by Bill Peschel
Within a few minutes he called a halt, and we found ourselves on the edge of a crowd, with open umbrellas, listening to a spellbinder, who was shouting something about beet sugar and reciprocity. It was raining freely, and the cold blasts of wind made me shiver from head to foot as we stepped from the automobile.
“I didn’t know that we had come out to attend a political meeting,” said I, huffily, my teeth chattering.
“Didn’t you?” laughed Padlock Jones. “I’m afraid you’re not a good party man, Jotson. But now to business. Mr. Hawkins, go up on that stand where the fellow is yelling and take a careful look over the crowd. We will wait here.”
Mr. Hawkins made his way to the stand with difficulty and peered about anxiously. Suddenly, his face lighted up, and he sprang from the stand into the crowd. A minute later, he emerged, leading a young man whose clothes were soaked and whose lips were blue with cold. “It is my boy!” he exclaimed.
“Get in the automobile and take him home right away,” said Padlock Jones, stopping a flow of thanks. “You may drop in to-morrow morning if you wish.”
“But how could you know that—”
“It is no time for questions now,” said Padlock Jones sternly. “If you are curious about a very simple matter come to me in the morning, and I will try to satisfy your curiosity.”
Early in the morning Mr. Hawkins was in our rooms.
“How could you guess—” he began.
“Guess! Guess! Why will everybody, even you, Jotson, talk about my making guesses?” Padlock Jones interrupted impatiently. “I never guess; I deduce. There is no guessing in mathematics, is there? Well, deduction is just as exact a science. When I heard that this feeble-minded young man had escaped from a sanitarium, I considered where he was most likely to go. It was reasonable to assume that after having been cooped up for two months, he would seek some entertainment adapted to his intellect.
“At first, it occurred to me that he would steer straight for one of the new plays at certain Broadway theatres. In fact, I was about to make a round of those theatres, but, knowing by experience that hasty action is not wise action, I went over the field again and asked myself: ‘Is there any other place to which a feeble-minded man would be more likely to go to under the circumstances?’
“While I was thinking, my glance fell on a newspaper on the table, and I saw an advertisement of this open-air meeting. All at once, it occurred to me that if there was one place in New York to which a feeble-minded person would go on a blood-chilling night like this, it was to an open-air meeting, and as this one was to be held not far from the sanitarium, I decided to try it first. When I heard the speaker talking beet sugar and reciprocity in a municipal campaign I was sure I had struck the right place.
“No particular mystery about all this, is there? It is simplicity itself. Just one more jab of the needle, Jotson. Won’t you have one, Mr. Hawkins? It’s great. No? Well, good night.”
The Resources of Mycroft Holmes
Charlton Andrews
This is the second story by Andrews after “The Bound of the Asterbilts” in 1902. It appeared in the December issue of The Bookman.
I.—He Repudiates Sherlock.
Rushem, the editor of The Daily Saffron, had sent for and employed me within twenty minutes after he received the following message, wireless, from his London correspondent:
“Reason to believe interview could be had with Mycroft Holmes.”
When I had been shown the Marconigram, Rushem asked, “You are still disposed to desert the chair of history in your university to become a journalist, Professor Mustie?”
I answered tersely in the affirmative.
“You know who Mycroft Holmes is?”
I replied that he was the tall, corpulent seven-year-older, and more nicely observing brother of Sherlock Holmes, who had first attained worldwide fame through Dr. Watson’s account of his (Mycroft’s) connection with “The Affair of the Greek Interpreter,” who was a member of the singularly unsociable Diogenes Club, London, and who applied his extraordinary faculty for figures in auditing books in certain government departments, Whitehall.
Rushem was pleased, as I had fully intended he should be, by my multum in parvo mode of expression. I think he impulsively added a ten to the salary he was about to propose, and I was employed on the spot.
Behold me, therefore, seven days later, in the Strangers’ Room of the Diogenes Club, Pall Mall, seated opposite Mycroft Holmes, in the gentle act of interviewing him.
