The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

by edited by John Joseph Adams

  "It is a large country," Holmes remarked.

  "Indeed it is. One can travel hundreds of miles in western Canada and see nothing but wheat fields. I believe the Lord said, 'Let there be wheat,' and Saskatchewan was born."

  It was late afternoon when we left the train at Orillia and took a carriage the few short blocks to Leacock's cottage. Since there was no telephone, he'd been unable to announce our arrival in advance. A handsome young man with sandy hair and a few freckles was seated on the porch as we left the carriage. He immediately put down the Rider Haggard novel he was reading and stood up.

  "Professor Leacock! What brings you here?"

  "I have bad news for you, lad. Franz Faber was murdered the night before you left Montreal. The police want to question you about it."

  At his words the screen door behind him opened and a lovely red-haired girl in a blue shift appeared. She had a dimple in her chin and a smile to charm any man. "Ralph was with me all the time," she told us. "He couldn't have killed anyone."

  Holmes inserted himself into the conversation. "Would this be the missing Miss Starr?" he asked.

  "Who are you?" Norton demanded.

  "Sherlock Holmes. I am an old friend of your mother, who summoned me from England to find you."

  He shook his head. "I didn't kill anyone, and I'm not going back to see the police. We're staying right here." His glance shifted to me. "Who is this man?"

  "My associate, Dr. Watson," Holmes responded.

  He studied me more closely. "A medical doctor?"

  "Of course," I told him.

  "And you know Rob, my assistant," Leacock said.

  Ralph smiled slightly. "We see each other at the pub."

  Leacock glanced around. "We only have three bedrooms. Is there room for us all overnight?"

  "Sure," Ralph conceded. "Follow me, Mr. Holmes. We'll get everyone settled and have a bit of supper. You must be hungry after that long train ride."

  Holmes and I drew a small bedroom at the rear of the cottage. When we were alone I asked, "Why was he so interested that I was a doctor?"

  "You must try to be more observant, Watson. We now know why she didn't spend the summer at home with her parents. Even wearing that large shift I could detect a bit of a bulge. I believe Monica Starr to be at least six months pregnant."

  3. The Capture

  Seeing her seated at the dinner table later that evening, I had to agree with Holmes's diagnosis. The girl was certainly pregnant, probably entering her third trimester. It appeared that Ralph was planning to remain here with her rather than return to McGill. I wondered if Leacock and Gentry were aware of her condition. After we ate, there was still enough light for us to walk along Old Brewery Bay. It was a small arm of the lake, with Leacock's house at the innermost part. I could see that Irene's son and Monica Starr were supremely happy, even with these unexpected guests. They played catch with a red rubber ball, occasionally tossing it to Leacock or Gentry as well. At one point, Ralph ran ahead and shouted to her. "North! Catch!"

  "North?" Holmes questioned after she'd caught the ball and tossed it on to Gentry.

  "I'm from up north, so naturally the guys started calling me North Starr, or just North."

  "Do you like it at McGill?"

  "Sure, what's not to like? That's where I met Ralph. We'll be getting married soon, after we break the news to our folks."

  "I wish you all the happiness you deserve," Holmes said.

  Leacock had been standing close enough to overhear the conversation, and he commented to me, "Many a man in love with a dimple makes the mistake of marrying the whole girl."

  "You do not approve?" I asked, addressing him for the first time since our journey began.

  "It is not for me to say. Life, as we often learn too late, is in the living."

  As the evening wore on, I found myself forced into further conversation with Leacock. "Did you have an opportunity to read my little piece on the Defective Detective, Dr. Watson?"

  "I did, sir. It seems to me you could devote your talents to more important matters."

  "Ah, but you see, I would sooner have written Alice in Wonderland than the whole of the Encyclopedia Britannica."

  I had no answer for that.

  Holmes and I both slept well that night. The water was still, and a big change from our Atlantic crossing. In the morning, over breakfast, the talk turned serious. It was Leacock who brought matters to a head. "You have to come back with us, Ralph. If you don't, I must tell the police where you are."

  But it was Monica who rose to his defense. "Why do you have to tell them? He's done nothing wrong."

  Leacock turned appealingly toward Holmes, who said quietly, "Franz Faber named Ralph as he was dying. He told a police officer it was Norton."

  "But that's impossible! I was with him all that night."

  "No, you weren't, Monica," Ralph told her. "This was Thursday, the night before we left. Remember, I had to pick up some things from home. I was gone for over an hour."

  "You couldn't kill anyone, Ralph," she said with a sigh. "Franz might not have seen his killer. You two'd had a fight, so your name was the one he spoke."

  "He was stabbed in the chest," Holmes told her. "It's most likely he did see his killer." Then he turned back to Ralph. "What had you and Faber fought about?"

  He gave a snort. "We fought over Monica. It felt like I was still a kid in high school."

  "Is that true?" he asked her.

