by Otto Penzler
A queer smile of triumph sat upon Holmes’s lips.
“Indeed,” he said quietly, “I believe I have solved your little problem, Mr. Harrington Edwards.”
“My dear Holmes!” I cried, and “My dear sir!” cried our client.
“I have yet to establish a motive,” confessed my friend; “but as to the main facts there can be no question.”
Mr. Harrington Edwards fell into a chair; he was white and shaking.
“The book,” he croaked. “Tell me.”
“Patience, my good sir,” counseled Holmes kindly. “We have had nothing to eat since sunup, and we are famished. All in good time. Let us first have luncheon and then all shall be made clear. Meanwhile, I should like to telephone to Sir Nathaniel Brooke-Bannerman, for I wish him also to hear what I have to say.”
Our client’s pleas were in vain. Holmes would have his little joke and his luncheon. In the end, Mr. Harrington Edwards staggered away to the kitchen to order a repast, and Sherlock Holmes talked rapidly and unintelligibly into the telephone and came back with a smile on his face. But I asked no questions; in good time this extraordinary man would tell his story in his own way. I had heard all that he had heard, and had seen all that he had seen; yet I was completely at sea. Still, our host’s ghastly smile hung heavily in my mind, and come what would I felt sorry for him. In a little time we were seated at table. Our client, haggard and nervous, ate slowly and with apparent discomfort; his eyes were never long absent from Holmes’s inscrutable face. I was little better off, but Sherlock Holmes ate with gusto, relating meanwhile a number of his earlier adventures—which I may some day give to the world, if I am able to read my illegible notes made on the occasion.
When the dreary meal had been concluded we went into the library, where Sherlock Holmes took possession of the easiest chair with an air of proprietorship that would have been amusing in other circumstances. He screwed together his long pipe and lighted it with almost malicious lack of haste, while Mr. Harrington Edwards perspired against the mantel in an agony of apprehension.
“Why must you keep us waiting, Mr. Holmes?” he whispered. “Tell us, at once, please, who——who——.” His voice trailed off into a moan.
“The criminal,” said Sherlock Holmes smoothly, “is——.”
“Sir Nathaniel Brooke-Bannerman!” said a maid, suddenly putting her head in at the door; and on the heels of her announcement stalked the handsome baronet, whose priceless volume had caused all this commotion and unhappiness.
Sir Nathaniel was white, and he appeared ill. He burst at once into talk.
“I have been much upset by your call,” he said, looking meanwhile at our client. “You say you have something to tell me about the quarto. Don’t say——that——anything——has happened——to it!” He clutched nervously at the wall to steady himself, and I felt deep pity for the unhappy man.
Mr. Harrington Edwards looked at Sherlock Holmes. “Oh, Mr. Holmes,” he cried pathetically, “why did you send for him?”
“Because,” said my friend, “I wish him to hear the truth about the Shakespeare quarto. Sir Nathaniel, I believe you have not been told as yet that Mr. Edwards was robbed, last night, of your precious volume—robbed by the trusted servants whom you sent with him to protect it.”
“What!” screamed the titled collector. He staggered and fumbled madly at his heart, then collapsed into a chair. “My God!” he muttered, and then again: “My God!”
“I should have thought you would have been suspicious of evil when your servants did not return,” pursued the detective.
“I have not seen them,” whispered Sir Nathaniel. “I do not mingle with my servants. I did not know they had failed to return. Tell me——tell me all!”
“Mr. Edwards,” said Sherlock Holmes, turning to our client, “will you repeat your story, please?”
Mr. Harrington Edwards, thus adjured, told the unhappy tale again, ending with a heartbroken cry of “Oh, Nathaniel, can you ever forgive me?”
“I do not know that it was entirely your fault,” observed Holmes cheerfully. “Sir Nathaniel’s own servants are the guilty ones, and surely he sent them with you.”
“But you said you had solved the case, Mr. Holmes,” cried our client, in a frenzy of despair.
“Yes,” agreed Holmes, “it is solved. You have had the clue in your own hands ever since the occurrence, but you did not know how to use it. It all turns upon the curious actions of the taller servant, prior to the assault.”
