Sherlock Holmes Edwardian Parodies and Pastiches I Page 8

  “Well, what has become of Mahammed?” inquired Madame. “Your last news was that he had escaped from the train as you had foreseen he would.”

  “This fresh telegram informs me,” said Mr. Homes, laconically, “that Mahammed has met Sir Southdown Evel at the address to which the packet was directed, that Mahammed is no longer black—”

  “No longer black?” repeated the Duchesse. “Surely he was an Indian?”

  “I foresaw this,” calmly replied Mr. Homes. “Directly I met your servant, Madame, I perceived by the whites of his finger-nails that he was no more an Indian than I am.”

  “How appearances deceive!” cried the Duchesse. “But what further news have you?”

  “Both men have been arrested,” said Mr. Homes, “but . . .”

  “But what?” asked everybody.

  “The jewels were not to be found.”

  “There now!” cried Flügelbrecher, “I knew you would over-reach yourself. These detective theories are all very well when they succeed, but, when they fail, they are idiotic.”

  Mr. Homes smiled cynically. “My dear sir,” he said, quietly, “the worst of you amateur theorists is that you are too premature, too previous, too given to jump at conclusions. You are like the clever musical amateur who condemns all consecutive fifths and octaves at once whenever he sees them, unmindful that up all Macfarrenish or Proutean theoretical sleeves there are peculiar arguments, never previously heard or thought of, which at once knock down the ignorant, mystify the learned, and convince nobody, not even their authors.”

  “Don’t aggravate him, Mr. Homes,” said the Duchesse. “Put us out of our suspense at once if you have any further news.”

  “Perhaps I should not state a mere supposition,” replied the detective, humming meditatively something he would have called a melody, but to most people it would have sounded like the drone of a bagpipe.

  “Never mind, let us have it, quick! quick!” cried Gertrude, who could not bear these interludes.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, it is surmised,” said Mr. Homes, “that Mahammed threw over a river bridge the packet containing the jewels, at the same time that he threw out of the railway window his bright blue and silver livery, which performed, in its legato descent, a wonderful glissando curve. He evidently was afraid he was being watched, as the fact of the package being addressed to 19 Berners Street showed that he first intended it to be carried to London and delivered by hand. Nevertheless, Mahammed is too cunning to have normally pitched a valuable parcel into any stream without providing for something to indicate its position. In such cases the usual plan is to attach a string, with a cork at the end, which floats on the surface of the stream, so that the package can be picked up afterwards.”

  “Are you sure, quite sure, that the jewels will be recovered now?” asked Flügelbrecher.

  “I am never sure of anything until I see it,” replied Mr. Homes, testily.

  “Oh, Madame, I am so sorry!” cried Gertrude. “It is a great pity! You will not be able to wear your diamonds at the performance of the Great Motet—I mean, at the great occasion.”

  Madame smiled complacently. “Perhaps I shall, after all,” she said.

  “But how can you, if they are lost in the stream?” asked Mrs. Mackay.

  “Or are enjoying ‘a life on ze ocean vaves’?” added Flügelbrecher.

  “I think the time has come when I really ought to tell you,” answered the Duchesse, and then she began to laugh. “I may tell them, mayn’t I, Mr. Homes?”

  “What are you tittering at?” remarked John Lindsay. “Surely this is a very serious matter.”

  At this, the Duchesse was literally convulsed with laughter, and her admirer, Monsieur von Hammertitszki, not knowing the cause, joined in.

  “Ho! ho! I cannot help laughing,” gasped the Duchesse, “when I think, ah! ah! of such clever thieves being taken in!” Then she became grave. “But I have to thank Mr. Homes,” she added, “or I really should have lost my priceless jewels. He heard there was a plot afoot to rob me of them. He called on me, personating a clerk from my lawyers. Consequently, I had duplicate sets made, in paste, of my most valuable gems; and my other trinkets were copied in white metal gilt. These were substituted and exhibited, the real jewels being taken charge of by my bankers. Visitors to Blue Rock Castle have latterly seen nothing but sham sets. Under the electric light the imitations looked quite as pretty as the genuine ones. When Gertrude was accused of the theft, and the evidence against her was so conclusive, I need not say that I was very much shocked. I could not believe it, and it made me feel quite ill.”

