The Case of the Baker Street Irregulars

by Anthony Boucher

  You may, then, readily imagine my difficulties in this situation. Events have befallen me which must be told; and such is their singular nature that I myself must seem the leading figure. Already, as you see, I have transgressed against scholarly canons by the mere use of that one word—I; and having done so, I feel embarrassed and out of place.

  But enough of this preamble. Let me simply try to tell what happened, and implore your patience with my ineptitude in so doing. I shall follow no literary formula save that of the King of Hearts—to begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end: then stop. (Already, I may add, scholastic compunctions overwhelm me. It is with the greatest difficulty that I refrain from adding here an exact footnote indicating the source of my quotation.)

  I was up early this morning—earlier, I believe, than any of the others, save Mrs. Hudson and Sergeant Watson, who had, I imagine, never slept at all. I am not perhaps by nature an early riser, but the combination of eight o’clock classes on most mornings and my aunt’s belief in the soundness of old proverbs has perforce made me so.

  Mrs. Hudson, whose household efficiency is a source to me of awe and wonder, was already busy in the kitchen. As soon as I had shaved and descended the stairs, the odor of fresh coffee called to me. I found the worthy Sergeant there also, enjoying a snack of sorts before being relieved from duty. It did not take the deductive ability of a Holmes follower to conclude, from the plates before the good Sergeant and the fragments remaining thereon, that he had already consumed an egg or two, some bacon, a dish of oatmeal, and what is, I believe known as “a stack o’ wheats.” At the moment he was tapering off with some streusel cake, more than tempting in appearance, which Mrs. Hudson informed me she had prepared especially for Herr Federhut.

  I envy men who can eat in that manner, particularly at breakfast. Occasionally, after a rousing set of tennis, I can do likewise; but on the whole my sedentary life has left me unfitted for such Gargantuan or, to employ a more autochthonous idiom, Bunyanesque—exploits. In the morning I want nothing but a small glass of tomato juice, one slice of very dry toast, and one cup of coffee.

  Mrs. Hudson seemed torn in her allegiance. As a onetime student of dietetics, she admired the simplicity and restraint of my order; but as a woman, if I do not misinterpret her glances, she felt a certain respect for the virile voracity of Sergeant Watson.

  The excitement of the previous evening, however, did lead me to exceed my usual regimen to the extent of a second cup of coffee. Sternly rejecting the temptation to order a third, I had left the kitchen (where the Sergeant was engaged in experiments with the various jams which Mr. Weinberg had imported from England) and had entered this room to conduct an experiment which had occurred to me in connection with that sheet of numbers in Stephen Worth’s brief case, when the doorbell rang.

  I am not sure whether that ring was audible in the kitchen. If so, it may easily have been disregarded, since the Sergeant was otherwise occupied and Mrs. Hudson was busy preparing a fresh batch of streusel cake. At all events, after the ringing had continued unheeded for a moment or so, I resolved to answer it myself.

  I deeply regret that I cannot describe the young man who stood in the doorway. He was of about my own age or slightly younger, of medium height, with dark hair and completely unobtrusive clothes. The only remarkable thing about him was that he leaned on a crutch held in his left armpit, though his left leg seemed quite normal to the untutored eye.

  “Two-two-one B?” he said.

  “Yes,” I answered.

  For some reason he seemed a trifle crestfallen by this reply. “Thanks,” he said, and turned as though to leave.

  To me this seemed incomprehensible. The new number of the house, 221B, was clearly announced in fresh figures on the lintel of the door. What could be the conceivable purpose of ringing the doorbell to ask that number and then walking away upon receiving an affirmative reply?

  Then the only possible explanation occurred to me. Obviously the remark was intended as a sign or password of sorts. I could not imagine why anyone should be sending a secret message to me; but neither could I imagine why, if secret messages were being sent to this house, I should not at least attempt to intercept them.

  There seemed to be only one logical answer to “Two-two-one B” as a countersign, and I made it. “Baker Street,” I said.

