Sherlock Holmes Great War Parodies and Pastiches II

by Bill Peschel

  “Well, there’s nothing to do now but kill time until to-morrow when that scoundrel shows up in a spurious disguise,” said Holmes, as he moved toward the door. “I move that we shoot several games of pool upstairs for the rest of this eventful afternoon.

  “It ought to be about time now for old Chief Sleepy-eye to waddle in and ask about the stolen gems, after I’ve dug them all up, I guess.”

  “Old who, did you say?” inquired Thorneycroft with a smile.

  “Why, old Chief Sleepy-eye—that lethargic and comatose old piece of cheese that you call Letstrayed, of course. I suppose his ancestor must have got the name Letstrayed because he was let stray away from some asylum for the feeble-minded. Look, here he is now! Speak of the devil and he appears, darned if he don’t!”

  It was indeed the slow-moving and ponderous Inspector Barnabas Letstrayed that loomed up in the doorway and inquired about the cuff-buttons, while Holmes answered him very sharply:

  “Wake up and come to life, old General Incompetence! All the eleven shiners have now been run down and captured before they could bite anybody, by me, you understand, me—your ancient rival!”

  “Well, er—ah, I suppose I shall have to send in a formal report to Scotland Yard about it, then, so the authorities will have official cognizance of the matter,” said Letstrayed, as he scratched his somewhat thick head.

  At this moment, the bell rang, and Egbert the first footman, answering it, brought in a telegram from Scotland Yard, which Letstrayed had just mentioned, and handed it to him. Holmes snatched it out of his hand, tore it open, and hastily read it to the crowd:

  Inspector Barnabas Letstrayed,

  Normanstow Towers, Surrey,

  Have you found Puddingham’s cuff-buttons yet? Answer.

  O. U. Doolittle,

  Chief of Scotland Yard.

  “Wouldn’t that knock the specs off your grandmother’s nose?” sneered Holmes.

  He hurriedly scrawled a reply, which he gave to the waiting messenger outside the front door, while Letstrayed fumed and stammered in protest.

  This was the sarcastic message my partner sent back to London:

  O. U. Doolittle (well-named),

  Chief of Scotland Yard, London,

  No, of course not. How could he, when I grabbed them all? Now roll over and go to sleep again.

  Hemlock Holmes.

  We all gave it up, and willingly joined the masterful dictator of the castle in the billiard-room on the fourth floor, where we played pool and billiards until the evening shadows fell and Donald the second footman came in and announced dinner.

  The dinner passed off without excitement, except for the Earl’s rising and proposing the health of Hemlock Holmes, which was responded to enthusiastically by all present except Letstrayed, who insisted on saying “we” instead of “you” when speaking to Holmes about the credit for the recovery of the gems. After dinner we adjourned to the music room, where the Countess Annabelle entertained us as on the evening before, playing a number of selections on the piano, including one little song entitled, “Once I Loved A Spanish Maid,” which she repeated a couple of times with the evident purpose of kidding her uncle about his forthcoming marriage with her maid Teresa.

  The next morning dawned bright and clear, with the sun shining warmly, and after breakfast we took a walk around the lawn in the rear of the castle, where Holmes claimed that intuition told him that Billie Budd would appear. It got around to a quarter after nine, and while we were chinning with Blumenroth the gardener and Yensen the coachman, I noticed a farmer dressed in a suit of blue overalls and a wide-brimmed straw hat come strolling along the graveled driveway that led back to the stables. He was a harmless-looking fellow, with bushy gray whiskers and old-fashioned spectacles, and he came up and addressed us in a somewhat squeaky voice, which aroused Holmes’s suspicions at once.

  “I say, gentlemen, could you tell me who has charge of His Lordship’s hay in the stables? My name is Samuel Simmons, a farmer down the road a piece, and I would like to buy a ton or two of his hay, if he doesn’t want too much for it.”

  And the alleged farmer took off his old straw hat and fanned himself with it after his long walk.

