Sherlock Holmes Edwardian Parodies and Pastiches II

by Bill Peschel

  Shears slowly filled his pipe, lit it and said:

  “I consider that this case is infinitely less complicated than it appears at first sight.”

  “Very much less,” echoed Wilson, faithfully.

  “I say the case, for, in my opinion, there is but one case. The death of Baron d’Hautrec, the story of the ring and—don’t let us forget—the mystery of number 514, series 23, are only different aspects of what we may call the puzzle of the blonde lady. Now, in my opinion, what lies before me is simply to discover the link which connects these three phases of the same story, the particular fact which proves the uniformity of the three methods. Ganimard, who is a little superficial in his judgments, sees this uniformity in the faculty of disappearing, in the power of coming and going unseen. This intervention of miracles does not satisfy me.”

  “Well?”

  “Well, according to me,” said Shears, decidedly, “the characteristic shared by the three incidents lies in your manifest and evident, although hitherto unperceived, intention to have the affair performed on a stage which you have previously selected. This points to something more than a plan on your part: a necessity, rather, a sine qua non of success.”

  “Could you give a few particulars?”

  “Easily. For instance, from the commencement of your contest with M. Gerbois, it was evident that Maître Detinan’s flat was the place selected by you, the inevitable place at which you were all to meet. No place seemed quite as safe to you, so much so that you made what one might almost call a public appointment there with the blonde lady and Mlle. Gerbois.”

  “The daughter of the professor,” explained Wilson.

  “Let us now speak of the blue diamond. Did you try to get hold of it during all the years that Baron d’Hautrec had it in his possession? No. But the baron moves into his brother’s house: six months later, Antoinette Bréhat appears upon the scene and the first attempt is made. … You fail to secure the diamond and the sale takes place, amid great excitement, at the Hotel Drouot. Is the sale free? Is the richest bidder sure of getting the diamond? Not at all. At the moment when Herschmann is about to become the owner, a lady has a threatening letter thrust into her hand and the diamond goes to the Comtesse de Crozon, who has been worked upon and influenced by the same lady. Does it vanish at once? No: you lack the facilities. So an interval ensues. But the countess moves to her country-house. This is what you were waiting for. The ring disappears.”

  “To reappear in the tooth-powder of Bleichen, the consul,” objected Lupin. “How odd!”

  “Come, come!” said Shears, striking the table with his fist. “Tell that to the marines. You can take in fools with that, but not an old fox like me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Shears took his time, as though he wished to save up his effect. Then he said:

  “The blue diamond found in the tooth-powder is an imitation diamond. The real one you kept.”

  Arsène Lupin was silent for a moment and then, with his eyes fixed on the Englishman, said very simply:

  “You’re a great man, sir.”

  “Isn’t he?” said Wilson, emphatically and gaping with admiration.

  “Yes,” said Lupin, “everything becomes cleared up and appears in its true sense. Not one of the examining magistrates, not one of the special reporters who have been exciting themselves about these cases has come half as near the truth. I look upon you as a marvel of insight and logic.”

  “Pooh!” said the Englishman, flattered at the compliment paid him by so great an expert. “It only needed a little thought.”

  “It needed to know how to use one’s thought; and there are so few who do know. But, now that the field of surmise has been narrowed and the ground swept clear….”

  “Well, now, all that I have to do is to discover why the three cases were enacted at 25, Rue Clapeyron, at 134, Avenue Henri-Martin and within the walls of the Château de Crozon. The whole case lies there. The rest is mere talk and child’s play. Don’t you agree?”

  “I agree.”

  “In that case, M. Lupin, am I not right in saying that I shall have finished my business in ten days?”

  “In ten days, yes, the whole truth will be known.”

  “And you will be arrested.”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “For me to be arrested there would have to be a conjunction of such unlikely circumstances, a series of such stupefying pieces of ill-luck, that I cannot admit the possibility.”

  “What neither circumstances nor luck may be able to effect, M. Lupin, can be brought about by one man’s will and persistence.”