  “Vhat! You allowed Gertrude to be charged viz stealing your real jewels, ven you knew zat only sham ones had been taken?” cried Flügelbrecher, aghast.

  “Well, you see,” Madame explained, uneasily, “Mr. Strong, I mean Mr. Shamrock Homes, pointed out to me that a theft was a theft, whether the articles taken were of little or great value; and his object was to capture the thieves at all costs.”

  “Zat is no excuse,” cried Flügelbrecher. “You wished for réclame at all costs, at ze price even of ze fair name of my future wife. Duchesse, it vas vicked, it vas cruel and vile of you!”

  “It is you who are cruel to me!” exclaimed Madame, looking very white. “All I could do to spare Gertrude I did,” she protested; “but even John Lindsay, her own brother, thought her guilty. I was acting under the advice of a famous detective, who declared that the evidence against Gertrude was overwhelming, and that the only chance there was of capturing the real thief was to put my own feelings aside and treat Gertrude as the criminal until she was proved innocent. I did this, I can assure you, against my own wishes, and no one is better pleased than I am if the real culprit has been trapped. It is now my one wish to make Gertrude all the reparation in my power.”

  “You cannot make reparation,” growled Flügelbrecher, surlily.

  “Heinrich,” cried Gertrude, “you don’t know the Duchesse if you say that.”

  The Duchesse looked up. “You have an idea, Gertrude?” she said. “I know you have forgiven me. Come over here and whisper.”

  Gertrude crossed the room, and said something in a low tone to the Duchesse, who at once cried, “How clever of you! Excellent! Excellent! The very thing!”

  Hand in hand both ladies then came forward to the pianist, Flügelbrecher, whose rage with the Duchesse had not yet abated.

  “What piano, in the whole world,” asked the Duchesse in her most bewitching manner, “do you like best, Herr Flügelbrecher?”

  “Vhat a question to ask!” he said. “Zat piano over zere,” and he turned to me, “is ze finest instrument” (“Without a crank,” growled Hammertitszki) “I ever put my hands on. It is not so fine, berhaps, as it vas vhen quite new, but it is so associated vid ze joys and griefs of my life zat I prefer it, even now, to any other piano.”

  “Gertrude wishes you to accept that good friend from me, as a present,” said the Duchesse.

  “But, Duchesse, vhy? Zis is too generous,” said Flügelbrecher, somewhat puzzled, but smiling brightly.

  “You will take it, won’t you?” pleaded Gertrude.

  “I vill do anything you vish, darling,” replied her lover.

  “But you will do something for me as well?” added the Duchesse.

  “Yes, certainly, Duchesse. Forgive me,—I vas too hasty—of course I vill,” answered Flügelbrecher, half apologising for his rough behaviour.

  “Thank you,” said the Duchesse. “Then that is settled.”

  “Vat is settled?” inquired Flügelbrecher.

  “It gives me an opportunity of fulfilling one of the dearest wishes of your life, although you won’t guess what it is. It seems to me that the only way I can make reparation to Gertrude is through you, whom she loves better than herself. The dearest wish of your life, she has told me more than once, is to play before the Queen. You know that I am commanded to sing at Windsor next week. A certain great pianist, who was to have appeared at the sam
e time, has been taken ill, and I have to-day received a letter from Her Majesty’s Private Secretary requesting me to nominate a substitute. My dear friend, Vladimir,” she said, turning to Monsieur von Hammertitszki, “desires that you shall play, and I have already made arrangements for your favourite piano to be packed and sent by rail to Windsor.”

  “Gertrude! Gertrude! Vat shall I zay? Zis is too kind!” cried Flügelbrecher. “Ze reparation was to be made to you, and not to me.”

  “It is made to me, dear, if it is done through you,” replied Gertrude.

  And then the lovers went over to Madame, who kissed Gertrude and shook Flügelbrecher by both hands.

  There was a general murmur of applause from the others who were present, for it was evident that, with her usual tact, Madame had done the only possible thing to make the irascible Flügelbrecher thoroughly pleased.

  “Who do you think is the real thief?” Mr. Homes asked, suddenly, in his dry voice.

