommy rot and cheap Barrel House wit ever seen or heard that contained under the heading ‘In the Wake of the News’ has them all beaten to a frazzle.

  “It appears to me that R.W. L— — — would make a good wit at a real wake and were he the corpse I’d say thank God.

  “I’ve decided to switch to another paper, and talking the matter over with other fellow drummers the general opinion seems to be the same. Namely L— — — is a ‘dead one.’

  “Yours very truly,— — —.”

  “Well,” said Holmes at length, “what do you make of him?”

  “Nothing,” I returned, “except that he writes clearly and legibly.”

  “O, Watson, Watson!” exclaimed my companion, and threw up his hands in mock horror. “Where are your brains?”

  “In my head, I hope,” I said with asperity. “But I did not make any ridiculous assertion as to my clairvoyant powers. It was you, I believe, who started the discussion. And it is surely your duty to make good your claim or admit that you were talking nonsense, as I believe to be the case.”

  Holmes smiled quietly and, reaching over, took back the letter he had given me. He pondered it in silence for some moments before he spoke.

  “Watson,” he said, “it is as far from nonsense as anything could be. This power or knack or whatever you choose to call it has served me in good stead in some of my most important cases. But I see that you are still a skeptic and it is therefore my part to convert you. I have already made my study of this particular letter and will state my conclusions to you as briefly as I can.

  “To begin with, I see that the writer is or recently has been in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. He has a bit of spare time on his hands, either while stopping at the Grand hotel, which is centrally located and homelike, owned by R.J. Warner and protected by the electric fire alarm system, or right afterwards. He is not a personal friend of the editor of The Tribune called ‘In the Wake of the News.’ He is hard-hearted. He is religious. He makes his decisions only after careful thought and discussion. He is democratic. He is interested in the opinion of his fellows and not above talking with them. He is a salesman who travels. He is inconsiderate. I think that is about all. Do you follow me?”

  “Holmes, you are wonderful!” I exclaimed. “But surely you will tell me how you reached some of your conclusions. For instance, how do you deduce that the writer is inconsiderate?”

  “From his handwriting, of course,” returned my companion. “Study the formation of the letters in this sentence: ‘I’ve decided to switch to another paper.’ If he were considerate of the feelings of others, would he be so blunt with the person addressed? Wouldn’t he rather allow the editor to find out gradually that he was no longer a subscriber?”

  “It is as clear as day,” I admitted. “And how long did it take you to master this trick?”

  “Trick!” said Holmes, disgustedly scratching the bridge of his aquiline nose with a gold-handled toothpick.

  The ’Varsity Letter

  Another (for this occasion only) Return of Sherlock Holmes

  Anonymous

  The importance of a varsity letter could not be overstated in this story that appeared in the April 17 issue of Puck. It was introduced at Harvard in 1865 to designate the members of the baseball and football teams. They were to be worn for the year and then returned, unless the player participated in the game against arch-rivals Yale or Princeton. The practice spread to other universities, who would award them for excellence in a particular sport. They were considered so important that Pearson’s magazine this same month, ran “The ’Varsity Letter Mystery” by Robert Emmet MacAlarney (1873-1945). In it, a female private detective known only as “The Skirt” foils a butler seeking revenge on his master, Yale’s football coach, because he denied his son a chance at a letter and who subsequently died! As a police detective observed, “A ’varsity letter means a lot of things—in New Haven.”

  It was shortly after Holmes’s return from Thibet, where he had so brilliantly solved the mystery of the six blue poker chips in the palace of the Grand Llama. He had just breakfasted on a seventy per cent solution of cocaine and was resting in the basket chair when a commotion arose in Baker Street without. I ran to the window.

  “Good heavens, Holmes!” I cried, “some poor fellow has been tarred and feathered. A crowd is following him and, yes, he is coming here!”

  A violent pull at the bell confirmed my words, and the next minute there literally fell into our rooms the unfortunate man. He was completely exhausted and in an instant Holmes had the brandy flask to his lips.

  “You are from America, I see,” said Holmes, soothingly.

  The man—as near as we could judge he was a very young man, a mere boy—gasped with astonishment, sputtered, and attempted to speak.

  “Tut!” interrupted Holmes, anticipating his question. “It is really very simple. The feathers with which you are covered belong to a breed of chickens raised only in the vicinity of Umpterino, Ohio. You should read my little monograph on chicken feathers, Watson.”

  “It is as you say, Mr. Holmes,” gasped our uncomfortable visitor. “My name is Hector Starboob. I am a student, a senior, at Umpterino University. Or I was until last—”

  “And I note,” said Holmes, in the same soothing manner, “that you lost no time in coming to me.”