  The young man instantly turned back to me, using the crutch as a pivot, and said, “‘The dog did nothing in the nighttime.’”

  “‘That,’” I replied automatically, “‘was the curious incident.’”

  (And here at last scholastic training overwhelms me. For the benefit of those not of our group, I must add, as an oral footnote, that this bit of dialogue is a famous excerpt from the adventure of “Silver Blaze”—perhaps the most noted example of that form of verbal riposte which Father Knox has christened the Sherlockismus, though Sherlockution is an alternative form which I find even more suitable.)

  The young man smiled, and with that smile his commonplace face came to life and became that of an individual. If I were to seem him smiling, I am sure that I should recognize him, whereas his face in repose might be that of anyone. For this was a smile which threw every feature slightly off balance, and made of his normal and unmemorable physiognomy a curious mask, half friendly and half terrible. “Come with me,” he said.

  Macbeth’s realization of the compelling force of blood applies with the equal truth to any enterprise not in our quotidian sphere of activities. To embark upon any unusual act means eventual recognition of the fact that should we wade no more, returning were as tedious as go o’er. I had answered the sign with the countersign; and now I knew a strange compulsion to follow the messenger and learn the meaning of this curious episode. So, feeling yet but young in deed, I walked with him to the sidewalk.

  There at the curb stood a yellow taxicab. The young man with the crutch walked up to it and opened the door. Even at the time I should have thought this strange; but taxicabs are not a usual phenomenon on an assistant professor’s salary. It was not until later that I recalled that it is always the driver, never a passenger, who opens the door.

  “Get in the auto,” the young man said—or at least so I thought at the moment. Now I am not so sure.

  I hesitated an instant, and he added urgently, “What are we waiting for? The Irish girl told me you’d be in a hurry to get there, and now you go stalling around. Get in!”

  For some absurd reason, this remark decided me. I entered the taxi.

  Its interior, in contrast to the bright sunlight without, seemed so dim and dark that for a brief interval I could distinguish nothing. I heard my companion enter, I heard the motor start, but it was not until we were in motion that I could actually see the interior of the cab.

  What I then saw filled me with amazement. I was in a box, a close, tight box. There were no windows, no jump seats, no meter, no communication with the driver’s compartment-nothing, in short, to suggest the interior of an actual taxicab. A minute and dusty electric-light globe in the ceiling provided the little light that I had to see by, and an indistinct whirring above me suggested a ventilating apparatus of some sort.

  But even more astonishing than the nature of this vehicle was the fact that I was alone in it. My companion of the unnoticeable appearance and the unforgettable smile had quite vanished, although I could have sworn that I heard him enter. He had, however, left behind a souvenir of his presence—the crutch.

  I cannot say what my first thoughts were upon realizing my predicament. A numbed confusion doubtless predominated. Fear, I may say with all modesty, never entered my mind. Fear must imply conviction and belief; this whole situation was too sudden, too fantastic to stimulate more than wonder and curiosity.

  I could see nothing of the streets along which we traveled, but the constant lurchings of the machine told me that we were following a winding and devious course, even more devious than the twists of the streets in this neighborhood would naturally occasion. Quite p
robably, I thought, the driver was taking all possible precautions to shake off a conceivable tail, if I may be allowed a cant term.

  At first I entertained some thoughts of jotting down a record of these turns, in case it should be necessary later to trace the course; but after a minute or two I realized the impracticability of this ruse. We had turned at least a dozen corners before I could commence my log; and if the starting place is completely unknown, what can be the use of the most accurate record from that point on?

  Instead I turned my attention to the cab itself, after first noting down the exact time and, from that, the approximate time of our departure from 221B Romualdo Drive. It was then 8:18; we must have left this house somewhere in the neighborhood of 8:15. The gauging of minutes without a watch has never been one of my accomplishments. I am told that it can be done by counting chimpanzees; but the idea seems implausible.

