by David Marcum
I came to know Holmes through a mutual friend, Reginald Musgrave, whom the former had helped out in the course of a family tragedy suffered by the latter. Upon my getting to know Holmes more closely, I came to realize that, although he affected the detached and unimpassioned ways of a strictly logical machine devoted to the tasks of observation, categorization, and deduction, he was, as it happened, a man greatly dedicated to the pursuit of justice and fairness in human affairs – a fact that would greatly influence his determination to make a career of fighting crime, in a manner that was always sensitive to the distinction between morally understandable and morally unjustifiable transgressions of the law. In his quiet and private way, which could nevertheless assume a public dimension if the occasion so demanded, he defended the weak and the disadvantaged, was kind to animals and street-urchins, and detested all forms of bullying.
Given the last, it is no great surprise that Sherlock Holmes did not count among his best friends the Rt. Hon. Frederick Thursgood, son and heir of Bertram, sixth Earl of Blackburn. Thursgood was a typical representative of his class in those days – a member of the constituency of the idle rich formed by the landed gentry: Selfish, insensitive, shallow, and endowed with more money than was good for his soul. He had a small following of toadies and spongers and hangers-on who exchanged their loyalty to him for the favours of the good life which his wealth enabled him to shower upon them. Thursgood’s gang once tried to crowd Holmes in a busy corner of the High – but such ambitions of bullying had to be permanently laid to rest after a brief but effective demonstration by Holmes of his skills in baritsu.
The effect of the vulgar noisiness of Thursgood and his associates was matched only by that of the exquisite flamboyance of Lord Armine de Mornay who, in every way – down to his club foot and his splendid flowing cape – cut a Byronesque dash in the university of those days. He was rich and handsome, daring and cynical – a supremely gifted young poet who was as dissolute as he was romantic, as irresistible as he was fickle in affairs of the heart. He had the reputation, in addition, of being something of a conjurer, necromancer, and prestidigitator: His alleged skills of léger de main only added to the aura of mystery and magic that shrouded the man’s personality. He conformed faithfully to Lady Caroline Lamb’s famous description of Byron, as a person who was “mad, bad, and dangerous to know”.
One of the accessories which de Mornay employed to good effect, in order to embellish his image of the flawed knight, was the aluminium crutch he wielded to take the strain off his clubbed foot. The crutch was a piece of exquisite craftsmanship, fashioned out of an extravagantly expensive metal. De Mornay’s crutch became a famous artifact in the undergraduate’s Varsity of those days. It was rumoured to be equipped with secret receptacles designed to hold valuable jewellery in them, while the tip of the crutch, it was broadcast, concealed a wickedly pointed sword-end, for use in the event of an attack upon the person of the owner, who was known to have enemies amongst gamblers, disappointed lovers, and rivals in affection.
I speak of the final year of our undergraduate degree. I was preoccupied then with my theological studies, as much as by the financial difficulties attending my family’s circumstances, which threatened to cut short my career at the university and force me to leave without acquiring a degree. I had confided my woes in Musgrave and Holmes, the only men with whom I felt comfortable about sharing my confidences. Both men were sympathetic, but neither was in a position to do much about the situation: Musgrave was on a strict allowance from his father, and Holmes on a much stricter allowance from his. It was in the midst of these circumstances that Lord Bertram Blackburn arrived one evening at our college to visit his son Frederick Thursgood. On the way, he had attended a Royal Banquet in the capacity of a Member of the House of Lords. It came to light that Lord Blackburn was proceeding further north on work, and that he had left his invaluable family heirloom – a pair of diamond-studded golden cuff-links which he had worn at the Royal Banquet – in his son’s care, to be picked up by the father on the latter’s return journey a couple of days hence.
