The Case of the Baker Street Irregulars

by Anthony Boucher

  “Is that all?”

  “Yes. I shall sign the letter after lunch. Now go.”

  Harrison Ridgly had not moved all the time that Miss Purvis was in the room. He had not dared to move. Now he turned and looked across the room to the chastely framed photograph of the young girl in her coming-out gown. He could hardly focus his eyes to read the familiar inscription, in that foolish round hand. To the world’s best brother from his Phillida.

  He moved toward the picture. He had been wise to remain still while Miss Purvis was present. Movement requires coordination, and small rugs on smooth floors are a danger.

  The cartoonists of rival publications (and even of his own) would have rejoiced in the sight of Harrison Ridgly III sprawled stupidly on the floor of his office. They would have thought it funny.

  The perfectly Sirrah-styled suit was acquiring wrinkles which would have wrung its designer’s sensitive heart. But its wearer had no thought for the things of Sirrah as he lay there, his eyes twisted upward to the photograph, his body shaken with horrible noises which he would have deemed ludicrous in another.

  His mouth twisted. Perhaps he knew these sobs to be ludicrous even in himself. Even the grotesque sincerity of his woe could not keep the Ridgly mouth from twisting.

  II

  METROPOLIS PICTURES

  June 26, 1939

  Mr. John O’Dab

  c/o Mason and Morrison, Publishers

  386 Fourth Avenue

  New York, N. Y.

  Dear Mr. O’Dab:

  Your protest against the assignment of Stephen Worth to the script of The Speckled Band has been received and personally considered by me. Unfortunately, contractual arrangements, which I am sure you as an author will understand, prevent me from altering this assignment; but I have hit upon an arrangement which will, I hope, satisfy you.

  I am inviting you and a group of your associates among the Baker Street Irregulars to be my guests in Hollywood during the making of this picture. You will have complete advisory authority over all details of adaptation and be in a position to guarantee authenticity and fidelity.

  I will not affront your devotion to the literature of Sherlock Holmes by offering you a salary as a technical advisor. As I say, you shall be my personal guest, with all travel and living expenses cared for and a liberal drawing account for personal expenses.

  I hope that this invitation is fortunate enough to reach you at a period between novels when you will be free to accept it. May I add that I strongly anticipate meeting the creator of that dashing criminal of the printed page and the silver screen, the Honorable Derring Drew. You will be pleased to hear that our motion picture, Meet Derring Drew, adapted from your The Deeds of Derring Drew, is a great success throughout the country from exhibitors’ reports; Variety, in fact, describes it as “the socko B of the season.” Your sequel, The Grand Duke’s Cigar Case, will shortly go into production under the working title, Derring Drew at the World’s Fair. You will doubtless be happy to learn that Paul Jackson, whose fan mail has mounted daily since he assumed the role of Derring Drew, will play a leading part in The Speckled Band.

  Hoping that I shall soon receive a favorable reply from you, I remain

  Yours sincerely,

  F. X. Weinberg

  FXW/RS

  Columbia, Mo.

  July 3, 1939

  M. F. X. Weinberg

  Metropolis Pictures

  Los Angeles, California

  Dear Mr. Weinberg:

  You may well marvel at the postmark on this letter. A small Midwestern town—and an academic one at that—seems an odd place to encounter Derring Drew. But we were weary of the brilliant world, Derring and I, and in this out-of-the-way place we have found a restful charm.

  Even a restful charm, however, palls on one in time. I myself, who am merely the humble narrator of dashing events, have found the seconds hanging heavy on my hands; and Derring has been veritably champing for action.

  We have heard great things of your Hollywood. Perhaps it will live up to its promises, though I must confess that I am doubtful. Moreover, the honor of protecting the memory of Holmes appeals to me strongly.

  Derring suggests scornfully that you might better make a picture about Raffles; but I tell him that such an act would in all likelihood merely cut the market out from under his own picture. Any psychoanalyst could tell him that all the bravura of his exploits results quite simply from a Raffles fixation.

  But why should I tell the secrets of my hero? It is enough that he and I cordially accept your invitation.

