by Otto Penzler
“It would be about that time,” I replied, “since the maids left.”
Combs towered above me, lost in thought, his chin sunk upon his breast.
“I will not be baffled,” he exclaimed suddenly. “It would be ill-fortune,” he went on, “if, after years spent successfully solving the solutions of others, I were to fail upon the most important and intricate case I have ever had to deal with, particularly when it affects me personally.”
At that moment my wife knocked at the door.
“The postman has just left a card for you,” she said.
“Grocers and butchers I can understand,” said Combs, “but I do not quite realise the value of being upon visiting terms with your postman.”
“Put it under the door, please,” I cried. And I leant down and picked up a postcard addressed to me, and which I read aloud to Combs. It ran as follows:
“Messrs. Emess and Script present their compliments to Mr. Whatson, and beg to inform him that an empty and unstamped foolscap envelope, addressed in his handwriting, was taken in by their office boy this morning, and the necessary surcharge postage paid thereon. They will be obliged if Mr. Whatson will kindly remit them threepence to cover this expenditure, or are prepared, if so desired, to debit it on Mr. Whatson’s royalty account.”
“Do you think it is genuine?” I asked, handing it across to Combs, who took it and studied it minutely through his glass.
“Undoubtedly,” he replied.
“Then what do you make of it?” I queried.
Combs did not reply for a minute. Then he said, “I can imagine that the thief wished to rid himself of the valueless part of his booty at the earliest possible moment, and as he didn’t know what to do with the envelope, he crossed the road and posted it.”
“It sounds feasible,” I said.
Combs flashed an angry glance at me.
“If you know of a better detective, you’d better go to him,” he said. “You know that I know that you know that you cannot know of a better one, since none better exists.”
I began to apologise. But Combs stopped me with another of his imperative gestures and rose.
“It’s gone twelve o’clock,” he said. “Do you turn to the right or the left for the Duke of Edinburgh? I want to measure the distance,” he added.
I gave him the necessary directions, and ventured to add a warning as to certain drinks sold there which experience has taught me to avoid.
“Many thanks,” said Combs. “Come and see me at seven o’clock this evening. I hope to have solved the problem.” And he was gone.
I sat down and tried to think. I was in possession of all the facts, but could make nothing of them; while Combs, with the same facts, would, I felt happily sure, regain possession of the lost papers.
After some twenty minutes I gave up thinking in despair, and, slipping my revolver into my pocket, and telling my wife that I might not be home that night, I went off to the bedside of a patient who had been dying for the last three days, and who, I felt, might think he was being neglected.
I happily found him none the worse for my absence, but, owing to his insisting upon reading through his will to me before he would ask me to witness his signature thereto, it was nearer 7:15 than 7 o’clock when I knocked at Combs’s door.
A young and fashionably-dressed lady, whose features seemed strangely familiar to me, was sitting in Combs’s chair, smoking a pipe, and I was just about to withdraw an apology, when a sudden lifting of the eyebrow recalled her face to my recollection.
“Good evening, Miss Combs!” I said. “I assume your brother has not yet arrived home. May I come in and wait?”
“Mine name is Kammerad,” said the lady. “I for Herr Combs on pizziness wait.”
I judged from her accent that the lady was a German, a nation I had always disliked, and I decided that I would rather vait—I mean wait—for my friend in the street.
I was half-way down the stairs when a voice from upstairs called, “Herr Vatson! Herr Vatson!”
I returned to the room.
“Well?” I said testily.
“Don’t you me know?” asked the lady, with a smile that was intended to be ingratiating.
“I haven’t the pleasure,” I said dryly.
“Then you ought to,” said Combs in his ordinary voice, for it was he.
I expressed my admiration, and could not help reflecting, as I had many times reflected before, upon the genius of my friend. Not only was he a perfect past master in the art of making up, but he was able to throw himself into the character he impersonated with such success that even I, who knew him perhaps better than any other living soul, was unable to penetrate his disguise. The cinema-loving public lost a rare treat when Combs decided that he would not act for the films.
Combs chuckled.
