Sherlock Holmes Edwardian Parodies and Pastiches II

by Bill Peschel

  “You’ve said that before,” I remarked.

  “Yes,” he went on, unheeding. “There is no question of that. Now the body was disposed of but before it was disposed of the physician, low of mind and foolishly cunning, wrote the name or initials of the surgeon of repute on a round sticker and pasted it on the suit case, the cover, left-hand upper corner.”

  “But how does that appear?” I asked.

  “There was such a sticker on the suit case when it went into the water,” Holmes declared. “A casual examination of the suit case showed the print of it—saw teeth and all. An examination under the glass showed it had only been recently removed, and it was removed clearly, not scraped off with a knife, but by long immersion in the water.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Go on.” I was beginning to understand.

  “Now the man who originally owned the suit case tells me he never saw a sticker on it of any kind. The pawnbroker declares there was no sticker on it; he never uses them. Yet there was a sticker on the suit case when it went into the water. How did it get there? Obviously it must have been put there between the time it was brought up on Tuesday, and the time it went into the water on Thursday.”

  “That’s perfectly clear,” I said.

  “Now no man is quite fool enough to put his own name or initials on a thing like that,” Holmes went on, speaking with the positive tone of certain knowledge. “But a man who is silly enough to try to be cunning—the operating physician, for instance—is just about fool enough to put the name and initials of the surgeon on a sticker, paste that on the suit case and throw it overboard.”

  “To incriminate the surgeon in case the suit case should be found?” I put in eagerly.

  Disposed Of At Night.

  “Precisely,” said Holmes. “This particular fool, however, forgot that water would take the sticker off. Therefore, when the sticker was lost, the name of a decent, respectable and reputable surgeon was saved from connection with the case. I’m glad it was lost.”

  Sherlock Holmes settled back on the couch and lighted his cigarette. I looked at him admiringly. This part of the mystery he had made clear by that startling gift of logic which he possessed. I reviewed it all as he stated it, and found no flaws, if the original estimate of the physician who first operated was correct.

  “But how was the suit case thrown into the water at mid-day?” I asked, curiously.

  “It wasn’t thrown into the water at all,” said Holmes.

  “What?” I exclaimed. “How did it get there?”

  “We will remove,” said Holmes, “all consideration of the suit case having been thrown into the water from a train, boat, ferry, bridge, or otherwise. It was in the water when found, yes. But the man who conceived this thing would not have thrown the case into the water at mid-day while thousands might have seen.”

  “How can you reconcile the facts that experts agree the body was in the water only four to six hours, and it was found at 5:30 in the afternoon?” I asked. “That of necessity would have made the time of throwing it into the water about midday.”

  “Quite right,” said Holmes. “The body was in the water only four or six, or possibly, probably eight hours altogether, in the water twice. The suit case, with the sticker attached, was thrown on the mud flats of Lewis Lake on the night preceding the finding at low tide. The surgeon whose mind planned it all reasoned that with the lungs left in the body it would float and be taken out by the tide, which was high about 4 o’clock on the morning of that day.

  “Now this tide failed to remove the suit case,” he went on, “and it was deposited somewhere in the marshes of Lewis Lake. The next tide, in the afternoon, which was higher, floated the suit case. It was caught in the swirl of the tide going out of the sluiceway, carried through and left near the yacht clubhouse.”

  “I see now,” I put in eagerly. “And the cigar box you threw overboard—”

  “Was to determine what direction anything would float there at one hour after high tide,” said Holmes. “It demonstrated that the wind on that day of the finding of the body was not sufficient to have blown that suit case anywhere, because it was mostly under water. Therefore, it must have come from Lewis Lake. Coming from Lewis Lake, it must have been placed there, and the total time it was in the water was not more than eight hours.”

  “Do you think the scene of the murder was near Lewis Lake?” I asked.

  “Yes, very near it,” said Holmes.

  “And I suppose you now know the name of the man who killed the girl?” I asked.

  “I do know his name,” said Holmes, quietly.

  CHAPTER V

  Sherlock Holmes leaned back on the couch, smiling genially, and locked his long fingers about his knees as he smoked. He was enjoying my amazement; and indeed it must have been something to afford him keen enjoyment at that particular moment.

  “You know the name of the man who killed that girl?” I gasped. I couldn’t quite believe that I had heard right.

  “I do,” he responded.

  “Then get up from there and tell the police,” I exclaimed. “Have him arrested immediately.”

  “He can’t be arrested yet,” said Holmes, with maddening calm.

  “Why not?” I demanded. “Surely for a crime like that—”

  “I don’t know where he is,” Holmes explained. He was smiling.

  “Oh,” I exclaimed. That hadn’t occurred to me. “What’s his name?”

  “You are impatient, Watson,” he said as he stretched his long legs and gaped slightly. “I haven’t been to sleep for hours. I think I’ll go to bed.”

  He slept until nearly noon and I waited impatiently for his next move. Just as he had reached that point where the pall of mystery which had veiled this tragic riddle was to be swept aside he had become strangely inactive. He lingered in the bath while I nervously turned the sheets of the newspapers, seeking that one thing which was not there, light on the puzzle. Then he dawdled over his breakfast, and, that over, he reached for his violin. I could contain myself no longer.

