The Case of the Baker Street Irregulars

by Anthony Boucher

  “He refused to recognize me—denied that he’d ever seen me before or ever heard of any man named Peter Black. I was almost convinced that I had made a mistake until his protestations became so insistent that I was sure they were false. If he’d been more casual, he might have succeeded in fooling me; but he went too far, and I simply became damned angry. My words grew more violent than his; and violent words, with men like us, can’t go on for long without leading to blows.

  “We already had an audience—a cluster of sailors heckling us on and eagerly waiting for action. When the action started, they all pitched in. Damned lucky for me they did, or Peter’s knife might not have grazed so harmlessly off my cheek. The cut stung, but the next instant I had forgotten that and all but forgotten Peter as I let myself go, despite my age, in the finest lustiest free-for-all I’d known in a dozen years.”

  The captain paused to finish his drink. “When we were all being led to the station wagon,” he resumed, “one of the sailors stuck something in my hand. ‘You dropped this,’ he said. ‘Ought to be glad one of them bitches didn’t find it. They’ll hook onto anything.’ Unthinking, I slipped the small object into my pocket, and had no time to examine it until later. We were all herded down to night court, where those of us who could pay our fines were released at once. I had no objection to the fine; that fight had been well worth the cost, and even the cut on the cheek. Peter, I should add, was not in the line-up. As usual, he’d been smart enough to beat the rap.

  “Not until I reached my hotel room did I think to look at what I was said to have dropped. To my surprise, it was a small box which I had never seen before. It—But there’s no use in describing it when I can show it to you. Here.”

  He reached into his breast pocket and produced a small cardboard box, roughly three inches by four, tied neatly with string. The knot was an odd one—nautically significant, perhaps, but such specialized knowledge lies outside my purlieu. Instead I read what was more suited to my understanding—a hand-printed label on its surface reading:

  Miss Belle Craven 11473

  Shenandoah Road

  West Los Angeles

  (I beg your pardon, Mr. Furness; please be so kind as to wait till I come to an effective stopping place.)

  “Well, I said—and I must confess somewhat indifferently—“why haven’t you simply sent it on to Miss Craven? There’s no return address, no stamps—but it’s obviously meant to be delivered to her.”

  “Because,” he answered, slowly, “I am afraid to.”

  “Afraid? Hell and death, man—”

  “You see, Dr. Bottomley, Belle Craven was Alice’s sister. The woman whom Peter Black hated beyond anything else in this world.”

  “You think he dropped this then?”

  “What else am I to think?”

  “And what do you think is in it—some nice little poison trap or infernal machine? Or have you opened it?”

  “No,” he said. “No, I haven’t opened it.” And I knew that he was lying.

  “And now, Mr. Furness,” Dr. Bottomley broke off from his platform manner, “you may make your objections. Forgive me for shushing you, but you must allow a narrator his curtain lines. Mrmfk.”

  Furness was on his feet. “But it’s absurd,” he protested. “It’s fantastic—ridiculous—”

  “Laughable,” Harrison Ridgly added helpfully. “Preposterous. Unbelievable. Ah—anyone have a Roget around?”

  Drew Furness glared at the speaker, then at Bottomley. “Belle Craven is a dear, sweet old woman. To make her into an insidious villainess, with some sort of vile implication of—”

  “Please. Please.” Dr. Bottomley waved a hand feebly. “You overwhelm me with your torrent of indignation. Please try to remember that I am merely telling what happened to me. And by the way, your father was at the University of Kansas in 1917?”

  “Yes,” said Furness grudgingly.

  “And you did have another aunt—Alice?” “I hardly remember her.”

  “Because she was killed in an accident when you were very young?”

  “Hang it, yes. But simply because that much is true—”

  “It seems,” Dr. Bottomley observed, apparently to the waggling point of his imperial, “that everyone finds this case merely a fascinating problem in crime and deduction until he is personally dragged into it. Mrmfk. But if, gentlemen, now that Mr. Furness has registered his protest, I may resume the narrative—”

  “But what’s he so het up about?” came the practical voice of Sergeant Watson.