“I am glad to find that I have not lost all my old powers,” he said.
“Have you found the papers?” I asked anxiously.
“No,” he replied, “but you will be glad to hear that your wife had not got them.”
“How do you know that?” I cried in astonishment.
“I visited her in this disguise this afternoon,” he replied, “and, telling her that I had been sent by a registry office, applied for the position of cook-parlour-maid. Fortunately, she shares your dislike for Germans, and my application was refused.”
I suppose I showed all too clearly my disappointment at his failure to recover the papers.
“Cheer up,” said Coombs, though the tone in which he said it was anything but cheering. “I am expecting the papers here at any moment.”
I confess that at the time I thought that he only said it to buck me up.
“How, when, and where?” I cried excitedly.
“Ah-ha!” replied Combs mysteriously.
At that moment there was a knock at the front door.
“A visitor during the dinner-hour!” ejaculated Combs in surprise. “It must be something important.”
“But you have just told me that you are expecting the papers,” I said.
“How silly of me! Of course I did,” replied Combs. “I had forgotten it for the moment.”
The knock was repeated upon the door of the room.
“Come in!” said Combs.
A postman opened the door and inquired, “Mr. Combs in?”
“Yes,” said Combs.
“Beggin’ your pardon missie, but it’s Mr. Combs as I want.”
“It’s all right, postman,” said Combs, laughing, as he pulled off his wig.
“Oh, I beg your honour’s pardon,” said the man. “I didn’t recognise you in them joy rags of yourn. One shilling to pay,” he added, holding out a bulky-looking envelope.
“I never dispense charity at the door,” said Combs, waving it aside.
“Do you formally refuse to take it?” queried the man.
“What is it?” parried Combs.
“ ’Ere you are, you can see for yourself. It’s a handstamped letter. You was hout the hother two hoccasions I called tod’y, an’ I couldn’t leave it,” replied the postman, his veneer of education wearing off in his excitement.
Combs took the proffered packet, and as he saw it a look of blank astonishment stole over his face.
“It’s worth risking,” he muttered, as he handed the postman a shilling.
He tore open the envelope, and glanced rapidly at its contents.
“Catch!” he cried, with a sigh of relief, tossing the envelope over to me. “There are your valuable papers. Mind you take more care of them in the future.”
It was true. Not a paper was missing, and the envelope was the identical one I had myself addressed to Combs the previous evening.
I dropped on my knees at Combs’s feet, and kissed his hands in gratitude.
“How did you manage it?” I gasped. But Combs waived the question aside.
“Leave me now,” he said. “I’m very tired, and I think I’ll go to bed. Come round tomorrow morning, and I’l
l have an explan—and I’ll explain it to you.” And he yawned.
I placed the precious packet securely in the inner lining of my waistcoat, and with reiterated thanks went home to bed and to sleep for the first time for two nights.
On the following morning I found Combs at breakfast, in a curiously shaped dressing gown of many colours. He had deep black lines under his eyes, which told me, as a medical man, quite clearly of the sleepless night he had spent pondering over the intricacies of some recent case, no doubt.
“You want to know how I found the papers,” he said. “I will tell you. I have been thinking about it all night. It was really very simple when once I satisfied myself that no one could have entered the house while you were out. You will recollect that you confirmed my suspicions that none of the windows or the back door had been opened for several months. And, indeed, anyone jumping out of your study window must have inevitably broken his neck in falling into the area below. There was nobody there yesterday morning, because I looked, and I learnt from inquiry at the local police-station that none had been removed during the night.
“These facts established, I felt confident that no burglary had been committed, and as you have no maids, and I had myself ascertained that your wife was quite innocent, I was driven to the conclusion that you took the papers out of the study yourself.”
“Me!” I cried, forgetting my grammar again in my excitement.
“You,” said Combs. “It is clear to me that before leaving the room for the Duke of Edinburgh you stuffed the papers into one of the envelopes, thought of putting them away for safety, but realised that you hardly had the time to put them away and lock up your desk again, and you dashed out with the envelopes in one of your hands—I am not sure which.