  “If the will and persistence of another man do not oppose an invincible obstacle to that plan, Mr. Shears.”

  “There is no such thing as an invincible obstacle, M. Lupin.”

  The two exchanged a penetrating glance, free from provocation on either side, but calm and fearless. It was the clash of two swords about to open the combat. It sounded clear and frank.

  “Joy!” cried Lupin. “Here’s a man at last! An adversary is a rara avis at any time; and this one is Holmlock Shears! We shall have some sport.”

  “You’re not afraid?” asked Wilson.

  “Very nearly, Mr. Wilson,” said Lupin, rising, “and the proof is that I am going to hurry to make good my retreat … else I might risk being caught napping. Ten days, we said, Mr. Shears?”

  “Ten days. This is Sunday. It will all be over by Wednesday week.”

  “And I shall be under lock and key?”

  “Without the slightest doubt.”

  “By Jove! And I was congratulating myself on my quiet life! No bothers, a good, steady little business, the police sent to the right about and a comforting sense of the general sympathy that surrounds me…. We shall have to change all this! It is the reverse of the medal…. After sunshine comes rain…. This is no time for laughing! Good-bye.”

  “Look sharp!” said Wilson, full of solicitude on behalf of a person whom Shears inspired with such obvious respect. “Don’t lose a minute.”

  “Not a minute, Mr. Wilson, except to tell you how pleased I have been to meet you and how I envy the leader who has an assistant so valuable as yourself.”

  Courteous bows were exchanged, as between two adversaries on the fencing-ground who bear each other no hatred, but who are constrained by fate to fight to the death. And Lupin took my arm and dragged me outside:

  “What do you say to that, old fellow? There’s a dinner that will be worth describing in your memoirs of me!”

  He closed the door of the restaurant and, stopping a little way off:

  “Do you smoke?”

  “No, but no more do you, surely.”

  “No more do I.”

  He lit a cigarette with a wax match which he waved several times to put it out. But he at once flung away the cigarette, ran across the road and joined two men who had emerged from the shadow, as though summoned by a signal. He talked to them for a few minutes on the opposite pavement and then returned to me:

  “I beg your pardon; but I shall have my work cut out with that confounded Shears. I swear, however, that he has not done with Lupin yet…. By Jupiter, I’ll show the fellow the stuff I’m made of! . . . Good night . . . The unspeakable Wilson is right: I have not a minute to lose.”

  He walked rapidly away.

  Thus ended that strange evening, or, at least that part of it with which I had to do. For many other incidents occurred during the hours that followed, events which the confidences of the others who were present at that dinner have fortunately enabled me to reconstruct in detail.

  1909

  With Jean pregnant with their first child, it was a bad time for Conan Doyle to fall ill, but he did, with an intestinal blockage that necessitated minor surgery. On Jan. 10, he underwent an operation at Windlesham for hemorrhoids. For a week, he endured intense pain until he was given morphia. His relief was so great that he speculated that the ability of a vegetable to relieve human
suffering was an argument for a designing deity.

  Despite his pain, he continued to work. He bought a neighbor’s land to expand his house onto it. He wrote poetry and planned to publish a collection. He caught up with his paperwork. He even considered, briefly, a third run for Parliament, this time representing Edinburgh University.

  In March, Denis Percy Stewart Conan Doyle was born. His father was thrilled with his “wonderfully domed” head and predicted “he will do deeds if he lives.”

  There was also the neighborhood around Crowborough to explore. When fossils were found in the quarry near the house, Conan Doyle summoned an expert from the British Museum to examine them He also filed the incident for use in a novel.

  In June, The Fires of Fate, a play based on his novel The Tragedy of the Korosko, opened in London. With Lewis Waller again playing the hero—as he did unsuccessfully as Brigadier Gerard—it ran for only four months and an additional three weeks in New York.

