The Early Punch Parodies of Sherlock Holmes

by Bill Peschel

  “How are you, my dear Potson?” he began. “What? Not well? Dear me, dear me, what can it mean? And yet I don’t think it can have been the fifth glass of sherbet which you took with the fourteenth wife of the Khan. No, I don’t think it can have been that.”

  “Holes, you extraordinary creature,” I broke in; “what on earth made you think that I drank five glasses of sherbet with the Khan’s fourteenth wife?”

  “Nothing simpler, my dear fellow. Just before I saw you a native Bokharan goose ran past this rock, making, as it passed, a strange hissing noise, exactly like the noise made by sherbet when immersed in water. Five minutes elapsed, and then you appeared. I watched you carefully. Your lips moved, as lips move only when they pronounce the word fourteen. You then smiled and scratched your face, from which I immediately concluded you were thinking of a wife or wives. Do you follow me?”

  “Yes, I do, perfectly,” I answered, overjoyed to be able to say so without deviating from the truth; for in following his reasoning I did not admit its accuracy. As to that I said nothing, for I had drunk sherbet with no one, and consequently had not taken five glasses with the fourteenth wife of the Khan. Still, it was a glorious piece of guess-work on the part of my matchless friend, and I expressed my admiration for his powers in no measured terms.

  “Perhaps,” said Holes, after a pause, “you are wondering why I am here. I will tell you. You know Lady Hilda Cardamums?”

  “What, the third and loveliest daughter of the Marquis of Sassafras?”

  “The same. Two days ago she left her boudoir at Sassafras Court, saying that she would return in a quarter of an hour. A quarter of an hour elapsed, the Lady Hilda was still absent. The whole household was plunged in grief, and every kind of surmise was indulged in to account for the lovely girl’s disappearance. Under these circumstances the Marquis sent for me, and that,” said Holes, “is why I am here.”

  “But,” I ventured to remark, “do you really expect to find Lady Hilda here in Bokhara, on these inhospitable precipices, where even the wandering Hadrian finds his footing insecure? Surely it cannot be that you have tracked the Lady Hilda hither?”

  “Tush,” said Holes, smiling in spite of himself at my vehemence. “Why should she not be here? Listen. She was not at Sassafras Court. Therefore, she must have been outside Sassafras Court. Now in Bokhara is outside Sassafras Court, or, to put it algebraically,

  in Bokhara = outside Sassafras Court.

  “Substitute ‘in Bokhara’ for ‘outside Sassafras Court,’ and you get this result—

  ‘She must have been in Bokhara.’

  “Do you see any flaw in my reasoning?”

  For a moment I was unable to answer. The boldness and originality of this master-mind had as usual taken my breath away. Holes observed my emotion with sympathy.

  “Come, come, my dear fellow!” he said; “try not to be too much overcome. Of course, I know it is not everybody who could track the mazes of a mystery so promptly; but, after all, by this time you of all people in the world ought to have grown accustomed to my ways. However, we must not linger here any longer. It is time for us to restore Lady Hilda to her parents.”

  As Holes uttered these words a remarkable thing happened. Round the corner of the crag on which we were standing came a little native Bokharan telegraph boy. He approached Holes, salaamed deferentially, and handed him a telegram. Holes opened it, and read it without moving a muscle, and then handed it to me. This is what I read:—

  “To Holes, Bokhara.

  “Hilda returned five minutes after you left. Her watch had stopped. Deeply grateful to you for all your trouble. Sassafras.”

  There was a moment’s silence, broken by Holes.

  “No,” he said, “we must not blame the Lady Hilda for being at Sassafras Court and not in Bokhara. After all, she is young and necessarily thoughtless.”

  “Still, Holes,” I retorted, with some natural indignation, “I cannot understand how, after your convincing induction, a girl of any delicacy of feeling can have remained away from Bokhara.”

  “I knew she would do so,” said my friend, calmly.

  “Holes, you are more wonderful than ever,” was all that I could murmur. So that is the true story of Lady Hilda Cardamums’ return to her family.

