by Otto Penzler
Chapman also had a long career in the newspaper business, working for the Chicago Daily News as a reporter, The Denver Republican as a literary editor and columnist, and The Denver Times as managing editor. In 1919 he left the frontier for New York City, where he became a staff writer for the Sunday edition of the New York Tribune (later the New York Herald Tribune). He was a writer of fiction and nonfiction throughout his life, and published four books over the span of a dozen years: Mystery Ranch (1921), a western adventure and murder mystery; The Story of Colorado, Out Where the West Begins (1924), a history of the state; John Crews (1926), a western combining adventure and romance; and The Pony Express: The Record of a Romantic Adventure in Business (1932), a nonfiction account.
“The Unmasking of Sherlock Holmes” was originally published in the February 1905 issue of The Critic and Literary World.
THE UNMASKING OF SHERLOCK HOLMES
Arthur Chapman
IN ALL MY career as Boswell to the Johnson of Sherlock Holmes, I have seen the great detective agitated only once. We had been quietly smoking and talking over the theory of thumbprints, when the landlady brought in a little square of pasteboard at which Holmes glanced casually and then let drop on the floor. I picked up the card, and as I did so I saw that Holmes was trembling, evidently too agitated either to tell the landlady to show the visitor in or to send him away. On the card I read the name:
Monsieur C. Auguste Dupin,
Paris.
While I was wondering what there could be in that name to strike terror to the heart of Sherlock Holmes, M. Dupin himself entered the room. He was a young man, slight of build and unmistakably French of feature. He bowed as he stood in the doorway, but I observed that Sherlock Holmes was too amazed or too frightened to return the bow. My idol stood in the middle of the room, looking at the little Frenchman on the threshold as if M. Dupin had been a ghost. Finally, pulling himself together with an effort, Sherlock Holmes motioned the visitor to a seat, and, as M. Dupin sunk into the chair, my friend tumbled into another and wiped his brow feverishly.
“Pardon my unceremonious entrance, Mr. Holmes,” said the visitor, drawing out a meerschaum pipe, filling it, and then smoking in long, deliberate puffs. “I was afraid, however, that you would not care to see me, so I came in before you had an opportunity of telling your landlady to send me away.”
To my surprise Sherlock Holmes did not annihilate the man with one of those keen, searching glances for which he has become famous in literature and the drama. Instead he continued to mop his brow and finally mumbled, weakly:
“But—but—I thought y-y-you were dead, M. Dupin.”
“And people thought you were dead, too, Mr. Sherlock Holmes,” said the visitor, in his high, deliberate voice. “But if you can be brought to life after being hurled from a cliff in the Alps, why can’t I come out of a respectable grave just to have a chat with you? You know my originator, Mr. Edgar Allan Poe, was very fond of bringing people out of their graves.”
“Yes, yes, I’ll admit that I have read that fellow, Poe,” said Sherlock Holmes testily. “Clever writer in some things. Some of his detective stories about you are not half bad, either.”
“No, not half bad,” said M. Dupin, rather sarcastically, I thought. “Do you remember that little story of ‘The Purloined Letter,’ for instance? What a little gem of a story that is! When I get to reading it over I forget all about you and your feeble imitations. There is nothing forced there. Everything is as sure as fate itself—not a false note—not a thing dragged in by the heels. And the solution of it all is so simple that it makes most of your artifices seem clumsy in comparison.”
“But if Poe had such a good thing in you, M. Dupin, why didn’t he make more of you?” snapped Sherlock Holmes.
“Ah, that’s where Mr. Poe proved himself a real literary artist,” said M. Dupin, puffing away at his eternal meerschaum. “When he had a good thing he knew enough not to ruin his reputation by running it into the ground. Suppose, after writing ‘The Murders of the Rue Morgue’ around me as the central character, he had written two or three books of short stories in which I figured. Then suppose he had let them dramatize me and further parade me before the public. Likewise suppose, after he had decently killed me off and had announced that he would write no more detective stories, he had yielded to the blandishments of his publishers and had brought out another interminable lot of tales about me? Why, naturally, most of the stuff would have been worse than mediocre, and people would have forgotten all about that masterpiece, ‘The Murders of the Rue Morgue,’ and also about ‘The Purloined Letter,’ so covered would those gems be in a mass of trash.”