“The actions of——?” stammered Mr. Harrington Edwards. “Why, he did nothing——said nothing!”
“That is the curious circumstance,” said Sherlock Holmes. Sir Nathaniel got to his feet with difficulty.
“Mr. Holmes,” he said, “this has upset me more than I can tell you. Spare no pains to recover the book and to bring to justice the scoundrels who stole it. But I must go away and think——think——.”
“Stay,” said my friend. “I have already caught one of them.”
“What! Where?” cried the two collectors together.
“Here,” said Sherlock Holmes, and stepping forward he laid a hand on the baronet’s shoulder. “You, Sir Nathaniel, were the taller servant, you were one of the thieves who throttled Mr. Harrington Edwards and took from him your own book. And now, sir, will you tell us why you did it?”
Sir Nathaniel Brooke-Bannerman staggered and would have fallen had not I rushed forward and supported him. I placed him in a chair. As we looked at him we saw confession in his eyes; guilt was written in his haggard face.
“Come, come,” said Holmes impatiently. “Or will it make it easier for you if I tell the story as it occurred? Let it be so, then. You parted with Mr. Harrington Edwards on your doorsill, Sir Nathaniel, bidding your best friend good-night with a smile on your lips and evil in your heart. And as soon as you had crossed the door, you slipped into an enveloping raincoat, turned up your collar, and hastened by a shorter road to the porter’s lodge, where you joined Mr. Edwards and Miles as one of your own servants. You spoke no word at any time, because you feared to speak. You were afraid Mr. Edwards would recognize your voice, while your beard, hastily assumed, protected your face and in the darkness your figure passed unnoticed.
“Having strangled and robbed your best friend, then, of your own book, you and your scoundrelly assistant fled across Mr. Edwards’s fields to his own back door, thinking that, if investigation followed, I would be called in, and would trace those footprints and fix the crime upon Mr. Harrington Edwards—as part of a criminal plan, prearranged with your rascally servants, who would be supposed to be in the pay of Mr. Edwards and the ringleaders in a counterfeit assault upon his person. Your mistake, sir, was in ending your trail abruptly at Mr. Edwards’s back door. Had you left another trail, then, leading back to your own domicile, I should unhesitatingly have arrested Mr. Harrington Edwards for the theft.
“Surely you must know that in criminal cases handled by me, it is never the obvious solution that is the correct one. The mere fact that the finger of suspicion is made to point at a certain individual is sufficient to absolve that individual from guilt. Had you read the little works of my friend and colleague, Dr. Watson, you would not have made such a mistake. Yet you claim to be a bookman!”
A low moan from the unhappy baronet was his only answer.
“To continue, however; there at Mr. Edwards’s own back door you ended your trail, entering his house—his own house—and spending the night under his roof, while his cries and ravings over his loss filled the night and brought joy to your unspeakable soul. And in the morning, when he had gone forth to consult me, you quietly left—you and Miles—and returned to your own place by the beaten highway.”
“Mercy!” cried the defeated wretch, cowering in his chair. “If it is made public, I am ruined. I was driven to it. I could not let Mr. Edwards examine the book, for that way exposure would follow; yet I could not refuse him—my best friend—when he asked its loan.”
&
nbsp; “Your words tell me all that I did not know,” said Sherlock Holmes sternly. “The motive now is only too plain. The work, sir, was a forgery, and knowing that your erudite friend would discover it, you chose to blacken his name to save your own. Was the book insured?”
“Insured for £100,000, he told me,” interrupted Mr. Harrington Edwards excitedly.
“So that he planned at once to dispose of this dangerous and dubious item, and to reap a golden reward,” commented Holmes. “Come, sir, tell us about it. How much of it was forgery? Merely the inscription?”
“I will tell you,” said the baronet suddenly, “and throw myself upon the mercy of my friend, Mr. Edwards. The whole book, in effect, was a forgery. It was originally made up of two imperfect copies of the 1604 quarto. Out of the pair I made one perfect volume, and a skillful workman, now dead, changed the date for me so cleverly that only an expert of the first water could have detected it. Such an expert, however, is Mr. Harrington Edwards—the one man in the world who could have unmasked me.”