  “Well, Sam, the guy who has charge of it is the coachman over there, that fat little fellow with the red face standing under the peach tree,” replied Holmes in a well modulated tone, but with his eyes glittering with suppressed excitement. “And I suppose the Earl would sell you part of it, as I have good reason to know, to my cost, that he has more of it up there in the loft than he needs, and I think that you do, too. Weren’t you up in the hayloft last Tuesday afternoon, Sam? Sure you were, and what’s more, your name then was William X. Budd or I’m a Chinaman!”

  And Holmes yelled out as he lunged at the so-called Samuel Simmons and pulled away his false whiskers, thereby disclosing to my astounded eyes the well-remembered face of Budd the crook.

  Budd waited not a second, but put his speedy limbs into action down the driveway toward the open road a blamed sight faster than he came in, his spectacles and straw hat falling to the ground, while Holmes and I took after him as rapidly as we could.

  “Hey! head him off! head him off there, somebody, for the love of Heaven!” shouted Holmes.

  Our hopes were rewarded by Harrigan the butler, who came running out of a side entrance of the castle and made a flying leap at Budd from the side, just as the latter passed him.

  Harrigan seized the runner around the knees, and they both came with a crash to the ground (making as fine a football tackle as I ever saw), where they rolled and wrestled, the butler on top.

  Holmes and I ran up to them, and we soon got a pair of handcuffs—which Holmes always carried with him—around Budd’s wrists and jerked him to his feet, while Harrigan arose and brushed off his clothes, just in time to meet the Earl, who hastened out of the castle and came over and clapped the butler on the back, shaking hands with him effusively.

  “By Jove, Harrigan, you’re a prince! Accept my heartiest thanks for the good work you did in capturing that scoundrel. I saw the whole thing from one of the windows, and knew right away that it must be Budd, in spite of the farmer’s disguise,” chortled the Earl. “Go inside and pour yourself out a glass of the best wine in the place on me!”

  Harrigan left us with a grin, while Budd, handcuffed in Holmes’s grasp, stood and scowled at us and ground his teeth with rage as the great detective said:

  “We’ve got him at last, Your Lordship, and he’ll certainly get all that’s coming to him now. Just go inside and telephone down to the village to send up two of their constables, in order that he may be escorted into London in a manner befitting the enormity of the crime he has committed.”

  But as the Earl turned away to reenter the castle, the desperate Budd made another attempt to escape, and succeeded in breaking away from Holmes. Down the driveway he tore at a mile a minute or so, holding his manacled hands up before him, while Holmes for a moment seemed to be dying of heart failure, judging by the appearance of his face.

  “Great guns!” he yelled, and a couple of other expletives as well, as he ran after the fugitive again; “he mustn’t get away now, after all the trouble we’ve had to get him!”

  But Budd developed remarkable speed, and there was no one now to head him off by a flank movement. But suddenly Holmes spied a farmer driving a small wagon with a single horse along the road out in front.

  “Here! your horse and wagon are commandeered in the name of the law!” he shouted, jumping into the wagon and jerking the reins away from their astonished owner. Then he whipped up the horse after the fleeing Budd, who was making a large cloud of dust behind himself down the road toward the village. In a minute or two, the Earl and I, standing on the front lawn, saw Holmes and the farmer overtake Budd, with their horse galloping, and the wagon tearing along most of the time on three wheels. Leaping out of the wagon at just the right moment, my resourceful partner landed squarely on the back of Budd, and bore him to the g
round in a cloud of dust and execrations, while the farmer, stopping his panting horse, got out and assisted Holmes to tie up Budd’s ankles with a piece of rope that he fortunately had with him in the wagon. Then they lifted the now powerless crook into the wagon, and drove more slowly back to the castle, while Holmes explained the situation to the farmer.

  “Well, I guess we might as well use this conveyance to take Budd down to the railroad station ourselves,” said Holmes, as the wagon stopped in front of us, and he patted his coat-pocket where he had the dozen cuff-buttons. “Those constables would probably take a year getting out here anyhow, and I can also take your twelve cuff-buttons that caused all the trouble into London with me, instead of your waiting to send them by express. I’ll take ’em to the Bank of England all right, get a receipt from the safety deposit department there, and mail it to you; and you can mail me your check for the twenty thousand pounds reward. You know my address, 221-B Baker Street. I can’t stand on ceremony now, as I want to get this fellow Budd into the hands of the jailer P. D. Q., before he pulls off another attempted escape, so I’ll just ask you to say good-by to Her Ladyship the Countess for me, and give my regards to Joe Harrigan, Louis La Violette, and Heinie Blumenroth—the only three among the servants who showed any brains—and my prayers for brains for all the others. Ta, ta! George! You’re a pretty good fellow yourself!”