  Sincerely yours,

  John O’Dab

  For all its careful dashing air, this letter was written in a schoolroom—to be precise, in a classroom of Miss Aminta Frowley’s Select Coaching School for Young Ladies. There were French verbs on the blackboard, and the air was heavy with chalk and the peculiar scent of janitor’s sawdust.

  The dry little man at the desk screwed the cap meticulously back on his fountain pen. “That is a peculiarly silly letter, Fred, is it not?”

  Fred, the janitor, leaned heavily on his pushbroom and peered through Woolworth reading glasses at the letter on the desk. “Don’t seem to make much sense to me, Mr. Evans, and that’s a fact; but there ain’t no telling what them Hollywood people like. That’s what I always say when I go to a movie: ‘They don’t know what we like,’ I say, ‘that’s plain enough. So how’s a body ever to know what they like?’ I say.”

  “They seem to like Derring Drew, at all events,” said Jonadab Evans, known to what Mason and Morrison term “his unending circle of readers” as John O’Dab. (Mr. Evans had once pointed out to them that all circles are unending by definition; but the thought had not discomposed the copywriters.)

  “So do I,” said Fred, pulling out a heavily caked corncob of the most primitive design. “Leastways I guess I do. It ain’t what you’d call real convincing, but it sort of makes you forget things, and I guess sometimes that’s a pretty good idea.”

  “Thank you, Fred. The literature of escape receives the endorsement of the proletariat.”

  “Is that what I am?” Fred slowly filled from a rubber pouch what little space remained in the pipe’s bowl. “Can’t say as I like the sound of it.”

  “I know. That’s one of the consolations of democracy. No American workingman likes to be told that he’s a proletarian.”

  Fred looked back at the letter as he struck a match. “So you’re really going to Hollywood?” (He said it in the tone of “So you’re leaving for Mars after all?”) “What are you going to say to Miss Frowley?”

  “There, Fred, is a problem. What would you say to Miss Frowley if she came in now and caught you smoking in the classroom?”

  Fred grinned. “I’d say I was helping out her old man. He made his money out of corncobs, and I always say there ain’t a sweeter smoke in the world than a good Missouri meerschaum.”

  “That,” said Mr. Evans judiciously, “is at it may be. But for all my fine words to Metropolis Pictures, I don’t quite know how to face Miss Frowley. I may not be able as a writer to understand Mr. Weinberg’s contractual difficulties, but I certainly do as a teacher.”

  “Why don’t you just tell the old lady to go to blazes? I would, Mr. Evans; I certainly would, if the movies was buying my books.”

  “I know, Fred; but the trouble goes back to old Mr. Frowley. He was such a good businessman that he passed on his tricks to his daughter. And I, like an innocent lamb, signed the contract she gave me. For seven years. Four years I’ve been here—ever since dear old Sampson Military Academy died. Four years of coaching the young ladies of Missouri, winter and summer, and three more years to go. Ever since the Derring Drew stories were accepted, I have been hinting to Miss Frowley that I might like to leave; but she as good as brandishes the contract in my face, and here I am still.”

  “Pick a fight with her,” Fred suggested. “Get her mad and she’ll break the contract her own self.”

  Mr. Evans shuddere
d delicately. “Please, Fred. You know Miss Frowley. Do you imagine that I have the courage to pick a fight with her?”

  Fred looked him over at some length. “No-o-o-o. Guess not. Can’t say as I blame you. Ain’t got that much guts myself.” He set down the corncob and picked up his bucket of cleansing sawdust. “Well, I got to be getting along to the other rooms. Wish you luck, Mr. Evans.”

  “Thanks.” The door closed behind Fred. Mr. Evans picked up his optimistic letter to F. X. Weinberg and reread it. “A trifle coy,” he commented distastefully. “But then people seem to expect that of such a dashing writer.” He turned again to Mr. Weinberg’s own epistle, and clicked his tongue over the disgraceful misuse of “anticipate.” “And I do wonder,” he murmured, “just what a ‘socko B’ might be.”

  The door swung open again. Mr. Evans looked around, to see the whole of the good-sized doorway obscured by the formidable bulk of Miss Aminta Frowley.

