Sherlock Holmes Great War Parodies and Pastiches I

by Bill Peschel

  “I,” continued my friend, “will take my trusty violin; it has proved an excellent weapon many times before now.”

  It was late when we started, and we made our way direct to the rooms of our client. Holmes insisted on entering through the window.

  “I believe,” he remarked to our astonished host, “that there is a small reward offered for the solution to this problem—one and elevenpence halfpenny, to be exact. I see you have your cheque book there. Would you mind making me out a cheque for that amount in favour of the local hospital—it will save time.”

  “This jest is ill-timed,” cried our client impatiently. “Whom do you accuse?”

  “I accuse you!” cried Holmes triumphantly.

  It was some few days later that I found Holmes in our old rooms in Baker Street, with a dozen of the smartest detectives of Scotland Yard ranged up against the wall, walking up and down and blowing tobacco smoke in their faces.

  “It was the simplest problem in the world,” he was explaining, “I narrowed the search down at once between A (this was not his real name but the issues at stake are so great that I have to be discreet), and B (the reader will see that I am compelled to resort to pseudonyms when so great and noble a family is involved), C, and D. With A once squared, B and C….

  (The remainder of the explanation can be gathered from two pages taken at random from any reliable Algebra text book.)

  Latest-Desiccated Detective Stories, Boiled to the Bone

  “A. Conning Goil”

  Illustrated by Herman Roeg

  This rare parody featuring a female Sherlock appeared in the Los Angeles Sunday Tribune on April 27. It is also notable for being one of the first to deal with the science of fingerprinting. There is no clue to the contributor; illustrator Herman Roeg is best known for designing a vivid World War I poster for the Red Cross.

  Don’t be deceived into spending $1.18 net and waste golden hours staying up nights to be harrowed! Read these ten-minute tales of canned crime and condensed duplicity and be thrilled while you wait for your car! Study the powdered processes of the great girl detective, Shirley Combs, and stay with her while she elucidates the mystery of an evaporated vanishing. You can do it while the coffee is coming to a boil!

  No. 1—The Finger Print Failure

  It was misting great drops as I noiselessly inserted my night key into the door of our Faker Street apartment, a beastly day, in fact, and I was heartily glad to find Shirley Combs in. I called a greeting from the vestibule.

  “How could you tell I was there?” she asked banteringly, “by the light?”

  “No,” I replied, not without pride, “I could hear you playing the ukulele.”

  “You are improving, Marietta, decidedly you are improving,” she said, half to herself, as she mixed a coca-cola from a demijohn and a siphon standing on a table at her elbow. “What did you find new at the American store?”

  I started. “Why-ah—how did you know?”

  “You are smoking, are you not?” queried the svelte sleuth I have learned to dote on and admire. I glanced at my hand. I was, in fact, smoking.

  “Well,” she explained, “one whiff from your cigarette was enough to inform me that you were experimenting with that new San Joaquin Valley tobacco from America. Where had you come in contact with it? Of course, as soon as the possibility of growing it had been demonstrated and news of the experiment had been published in the Porterville Herald, my clipping bureau had at once apprised me, but I knew that the English public had only one means of becoming acquainted with it and that was at the American store. Besides, had I been deceived in the odor the bulkiness of your side pocket could denote only a huge pennant such as is given away with the new smokes, and I saw at once you had been spoofed with the same silly old bait.”

  I had not finished my long gasp of astonishment when a low sibilant whistle sounded in the room. It was the speaking tube from the street door. Shirley picked up the tube, worked the catch, and promptly spoke into the opening: “Come right up, M’sieu Roquette.”

  I must have looked my utter amazement, for Shirley said:

  “You were going to ask how I could recognize a person by his whistle in the tube. It is true I have never made the acquaintance of M. le Prefect of the Paris police, but I could tell from his photograph, which of course I have, that his upper left bicuspid and lower right incisor are missing. My specialized knowledge of the laws of formation of sound in the human throat and the effects produced upon that sound by the conformation of the mouth enabled me to project in my brain an auditory impression of his voice. Simple, is it not?”

