by Bill Peschel
Slowly, Conan Doyle returned to his energetic self. The Edalji case forced him back into the public eye. Then in February, he came down with ptomaine poisoning. During his recovery, he announced his engagement to Leckie, with the wedding to take place in September.
Before that, however, there was a special birthday celebration. The Ma’am had turned 70, and the celebration could not have been imagined by the poor wife of a growing family washing clothes in an Edinburgh tenement. The family gathered at the London home of her daughter, Constance, and her husband Willie Hornung (himself the creator of Raffles the gentleman burglar). They dined at the Gaiety before seeing a performance of Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch.
The wedding was a lavish affair, and the guest list reflected every aspect of Conan Doyle’s life. His brother, Innes, was best man and among the guests were his literary friends J.M. Barrie, Jerome K. Jerome, and Bram Stoker; the Strand’s owner (George Newnes) and editor (Greenhough Smith); Dr. Reginald Hoare, who had befriended Conan Doyle three decades before; and George Edalji, who had recently received his coveted pardon.
The couple embarked on a honeymoon cruise on the Mediterranean that would take them as far as Constantinople, where they received medals from the Ottoman sultan. On their return, they moved into their new home, Windlesham, overlooking the same Sussex Downs that Holmes retired to. Undershaw was leased, and would be sold in 1921.
Publications: The Story of Mr. George Edalji (Jan.); Through the Magic Door (Nov.)
Coverage of Conan Doyle’s marriage to Jean Leckie in a New York newspaper. The immediate details are correct, but Conan Doyle did not marry his first wife in South Africa, and she did not die “shortly afterward of typhoid”, leaving readers wondering when the two children came along. Also, Leckie was 33, not 30, although this may have been intentional on her part. Notice that the reported 18-year age difference between the couple merited only a “just” in the story.
A Sherlock Holmes Understudy
Samuel Hopkins Adams
This unusual article from the March issue of The Bookman opens with a note from the editor about a review of The Mystery that appeared in that issue. Its author was Samuel Hopkins Adams (1871-1958), the novelist and investigative reporter whose articles exposing dangerous ingredients in patent medicines aided passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906. His short story, “Night Bus,” was turned into the Clark Gable movie It Happened One Night (1934). The White in the story was Stewart Edward White (1873-1946), a writer and novelist who specialized in natural history and outdoor life. Like Conan Doyle, he was a spiritualist and wrote books with his wife that they claimed were dictated by spirits.
The greater part of The Mystery, which is reviewed elsewhere in this number, was written at Mr. White’s home, “The Jumping-Off Place” in Santa Barbara. When Mr. Adams came East he left behind him what Mr. White describes viciously as “one rat-tailed shaving brush,” upon which he must have put great store, since its loss was the burden of the greater part of his subsequent correspondence, until finally Mr. White in disgust attached a tag to the brush and mailed it without other cover. Here is Mr. Adams’s acknowledgment:
Dear Stewart:
In the matter of one high-grade, best in the United States shaving brush; many thanks. It came safely and relieved my mind of the growing suspicion that you were going to start a barber shop on the premises. I’m quite aware that it would be more fitting for me to apologise for my delay in acknowledging its receipt, than to be casting asparagus at you for not having restored it earlier to my aching arms; but I always did prefer jumping on the other fellow to confessing my own shortcomings.
Well, as I said, it arrived safely, tag and all. Examining it with my Sherlock Holmes patent magnifying glass, and my knitted brow, I made several discoveries.
First: a red-headed, cross-eyed, knock-kneed, left-handed brakeman on the Southern Pacific shaved with it somewhere between Needles, California, and Tucson, Arizona, using a low grade of Barren Island soap. This is shown by the small red sprinklings, intermixed with desert and a last-rose-of-summer fragrance, while the physical peculiarities of the shaver are sufficiently obvious (“My dear Holmes, you surprise me,” here broke in Watson), by the irregular streaking of the bristles, though to be sure, he may only have been drunk.