  In the meanwhile, reports from the Congo Free State were infuriating Conan Doyle. In the pursuit of profit, the personal preserve of Belgium’s King Leopold had become hell on earth. Journalist E.D. Morel, helped by Roger Casement, the former British consul for the Congo, described how massacres and maimings were used to keep the Congo natives slaving on the rubber plantations. Conan Doyle began a letter-writing campaign, lobbying President William Taft, Kaiser Wilhelm II, and numerous newspapers in the U.S., Belgium, and England. He turned out a pamphlet, The Crime of the Congo, that he had translated into German and French. This battle would occupy him until 1912.

  As if that wasn’t enough, he promoted an invention that turned a bicycle into a motor bike and worked on The House of Temperly, a play about boxing that he had started in 1894 but set aside.

  Publication: The Crime of the Congo (Oct.).

  Mr. Sherlock Holmes in the Case of the Drugged Golfers

  Bertram Atkey

  This story appeared in the November issue of Fry’s, The Outdoor Magazine. Bertram Atkey (1880-1952) had worked a number of laboring jobs before embarking on a long career as a writer of popular fiction. He had a literary connection to Conan Doyle; his nephew Philip Atkey (1908-1985) continued the Raffles series after the death of E.W. Hornung, Conan Doyle’s brother-in-law.

  “Holmes,” said I, as I was looking out of our window one morning, “here is a madman coming!”

  My friend slipped the fully loaded hypodermic syringe—with which he was whiling away a pleasant half-hour after breakfast—into the pocket of his dressing-gown, and looked over my shoulder.

  “Yes. Coming to consult with me,” he said, rubbing his hands. “Ha! There he is.” Almost as he spoke the front door bell-wire was torn completely down and out through the door into the street.

  The landlady ushered into the sitting-room a short, stout, red-faced, middle-aged man of hairless appearance with a military look.

  Puffing and gesticulating, he sat down heavily in the arm-chair which Holmes indicated.

  “Whisky, for Heaven’s sake!” he gasped.

  I poured out the stimulant for him, and turned to get the soda syphon. By the time I reached it our caller had emptied his glass, refilled it, emptied it again, and was refilling for the third time. He motioned the soda away impatiently, and drained the glass.

  “Not another drop,” he said, emphatically, and drained the glass.

  Holmes opened his eyes suddenly. He had been lounging in his favourite chair with half-closed lids.

  “Were you under the impression that it was ‘The White Hart’ or ‘The Three Tuns’?” he said, suavely. “Let me offer you—er—” he pushed over the cachou box presented to him by a Russian Grand Duke.

  Our caller smiled.

  “No doubt you think I am mad!” he said.

  “No—only thirsty,” said Holmes, gently. “And now that you have slaked your thirst, let me have a clear account of who you are and what trouble has befallen you.”

  “My name,” answered our visitor, “is Colonel Cleak. I am a member of Blameshot Golf Club, and I have been travelling half the night in order to lose no time in laying my case before you. Blameshot Golf Club is composed wholly of retired officers—we tolerate no d—n nonsense there, sir, from the pups of the younger school—and two days ago I put up for competition an Indian trophy of great value. It was a gem-studded drinking cup fashioned from a tiger’s skull, and had long been the envy of every member of the club. It was, of course, an event of some moment in the annals of the club, and to celebrate it the committee engaged an Indian cook for the occasion, and arranged for a perfect dinner to be attended by all the members, at which I should formally offer the cup for competition.

  “I attended that dinner—held last evening—Mr. Holmes, and I have no hesitation in saying that it was the finest dinner I recollect—and that from a man who has eaten with kings, damme! We have a cellar to be proud of, Mr. Holmes.

  “Now, I remember distinctly taking the cup to the club-house—where the event was celebrated—I carried it personally in a small brown bag, and during the meal the bag was under my chair. At the conclusion of the banquet I made a few well-chosen and appropriate remarks, and, producing the cup from the bag, placed it in the exact centre of the table upon a pedestal which had been put there for the purpose. Then followed a few speeches suitable to the occasion, and we adjourned to the billiard-room for some pool.

