by Bill Peschel
“Good evening, Combs,” said I, extending my hand.
“Hello, Spotson,” cried he, ignoring my proffered digits. “You are well, I see. It really is too bad, though, that you have no servant again. You seem to have quite some trouble with your help.” And he chuckled as he sipped the soda water.
Familiar as I was with my friend’s powers, this extraordinary exhibition of them really startled me.
“Why, Oilock,” said I, calling him, in my excitement, by his praenomen, “how did you know it?”
“Perfectly obvious, Spotson, perfectly obvious. Merely observation,” answered Combs as he took out his harmonica and began playing a tune thereon.
“But how?” persisted I.
“Well, if you really wish to know,” he replied, as he ceased playing, “I suppose I will be obliged to tell you. I see you have a small piece of courtplaster upon the index finger of your left hand. Naturally, a cut. But the plaster is so small that the cut must be very minute. ‘What could have done it?’ I ask myself. The obvious response is a tack, a pin, or a needle. On a chance I eliminate the tack proposition. I take another chance and eliminate the pin. Therefore, it must have been the needle. ‘Why a needle?’ query I of myself. And glancing at your coat I see the answer. There you have five buttons, four of which are hanging on rather loosely while the fifth one is tightly sewn to the cloth. It had recently been sewn. The connection is now clear. You punctured your finger with the needle while sewing on the button. But,” he continued musingly and speaking, it seemed, more to himself than to me, “I never saw nor heard of the man who would sew unless he was compelled to. Spotson always keeps a servant; why did she not sew the button on for him? The reply is childishly easy: His servant left him.”
I followed his explanation with rapt attention. My friend’s powers were, I was happy to see, as marvelous as they were when I lived with him.
“Wonderful, Combs, wonderful,” I cried.
“Merely observation,” he replied. “Some day I think that I shall write a monograph on the subject of buttons. It is a very interesting subject and the book ought to sell well. But, hello, what is this?”
The sound of a cab halting before the door caused Combs’s remark. Even as he spoke there was a pull at the bell, then the sound of hasty footsteps on the stairs. A sharp knock sounded upon the door. Combs dropped into his armchair, stuck out his legs in his familiar way and then said: “Come in.”
The door opened and there entered, in great perturbation, a young lady, twenty-three years of age, having on a blue tailor-made suit, patent-leather shoes and a hat with a black pompon ornamenting it. She wore some other things, but these were all that I noticed. Not so Combs. I could see by the penetrating glance he threw at her that her secret was already known to that astute mind.
“Thank heaven,” she cried, turning to me, “that I have found you in!”
“Are you ill, madam?” I began; but suddenly realizing that I was not in my office but in Combs’s consultation room, I drew myself up stiffly and said: “That is Mr. Combs.”
The young lady turned to him. Then, lifting her handkerchief to her beautiful eyes she burst into tears as she said: “Help me, help me, Mr. Combs.”
The great man did not reply. An answer to such a remark he would have regarded as too trivial. The lady took down her handkerchief and, after glancing dubiously at me, said to Mr. Combs: “Can I see you privately?”
Once, and once only did I ever before or, indeed, since, see such a look of rage on Combs’s face. That was when Professor O’Flaherty and he had that altercation in Switzerland. (See Memoirs of Oilock Combs, Arper & Co. $1.50.)
“Madam,” said he in frigid tones, “whatever you desire to say to me you may say before Dr. Spotson. How under the sun, woman,” he cried, losing control of himself for a moment, “would the public know of my adventures if he were not here to write them?”
I threw Combs a grateful look while he reached for the soda water. The visitor was momentarily crushed. At last, however, she recovered her equanimity.
“Well, then,” she said, “I will tell you my story.”
“Pray, begin,” said Combs rather testily.
“My name is Ysabelle, Duchess of Swabia,” the visitor commenced.
“One moment, please,” interrupted Combs. “Spotson, kindly look up that name in my index.”