A little beyond Yuma, while the engine stopped for water, the mail-clerk threw the brush at a prairie dog. To the trained eye this is perfectly clear, as the marks of the outraged animal’s teeth are not to be mistaken, while the location is indicated by the thorn of a cactus which grows only in that locality. (How do I know that the train was stopping for water at the time? My dee-ar Watson. Do collect yourself. What would you expect it to be stopping for? Beer?)
At Denver, Colorado, it helped put a new coat of stove blacking on the engine. At Two Kicks, Kansas, the conductor cleaned his pipe with it. At Chicago, Illinois, the porter took a turn at it and added lustre to several pairs of patent leather shoes therewith. Coming through Buffalo it must have been left in the sleeper, for (I don’t want to accuse anyone unjustly, but the fact remains) there are to be found on it convincing relics of Dr. Lyon’s tooth powder.
When it first reached me, I didn’t at first recognise these obvious inferences (here Watson may be supposed to butt-in again with one of his asinine antiphonies), and so I used it to shave with. For days thereafter I resembled the Painted Lady. The investigation followed, and if I mistake not, Watson, the villains will be behind the bars of justice before night. Ha! A knock on the door. Probably the prairie dog.
Sheerluck Jones, or The Encyclopaedia Britannica
E.S. Blair
This is the third story from The Grotonian, the magazine from the elite New England boarding school that contributed two stories to the 1900-1904 volume. Part of their attraction to the editor has been to trace the lives of these young men of privilege. In the case of Edward S. Blair, he was a descendant of Robert McCormick, the Chicago inventor who made a fortune from his mechanical reaper. Blair graduated from Yale in 1911 and studied music in Munich until World War I. He served as an intelligence officer in the U.S. Army and returned to Europe after the war. Back in Chicago in the mid-1930s, he participated in the theatre scene. His most notable accomplishment was to organize events including cockroach races for the Streets of Paris exhibit at the Chicago World’s Fair of 1933. He admitted to a reporter in 1964 that the races, inspired by those he saw in Paris, were not a popular draw, saying they “appeal only to the supreme over-privileged class. The masses of people that have to deal with cockroaches are not interested in seeing them race.”
Chapter I.
Sheerluck Jones, R.S.V.P.S.P.C.A., was lounging in his big arm chair before the fire, his feet twined daintily around the clock on the mantelpiece, his hands clasped beneath the left hind leg of the chair, and dangling from his mouth the little tin pipe which H.R.H. Prince Fitzbooble of Patagonia had presented him in the case of the royal lapdog. I had come in tired from a long day’s round of medical visits, and I was not surprised to find my friend Jones in his customary attitude; but when I looked closer I saw something which made me drop my hat and coat in haste. Seventeen years’ experience had made me too well acquainted with his eccentricities not to know by the slightest signs that something was up.
“Jones,” said I, “what’s up?”
His hair was unbrushed, his right shoelace was untied, and he wore a dirty shirt.
“Spitzen,” says he to me; “do you hear that carriage coming down the street? Well, one of two things is about to happen: Either a gentleman will alight from that carriage and ascend the steps, or the driver will resolutely drive on without stopping.”
“Ma-a-a-rrr—”
My exclamation was interrupted as the doorbell rang, and a gentleman entered the room.
“Mr. Sheerluck Jones, I believe?” he said. Jones disengaged his right hand from beneath the left hind leg of the armchair, and motioned the visitor to a seat. I mention all these trivialities because the
y will later have great bearing on the case. The visitor sat down, and, as he momentarily surveyed the great detective opposite him, I saw my friend’s eyes light up with a flash, and then die down again into that steely glitter which I knew only too well. Then I knew that I had missed a trick.
“I perceive that you are a schoolmaster,” said Jones.
“Yes.”
“You come to me about troubles you are having at your school.”
“Exactly. Mr. Jones, we have lost a thirty-two pound Encyclopaedia Britannica from our library, and a mystery has grown up around it that bids fair to ruin our peace of mind and destroy our happiness. We have racked our brains; we have searched high and low, in the cellars and the confiscation lockers, to no purpose. I have come to you—”
“Say no more,” interrupted Jones, pulling his feet from the mantelpiece, and upsetting the clock with decisive carelessness into the red hot coals below. “Tomorrow I will be at your school. In three days the mystery shall be cleared up, or my name is not Sheerluck Jones. Good-day.”