“Thank you, Nathaniel,” said Mr. Harrington Edwards gratefully.
“The inscription, of course, also was forged,” continued the baronet. “You may as well know everything.”
“And the book?” asked Holmes. “Where did you destroy it?”
A grim smile settled on Sir Nathaniel’s features. “It is even now burning in Mr. Edwards’s own furnace,” he said.
“Then it cannot yet be consumed,” cried Holmes, and dashed into the cellar, to emerge some moments later, in high spirits, carrying a charred leaf of paper in his hand.
“It is a pity,” he cried, “a pity! In spite of its questionable authenticity, it was a noble specimen. It is only half consumed; but let it burn away. I have preserved one leaf as a souvenir of the occasion.” He folded it carefully and placed it in his wallet. “Mr. Harrington Edwards, I fancy the decision in this matter is for you to announce. Sir Nathaniel, of course, must make no effort to collect the insurance.”
“Let us forget it, then,” said Mr. Harrington Edwards, with a sigh. “Let it be a sealed chapter in the history of bibliomania.” He looked at Sir Nathaniel Brooke-Bannerman for a long moment, then held out his hand. “I forgive you, Nathaniel,” he said simply.
Their hands met; tears stood in the baronet’s eyes. Powerfully moved, Holmes and I turned from the affecting scene and crept to the door unnoticed. In a moment the free air was blowing on our temples, and we were coughing the dust of the library from our lungs.
3
“They are a strange people, these book collectors,” mused Sherlock Holmes as we rattled back to town.
“My only regret is that I shall be unable to publish my notes on this interesting case,” I responded.
“Wait a bit, my dear Doctor,” counseled Holmes, “and it will be possible. In time both of them will come to look upon it as a hugely diverting episode, and will tell it upon themselves. Then your notes shall be brought forth and the history of another of Mr. Sherlock Holmes’s little problems shall be given to the world.”
“It will always be a reflection upon Sir Nathaniel,” I demurred.
“He will glory in it,” prophesied Sherlock Holmes. “He will go down in bookish circles with Chatterton, and Ireland, and Payne Collier. Mark my words, he is not blind even now to the chance this gives him for a sinister immortality. He will be the first to tell it.”
“But why did you preserve the leaf from Hamlet?” I inquired. “Why not a jewel from the binding?”
Sherlock Holmes laughed heartily. Then he slowly unfolded the leaf in question, and directed a humorous finger to a spot upon the page.
“A fancy,” he responded, “to preserve so accurate a characterization of either of our friends. The line is a real jewel. See, the good Polonius says: ‘That he is mad, ’tis true; ’tis true ’tis pittie; and pittie ’tis ’tis true.’ There is as much sense in Master Will as in Hafiz or Confucius, and a greater felicity of expression….Here is London, and now, my dear Watson, if we hasten we shall be just in time for Zabriski’s matinee!”
The Stolen Cigar-Case
BRET HARTE
SEVERAL EXPERT READERS, including Ellery Queen, have described this oft-reprinted story as the best Sherlock Holmes parody (though I confess to a weakness for several of those by Robert L. Fish). There are, however, greater connections between the two hugely popular authors of the Victorian era than that they have both written about Holmes.
Bret Harte (1836–1902) established a reputation as one of the first and greatest chroniclers of life in the American West, specifically the gold rush years of California, in such stories as “The Outcasts of Poker Flat” (1869), which has been the basis for several films as well as multiple operas, and “The Luck of Roaring Camp” (1868), which brought him nationwide fame and wealth. His success did not last long, however, and though he continued to be published on a regular basis, his stories found little favor in America, often dismissed as derivative and sentimental. He moved to England in 1885, where his work enjoyed a large and enthusiastic following. Harte lived there for the rest of his life—an oddity, as he was then known as “the quintessential American writer.”
In his autobiography, Arthur Conan Doyle admitted that several of his early short stories, such as “The Mystery of Sasassa Valley” (1879) and “The American’s Tale” (1880), were “feeble echoes of Bret Harte.” Furthermore, the plot of Conan Doyle’s “The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor” (1892) appears to bear a striking resemblance to Harte’s narrative poem, “Her Letter.”