  “Good-by, Holmes, and my best congratulations for capturing that man Budd the second time. I’ll mail you the check right away, so you’ll get it this afternoon in town.”

  And the Earl waved his hand at us, as I climbed into the wagon and joined Holmes on our farewell trip. Halfway down to the village, I took my handkerchief, at Holmes’s command, and made a gag out of it to tie in Budd’s mouth, to prevent the flow of a very profane line of talk that he inflicted on the atmosphere.

  The farmer’s name was Henry Hankins, and Holmes gave him a ten-pound note for his trouble in helping to recapture Budd. At the village, the three of us lifted the bound, gagged and shackled Budd out of the wagon and into a passenger coach on the 9:50 train for London, where Holmes silenced all excited inquirers by calmly showing them his card, at which every one drew back abashed, some even taking off their hats at sight of the celebrated name.

  In a half-hour’s time we arrived at the station in London, and when Budd was lifted out onto the platform, he showed his still impenitent desperation by actually trying to escape a third time, handcuffed and with his ankles tied as he was, by hopping along, both feet together.

  We collared him soon, though, and bundled him into a cab for Scotland Yard, where, upon his arrival, the scoundrel again caused a rumpus by jumping and twisting around when they went to put him into a prison-cell, so that it required the combined efforts of four fat policemen to hold him down.

  “Gosh! I feel as if I could sleep for a year, after all that excitement out at Normanstow Towers!” sighed Holmes, as he mopped his forehead on arriving finally at our old rooms on Baker Street, about a quarter after eleven that Friday morning.

  “Same here, Holmes. You have nothing on me in that respect,” I said, as I threw off my coat and put on my well-worn lavender smoking jacket, preparatory to sitting down in my old chair and enjoying a good, quiet, peaceful smoke before luncheon, far from the madding diamond-thieves’ ignoble strife.

  After luncheon, served by our old reliable landlady, Mrs. Hudson, who still did business at the old stand unmoved by the shame that had recently come to the noble House of Puddingham, we played chess until two o’clock, when the mail-carrier brought us an envelope addressed to Holmes, with an earl’s coronet engraved on it. Tearing it open, Holmes found it to be a short note from our late host and friend the Earl, with a thin, pale blue check for twenty thousand perfectly good pounds sterling enclosed with it, drawn on the Bank of England, filled out in Thorneycroft’s handwriting, and signed, as per the nobiliary custom, with simply the one word: “Puddingham.”

  “And the date of the check is April 12, 1912, Watson. And now I’m going to keep my promise I made to you out in the woods yesterday morning back of the castle,” smiled Holmes, “I split with you fifty-fifty. When I go down to the bank now to deposit this check, I’ll write you one of mine for ten thousand pounds, and you can come along to endorse it, deposit it to your credit, and we’ll leave the Earl’s diamond cuff-buttons at the safety deposit vault, mailing him the receipt for them from there.”

  “Holmes, you’re certainly a gentleman and a scholar,” I said. “Thanks.”

  On our return from the bank, after a few more games of chess, we had an early dinner and retired to a much needed rest, in our bedroom adjoining the celebrated sitting-room, but I couldn’t get the case out of my head, and inquired:

  “Say, Holmes, old boy, how was it you didn’t grab Launcelot first instead of last, when you got all the evidence at once?”

  Holmes had a grouch on just then—for some reason or other—and he answered me by throwing one of his shoes in my direction, which I hastily dodged by shoving my head under the bedclothes as he growled:

  “Didn’t you just make the equivalent of fifty thousand Yankee dollars for three or four days’ work, the most of which I did, Watson? For the love of Pete, stow it away in your historical records somewhere and forget it! Dry up and lemme go to sleep now, or I’ll climb out there and settle your hash for good!”