  The Escape of the Bull-Dog

  R.C. Lehmann

  The ancient, respected universities of Oxford and Cambridge seem so similar that they blend together in the public mind as “Oxbridge.” But that doesn’t mean that they aren’t also rivals. So it shouldn’t be surprising that Lehmann would choose his alma mater as the location to have some fun with the stuffier aspects of these institutions. “Quis jaculatur scarabæum?”—meaning literally “Where darts the beetle?”—might also mean “Where’s the beadle?” referring to the assistants who run errands for university officials.

  “How now, Sirrah?” he replied; “how dare you insinuate that—”

  I think I have mentioned that the vast intellect of my friend Holes took as great a delight in unravelling the petty complexities of some slight secret as in tracing back to its source the turbid torrent of a crime that had set all Europe ablaze. Nothing, in fact, was too small for this great man; he lived only to unravel; his days and nights were spent in deciphering criminal cryptograms. Many and many a time have I said to him, “Holes, you ought to marry, and train up an offspring of detective marvels. It is a sin to allow such a genius as yours to remain unreproduced.” But he only smiled at me in his calm, impassive, unmuscular, and unemotional manner, and put me off with some such phrase as, “I am wedded to my art,” or, “Detection is my wife; she loves, honours and obeys me—qualities I could never find in a mate of flesh and blood.” I merely mention these trifles in order to give my readers some further insight into the character of a remarkable man with whom it was my privilege to be associated on more than one occasion during those investigations of which the mere account has astonished innumerable Continents.

  During the early summer of the year before last a matter of scientific research took me to Cambridge. It will be remembered that at that time an obscure disease had appeared in London, and had claimed many victims. Careful study had convinced me that this illness, the symptoms of which were sudden fear, followed by an inclination to run away, and ending in complete prostration, were due to the presence in the blood of what is now known as the Proctor Bacillus, so called on account of two white patches on its chest, which had all the appearance of the bands worn by the Proctor during the discharge of his unpleasant constabulary functions in the streets and purlieus of University towns. In order to carry on my investigations at the very fountainhead, as it were, I had accepted a long-standing invitation from my old friend Colonel the Reverend Henry Bagnet, who not only commanded the Cambridge University Volunteers, but was, in addition, one of the most distinguished scholarly ornaments of the great College of St. Baldred’s.

  On the evening to which my story relates we had dined together in the gorgeous mess-room which custom and the liberality of the University authorities have consecrated to the use of the gallant corps whose motto of “Quis jaculatur scarabæum?” has been borne triumphantly in the van of many a review on the Downs of Brighton and the brilliant array of grey uniforms, the heavy gold plate which loaded the oak side-board, the choice vintages of France and Germany, all these had combined with the clank of swords, the jingle of spurs, the emphatic military words of command uttered by light-hearted undergraduates, and the delightful semi-military, semi-clerical anecdotes of that old war-dog, Colonel Bagnet, to make up a memorable evening in the experience of a careworn medical practitioner who had left the best part of his health and his regulation overalls on the bloody battle-field of the Tantia-Tee, in the Afghan jungle.

  Colonel Bagnet had just ordered the head mess-waiter to produce six more bottles of the famous “die-hard” port, laid down by his predecessor in the command during the great town and gown riots of 1870. In these terrible civic disturbances the University V
olunteers, as most men of middle age will remember, specially distinguished themselves by the capture and immediate execution of the truculent Mayor of Cambridge, who was the prime mover in the commotion. The wine was circulating freely, and conversation was flowing with all the verve and abandon that mark the intercourse of undergraduates with dons. Just as I was congratulating the Colonel on the excellence of his port the door opened, and a man of forbidding aspect, clothed in the heavy garments of a mathematical moderator, entered the mess-room.

  “I beg your pardon, Colonel,” said the new arrival, bringing his hand to his college cap with an awkward imitation of the military salute. “I am sorry to disturb the harmony of the evening, but I have the Vice-Chancellor’s orders to inform you that the largest and fiercest of our pack of bull-dogs has escaped his kennel. I am to request you to send a detachment after him immediately. He was last heard barking on the Newmarket Road.”