“Briefly, Mr. Holmes,” said I, for the twentieth time mentally sizing him up to my combined satisfaction and mystification, “what my paper’s readers want is to know whether there is any truth in the widespread rumours that you are setting up in competition with your brother, lately reappeared?”
Mycroft Holmes looked up sharply from his cigar-ash in evident surprise and disappointment. “Softly, softly, my dear fellow,” he expostulated at once; “this is scarcely the proper beginning if I remember—if I know myself. It is for me to speak first, I believe, and so we shall commence over.” He drew his ponderous weight higher up in his arm-chair and fixed his narrow eyes on mine in a manner well calculated to be impressive.
“In the first place,” he continued at once, “it must be a source of some satisfaction to you, even though a citizen of a republic, to be aware that you are descended in an almost direct line from a king of France, that another of your forbears was for months the companion of a monarch of England, and that two other progenitors of yours fell at Waterloo, fighting on opposite sides.”
“Indeed, it is!” I acknowledged before I thought; and then, I frankly confess, I sprang up in the most intense amazement: I had come fully prepared for the usual demonstration of keen powers of observation and deduction, but I had certainly expected them to be applied to matters of the present or, at least, recent. So I did exactly what I had previously resolved not to do: I exclaimed in accents of extreme astonishment, “Mr. Holmes, this is marvellous! How on earth do you do it?”
Mycroft Holmes smiled contentedly. “I shall tell you,” he said, “presently. Now, we shall return to the interview. It is desired to know whether I shall set up in competition with my brother, Sherlock: briefly, I shall not.”
He paused, evidently to gather his forces, a frown coming over his low forehead, and continued, “Sherlock Holmes is—” in such a tone that I could not repress an involuntary, “Yes?” of expectancy and suspense.
“Sherlock Holmes is a vain coxcomb and an arrant charlatan,” went on Mycroft explosively. “The strain he exhibits comes into our line in the middle of the eighteenth century: there was a fellow married a Holmes, a certain would-be detective named Quiller, who rejoiced in the sobriquet of—”
“Foxy!” I cried, exultation mingling with my surprise.
“Foxy,” repeated Mycroft, nodding and pausing to interject, “Very clever in you, my dear Mustie!” Then, “Look at my brother’s career,” he cried sharply, “full of egregious conceit and inordinate self-advertisement, as it is! Why, it has been an eyesore and a nuisance to me for years, and, now that he has accomplished this supreme spectacularity of coming back from the dead, I can no longer endure the thoughts of it! Learn, then, young man, and report my words accurately,—that I am not to be in competition with my brother and that, ever since that morning when I drove his absurd Boswell to Victoria Station—the morning Sherlock left for his notorious interview with Moriarty in Switzerland—in utter disgust I have completely abandoned all effort and interest in the modern business of detection. No, I am no longer auditing for the government. Yes, I am devoting myself, body and soul, to a new pursuit. (You see, I anticipate your questions.) What is my business? I am, for the remainder of my natural life, Mycroft Holmes, Esquire, Solver of Historical Mysteries.”
It was very natural that I should bow profoundly here, as he slightly nodded his head. “But, if you please,” I said, “condescend to solve for me the present mystery of the words you have just uttered.”
“Readily! My income is sufficient for my needs. My sole object in life is to redeem the name—my name—my brother has succeeded in bringing so low. It is a difficult task to restore lost dignity: but I shall do it. Briefly, my business is not to waste my moments in the trite processes of unravelling tangles of to-day, tangles whereof the beginnings, ends, and entire lengths of every thread are capable of being rendered visible: my business lies with the solution of those Gordian knots of long ago, nine-tenths of whose component skeins are forever hid in the black fastnesses of the past.”
I was enraptured, and I let him see it. He was by no means chagrined. After a time I exclaimed, “And so you can finally answer all those perplexing old questions, like Who wrote Shakespere? and The Letters of Junius? and Who was the Man in the Iron Mask?”