  “Sorry if I’m not being elementary, my dear Watson, but truly it is obvious. Professor Furness’ address is 11473 Shenandoah Road, and Miss Belle Craven is his aunt.”

  “Oh,” said Sergeant Watson.

  “Three guesses,” Harrison Ridgly offered, “what’s in that box.”

  Jonadab Evans looked at him quietly. “Don’t spoil the story,” he counseled. “Write it down on paper now; we’ll see later if we’re right.”

  Dr. Bottomley caught their glance of mutual agreement. “Hell and death,” he thumped. “And I never thought of that!”

  “Get on with your yarn,” said Lieutenant Jackson.

  To resume, then: I gave Captain Agar what I thought the best advice—to take the parcel to Miss Craven in person, to explain how he had come into possession of it, and to leave further developments in her hands.

  He nodded thoughtfully. “Maybe so, Doctor. I may be worried about nothing, I suppose. But I would be glad, now that you’ve gone this far with me, if you’d see the thing through. Come along with me to Shenandoah Road.”

  I wavered. It was a tempting adventure, but damn it, I had an adventure of my own right here in 221B. And as I sat there undecided, I recognized the Shenandoah Road address. That resolved me. If, through some outrageous fluke of chance, one of the men in this very house was involved in Captain Agar’s fabulous tale, it certainly behooved me to see things through.

  “It’s a bit difficult, however,” I explained. “There’s been a little trouble in this house,” I added, making a mental note to send my remark to our fellow Irregular Alexander Woollcott for his collection of understatements, “and I’m under police sur-however-you-pronounce-it. I’m not sure I can just walk out.”

  Captain Agar thought for a moment, and when he spoke I knew that this had been no idle musing.

  A moment later the sergeant—I don’t know his name; the one who replaced Watson for day duty—was forced to eject a drunken curiosity hound with a bronzed face who was roaming noisily about the house. While Sergeant Whoozis was thus busily engaged in his duty, I slipped out of 221B, darted around the corner as agilely as a man of my dimensions can dart, and waited for the Captain. He arrived in an instant, delighted with the success of his drunk act and only regretful that our schedule had not allowed him a really rousing fight with the sergeant.

  I can well understand the Captain’s getting lost and Ridgly’s wanderings last night. Reaching Hollywood Boulevard was not a simple task to us, however it might seem to that crow who’s always flying between places. But once there, we caught a red car marked West Los Angeles, and at its terminus found a cab which promptly deposited us in front of 11473 Shenandoah Road.

  It is a pleasing house, as some of you may know—small but new and comfortable, dating, I should judge, from Mr. Furness’ promotion to assistant professor. We rang the doorbell and waited. Just as we heard footsteps, Captain Agar whispered, “Take this!” and thrust the package into my hand.

  There was no time to argue, for the door was opening.

  “Miss Belle Craven?” I asked of the small old woman in the somewhat antique house dress.

  “Yes,” she said sharply. “What do you want? It isn’t about Them, is it?”

  “My friend here—” I began.

  “What friend?”

  I turned in astonishment. I was standing alone on the doorstep.

  Pause for effect. There. End of pause.

  “What do you want?” Miss Crav
en repeated.

  “I-ah-mrmfk—I have a package for you,” I managed to say, while my eyes looked vainly up and down Shenandoah Road for a sign of Captain Fairdale Agar.

  “Hm!” said Miss Craven. “I never in all my born days saw a messenger boy with a beard before.”

  “I am not a messenger boy,” I tried to explain in what I hoped was a dignified manner. “Not precisely, that is. I am, as a matter of fact, entrusted with a commission—”

  “Not by Them?” she interrupted hastily.

  “By someone whom I believe to be unknown to you at whose request I have undertaken to …” The elderly lady’s eyes were small but possessed of a certain gimlet quality. Under their fixed gaze, I was floundering badly and knew it. Moreover, although I know by heart every grammatical rule concerning relative clauses, I am always apt to bog down when I use them aloud. I bogged now.

  “Come on inside,” said Miss Craven abruptly. “We can’t have you standing there on the stoop all day. They’ll see you, and there’s no telling what They might do. Come in,” she repeated peremptorily.