  At this point the car was stationary for almost half a minute—halted, presumably, by a traffic signal. This was an admirable chance to open the door—not that I had the remotest intention of obeying the promptings of my more sensible nature by leaving the cab; I wished merely to see where we were in order to resume my log with some hope of its efficacy.

  But there was no door handle. That there was a door was an obvious fact; I was still a creature of flesh and blood, small though the odds might be which a rational person would place by now upon my long remaining so, and I could scarcely have entered this box through solid walls. But the door apparently opened only from the outside; here within I was cabined, cribbed, and confined far more securely than a rat in a trap.

  I mused briefly on rats, and wondered how a psychologist, such as my friend of the faculty, Professor Giancarelli, would rate my I. Q. at the moment, since that of the lower animals seems to be estimated chiefly by their ability to escape from involved traps. The psychologist’s trap, however, like a crossword puzzle or a mystery novel, must be based upon the premise that there is a possible solution; and the more I examined the utterly blank interior of that cab, the more I came to the conclusion that solving this problem would be on a par with squaring the circle. The Honorable Derring Drew, who is accustomed to such situations, would doubtless have fumbled through his pockets until he came across an apposite tool by means of which he might free himself; but a brief search of my own pockets yielded nothing but a pen, a pencil, a comb, a handkerchief, a pocketbook, a bunch of keys, a few random notes on the case, and some loose change. Rebuking myself with the reminder that the keys and the automatic pencil would doubtless have sufficed for the Honorable Derring, I regretfully returned my meager trove to my pockets and turned to examine the one tangible object in the interior of that cab—the crutch.

  My first impression, upon picking it up, was one of extraordinary lightness. It had looked as though it were fashioned of wood, but now that I held it in my hand, I could see that this was a delusion caused by an ingenious varnish. The crutch was of some light metal, seemingly, from what I could see in one place where the varnish had chipped, aluminum.

  You will recall that in entitling this adventure I have referred to the “aluminium” crutch, for I could scarcely be expected to neglect the amazing coincidence of my own experience with the title of one of Watson’s manifold untold tales. But to an American, “aluminium” is a difficult word to pronounce; and I hope I may be acquitted of any charge of inconsistency if I employ the shorter American form in the body of my narrative.

  But even, to resume my story, if one granted that the crutch was of aluminum, it still seemed remarkably light—so much so, in fact, that I was forced to the conclusion that it must be hollow. A moment’s investigation proved me correct. The rubber tip came off with ease, revealing below it a dark line running around the circumference of the cylinder. The end of the crutch unscrewed readily, revealing a hollow interior.

  What I expected to find there, I cannot say. I believe that I had some thought of rubies and emeralds. What I did find was a slip of paper bearing the typed message:

  HTR OWMOR FEVOL HTI WTEE RT SREKA BOTST UN

  At this point the proceedings were interrupted by a loud groan from Lieutenant Jackson. The speaker coughed nervously and remarked, “I beg your pardon?”

  “For the dear God’s sake!” cried Jackson. “Another code! You don’t want a detective—you want a guessing-contest expert.”

  “You have said, Herr Leutnant,” Otto Federhut reminded him, “that you are an amateur cryptanalyst. Surely here is for you the opportunity.”

  “But this is going too far. Dancing men and lists of numbers and now—”

  “Getting too much for you, Lieutenant?” Sergeant Watson grinned.

  “That’s enough out of you, Watson. If Finch ever hears about your early morning appetite while valuable witnesses are being spirited away in unbelievable taxicabs—”

  The Sergeant subsided.

  “Calm yourself, Lieutenant,” Harrison Ridgly murmured. “After all, you yourself have observed that this entire case hinges upon a knowledge of Holmes; and you know the extraordinary number of those stories which involve a code or a cipher in one way or another. We must all have a little deciphering session later.”

  “Meanwhile,” Dr. Bottomley advised as chairman, “let us hear the rest of Furness’ narrative. This crutch I find highly suggestive; but in justice to the speaker, we must at least suspend judgment until he has finished. Mrmfk. Go on, sir.”