When the gentleman had left, “Jones,” I said, “how did you do it?”
“My dear Spitzen, it was easy enough. I had previously omitted to change my shirt, to tie my shoe, and to brush my hair, so that when he perceived it, his hand involuntarily started towards the little red note book in his left upper waistcoat pocket. Then it was that I knew that he was a schoolmaster.”
“But how did you know that he was coming to the house at that precise time?”
“Because he had written to me a couple of days before from his school that he would do so.”
“Ma-a-a-rrvelous!”
Chapter II.
The day dawned bright and clear as Jones and I took the train for the school at which our visitor of the previous day was a master. Jones had been so excited all night, pacing the room in a feverish frenzy, that I felt I must drag myself out of bed and catch the 6.45 train with him. Jones munched paté-de-fois-gras sandwiches all the way up, and said never a word until we reached our destination, when he suddenly disappeared, and I was left to drive to the school grounds alone.
I could not help being impressed with the scene as it burst upon me—the majestic, square-blocked gymnasium, with its graceful colonnade leading to the outlying fives courts; the main dormitory house stretching in a semi-circle like some old English country hall; the distinctly modern school house, with its white belfry and gilded dome; the picturesque little brick vine-covered building which was the original old dormitory house with which the school started; and finally, the beautiful chapel, with its white stone glistening in the morning dew, and its one stately pinnacled tower pointing upwards towards the heavens like the finger of fate to the destiny of the boys entering below—all these buildings stretching in a complete circle around what the vulgar would call a campus.
Meanwhile morning service was about to begin, and as I entered the chapel I explained to our friend the master that Jones would probably turn up during the service somewhere between the cellar and the organ loft.
Not a bit of it. I knew that I was fooled again, when, immediately after the service, the most awful noise began to proceed from far up in the tower, drowning out the plaintive sounds of the organ recessional with a clash and clamor as if all pandemonium had been let loose.
In the midst of the excitement, as people were running up the steps leading to the top of the tower, I suddenly perceived Jones slip down and out with a sidewise motion, and forthwith followed. When we were outside I ran up to him.
“Is the game on?” I cried.
“Hush!” he answered, placing the third finger of his left hand upon his upper lip. “Continue acting as though you had not seen me.”
“But where have you been?” I gasped.
“Disguised as a gargoyle on the chapel tower—for purposes of observation. S-h-h-h-h! I took a running dive into the bells to distract public attention!”—and with that he slipped under the board walk, just as the first person appeared from the chapel.
Struck dumb with admiration, I stood aside and watched the school file by—a long, slow-winding snake. First came a short, stocky gentleman, walking ahead of the rest at full speed; later a gentleman with a green cap; next to the last a gentleman with a brown cap and a small mail bag; last, a gentleman on a bicycle.
As the last gentleman passed, Sheerluck Jones emerged from beneath the board walk, scraping along with him twenty-six different species of cigarette ashes, to watch the procession of boys file slowly into the schoolhouse. But before I could accost him, he had jumped into the sheltering shade of the fives courts, and I followed, soon perceiving the cause of this action.
Back along the board walk a long, lank, red-haired youth was coursing. With lightning speed he sped along the supple boards. Jones’ eyes sparkled.
“Aha!” he cried. “A clue! A clue! He has forgotten his book!” and, bidding me wait for him, he sprang forth and accosted the youth. For a brief moment he stood talking animatedly with him, probing him through and through with his piercing eyes, scribbling upon his collar meanwhile the important points of the conversation.
Then he beckoned to me, and the two of us dashed off towards the library. Here Jones began to pull books from the shelves, frantically piling them up in his arms, and I followed suit, filling my pockets with them, and embracing all I could possibly get around—folios, quartos, big books, little books, golden bindings tarnished by a hundred thumbs, and dirty little paper coverings which looked as though millionaires’ sons had licked the silver off them.