  “Mahammed, of course,” cried everybody.

  “Yes, but who is Mahammed?” demanded Homes.

  “Some picturesque Indian Thug, no doubt,” surmised Madame. “I can’t quite believe, yet, that he is not an Indian. Those Indians are so cunning.”

  Mr. Homes took no notice of the great singer; he merely went on where he had left off.

  “The police have at last captured the murderer of Angus Mackay, the notorious … Klug.”

  Mrs. Mackay fainted, to appropriate music, for Scarlatti had, at that moment, dumped himself down on my keyboard.

  1901

  After a year of war, politics, and writing, Conan Doyle needed to take a break, so he began the year on several golfing holidays with the Ma’am acting as chaperone for Jean Leckie.

  Then in February, Queen Victoria died. She had ruled the empire for 63 years, and for most of Britain, she was the only monarch they knew. For the New York World, Conan Doyle captured the impact of the late queen “to which 400,000,000 of us who dwell under the red-crossed flag looked as the centre of all things, the very heart of our lives, our inspiration, our standard of duty, the dear mother of us all.” Under her wastrel son Bertie—who would surprise everyone by proving to be a capable, if short-lived, king—the Edwardian era of 1901 to 1910 would see the first glimmers of what we would call the modern world.

  In March, Conan Doyle turned his pen to a new story. His friend Fletcher Robinson’s tales about his native Devonshire—about ghost hounds, headless riders, and devils—inspired an idea. Robinson took Conan Doyle on a weeklong walking tour of Dartmoor so he could see the wilderness with its evocative bogs and unusual rock formations. As the story grew in his imagination, he saw a place in it for Sherlock. Conan Doyle negotiated a higher price with The Strand and stipulated that Robinson’s name must appear with his. “He gave me the central idea and the local colour, and so I feel his name must appear.” But Greenhough Smith resisted dividing the credit for a Sherlock Holmes story, and in the end Robinson’s credit was reduced to a footnote on the title page.

  Serialized in The Strand, The Hound of the Baskervilles was a roaring success, and Conan Doyle could spend the rest of the year at his ease. He spent the summer playing cricket, and in July, he ascended in a balloon from London’s Crystal Palace. He helped judge a contest for the man with the best physique at the Royal Albert Hall. His estrangement with his sister, Connie, and Hornung, over Jean Leckie had healed enough by November that he took them to a lecture in London on typhoid fever. On Christmas, he hosted the American company of Sherlock Holmes at Undershaw.

  Publications: Holmes in The Strand: The Hound of the Baskervilles (Aug. 1901-April 1902).

  Holmes, Jr., at an Easy One

  How He Reconstructed a Picture of Early Morning Domestic Bliss

  Anonymous

  This clever example of Holmes’ deductive ability appeared in the July 7 issue of the New York Tribune.

  “Hah!” said Sherlock Holmes, Jr., “it is as I suspected.”

  His companion stopped, mystified, and asked: “What has happened?”

  “There,” replied the great amateur detective, pointing to a man who had just passed them; “he is the father of a child less than six months old that is troubled with the colic. He has no other children and is left-handed; his wife is not very strong, and they can’t afford to keep a nurse. They feed the child on milk from a Jersey cow. He kissed her when he left home this morning, and then walked half backward to the street, smiling at her.”

  The other turned pale and asked: “Heavens, how do you know this? Is he a friend of yours?”

  “No,” said Sherlock Holmes, Jr. “I never saw him before. I have never heard his name.”

  “But surely you can’t expect me to believe there is anything in his personal appearance to enable you to make this wonderful deduction?”

  “Yes. One glance as he passed close to us a moment ago was sufficient. Really, you are very stupid not to notice these things. They are so simple. Now he is stopping to look in at that haberdasher’s window. We will pass behind him. Look closely and see if there is anything about him to indicate how I have arrived at my wonderful conclusion regarding him.”

  After they had passed, the great detective turned with a look of inquiry to his companion.

  “No,” the latter said. “I couldn’t see anything that gave me the slightest clew.”

  “I knew you wouldn’t,” Holmes answered. “There are three spots on the back of his coat—or, rather, there is a streak broken into three parts on the back of his coat, passing downward from the right shoulder. You can’t guess how those spots came to be there, can you?”