  I followed her into a neat and trim little living room, furnished with a curious mixture of Roosevelt II Californian and Roosevelt I Kansan. The latter seemed as comfortable as it was dowdy; I chose a well-broken-in Morris chair and hesitated before it until my—should I say hostess?—had seated herself.

  “Sit down, young man,” she ordered, with complete disregard of the fact that I could not possibly be more than a year her junior. “Tell me all about it. And remember, They’ve tried to fool me before, and it can’t be done.”

  I sat down, and enjoyed a delicious moment of realizing how exceedingly comfortable a Morris chair is. Whatever else may be said of that unbelievable tangler of the utilitarian and the quasi-esthetic, William Morris undeniably knew how a man likes to sit. But Miss Craven’s reservedly hostile gaze quickly aroused me from any sense of bodily ease.

  As always when trying to resolve how best to approach a situation, I moved my hand unconsciously to my breast pocket. As I touched the inestimable herb there concealed, I recalled that I am, roughly speaking, a gentleman, and broke off to ask, “May I?”

  “Indeed you may not,” Miss Craven replied quite as casually as I had asked. “Get on with your story.”

  “You may remember,” I began more or less helplessly, “a certain Peter Black.”

  “I do not,” Miss Craven snapped.

  I tried to carry on. “He was, I believe, engaged to marry your sister Alice some time around 1917.”

  “Was he indeed? And I suppose you know more about my own sister than I do?”

  This was not going at all well. “Surely you remember,” I ventured, “why your sister left Kansas?”

  Miss Craven’s only answer to this question was to walk over to my chair, seize my beautiful beard firmly in both hands, and tug like all hell.

  I think I squealed. Perhaps I screamed or shrieked. At any rate—another for Woollcott’s collection—I made a noise; and a stronger and bolder man than I need not have been ashamed to quail under the purposeful vigor of that tug.

  “It was smart of Them,” she said, “to send a real beard this time. Go on, young man.”

  “With all due respect, madam, may I ask you just who the devil are They?”

  “We do not use foul language in this house,” she said.

  “I beg your pardon. But do you mean to imply that I am an emissary of some—”

  “I know what They want now,” she went on. “They’re trying to get revenge for the one of Them that was killed. Of course he deserved to die; I don’t blame Drew in the least after all he did to him like beating him up like that and then insulting him. Maybe that’s what should be done to all of Them—kill Them.”

  She said this calmly enough, but with conviction—a conviction that did not add to my comfort when I realized that I was, in her eyes, one of Them, whoever They might be. “About this box,” I said.

  “I never thought They’d be so bold as to send one of Them right into my own house here. Generally They just watch around corners and fences and when I look again They aren’t there any more. But one of Them right in here. … Maybe this was meant.”

  “It has your name on it,” I continued desperately, “and so we thought—”

  “‘We’l” She pounced on the word. “Then you admit—”

  Frantically I pulled the box from my pocket and thrust it at her. “Here,” I said.

  She took it almost reluctantly and turned her back on me to open it. She fumbled with the complex knot, then rose. “I need my glasses for this,” she said. “I never can find them. Now let me see …” She moved questingly toward the hall. With impolite eagerness, I rose and followed her. After all this, I was not going to be done out of seeing the contents of that box.

  “I think I left them in my wool jacket,” she was murmuring. “That would be in this closet here. … Oh, dear!” Her hand on the open door of the closet, she turned back to me with a surprising new friendliness. “You do look like a nice man, for one of Them. Won’t you pick up that box for me? My sciatica does bother me so when I stoop over.”

  The box had fallen well inside the closet. I was leaning over to pick it up when I felt an abrupt thump on my exposed tilted rear. I was incredulous at the thought of even such an eccentric old lady yielding to the temptation to kick me; but I was even more incredulous to turn and behold that I had been struck by the sharp closing of the closet door. Even as I gazed unseeing in the blackness of the little room, I heard the click of the key in the lock.