It was typical of Thursgood and his penchant for “sticking side” and showing off that he should, immediately upon his father’s departure, have advertised the fact that his family heirloom was in his temporary possession. His father would have been horrified to learn that his son was thus jeopardizing the safekeeping of the golden cuff-links. Indeed, Thursgood thought it was a good idea to invite the students with rooms on his floor of the hall of residence to tea at the junior common room the following day, where, it was promised, the cuff-links would be on display. Apart from five or six of Thursgood’s own immediate circle of friends, the invitees included de Mornay, Sherlock Holmes, and myself.
Holmes was of the firm conviction that Thursgood’s decision was an open invitation to an act of venality, an irresistible temptation to anyone, so minded, to make an attempt to steal the cuff-links. “I should,” Holmes muttered to me, “warn the fellow, if it were not for the fact that his obtuse vanity far outstrips any sense of ordinary prudence and discretion, not to say good taste, that he might be expected to possess. It is futile to try and get anything past and through that concrete skull of his. Well, well, when the blow falls, as it surely must, one can only hope he will be prepared for it.” That there was trouble waiting in the wings was soon confirmed by a message, wafted on the air as such messages are wont to be, that de Mornay would register his view of Thursgood’s questionable taste for publicity-mongering in making an open spectacle of his family heirloom: The means to the end would be the seizing of the cuff-links at the tea-party. It was as if a challenge had been issued and accepted.
We assembled at the common room the following evening for Thursgood’s do. The sandwiches and muffins and cake and tea were put away with the appetite that is known only to healthy and hungry young undergraduates. We were then asked to line up against the wall for a view of the evening’s pièce de résistance. A table was called for and placed in the centre of the hall, and a glass-case with the cuff-links in it was placed on the table, for a close-range viewing of it by the assembled guests, one after the other. Sherlock Holmes and I politely declined the invitation to gawp at the piece of jewellery. Not so Thursgood’s friends, who feasted their eyes upon the cuff-links in sycophantic and slack-jawed wonder.
At last it was de Mornay’s turn to advance to the table. Nine pairs of eyes were fixed on him with morbid curiosity as he limped his way slowly toward the glass case and its contents. Arriving at the table, he stood motionless for a moment in front of the Blackburn heirloom. He then dropped a large silk handkerchief over the glass case, covering it entirely with the cloth, and proceeded to make wafting, wavy movements with his left hand, as if to coax the cuff-links in the case out of it and toward the aluminium crutch which he had rested against the side of the table, with his right hand held loosely over it. Soon, it appeared as if coloured vapours were emanating from de Mornay’s left hand, and crystallizing into something solid in his right palm. Quite suddenly, he appeared to transfer something from his right hand into a cavity in the crutch, concealed in a small sliding panel which he opened and quickly closed. Immediately after the transfer seemed to have been effected, de Mornay broke into an awkward hobbling run toward the open door of the hall, which looked out upon the College Quadrangle.
It was de Mornay’s abrupt bolt that broke the thralldom in which his spectators were held. “Stop him and get that crutch!” yelled Thursgood. His friends rushed after de Mornay, and just as they were about to bring him down in a diving tackle at the hall’s doorway, he swung it back and, with all his might, flung it into the quadrangle with the cry: “Grab it and run like the devil!” The crutch was caught in its flight by a friend of de Mornay’s who was waiting on the lawn of the quad. Clutching it to himself, he ran like a madman for the College gates, and out through them into the lane toward the main thoroughfare leading to High Street. Eight men, including me, rushed after de Mornay’s friend and gave him
chase. On the way out into the quad I looked back, for a moment, into the hall. It had only two occupants – de Mornay, who was lying sprawled near the doorway and, behind him, half-hidden in the shadow of the wall, Sherlock Holmes. Before resuming the chase, I rapidly registered the strange fact that Holmes was not watching any of the action that had just unfolded. Instead, he seemed to have his eyes fixed in fascination upon a window of the hall. On the window-sill stood the hall’s feline mascot, a straggly ginger which rejoiced in the name of Sir Tobias Caterwauler. At that moment, Sir Tobias presented the comical picture of a cat that has been given the slip by a wall lizard that had entered through the window by mistake and made good its escape through the same aperture when, by rights, it should have been in the cat’s possession.