  During the conversation which ensued between M. Roquette and Shirley Combs, she kept up a gentle, plaintive strumming on her ukulele, intermittently sipping coca-cola, as she leaned back in her chair, through a swivel-jointed straw made especially for the noted female apprehender of miscreants. I mention this straw, with its universal joint, merely to give the reader an idea of the many-sidedness of Shirley Combs. The soft, pleading melody which she evoked from the strings of the Hawaiian instrument produced a wonderful calming effect upon the plainly distraught nerves of the Gallic police chief, and by the time he had reached the end of his narrative he was gesticulating in a perfectly normal manner. Let me paraphrase his story:

  “Chu Chu the Locomotive has vanished into thin air, and still he continues his daylight depredations. He has disappeared absolutely. There are no secret hiding places in a circus tent, are there? And yet he got away with the entire receipts of one performance of Scarnum and Scaley’s circus only three days ago.

  “The loss was discovered before the grand parade around the big ring had started. The tent was pitched in an open field, and anyone leaving it could have been seen for several minutes, no matter what direction he took. No one left the tent—my detectives, who were on the lookout, assure me of that. We searched everyone, both in the audience and among the performers and employees. Chu Chu’s finger prints were found in several places on the safe; it could have been no one else—the Bertillon system is never at fault. No Chu Chu to be found among all that crowd—I was there—you see, these outrages have put France in an uproar—my position is in danger—I was on the spot and personally looked into all the faces there.”

  “Faces?” broke in Shirley, “you should have looked at their hands. But never mind, go on.”

  “Then we began to look for the money. It could not have been taken away. My men—I did not trust even the circus hands—pitchforked over all the hay, examined the stomachs of all the large animals with electric lights—we even cut open the big python because he would not uncurl enough so that we might determine by means of the light the nature of a huge lump about the middle of his length. It was a pig, of course. Then we searched all the 10,000 persons present. THE MONEY COULD NOT BE FOUND.”

  “Did you look in the safe again?” queried Shirley and then quickly added; “but never mind, go on.”

  “That is all.”

  “Very well, then, if you wish to leave the case entirely in my hands, I will tell you who your man is a week from tonight. By the way, I suppose you recognized among the crowd at the circus some men with records?”

  “Indeed, but yes,” volleyed the Frenchman, “there was Arson the Fire, Dago the Red—but I will send you all their names and a report on each tomorrow. Dieu t’enriche, Miss Combs, God bless you. So much I have heard of you I feel sure that you will be successful. I shall sleep.”

  “One thing more,” said Shirley. “You might ascertain if any of those men who were present and who were known to the police seemed to be in mourning.”

  “You are strange, mam’selle—but very well; you shall have it.”

  As soon as M. Roquette had left the room, Shirley changed from her comfortable Turkish trousers to her modified Bulgarian ecru éponge with the mackerel-blue sash and the Nell rose guimpe, and a saucy little late-asparagus Poiret hat with marabout edging and stick-up of hard winter wheat.

  “You will have to s
how a little speed,” she said to me, “if we intend to get to that cubist exhibit at all.”

  “But surely,” I remonstrated, “this case is of so great importance—”

  “Tut! tut!” she cut me short. And so, of course, we went, and Shirley and I spent the afternoon leaning over the railing deciphering titles in the hope of finding some clue to the picture itself. Here Shirley’s marvelous powers of deduction were given full play, but that is not germane to my story.

  The next afternoon Shirley looked up from the reports she was reading which, true to his word, the prefect of Paris police had sent, and phoned to Scotland Yard. Upon getting in communication with the chief, she said:

  “This is Shirley Combs. You will find that Amos Ward, represented as a cousin of Tal the Dip, was buried in the churchyard at Holcombe-under-the-Hedge about a month ago. Kindly have the body exhumed, and let me know what you find about the external appearance. Goodbye.”

