Sherlock Holmes Great War Parodies and Pastiches I

by Bill Peschel

  “Why have you that string on your finger?” I asked.

  “That’s the problem,” said Jolnes. “My wife tied that on this morning to remind me of something I was to send up to the house. Sit down, Whatsup, and excuse me for a few moments.”

  The distinguished detective went to a wall telephone and stood with the receiver to his ear for probably ten minutes.

  “Were you listening to a confession?” I asked, when he had returned to his chair.

  “Perhaps,” said Jolnes, with a smile, “it might be called something of the sort. To be frank with you, Whatsup, I’ve cut out the dope. I’ve been increasing the quantity for so long that morphine doesn’t have much effect on me any more. I’ve got to have something more powerful. That telephone I just went to is connected with a room in the Waldorf where there’s an author’s reading in progress. Now, to get at the solution of this string.”

  After five minutes of silent pondering, Jolnes looked at me with a smile and nodded his head.

  “Wonderful man!” I exclaimed; “already?”

  “It is quite simple,” he said, holding up his finger. “You see that knot? That is to prevent my forgetting. It is, therefore, a forget-me-knot. A forget-me-not is a flower. It was a sack of flour that I was to send home!”

  “Beautiful!” I could not help crying out in admiration.

  “Suppose we go out for a ramble,” suggested Jolnes.

  “There is only one case of importance on hand now. Old man McCarty, one hundred and four years old, died from eating too many bananas. The evidence points so strongly to the Mafia that the police have surrounded the Second Avenue Katzenjammer Gambrinus Club No. 2, and the capture of the assassin is only the matter of a few hours. The detective force has not yet been called on for assistance.”

  Jolnes and I went out and up the street toward the corner where we were to catch a surface car.

  Halfway up the block we met Rheingelder, an acquaintance of ours, who held a City Hall position.

  “Good morning, Rheingelder,” said Jolnes, halting. “Nice breakfast that was you had this morning.”

  Always on the lookout for the detective’s remarkable feats of deduction, I saw Jolnes’s eyes flash for an instant upon a long yellow splash on the shirt bosom and a smaller one upon the chin of Rheingelder—both undoubtedly made by the yolk of an egg.

  “Oh, dot is some of your defectiveness,” said Rheingelder, shaking all over with a smile. “Vell, I bet you trinks and cigars all around dot you cannot tell vot I haf eaten for breakfast.”

  “Done,” said Jolnes. “Sausage, pumpernickel, and coffee.”

  Rheingelder admitted the correctness of the surmise and paid the bet. When we had proceeded on our way I said to Jolnes:

  “I thought you looked at the egg spilled on his chin and shirt front.”

  “I did,” said Jolnes. “That is where I began my deduction. Rheingelder is a very economical, saving man. Yesterday, eggs dropped in the market to twenty-eight cents per dozen. Today, they are quoted at forty-two. Rheingelder ate eggs yesterday, and to-day he went back to his usual fare. A little thing like this isn’t anything, Whatsup; it belongs to the primary arithmetic class.”

  When we boarded the street car we found the seats all occupied—principally by ladies. Jolnes and I stood on the rear platform.

  About the middle of the car there sat an elderly man with a short, gray beard, who looked to be the typical, well-dressed New Yorker. At successive corners, other ladies climbed aboard, and soon three or four of them were standing over the man, clinging to straps and glaring meaningly at the man who occupied the coveted seat. But he resolutely retained his place.

  “We New Yorkers,” I remarked to Jolnes, “have about lost our manners, as far as the exercise of them in public goes.”

  “Perhaps so,” said Jolnes, lightly; “but the man you evidently refer to happens to be a very chivalrous and courteous gentleman from Old Virginia. He is spending a few days in New York with his wife and two daughters, and he leaves for the South to-night.”

  “You know him, then?” I said, in amazement.

  “I never saw him before we stepped on the car,” declared the detective, smilingly.

  “By the gold tooth of the Witch of Endor!” I cried, “if you can construe all that from his appearance you are dealing in nothing else than black art.”

