by Bill Peschel
“You are a wizard, Mr. Shomes,” said he.
I shot a sidelong glance at Shomes, which he studiously avoided.
“How on earth did you find it?” asked Basker when he had recovered from his surprise.
“It was a pretty little problem,” said Shomes, “and one in which there was plenty of field for imagination and deduction. The simple explanation is this. You had arranged a match with another chess player, and consequently you were very excited about it, and when one of the pieces from your set happened to be missing, you jumped at the conclusion that your opponent had something to do with its disappearance. You were wrong. Chess players are generally above that sort of thing. I examined the set of men, and adhering to the tops of some of the pawns, I found small particles of tobacco. You said you did not smoke yourself, but that your son did. I examined the tobacco ash in the various ashtrays and from my knowledge of tobacco ashes, I knew that the tobacco smoked was of a particular kind, which is only sold in cartridges, and is generally inserted in the pipe by some means of a pipe filler. Now some people, I have observed, do not trouble to procure a pipe filler, but push the tobacco into the pipe with the finger or pencil. It struck me that the pawns from your set of men would make excellent fillers, by holding the base in the palm of the hand and using the top to press the tobacco into the pipe. You stated that your son smoked tobacco from cartridges, and further that he kept his unsmoked cartridges in the teapot. I examined the teapot, and found the missing pawn! Viola tout! Now, Mr. Basker,” concluded Shomes, “you have your cherished set complete, and I wish you luck in your great match to-morrow.”
And after settling up certain little financial details too sordid to be dealt with here, Shomes and I made our way back to Baker Street.
The Return of Herlock Sholmes: The Case of the Missing Name Plates
“A. Donan Coyle”
Parodies found in university publications tend to rely a lot on in-jokes, and this one—from the Feb. 21 edition of the University Missourian, the student newspaper at the University of Missouri—is no exception. Despite what the story says, the Greek letters Pi Beta Phi (ΠΒΦ) refer to the international sorority founded in 1867 as a distaff counterpart to men’s Greek-letter fraternities. Nicknamed “Mizzou,” the university was established in 1839 and is the oldest public university west of the Mississippi. Women were admitted in 1871, but four decades later they were still treated as if they were living at home. They had to obey curfew, required chaperones everywhere they went, and could not receive gentleman callers without permission.
“They say that I am a candidate for the ‘can’t come back club,’ Watson,” said my friend Herlock Sholmes, as we sat one night in our lodgings in Caker street. The night was cold and damp. Outside the streets glistened from the recent deluge. Now and then fitful spatterings of rain could be heard on the roof. Considering the night, my friend was in an unusually talkative mood. He was nervous and excited, however, and I suspected that he had secretly taken an injection of the hated drug that had such a hold on him.
“My health has been such as not to permit me to handle any cases recently,” Sholmes continued. “There have been many that have interested me immensely, however. Just today I received a note from a woman who is evidently in some great distress. The case interests me, and I am almost tempted to do what I can for her. See what you make of this,” and he passed the note to me.
It was written in a girlish hand on paper of fine texture. It was evidently written in a hurry. It was unusually appealing.
“Dear Mr. Sholmes,” the note ran, “I am in great trouble. Won’t you help me? I do not want to give the case to the Mitchell Yard force. I want to keep it as quiet as possible; so I make this appeal to you. Yours truly, Lady Betty Phipps.”
That was all the note said.
“Well,” said Sholmes, “what do you think of it, Watson?”
“The writer was evidently laboring under some mental strain,” I replied, trying to make something out of the written words.
“You are right there,” he replied. “And I have written to the author to come here and explain her case to me. And if I am not mistaken there she is now,” he said, as a step sounded on the stairs outside our lodgings. A knock sounded hesitatingly on our door. At the invitation to come in, the door opened slowly, and a woman of unusual beauty entered and closed the door behind her.
“This is Mr. Sholmes?” she said to my friend, as he arose to greet her.
“Yes,” he replied. “This is my friend, Watson. You are Lady Betty Phipps, I presume?”
“I am,” she answered in a low tone. “I came to see you on a very strange matter. I would rather that we talked alone.” I rose to go, but Sholmes assured her that she could speak frankly before me.
“I live,” she began, after being reassured that she need not mind my presence, “in Strike street in the south part of the city. As you may know, we have a crest on our door consisting of three Greek letters. This crest has been handed down in the family many years, and it has always been highly prized as an heirloom. Two nights ago, someone stole this nameplate from the door of our house, and since that time we have heard nothing of it. I do not know why anyone should want to steal it. It had no especial value. It was made of brass on wood.”
“You suspect no one?” Sholmes inquired, meditatively.
“Not a soul. It would be of no value to anyone outside our immediate family.”
“You say the crest consisted of three Greek letters?”
“Yes, the letters Pi Beta Phi. It was an old crest that we have used many years. I myself don’t know what it signifies. It is some motto that one of our ancestors used.”
“Interesting, and very mysterious,” muttered Sholmes. “You have aroused my interest to a great degree. I think we will have some difficulty in finding the culprit. The very simplicity of the case makes it doubly difficult.”