I took down the book referred to, in which Combs had made thousands of notes of people and events of interest, and found between “Yponomeutidae” and “yttrium” the following item, which I read aloud:
“Ysabelle, Duchess of Swabia; Countess of Steinheimbach; Countess of Riesendorf, etc., etc. Born at Schloss Ochsenfuss, February 29, 1876. Her mother was the Duchess Olga, of Zwiefelfeld, and her father was Hugo, Duke of Kaffeekuchen. At three years of age she could say ‘ha, ha!’ in German, French, English, Italian, and Spanish. Between the ages of five and fifteen she was instructed by Professor Grosskopf, the eminent philosopher of the University of Kleinplatz. By sixteen her wisdom teeth had all appeared. A very remarkable woman!”
As I read this last sentence, the duchess again burst into tears.
“Pray, pray, compose yourself, duchess,” said Combs, taking a pipe from the table and filling it with some tobacco which he absent-mindedly took from my coat-pocket.
The duchess succeeded in calming herself. Then, rising majestically and gazing at Combs with those wonderful eyes which had played havoc with so many royal hearts, she said, in solemn tones:
“I am lost!”
The manner in which she made this statement as well as the declaration itself seemed to make a deep impression upon Combs. Without uttering one word he sat there for fully four minutes. The way in which he puffed nervously at the pipe showed me that he was thinking. Suddenly, with an exclamation of delight, he dashed out of the room and down the stairs, leaving the amazed duchess and myself in his apartments. But not for long. In forty-three seconds, he was again in the room and, dropping into his chair thoroughly exhausted, he triumphantly cried:
“I have it!”
Never had I seen my friend wear such a look of victory. The achievement which merited such an expression upon his countenance must have been remarkable. By and by, he recovered from his fatigue. Then he spoke.
“Madam,” he said, “I have the answer.”
The duchess sobbed in ecstasy.
Combs continued:
“The moment that you said you were lost,” he began, “an idea came to me. You must have noticed, Spotson, how preoccupied I seemed before. Well, that is the sign of an idea coming to me. Before it had time to vanish I dashed down the steps, into the vestibule, looked at the number of this house and jotted it down. Madam,” he cried, drawing out a book and looking at one of the pages, “madam, you are saved! You are no longer lost! This is No. 62 Fakir street. You are found!”
During this entire recital the duchess had not said a word. When Combs had finished she stood for a moment as if she did not understand and then, realizing the fact that she was rescued, she wept once more.
“My savior,” she cried as she prepared to leave the room, “how can I ever thank you?” And she pressed into Combs’s outstretched hand a large gold-mesh, diamond-studded purse.
The door closed, the carriage rolled away and the Duchess of Swabia was gone.
“Spotson,” said Combs to me, “don’t forget to write this one down. It has a duchess in it and will sell well to cooks and chambermaids. By the way, I wonder what she gave me.”
He opened the purse and there, neatly folded, lay two hundred pounds in bills.
“Bah!” cried Combs contemptuously, “how ungrateful these royal personages always are.”
The Great Suit Case Mystery
Jacques Futrelle
Illustrated by Donnmar
Conan Doyle’s reluctance to insert his creation into real-life crimes such as the Jack the Ripper case did not keep other writers from doing the same.
On Sept. 21, a suitcase cont
aining a young woman’s torso was pulled from the water near the Winthrop Yacht Club outside of Boston. Within a week, while police investigated, Hearst’s Boston American tabloid splashed “The Great Suit Case Mystery” in four installments on its front page. Three weeks after Futrelle’s story ran, a second suitcase was recovered containing the woman’s arms and legs. The head was never found, but the rings she wore identified her as Susan Geary, a 21-year-old chorus girl.
As Futrelle’s Holmes suspected, the girl died from a botched abortion, and her body was cut up and dumped to protect the guilty. Abortion was not only illegal, but it could not be discussed in a newspaper.