  His Final Arrow

  R.C. Lehmann

  While many writers have tried their hand at Holmes, only Punch contributor R.C. Lehmann (1856-1923) saw the possibility of writing collections of parodies that mimicked the books. He wrote eight stories featuring Picklock Holes and his sidekick, Potson, that appeared in 1893, less than two years after “A Scandal in Bohemia.” In response to Holmes’ return in 1903, he wrote a second cycle of eight stories. The publication of “His Last Bow” gave Lehmann one more opportunity to revive Picklock Holes. These stories have been collected in The Early Punch Parodies of Sherlock Holmes (2014).

  My name is Potson, as all the world now knows. I am only a poor doctor and suffer from the consequences of a wound received in a border skirmish in Afghanistan many years ago. It is not for any merits of my own that my name has become celebrated, but because I have enjoyed the friendship and the society of the most illustrious and most detective man known to this or any other age. That man, as every reader will have guessed, was Picklock Holes. It was his custom, when engaged on one of those marvellous feats of investigation which made Continents shudder and Scotland Yard grow green with envy, to take me with him, not so much to help him—I never aspired to that—as to be the recipient of his confidences and the foil for his humour. “Potson,” he would say to me, “you are not clever; in fact, not to put too fine a point on it, you’re a fool; but if I want any one to tell me how many beans make five you will do for the job as well as any other man. Of course you ask silly questions, but they don’t worry me now and therefore I can endure you.”

  “My dear Holes,” I used to murmur, “I love your quaint harshness and could not do without it. Lead on and wherever you go I’ll follow.”

  I am now about to relate the last and perhaps the most striking example of my wonderful friend’s genius. Everyone will remember the sensation that was caused a year or two ago by the discovery that there was a shortage in the accounts of the Food-Controller of one lump of sugar and three standardized bread-crumbs. All kinds of guesses were hazarded to explain the deficiency and to discover the culprit who was responsible for it, but none was successful. It was thought at one time that German spies, whom this country, by the way, has never sufficiently hated, were responsible for the loss; but this supposition proved to be untenable. At last the War Cabinet decided to call in the assistance of Holes, and he, as usual, summoned me to his side. Without a moment’s delay I repaired to the Baker Street room on which Holes had conferred the dignity of his presence. I found him deep in calculations. Without looking up or even responding to my greeting he continued to cover sheets of paper with
mysterious formulae until at last he noticed that I was there.

  “Potson,” he said, “we learn from the arithmetic books that nine times twelve is a hundred and eight.”

  “Are a hundred and eight,” I ventured to object.

  “Brainless chatterer,” he hissed, “is this a time for grammatical subtleties? Can you tell what this is?” and he handed me a fragment of something green.

  “It belongs,” I said, looking at it carefully, “to the vegetable kingdom.” He gave me one of his piercing looks. “Any fool,” he said, “could have told me that. Do you not see that it is a strawberry leaf, and do you not remember that, according to my Detective’s Manual, a strawberry leaf is always a clue of the first importance? Let us proceed. We will eliminate the strawberry and the cream, because there is no cream to be had, and the strawberry has already been eaten, and we then find ourselves brought up against a ducal coronet.”

  “Holes,” I said, “you are a perfect marvel.”

  He waved me aside and continued: “Proceeding twice, according to the well-known theory of ‘Next Things,’ we find that the next thing to a ducal coronet is a Duke, and the next thing to a Duke is a Marquis. This leaf was found in the back-garden. Therefore it was found outside. Now fetch Who’s Who, and look at this entry, ‘Outside, family name of the Marquis of Bobstay.’ Ah, Henry Brabazon Beltravers, Marquis of Bobstay, I think we have got you fixed at last, and shall bring your career of crime to a close.” In a moment we had flung ourselves into a taxi, and in about ten minutes we had arrived at the palatial mansion of the Marquis of Bobstay. We found his Lordship at home and were ushered into his library. He is a stout man and evidently well fed. Holes grappled with him at once, and after a short struggle produced from the Marquis’s breast-pocket a glistening lump of sugar. The bread-crumbs were discovered in the ticket-pocket of his Lordship’s overcoat. On the following morning the miserable man paid the penalty of his wickedness.