  “Thank you.” Drew Furness picked up his papers again and continued.

  I thought it wise for the moment to replace this cryptic note in its hiding place, to rescrew the cap of the crutch, and to slip the rubber tip back on. No matter what was to happen, it might be well if I seemed not to know too much. I am, however, the possessor of an admirable photographic memory, and I devoted the rest of the journey to contemplating that row of letters in my mind’s eye and seeking to discover their secret.

  So absorbed was I in this process that I did not notice when the cab stopped; but the sudden opening of the door roused me from my analytical meditations. I first looked at my wrist watch. The time was 8:46—exactly twenty-eight minutes since I had last looked and approximately a half-hour since we had left 2218. I waited, my eyes fixed on the open door and my hand grasping the crutch as a possible if cumbersome weapon. Enough time had passed to account for quite a troop of chimpanzees before I finally realized that the next move must be up to me.

  I stepped out of the cab into a darkness compared to which the vehicle’s interior was a world of light. I could discern the sound of no movements save my own. The floor beneath my feet was hard and slippery; the wall, against which I struck my knuckles as I extended my hand, was of cement. I stooped over, touched my finger to the slippery spot on which my feet rested, and brought my hand into the light of the cab. I observed, with a certain sense of relief, that my fìnger was coated with nothing more sinister than oil. It was apparent that I was in a small garage.

  Some means of exit there must be. As I thought back, I could now recall hearing a heavy clank just before the cab door was opened. That must have marked the lowering of the garage door through which we had entered. But the driver had let me out after that; there must be some other door through which he had disappeared, unless—disquieting thought!—he was even now lurking in the darkness about me. I began, for the first time in my life, to regret the fact that I had never succumbed to the incomprehensible lure of tobacco. A victim of that passion is bound to carry with him matches, a lighter, or some such means of illumination. That striking a light would make me an easy target provided a partial consolation in my helplessness; but so great was my desire to know something of my surroundings that I should have chanced even that contingency.

  My present situation called not for the abilities of a Derring Drew nor even for those of a Holmes, but rather for the astonishing extrasensory perceptions of Holmes’ eminent contemporary, the blind Max Carrados. Tapping the crutch before me (like old Ped, I thought, and then thought likewis
e of the Blind Spot and wondered again as to the meaning of that typewritten line), I felt my way to the front of the cab.

  There at my right was a thin, all but indistinguishable, line of light along the floor. I felt my way toward it and ran my hand along the wall. This time there was a handle on my side of the door. What lay beyond I could not surmise, but know I must. Gingerly I turned the knob.

  Before me a long and narrow flight of stairs led upwards, ending in a wooden door above which hung a single small light globe. Clasping the crutch in one hand and my courage in both, I mounted the stairs, first closing the garage door behind me so that at least the sound of its opening might apprise me of any attack from behind.

  A keen-eared guard must have been waiting behind the upper door; for before I could even knock, the door was opened. The sentinel was masked by a square of black cloth which covered his entire face save for the eyeholes. His hand lingered significantly in his coat pocket.

  “Two-two-one B?” he demanded.

  This time I answered without hesitation. “Baker Street.”

  “‘The dog did nothing in the nighttime.’”

  “‘That was the curious incident.’”

  He stepped back from the doorway, indicating that I was to enter. As I did so, his glance lit on the aluminum crutch. “I must say,” he observed, “you don’t look much like what we expected, Altamont.”

  (Here Professor Furness, revealing a quite unexpected sense of theatrical maneuver, paused to let amazement ripple audibly over his audience.)

  Altamont! Nothing in the adventure up to this point had amazed me as did this name. Whoever I was supposed to be, whatever the enterprise which had caused me to bring to this shabby room an aluminum crutch from a windowless taxicab, I was known as Altamont—the very name adopted by Sherlock Holmes in “His Last Bow” when, emerging from his bee-keeping retirement on the Sussex Downs, he had devoted two years to becoming one of the most trusted agents of the Imperial German Government, only to foil its most vital schemes in August, 1914.