Mycroft Holmes shrugged his massive shoulders. “My dear Mustie,” he said, with a smile, “you underestimate me. I assure you I have done nothing with these matters which are the common property of every amateur investigator. What I have done is to ascertain whose step-aunt married the seventh Earl of Willingham, how Giles Harcourt bought the broken corkscrew from the blind Crusader, how the centurion Alertius overcame the Pompeiian lictor—”
“But, my dear Mycroft” I interrupted (I might as well be familiar, too), “these are matters of the slightest interest to the public, compared with the mysteries I have mentioned. Come! Get to work on something everybody knows about, and I will be your Boswell, your Watson!”
I saw that the suggestion pleased him immensely though he tried hard not to show it. “Very well,” he said after a moment; “be it as you say. Come here tomorrow at two, and I will solve any historical mystery you mention, no matter how easy.”
Overjoyed with the prospect, I rose to go. “And now,” said I, “surely you will no longer withhold an explanation of how you ascertained my ancestry and my most cherished secret at first glance? How did you know me to be the descendant of a king and of a king’s companion, as well as of the two soldiers that fell at Waterloo?”
Mycroft answered nonchalantly, “You are a student of history as a hobby, for you are wealthy; you are a descendant of Israel Mustie, since you resemble him so strikingly; I knew Israel Mustie, here in London, when I was a boy; he was my father’s nearest neighbour; he had a birthmark on his forehead resembling two crossed sabres; this birthmark was the result of his mother’s having learned that her father and his brother had died at Waterloo, the one under Bonaparte, the other under Wellington—”
“But,” I cried excitedly, “my father, Israel Mustie, did not know the family history farther back than these unfortunate brothers!”
“Ah, yes,” replied Mycroft coolly, “but I did. When Israel emigrated to the States, I found among some papers he had thrown out, unexamined, as worthless, a complete family record extending back more than two hundred years. From this record, I learned in ten minutes what has taken you a decade to ascertain from libraries and museums—not only that you are descended from one Gaston de Vrayeulx, who was a leading member of the gay little court of the exiled Charles II, of England, at Bruges, but that the said Gaston’s parentage goes back to the left-handed union of Charles IX of France with Marie Touchet. Now is the proper moment for the expression of your surprise and admiration, I believe,” concluded Mycroft.
“But, my dear Holmes,” I protested, “your knowing these things is sheer luck after all!”
“So it is,” said Mycroft; “but sheer luck counts.”
I was at the door when he called me back to answer a conundrum, which, of course, I could not do.
“What,” Mycroft asked quizzically, “what is the difference between Dr. Watson and myself?”
I gave up, and properly repeated the conundrum to him.
“Because,” he replied, with a chuckle, “Watson deals with the history of mysteries, whereas I deal with the mysteries of history.”
Then I left him chuckling mightily: one can imagine my elation, convinced as I was that on the morrow I should at least see solved The Mystery of the Shakesperian Authorship.
II.—He Solves the Mystery of the Shakesperian Authorship.
One of my first discoveries of the next day, when I went to fulfill my appointment with Mr. Mycroft Holmes, at the Diogenes Club, Pall Mall, was that the great historical detective, as I may safely dub him, is as wholly devoid of any decent knowledge of literature as, notoriously, his brother Sherlock. Mycroft handled the superb and priceless first folio of Shakespere, the property of the most enviable Diogenes Club, as one would handle a ten-cent paper-back by, say, L.J. Libbey—that is, with the slightest care—much to my own anxiety. This latter I probably failed to conceal, for, with a sympathetic glance my way, Mycroft observed naively, “It is a wretched old copy: one would think so prosperous a club might afford something a trifle more modern!” Whereat I submerged the outraged feelings of an amateur bibliophile in the highly-keyed expectations of a newspaper reporter on the scent of an amazing scoop.
