Jerry eBooks
No copyright 2013 by Jerry eBooks
No rights reserved. All parts of this book may be reproduced in any form and by any means for any purpose without any prior written consent of anyone.
First Carol Publishing Group Edition 1991
Copyright © 1989 by Sebastian Wolfe and Xanadu Publications Ltd Introduction copyright © 1987 by Sebastian Wolfe
A Citadel Press Book
Published by Carol Publishing Group
Citadel Press is a registered trademark of Carol Communications, Inc.
Editorial Offices
600 Madison Avenue
New York, NY 10022
Sales & Distribution Offices
120 Enterprise Avenue
Secaucus, NJ 07094
In Canada: Musson Book Company
A division of General Publishing Co. Limited
Don Mills, Ontario
All rights reserved. No part of this book
may be reproduced in any form, except by
a newspaper or magazine reviewer who
wishes to quote brief passages in
connection with a review.
Queries regarding rights and permissions
should be addressed to: Carol Publishing Group,
600 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10022
Published by arrangement with Xanadu Publications Ltd
Manufactured in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Carol Publishing Group books are available at special discounts
for bulk purchases, for sales promotions, fund raising, or
educational purposes. Special editions can also be created to
specifications. For details contact: Special Sales Department,
Carol Publishing Group, 120 Enterprise Ave., Secaucus, NJ 07094
ISBN 0-8065-1245-8 (cloth)
ISBN 0-8065-1235-0 (paper)
The Misadventures of
Sherlock Holmes II
Introduction
Sebastian Wolfe
The Martian Crown Jewels
Poul Anderson
From the Diary of Sherlock Holmes
Maurice Baring
The Anomaly of the Empty Man
Anthony Boucher
The Adventure of the Paradol Chamber
John Dickson Carr
The Adventure of the Conk-Singleton Papers
John Dickson Carr
The Adventures of the Snitch in Time
August Derleth and Mack Reynolds
The Adventure of the Dog in the Knight
Robert L. Fish
The Adventure of the Three Madmen
Philip José Farmer
Mr Montalba, Obsequist
H.F. Heard
A Trifling Affair
H.R.F. Keating
The Great Detective
Stephen Leacock
The Singularge Experiece of Miss Anne Duffield
John Lennon
The Affair of the Midnight Midget
Ardath Mayhar
From a Detective’s Notebook
P.G. Wodehouse
Sources and Acknowledgements
INTRODUCTION
Ever since Sherlock Holmes attained his first great popularity in the 1890s he has been imitated, parodied and burlesqued by admiring or envious writers, and in the century or so that has passed since then there have been literally thousands of non-canonical stories, not to mention a huge body of scholarly work on Holme’s origins, tastes, habits, dwellings, dressing-gowns and so forth, that in sheer mass is rivalled only by research on Shakespeare and his writings. As H.R.F. Keating has observed, Holmes is a true myth, whose image is familiar to virtually every inhabitant of English-speaking countries throughout the world. And still those letters go to 221B Baker Street, where the Abbey National Building Society employs a secretary full-time to deal with them.
Holmes was not the first Great Detective and, as a host of friendly critics have pointed out, his detecting does not always stand up to the closest scrutiny, but he is assuredly the Greatest of all the Great Detectives, without whom no series calling itself The Great Detectives could possibly be worthy of the name—hence this specially-commissioned collection of Sherlockian stories (there being little point in reprinting the original adventures, which are readily available elsewhere and surely known by heart by all but the most recent devotee of the mystery story).
The distinctions between parodies, pastiches and burlesques are not very clear, so suffice to say that I have included plenty of all three: burlesques such as the ones by Robert L. Fish and the late John Lennon go straight for the belly-laugh, but to read a whole book of them would be like dining exclusively on cranberry sauce, so I have balanced the menu with parodies—gentler satires such as the ones by Ardath Mayhar and Maurice Baring—and pastiches, by which I mean fully-fledged stories inspired directly (H.R.F. Keating) or indirectly (Anthony Boucher, H.F. Heard) by the great original. These are, I think, excellent tales in their own right, which can be enjoyed entirely on their own terms.