  “The habit of observation—nothing more,” said Jolnes. “If the old gentleman gets off the car before we do, I think I can demonstrate to you the accuracy of my deduction.”

  Three blocks farther along, the gentleman rose to leave the car. Jolnes addressed him at the door:

  “Pardon me, sir, but are you not Colonel Hunter, of Norfolk, Virginia?”

  “No, suh,” was the extremely courteous answer. “My name, suh, is Ellison—Major Cornfield R. Ellison, from Fairfax County, in the same state. I know a good many people, suh, in Norfolk—the Goodriches, the Tollivers, and the Crabtrees, suh, but I never had the pleasure of meeting yo’ friend, Colonel Hunter. I am happy to say, suh, that I am going back to Virginia to-night, after having spent a week in yo’ city with my wife and three daughters. I shall be in Norfolk in about ten days, and if you will give me yo’ name, suh, I will take pleasure in looking up Colonel Hunter and telling him that you inquired after him, suh.”

  “Thank you,” said Jolnes; “tell him that Reynolds sent his regards, if you will be so kind.”

  I glanced at the great New York detective and saw that a look of intense chagrin had come upon his clear-cut features. Failure in the slightest point always galled Shamrock Jolnes.

  “Did you say your three daughters?” he asked of the Virginia gentleman.

  “Yes, suh, my three daughters, all as fine girls as there are in Fairfax County,” was the answer.

  With that Major Ellison stopped the car and began to descend the step.

  Shamrock Jolnes clutched his arm.

  “One moment, sir,” he begged, in an urbane voice in which I alone detected the anxiety—“am I not right in believing that one of the young ladies is an adopted daughter?”

  “You are, suh,” admitted the major, from the ground, “but how the devil you knew it, suh, is mo’ than I can tell.”

  “And mo’ than I can tell, too,” I said, as the car went on.

  Jolnes was restored to his calm, observant serenity by having wrested victory from his apparent failure; so after we got off the car he invited me into a cafe promising to reveal the process of his latest wonderful feat.

  “In the first place,” he began after we were comfortably seated, “I knew the gentleman was no New Yorker because he was flushed and uneasy and restless on account of the ladies that were standing, although he did not rise and give them his seat. I decided from his appearance that he was a Southerner rather than a Westerner.

  “Next, I began to figure out his reason for not relinquishing his seat to a lady when he evidently felt strongly, but not overpoweringly, impelled to do so. I very quickly decided upon that. I noticed that one of his eyes had received a severe jab in one corner, which was red and inflamed, and that all over his face were tiny round marks about the size of the end of an uncut lead pencil. Also upon both of his patent-leather shoes were a number of deep imprints shaped like ovals cut off square at one end.

  “Now, there is only one district in New York City where a man is bound to receive scars and wounds and indentations of that sort—and that is along the sidewalks of Twenty-third Street and a portion of Sixth Avenue south of there. I knew from the imprints of tramping French heels on his feet and the marks of countless jabs in the face from umbrellas and parasols carried by women in the shopping district that he had been in conflict with the amazonian troops. And as he was a man of intelligent appearance, I knew he would not have braved such dangers unless he had been dragged thither by his own women folk. Therefore, when he got on the car his anger at the treatment he had received was sufficient to make him keep his seat in spite of his traditions of Southern c
hivalry.”

  “That is all very well,” I said, “but why did you insist upon daughters—and especially two daughters? Why couldn’t a wife alone have taken him shopping?”

  “There had to be daughters,” said Jolnes, calmly. “If he had only a wife, and she near his own age, he could have bluffed her into going alone. If he had a young wife she would prefer to go alone. So there you are.”

  “I’ll admit that,” I said; “but, now, why two daughters? And how; in the name of all the prophets, did you guess that one was adopted when he told you he had three?”

