by Bill Peschel
“Calm yourself, Holmes. Your zeal for this client has made you forget your other cases—the Duchess of Dingwall’s diamonds, and the League of Lesbos, and a thousand others.”
“True, true,” said Holmes sadly, sinking into a chair, and removing his historical kettle-holder cap. The fire had gone from his eyes. “You are right, Watson; right, as always.”
To Paul it seemed an astounding thing that the greatest detective the world has known should be so completely under the influence of a mediocre medical man. Of Dr. Watson he, of course, knew nothing, save what he had gathered from the Doctor’s works. And while perusing them it had appeared incomprehensible that a genius of Sherlock’s calibre should have ever admitted such a confirmed dolt to friendship, let alone intimacy.
Yet, the actual facts were infinitely more astonishing. Holmes was absolutely under the control of Watson.
Paul desired that Sherlock should investigate a case.
Sherlock was anxious to devote his energies to that case.
Watson (Watson, of all people!) vetoed the whole thing.
And Sherlock, limp as a rag, acquiesced.
Clearly the mystery of the humility of Holmes was more extraordinary than the mystery of the whiskery men.
Holmes’s eyes closed.
“Come again to-morrow . . . if you care to,” said Watson.
Paul left.
Chapter XIII
The Dull Thud in the Dining-Room
A changed man, Paul walked out into Baker Street. The events of the last twenty-four hours . . . the suicide of Lord Walter, the winning of the boat-race, the strange conversation with the President of the Board of Brains, the mysterious circumstances which had suddenly come into his life, would have affected a temperament less sensitive than his.
He had, within a short space, found himself confronted with inexplicable complexities. Around him events were taking place, events which, though he understood them not at all, were obviously connected with his career. He felt in his heart that he was cast for an important part on the stage of life. Would the play be farce or tragedy? Was he villain, hero, or buffoon?
He could form no conception; but the sense of the responsibility of his part, whatever it should be, weighed heavily upon him.
It seemed to him years since he had spoken in the flippant dialogue of fashionable lunacy to the Duchess in the Park.
Absorbed in his reverie, he walked down Baker Street, unconscious of the admiring looks directed at the cox of the victorious Eight.
Already he had forgotten the boat-race; he was in no mood to dine with the crews at the banquet that night.
And yet he hated the idea of being alone.
Therefore, having changed his clothes at his flat in Half Honeymoon Street, Piccadilly, he went to Great Cumberland Place, where he found his guardian preparing for a solitary meal. Amanda Dolorosa always dined in her sanctum—frugally, but beautifully—on bread and milk, white bread and white milk, the purest that money could buy.
Bombovitch welcomed him cordially, and had evidently dismissed from his mind the disagreement of the previous day.
He congratulated Paul on his prowess, and throughout the dinner entertained him with surprising anecdotes of men and cities and women.
In complete physical enjoyment, guardian and ward sat sipping their wine after dinner. A cool breeze blew through the open window.
Paul was on the point of framing a question with regard to the mysterious messages, when IT fell with a dull thud on the floor.
* * * * *
Two men are calmly enjoying the after-dinner feeling when something falls with a dull thud on the floor—something that can be heard, but has not been seen.
* * * * *
Instantly the men rose.
“Did you hear anything?” asked Bombovitch. “I heard . . . a dull thud . . . on the floor.”
“There is nothing to be seen. There is nothing on the floor . . . nothing whatever on the floor.”
“Nevertheless, I heard a dull thud. And it was, beyond question, on the floor. Evil always follows a dull thud on almost any floor.”
Bombovitch lifted up the tablecloth, and drew from the side of a hassock . . . a human head, a dead human head.
He held it in his hands at arm’s length, after the manner of a skilled football-player about to take a drop-kick.
* * * * *
After due reflection he said:
“I have never met the late owner of that head. It does not belong here. It is not the head of any one of my servants.”
* * * * *
Paul, pallid, with livid lips, gazed in terror at the thing.