When we emerged from the house, murky twilight was falling, and the purple sun was shaving itself upon the jagged edges of the western hills. Jones led the way to an apple tree in the middle of the lawn.
“Come,” he said; “we will lay the trail.”
“What in blazes—” I stopped there, for I caught the steely glint of his eyes, and knew that he had found the clue, and the finish was near. And with that the sun popped below the horizon.
So we laid a trail of books from the apple tree across the lawn to a wild, forsaken spot behind the schoolhouse. Here we crouched in the shadow of a bowlder, and waited, waited, waited, we two together all alone. The suspense was awful, crouching there with drawn revolvers in the silence and the darkness—silence which you could cut like a cheese, and darkness which you could butter like a piece of bread. I could hear myself perspire; but Jones only gazed along the trail of books.
Suddenly in the distant silence we heard a sound, a sound as of a crumpling of paper, a crackle and a crunch. I strained my ears and Jones peered through the blackness. Slowly nearer and nearer came that quiet, continuous sound.
“Jones,” I gasped, unable to contain myself any longer, “What is it?”
“Spitzen,” he whispered; “I have written a treatise on the thirty-one different sound effects produced by chewing, and by Jupiter, I’ll be hanged if somebody isn’t eating those books!” There was no time for further intercourse; the devouring bookworm, he, she or it, whatever it was, was nearing us, and I could already catch sight of it looming up in the night. One breathless moment—a moment which seemed like an aeon—passed, while the figure neared, following the trail of books, and eating them as it approached.
Then—Jones discharged his revolver and leaped forth upon the enemy. Now began the death struggle, while I kept time and held Jones’ valuables. All I could see of the enemy was an indefinable form, whether of beast or man I could not tell. So the two rent the air with their labored breathing, while their heaving bodies thrashed through the grass as they tossed each other back and forth. Finally, I was just slipping off my coat to join the fray, when a sudden hush took the place of the former sounds of fierce strife, and in silence Jones came to me and whispered one word:
“Killed!”
“Two minutes and forty-three seconds,” I said. “Who is it?”
“Don’t go near the body,” he answered. “I am tired and wounded. My nerves are shattered. Come, let us go home.
”
Chapter III.
After twenty-four hours of sleep Jones had quite recuperated, and on the afternoon of the third day after the mysterious call of our friend the master, he and I again took the train for the school. Jones was calm and quiet; I could see from the peace that seemed to take possession of his soul that the mystery was solved. But he did not open his mouth the whole way up, and I had sense enough not to speak, except to remonstrate with him on the hated morphine which he now and then injected into his wrist through the silver-gilt bicycle pump which he always carried in his revolver pocket.
Arrived, he sent in his card, and we were soon before the master. Jones sat down, crossed his legs, placed the finger tips of each hand one upon the other, respectively, cleared his throat, and spoke:
“It was evident to me from the beginning, my dear sir, that somebody must have taken the thirty-two pound Encyclopaedia Britannica from your library, and left it behind him where he was reading it, where somebody else happened upon it and purloined it. Now, I reasoned, if I could only find the person who was reading it, I could then trace the culprit. So I took hidden and mysterious methods of operation, and was rewarded by finding a boy who had the habit of leaving behind his books, and who, by a lucky chance, turned out to be the very one I was looking for.
“Now,” I said to myself, “for the criminal!” After much talk I screwed it from the youth that he was reading the Encyclopaedia one winter’s evening beneath the apple tree on the lawn, watching the sunset, when the bell rang for supper, and he dropped the book and sped indoors. So with some few hundreds of books from the library I laid a trail from the apple tree to a hidden lair, where Spitzen and I concealed ourselves, arguing that the purloiner, revisiting his old haunt, would pick up all the books until he fell into our hands. All fell out as I had planned. The criminal was led along the trail, in his insatiate greed eating the books as he came—yes, do not laugh, he was eating the books. So you know the whereabouts of your Encyclopaedia Britannica: it was devoured by the self-same culprit, who now lies dead behind the schoolhouse. And now, my dear sir, the mystery is solved, within two hours and seventeen minutes of the appointed time.”
