The Case of the Baker Street Irregulars

by Anthony Boucher

  Drew Furness had risen to his feet. “Doctor,” he requested, “may I have the floor for a moment?”

  “Certainly.”

  “I wish to go on record as protesting this stupid calumny against my aunt. That we, a group of intelligent men, should sit here listening to such infamous—”

  “I think,” Harrison Ridgly III interrupted drawlingly, “that it is my turn next. Contain yourself in patience, Mr. Furness; you may soon have the opportunity of seeing how well the doctor likes to have his own nerves plucked.”

  And with this cheering preamble, the editor of Sirrah took his place before the company.

  Chapter 13

  COLONEL WARBURTON’S MADNESS

  being the narrative of Harrison Ridgly III

  I too prefer to speak my little piece. It is not that I seek the vigor of extemporaneous self-expression desired by our good Dr. Bottomley; it is merely that I am on an editorial vacation, and the thought of needlessly approaching a typewriter terrifies me.

  I shall omit the details of breakfast so lovingly dwelt upon by our previous speakers. Mrs. Hudson, with all due respect, strikes me as being that most highly praised abomination, a “good plain cook,” who bears somewhat the same relation to my Gustl as a U.P. news cameraman bears to Steichen or Weston. But Gustl is in New York, and there is a legend to the effect that man must eat to keep alive. Having always had a due regard for superstitious ritual, I ate, but I prefer to say no more on the subject.

  I had slept late, and it was almost noon when I finished breakfast and settled down to an idle period of musing—for even reading is far too reminiscent of editorial duties. The matter of my musing is not germane to the narrative, though close kin to the narrator.

  You will pardon an occasional cryptic turn to my speech? There was a time not long past when life was clear to me. A source of amusement, yes, but of good clean fun—as absurd, as obscene, and as obvious as the antics of a burlesque comedian. Now I know that I was a fool—that the performance I am watching is rather that of the Grand Guignol, where farce and terror follow so closely on each other’s heels that horror congeals the spine still trembling with laughter. And from such charnel hysteria it is some partial escape to confuse one’s listeners in the hope that one may oneself be confused, lest one see too clearly.

  But let me interrupt this chain of maundering as my own thoughts were interrupted—by the sound of the telephone and the voice of Mrs. Hudson. My caller was a stranger to me, though one whose name and accomplishments were familiar, as doubtless they are to most of you. He was Gordon Withers, M.D., proprietor, to use a vulgar term, of the most highly esteemed rest home in this abode of dementia and neurosis. I was surprised by the call. I should be the last to deny my perchance even urgent need of Dr. Withers’ services, but I failed to understand how he could have become aware of that need.

  He quickly disillusioned me. It is too often a mistake to assume that an unusual event must have a personal significance. Instead of regarding me as a possible subject for the practice of his soothing arts, Dr. Withers wanted me rather as an instrument—a vulcanized-rubber pacifier for one of his patients, warranted not to split.

  Teddy Fircombe is an odd little individual who was for many months a hanger-on of the “Sirrah” offices. I had never heard a word concerning Teddy’s past, his family, or anything else about him save his firm conviction that he could run “Sirrah” singlehanded. I don’t even know how he came to affix himself to us—I think vaguely that Denny acquired him one night on a pubcrawl, and not knowing what to do with him upon awaking the next morning, simply took him along to the office. Teddy, to hear his own most candid self-analysis, could draw better than Denny, write better than any half dozen of our biggest names, and edit far better than I. Moreover, he Knew What the Public Wanted. He was such a bumptious little man, so cocksure of his talents, that we took him to our hearts. He was a fixed point in a world of flux. His vulgar assurance in the midst of our moody pallor made him seem like a Hogarth character who had wandered into a Thurber drawing, and he delighted us. And out of each gross of his fluent suggestions, we might find one which would prove useful.

  His great value, however, developed when Denny invented Colonel Warbuton. Most of you, I trust, are familiar with that outrageous little gentleman who wanders through the pages of “Sirrah” with one beady eye fixed on the dread Red menace and the other stroking the rump of a lusty wench. (This metaphor, I realize, seems to give him the ocular stalk of a lobster; but I hope my meaning is nonetheless clear.) This sturdy little supporter of the status quo ante bellum ac post coitum—to whom, I believe, “Sirrah” owes more of its circulation than to any other single factor save the Denny Girl—this contemptibly delightful figure was an exact reproduction of most of the body and some of the mind of Teddy Fircombe.