  In a moment all was confusion. Colonel Bagnet brandished an empty champagne bottle, and in a voice broken with emotion ordered the regiment to form in half-sections, an intricate manœuvre, which was fortunately carried out without bloodshed. What might have happened next I know not. Everybody was dangerously excited, and it needed but a spark to kindle an explosion. Suddenly I heard a well-known voice behind me.

  “One moment, Colonel,” said Picklock Holes, for it was none other, though how he had obtained an entrance I have never discovered; “you desire to find your lost canine assistant? I can help you, but first tell me why a soldier of your age and experience should insist on wearing a lamb’s-wool undervest.”

  The guests were speechless. Colonel Bagnet was blue with suppressed rage.

  “How now, Sirrah?” he replied; “how dare you insinuate that—”

  “Tush, Colonel Bagnet,” said my wonderful friend, pointing to the furious warrior’s mess-waistcoat; “it is impossible to deceive me. That stain of mint-sauce extending across your chest can be explained only on the hypothesis that you wear underclothing manufactured from lamb. That,” he continued, smiling coldly at me, “must be obvious to the meanest capacity.”

  “I am at your orders,” he said, shortly. “The man who can prove that I wear lamb’s-wool when I am actually wearing silk is the man for my money.” In another moment Holes had organised the pursuit.

  “It would be as well,” he remarked, “to have an accurate description of the animal we are in search of. He was—”

  Here the impatient Colonel interrupted. “A brindled bull, very deep in the chest, with two kinks in his tail; has lost one of his front teeth, and snores violently.”

  “Quite right,” said Holes; “the description tallies.”

  “But, Holes,” I ventured to say, “this is most extraordinary. You, who have never been in Cambridge before, know all the details of the dog. It is wonderful.”

  Holes waved me off with as near an approach to impatience as I have ever seen him exhibit. Having done this, he once more addressed the Colonel.

  “Your best plan,” he said, “will be to scour the King’s Parade. You will not find him there. Next you must visit the Esquire Bedell, and thoroughly search his palace from basement to attic. The dog will not be there, but the search will give you several valuable clues. You will then proceed to the University Library, and in the fifth gallery, devoted to Chinese manuscripts, you will find—”

  As Holes uttered these words the mathematical moderator again entered. “Sir,” he said to the Colonel, “it was all a mistake. The dog is quite safe. He has never been out of his kennel.”

  “That,” said Holes, “is exactly what I was coming to. In the fifth gallery, devoted to Chinese manuscripts, you will find no readers. Hurrying on thence, and guiding your steps by the all-pervasive odour of meat-fibre biscuits, you will eventually arrive at the kennel, and find the dog.”

  “Zounds! Mr. Holes,” said the admiring Colonel, in the midst of the laugh that followed on Holes’s last words, “you are an astounding fellow.” And that is why, at the last Cambridge Commencement, the degree of LL.D. honoris causa was conferred on Picklock Holes, together with a Fellowship at St. Baldred’s, worth £800 a year. But my friend is modesty itself. “It is not,” he said, “the honorary degree that I value half so much as the consciousness that I did my duty, and helped a Colonel in the hour of his need.” And with these simple words Dr. Picklock Holes dismissed one of his finest achievements.

  The Hungarian Diamond

  R.C. Lehmann

  The fifth story in the Holes cycle plays off the tense political situation in Europe, when alliances and counter-alliances were formed to counter the latest perceived threat. This, in turn, sparked a genre called “invasion literature.” The first novel in this genre was “The Battle of Dorking” (1871), which portrayed an attack on Britain by Germany. Many were written in an attempt to cash in on the latest crisis, but some tried to alert the country to weaknesses in its defense. One of these authors was ACD, whose 1914 short story “Danger!” showed—correctly—how German U-boats could blockade Britain.