However, I had myself so well in hand that when, after a long silence, Holmes remarked sharply, “You are quite right; it is too bad a man of my attainments is no better informed on bookish subjects.” Of course, he had read my thoughts to the letter, but I was resolved not to show any emotion over so old a trick. I think my manner pleased him; at all events, he continued at once, “I am ignorant of books, past and present, their authors and their critics, except insofar as I must deal with them in my historical efforts. Now, I believe we are to ascertain this morning the true authorship of The Works of William Shakespere?”
I also believed that and admitted it half tremulously.
“It appears,” Mycroft went on quickly, “that the existence of a cypher, meant to establish the rightful authorship, is suspected. It is dry work, dealing with cyphers, but you have chosen to-day’s mystery, and we must abide by its terms. If there is a cypher, rest assured I shall soon discover it.”
All the time he was speaking he was turning over the leaves of the folio, now rapidly, now slowly, now with evident assurance, now hesitatingly, his chubby finger meanwhile tracing its way down columns, across paragraphs, over pages, sometimes at a gallop and oftener at a crawl, for all the world like a faithful hound hot on the scent of a half-found quarry. Suddenly, as I watched him in fascination, he closed the book with a bang, and, leaning back in his chair, examined his watch interestedly.
“Eight minutes and three-quarters,” he said, with a smile. “Not half-bad, that, eh, Mustie? To settle in eight and three-quarters minutes what dozens of erudite writers have been squabbling over for—I suppose—a century?”
I threw up my hands in unbounded amazement. “Mycroft,” I cried, “do you mean to say you have discovered the author’s name?”
Holmes nodded. “Exactly,” said he.
“And it is?” I demanded, leaning forward in the utmost eagerness lest my ears should miss a syllable of what he was about to say.
“The name of the author, with which I am unfamiliar,” he replied, “is—but, there! I shan’t be so unjust as to tell you immediately before you know something of the manner in which it has been ascertained.”
“Then I am all attention and suspense!” I cried quickly, exasperated with the calmness that possessed his voice and manner.
Mycroft proceeded more briskly. “How many plays did this Shakespere write?” he asked.
“Thirty-seven,” I responded promptly.
“So I believe; and how old was he when he died?”
“Fifty-two.” Such information is always at my tongue’s end.
“Fifty-two years exactly,” said Mycroft Holmes. “Fifty-two and thirty-seven, then, are our prime numbers in this investigation, our starting posts. Take the latter from the former, and we have fifteen. Turn to our friend Shakespere’s fifteenth play, and we find that it is Macbeth, in the usual order. And, now, we observe that there is a cypher, and that this cypher, far from being intricate and difficult, is of a most ordinary and uninteresting natu
re. Observe the first line of the play:
“‘First Witch. When shall we three meet again?’”
He turned the volume so I could look on with him, at the same time handing me a writing-tablet and a pencil.
“This,” he continued paedagogically, “is the keyline of our cypher, complete in itself. What are the three objects concerning which the question is asked? Evidently, they are the witches, represented by the letter W, which occurs three times in the line. Oblige me by jotting down the alphabet and placing below W the figure 3.”
This I did in almost feverish haste.
“Now credit each other letter of the alphabet, that appears in this line, with the number of times it appears in the line.”
I obeyed and set before him these rows:
“So,” said Mycroft; “we have enough of our alphabet to proceed, found by the method usual in the commonest, old-fashioned cryptogram of the past. Add the numerals, and we have twenty-nine. Turn to the twenty-ninth line of the play, and we find:
“‘Which smok’d with bloody execution.’
“And now mark a curious feature of our cypher: How many letters are there in this line?”
I counted them, and there were twenty-nine!
“Twenty-nine, then,” continued the detective, “is our third prime number, sending us, of course, without hesitation, to the twenty-ninth play, which proves to be Julius Caesar. Now, permit me to refer you back to our alphabet: you observe that there are thirteen unnumbered letters of the twenty-six, another very significant feature—thirteen from twenty-six leaves thirteen. I see instantly that our attention is directed to the thirteenth scene of the play in hand, and I am made supercertain of this fact when I observe that the thirteenth scene is the famous