Had its eyes not been closed, he felt that he would have fainted.
“It has whiskers,” he stammered. “It is a man’s head.”
At the mention of whiskers Bombovitch examined the chin carefully.
Then he spoke:
“This man did not wear whiskers in his lifetime.”
“But do whiskers grow after decease? Has such a case ever been known? This adds a new terror to death.”
“No, Paul; this man in his lifetime wore a full beard. After death all the face has, for some reason or other, been shaved except a pair of mutton-chop whiskers.”
He placed the head on a dessert-plate in the centre of which was painted a pine-apple.
“Have some brandy, Paul? This episode is unpleasant, but it is not significant.”
The young man gulped down a half tumblerful of brandy, and then rushed in terror from the house.
Chapter XIV
Mainly About Sherlock
During that night no sleep came to Paul’s eyelids. Throughout that night he saw but one thing—a head with mutton-chop whiskers; he heard but one sound—a dull thud on a dining-room floor.
When, from sheer weariness the night wore to dawn, he rose and dressed. His face was white and haggard, deep hoops of black encircled his eyes. He was as a man who had supped with Sorrow at the gates of Fear.
At half-past eight he entered Sherlock Holmes’s sitting-room, before the great man had finished his breakfast. By his side was Dr. Watson, busily engaged in dissecting a kipper . . . in the dear old Edinburgh manner.
“Be seated,” said Holmes, with his well-known hospitality, which, however, extended only to the furniture, “and tell us exactly how your guardian took it.”
Limply, Paul sank into an “occasional” chair of early Victorian design.
So this marvellous man knew all!
“Took it!” he gasped. “Took what? Do you mean . . .the . . . head?”
“Obviously. I trust the shock has not had any disastrous effects.”
“No, Mr. Holmes; my guardian scarcely seemed interested.”
Holmes rose, a-quiver with surprise.
“He scarcely seemed interested! Man, you astound me! Did he say nothing? Did he make no comment? Think again.”
“Nothing of importance, Mr. Holmes.”
“Refresh your memory,” said the great detective, with the wide gesture of a man offering priceless hospitality.
“He said practically nothing.”
“A man—a guardian—is quietly dining with his ward in a modem home, fitted with all the usual conveniences. A head, the property of a complete stranger, suddenly falls on the floor with a dull thud, and this man—this guardian—makes no comment of importance! What do you make of it, Watson?”
Watson did not attempt to “make” anything of it.
S. Holmes was evidently and naturally annoyed at the Doctor’s apathy.
He rebuked him:
“Willy,” said he with bitter scorn, “the fact that you have been made an honorary LL.D. of Aberdeen for your skill in chronicling my achievements seems to have had a deadening effect on your vitality. You will never get your knighthood.”
The Doctor held up his hands in the conventional attitude of one calling Heaven to witness whatever is going on.
S. Holmes, satisfied with the medical man’s unintelligibl
e and, indeed, unintelligent manoeuvre, sat down. His finger-nails were in half-mourning.
“I must put on my thinking-cap,” said he, adjusting the famous deer-stalker.
It did not help matters one per cent.
“I am baffled; I am nonplussed; I am completely at fault,” stated Sherlock, if one may so style him without irreverence.
The Doctor operated on a second kipper, apparently for dorsal appendicitis.
At last Paul broke the silence.
He did not break it brilliantly. He just broke it—and only just.
Said he:
“Well?”
“By no means,” snapped Holmes. Then, after reflection, he added: “Bombovitch is an extraordinary man.”
Paul nodded assent.
“You are quite sure that he wears red whiskers?”
“The reddest I have ever seen.”
“It is fortunate that I have taken a considerable interest in these facial fittings.”
“Indeed, Mr. Holmes?”
“Certainly; otherwise I should not have solved this interesting problem.”
“You have solved it?” cried Paul.
“Unquestionably. I always solve problems.”
“Tell me.”