  Everybody must remember the apparently causeless panic that seized the various European governments only a few years ago. It was the dead season. Members of Parliament were all disporting themselves on the various grouse-moors which are specially reserved for the august legislative body in order that there may be no lack of accuracy in the articles of those who imagine that the 12th of August brings to every M.P. a yearning for the scent of heather and the sound of breech-loading guns. Suddenly, and without any warning, a great fear spread throughout Europe. Nobody seemed able to state precisely how it began. There were, of course, some who attributed it to an after-dinner speech made by the German Emperor at the annual banquet of the Blue Bösewitzers, the famous Cuirassier regiment of which the Grand Duke of Schnupftuchstein is the honorary commanding officer. Others again saw in it the influence of M. Paul Deroulède, while yet a third party attributed it with an equal assumption of certainty to the fact that Austria had recently forbidden the import of Servian pigs. They were all wrong. The time has come when the truth must be known. The story I am about to tell will show my extraordinary friend, Picklock Holes, on an even higher pinnacle of unmatchable acumen than which fame has hitherto assigned for him. He may be vexed when he reads my narrative of his triumphs, for he is as modest as he is inductive; but I am determined that, at whatever cost, the story shall be made public.

  It was on one of those delightful evenings for which our English summer is famous, that Holes and I were as usual sitting together and conversing as to the best methods of inferring an Archbishop from a hat-band and a Commander-in-Chief from a penny-whistle. I had put forward several plans which appeared to me to be satisfactory, but Holes had scouted them one after another with a cold impassivity which had not failed to impress me, accustomed though I was to the great man’s exhibition of it.

  “Here,” said Holes, eventually, “are the necessary steps. Hat-band, band-master, master-mind, mind-your-eye, eye-ball, ball-bearing, bear-leader, Leda and the Swan, swan-bill, bill-post, post-cart, cart-road, road-way, Weybridge, bridge-arch, arch-bishop. The inference of a Commander-in-Chief is even easier. You have only to assume that a penny-whistle has been found lying on the Horse-Guards’ Parade by the Colonel of the Scots Guard, and carried by him to the office of the Secretary of State for War. Thereupon you sub-divide the number of drummer-boys in a regiment of Goorkhas by the capital value of a sergeant’s retiring pension, and—”

  But the rest of this marvellous piece of concise reasoning must remain forever a secret, for at this moment a bugle-call disturbed the stillness of the summer night, and Holes immediately paused.

  “What can that mean?” I asked, in some alarm, for Camberwell (our meeting place) is an essentially unmilitary district, and I could not account for this strange and awe-inspiring musical demonstration.

  “Hush,” said Holes, with perfect composure; “it is the agreed signal. Listen. The great Samovar diamond, the most brilliant jewel in the t
urquoise crown of Hungary, has been lost. The Emperor of Austria is in despair. Next week he is due at Pesht, but he cannot appear before the fierce and haughty Magyars in a crown deprived of the decoration that all Hungary looks upon as symbolical of the national existence. A riot in Pesht at this moment would shake the Austro-Hungarian empire to its foundations. With it the Triple Alliance would crumble into dust, and the peace of Europe would not be worth an hour’s purchase. It is, therefore, imperative that before the dawn of next Monday the diamond should be restored to its wonted setting.”

  “My dear Holes,” I said, “this is more terrible than I thought. Have they appealed to you, as usual, after exhausting the native talent?”

  “My dear Potson,” replied my friend, “you ask too much. Let it suffice that I have been consulted, and that the determination of the question of peace or war lies in these hands.” And with these words the arch-detective spread before my eyes those long, sinewy, and meditative fingers which had so often excited my admiration.

  Our preparations for departure to Hungary were soon made. I hardly know why I accompanied Holes. It seemed somehow to be the usual thing that I should be present at all his feats. I thought he looked for my company, and though his undemonstrative nature would never have sufficed him to betray any annoyance had I remained absent, I judged it best not to disturb the even current of his investigations by departing from established precedent. I therefore departed from London—my only alternative. Just as we were setting out, Holes stopped me with a warning gesture.