  "I guess so. I went out with Franz for a while and he didn't want to give me up."

  If we were to be back in Montreal that night we had to be leaving soon. Rob Gentry had gathered up the material Leacock wanted to bring back, but there was still no agreement from Ralph. "I'm not going to ride all day on the train just to tell some ignorant detective I'm innocent."

  "I can stay here alone for one night," Monica told him. "Or you can come back with him," Professor Leacock suggested. "That might be best."

  She shook her head. "No. I came here to get away from people—"

  Holmes spoke softly. "Dr. Watson could examine you if you are concerned about your condition."

  "It's not that. I just don't want to go back there."

  "And neither do I," Ralph decided.

  Leacock tried to reason with them. "Sooner or later the Montreal police will learn where you are, Ralph. You'll be arrested and taken back there in handcuffs. That's hardly something you'd want your mother to see."

  "There's no evidence that I killed him."

  "You fought, and he named you as his killer," Holmes said.

  "Our fight was several days earlier. There was no reason to renew it or stab him. Monica was coming with me. I asked you about this cottage and you gave me the key a full day before Faber was killed."

  "You make a good case for your innocence," Holmes agreed. "But the police want a killer and you're the only suspect they have."

  It was then that Monica Starr spoke. "They have another," she said quietly. "I killed Franz Faber."

  "Monica!" Ralph shouted. "Don't ever say that again! Someone might believe it."

  I stared at Leacock and Gentry, seeing the disbelief in their faces. But than I glanced at Holmes and saw something quite different, something like satisfaction. "Of course she killed him. I've known it since last night. But I had to hear it from her own lips."

  "How could you have known?" Ralph asked. "What happened last night?"

  "You called her by a nickname, 'North.' When Franz Faber lay dying, he reverted to his native language. The officer asked who stabbed him and he didn't say Norton but Norden, the German word for north. He was saying you stabbed him, Monica. Do you want to tell us why you did it?"

  She stared down at the floor, unable to look any of us in the eye. Finally she answered. "I love Ralph, I love him so much. My brief time with Franz was a big mistake, but when I became pregnant he threatened to tell Ralph the baby was his and not Ralph's. I couldn't let him do that. I begged him not to, but he wouldn't listen. I'd broug
ht a knife along to threaten him, but when he saw it he just laughed. That was when I stabbed him."

  "Monica—" It was almost a sob from Ralph Norton's lips.

  The six of us took the long train ride back to Montreal together. Holmes telephoned Detective Leblond from a stop along the route and he was waiting for us at the station.

  Holmes and I took a carriage to Irene Norton's home. He insisted on giving her the news in person. "Your son will be home soon," he told her. "He's gone to the Sûreté with Monica Starr."

  "Have you solved the case?" she wanted to know. "Is my son innocent?"

  "Innocent of all but a youthful love. Only time can cure him of that." He told her of Monica's confession.

  "And the baby?" she asked. "Who is the father?"

  "We didn't ask, but it seems Faber had reason to believe it was his. It may take Ralph some time to get over that."

  She dipped her eyes, and may have shed a tear. "A scandal in Montreal. Who would have thought it? First me, all those years ago in Bohemia, and now my son."

  "No one is blaming you, or your son."

  She lifted her head to gaze at Holmes. "How can I ever thank you? Will you be going back now?"

  He nodded. "I am retired and keep bees at my villa in Sussex. If you are ever in the vicinity, it would be my pleasure to show it to you."

  "I'll keep that in mind," she said, and held out her hand to him.

  The Adventure of the Field Theorems

  by Vonda N. McIntyre

  Vonda N. McIntyre is the author of the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus award-winning novel Dreamsnake. She is also the author of The Moon and the Sun (which also won the Nebula Award) and several other novels, including a Star Wars novel and several Star Trek novels. Other original novels include The Starfarers Quartet, Barbary (a book for younger readers), Superluminal, and The Exile Waiting. Much of her short fiction has been collected in Fireflood and Other Stories.

  Readers have a tendency to identify authors with their characters, and this was certainly the case for Arthur Conan Doyle. He received piles of letters from readers asking for his help in solving actual crimes, to which he could only throw up his hands. Not only did Conan Doyle lack the rigorous, logical, machine-like Holmes-ian ability to penetrate subterfuge, but the author was also famously gullible. He repeatedly put his reputation on the line championing any hokey spiritualist who waved some ectoplasm at him. (In fact, the stage magician Houdini, who knew all the tricks of the spiritualists and who dedicated himself to unmasking them, displayed more Holmes-like behavior than the author ever did.) Perhaps the most embarrassing example of Conan Doyle's credulity was his publicizing the case of the Cottingley fairies—amazingly, the creator of Sherlock Holmes showed no skepticism when some mischievous teenage girls took photographs of themselves standing beside cardboard-cutouts of gnomes and fairies and then presented the images as real. This next tale shows us this side of Conan Doyle. Of course, in the wilds of an author's imagination, you can never be too sure what's real and what isn't.