In the pages that follow we’ll meet Sherlock Holmes in a truly staggering variety of disguises. Ellery Queen listed as long ago as 1951 some of the parody names—Thinlock Bones, Picklock Holes, Shamrock Jolnes, Sherlaw Kombs, Solar Pons and Holmlock Shears are just a few—and now we find Holmes appearing as a Martian bird, as a dog, as a time-traveller, as a fraud and as an abject failure . . . there are seemingly no limits to the inventiveness of Holmes parodists, and I for one have no complaints about that.
The only real problem has been choosing from this embarassment of riches, and in making this selection I have tried to go for less familiar stories (several are published here for the first time in this country, and one for the first time anywhere) in what I hope is a balanced and enjoyable bill of fare. In doing this I was greatly helped by Ronald Burt de Waal’s The World Bibliography of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson and by Ellery Queen’s The Detective Short Story.
Finally I should perhaps explain that only as the contents of this book were being finalized, when it was too late to make changes, did I learn of the existences of an earlier volume with the same title, edited by Ellery Queen in 1944.1 have not been able to locate a copy of this book—it was suppressed, I gather, by the Conan Doyle Estate—so any resemblances between that Misadventures and this one are necessarily coincidental.
SEBASTIAN WOLFE
London, 1989
The Martian Crown Jewels
Poul Anderson
The signal was picked up when the ship was still a quarter million miles away, and recorded voices summoned the technicians. There was no haste, for the ZX28749, otherwise called the Jane Brackney, was right on schedule; but landing an unmanned spaceship is always a delicate operation. Men and machines prepared to receive her as she came down, but the control crew had the first order of business.
Yamagata, Steinmann, and Ramanowitz were in the GCA tower, with Hollyday standing by for an emergency. If the circuits should fail—they never had, but a thousand tons of cargo and nuclear-powered vessel, crashing into the port, could empty Phobos of human life. So Hollyday watched over a set of spare assemblies, ready to plug in whatever might be required.
Yamagata’s thin fingers danced over the radar dials. His eyes were intent on the screen. ‘Got her,’ he said. Steinmann made a distance reading and Ramanowitz took the velocity off the Dopplerscope. A brief session with a computer showed the figures to be almost as predicted.
‘Might as well relax,’ said Yamagata, taking out a cigarette. ‘She won’t be in control range for a while yet.’
His eyes roved over the crowd
ed room and out its window. From the tower he had a view of the spaceport: unimpressive, most of its shops and sheds and living quarters being underground. The smooth concrete field was chopped off by the curvature of the tiny satellite. It always faced Mars, and the station was on the far side, but he could remember how the planet hung enormous over the opposite hemisphere, soft ruddy disc blurred with thin air, hazy greenish-brown mottlings of heath and farmland. Though Phobos was clothed in vacuum, you couldn’t see the hard stars of space: the sun and the floodlamps were too bright.
There was a knock on the door. Hollyday went over, almost drifting in the ghostly gravity, and opened it. ‘Nobody allowed in here during a landing,’ he said. Hollyday was a stocky blond man with a pleasant, open countenance, and his tone was less peremptory than his words.
‘Police.’ The newcomer, muscular, round-faced, and earnest, was in plain clothes, tunic and pajama pants, which was expected; everyone in the tiny settlement knew Inspector Gregg. But he was packing a gun, which was not usual.
Yamagata peered out again and saw the port’s four constables down on the field in official space-suits, watching the ground crew. They carried weapons. ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked.
‘Nothing . . . I hope.’ Gregg came in and tried to smile. ‘But the Jane had a very unusual cargo.’
‘Hm?’ Ramanowitz’s eyes lit up in his broad plump visage. ‘Why weren’t we told?’
‘That was deliberate. Secrecy. The Martian crown jewels are aboard.’ Gregg fumbled a cigarette from his tunic.