  “Don’t say guess,” said Jolnes, with a touch of pride in his air; “there is no such word in the lexicon of ratiocination. In Major Ellison’s buttonhole there was a carnation and a rosebud backed by a geranium leaf. No woman ever combined a carnation and a rosebud into a boutonnière. Close your eyes, Whatsup, and give the logic of your imagination a chance. Can not you see the lovely Adele fastening the carnation to the lapel so that papa may be gay upon the street? And then the romping Edith May dancing up with sisterly jealousy to add her rosebud to the adornment?”

  “And then,” I cried, beginning to feel enthusiasm, “when he declared that he had three daughters—”

  “I could see,” said Jolnes, “one in the background who added no flower; and I knew that she must be—”

  “Adopted!” I broke in. “I give you every credit; but how did you know he was leaving for the South to-night?”

  “In his breast pocket,” said the great detective, “something large and oval made a protuberance. Good liquor is scarce on trains, and it is a long journey from New York to Fairfax County.”

  “Again, I must bow to you,” I said. “And tell me this, so that my last shred of doubt will be cleared away; why did you decide that he was from Virginia?”

  “It was very faint, I admit,” answered Shamrock Jolnes, “but no trained observer could have failed to detect the odor of mint in the car.”

  Maddened by Mystery: or, The Defective Detective

  Stephen Leacock

  This is one of the most popular and reprinted Sherlockian parodies, and deservedly so. Drawn from Leacock’s collection Nonsense Novels, it was the only parody E.C. Bentley chose for The Second Century of Detective Stories (1938) and appeared in both Ellery Queen’s The Misadventures of Sherlock Holmes (1944), and the equally excellent Mini Mysteries (1969), where I first encountered it as a lad.

  Stephen Leacock (1869-1944) was a popular Canadian teacher, writer, and humorist. Since 1947, the Stephen Leacock Award is given annually for the best humor book by a Canadian writer.

  The great detective sat in his office. He wore a long green gown and half a dozen secret badges pinned to the outside of it.

  Three or four pairs of false whiskers hung on a whisker-stand beside him.

  Goggles, blue spectacles, and motor glasses lay within easy reach.

  He could completely disguise himself at a second’s notice.

  Half a bucket of cocaine and a dipper stood on a chair at his elbow. His face was absolutely impenetrable.

  A pile of cryptograms lay on the desk. The Great Detective hastily tore them open one after the other, solved them, and threw them down the cryptogram-chute at his side.

  There was a rap at the door.

  The Great Detective hurriedly wrapped himself in a pink domino, adjusted a pair of false black whiskers and cried,

  “Come in.”

  His secretary entered. “Ha,” said the detective, “it is you.”

  He laid aside his disguise.

  “Sir,” said the young man in intense excitement, “a mystery has been committed!”

  “Ha!” said the Great Detective, his eye kindling, “is it such as to completely baffle the police of the entire continent?”

  “They are so completely baffled with it,” said the secretary, “that they are lying collapsed in heaps; many of them have committed suicide.”

  “So,” said the detective, “and is the mystery one that is absolutely unparalleled in the whole recorded annals of the London police?”

  “It is.”

  “And I suppose,” said the detective, “that it involves names which you would scarcely dare to breathe, at least without first using some kind of atomizer or throat-gargle.”

  “Exactly.”

  “And it is connected, I presume, with the highest diplomatic consequences, so that if we fail to solve it England will be at war with the whole world in sixteen minutes?”

  His secretary, still quivering with excitement, again answered yes.

  “And finally,” said the Great Detective, “I presume that it was committed in broad daylight, in some such place as the entrance of the Bank of England, or in the cloak-room of the House of Commons, and under the very eyes of the police?”

  “Those,” said the secretary, “are the very conditions of the mystery.”

  “Good,” said the Great Detective, “now wrap yourself in this disguise, put on these brown whiskers and tell me what it is.”

  The secretary wrapped himself in a blue domino with lace insertions, then, bending over, he whispered in the ear of the Great Detective:

  “The Prince of Wurttemberg has been kidnapped.”

  The Great Detective bounded from his chair as if he had been kicked from below.

  A prince stolen! Evidently a Bourbon! The scion of one of the oldest families in Europe kidnapped. Here was a mystery indeed worthy of his analytical brain.