  Noisemaking, I quickly realized, could do me no good. There was presumably no one within earshot but the very person who had locked me in here. Uttering a brief prayer that Miss Craven did not add pyromania to her other peculiarities (for I failed to see how else she could harm me in my imprisonment), I calmly sat on the floor, leaned back against the wall, and lit a cigar. I must confess that I took a certain luxurious pleasure in the thought of polluting with my blessedly filthy habit even so small a part of an abstaining household.

  Outside the closet I could hear the dial clicks of a telephone and the excited voice of Miss Craven. Somehow I felt that those indistinguishable soprano yelps boded no good for me, but I cannot say I was worried. I was perfectly willing to sit there and see what happened, half certain that I should wake up before long.

  And then I remembered the box. I felt around in the darkness until my fingers hit it. Then I struck a match—and incidentally I thank you, Mr. Furness, for your acknowledgment of this one advantage in the vice of smoking—and tried to untie the string.

  Have you gentlemen ever tried untying a string with one hand while holding a match in the other? I finally surrendered to my helplessness, fished out my pocketknife, and solved the problem in the manner of the great Alexander.

  Gingerly I lifted the lid. I might, if I chose, expatiate upon my thoughts at this moment. What could this box hold that so strangely intertwined the fates of Peter Black, Captain Fairdale Agar, Belle Craven, Drew Furness, and my fat self? Could it be—and so on. But I spare you. I simply tell you that in that box lay what, if I had been one half so astute as the Messrs. Ridgly and Evans, both of whom, I see, know the secret already—

  I told you relative clauses bother me, and this one has me licked, which isn’t helping my climax any. But the tag line is this:

  In that cardboard box, tenderly imbedded in cotton, lay a neatly severed and duly dried human ear.

  Dr. Bottomley resumed his seat.

  “That,” said Lieutenant Jackson feelingly, “is a hell of a place to end a story. You leave yourself locked up in a closet with a human ear, while a madwoman is telephoning to God knows what. How did you get back here safe and sound?”

  Dr. Bottomley frowned. “You can thank Professor Furness for the incomplete nature of my narrative. Its closing portion parallels his own story so closely as to ruin my effect. Damned unsporting of him, I call it.”

  “You mean—”

/>   “I got back here the same way Furness did—in a police car, after invoking the patronage of Lieutenant Finch. It was the police that Miss Craven was phoning. I don’t know what she told them, but they seemed to be under the impression that I was an elderly degenerate who went around molesting helpless old ladies. (Helpless! Mrmfk.) I gather that there’s been a tidy wave of sex murders here in Los Angeles lately, and a nice shiny new suspect is needed every so often. It looked as though I was elected, until Finch explained who I was and that I was in New York when Anna Sosoyeva was killed—whoever she was. Very decent man, this Finch of yours, though I can’t say I liked his parting shot. I said how grateful I was for his clearing me, and he up and replied, ‘That’s all right. You mightn’t think it to read the papers, but there are other murders beside Sosoyeva’s.”

  “Now just for the record, gentlemen,” Jackson said hesitantly, “is this damned ear something more out of Holmes?”

  “Not only the ear, Lieutenant,” Jonadab Evans hastened to explain. “The box, the seafaring adventurer, the wicked sister—they’re all straight out of The Adventure of the Cardboard Box.”

  “And something more else,” Otto Federhut added. “Did you observe, Herr Doktor, the name of your Captain? Are not Fairdale and Agar to you familiar names?”

  “Hell and death!” Bottomley exclaimed. “I’m not being bright, am I? Of course. Elementary.”

  “Before the Lieutenant explodes,” said Harrison Ridgly, “I might explain that my colleagues refer to two others of the unpublished reminiscences of John Watson, M.D. Mr. Fairdale Hobbs was a lodger with one Mrs. Warren for whom Holmes arranged an affair—‘a simple matter.’ Dr. Moore Agar was a Harley Street physician, ‘whose dramatic introduction to Holmes,’ Watson promised, ‘I may some day recount.’ The rogue of a chronicler, I need hardly add, lied in his teeth. I trust,” he murmured, “that no one has encountered today a gentleman named Moore Hobbs?”