  The next day, when the chief of Scotland Yard called up Shirley, I listened in on the extension in the bedroom, but only in time to hear Shirley say: “Ah, I thought so,” and then she hung up the phone.

  Shirley Combs at once sent a message to M. Roquette. It was this: “Arrest Tal the Dip. He has the goods.”

  “And now,” Shirley said to me when we had settled down to our books and chocolates once more, “I suppose you want to know how I discovered that Tal the Dip was the man. I don’t know myself: it was womanly intuition, I guess. At any rate, this is what happened: Chu Chu the Locomotive did not disappear; he died. From the report I learned that Tal the Dip was a close associate of Chu Chu. He had skinned the hand of his friend and put the skin upon a glove which he took care to wear when cracking cribs.

  “Naturally, as Chu Chu’s finger prints were the only ones to be found near the job, attention was diverted from our friend Tal the Dip, who snapped Chu Chu’s fingers, as it were, under the noses of the French police. That is all. Simple, is it not?”

  How the Great Detective-Editor Solves a Chinese Murder Mystery

  “Ole Doc Watson”

  Husband-killing was a popular pastime in Chicago. So was getting acquitted of it. A newspaper in 1914 pointed out that at least 14 women accused of “husband murder” in recent years were not convicted. This included Mrs. Alice Davis Sing, whose case is the subject of this story that appeared in the Sept. 9 issue of The Day Book.

  According to the newspapers, Charlie Sing, the owner of a chop suey restaurant, had argued with Alice over her purchase of a silk dress. The next morning, he was found stabbed to death in his bed next to her. Alice told police that two men had entered the room, knocked her unconscious, and killed Charlie. The jury agreed.

  The Day Book, from which this story was discovered, was an experiment by publisher E.W. Scripps (1854-1926) to break the influence advertisers exerted over what news was reported. Launched in Chicago in 1911 as a tabloid, it accepted no advertising and relied on subscriptions for survival. If it succeeded, Scripps planned to publish similar newspapers nationwide. But The Day Book was profitable for only one month and was shut down in 1917.

  While we don’t know who wrote the piece, “Ole Doc Watson” was likely a reference to pitcher Charles John “Doc” Watson (1886-1949), who had just finished his first season with the Chicago Cubs. The next year, Watson jumped to the Chicago Chi-Feds in the newly formed rival Federal League, then played out the 1914-1915 season with the St. Louis Terriers.

  I knew something was on Herlock Sholmes’ wonderful mind the instant I entered his study.

  He expected me. I knew this much because he had sent for me and I had told him I would come. Therefore he was not surprised when I carefully opened the door, entered his study and softly closed the door from the inside.

  Quickly taking off my shoe, I tiptoed in my socks gently to a chair on the other side of the table. I knew better than to disturb the great genius when he had been hitting the hop and was in a brown study.

  One should always be careful in the presence of genius.

  Sholmes looked along both sides of his long, keen nose from his shrewd, penetrating, greenish blue eye. It was a habit he had—that looking with his eyes.

  He seemed to bore holes in the silence that appeared everywhere around us in the room. One couldn’t see the holes, but one could sense them. They were there. From long and intimate association with the great detective I could almost poke the finger of my mind’s eye in one of the holes.

  It was a long time before he moved. Probably many minutes. But I held my breath. And finally, when he did move, he didn’t move at all. He merely spoke in those sharp, low, almost invisible accents for which he was noted.

  “Watson!” he said.

  “Yes sir,” said I, feeling safe now in letting go a small portion of the breath I had been holding.

  “Watson!” he said again.

  “Yes sir” I faintly repeated, having mustered up the courage to do so.

  “Watson,” he said, “you will observe that I am disguised.”

  Fearing to step on the tread of his mighty thoughts I said nothing at all. On the contrary I caught my breath again—this time with both hands—and held it tightly.

  “Yes,” he mused. “I am disguised as the great editor of a daily newspaper. I am about to solve a mysterious murder.”