  His mind began to move like lightning.

  “Stop!” he said, “how do you know this?”

  The secretary handed him a telegram. It was from the Prefect of Police of Paris. It read: “The Prince of Wurttemberg stolen. Probably forwarded to London. Must have him here for the opening day of Exhibition. 1,000 pounds reward.”

  So! The Prince had been kidnapped out of Paris at the very time when his appearance at the International Exposition would have been a political event of the first magnitude.

  With the Great Detective, to think was to act, and to act was to think. Frequently he could do both together.

  “Wire to Paris for a description of the Prince.”

  The secretary bowed and left.

  At the same moment there was a slight scratching at the door.

  A visitor entered. He crawled stealthily on his hands and knees. A hearthrug thrown over his head and shoulders disguised his identity.

  He crawled to the middle of the room.

  Then he rose.

  Great Heaven!

  It was the Prime Minister of England.

  “You!” said the detective.

  “Me,” said the Prime Minister.

  “You have come in regard the kidnapping of the Prince of Wurttemberg?”

  The Prime Minister started.

  “How do you know?” he said.

  The Great Detective smiled his inscrutable smile.

  “Yes,” said the Prime Minister. “I will use no concealment. I am interested, deeply interested. Find the Prince of Wurttemberg, get him safe back to Paris, and I will add £500 to the reward already offered. But listen,” he said impressively as he left the room, “see to it that no attempt is made to alter the marking of the prince, or to clip his tail.”

  So! To clip the Prince’s tail! The brain of the Great Detective reeled. So! a gang of miscreants had conspired to—but no! the thing was not possible.

  There was another rap at the door.

  A second visitor was seen. He wormed his way in, lying almost prone upon his stomach, and wriggling across the floor. He was enveloped in a long purple cloak. He stood up and peeped over the top of it.

  Great Heaven!

  It was the Archbishop of Canterbury!

  “Your Grace!” exclaimed the detective in amazement—“pray do not stand, I beg you. Sit down, lie down, anything rather than stand.”

  The Archbishop took off his mitre and laid it wearily on the whisker-stand.

  “You are here in regard to the Prince of Wurttemb
erg.”

  The Archbishop started and crossed himself. Was the man a magician?

  “Yes,” he said, “much depends on getting him back. But I have only come to say this: my sister is desirous of seeing you. She is coming here. She has been extremely indiscreet and her fortune hangs upon the Prince. Get him back to Paris or I fear she will be ruined.”

  The Archbishop regained his mitre, uncrossed himself, wrapped his cloak about him, and crawled stealthily out on his hands and knees, purring like a cat.

  The face of the Great Detective showed the most profound sympathy. It ran up and down in furrows. “So,” he muttered, “the sister of the Archbishop, the Countess of Dashleigh!” Accustomed as he was to the life of the aristocracy, even the Great Detective felt that there was here intrigue of more than customary complexity.

  There was a loud rapping at the door.

  There entered the Countess of Dashleigh. She was all in furs.

  She was the most beautiful woman in England. She strode imperiously into the room. She seized a chair imperiously and seated herself on it, imperial side up.

  She took off her tiara of diamonds and put it on the tiara-holder beside her and uncoiled her boa of pearls and put it on the pearl-stand.

  “You have come,” said the Great Detective, “about the Prince of Wurttemberg.”

  “Wretched little pup!” said the Countess of Dashleigh in disgust.

  So! A further complication! Far from being in love with the Prince, the Countess denounced the Bourbon as a pup!

  “You are interested in him, I believe.”

  “Interested!” said the Countess. “I should rather say so. Why, I bred him!”

  “You which?” gasped the Great Detective, his usually impassive features suffused with a carmine blush.

  “I bred him,” said the Countess, “and I’ve got £10,000 upon his chances, so no wonder I want him back in Paris. Only listen,” she said, “if they’ve got hold of the Prince and cut his tail or spoiled the markings of his stomach it would be far better to have him quietly put out of the way here.”