Hollyday and Steinmann nodded at each other. Yamagata whistled. ‘On a robot ship?’ he asked.
‘Uh-huh. A robot ship is the one form of transportation from which they could not be stolen. There were three attempts made when they went to Earth on a regular liner, and I hate to think how many while they were at the British Museum. One guard lost his life. Now my boys are going to remove them before anyone else touches that ship and scoot ’em right down to Sabaeus.’
‘How much are they worth?’ wondered Ramanowitz.
‘Oh . . . they could be fenced on Earth for maybe half a billion UN dollars,’ said Gregg. ‘But the thief would do better to make the Martians pay to get them back . . . no, Earth would have to, I suppose, since it’s our responsibility.’ He blew nervous clouds. ‘The jewels were secretly put on the Jane, last thing before she left on her regular run. I wasn’t even told till a special messenger on this week’s liner gave me the word. Not a chance for any thief to know they’re here, till they’re safely back on Mars. And that’ll be safe!’
‘Some people did know, all along,’ said Yamagata thoughtfully. ‘I mean the loading crew back at Earth.’
‘Uh-huh, there is that.’ Gregg smiled. ‘Several of them have quit since then, the messenger said, but of course, there’s always a big turnover among spacejacks—they’re a restless bunch.’ His gaze drifted across Steinmann and Hollyday, both of whom had last worked at Earth Station and come to Mars a few ships back. The liners went on a hyperbolic path and arrived in a couple of weeks; the robot ships followed the more leisurely and economical Hohmann A orbit and needed 258 days. A man who knew what ship was carrying the jewels could leave Earth, get to Mars well ahead of the cargo, and snap up a job here—Phobos was always shorthanded.
‘Don’t look at me!’ said Steinmann, laughing. ‘Chuck and I knew about this—of course—but we were under security restrictions. Haven’t told a soul.’
‘Yeah. I’d have known it if you had,’ nodded Gregg. ‘Gossip travels fast here. Don’t resent this, please, but I’m here to see that none of you boys leaves this tower till the jewels are aboard our own boat.’
‘Oh, well. It’ll mean overtime.’
‘If I want to get rich fast, I’ll stick to prospecting,’ added Hollyday.
‘When are you going to quit running around with that Geiger in your free time?’ asked Yamagata. ‘Phobos is nothing but iron and granite.’
‘I have my own ideas about that,’ said Hollyday stoutly. ‘Hell, everybody needs a hobby on this Godforsaken clod,’ declared Ramanowitz. ‘I might try for those sparklers myself, just for the excitement—’ He stopped abruptly, aware of Gregg’s eyes.
‘All right,’ snapped Yamagata. ‘Here we go. Inspector, please stand back out of the way, and for your life’s sake don’t interrupt.’
The Jane was drifting in, her velocity of the carefully precalculated orbit almost identical with that of Phobos. Almost, but not quite—there had been the inevitable small disturbing factors, which the remote-controlled jets had to compensate, and then there was the business of landing her. The team got a fix and were frantically busy.
In free fall, the Jane approached within a thousand miles of Phobos—a spheroid 500 feet in radius, big and massive, but lost against the incredible bulk of the satellite. And yet Phobos is an insignificant airless pill, negligible even beside its seventh-rate planet. Astronomical magnitudes are simply and literally incomprehensible.
When the ship was close enough, the radio directed her gyros to rotate her, very, very gently, until her pickup antenna was pointing directly at the field. Then her jets were cut in, a mere whisper of thrust. She was nearly above the spaceport, her path tangential to the moon’s curvature. After a moment Yamagata slapped the keys hard, and the rockets blasted furiously, a visible red streak up in the sky. He cut them again, checked his data, and gave a milder blast.
‘Okay,’ he grunted. ‘Let’s bring her in.’
Her velocity relative to Phobos’s orbit and rotation was now zero, and she was falling. Yamagata slewed her around till the jets were pointing vertically down. Then he sat back and mopped his face while Ramanowitz took over; the job was too nerve-stretching for one man to perform in its entirety. Ramanowitz sweated the awkward mass to within a few yards of the cradle. Steinmann finished the task, casing her into the berth like an egg into a cup. He cut the jets and there was silence.
