Sherlock Holmes in Orbit

by Mike Resnick (ed)

  She looked toward the door, then would have fallen once again if it had not been for Holmes. The man in the doorway leaped to her side and held her against him. “My God, Leona, how can you ever forgive me!”

  “You were too good at hiding/’ Holmes said to the woman. “Mr. McGuire has been searching for you for a year. You should be grateful for his persistence—and that he looked for you in all the wrong places.”

  She had buried her face in the man’s shoulder and was quietly sobbing. “How can you ever forgive me?”

  It was Holmes who led them gently to the door and quietly closed it after them. I was overwhelmed, not only by his generosity of spirit and understanding but that he had been willing to expose the heart that he usually kept so well hidden.

  “I imagine they will spend the rest of their lives forgiving each other,” I said. “As good a basis for a marriage as any, I suppose.” And then: “How did you find him?”

  “I told you before that this was a mystery of character, Watson. I made inquiries of the police and they told me that a year ago a gentleman had asked after Leona Adler and once again they had referred him to Lieutenant Van Dyke, who was handling everything to do with the Adler case. It turned out Van Dyke’s ultimate villainy was to conceal from William McGuire that his lost love was still alive. She had disappeared, Van Dyke insisted, but McGuire continued his search. Just yesterday I located him at the Baldwin, staying in their presidential suite. Incidentally, Watson, he is now a very wealthy man. Eventually, he did indeed discover gold.” But there was still the last bit of the puzzle. “How did you know the phantom was Leona Adler? Did the guitar pick play a part?

  Holmes smiled slightly. ‘The pick had nothing to do with it, Watson. I was suspicious when Lieutenant Van Dyke told us the tale of the phantom. And I recognized the guitar the moment I saw it. It had been hanging on the wall behind Miss Adler in the portrait Mycroft had given us. I was surprised you did not recognize it as well.” He glanced at his watch again. ‘They will be coming for our bags soon. Is everything packed?”

  I nodded, then said: “I imagine the Prince and the Adler family will be very pleased.”

  He shook his head.

  “What would I tell them, Watson? I could not fill in the years any more successfully than she could. She was right, she would have been forced to lie and eventually they would have seen through the falsehoods and it would have wounded their lives forever. I shall have to leave it as it is. I will tell them simply that Leona Adler has disappeared, which is partly true, at least for the woman they knew. Later, if Miss Adler wishes to contact her family, it will be easier with a marriage of four or five years behind her. Some things are more easily forgiven than others. But for the moment, to protect her I shall willingly confess to failure.”

  “But you did not fail!” I protested.

  “Ah, but I did, Watson,” he said softly. “My failure is that I did not find her ten years ago.”

  MOUSE AND THE MASTER by Brian M. Thomsen

  In the numerous years of my relationship with the consulting detective Sherlock Holmes, I have witnessed his mastery of the arcane, modem science, mock mysticism, and impenetrable impersonations. Always awed by the vast mental resources he had at his immediate beck and call, I was always in error whenever I doubted his line of thinking, resolution, or decision making ... but there’s still that one exception to the rule for which even today I cannot see his reasoning. It involved a particularly disreputable fellow, an American if memory serves, whom the master himself felt necessary to employ....

  —John H. Watson

  It was a typical spring day in London, and nature was bestowing her bounty on me once again.

  It was raining, and the residual dampness in my quarters was doing its best to remind me of the past errors of my ways with the dull aches and pains that come from having been bound and gagged and tossed in a cellar, all attributable to my last case (a real dickens of one if I do say so myself). My name is Malcolm Chandler, and if I didn’t get hired for a new case real soon, I would be tending my bodily aches and pains in Newgate debtor’s prison in no time at all. You see, I’m a private investigator, a gumshoe, a shamus, a dick.

  My friends call me Mouse, and unfortunately I really didn’t fit the bill for the locals’ expectations of what a great detective would look like, and, as a result, I was always having to scrounge for work.