“On closing the front door you found yourself on the doorstep with the envelopes in your hand, and subconsciously assumed that you had come out to post the letters, so you crossed the road and slipped them into the pillar-box. Then when you found yourself on the doorstep again, and felt in your pocket for your latchkey you found your flask, and, forgetting in your excitement all about your little trip to the pillar-box, you dashed off to the Duke of Edinburgh.
“To be honest, and so prevent you from running away with the idea that I solved the problem by deduction alone, and without the aid of clues, I ought to mention that the mud on your study carpet set me wondering. There is no mud between here and the Duke of Edinburgh, and you remember coming straight back. You made no mention, however, of having gone straight there, and when I saw the muddy state of the road between your front door and the pillar-box, I felt that I was on the right track, and the publishers’ postcard helped me farther.
“I think that’s about all there is to it, except to say that to go round to the local post-office and inquire the time of the next delivery was but the work of five minutes, or, rather, would have been had I not been kept waiting fifty minutes for an answer to my query.”
“Combs,” I cried enthusiastically, seizing both his hands in mine, “you are really wonderful! How can I show my gratitude?”
“By leaving me, my dear chap,” said Combs. “I am expecting a lady—er—an important client—at almost any moment, and her case is too private even for your ears.”
And as I descended the stairs I heard him tuning his beloved ’cello, the gift—er—yes——
A Pragmatic Enigma
JOHN KENDRICK BANGS
(Writing as A. Conan Watson, M.D.)
OF THE MANY clever ideas of the great American humorist John Kendrick Bangs (1862–1922), none equaled his notion of “condensed novels.” He published Potted Fiction (1908) with the subtitle Being a series of extracts from the world’s bestsellers put up in thin slices for hurried consumers.
In his foreword, Bangs notes that “This library of Condensed Best Sellers is designed to meet the literary needs of those who have troubles of their own so numerous that they have not much spare time to devote to the trials and tribulations of the heroes and heroines of the hour. It is the purpose of the United States Literary Canning Company, of Pennsylvania, to put up in small packages, of which this is a sample, the most talked of literary products of our best, if not most famous, authors.”
And thus was born Reader’s Digest. Well, no, not really, but the spoof produced by Bangs is only slightly different from that enormously successful publishing enterprise. The concept was clearly a popular one, as the following testimonials illustrate.
From the mayor of Squantumville, S.D.: “Since using six cans of your Potted Fiction our Common Council has closed the Carnegie Library as superfluous.” And from an insomniac of twenty years: “Your literary capsules have just arrived, and they are a revelation. I took two upon retiring last night, and have not waked up since. Many thanks.”
“A Pragmatic Enigma” was first published in the magazine section of the April 19, 1908, issue of The New York Herald; it was first collected in book form in Potted Fiction (New York, Doubleday, Page & Co., 1908).
A PRAGMATIC ENIGMA
John Kendrick Bangs
IT WAS A drizzly morning in November. Holmes and I had just arrived at Boston, where he was to lecture that night on “The Relation of Cigar Stumps to Crime” before the Browning Club of the Back Bay, and he was playfully indulging in some deductive pranks at my expense.
“You are a doctor by profession, with a slight leaning toward literature,” he observed, rolling up a small pill for his opium pipe and placing it in the bowl. “You have just come on a long journey over the ocean and have finished up with a five hour trip on the New York, New Haven, and Hartford Railroad. You were brushed off by a coloured porter and rewarded him with a sixpence taken from your right hand vest pocket before leaving the train. You came from the station in a cab, accompanied by a very handsome and famous Englishman; ate a lunch of baked beans and brown bread, opening with a Martini cocktail, and you are now wondering which one of the Boston newspapers pays the highest rates for press notices.”
“Marvellous! Marvellous!” I cried. “How on earth do you know all this?”—for it was every bit of it true.