  “Since that moment not one of us has set eyes on the cup. It has vanished completely. The servants are above suspicion, and I scarcely say the members also. Indeed, there are only twenty members of the club. We are fairly well-to-do, and we like to play our own games in our own way—without the advice and sneers of strangers or of the younger generation. Practically all the Blameshot Golf Club is a purely private concern. And now, Mr. Holmes, we want you to find the cup. That is the problem you have to solve.”

  “I have!” said Holmes, languidly.

  “You have! Have what?” cried the colonel.

  “Solved it!” Holmes yawned. “I shall arrive at the club-house at four o’clock this afternoon, and I shall place the cup in your hands at six o’clock precisely.”

  He rose. “It has been an interesting little problem, colonel, but elementary. And now I must leave you. I have an appointment at the docks in connection with the Case of the Man with the Striped Hair, the story of which Watson here is anxious to finish in time to catch the American mail on Saturday. It would be wise for you to rest here for an hour or so—you won’t find it dull, there is plenty of whisky left—and by twelve o’clock Watson and I will be back. We might all three travel to the scene of the robbery together. Good-morning. Come along, Watson, and bring your revol—your fountain pen, that is.”

  A few hours later found us on the scene of the robbery, where we were met by an inspector of the local police, who, beyond arresting the entire staff of the servants and telephoning to Scotland Yard to have the Indian cook arrested on his arrival at Waterloo, had taken no steps pending our arrival. There were a number of elderly gentlemen of the military type sitting on the verandah behind tumblers, discussing their handicaps.

  Holmes asked to be shown the kitchen, and the inspector conducted us thither. Colonel Cleak had joined the group on the verandah.

  Lost in admiration and wonder, the inspector and I squeezed ourselves up against the dresser watching the great detective at work. With a magnifying-glass in one hand, his pamphlet upon cigar ash in the other, and a tape measure between his teeth, he crawled about the kitchen, evidently hot upon the scent.

  Suddenly, he turned to the inspector.

  “I shall want to see the waiter or butler who served at table at the dinner last night,” he said.

  The inspector went to fetch the man.

  “Will you ask Colonel Cleak to step this way, Watson, my dear fellow?” next asked Holmes.

  I did so.

  “Which of the members of the club has the most seasoned and strongest head for wine, colonel?” questioned Sherlock Holmes w
hen the colonel arrived.

  “I have, Mr. Holmes, undoubtedly,” said the colonel readily.

  Holmes thanked him, and he withdrew, as the inspector returned with the waiter—a tired-looking man, with a very pale face and a curious look of regret in his eyes.

  Holmes whispered something to the inspector, who left the kitchen. He then spoke in low tones with the man for a few moments and went with him into a sort of scullery adjoining the kitchen.

  Very shortly the inspector returned, accompanied by a horsey-looking individual in coachman’s livery.

  “How was your master when you drove him home last night, my man?” asked Holmes, holding a half-sovereign in his hand.

  The man threw up his hands in a gesture of envy and despair.

  “Abso-lutely, sir. Broke all records.”

  “All right, my man, that will do!”

  The horsey-looking man grabbed the half-sovereign and vanished. Holmes pulled out his cocaine apparatus and took a stiff dose. Then, lighting his pipe and placing a paper of shag on the floor, he sat down beside it and stared vacantly at a toasting-fork that hung near the kitchen range. He was thinking—that flawless, pitilessly logical mind was dissecting, as with a pork-butcher’s knife, weighing, as with a cheesemonger’s scales, the case upon which we were working. It was almost possible to hear that great brain grinding as it worked, swiftly, surely, relentlessly, to the solution of the problem.

  An hour passed. Then, with an exclamation, Holmes leaped to his feet and darted into the scullery. We heard a rattle of plates and dishes, then a sound of running water.

  A minute later, Holmes appeared before us. In his hand he held a whitish, jewelled object that blazed and sparkled in the sunlight which shone through the kitchen window. It was the Indian trophy!

  “Call the colonel,” said Holmes.