‘Whew! Chuck, how about a drink?’ Yamagata held out unsteady fingers.
Hollyday smiled and fetched a bottle. It went happily around. Gregg declined. His eyes were locked to the field, where a technician was checking for radioactivity. The verdict was clean, and he saw his constables come soaring over the concrete, to surround the great ship with guns. One of them went up, opened the manhatch, and slipped inside.
It seemed a very long while before he emerged. Then he came running. Gregg cursed and thumbed the tower’s radio board. ‘Hey, there! Ybarra! What’s the matter?’
The helmet set shuddered a reply; ‘Senor . . . Senor Inspector . . . the crown jewels are gone.’
Sabaeus is, of course, a purely human name for the old city nestled in the Martian tropics, at the juncture of the ‘canals’ Phison and Euphrates, Terrestrial mouths simply cannot form the syllables of High Chlannach, though rough approximations are possible. Nor did humans ever build a town exclusively of towers broader at the top than the base, or inhabit one for twenty thousand years. If they had, though, they would have encouraged an eager tourist influx; but Martians prefer more dignified ways of making a dollar, even if their parsimonious fame has long replaced that of Scotchmen. The result is that though interplanetary trade is brisk and Phobos a treaty port, a human is still a rare sight in Sabaeus.
Hurrying down the avenues between the stone mushrooms, Gregg felt conspicuous. He was glad the airsuit muffled him. Not that the grave Martians stared; they varkled, which is worse.
The Street of Those Who Prepare Nourishment in Ovens is a quiet one, given over to handicrafters, philosophers, and residential apartments. You won’t see a courtship dance or a parade of the Lesser Halberdiers on it: nothing more exciting than a continuous four-day argument on the relativistic nature of the null class or an occasional gunfight. The latter are due to the planet’s most renowned private detective, who nests there.
Gregg always found it eerie to be on Mars, under the cold deep blue sky and the shunken sun, among noises muffled by the thin oxygen-deficient air
. But for Syaloch he had a good deal of affection, and when he had gone up the ladder and shaken the rattle outside the second-floor apartment and had been admitted, it was like escaping from nightmare.
‘Ah, Krech!’ The investigator laid down the stringed instrument on which he had been playing and towered gauntly over his visitor. ‘An unexbected bleasure to see hyou. Come in, my tear chab, to come in.’ He was proud of his English—but simple misspellings will not convey the whistling, clicking Martian accent.
The Inspector felt a cautious way into the high, narrow room. The glowsnakes which illuminated it after dark were coiled asleep on the stone floor, in a litter of papers, specimens, and weapons; rusty sand covered the sills of the Gothic windows. Syaloch was not neat except in his own person. In one corner was a small chemical laboratory. The rest of the walls were taken up with shelves, the criminological literature of three planets—Martian books, Terrestrial micros, Venusian talking stones. At one place, patriotically, the glyphs representing the reigning Nest-mother had been punched out with bullets. An Earthling could not sit on the trapeze-like native furniture, but Syaloch had courteously provided chairs and tubs as well; his clientele was also triplanetary.
‘I take it you are here on official but confidential business.’ Syaloch got out a big-bowled pipe. Martians have happily adopted tobacco, though in their atmosphere it must include potassium permanganate.
Gregg started. ‘How the hell do you know that?’
‘Elementary, my dear fellow. Your manner is most agitated, and I know nothing but a crisis in your profession would cause that.’
Gregg laughed wryly.
Syaloch was a seven-foot biped of vaguely storklike appearance. But the lean, crested, red-beaked head at the end of the sinuous neck was too large, the yellow eyes too deep; the white feathers were more like a penguin’s than a flying bird’s, save at the blue-plumed tail; instead of wings there were skinny red arms ending in four-fingered hands. And the overall posture was too erect for a bird.
The Misadventures of Sherlock Holmes II Page 1