“It is the thing that we see the most clearly that we perceive the more quickly, my dear Watson,” he replied, with a deprecatory gesture. “To begin with, I know you are a doctor because I have been a patient of yours for many years. That you have an inclination toward literature is shown by the fact that the nails on the fingers of your right hand are broken off short by persistent banging on the keys of a typewriting machine, which you carry with you wherever you go and with which you keep me awake at night, whether we are at a hotel or traveling on a sleeping car. If this were not enough to prove it I can clinch the fact by calling your attention to the other fact that I pay you a salary to write me up and can produce signed receipts on demand.”
“Wonderful,” said I, “but how did you know I had come on a long journey, partly by sea and partly by rail on a road which you specify?”
“It is simplicity itself,” returned Holmes warily. “I crossed on the steamer with you. As for the railroad, the soot that still remains in your ears and mottles your nose is identical with that which decorates my own features. Having got mine on the New Haven and Hartford, I deduce that you got yours there also. As for the coloured porter, they have only coloured porters on those trains for the reason that they show the effects of dust and soot less than white porters would. That he brushed you off is shown by the streaks of gray on your white vest where his brush left its marks. Over your vest pocket is the mark of your thumb, showing that you reached into that pocket for the only bit of coin you possessed, a sixpence.”
“You are a marvel,” I murmured. “And the cab?”
“The top of your beaver hat is ruffled the wrong way where you rubbed it on the curtain roller as you entered the cab,” said Holmes. “The handsome and famous Englishman who accompanied you is obvious. I am he, and am therefore sure of my deduction.”
“But the lunch, Holmes, the lunch, with the beans and
the cocktail,” I cried.
“Can you deny them?” he demanded.
“No, I cannot,” I replied, for to tell the truth his statement of the items was absolutely correct. “But how, how my dear fellow, can you have deduced a bean? That’s what stumps me.”
Holmes laughed.
“You are not observant, my dear Watson,” he said. “How could I help knowing when I paid the bill?”
In proof he tossed me the luncheon cheque, and there it was, itemised in full.
“Aha!” I cried. “But how do you know that I am wondering which one of the Boston papers pays the best rates for press notices?”
“That,” said he, “is merely a guess, my dear Watson. I don’t know it, but I do know you.”
And this was the man they had said was losing his powers!
At this moment there came a timid knock on our door.
“A would-be client,” said Holmes. “The timidity of his knock shows that he is not a reporter. If it were the chambermaid, knowing that there were gentlemen in the room she would have entered without knocking. He is a distinguished man, also, who does not wish it known that he is calling, for if it were otherwise he would have been announced on the telephone from the office—a Harvard professor, I take it, for no other kind of living creature in Boston would admit that there was anything he did not know, and therefore no other kind of a Bostonian would seek my assistance. Come in.”
The door opened and a rather distinguished looking old gentleman carrying a suit case and an umbrella entered.
“Good morning, professor,” said Holmes, rising and holding out his right hand in genial fashion and taking his visitor’s hat with his left. “How are things out at Cambridge this morning?”
“Marvellous! Marvellous!” ejaculated the visitor, infringing somewhat on my copyright, in fact taking the very words out of my mouth. “How did you know I was a professor at Harvard?”
“By the matriculation mark on your right forefinger,” said Holmes, “and also by the way in which you carry your umbrella, which you hold not as if it were a walking stick, but as if it were a pointer with which you were about to demonstrate something on a chart, for the benefit of a number of football players taking a four years’ course in Life, at an institution of learning. Moreover, your address is pasted in your hat, which I have just taken from you and placed on the table. You have come to me for assistance, and your entanglement is purely intellectual, not spiritual. You have not committed a crime nor are you the victim of one—I can tell that by looking at your eyes, which are red, not with weeping, but from reading and writing. The tear ducts have not been used for years. Hence I judge that you have written a book, and after having published it, you suddenly discover that you don’t know what it means yourself, and inasmuch as the critics over the country are beginning to ask you to explain it you are in a most embarrassing position. You must either keep silent, which is a great trial to a college professor, especially a Harvard professor, or you must acknowledge that you cannot explain—a dreadful alternative. In that bag you have the original manuscript of the book, which you desire to leave with me, in order that I may read it and if possible detect the thought, tell you what it is, and thus rid you of your dilemma.”