  Flicking the ashes from the end of his cigaret, the marvelous Sholmes deftly replaced the little white coffin nail back between his teeth, and remused:

  “It is the Charles Sing murder—the Chinaman—the Chinaman with the white wife. He was found dead—murdered, Watson, murdered in his own home—”

  Again there was silence upon which I feared to tread—so awe-inspiring is genius when it is throbbing on the high speed, going downhill on a macadamized pike.

  “Understand me, Watson,” Herlock Sholmes resumed, “I am disguised as a great editor. We will assume that I am the highest-priced, highest-browed editor in this country—and am writing the lead story myself. Follow me, Watson.”

  I boldly shut my eyes and followed him.

  “Let us find the mystery. As I said before, Charles Sing was a Chinaman. By the simplest possible deduction, we find that he ate chop suey. All Chinamen eat chop suey. Sing was a Chinaman. Hence Sing ate chop suey.

  “Now comes the second link in the chop suey chain. You will doubtless remember, Watson, that some years ago, one Elsie Sigel, a white girl, was mysteriously murdered by Chinamen in New York. Yes?”

  I remembered.

  “Well,” continued Sholmes, after he had taken a deep inhalation of cigaret smoke and had expelled it back into the room through his open nostrils, “as all Chinamen eat chop suey, the Chinamen who murdered Elsie Sigel ate chop suey. Do you see the connection, Watson?”

  It was too deep for me, yet I felt no chagrin at not being able to follow the marvelous convolutions of a mind like that of Sholmes.

  “Well,” he said, rather impatiently. “Charles Sing was a Chinaman. He ate chop suey. The murderers of Elsie Sigel were Chinamen. They ate chop suey. So, curiously enough. there appears to be a hazy connection between that murder and the death of Charles Sing in Chicago.”

  “Marvelous!” was all I could ejaculate from a mouth gaping wide with wonder and astonishment.

  Herlock Sholmes smiled in amusement. I felt as one rebuked. It all seemed so plain and simple once he had explained it.

  “Never mind, Watson,” he said, consolingly. “All of us cannot be great editors and great detectives, although some of us would make amazing bartenders.

  “To unravel this apparently baffling mystery,” Sholmes continued, “all we need do is to follow the trail of the lonesome chop suey to its ultimate conclusion. I venture to say, Watson, that none of these dumb Chicago detectives ever thought of that.”

  Here Sholmes actually chuckled, and I carefully jotted it down in my note book.

  “But let them go to it in their own way,” he resumed. “Let them try the once over and the third degree. But I will sho
w them in this great murder mystery all the fantastic elements of mystery—drugs of strange properties, yellow villains whose very names spread the silence of terror in Chinatown—romance and degradation—the suggestion of a nationwide conspiracy—the outcroppings of evidence of a maze of murder-slavery plot for traffic in white and Chinese girls—a scenario of sensation surpassing fictional fancy.”

  The great head dropped forward. That Grecian chin rested on the unresisting bosom of his pleated shirt. The eyes—those boring eyes—lost their luster.

  “Quick, Watson, the needle,” he whispered.

  With rare presence of mind and the hypodermic I gave the great genius another shot in the arm.

  Slowly he came to. Then three. And finally four. Ah! The Sign of the Four! The thrill darted through his flaccid veins, closely followed by the blood. A quiver trembled through his entire nervous system from Portland, Maine, to Portland, Oregon, and from the Great Lakes to the Gulf.

  When he had finally arrived, he calmly lighted another cigaret, carefully reached over and pulled his creased pants an inch and three-quarters above the knee cap, hemmed slightly to clear his throat, and said:

  “Yes, Watson, I like this great editoring much better than great detectiveing. We will now follow the trail of the chop suey. Bring your pistol with you, Watson. Also your chopsticks. Are you ready, Watson? Forward march! Hep—hep!—hep!—hep!—hep!”

  I followed the great Herlock Sholmes on to new adventure—to solve the great Sing murder mystery.

  That was years ago, children, yet I remember it all as clearly as if it were yesternight. And Herlock Sholmes was sure some great editor, believe me.