  “Aren’t you going to do anything else?” I demanded.

  “Yes, after awhile,” he said. “I thought we might go out and find the missing head, limbs—perhaps,” and he smiled.

  “Do you know where they are?” I asked anxiously.

  “If I did I wouldn’t go looking for them,” said Holmes. “However, I have a few ideas.”

  It was fully 3 o’clock when I finally roused Holmes to action. Then he threw off the dressing gown and was preparing to go out when a step sounded in the hall, outside the door.

  “It’s a telegram for me,” said Holmes, and he showed for the first time since rising a glint of animation.

  Went To Rowe’s Wharf.

  I opened the door in answer to a knock, and a telegraph boy was there. He handed me an envelope.

  “T’is for youse?” he asked.

  The telegram was directed to Holmes. I passed it to him and signed the book. Holmes’ lassitude disappeared in a flash; he was ready for work now.

  “Good, good,” he muttered several times.

  We went out together and he led me straight to Atlantic avenue. We threaded our way from wharf to wharf there, through bustling crowds of hurrying work men. Finally we found the wharf Holmes was seeking. A big steamer was just tying up. We waited until the crowd had passed on its way.

  “If you will wait for me here, Watson,” said Holmes, “I should consider it a favor. I want to ask this purser a few questions; and he might not care to talk if two were present.”

  “Certainly,” I responded, but I was chagrined.

  Holmes was gone only half an hour or so, then we went to Rowe’s Wharf. It was Winthrop again, I thought. But it wasn’t. Instead Holmes left the train, me following, and together we went to the Saratoga street bridge.

  “You know the police say the two suit cases with the body of the girl were thrown into the water here,” Holmes remarked.

  For half an hour we lingered there, l
ooking from all sides into the water. It was not a search for a second suit case—it was merely a general observation. Once, Holmes grew interested in a tiny spot he found and inspected it under his glass, but he arose disappointed.

  From there we went on to Winthrop, alighting at the Winthrop Beach Station and went straight across to the beach on the ocean side. Holmes glanced around; there were a few persons in sight and none of these seemed to interest him. Still, this wasn’t a search; I kicked over a half a dozen bundles of paper which had been washed up on the beach. They meant nothing except that a great many people at Winthrop eat short lobsters.

  Finally we sat down on the sand and Holmes lighted a cigarette and leaned back comfortably.

  “Well,” I asked. “Is this all?”

  “I’m waiting for some one,” he said.

  There was a pause and he lazily watched the waves as they lapped at his feet.

  “You know, Watson,” he said finally, “there is good reason to believe that the head and limbs will never be found. While I have nothing which shows me clearly on this point, it seems the most natural thing to suppose that if they were thrown into the water they were thrown on this side—at night—and were swept out on the early morning tide.”

  Might Have Been Seen.

  “Why on this side?” I asked, curiously.

  “Well, if we admit that the suit case with the torso was put on the marshes of Lewis Lake, as appears logical to me at least,” he said, “that seems a good reason why the second suit case, which might have contained the limbs, was not thrown there.”

  “I don’t see—” I began.

  “The mere act of taking one large bundle out on the marsh and leaving it would not attract particular attention from any one who happened to see,” Holmes went on. “Lewis Lake marshes are a general dumping ground for Winthrop. Hundreds of persons throw bundles there—mostly short lobster shells,” he said with a smile. “But the fact that a man took two bundles on the marsh and left them would attract attention, particularly when each bundle was very heavy.”

  “But at night?”

  “There is a chance that some one would be near enough to see if a man tried to lose a bundle in the desert of Sahara,” said Holmes. “It’s a greater chance that he would be noticed if he left two. It would be part of the general scheme of the man who planned the disposition of the body not to attract attention. Therefore he may have thrown the second suit case or a sack with the limbs into the water on this side, and it is now far out to sea. The lungs floated the torso; this second bundle would have sunk, lacking that buoyancy.”

  “The head would have been heavy, yes,” I remarked.

  “Frankly I don’t believe the head was thrown into the water at all,” Holmes went on. ‘I think, if the surgeon was of that high intellectuality which his every act indicated, that the head was destroyed in quicklime. That would have left no trace—save perhaps the teeth.”

  The horror of the thought appalled me; yet the plausibility of it struck me forcibly. The head would be a certain means of identification if found; therefore it would naturally be destroyed by quicklime, where it would have been a difficult matter to dispose of the entire body that way.

  After a while as we lay on the sand I noticed a man coming along the beach toward us. He made as if to pass, but stopped when Holmes spoke.

  “Did you find it?”

  “Sure,” said the stranger. “That’s the place,” and he jerked his head vaguely toward several cottages which stood a few blocks away.

  “Ah,” said Holmes. “I thought so. And the stickers?”

  “Nothing doing,” said the stranger.

  “Thank you,” said Holmes, and he handed out a bank note. “Second or third?”

  “Third,” replied the stranger enigmatically, and he passed on.

  Holmes arose after a while, and I followed him as he strolled on along the beach.