The clinic’s owner, called in the newspapers “Doctor” Jane Bishop, was never brought to trial; at her death in 1922, her obituary noted that she never spent a day in jail. Instead, police arrested Dr. Percy McLeod, an eminent Harvard-educated physician, who had been summoned in a last-minute attempt to save Geary’s life. During his trial, several participants in the abortion tried to blame him for Geary’s death, but the jury acquitted him. Only Bishop’s underlings saw any jail time.
The story was so notorious that Mark Twain, interviewed in Seattle two months later, begged for a similar public outcry over Belgium’s atrocities in the Congo.
Jacques Futrelle (1875-1912) was a reporter whose “Thinking Machine” stories featuring Professor Augustus S.F.X. Van Dusen was his attempt at an American rival to Holmes. The same year as “The Great Suit Case Mystery,” he published in the Boston American his first Thinking Machine story, “The Problem of Cell 13.” He quit newspapering the next year and wrote two novels and more than 50 Van Dusen stories. He died on the Titanic in 1912 after giving up his lifeboat seat to a woman. Sending his wife to safety, he remained on deck, last seen smoking a cigarette with John Jacob Astor IV.
This story is reprinted with the headlines omitted but the subheads retained.
“[With due apologies to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of the greatest detective in fiction]”
CHAPTER I
Sherlock Holmes sat cross-legged on his couch, like a Turk, with the folds of his familiar gown falling grotesquely about his lank figure as he smoked. The light in the room was dim and only the strong, keen face stood out clearly. Now he was enunciating a conviction, and when he spoke on such things as related to crime I was always interested. For certainly no man had been a greater student of his profession than had Holmes.
“There are only two reasons why some crimes are never solved,” he was saying now. “One is the stupidity of the police, and the other is that on that rare occasion, once in a thousand years, when the brain of the criminal is equal or superior to the best brain that can be brought to bear against him. This latter rarely happens.
“It is an actual fact that the average criminal leaves a trail like a wagon road behind him,” Holmes went on after a moment. “Why? Because he hasn’t the mentality to cover his tracks completely; else in excitement growing out of a crime he leaves unprotected that one thing which, carefully considered, would inevitably lead to his detection. Therefore, the solution of a crime should be . . . in most cases it is . . . perfectly easy.
“Speaking generally, all crimes are committed under stress of what seems to be necessity. In dealing with crime one must always remember, too, that the mind of the criminal is abnormal always. A man whose brain is perfectly poised is never a criminal. He never faces that condition where he feels it necessary to kill another or to steal. If there ever comes a case, therefore, where an absolutely superior mind, perfectly poised, seeks to cover up a crime, it is in nearly all cases successful. These make the great mysteries.”
For a time Sherlock Holmes sat silently smoking. I had heard him make similar statements before, and I had seen him time after time go over a path beaten bare by the police, and by his keen incisive reasoning and his great power of deduction and perception solve seemingly inexplicable riddles. Now I was thinking of that strange mystery of death here . . . the great Suit Case Puzzle.
Here it might be well to explain that Sherlock Holmes is now on a visit to the United States. I came over with him from London. We reached Boston on September 29, eight days after the dismembered body of a girl was found floating in a suit case near the Winthrop Yacht Club. Holmes had come here for a rest and when he rested he never read a newspaper. I had followed this tragic mystery with eagerness.
“Have you heard of the mystery here?” I asked now.
Mystery To Be Solved.
“No,” he replied. “Tell me about it.”
I told him what I knew from the public press, and he listened with that lack-lustre eye which means, in him, deep, concentrated thought. When I had finished the recital he paused to light his pipe; then:
“How long was the body in the water?”
“Four to six hours,” I replied. “At half past five o’clock in the afternoon of September 21.”
Holmes arose suddenly and paced back and forth across the room for a long time, thinking. Gradually his step grew quicker, and then I knew that that wonderful brain of his was busy. Finally, he stopped and turned on me, and there was an exultant tone in his voice:
“Watson, it looks good,” he said. “It really looks worth while. Body in a suit case. Who owns it? How did it get in the water? Who is the girl? It looks good, Watson. I’m glad you called my attention to it.”