Lady Betty, after the assurance of my friend that he would do what he could to recover the crest, left.
“What do you think about it, Watson?” he asked, after Lady Betty had gone.
“I see nothing to it,” I replied. “The crest is gone, and that settles it. I can’t see what anyone would want with that old relic of aristocracy.”
“But you don’t get the point,” he said, exasperated. “The crest was evidently stolen at night.”
“Sholmes,” I cried. “I don’t see how you get that from what Lady Betty told us.”
“Very simple. You see, the thief, or whatever he was, would come at night to avoid being seen, and while the inmates of the house were out at some social function.”
“Marvelous,” I muttered, amazed at the acumen of my great friend. “But what does that signify,” I inquired.
Sholmes said nothing; he seemed buried in thought. I retired in a short while and soon forgot about the case.
In the middle of the night I was awakened suddenly by a noise in the next room. I got up and saw my friend playing the old violin that he always used when working out an especially abstruse puzzle.
“Come on to bed, Herlock,” I said. “Don’t keep me awake all night.” But he said nothing. When I got up in the morning Sholmes was gone. I found a note on the table which read as follows:
“Dear Watson: Go to Baird’s manual and find out all you can about Greek letter organizations. Also look up the psychology of the bootblack.”
I went to the library and spent most of the morning reading volumes on these two subjects. But I saw nothing that could possibly aid us in this case, I rarely questioned my friend’s methods, however, and went on about my work.
I returned to our rooms that night and found Sholmes sitting before the fireplace playing his fiddle and smoking the inevitable pipe.
“Did you find anything?” he inquired as soon as I entered the room.
“I got a lot of junk on those things you said to look up, but I saw nothing that could possibly have any bearing on our case.”
“We will see about tha
t later. In the meantime get me something to eat and be prepared for a dangerous night’s work,” he said, dismissing me.
“You can’t be on the track of the person who stole the nameplates already?” I cried in amazement. He only smiled in that enigmatic way of his, and I went to the dining room.
When I returned I found Sholmes in a raincoat. He was just thrusting a pistol into one of the pockets of the coat.
“Put on your coat, and don’t forget your pistol,” he said. I got my coat and pistol, and we went forth into the night.
It was drizzling dismally. The streets were deserted. Hailing a four-wheeler, Sholmes gave the driver some direction that I did not understand and climbed into the cab. We drove over paved streets for some time, and finally hit a dirt road. We could hear the horses’ feet sloshing in the mud.
We finally stopped under a street light, and I turned to speak to Sholmes. But I cried out in amazement instead. For sitting next to me was a disreputable looking fellow who had the appearance of a bohunk section hand. The person put up his hand for silence.
“Hush, Watson, you fool,” the person said. “This is Shomes.”
“The disguise is perfect,” I said.
“How do you know what I mean to represent?” he inquired.
“I don’t,” I said. “But in the stories the disguise must always be perfect.”
We descended from the cab. Sholmes went into a dark open lot, and began to make his way cautiously across it. Presently a light shone through the trees, and we came upon a little hut. We crept close to this and hid under the window.
“You wait here. I am going inside,” Sholmes whispered. “If I don’t come out in ten minutes, come in after me.”
He then went around to the front of the cabin, pushed open the door and went in. I heard no sound come from the hut, and I wondered what sort of place he had blundered into.
After waiting nine minutes for my friend, I went in after him. I saw him kneeling in the middle of the floor in a bare room with only a table with a lamp on it and a small pallet in one corner for furniture.
“Aha! Shoe polish!” he was muttering as I pushed open the door. He carefully picked some specks from the floor, and put them into an envelope. Feeling my presence he whirled quickly, the pistol in his hand.
“My, you gave me a turn,” he cried. “Is my ten minutes up?”
“It is.”
“Let us be gone, then.”
When we got back to our rooms, Sholmes went to his desk and wrote two letters. He rang for a messenger and told him to deliver them to the mail box. Without a word about our expedition he went to bed.
He had left when I got up, and was gone all day. That night we were sitting before the fireplace. Sholmes had said nothing about the matter since his return.
“Well, Watson, I think our little case of the missing nameplate is about explained.”
A foot sounded on the stair. Sholmes went to the door, and a small man, evidently a Greek, came in. He had a package under his arm.
“Have you got it?” Sholmes immediately inquired. The man nodded his head. Sholmes took the package and unwrapped it. On the table lay a large piece of wood with three Greek letters in brass on it.
“The first thing I did after getting the details of the case from Lady Betty was to get a motive of the theft. That is the first thing to do, you know, Watson, in working out a mystery,” said Sholmes, after the Greek had left, explaining the case to me. “I went to the library and got out a Greek dictionary and put down all the words that these letters could stand for. I finally hit upon the combination that I thought would explain the mystery. I then went to the directory and looked up those persons whom I thought could be connected with the case. We took the excursion that you remember, and there I found some shoe blacking. That gave me the clue I wanted. After returning home I wrote to the man living there and told him to bring back the nameplate that he stole from the house. I took a long shot on it. As you see by the article there, I hit it right. So the next thing to do is to return the nameplate to Lady Betty, and the case is ended, and you can collect your data in your notebook.”