  “See that house there?” he asked finally, as he indicated with a nod of his head.

  “Yes,” I replied. “What about it?”

  “That’s where the girl was killed,” he said.

  CHAPTER VI

  We strolled on along the beach, finally taking a train home. I had been informed by Holmes that he would that night return to Winthrop for a search of the house, which he assured me was vacant. Therefore, it was with a vast deal of impatience that I waited his pleasure.

  It must have been 11 o’clock that night when we started. Winthrop was sleeping soundly when we arrived. We walked along for several blocks without encountering any one, and at last came to the house.

  “Back door,” said Holmes, and he went around.

  The door was not locked, the house being vacant, and we entered without difficulty. It was pitch dark. Holmes lighted our way with a small electric flash tube, which he carried. Immediately, without examination of the lower floor, he proceeded to the second.

  Then began one of those long, exhaustive, almost weirdly interesting searches which are part of the wonderful deductive system which Holmes employs in his work. It began in a closet upstairs. With the tiny bulb of light, Holmes went over every inch of paper, walls and flooring in the closet; he picked up several bits of paper, examined them minutely under his magnifying glass and then allowed them to flutter to the floor. With his glass, too, he went over the walls of the closet to the most remote corner.

  “Anything?” I asked when he came out.

  He shook his head and then began the same minute search of the room where we stood. First, the walls were gone over as high as he could reach, and around and around he went. Then the baseboards, then the flooring. There were innumerable scraps of paper and thick dust. But on his hands and knees, Holmes went over it all.

  For half an hour he worked away without a word, and the scene became almost ghostly to me—nothing visible but the small round spot of light in the intense darkness, and occasionally a glimpse of Holmes’ keen, hound-like face, with eyes drawn to a pinpoint, thin lips firmly set. When he concluded, he arose from the floor and shook his head; not one thing in that room had escaped his notice.

  Another room was gone over in the same thorough manner and a third, completing the upstairs of the house. Every tiny thing, even to the smallest pieces of paper, were fully inspected. Finally, Holmes passed into the halls and down the stairs. For more than an hour, he hadn’t uttered a word. As he concluded the examination of the last step of the stairs he turned to me.

  “He’s a clever man, Watson,” he said almost admiringly. “Clever, clever!”

  Traces Of Quicklime.

  Downstairs he began the same careful search.

  “There is to my mind little chance of the actual crime having been committed downstairs,” Holmes said as he began his work. “The window, you know. It is possible that any one might see in, or a chance caller might have heard or seen something.”

  “The house was occupied, then, at the time of the crime?” I asked.

  “Surely,” he said.

  There were five rooms and a bath on the lower floor. The hall was soon finished. The parlor, the living room, the dining room and then another room which formed a part of the main part of the house were gone over. Then Holmes went to the bathroom. There was a thick layer of dust in the porcelain tub.

  Where the search had been minute in the other rooms it was positively atomical here. Inch by inch, Holmes went over the floor, on his hands and knees, and over the walls in the same way. Then he turned to the porcelain tub. Around the water pipe he found a tiny sediment, scraped it up carefully, and examined it under his glass.

  “Is it blood?” I asked.

  “No,” he replied, “not a trace, so far as I find.”

  He carefully went around the upper edges of the tub. Finally, he stopped with a little stifled exclamation, which I knew meant something. He subjected this to close scrutiny under his powerful glass, then took out a small microscope from his pocket and looked at it. The—whatever it was—on the knife was so tiny I coul
d barely see it.

  “It’s quicklime,” said Holmes finally. “A bare atom.”

  “Then the head was destroyed?” I gasped.

  “Not necessarily,” he said. “There is a chance that it was used as a disinfectant, or formed part of a disinfectant. It frequently is. However, it may mean something.”

  We went into the kitchen. First, the floors and walls were gone over as in the other rooms, and then Holmes turned his attention to the range, which had been used for both coal and wood. Half buried in the ashes I saw two cigar stumps, thrown there since there had last been a fire in the stove, and a great deal of dust and ashes, but nothing else. That is, I could see nothing else.

  Holmes removed these ashes in little handsful and they went under the glass. He straightened up with what seemed to be the butt of a cigarette in his hand. He looked at it eagerly under the glass, smelled it, then looked at it again.

  “I’ve got it, Watson,” he exclaimed, exultingly. “I’ve got it. And this, too.” He held in his hand only the cigarette butt and a tiny piece of paper, torn, but I noticed it had saw edges.

  Owner’s Initials On It.

  “What is it?” I asked wonderingly. “I don’t see anything but a cigarette butt and a piece of paper.”

  “The cigarette butt has the initials of the owner on it,” Holmes exclaimed. “It’s a Turkish cigarette, very fine, of a special brand. The bit of paper is part of a sticker like this,” and he produced one of the stickers.

  “Well, what does it all mean?” I asked.

  “Let’s go to Boston,” he replied, shortly.

  It was 6 o’clock when we left the vacant house, and very light. We caught an early train in, and Holmes sought out a policeman. I was amazed when I saw him approach the guardian of the peace, thinking he was going to tell his story.

  “Can you direct me to a drug store that’s open now?” he asked instead.