  “Good heavens, Holmes,” I ejaculated, “this is mar—”

  My room-mate checked me with a gesture of impatience.

  “The tar under the feathers is still soft,” he said. “Surely, it is simple.”

  “I want you to find them for me, to find the villains, Mr. Holmes!” foamed our visitor, now revived by the brandy’s warming influence. “They came to my r
oom in the dead of night, and without the aid of a light they blindfolded and bound me. Then they dragged me outside and gave me this coating of tar and feathers, the cowards!”

  “They were hazing you?” queried Holmes.

  “I am a senior, Mr. Holmes,” said the victim, with dignity. “It is contrary to custom to haze seniors. And not only am I a senior at Umpterino, but I am an honor man in all my courses. I lead my classes. I excel in every study.

  “Had you enemies? Is there anyone you suspect?”

  “No; no one.”

  “No unpleasantness of any sort?”

  “None whatever. There is only one that I recall, and that seems too trivial to mention.”

  Holmes rubbed his hands in ecstasy.

  “Then by all means mention it,” he said, with a characteristic smile. “Watson, draw our friend’s chair a trifle further from the fire. I note his feathers are getting singed. Now, Mr. Hector Starboob, proceed.”

  “Well, Mr. Holmes, as I told you, the matter seems trivial, but since you ask me I will mention it. The afternoon of the day I was so shamefully handled I walked across the college campus, wearing a sweater bearing the ’varsity letter.”

  “You are an athlete, then?”

  “No, Mr. Holmes, on the contrary; and that brings me right to the point. I am not an athlete. I never took part in an athletic competition in my life. But it occurred to me the other day that a fellow who lead his classes, who was an honor man in all his courses, and who had the highest marks of any man in college, was as much entitled to wear the ’varsity U as anybody at Umpterino. It seemed to me so perfectly obvious that I cut a large U out of blue cloth and sewed it on a white sweater and went out.”

  Here Holmes, with a slight shake of his head, reached across to the coal scuttle, where we kept almost anything but coal, and extracted therefrom our pad of blank cablegrams, on one of which he scribbled a few penciled words.

  “It seemed to me, you see, Mr. Holmes, so perfectly reasonable. A chap who excelled in his studies seemed to me to be as much entitled to wear the ’varsity letter as a—as a pole vaulter, for instance, or a—or a hammer thrower. It seemed to me that a college should be as proud of an honor student as it is of an honor athlete, and as willing to acknowledge that he belongs to it. Now that you speak of it, I do recall that several words were spoken to me as I crossed the Campus that were not precisely—er—friendly, but it never struck me that—”

  Here Mr. Hector Starboob fell to picking absently at his feathers, and there was a period of awkward silence all around.

  “Watson,” said Holmes, quietly, “take this down to the cable office and file it. Personally, I haven’t the energy. It is a message to the health authorities at Umpterino, Ohio, telling them we have safely got the lunatic they are undoubtedly looking for.

  “Meanwhile, it’s a case for you, my dear Doctor, not for me. The man is hopelessly insane. He would be deemed so, beyond question, in any American college town.”

  With a shrug of his shoulders, Holmes reached for the cocaine bottle, and, rolling up his sleeves, prepared for another session with the needle.

  “Everything is so frightfully commonplace, Watson,” he sighed.

  The Adventure of the Clothes-Line

  Carolyn Wells

  Illustrations by Frederic Dorr Steele

  Carolyn Wells (1869-1942) was a prolific author and poet who produced more than 170 titles over four decades, including many Holmes-related stories. Her ode to 221B Baker Street appears in the 1905-1909 edition of the Casebook series.

  Among her pastiches were five stories in the Society of Infallible Detectives, a sort of super group of the era’s greatest detectives, with Sherlock as the president, of course. This story appeared in the May issue of The Century magazine. Another can be found in the 1917 chapter, and the rest in the 1900-1914 edition.

  Frederic Dorr Steele (1873-1944) was an American illustrator who created an iconic Holmes for U.S. readers much like what Sidney Paget did in Britain. He is credited with associating Holmes with the calabash pipe and deerstalker.

  The members of the Society of Infallible Detectives were just sitting around and being socially infallible in their rooms in Fakir Street, when President Holmes strode in. He was much saturniner than usual, and the others at once deduced there was something toward.

  “And it’s this,” said Holmes, perceiving that they had perceived it. “A reward is offered for the solution of a great mystery so great, my colleagues, that I fear none of you will be able to solve it, or even to help me in the marvelous work I shall do when ferreting it out.”