“Oh, I’ll admit that my string has been overplayed,” sighed Sherlock Holmes moodily, reaching for the hypodermic syringe, which I slid out of his reach. “But maybe Poe would have overplayed you if he could have drawn down a dollar a word for all he could write about you.”
“Poor Edgar—poor misunderstood Edgar!—maybe he would,” said Dupin, thoughtfully. “Few enough dollars he had in his stormy life. But at the same time, no matter what his rewards, I think he was versatile genius enough to have found something new at the right time. At any rate he would not have filched the product of another’s brain and palmed it off as his own.”
“But great Scott, man!” cried Sherlock Holmes. “You don’t mean to say that no one else but Poe has a right to utilize the theory of analysis in a detective story, do you?”
“No, but see how closely you follow me in all other particulars. I am out of sorts with fortune and so are you. I am always smoking when thinking out my plans of attack, and so are you. I have an admiring friend to set down everything I say and do, and so have you. I am always dazzling the chief of police with much better theories than he can ever work out, and so are you.”
“I know, I know,” said Sherlock Holmes, beginning to mop his forehead again. “It looks like a bad case against me. I’ve drawn pretty freely upon you, M. Dupin, and the quotation marks haven’t always been used as they should have been where credit was due. But after all I am not the most slavish imitation my author has produced. Have you ever read his book, ‘The White Company’ and compared it with ‘The Cloister and the Hearth’? No? Well do so, if you want to get what might be termed ‘transplanted atmosphere.’ ”
“Well, it seems to be a great age for the piratical appropriating of other men’s ideas,” said M. Dupin, resignedly. “As for myself, I don’t care a rap about your stealing of my thunder, Sherlock Holmes. In fact, you’re a pretty decent sort of a chap, even though you are trying my patience with your continual refusal to retire; and besides you only make me shine the brighter in comparison. I don’t even hold that ‘Dancing Men’ story against you, in which you made use of a cryptogram that instantly brought up thoughts of ‘The Gold-Bug.’ ”
“But you did not figure in ‘The Gold-Bug,’ ” said Sherlock Holmes with the air of one who had won a point.
“No, and that merely emphasizes what I have been telling you—that people admire Poe as a literary artist owing to the fact that he did not overwork any of his creations. Bear that in mind, my boy, and remember, when you make your next farewell, to see that it is not one of the Patti kind, with a string to it. The patience of even the American reading public is not exhaustless, and you cannot always be among the ‘six best-selling books of the day.’ ”
And with these words, M. Dupin, pipe and all, vanished in the tobacco-laden atmosphere of the room, leaving the great detective, Sherlock Holmes, looking at me as shamefacedly as a schoolboy who had been caught with stolen apples in his possession.
The Adventure of the Diamond Necklace
GEORGE F. FORREST
AS A PUBLISHING venture, a slim volume of parodies by a virtually unknown author seems a risky business, but that did not prevent Frank Harvey of 21 & 22 Broad Street, a small house in Oxford, from committing to the publication of Misfits: A Book of Parodies by George Forrest (as his name appears on the front cover, o
r G. F. Forrest, as he is identified on the title page); it was released in 1905.
As with all story collections, some are inevitably better than others; in the case of parodies, some are funnier than others, and this volume is no exception. It contains burlesques of such disparate authors as Rudyard Kipling, Francis Bacon, William Shakespeare, and the very popular adventure writer H. Rider Haggard, as well as several poets. “The Deathless Queen,” narrated by a cowardly Allan Quarterslain, is set in the heart of Africa and features an idolized queen known as “She-Who-Must-Be-Decayed.” For his spoof of Arthur Conan Doyle, Forrest subtitled the story “Dedicated as a study in grotesque criminology.”