Uninfluenced by the other’s anxiety for the solution, Holmes answered:
“It will be of interest to you to know how I came to take up the whisker . . . question. It was through a woman. It will interest you, I am sure.”
Paul lied:
“Undoubtedly.”
Holmes contracted his features into what, on any other man, would have been considered a fiscal face—that extraordinary expression of determined indecision characteristic of persons much given to the discussion of financial problems which do not concern them. The fiscal face is a development of the bicycle face, a development in the wrong direction.
To another man looking as mentally concentrated as did Sherlock while he patted his long fingers together the orthodox comment would surely have been a baffled shake of the head, a hopeless shrug of the shoulders, and the words: “Well, well! I for one can’t understand what the other side is up to.”
But to meet Sherlock’s case, Paul said sympathetically:
“Well, well! all women are alike.”
This is a useful remark to administer to any decent-looking man in time of painful reminiscence. And, indeed, there are few men, however facially malformed, who are not greatly pleased by the assumption that they are suffering from the wrongdoing of a woman.
“I’m hanged if they are!” the great thinker snapped. “Some are vastly worse than others.”
It is never prudent to contradict a man who makes a general statement, unless you are provided with statistics. And if you have earned a reputation for being provided with statistics, no prudent man will allow you to have intercourse with him on any subject at all.
“You have never met my Uncle William?” said he, after a pause.
“No; but it would be a great pleasure to me to meet him.”
“My Uncle William,” said he grimly, “is a drug in the market. Mr. William Tunnicliffe is not altogether sane.”
“Politics or Christian Science? What has led to his undoing?”
Sherlock explained the matter. It appeared that the unfortunate uncle, who was only an uncle by marriage, had on the death of his wife given way to such excess of grief that his brain had become affected.
“And the woman was so ugly!” said he. “I assure you that the decease of my Aunt Susan would have been regarded by any other fortunate widower as an entirely unmixed blessing. She was, also, the kind of woman who never does anything quite right. She had a sort of gift for doing even the right thing at the wrong moment. You see, she even died at a time when Mr. Tunnicliffe was just convalescent from influenza.”
“And in his weak state of health this shock, either of joy or of sorrow, made him—may I say dotty?” Paul queried kindly.
“You may say nothing of the sort. It made him—queer. That’s nothing in itself. Most people are more or less odd. Watson, for instance, is odd about . . . a deuce of a lot of things. But it made him queer in a queer way. Conservative ‘dottiness’ is never noticed. It is only the pioneer of a new form of insanity who is invested with the Order of the Padded Room. Well, Mr. Tunnicliffe devoted himself to piscatorial—you would say dottiness. It became his practice to fish out of his bedroom window for dogs, or women’s hats, or any old thing. The result was that his eldest son, an eminent specialist in nasal catarrh, who practises in Wimpole Street, arranged for his father to live in a Haven of Rest. The system of reclusion was a success. For the bulk of the year Uncle William is a confirmed non-angler—his sentiments are entirely anti-piscatorial—and he lives happily in Wimpole Street with his brilliant son. But there are other periods of the year—”
“When he becomes an Anglo-maniac?” suggested Paul, with a touch of humour which he trusted would agreeably relieve the great man’s gloom, and perhaps induce him to return to business.
Sherlock looked wearily at him.
“Many men have been cut out of wills for less than that,” said he, more in sorrow than in anger. Then he continued with deliberate irrelevance: “Ten years ago I fell in love.” Proudly he added: “The instant I was in love I detected it . . . by my methods.”
“You astound me, Mr. Holmes!”
I myself was astounded. But for all that, I was madly in love with—”
“The most charming little widow in the world.”
“Precisely. You know Mrs. Archie Bunster?”
“No.”
“Then why interrupt?” said Holmes irritably. He continued: “This widow . . .”
“Grass or sod?” inquired Paul.
“Sod. Her husband died of spinal-catarrh, if I remember rightly. You may assume that this love affair was entirely an affair of the heart, in spite of the fact that—”
“The fact that Mrs. Bunster had a slight income?”