  And now Teddy, the fixed point, the immutable constant—Teddy, the Normal Man, who guffawed at the pale neuroses of civilization—Teddy Fircombe had come to Dr. Gordon Withers.

  The story of Teddy’s affliction Dr. Withers declined to tell over the phone. He would only say that Mr. Fircombe had heard that I was in town, and that he felt the need of some friend—some connection, he had said, with the old time when things were all right—to stand by him in this hour of peril. Dr. Withers had acceded to this request, and thought my presence might well simplify his own task of bringing the patient back to normality.

  I resolved to go. Why, it is hard to tell you. I should be the first to protest that humanitarian motives are rare and implausible sources for my actions; and I am not given to sentimental regard for a figure of fun simply because his mock presentment has indirectly swelled my salary. I suppose, if I must analyze, that it was a gesture of escape. I had come here to 221B to escape what is, with all due respect, no concern of yours, only to find myself once more involved in a—in events of moment. The sad dilemma of Colonel Warburton-Fircombe could in no wise touch me. To leave this house for Dr. Withers’ sanitarium was to step out of the twisted husk that is myself into a new impartial freedom—to be once more the spectator I was.

  The whisky, please, Mrs. Hudson. Thank you.

  Now I am not an addict of adventure, nor have I ever considered personal precariousness a satisfactory vehicle of escape. Escape must be attained in physical comfort and mental detachment. So I contrived no convolute plans or stratagems to elude police surveillance. I simply spoke to Sergeant Hinkle (the good Watson’s understudy) and explained to him that a physician had requested my presence with his patient.

  The Sergeant has that innate sense of disbelief which so often passes for shrewd skepticism among the unintelligent. He verified my story by calling Dr. Withers back, then secured authorization from Lieutenant Finch, and finally arranged for a police chauffeur to drive me to the sanitarium.

  The drive was pleasant. The day by now had grown hot enough to justify me in wearing a new model of slack suit, contrived by a “Sirrah” designer after some of the more extreme theories of Elizabeth Hawes. The effect, though perhaps startling to the untutored eye of the official driver, brought to me a certain contentment. I was wearing a garment I had never before worn, driving with a man I had never before met, through streets I had never before seen, to a destination I had never before reached. I had escaped from everything save certain cardiac cicatrices, if I may apply the vocabulary of modern medicine—with your permission, Doctor—to the concepts of outworn romanticism.

  The sanitarium lies somewhere to the west of here. I did not bother to follow our route closely; but I imagine that it is situated not far from the scene of Dr. Bottomley’s incarceration in the closet. It is constructed in a bastard style—offspring of the rape of Our Lady of the Angels by a modern German theorist. Esthetically outrageous, but nonetheless—it was a warm day and I had escaped—faintly pleasing.

  The police chauffeur accompanied me inside, but had the grace to wait in the outer office when I was shown into Dr. Withers’ sanctum. What the doctor is like, I cannot say; I saw only his
professional manner, which is astutely blended of one part self-confidence, one part human kindness, and one part acidulous arrogance. Add a dash of bitters and stir profoundly.

  Much more noticeable in the room when I entered was a stenographer—a tall slim girl whose hair I would not demean by comparing it with honey. Even as she typed records from charts, she infused her each movement with a grace of a Danilova. My mental comment, I must confess, was a note which read: eminently stuprable. But the girl finished her last transcript almost as I entered, and left without looking at me, abandoning me to no greater visual consolation than that afforded by the chromium smoking gadgets on the doctor’s desk.

  I had expected to find Teddy there in all his Warburtonian vigor and vulgarity, and said as much to the doctor. He frowned and went on to explain the situation at as great and detailed length as though he were expounding a unique operation to a group of eminent but awed colleagues.