In addition to a regular trade edition in paper covers, Misfits was also issued in a handsome large paper hardcover edition, limited to one hundred fifty copies. Limited editions, then as now, are generally reserved for the great names in literature, so it appears that the publisher had oddly high hopes for a book by the little-known Forrest or, as seems more likely, that the author himself may have had a hand in the publication. Subsidy publishing, also known as vanity publishing, was not unknown in Edwardian times.
THE ADVENTURE OF THE DIAMOND NECKLACE
George F. Forrest
AS I PUSHED open the door, I was greeted by the strains of a ravishing melody. Warlock Bones was playing dreamily on the accordion, and his keen, clear-cut face was almost hidden from view by the dense smoke-wreaths, which curled upwards from an exceedingly filthy briar-wood pipe. As soon as he saw me, he drew a final choking sob from the instrument, and rose to his feet with a smile of welcome.
“Ah, good morning, Goswell,” he said cheerily. “But why do you press your trousers under the bed?”
It was true—quite true. This extraordinary observer, the terror of every cowering criminal, the greatest thinker that the world has ever known, had ruthlessly laid bare the secret of my life. Ah, it was true.
“But how did you know?” I asked in a stupor of amazement.
He smiled at my discomfiture.
“I have made a special study of trousers,” he answered, “and of beds. I am rarely deceived. But, setting that knowledge, for the moment, on one side, have you forgotten the few days I spent with you three months ago? I saw you do it then.”
He could never cease to astound me, this lynx-eyed sleuth of crime. I could never master the marvelous simplicity of his methods. I could only wonder and admire—a privilege, for which I can never be sufficiently grateful. I seated myself on the floor, and, embracing his left knee with both my arms in an ecstasy of passionate adoration, gazed up inquiringly into his intellectual countenance.
He rolled up his sleeve, and, exposing his thin nervous arm, injected half a pint of prussic acid with incredible rapidity. This operation finished, he glanced at the clock.
“In twenty-three or twenty-four minutes,” he observed, “a man will probably call to see me. He has a wife, two children, and three false teeth, one of which will very shortly have to be renewed. He is a successful stockbroker of about forty-seven, wears Jaegers, and is an enthusiastic patron of Missing Word Competitions.”
“How do you know all this?” I interrupted breathlessly, tapping his tibia with fond impatience.
Bones smiled his inscrutable smile.
“He will come,” he continued, “to ask my advice about some jewels which were stolen from his house at Richmond last Thursday week. Among them was a diamond necklace of quite exceptional value.”
“Explain,” I cried in rapturous admiration. “Please explain.”
“My dear Goswell,” he laughed, “you are really very dense. Will you never learn my methods? The man is a personal friend of mine. I met him yesterday in the City, and he asked to come and talk over his loss with me this morning. Voilà tout. Deduction, my good Goswell, mere deduction.”
“But the jewels? Are the police on the track?”
“Very much off it. Really our police are the veriest bunglers. They have already arrested twenty-seven perfectly harmless and unoffending persons, including a dowager duchess, who is still prostrate with the shock; and, unless I am very much mistaken, they will arrest my friend’s wife this afternoon. She was in Moscow at the time of the robbery, but that, of course, is of little consequence to these amiable dolts.”
“And have you any clue as to the whereabouts of the jewels?”
“A fairly good one,” he answered. “So good, in fact, that I can at this present moment lay my hands upon them. It is a very simple case, one of the simplest I have ever had to deal with, and yet in its way a strange one, presenting several difficulties to the average observer. The motive of the robbery is a little puzzling. The thief appears to have been actuated not by the ordinary greed of gain so much as by an intense love of self-advertisement.”
“I can hardly imagine,” I said with some surprise, “a burglar, qua burglar, wishing to advertise his exploits to the world.”
“True, Goswell. You show your usual common sense. But you have not the imagination, without which a detective can do nothing. Your position is that of those energetic, if somewhat beef-witted enthusiasts, the police. They are frankly puzzled by the whole affair. To me, personally, the case is as clear as daylight.”
“That I can understand,” I murmured with a reverent pat of his shin.
“The actual thief,” he continued, “for various reasons I am unwilling to produce. But upon the jewels, as I said just now, I can lay my hand at any moment. Look here!”