De Mornay had chosen the right accomplice for the job. Faraday, the associate waiting in the quad for the crutch, was the Varsity’s representative in the marathon. He led us a merry chase through the winding lanes, and it was an hour before we could lay him by the heels. And when we did, and when Thursgood located and opened the hidden panel in the aluminium crutch, all that the cavity revealed, as if to mock him, was a pair of pebbles! While I myself was able to see the comical side of the thing, it appeared that I was in a minority of one: Thursgood and his friends returned to the common room of our hall of residence in a mood of great chagrin.
A further shock awaited the Rt. Hon. Frederick Thursgood and his associates at the hall. The silken handkerchief with which de Mornay had covered the glass case was lying on the table, so that the case was now fully revealed – but without a trace of the studded cuff-links in it. All manner of accusations – not one of them substantial or coherent – was hurled upon de Mornay, and then upon Holmes, and then upon both. Both men volunteered to give themselves up to body searches which, however, yielded nothing. And the mystery moved no closer toward a solution when Holmes and de Mornay vouched for each other. In a fit of destructiveness, Thursgood and his friends took de Mornay’s aluminium crutch apart, but it had no secrets to reveal.
Eventually, and with much ill grace, Thursgood turned to Sherlock Holmes. “Look here, Holmes, you are supposed to be the detective. Can’t you throw some light on this? The governor will be back tomorrow, and I am in the most frightful stew imaginable. How will I explain to the dad the loss of a family heirloom valued at fifty-thousand pounds?”
“Am I to understand, Thursgood,” enquired Holmes suavely, “that you are actually seeking my advice?”
“Yes, damn it, yes I am, confound your cheek!”
“Very well, then,” said Holmes. “But first things first. You are no doubt aware that aluminium is one of the most expensive metals on the chemical market?”
“What of it?”
“Well, I would imagine that you need to compensate de Mornay for the destruction you have visited upon his crutch. Two hundred pounds would be a very fair recompense.”
“That is for de Mornay to ask.”
“I do ask it,” retorted de Mornay. “Holmes speaks for me.”
“And how will that help to restore the cuff-links to my possession?” demanded Thursgood petulantly.
“I didn’t say it would. The point being,” said Holmes sternly, “that there are some actions that are actuated by duty, not the desire for gratification. But as to what might actually help with the prospect of getting your jewelry back, may I suggest you announce a reward of three-hundred pounds to anyone who can tell you where to find the cuff-links?”
“Do you think that will help?” asked Thursgood suspiciously.
“At any rate, it can’t hurt,” responded Holmes.
“But two-hundred pounds for the blasted crutch and a reward of three-hundred pounds add up to five-hundred pounds,” muttered Thursgood sullenly.
“Your arithmetic is unflawed. I hope you are able to see, though, that five-hundred pounds for the prospect of recovering a family heirloom worth fifty-thousand pounds is a trifling bagatelle. Of course,” concluded Holmes with an indifferent shrug of his shoulders, “you are free to refuse. No doubt you are also free to explain the loss of the cuff-links to your father.”
“No, no, I will do as you say,” said a chastened Thursgood.
“Very well, then. May I suggest that we reassemble here in an hour’s time? If you, Thursgood, should arrive with five-hundred pounds in your pocket. Who knows? All might still end well.”
In an hour’s time we were all back in the hall. I saw Holmes brushing past Thursgood as they both passed through the door at the same time.
“Do you have any news for me, Holmes?” cried Thursgood anxiously.
“Indeed I do,” replied Holmes. “But first, let me see the colour of your money. Ah, five-hundred pounds! Excellent! Now as to where your cuff-links are. May I trouble you to examine your waist-coat pocket?”
“What manner of joke is this, Holmes?” enquired Thursgood, his face turning red with anger.
“Come, come, do as I say, and humour me, will you?” invited Holmes.
Thursgood inserted a suspicious hand in his waist-coat pocket, and withdrew it, clutching two dazzling diamond-encrusted golden cuff-links in his fingers. His face was a study in comical bafflement, relief, delight, and mortification, each chasing the other. “How – who – when – why – ?” he sputtered.