“But Sholmes,” I cried, “what were the three words that the Greek letters stood for?”
“SHOES SHINED HERE,” replied Sholmes, and went into his room to bed.
In Baker Street
Ralph Bingham
Another important source of entertainment, before movies and radio established a grip on the American attention span, was the traveling platform speaker. Men and women would tour the country to tell comic stories, recount the momentous events they were a part of, or advocate for social change.
If this parody has the ring of a vaudeville act, that might be because it appeared in the November issue of The Luyceumite and Talent, a magazine that promoted speakers for the Lyceum circuit. This was a movement that lasted from the mid-19th century to the early 20th that sponsored public programs and entertainments to improve the social, intellectual, and moral fabric of society. Ralph Bingham (1870-1925), who wrote the magazine’s “The Spotlight Column,” where this appeared, was a popular platform speaker and humorist.
Antrim is a township in eastern Pennsylvania. “Pennsyltuckey” is a slur implying that the land between Pittsburgh to the west and Philadelphia to the east is as rural—and therefore as backward in politics and intellect—as Kentucky.
Dr. Watson: “Mr. Bones, a newspaper in Phillamaclink, Pennsyltuckey, says that F. Singhi has skedoodled to parts unknown, even unknown to a lyceum bureau route clerk.”
Padlock Bones: “Your last statement is indescribably unpossible, however, after shooting a quart of elixir into my arm I’ll tell you how to find Mr. Singhi.”
Dr. Watson: “His name is F. Singhi.”
Padlock Bones: “Aha, it’s easy. F in music means forty; Singhi means he’s a tenor; Phillamaclink means Antrim Bureau. You’ll find him getting “40 per” singing tenor with a male quartet for the Antrim Bureau. Quick, the dope.”
And so it was.
Dr. Watson: “Mar-vole-us.”
From The Diary of Sherlock Holmes
Maurice Baring
We first met Maurice Baring (1874-1945) when we published “Sherlock Holmes in Russia” in the 1905-1909 volume. Then, we focused on his experiences as a travel writer and war correspondent, particularly in Russia, where he reported that “Conan Doyle’s books were universally popular. I never came across an officer who had not heard of Sherlock Holmes.” Back home in England, he continued to champion that country’s literature, especially Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and a then-unknown playwright named Anton Chekhov. He also wrote plays, poems, and 13 novels. Many of them are still in print, including this story that Washington Post book critic Michael Dirda called “wildly funny.” It was published in The Eye-witness on Nov. 23 and republished in Lost Diaries (1913).
Baker Street, January 1.—Starting a diary in order to jot down a few useful incidents which will be of no use to Watson. Watson very often fails to see that an unsuccessful case is more interesting from a professional point of view than a successful case. He means well.
January 6.—Watson has gone to Brighton for a few days, for change of air. This morning quite an interesting little incident happened which I note as a useful example of how sometimes people who have no powers of deduction nevertheless stumble on the truth for the wrong reason. (This never happens to Watson, fortunately.) Lestrade called from Scotland Yard with reference to the theft of a diamond and ruby ring from Lady Dorothy Smith’s wedding presents. The facts of the case were briefly these: On Thursday evening such of the presents as were jewels had been brought down from Lady Dorothy’s bedroom to the drawing-room to be shown to an admiring group of friends. The ring was amongst them. After they had been shown, the jewels were taken upstairs once more and locked in the safe. The next morning the ring was missing. Lestrade, after investigating the matter, came to the conclusion that the ring had not been stolen, but had either been dropped in the drawing-room, or repl
aced in one of the other cases; but since he had searched the room and the remaining cases, his theory so far received no support. I accompanied him to Eaton Square to the residence of Lady Middlesex, Lady Dorothy’s mother.
While we were engaged in searching the drawing-room, Lestrade uttered a cry of triumph and produced the ring from the lining of the arm-chair. I told him he might enjoy the triumph, but that the matter was not quite so simple as he seemed to think. A glance at the ring had shown me not only that the stones were false, but that the false ring had been made in a hurry. To deduce the name of its maker was of course child’s play. Lestrade or any pupil of Scotland Yard would have taken for granted it was the same jeweller who had made the real ring. I asked for the bridegroom’s present, and in a short time I was interviewing the jeweller who had provided it. As I thought, he had made a ring, with imitation stones (made of the dust of real stones), a week ago, for a young lady. She had given no name and had fetched and paid for it herself. I deduced the obvious fact that Lady Dorothy had lost the real ring, her uncle’s gift, and, not daring to say so, had had an imitation ring made. I returned to the house, where I found Lestrade, who had called to make arrangements for watching the presents during their exhibition.
I asked for Lady Dorothy, who at once said to me:
“The ring was found yesterday by Mr. Lestrade.”
“I know,” I answered, “but which ring?”
She could not repress a slight twitch of the eyelids as she said: “There was only one ring.”
I told her of my discovery and of my investigations.
“This is a very odd coincidence, Mr. Holmes,” she said. “Some one else must have ordered an imitation. But you shall examine my ring for yourself.” Where-upon she fetched the ring, and I saw it was no imitation. She had of course in the meantime found the real ring.