  “No,” his companion confessed, “I can’t.”

  “That is because you are not an expert in the deducting business. He held his baby over his shoulder, and it drooled, making that broken streak. Why did he hold the child over his shoulder? Because it was colicky, and holding it in that position relieved it. His wife would have held it over her own shoulder if she had not been all tired out, which shows that she is not very strong. If they could afford to keep a nurse the father would not, of course, be compelled to hold the little one up and pat it on the back, and if he were an old hand at that sort of thing he would take off his coat or put a towel over his shoulder before holding the child up. Is that all clear to you?”

  “Wonderfully so,” his companion replied with ill-feigned admiration, “but how do you know the baby is under six months of age, that the man is left-handed, that they feed the little one milk from a Jersey cow, that he kissed his wife and walked backward to the street this morning?”

  “I am coming to that,” Sherlock Holmes, Jr., said, with a queer gleam in his wonderful eyes. “After a child is more than six months old it isn’t likely to have colic. If you have ever held a colicky baby, you must know that a right-handed man always holds the little one over his left shoulder and vice versa. Now we come to the cow. I have for years been smelling these spots on men’s shoulders, and I know by the degree of sourness just what kind of infants’ food or milk they are composed of. Of course, if he hadn’t backed out of the door when he left home this morning, his wife would have seen the streak and called him in to have it sponged off. So he must have kissed her as he departed, and kept turning and smiling back at her until he was so far away that the spots were invisible to her.”

  The great amateur detective then caught a glimpse of a man who wore a silk hat and a sack coat and hurried after him to make further deductions.

  Notes of a Bookman

  James MacArthur

  The same month that The Hound of the Baskervilles began running in The Strand, the return of Holmes was celebrated in James MacArthur’s “Notes of a Bookman” column in the Aug. 31 issue of Harper’s Weekly. MacArthur (1866-1909) also worked as a playwright and consulting editor for several publishing houses. In his introduction to the Harper editions of A Study in Scarlet and The Sign of the Four, he predicted that “it is doubtful whether Dr. Doyle will ever surpass himself in the sto
ries which are gathered in these three volumes. They represent not only the best of his work but the most masterly detective stories which have ever been written.”

  The resuscitation of Sherlock Holmes is an accomplished fact—vide the August Strand. In view of the reappearance of this distinguished character I submit the following documents and correspondence in the case:

  From the London Daily Mail, 19th July

  Zermatt, Friday.

  An extraordinary rumor is circulating here that Mr. Sherlock Holmes, the eminent criminal investigator, whose tragic death in a crevasse was reported circumstantially several years ago, creating a great sensation all over the world, has recently been seen in Zermatt. A well-known guide, Andrew Breen, has made an affidavit before a notary that on Thursday last he saw Mr. Holmes in a café. [text is unclear] maintains that there could be no mistake about his identity, though he was obviously taking every precaution to keep himself as much out of the public gaze as possible. It may be remembered that when Mr. Holmes and Professor Moriarty were first reported to have fallen into the crevasse, the story was received with incredulity, and the suggestion made that it was merely a ruse on Mr. Holmes’s part with some ulterior object. This was denied at the time, but Breen’s story now justifies the scepticism of several years ago.

  From the London Daily Express, 20th July.

  As our Mr. Hesketh Pritchard has just returned from his search for the Giant Sloth, which he was unfortunately unable to discover, though he met with indubitable traces of its existence, we have determined, regardless of expense, to despatch him forthwith to Switzerland, where the reappearance of Sherlock Holmes is reported. Holmes is said to have been seen as late as last week at Zermatt. We always suspected that he was not really dead, and venture an hypothesis that he did not fall to the bottom of the precipice when he fell over the ledge with Professor Moriarty. He was doubtless caught by a clump of trees twenty or thirty feet below, and, fearing pursuit from some other members of the Moriarty gang, he allowed the report of his death to go unchallenged, hiding himself for that time under another name in one of the Cantons. If our Mr. Pritchard is as successful as he hopes to be, he will bring the Great Investigator back to London to score greater triumphs than ever in the interest of truth and justice.