  In mercifully fewer words, his account was this: Teddy was not, as I had hastily supposed, a patient at the sanitarium. He had simply come to the office that morning and asked to see Dr. Withers on an urgent matter—so urgent, he informed the nurse, that his sanity hung in the balance. The nurse was impressed by his manner, but even more deeply impressed (and in quite a different way) by his resemblance to Colonel Warburton. She had come half agiggle into Dr. Withers’ office; and the physician, curious to see the fleshly facsimile of so famous a character, had agreed to listen to him.

  When the story was told and Withers had sent for me, he had asked Teddy to wait outside while he attended to other patients. When I was announced, he had told the office nurse to show Teddy in at the same time—to which the surprised nurse replied that the funny little man had left the building as soon as Dr. Withers had shown him out of the office. Why Mr. Fircombe had demanded my presence so urgently and then disappeared once I had been summoned, Dr. Withers found himself unable to surmise.

  At first he was reluctant to tell me what the dire matter was which had reduced the Normal Man to the verge of madness. But the entire situation was so unparalleled in his professional experience, so difficult to match with exact analogy from the code of ethics, that he finally told me Teddy’s story, in the hope that I who knew the man might throw some light on the confused affair.

  As I have said, I knew nothing of Teddy’s private life. It did not surprise me, however, to learn that he had married some fifteen years ago and had a son of an age which indicated the strictest dispatch in the fulfillment of marital ritual. Nor was I surprised to learn that Teddy, upon becoming a widower two years ago, had promptly married a much younger and exceedingly beautiful woman, who had been equally punctual in perpetuating the Fircombe line.

  Devotion to this resultant infant was, one gathered, the chief sport and occupation of the Fircombe household. Its mother adored it. Its father adored it. Its nurse adored it. Only its elder half brother was ever known to waver in this orgy of adoration; and even he, apparently, paid the infant its due respect most of the time.

  Life for Teddy was blissful—in the sound and normal fashion which he would most approve—until the nurse reported to him an incredible episode. Furious in his disbelief, he fired the woman. But later he had the evidence of his own eyes. He beheld—

  Harrison Ridgly III suspended his narrative and paused with a twisted half-smile on his face. “Yes, Herr Federhut?” he said gently.

  Federhut ran his hand through his shaggy white mane in a gesture of incredulity. “I know that it seems madness in me as well,” he said. “But may I state what your Colonel Warburton told the doctor that he had seen?”

  Ridgly nodded. “Go ahead. I am certain that your astuteness will delight and confound the Lieutenant.”

  “He told the doctor …” Federhut hesitated as though what he was about to say were too outrageous for utterance. “He said that his wife was a Vampyr—that he had with his very eyes seen her to suck the blood from the neck of her own small infant.”

  The silence in the room was broken by the sudden glurp of Sergeant Watson inadvertently swallowing a Lifesaver.

  “Look here,” Jackson expostulated. “This is too much even for Holmes—this is oogy-boogy from a Universal B.”

  “I beg your pardon, Lieutenant,” Jonadab Evans said, “but Holmes did encounter more than one case which seemed on its surface to be of supernatural origin. One of these was the curious adventure of Robert Ferguson, who had been three-quarter for Richmond when Watson played Rugby for Blackheath. The same situation—adolescent son of first marriage, young second wife, mother accused of vampirism on her own child.”

  “The explanation,” Federhut added, “is that the mother was sucking from her child’s blood stream a poison by the jealous adolescent administered.”

  “For further details, vide,” Drew Furness concluded, “The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire.”

  In reply there came from Jackson only a cryptic noise.

  “And you, my dear Doctor,” Ridgly observed to Bottomley, “have you no comment to add on this singular coincidence?”

  Dr. Bottomley seemed to rouse himself with difficulty from an unwonted absorption. “I beg your pardon,” he said. “I was thinking—but no matter. Mrmfk. That is all of your story, Ridgly?” He sounded almost eager.

  “No,” said Harrison Ridgly succinctly.

  By now, naturally, I had come to the conclusion that Teddy had been indulging in a peculiarly atrocious form of legpulling of which I had never imagined him capable. I was not annoyed; the episode, absurd though it was, had at least provided me with a respite from the very real mysteries of 221B. But there was no use in prolonging the farce. I resolved to close the subject and to depart as soon as I could.