  Holmes laughed like a Bedlam escapee.

  Considerably startled by his outburst, I lowered my Times, where I had been engrossed in an article about a new geometrical pattern discovered in the fields of Surrey. I had not yet decided whether to bring it to Holmes's attention.

  "What amuses you so, Holmes?"

  No interesting case had challenged Holmes of late, and I wondered, fearfully, if boredom had led him to take up, once again, the habit of cocaine.

  Holmes's laughter died, and an expression of thoughtful distress replaced the levity. His eyes revealed none of the languorous excitement of the drug.

  "I am amused by the delusions of our species, Watson," Holmes said. "Amusing on the surface, but, on reflection, distressing."

  I waited for his explanation.

  "Can you not discern the reason for my amusement, Watson—and my distress? I should think it perfectly obvious."

  I considered. Should he encounter an article written particularly for its humorous content, he would pass straight over it, finding it as useless to him as the orbits of the planets. The description of some brutal crime surely would not amuse him. A trace of Moriarty would raise him to anger or plunge him into despair.

  "Ah," I said, certain I had divined the truth. "You have read an account of a crime, I beg your pardon, the resolution of a crime, and you have seen the failings in the analysis. But," I pointed out, somewhat disturbed by my friend's indifference to the deeper ramifications, "that would indicate the arrest of an innocent victim, Holmes. Surely you should have some other reaction than laughter."

  "Surely I should," Holmes said, "if that were the explanation. It is not." He shook the paper. "Here is a comment by Conan Doyle on Houdini's recent performance."

  "Quite impressive it was, too," I said. "Thrilling, I would say. Did Sir Arthur find the performance compelling?"

  "Conan Doyle," Holmes said with saturnine animosity, "attributes Houdini's achievements to—" Holmes sneered—"'mediumistic powers.'"

  "His achievements do strain credulity," I said mildly.

  "Pah!" Holmes said. "That is the point, Watson, the entire and complete point! Would you pay good money to see him fail to escape from a sealed coffin?"

  "I suppose that I would not," I admitted.

  "Were Houdini to tell you his methods, you would reply, 'But that is so simple! Anyone could achieve the same effect—using your methods!'"

  As Holmes often heard the same remark after explaining his methods, I began to understand his outburst.

  "I would say nothing of the sort," I said mildly. "I should say, instead, that he had brought the technique of stage magicianship to as near an exact science as it ever will be brought in this world."

  Holmes recognized my comment with a brief smile, for I had often said as much to him about his practice of detection.

  "But it is true, Watson," Holmes said, serious once more. "Anyone could achieve the same effect—were they willing to dedicate their lives to developing the methods, to studying the methods, to perfecting the methods! Then it is 'so simple.'"

  When Holmes deigned to lead an amazed observer through his deductive reasoning, the observer's reaction was invariably the same: His methods were "perfectly obvious"; anyone, including the observer, could duplicate them with ease.

  "Conan Doyle claims friendship with Houdini," Holmes said in disgust, "and yet he insults his friend. He dismisses Houdini's hard work and ingenuity. Despite Houdini's denials, Conan Doyle attributes Houdini's success to the supernatural. As if Houdini himself had very little to do with it! What a great fool, this Conan Doyle."

  "Easy on," I said. "Sir Arthur is an intelligent man, a brave man. An inspired man! His imagination is every bit as exalted as that of Wells! His Professor Challenger stories compare favorably to War of the Worlds—!"

  "I never read fiction," Holmes said. "A failing for which you berate me continually. If I did read fiction, I would not doubly waste my time with the scientific romances you find so compelling. Nor am I interested in the mad fantasies of a spiritualist." Holmes scowled through a dense cloud of pipe smoke. "The man photographs fairies in his garden."

  "You are too much the materialist, Holmes," I said. "With my own eyes I saw amazing things, unbelievable things, in Afghanistan—"

  "Ancient sleight of hand. Snake charming. The rope trick!" He laughed again, though without the hysterical overtones of his previous outburst. "Ah, Watson, I envy you your innocence."

  I was about to object to his implications when he stayed my comment by holding up one hand.

  "Mrs Hudson—"

  "—with our tea," I said. "Hardly deserves the word 'deduction,' as her footsteps are plainly audible, and it is, after all, tea-time—"

  "—to announce a client."

  Mrs Hudson, our landlady, knocked and opened the door. "Gentleman to see you, Mr Holmes," she said. "Shall I set an extra cup?"

  The figure of a man loomed behind her in the shadows.

&
nbsp; "Thank you, Mrs Hudson," Holmes said. "That would be most kind."

  Mrs Hudson placed a calling card on the tray by the doorway. Holmes rose to his feet, but did not trouble to read the card. As our visitor entered I rose as well, and made to greet him, but Holmes spoke first.