  I had just about resigned myself to having to join a strong-arm group that the local constabulary was forming to track down some escaped convict named Magwitch or Magpie or something, subjecting my already battered body to further bodily abuse for low pay, “mean expectations” at best, when a kid of about twelve barged into my office all out of breath like the last surviving turkey on the day after Thanksgiving.

  “Are you Malcolm Chandler, the second greatest consulting detective in all of London?” he asked, his body slightly stooped, his legs clutched together like some Ginny Jenny embracing a bottle.

  “Who wants to know?” I asked cautiously, knowing that as of recently I had more enemies looking for me than friends, “and what do you mean the second greatest consulting detective?”

  ‘The Master Detective asks that you accompany me back to his quarters on Baker Street,” he continued, but then interrupted with the greatest urgency, “may I please use your pot? It’s an emergency!”

  Now, recognizing the cause of his awkward stance, I motioned him to the pail I kept reserved for those mornings when the spirits of the previous night’s imbibing extracted their revenge, turned my back, and continued my questioning. “What does this Master Detective want with me?” “I think it has something to do with the doctor,” he replied as he finished his business. As he rethreaded the drawstring that held his pants in place, he started toward the door. “We must hurry,” he said. “Mister Holmes does not like to be kept waiting.”

  Having no better prospects, and knowing that Sherlock always charged top dollar, and therefore might be in line for a little of his own medicine, I followed the kid out into the noonday drizzle.

  Holmes’s quarters at 221B Baker Street were just as I pictured them—as was Holmes himself.

  Sherlock was of a build and a manner more akin to swashbuckling villains and Gothic mad scientists than the rugged persona of the manly art of mystery solving. His hands were stained yet effeminate with delicate digits whose discolored cuticle sheaths seemed naked without lacquer. He wasn’t of the Wilde sort, but his hands sure were.

  His hairline was receding, eyes deep set, and his nose was long and narrow as if inviting the reception of a pair of knuckles on a bone crushing course.

  Not exactly much of a heroic figure, if you ask me, but then again it wasn’t as if I ever had a clear view of him. The room was thick with pipe smog.

  He met us at the door, opening it quickly, and addressing the lad who rushed by him.

  “The pot’s behind the bureau, Wilson,” he told the lad who bolted into the other room as he undid his pants along the way. Turning to me, he invited me in with numerous salutations.

  “Ah, Mr. Chandler, welcome. By your build, demeanor, and bearing I would say that you are the sort of fellow who probably has a nickname. Something diminutive, and verminesque. Have a seat,” he nattered, ushering me to a chair.

  “Uh, yes,” I said with my usual amount of professional awkwardness. “The kid said you ...”

  “You mean Wilson. Bright fellow,” he interrupted.

  “Yes, I ...”

  “Has a bit of the trots. Runs in the family. Must be the water.”

  “Yes, I ...”

  “Weasel,” he interrupted.

  “What?” I said more confused than ever.

  “Your nickname is Weasel,” he continued in a matter-of- fact tone. “Your father was ...”

  “My nickname is Mouse,” I corrected.

  “Are you quite sure?”

  “Yes,” I replied. “Now, Wilson ...”

  “No, Wilson’s nickname is not Weasel. Wilson�
��s nickname is Wilson. Are you quite certain ... oh, maybe not. You might have made a mistake,” he nattered.

  “About your case,” I inserted, trying to get our conversation back on track. “Wilson said it was about the doctor. Moriarty, I presume.”

  “No, no, no. It’s about Watson,” he insisted.

  “Your sidekick, Boswell, and broker of fame.”

  “Well, yes, and no,” he explained, finally getting down to the case. “Watson and I used to share these rooms a few years ago before he became a practicing polygamist, and …

  “Polygamist?” I queried.

  “He has two wives.”

  “Oh.”

  “You see, Watson had just returned from the war where he had been wounded ...”

  “In the arm or the leg,” I queried, having heard rumors of both.