He disentangled himself from my embrace, and walked to a patent safe in a corner of the room. From this he extracted a large jewel case, and, opening it, disclosed a set of the most superb diamonds. In the midst a magnificent necklace winked and flashed in the wintry sunlight. The sight took my breath away, and for a time I groveled in speechless admiration before him.
“But—but how”—I stammered at last, and stopped, for he was regarding my confusion with evident amusement.
“I stole them,” said Warlock Bones.
The Adventure of the Ascot Tie
ROBERT L. FISH
ROBERT LLOYD FISH (1912–1981) was a successful civil engineer working in Brazil when he faced a dull day with no immediate obligations. An aficionado of Sherlock Holmes, he decided to fill the empty hours by writing a parody of the great detective for his own amusement, never before having written anything of a creative nature.
He had one scene in mind when he began to write, of the frequently recorded moment when Holmes makes a series of deductions about a client that invariably stupefies Watson, as well as the client, for its inspired brilliance. In Fish’s parody, Schlock Homes is entirely wrong and, when corrected on his absurd statements, retorts, “Ah, yes. Well, it was certain to have been one or the other.”
“The Adventure of the Ascot Tie” immediately sold to Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, marking the beginning of a career that led to more than thirty novels, two Edgar Awards (for The Fugitive, the best first novel of 1961, and for “The Moonlight Gardener,” the best short story of 1970), a position as president of the Mystery Writers of America, and the legacy of the Robert L. Fish Memorial Award, sponsored by the author’s estate, which has been awarded annually since 1984 by MWA for the best first short story by an American author.
In addition to Schlock Homes, Fish’s best-known characters are José da Silva, a police detective in Rio de Janeiro, and Kek Huuygens, a brilliant smuggler. Kek Huuygens, Smuggler (1976) was the first book ever published by the Mysterious Press. Fish also wrote under the pseudonym Robert L. Pike, under which name he produced Mute Witness (1963), the novel that was the basis for the popular motion picture Bullitt (1968). It starred Steve McQueen, Robert Vaughn, and Jacqueline Bisset, and remains memorable for the thrilling car chase scene through the streets of San Francisco; the film won an Edgar Award.
“The Adventure of the Ascot Tie” was first published in the February 1960 issue of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine; it was first collected in The Incredible Schlock Homes (New York
, Simon & Schuster, 1966).
THE ADVENTURE OF THE ASCOT TIE
Robert L. Fish
IN GOING OVER my notes for the year ’59, I find many cases in which the particular talents of my friend Mr. Schlock Homes either sharply reduced the labours of Scotland Yard or eliminated the necessity of their efforts altogether. There was, for example, the case of the Dissembling Musician who, before Homes brought him to justice, managed to take apart half of the instruments of the London Symphony Orchestra and cleverly hide them in various postal boxes throughout the city where they remained undiscovered until the dénouement of the case. Another example that comes readily to mind is the famous Mayfair Trunk Murder, which Homes laid at the door of Mr. Claude Mayfair, the zookeeper who had goaded one of his elephants into strangling a rival for Mrs. Mayfair’s affection. And, of course, there was the well-publicized matter involving Miss Millicent Only, to whom Homes refers, even to this day, as the “Only Woman.” But of all the cases which I find noted for this particular year, none demonstrates the devious nature of my friend’s analytical reasoning powers so much as the case I find I have listed under the heading of The Adventure of the Ascot Tie.
It was a rather warm morning in the month of June in ’59 when I appeared for breakfast in the dining room of our quarters at 221B Bagel Street. Mr. Schlock Homes had finished his meal and was fingering a telegram which he handed me as I seated myself at the table.
“Our ennui is about to end, Watney,” said he, his excitement at the thought of a new case breaking through the normal calm of his voice.
“I am very happy to hear that, Homes,” I replied in all sincerity, for the truth was I had begun to dread the long stretches of inactivity that often led my friend to needle both himself and me. Taking the proffered telegram from his outstretched hand, I read it carefully. “The lady seems terribly upset,” I remarked, watching Homes all the while for his reaction.