  “Working late, Mr. Evans,” she observed in a thin voice—quite out of proportion to her vast size and therefore all the more terrifying.

  “Why … ah … yes,” he fumbled. “Exercises, you know. Correcting them. That Loring child will never understand the imperfect subjunctive.” Miss Frowley was ominously stiff and silent. He babbled a bit. “That might be a good sign, you know. She may end by speaking like a true native—so few of them understand it, either. Ha ha,” he added. It was not a laugh—just the two syllables ha ha. It sounded pitifully helpless before Miss Frowley’s glaring silence.

  Slowly she cleared her throat and then spoke with measured sharpness. “Mr. Evans, there is tobacco smoke in this room.”

  He looked. There in front of him lay Fred’s well-seasoned corncob, still smoldering. And in a second he knew what to do. He stuck the stem in his mouth, cocked the pipe at a grotesque angle, and looked up. “So there is,” he said.

  Miss Frowley’s eyebrows all but met the gray roots of her black hair. “You know the rules of this institution, Mr. Evans,” she said.

  “And if I do?” he ventured bravely.

  “You know how strongly I am opposed to the weed in any form, in spite of my father’s ill-gotten wealth.”

  “I know.” He tried to send a sizable puff straight into her face, and almost made it.

  Miss Frowley glared. “There is only one answer then, Mr. Evans, much though I have admired your work. There is no room in the Frowley School for a—a corncob! I shall see my lawyer tomorrow to draw up a release from your contract. You may well shudder, Mr. Evans! Good day!”

  But Jonadab Evans was not shuddering in awe of Miss Frowley’s wrath. Neither was he shuddering in blissful expectation of the delights of Hollywood, nor yet in uncanny prescience of the events which were to befall him there. Mr. Evans, in the triumph of his first acquaintance with Missouri meerschaum, was only wondering if he could reach the men’s room in time.

  III

  METROPOLIS PICTURES

  June 26, 1939

  Rufus Bottomley, M.D.

  c/o Venture House

  20 East 57th Street

  New York, N. Y.

  Dear Dr. Bottomley:

  Your protest against the assignment of Stephen Worth to the script of The Speckled Band has been received and personally considered by me. Unfortunately, contractual arrangements, which I am sure you as a professional man will understand, prevent me from altering this assignment; but I have hit upon an arrangement which will, I hope, satisfy you.

  I am inviting you and a group of your associates among the Baker Street Irregulars to be my guests in Hollywood during the making of this picture. You will have complete advisory authority over all details of adaptation and be in a position to guarantee authenticity and fidelity.

  I will not affront your devotion to the literature of Sherlock Holmes by offering you a salary as a technical advisor. As I say, you shall be my personal guest, with all travel and living expenses cared for and a liberal drawing account for personal expenses.

  Since you have retired from active practice, I hope that you have no other commitments at this time which will interfere with your accepting this invitation.

  I should also be glad of the opportunity to confer with you on the sale of screen rights to your deservedly best-selling book, G. P. Your agents report that you are adverse to selling, because of our notion of introducing a romantic interest; but I hope that I can persuade you personally of the wisdom of such a move. As a doctor, you must know the value of sugar-coating a bitter capsule.

  I look forward warmly to our meeting.

  Sincerely yours,

  F. X. Weinberg

  FXW/RS

  New York

  June 30, 1939

  Mr. F. X. Weinberg

  Metropolis Pictures

  Los Angeles, California

  Dear Mr. Weinberg:

  Do you expect me to resist?

  Lovingly,

  Rufus Bottomley

  P.S. Romantic interest indeed! We’ll see about that.

  R.B.

  P.P.S. Do you know anything about Otto Federhut? Austrian scholar—eminent jurist—brilliant critical mind—do I have to add that he’s a refugee? Wrote an amazing work called Der Holmes-Mythos und seine Entwicklungen, mit einigen Bemerkungen über das Watson-Problem. Just about as fine a piece of mock scholarship as I’ve ever encountered. We’re initiating him into the Irregulars next week, if he passes our examination—as I’ve no doubt he will. He might add color to our party—to say nothing of aiding the refugee cause. You can reach him c/o the APRP—Association for the Placement of Refugees in the Professions. Give him my love.

