by Otto Penzler
And the Persian Slipper. For Sherlock Holmes’s tobacco.
I don’t know where the Persian Slipper came from. I never did know. I know it caught my eye at our first meeting during which we read aloud, examined, and took apart a fine Vincent Starrett—or was it Christopher Morley?—story in the style of the Canon.
It was the oddest, queerest, most beautiful slipper I had ever seen. It was made of some faded, jade-green stuff, like felt, obviously and authentically oriental. It was curled at the tip like some curious pastry, and from one end to the other it was crusted with tinted sequins and bright paste gems. O, it was so lovely! And something about the size of it caused my heart to stir—gently at first and then with a furious and almost unappeasable longing for possession. It was only a few millimeters greater in length than my foot. O, I knew I had to have the thing the moment I laid eyes on it!
My admission to the Irregulars occurred in the third year of their existence. I was not yet onto all the special rights and duties of the group—one of them, at least, downright eccentric.
I remember that night. Over on Roberts’ Ridge men were working in the hay harvest, in the moonlight, and the sweet smell of slaughtered clover drifted down upon the misted river hush. It was a scent like the great cake of Creation rising in God’s ovens! O, I stared across the table at which everyone was speculating on the date of the buried coins in the Musgrave Ritual (as if they were discernible!)—I stared across the glimmering lampshine at the mantelpiece. At the Persian Slipper.
Is it full of perique? I asked with a small smile. Or perhaps a nice latakia and shag cut English Burleigh?
Is what full of perique? asked the Brown Recluse in an unappeasably patronizing manner. Is what full of latakia or shag cut English Burleigh?
Why, the slipper, I said. The Persian Slipper. Isn’t that where the Master keeps his pipe tobacco?
Jake Bardall intervened kindly.
Ordinarily, yes, Ms. Lathrop. Tonight being Persian Slipper Night we dumped it out. It’s in that twist of paper you see beside it on the manteltop.
Slowly, irresistibly, I arose and left the doi-lied table and the circle of lampshine and went to the mantelpiece. O, it was so beautiful! I had never seen so lovely a slipper! Old? Of course. A little moth-eaten? Naturally. Eaten first by moths, I would guess, drawn to the halo of Aladdin’s lamp in some ancient Arab midnight. Was there a sequin or a paste gem missing here or there? Of course—ripped off in some desperate last moment escape by Sinbad the Sailor. O, I knew this was no stage prop, some scuffed and dusty Atlantic City souvenir donated by one of the Irregular wives or sisters. This was the Persian Slipper. It was the one, the only, the original Persian Slipper from the Master’s mysterious and marvelous abode. Here was proof (as though any were needed!) that Sherlock Holmes had been real, actual, flesh and blood—and always would be. This had been his slipper.
The men were watching me curiously as I stood at this place to which, on my giant crutch, I had hobbled. They seemed to grasp the fact—yes, even the Brown Recluse seemed to know—that they were in the presence of deep human emotion. The room was still, save for the grassy whisper of the clock. Through the open window came faintly the sweetness of the slashed clover up somewhere above the fog which set its wisping, spectral fingers across the weathered sill.
Slowly I reached up and took the Persian Slipper in my fingers. My hand trembled with excitement. O, you dear, lovely, old thing. I must somehow—someday possess you.
Everyone there must have surely heard my murmur. Yes, even the Brown Recluse.
Yet no one moved, no one spoke—not even as I tucked the slipper firmly in the space between head and shoulder and hopped and scraped across the oriental carpet to the deep Morris chair where the Master might once have sat deep in a cocaine revery of Irene Adler or the abominable Dartmoor dog. I lowered myself slowly into the leather and rested my thick crutch on the carved arm. Then I reached down and slipped off my costly, but rather practical looking, five and a half quadruple A shoe. I lay it beside my stockinged foot. I wriggled my pretty painted toes in happy anticipation. Dare I do it?
I knew every eye was upon me in that moment. I did not look up.
I took the Persian Slipper out from the hollow between cheek and shoulder where I had held it and lowered it to my beautiful foot. I slipped it on. I did not stand up—O, no, this was not for walking. It was for feeling, for dreaming, for being in another time, another place. I did not look at the men. I did not look into the bilious, yellow eyes of the Brown Recluse who, even there, in the comfort of that little room, hunkered above us all in his hideous brown-tweed cape. I looked at the window—the pretty lace curtains blowing gently on either side of a potted begonia—and beyond the sill, the fog. And I knew—I mean I was quite logically convinced—that so long as the Persian Slipper so clasped my foot that I was in England—in the London of a misted metropolitan night—with street lamps glowing in the fleecy murk like Van Gogh sunflowers amid some drenching dark. And somewhere up the street, in Buckingham or Windsor, Victoria was sleeping more soundly thanks to me and Sherlock Holmes!
I tore my eyes from Fancy then and faced the five silent pairs of eyes.
It feels—O, it feels as though—as though it has always been there. On my foot. O, and did you each see my foot? Yes, you, Mister Gribble, yes, I know you have seen it! Did any of you ever see a lovelier foot?