  “Neither,” he replied. “ ‘Twas the eardrums. Left him quite hard of hearing. Anyway, my practice was just beginning to take off, and he began to function as my press agent. Very early on I realized that I could turn my powers of deductive reasoning into a profitable sideline. Problem solving for the rich and famous, tracking down unfaithful suitors, selling information to the Grub Street rags, etc.”

  “Excuse me,” I interrupted. “That’s not exactly the line of work, I would have expected of the Master Detective of all England.”

  “Well, that’s part of the problem. Watson has misinterpreted a lot of my actions and intentions, and as a result I’ve come across a bit more noble than I had intended. I’m not complaining, mind you. It’s just not what I had intended.” “In other words, you just wanted to be a common everyday peeper, just like me.”

  “Well, maybe not as common as you, but you get my point,” he asserted.

  “Sure. So: A) How did this happen? B) What’s with the doctor? and C) What’s it got to do with me?” I asked trying to get matters to the point.

  “Well, as I said before, Watson has a hearing problem,” Holmes continued, taking a moment to lean back in his high-backed chair as Wilson quietly and sheepishly ushered himself out, “and as a result he often mishears parts of our conversations. For example, one evening I was reading the label on a bottle of cough syrup that was meant to be taken orally. Unfortunately, it had a bad taste, which to someone with as delicate a set of taste buds as mine is not a minor problem. Watson, who had just woken from a nap, asked me what my problem was, and I said ‘Alimentary, my dear Watson,’ and the next thing I know he has me saying—in print, mind you—’elementary, my dear Watson’ at the drop of a hat. Soon he had developed an entire fantasy world based on those things he thinks he hears. A case involving a polka-dotted polka sextet, somehow metamorphasized into a tale of terror with a poisonous snake.”

  “The Speckled Band,” I inserted.

  “The time I contemplated changing the color scheme of my den to a deep red.”

  “A Study in Scarlet.”

  “He even thinks I have a brother. One night I was ruminating over how I missed making paper animals. As I was an only child, and usually quite sickly, I’d do cut-outs to keep from being bored. At one point I may have mentioned that my crafts kept me company in my younger years, and somehow his addled little brain turned this around to me having a brother named Mycroft. Poor Wilson, I commented on his bowel condition once, and now Watson is sure he is the leader of a secret army of young aides I have called the Baker Street Irregulars.”

  “This is all very fascinating, but get to the point. What do you need me for?” I insisted, my patience long at an end.

  “Up to now his stories about me have been quite harmless, and indeed my practice and status have profited from them, but now I’ve grown worried. He’s claiming to hear voices from the great beyond, and to have dream conversations with an invisible friend named Artie. If we are not careful, everyone will know he’s gone around the bend, and my reputation will be ..

  “Back to my level,” I added snidely.

  “Or worse, if that’s possible. I’ve made arrangements with his wives to have him packed off to a very nice retirement home at Reichenbach Falls on the morrow, but unfortunately, tonight he is attending a séance with a group of spiritualists in hopes of making nonsomnolent contact with Artie. We are so close, yet the threat remains that he can still foul things up, so therefore I would like you to attend the séance to make sure nothing goes wrong.”

  “Why don’t you?” I questioned. “Aren’t you a master of disguise?”

  “I can’t take the risk. Watson might uncover my charade, and make a scene. No, I wish to hire you for the evening. Come, come, my good fellow, it’s not like the crowds are clamoring for your services, and if Pm not mistaken, there aren’t many cases for a PI to solve in Newgate prison.”

  He was right, and as much as I hated it, I had to take the case.

  “All right,” I answered, “but I’m going to charge your rates.”

  “Mr. Vermin Chandler, that’s out of the question. I know what your normal rates are. I’ve seen your ad in the back of True Consulting Detective Magazine and they will suit the occasion.”

  “What makes you think your services are worth more than mine?” I blustered.

  “I have a press agent,” he replied.

  He was right.

  I took the address of the séance and left.

  Watson was fairly easy to pick out in the crowd. He was the one with the earhorn.