  “Humph!” grunted the Thinking Machine, riveting his steel-blue eyes upon the speaker.

  “He voices all our sentiments,” said Raffles, with his winning smile. “Fire away, Holmes. What’s the prob?”

  “To explain a most mysterious proceeding down on the East Side.”

  He was much saturniner than usual, and the others at once deduced there was something toward.

  Though a tall man, Holmes spoke shortly, for he was peeved at the inattentive attitude of his collection of colleagues. But of course he still had his Watson, so he put up with the indifference of the rest of the cold world.

  “Aren’t all proceedings down on the East Side mysterious?” asked Arsene Lupin with an aristocratic look.

  Holmes passed his brow wearily under his hand.

  “Inspector Spyer,” he said, “was riding on the Elevated Road—one of the small numbered Avenues when, as he passed a tenement-house district, he saw a clothes-line strung from one high window to another across a courtyard.”

  “Was it Monday?” asked the Thinking Machine, who for the moment was thinking he was a washing machine.

  “That doesn’t matter. About the middle of the line was suspended—”

  “By clothes-pins?” asked two or three of the Infallibles at once.

  “Was suspended a beautiful woman.”

  “Hanged?”

  “No. Do listen! She hung by her hands and was evidently trying to cross from one house to the other. By her exhausted and agonized face, the inspector feared she could not hold on much longer. He sprang from his seat to rush to her assistance, but the train had already started, and he was too late to get off.”

  “What was she doing there?” “Did she fall?” “What did she look like?” and various similar nonsensical queries fell from the lips of the great detectives.

  “Be silent, and I will tell you all the known facts. She was a society woman, it is clear, for she was robed in a chiffon evening gown, one of those roll-top things. She wore rich jewelry and dainty slippers with jeweled buckles. Her hair, unloosed from its moorings, hung in heavy masses far down her back.”

  “How extraordinary! What does it all mean?” asked M. Dupin, ever straightforward of speech.

  “I don’t know yet,” answered Holmes, honestly. “I’ve studied the matter only a few months. But I will find out, if I have to raze the whole tenement block. There must be a clue somewhere.”

  “Marvelous! Holmes, marvelous!” said a phonograph in the corner, which Watson had fixed up, as he had to go out.

  “The police have asked us to take up the case and have offered a reward for its solution. Find out who was the lady, what she was doing, and why she did it.”

  “Are there any clues?” asked M. Vidocq, while M. Lecoq said simultaneously, “Any footprints?”

  “There is one footprint; no other clue.”

  “Where is the footprint?”

  “On the ground, right under where the lady was hanging.”

  “But you said the rope was high from the ground.”

  “More than a hundred feet.”

  “And she stepped down and made a single footprint. Strange! Quite strange!” and the Thinking Machine shook his yellow old head.

  “She did nothing of the sort,” said Holmes, petulantly. “If you fellows would listen, you might hear something. The occupants of the tenement houses have been questio
ned. But, as it turns out, none of them chanced to be at home at the time of the occurrence. There was a parade in the next street, and they had all gone to see it.”

  “Had a light snow fallen the night before?” asked Lecoq, eagerly.

  “Yes, of course,” answered Holmes. “How could we know anything, else? Well, the lady had dropped her slipper, and although the slipper was not found, it having been annexed by the tenement people who came home first, I had a chance to study the footprint. The slipper was a two and a half D. It was too small for her.”

  “The lady had dropped her slipper.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Women always wear slippers too small for them.”

  “Then how did she come to drop it off?” This from Raffles, triumphantly.

  Holmes looked at him pityingly.

  “She kicked it off because it was too tight. Women always kick off their slippers when playing bridge or in an opera box or at a dinner.”

  “And always when they’re crossing a clothes-line?” This in Lupin’s most sarcastic vein.

  “Naturally,” said Holmes, with a taciturnine frown. “The footprint clearly denotes a lady of wealth and fashion, somewhat short of stature, and weighing about one hundred and sixty. She was of an animated nature.”

  “Suspended animation,” put in Luther Trant, wittily, and Scientific Sprague added, “Like the Coffin of Damocles, or whoever it was.”

  But Holmes frowned on their light-headedness.

  “We must find out what it all means,” he said in his gloomiest way. “I have a tracing of the footprint.”

  “I wonder if my seismospygmograph would work on it,” mused Trant.

  “I am the Prince of Footprints,” declared Lecoq, pompously. “I will solve the mystery.”