I kicked my leg like a dancer, there in the lampshine. Now, there were fireflies out in the fog, but they were not really fireflies at all—they were the wink of carriage lamps on fleeing hansom cabs or glimmers of dusky, hangdog flames leaked out of dark lanterns carried by bodysnatchers and Resurrectionists from up in the Mews.
Can’t you see? I said, that the Persian Slipper is really mine?
And so it may well be, said Harry Hornbrook with a kindly nod into the smoke of his Marsh Wheeling stogie. Next year.
Next year?
Why, yes, said Gene Voitle. If you win it.
Win it? I murmured. How vulgar. I don’t believe I understand.
The Brown Recluse rose. He appeared more menacing, more virulent as his huge, brown-caped figure soared up out of his chair. He glowered meanly down at me.
This year, he said. It seems that I am the winner.
Winner? Will one of you be so kind as to explain?
I shall not tax you with the details of the answer which followed—nor the truly obscene ritual that ensued—save to say that in the initial year of its organization, the local chapter had voted to have an annual award—purely honorary—to the Irregular who solved a crime to have been committed by someone other than the person charged by the authorities in Glory or in the boundaries of the Ohio Valley.
As this was being explained to me (as I sat listening in disgust), the Brown Recluse came scuttling across the room, lifted the adorable slipper from my reluctant hands and replaced it on the mantelpiece after a moment of proprietary weighing of it in his own fingers.
It is not often, said Ory with a courteous nod to the sheriff, that law-enforcement officials in these times arrest the wrong person. But it does happen.
He lighted his cold bulldog brier. His friendly eyes twinkled as he regarded the sheriff.
No offense of course, Gene.
Voitle nodded and rubbed the tip of his bulbous, shiny nose.
No offense, of course, he said. But at least once a year during the last three years the law has been wrong. The Ashworth burglary three years ago, we arrested the wrong persons. The Moorhead holdup—that was another mistake. And this year we nabbed and charged those three Trentor kids for a car theft in Benwood, and again we were wrong.
He glanced appreciatively in the direction of the Brown Recluse.
But thanks to you, Charlie Gribble, Justice finally triumphed.
I don’t understand, I said, though I think I was beginning to.
Simply this, Miss Lathrop, said the Brown Recluse suddenly, in that nasal voice of his which seems to penetrate and spoil eve
ry cranny of peace in a room. Every year for the past three years—since, indeed, I founded this chapter of the Baker Street Irregulars—I have proven the true author of a crime instead of the one wrongly accused.
How? I managed to gasp. You?
By the simple application of those rules of logic which your late father expounded and taught, he said. And with the methods of the Master—the great Sherlock Holmes—whom I have adored (and studied) since childhood.
I think not, I said icily. I think much more recently than that, Charlie.
Well, you are mistaken. My father had a large library of great books. He had many original Doyle manuscripts—he had the complete file of the Strand Holmes—he had every first edition. He even had—.
Yes, I think I know, I said, getting laboriously to my leg. He had an inscribed photograph of Doyle.
The spidery hulk wavered. A snicker of wet apology was heard.
Why, no, he said. He was never so fortunate as that. But to get on with it—I have won the Persian Slipper for two years and if my fellow members are to be believed—I am to win it again tonight.
A murmur of assent went round the group. The fog piled white as Dickens’ dreams against the lacy panes and I was in the midst of a vanished England.
For a year, I said, nervously. You possess it for a year.
A year is the limit, said Ory. Unless—well, we’ve never been faced with this one.
What is that? I asked, my curiosity insatiable now.
The solving of one kind of case, said Harry Hornbrook. By one of the Irregulars—would mean that he could keep the Persian Slipper in perpetuity.
And what sort of case might that be?
Something, luckily, we haven’t had to deal with in this fine little community, observed Sheriff Voitle.
I ask what it is—this special crime—to bring so special a reward for solving.
Murder.
Did you say murder?
Yes, murder. Any member who solves a murder is, at the next meeting, awarded the Persian Slipper.
To—to keep?
In perpetuity, said Harry then.
I don’t mean to discourage you, ma’am, said Ory, but we got a pretty clever sheriff here. And we have Charlie Gribble.
Yes, I said, in a voice I struggled to steady. I know you have him. The Brown—
It came out despite myself.
—the Brown Recluse.
What did you say, my dear? asked Harry Hornbrook.
I said you must excuse me, I stammered, and scraped and hobbled to the door. I shan’t stay for the award. I shall pass this meeting entirely by, I think, gentlemen. I have the most unremitting headache in years.
And I was gone from them—into the fogs of that London night, along the sacred Thames, along my lovely old Ohio.
The next three years passed by in dreary progression. A horse theft the first year and the true thief unveiled got the Brown Recluse the treasured Slipper award. The second year vandals broke into the Bowser Feed Company and stole six hundred pounds of chicken mash. Again the Brown Recluse got the honor. And the slipper. The third year he won it for locating another stolen car.
Stolen cars, horse thieves, chicken feed!
What a farce it was!
And the lovely Persian Slipper showing a little more wear, a little more age, a sequin missing here or there as the relentless years unfolded.