  The séance was to take place in the basement of the Six Bells Tavern in the Whitechapel section of town, probably to keep things inconspicuous. Of course, no one would ever notice a party of eight swells dressed in evening finery entering a broken down gin mill through the delivery entrance. The swells were seated in a storeroom trying to not be noticed by each other.

  I took a seat on a cider crate next to Watson.

  After about twenty minutes, a dame appeared who resembled some lost Bronte sister who had spent the last twenty years locked in some attic somewhere. She was sheathed in black as if she were trying to host a joint wedding-funeral, and her voice reminded me of a nanny from Miss Haversham’s School for Young Ladies and Attack Dogs.

  “Will all the seekers of the other side please identify themselves and name the spirit they wish to contact,” she declared to the huddled crowd.

  A foreign nobleman stood up in protest.

  “But we were all assured of anonymity,” he argued. “I was told that this would all be kept secret, very secret.”

  “And it shall, Count Vlad,” she answered. “For only by revealing your identities to each other can you share in a mutual act of discretion. After all, he who talks will soon be talked about. What better assurance of anonymity can you ask for?”

  I had to admit it was a clever setup. She had put the crowd at ease in no time at all. None of them even seemed to notice that though their secrets might be safe with each other, they were far from safe from everyone. It had the makings of a perfect blackmail scam with Madame Morbid (or some associate, who was probably hidden somewhere in the cellar free from prying eyes and suspicious minds) paying a call at some later date.

  The count said his piece.

  “I am Count Vlad Dracula, recently arrived from Transylvania, and I wish to contact my contact on the other side who goes by the name of Abraham.”

  The count took his seat and the roll call continued in clockwise fashion.

  A gentleman doctor: “My name is Henry Jekyll and I wish to contact my other side friend Robert.”

  A blonde-haired maiden: “My name is Alice Liddell and I want to contact two friends from the other side, one named Lewis and one named Charles.”

  A blond-haired Adonis: “My name is Dorian Gray, and I have come to contact Melmoth.”

  A Charing Cross dandy who kept looking at his watch: “Phileas Fogg, looking for Jules.”

  Just then Watson interrupted.

  “Sir, I’m afraid you must have made a mistake. You must be looking for the treasure hunting séance if you are looking for jewels,” the half
-deaf old codger interrupted.

  Fogg replied in a huff. “His name is Jules. He speaks to me with a French accent.”

  “An ax sent?” Watson questioned.

  “Please go on,” Madame Morbid said. “Whom do you wish to contact, Doctor Watson?”

  As I suspected, she did indeed already know what faces went with what names on the invitations.

  Watson replied, “Oh, yes,” with a stammer. “John Watson, and I wish to contact Arthur.”

  My turn had arrived, and I had to do some fast talking since obviously my name was not on the list.

  “My name is Malcolm Chandler. Ebenezer Scrooge referred you to me, and I really want to contact”—I paused, and then blurted out the first name to come to my mind— “Brian.”

  Our hostess relaxed.

  “Ah, yes,” she replied. “Mr. Scrooge is one of our most satisfied customers.” Well, so much for keeping previous clients’ identities secret.

  Scrooge was the subject of one of my previous cases, and the grapevine had it that he had recently turned to spiritualism for some answers to some rather bizarre questions. I had taken a gamble that he had been a previous client/dupe, and it would appear that the gamble had paid off.

  She had accepted me as just another mark, and would probably make some excuse later in the evening that contact would not be possible for me this evening and that, perhaps, I would be willing to reschedule at a later date when she would have the necessary time to do her homework.

  A back-alley brute of a fellow who I recognized as an occasional bartender at the upstairs pub joined our group from some shadowy comer and set a table top on a base of crates roughly in the center of the room. Madame Morbid then spread a tablecloth over it (black of course) and set a lit candelabra in its center. The brute then faded back into the shadows, well out of sight.

  “Please take your places around the table,” she said firmly. “I am afraid that you will have to use these crates as seats. I apologize for these rather primitive accommodations, but discretion demands that everything be portable and inconspicuous.”