“Very slight—two thousand pounds a year and a house in Pont Street,” he corrected. “Also, she was not precisely young, except in manner and appearance. Her manner, I must say, was younger than her appearance—perhaps younger by thirty years or so,” he added with a touch of bitterness that seemed rather inexplicable.
“So the dear old lady loved you? It is better to be an old lady’s darling than—a dead dog,” Paul wound up limply, but meaning well.
“You are right,” he answered. “But for Uncle William, I should certainly have proposed to Nellie Bunster on the 14th of July, 1894.”
“Surely the fact that you suffered from an uncle by marriage who was a slightly unorthodox fisherman has not prevented you from marrying! You are going too far! I have known many conspicuously sane people who fished for hours at a time, to their own obvious content, in less likely places than London streets. Let me instance the Thames at Maidenhead and the Quai d’Orsay. Surely the eccentric fishing proclivities of the uncle need not condemn the nephew to a life of celibacy?”
“Stop; you are not dealing with the point.”
“Help me, Mr. Holmes. I am as a ship without a rudder—not that I know much about shipping.”
“I question your ruling,” said he, “but I will proceed. On the afternoon of the 14th of July, 1902, previous to proposing, I went to Debenhall and Snellbody’s to be manicured. These large shops charge you one shilling instead of the five shillings usual in Bond Street. Besides, the manicure girl is always pleased to deal with a man in place of the economical matron who wants to pay tenpence halfpenny for a shilling touch. Besides, Edith was charming—”
“Edith was?”
“She was a manicurist. But let that pass. At Debenhall and Snellbody’s one is manicured in a sort of loose-box that opens into the costume department. After the operation I was saying good-bye to Edith, when I noticed a kind of disturbance in the shop. A tall, colonelish-looking man, with an iron-gray moustache and cotton-wool whiskerettes, was unpacking a fishing-rod, much to the an
noyance of a weedy shopwalker. Said the shopwalker:
“‘Really, sir, I must ask you not to do that.’”
“‘Do what?’ said my uncle. (It was Mr. Tunnicliffe.) ‘Wait till you see what I do: then you may ask me any questions you like about how I do it. And I’ll help you all I can.’
“This was a sound offer. Then he proceeded to fix his fishing-gear. By the time that he was in a position to catch fish, the shopwalker had nearly finished his speech for the prosecution and was coming to his peroration.
“‘That’ll do nicely,’ said Uncle William. ‘I am in for a fair day’s sport.’
“‘You are,’ replied the shopwalker, at his wits’ end. ‘You’ll just about get all the sport you need. I’m pleased you’re so hopeful,’ he added, evidently realizing that my uncle was a member of the crank-brigade.
“‘And I’m pleased to share in your pleasure,’ answered poor old Tunnicliffe, proceeding to bait his line with a chinchilla muff from one of the counters.
“Said the shopwalker amiably, and in the manner of one not accustomed to people like my uncle:
“‘Excuse me, sir: fishing is not allowed here—not on any account.’
“But Mr. T. met him in this way:
“‘Pardon me; if fishing were not allowed here, there would be a notice up on the walls, “NOTICE TO ANGLERS: FISHING PROHIBITED.” In the absence of any such prohibition, I shall certainly exercise my rights.’
“This seemed bright and pithy. But that shopwalker had brain. He put a pretty good question to Mr. Tunnicliffe:
“‘Might I ask what sort of fish you propose to catch in . . . the costume department?’
“I doubt if my uncle heard the last words; but he answered confidently: “‘Some mackerel, soles, and, with luck, a few hake and ling,’ and then he proceeded with his duties.
“Though he is my own uncle, I do not hesitate to say he is one of the most workmanlike loonies I have ever struck. Still, the shopwalker was an intelligent man. He discovered a flaw in my uncle’s scheme, and he pointed it out in these words:
“‘You are fishing for deep-sea fish, and you are fishing with rod and line and a chinchilla muff. That is all wrong.’