  Of course one could hardly tell the sincere doctor that he had been immeasurably behoaxed. He had evolved two beautiful alternative theories, one to explain Mrs. Fircombe’s incredible behavior as fact and the other predicated on the notion that it was all a delusion of Teddy’s. Both, I may add with cautious euphemism, involved a somewhat debatable analogy between blood and another almost equally vital fluid. I had not the heart to point out that the solution to this case history lay in a less austere authority than Havelock Ellis.

  The re-entrance of the blonde secretary, who laid some papers on the desk and retired with ineffable silent grace, provided me with a cue. I brushed aside the doctor’s apologies for having brought me in quest of the wild goose, and added that I should get in touch with him again shortly to learn what more he had heard of Teddy and also to obtain the address of his employment agency. If I was to be here long, I explained, I might need a secretary; and I was more than anxious to learn where one could obtain young ladies with such hair, such bodies, and above all such grace of movement.

  It took a moment’s hesitation before he could decide to treat my query as genuine. Then he hemmed a bit and finally confessed that the blonde was not, strictly speaking, an employee at all. She was a patient—rather a singular case. A girl who had suffered a severe physical shock, so terrible that for a time her sanity had been in doubt. She had slowly recovered her balance under Dr. Withers’ care, but with complete oblivion of all that had gone before the shock. The work she did here was of the same nature as her employment before the disaster. Its purpose was therapeutic—to re-establish her, so to speak, in her former life; but so far the experiment had met with no success. She was in every respect sane and normal; but the amnesia persisted. She was unable even to recognize the closest friends of her former existence.

  Whereupon the doctor went on to say that he knew a friend of mine—had in fact seen him quite recently. Dr. Rufus Bottomley, whose practice he had shared in long-dead days in Waterloo, Iowa. He hoped that I would give his regards to Dr. Bottomley.

  He hedged and hesitated until I realized that what he truly wanted, beneath all this verbal subterfuge, was some inside information on our murder, of which he must have read newspaper accounts. Despite the freakish cases of abnormality which he handled
as daily routine, despite his reputed knowledge of more inside scandal than any other six men in the film colony, he was as eager as a shopgirl for good fresh dirt.

  I toyed with the temptation to invent certain tidbits to delight him, but I was afraid that Dr. Bottomley might inadvertently upset my wax-apple cart when next he saw his friend. So I confined myself to detailing a few of our more outlandish clues which have not received due newspaper attention, and ended by stating in all truth that I for one had not the remotest notion of who had killed Stephen Worth.

  From the doorway behind me came a single sharp scream and a sliding thud. I turned to see the lovely blond patientsecretary lying like a shapeless lump on the floor, the papers she had been carrying now scattered about and over her like the leaves on the Babes in the Wood.

  I stood by with the shrinking futility of the laymen while Dr. Withers and two nurses competently attended to the girl, and my police chauffeur, drawn by the scream, watched the scene dubiously.

  The blonde delight recovered consciousness quickly. But consciousness was all that she had recovered. Her mind, Dr. Withers told me in tones of quite unprofessional shock, had fallen back to its state immediately after her tragedy.

  And all, it would seem, because Colonel Warburton had staged a stupid hoax and I had mentioned Stephen Worth.

  Harrison Ridgly III concluded his narrative with an air of malicious languor, and resumed his seat. Almost before he was seated, Lieutenant Jackson had come to the table and was facing the group.

  “My turn,” he said curtly. “Now those first two stories were strange enough. They offer lots of possibilities for consideration, even aside from all those Holmes angles you’re so bright at digging up. But they can’t be checked. No independent observer saw Grossmann the nasty Nazi, or Captain Fairdale Agar, who found a human ear in a Main Street brawl. This one’s different. I know Dr. Withers by reputation. He’s tops in his profession and as reliable a witness as you could ask for. And, leaving the Colonel Warburton angle out of the question for the moment, when one of Dr. Withers’ patients suffers a serious relapse on hearing the name of Stephen Worth, it’s damned important. All right. Now does any of you know anything about a girl connected with Worth who could be this mysterious blonde?”