“No, no, Thursgood,” said Holmes, laughing heartily at the sight of Thursgood’s face. “Not another word of explanation or clarification will you receive from me, for that was no part of our contract. You will now make over two-hundred pounds to de Mornay in compensation for his crutch, and three-hundred pounds to me for telling you where to find your cuff-links. I am a poor man, and am glad to see that the singular affair of the aluminium crutch has contributed a little toward a more egalitarian distribution of this world’s wealth. As for you, I can only hope that this little event will have taught you something of the virtues of moderation, humility, prudence, and good taste.”
A few minutes later, de Mornay, Holmes, and I were sitting before a blazing hearth in de Mornay’s room, with an open bottle of de Mornay’s fine champagne in front of us.
“Holmes,” said I, “an explanation is surely overdue! Perhaps you can begin by telling me what on earth you found so fascinating about Sir Tobias Caterwauler when the attention of the rest of us was fixed on de Mornay here and his aluminium crutch.”
Holmes’s body was seized by racks of internal laughter. “Ah, Sir Tobias! I was staring at him because I suddenly realized that two identical dramas were being enacted close to each other in that hall and right in front of my eyes. Tobias lost his wall-lizard because he chose to be diverted by the wriggling, squirming tail the lizard dropped in order to distract him. And all of you fellows lost track of the cuff-links when you chose instead to be diverted by that aluminium crutch of de Mornay’s. The crutch was to de Mornay what the lizard’s tail was to the lizard – and he certainly built up the mystery of that crutch most assiduously and effectively. The hand-waving, the vapours, the crystallization, that apparent transfer from palm to crutch – these were the chemical and physical appurtenances of the illusionist’s craft. De Mornay had you exactly where he wanted you – believing in the impossible osmosis of a solid pair of cuff-links from a glass case into his crutch. After you had blundered your way in quest of the crutch, now firmly in possession of the fleet-footed Faraday, de Mornay quietly returned to the table in the hall, removed the silken kerchief with which he had covered the glass case, calmly opened the case, and helped himself to the cuff-links within. That was when I stepped out of the shadows, rather, I think, to de Mornay’s shock.”
“Shock, yes,” agreed de Mornay. “But also relief. Because I wasn’t quite sure what to do with the wretched cuff-links. I may be something of a crass prankster, but I am no thief. The whole object of the exercise was to give Thursgood and his loutish friends a little lesson in common humility, which might persuade them against the notion of succumbing too readily, ever again, to the temptation of flaunting th
eir personal wealth. My idea was to give Thursgood a difficult hour before arranging for the reappearance of the cuff-links. Holmes here understood immediately, and because we thought alike, we quickly agreed on the plan whose execution you, of course, witnessed. Holmes put the cuff-links away in a temporary hiding place, and succeeded later in planting them in Thursgood’s waist-coat pocket when we reassembled at the hall. I am not too proud to say that Holmes here would make as good a pick-pocket as I would if we were both to put our minds to it. So there we are. Holmes greatly exaggerated the injuries sustained by my crutch. Fifty pounds should suffice for necessary repairs, which means we are four-hundred-and-fifty pounds to the good!”
“And what do you propose to do with it?” I asked.
“Not we, my dear fellow. You!” said Holmes. “These four-hundred-and-fifty pounds should see you through this your final year. No, not another word, I beg of you. What would really help is if you were to pour out some more of de Mornay’s splendid vintage with which we may feel justly entitled in offering a toast to the successful conclusion of the singular affair of the aluminium crutch.”
“The aluminium crutch!” we chorused in unison, and drained our glasses. We were undergraduates at the Varsity, and the night was still young.
The Adventure of the Dead Ringer
by Robert Perret
“London black shag, please.”
“Mr. Holmes, couldn’t I interest you in this Turkish blend? I concoct it myself, here on these premises. I’ve yet to find a dissatisfied customer.”