“The Stolen Cigar-Case” was first published in the December 1900 issue of Pearson’s Magazine; it was first published in book form in Condensed Novels: New Burlesques (Boston and New York, Houghton Mifflin, 1902).
THE STOLEN CIGAR-CASE
Bret Harte
I FOUND HEMLOCK Jones in the old Brook Street lodgings, musing before the fire. With the freedom of an old friend I at once threw myself in my old familiar attitude at his feet, and gently caressed his boot. I was induced to do this for two reasons; one that it enabled me to get a good look at his bent, concentrated face, and the other that it seemed to indicate my reverence for his superhuman insight. So absorbed was he, even then, in tracking some mysterious clue, that he did not seem to notice me. But therein I was wrong—as I always was in my attempt to understand that powerful intellect.
“It is raining,” he said, without lifting his head.
“You have been out then?” I said quickly.
“No. But I see that your umbrella is wet, and that your overcoat, which you threw off on entering, has drops of water on it.”
I sat aghast at his penetration. After a pause he said carelessly, as if dismissing the subject: “Besides, I hear the rain on the window. Listen.”
I listened. I could scarcely credit my ears, but there was the soft pattering of drops on the pane. It was evident, there was no deceiving this man!
“Have you been busy lately?” I asked, changing the subject. “What new problem—given up by Scotland Yard as inscrutable—has occupied that gigantic intellect?”
He drew back his foot slightly, and seemed to hesitate ere he returned it to its original position. Then he answered wearily: “Mere trifles—nothing to speak of. The Prince Kapoli has been here to get my advice regarding the disappearance of certain rubies from the Kremlin; the Rajah of Pootibad, after vainly beheading his entire bodyguard, has been obliged to seek my assistance to recover a jewelled sword. The Grand Duchess of Pretzel-Brauntswig is desirous of discovering where her husband was on the night of the 14th of February, and last night”—he lowered his voice slightly—“a lodger in this very house, meeting me on the stairs, wanted to know ‘Why they don’t answer his bell.’ ”
I could not help smiling—until I saw a frown gathering on his inscrutable forehead.
“Pray to remember,” he said coldly, “that it was through such an apparently trivial question that I found out, ‘Why Paul Ferroll killed his Wife,’ and ‘W
hat happened to Jones!’ ”
I became dumb at once. He paused for a moment, and then suddenly changing back to his usual pitiless, analytical style, he said: “When I say these are trifles—they are so in comparison to an affair that is now before me. A crime has been committed, and, singularly enough, against myself. You start,” he said; “you wonder who would have dared attempt it! So did I; nevertheless, it has been done. I have been robbed!”
“You robbed—you, Hemlock Jones, the Terror of Peculators!” I gasped in amazement, rising and gripping the table as I faced him.
“Yes; listen. I would confess it to no other. But you who have followed my career, who know my methods; yea, for whom I have partly lifted the veil that conceals my plans from ordinary humanity; you, who have for years rapturously accepted my confidences, passionately admired my inductions and inferences, placed yourself at my beck and call, become my slave, grovelled at my feet, given up your practice except those few unremunerative and rapidly decreasing patients to whom, in moments of abstraction over my problems, you have administered strychnine for quinine and arsenic for Epsom salts; you, who have sacrificed everything and everybody to me—you I make my confidant!”
I rose and embraced him warmly, yet he was already so engrossed in thought that at the same moment he mechanically placed his hand upon his watch chain as if to consult the time. “Sit down,” he said; “have a cigar?”
“I have given up cigar smoking,” I said.
“Why?” he asked.
I hesitated, and perhaps coloured. I had really given it up because, with my diminished practice, it was too expensive. I could only afford a pipe. “I prefer a pipe,” I said laughingly. “But tell me of this robbery. What have you lost?”
He rose, and planting himself before the fire with his hands under his coat tails, looked down upon me reflectively for a moment. “Do you remember the cigar-case presented to me by the Turkish Ambassador for discovering the missing favourite of the Grand Vizier in the fifth chorus girl at the Hilarity Theatre? It was that one. It was incrusted with diamonds. I mean the cigar-case.”