  RB

  P.P.P.S. You don’t sugar-coat capsules.

  Dr. Rufus Bottomley was sealing his letter as the house phone rang.

  “Hello.” He listened a moment, then burst into an expansive roar of welcome. “Fine. Good to hear your voice again. Come on up.”

  He set to sprucing himself a bit. Now that he was an Established Author, with a room at the Algonquin when he stayed in New York, it was necessary to keep up appearances more carefully than when he had been a general practitioner—a G. P.—in Waterloo, Iowa. He brushed the pipe ashes off his vest. Then he took a comb and did perfunctory justice to his mustache and imperial. These were new since his days of general practice. He was modern enough to realize the unhygienic possibilities of facial hair. He realized, too, that his short paunchy body looked absurd with such elaborate ornamentation sprouting above it; but that aspect did not concern him. All his life, for some reason, he had wanted an imperial—and there was no valid reason now why he shouldn’t have one.

  A knock on the door came as he was slipping on his coat. He left wrinkles unstraightened, and answered with a promptitude surviving from those days when a knock might mean anything from a fatal stroke for old Mrs. Wyatt to a new baby out at the Hobbses.

  “Gordon!” he bellowed. “Great to see you! Come on in. Spot of whisky before we set out to paint New York?”

  Gordon Withers, though by nature more restrained, was no less sincere in his greeting. “It is good, Rufus. And I will, if you don’t mind.”

  “Fine.” Dr. Bottomley occupied himself with pouring. “And how’s the rest home?”

  “Doing nicely. You’ve no idea what a boon the film industry is. Shooting schedules and nervous breakdowns form practically a definition of cause and effect.”

  Dr. Bottomley grinned. “No regrets for the quiet days when we ran a practice together?”

  “None, Rufus. Oh, I know all your ideas about the true vocation of medicine. I’ve read your book, and God knows I’ve heard you talk. But if honest men didn’t cater to this generation of neurotics, the quacks would. My conscience is clear—and that’s more than you can say for the consciences of most of us who live off the colony.”

  “Strange place, Hollywood, from all I hear. Mrmfk! Wonder how I’ll like it?”

  “You, Rufus?”

  “Me. Rufus. In person—and not, God grant, a moving picture. He
re, take your drink.”

  “But what should bring you—”

  “Out into your bailiwick? Matters of great moment, Gordon. Lo! And likewise behold!” He handed over F. X. Weinberg’s invitation.

  “So? … Well, I shall be glad to see you out there. I don’t know quite what you’ll make of it—”

  “But I’ll enjoy myself, Gordon. You may be sure of that. Cigar?”

  Dr. Withers looked distastefully at the case of short black things. “Still at those? They look like torpedoes; but if I remember aright, they’re infinitely more deadly. No thanks.” He lit a cigarette. “But tell me—how’s your book going?”

  “Splendiferously. Right up in front with Heiser and all the rest. I expect the Writers’ League of America to start issuing prescriptions any day—it’d be only a fair exchange. Mrmfk. Yes, everybody is unconscionably delighted with G. P.—all but a few misguided and probably misbegotten souls who thought it was a history of the Russian secret police.”

  Dr. Withers walked slowly over to the desk and laid his hand lightly on the vast calabash pipe that rested there in a specially constructed cradle. “Warm,” he said softly.

  Rufus Bottomley looked almost shamefaced. “Yes,” he admitted.

  “I’ve known you for twenty years, Rufus, and I know that the only cause that can drive you from your damned little torpedoes to a decent pipe is worry—and pretty serious worry at that. What is it now?”

  Dr. Bottomley waved a plump hand helplessly. “What would it be?”

  “Ann?”

  “Of course. Two years, you know, doesn’t make it hurt any the less.”

  “I know.”

  Dr. Bottomley’s face was grave—so intensely grave that even the foolish imperial looked serious. “How is she?”

  “My turn to give a helpless answer. How would she be?”

  “I’ll come to see her, of course. That’s my main reason for accepting Mr. Weinberg’s invitation so blithely. You probably guessed that?”

  “Yes.”