Holmes rubbed his long, thin fingers together with a movement as nearly indicating enthusiasm as he ever showed. I reached over, picked up the hypodermic which lay on the table, replaced it in the case, and put the case in a drawer of the table. Holmes wouldn’t need that now; for there was a mystery to be solved.
After a while Holmes slipped on his coat and went out. He returned shortly with an armful of newspapers, embracing every thing from the date of the murder. Then he read until eleven o’clock. At last he turned to me and I lay down my book.
“It’s a pretty problem, Watson,” he said. “Let me state the point to you briefly. Correct me if I make a mistake. A suit case, one of only five like it in the world, is found floating in the water. It is picked up. It contains the headless and limbless body of a girl. She is young. Probably beautiful. The body shows every indication of refinement. It had been in the water four to six hours; she had been dead not more than twenty-four hours. The dismemberment was the work of a skilled anatomist. No mark is left by which the body might ever be identified.”
“Perhaps marks on her legs or arms which might give her identity were the cause of those limbs being removed?” I suggested.
“No,” he said, somewhat shortly. “They were removed to make the disposition of the body more easy. There might have been marks on them, but it doesn’t follow. The removal of the head served two purposes, one making it impossible to identify the torso; another to more easily dispose of it.”
He paused, and his eyes narrowed to pin points.
“Let’s see what we can get from the condition of the body,” he mused. “Well cared for, well nurtured, velvety skin, pink and firm. Clearly that of a woman above the level. Wonderful skill in the dismemberment. The work of a skilled man, a man of unusual skill. Employed latest methods in removing limbs and head. We may assume, therefore, that he is now an old man, that he is a man of repute; that he was possibly of the same social level as the girl; might have known her” and his musings passed into inarticulate grunts.
“But the suit case?” I asked finally.
“I can’t talk of that until I see it,” he replied. “It has been positively identified by a pawnbroker and the original owner; and on the other hand by a shoemaker who says he repaired it. I dare say the shoemaker is right.”
Two Men Concerned.
He sat for a long time thinking, and the mental process by which he adjusted minute details gleaned from the information at hand was almost perceptible in the workings of his keen, grave face.
“I think possibly from information now at hand,” he said, “that there were two men concerned. Yes, I believ
e there were. One killed, the other dismembered the body and disposed of it, yes. Probably might have been a friend of the girl. Possibly a surgeon of high position dismembered the body and disposed of it. Yes, that seems to be clear,” he mused.
“And then he ran away?” I suggested.
“No,” said Holmes, almost sharply. “That would be the only dangerous thing he could do. He is now sitting at home probably, absolutely safe.
“Here, Watson, doesn’t this appeal to you? A girl of high position errs, as others have done, seeks desperately to save her name, is mortally injured under the knife, is dying, a reputable man is sent for, a man of whose skill there is no question. She dies. So, then, to save her name, possibly because of friendship for the family, he conceives and executes the plan of disposing of the body. The actual slayer has little to do with it.”
“But his high reputation?” I asked.
“Would only be preserved by his carefully disconnecting himself from the matter in every way by disposing of the body, for instance,” said Holmes. “We must attribute to this man intelligence of the highest order, as well as ethics of the highest order. He committed no crime, therefore would not have made a mistake later. He made no mistake. He is bound to protect the other man through professional secrecy, then has desire to protect himself through his original desire to save the girl’s name.”
“You mean, then—”
“I mean that the solution of this mystery will hit high places,” said Holmes. “We’ll go out and do some work to-morrow, eh?”
CHAPTER II
Half a dozen times that night I was dimly aroused by the strange, weird music of Holmes’ violin, his invariable stimulant to deep thought. For he didn’t go to sleep; in fact, didn’t go to bed. When I arose for breakfast he was sitting on the couch with closed eyes, and the bow of the violin was sweeping back and forth across the strings.