I determined one chilly September night in that last year that this should end. Abruptly. I had worked hard on all the cases in question. To tell the truth, all of the members were as eager to help me win the award as I was—I think they knew it meant something special to me. They seemed to relinquish all personal ambitions to possess it. But each year—though I did my homework faithfully (and, as nearly as possible, following the Master’s methods)—the Persian Slipper went to the Brown Recluse.
Damn him!
I knew that cold September night that this spider must be crushed.
Forever.
I resolved that the Brown Recluse should be dead before morning.
I am not one of your modern cynics writing now in the mode so prevalent that dwells with obsessive and feverish particulars on acts of violence. So I shall be terse.
There is a venerable and gigantic elm at the corner, beyond the single street lamp, at Water Street and Twelfth. The tree is thought to be some six or seven hundred years old, and its great roots have thrust tough fingers under the brick sidewalk, giving it a lovely tilt and bulge and ripple. In the fog, with the feathered luminescence of the street lamp behind it, it looks like some enormous Druid priest—presiding over some mossy, sacred ritual.
It was behind this tree that I waited that biting September night. From where I leaned, I could scarcely make out the shape of my house, though I could distinguish the guttering candle flame in the window of the little fruit and vegetable storage room off the pantry.
I was frightened, but I was determined.
It was perhaps ten-thirty. I kept my eyes fixed, piercing as best they could the scarcely penetrable fog which lay on the land toward the center of town. Every light was a golden spider sending out myriad, shimmering strands to form, in each pocket of dark, a golden web. But the spider for which I waited was not golden. I had taken my crutch from the pit of my arm and braced myself securely against the great, ancient tree. Somewhere out on the river voices drifted from boys in skiffs, out gigging frogs. A dog barked, muffled, secret, beyond the mist. I faced up Twelfth Street, the direction from which he would come from the Bank. At the very moment when the town clock struck eleven in the tower of the courthouse somewhere up in the submerged village, I heard those footsteps. Footsteps and the unmistakable chink of the steel ferrule of the golden-headed walking stick as he struck it ahead of him along the rippled brick sidewalk. But, heavens—he was coming from the house, not toward it. He had gotten home early, it would seem, and now was returning to the bank for some late work—those dreary mercantile schemes which seem to occupy his professional life, at least.
If you ponder a moment, you will realize that I was on the wrong side of the tree for him not to glimpse me before I struck. He was far, far stronger than I—stronger than some men, I should wager—and I knew if he saw me with my heavy crutch raised he would fend away my blow easily and successfully ward it off. I could not permit that to happen.
With an effort so great that it tore at my very breath I scrambled around the half circumference of the huge tree trunk and stationed myself on the other side—and not a moment too soon.
He was almost opposite me now. I must wait until that split moment when he is past, yet not too far past, out of eyeshot, at least, but within striking distance. The moment arrived and I harvested it well.
I have not yet mentioned the strength in my right shoulder and arm with which almost forty-nine years of crutching myself about have endowed me. On that side I am quite powerful.
I shall never forget that moment. The street lamp like a blinding, baleful moon above us both. He—in that split instant with his back to me—that hated back, the dirty glow of the bilious brown-tweed cape below the scraggled hair and not very clean collar and raddled, fat neck. It was at this target that now, with all my mortal power, I aimed and swung the crutch.
The Circle of Willis, the poets call it. And the doctors. That area of cranial excellence and all living movement—the base of the skull above the nape. I felt the metal of the crutch standard strike and I felt something crunch and I heard an almost mindless gasp—a sound that seemed to have been an afterthought to dying. Without another noise the hideous victim slumped heavily to the glistening brick pavement.
And fitting the armpiece of the crutch back under my arm I hobbled slowly, remorselessly, and feeling wholly at peace with myself, toward the light in the pantry window.
I had a slender stemmed glass of Muscadet Bordeaux from a bottle my father had left in his small liquor cabinet in the library. I sat a long while in the dark of the parlor. My thoughts were as slow and grave
as the procession of numerals on a clock face. My mind was entirely in order. Except for one thought—a fancy, at first, and then presently an obsession.
I thought I should now never possess the Persian Slipper. I thought the ghost of the Brown Recluse—the avenging shade named Charlie Gribble—would come back from the dead and announce (after much showy pretense of deduction) his own murderer. And in perpetuity—even if in Death—possess the adorable award. The more I thought of it the more I trembled. Even at this moment, it seemed, the ghost of the man I had murdered was pacing the sterile linoleum of his bedroom, pondering the solution to this latest and most intriguing of crimes—and then pointing his phosphorescent finger of accusations—quite accurately—at me!
Damn him!
I hobbled to the phone and sank onto the Ottoman beside it. I laid down my crutch (quite unstained by its recent fatal contact) and picked up the phone and dialed his number. O, yes I knew it. I would never forget it—a memory of the nights when—full of his child—I had frantically called and called to a phone which was off the hook or not answered at all.
I listened to the distant drone of the ring—somehow seeming a little fainter because of the fog against the windows.
Again it rang.
