Sherlock Holmes Great War Parodies and Pastiches I

by Bill Peschel

“But I ignored that,” declared Holmes, “and I deduced it entirely from the lady’s umbrella and rubbers.”

  “Marvelous, Holmes, marvelous!” exclaimed Watson, thrilled to the uttermost fiber of his appreciation.

  “You have lost something, Madam,” said Holmes, shaking his saturnine forefinger at her.

  “Good land, Sir! how did you know that? Was it in the papers?”

  “No. But I’m sure you’re not mixed up in a murder case, and there’s no other crime except robbery; so I know it’s theft. The article you lost is—”

  “Oh, Holmes,” exclaimed the Thinking Machine querulously, “let the lady herself tell what she has lost! She knows more about it than you do.”

  “I am not sure of that,” returned Holmes dubiously, a grim smile lighting up his dark face; “but go on, Madam, tell us what you do know, or think you know, of the case.”

  “Well, Sir, you see I am a widow.”

  “I deduced you were a widow,” put in Holmes, “as soon as I saw your wedding ring and your black crepe veil.”

  “Marvelous, Holmes, marvelous!” observed Watson a trifle mechanically.

  “You also deduced that she read The Ladies’ Own Ledger,” said Vidocq. “Can you prove that?”

  Languidly Holmes lifted his weary forefinger and pointed to the jabot at the lady’s throat. Too true, it was made of a Turkish washcloth, deftly plaited into shape, and worked in cute little designs with red marking cotton. It had been described in that very month’s paper, and they all knew it.

  “And how did you know she was ant suffrage?” asked the Thinking Machine.

  “So many dinky frills on her petticoat, which I saw flippering about as she crossed the street.”

  “And that she was parsim—”

  But Lecoq’s rude speech was stayed by Raffles, who clapped his hands over the speaker’s mouth.

  “Oh, fiddle strings!” cried Holmes. “If she had on such extravagant lingerie, she could afford a taxi, and as she didn’t have one she—she was—walking for her health,” he concluded, as the lady stared straight at him.

  “My name is Mrs. Plummer,” she began, “Mrs. Ezra J. Plummer. But I suppose, Sir, you would have known that too, if I hadn’t told you.”

  “Of course,” responded Holmes carelessly. “Go on.”

  “Well, I’ve lived alone ever since Ezra died, nineteen years come next June, and I’ve kept my house and home just as it always was. I ain’t great for changing my furniture with every whip-around of the fashion. The plush chairs in my parlor are just as good now as the day we bought ’em; two of ’em red and three green and the sofa red. Black ebony frames, they have, picked out with gilt, and a neater parlor suit ain’t to be found.”

  “Charming set of furniture,” said Raffles politely.

  “Tasty idea that, of red and green alternating. And you’ve lost those chairs, Madam?”

  “No, Sir, burglars don’t take chairs. What I’ve lost is a work of art, the chief ornament of my parlor, my choicest possession. A treasure, indeed!” Mrs. Plummer broke down completely and began to cry.

  The four French gentlemen, being of sympathetic and emotional dispositions, wept also. The Thinking Machine wriggled uneasily in his chair.

  President Holmes gazed out of the window with neatly folded arms. “A work of art!” he hissed. “Ha, a parallel case to the Mona Lisa! What was it, Madam, a picture, a statue?”

  “Ah, how clever you are!” she exclaimed. “You’ve almost hit it. Try again!”

  “A statuette, an antique, a curio, a bronze?” the eager detectives suggested one after another.

  “No!” exclaimed Mrs. Plummer. “You’ll never guess! It was a Rogers Group.”

  “Rogers Group! What is that?” asked Lecoq, for the fame of the Great Grouper had never penetrated his benighted land.

  “Oh, Sir,” exclaimed Mrs. Plummer, “it was one of his choicest designs! It was Weighing the Baby, and—oh, if you could see the old doctor peering through his glasses, and the nurse with her clasped hands, and the infant—ah, the infant!—gone!”

  Again she broke down and wept as women will when babies are concerned. And the four Frenchmen sympathetically and copiously followed her lead.

  “Ah, a kidnapping case!” exclaimed Luther Trant; while the Thinking Machine inquired tensely:

  “How much did the baby weigh?”

  But President Holmes interrupted. “Proceed, Madam, to give us the details of the robbery.”

  “Well, Sirs, it was this way. I went out to the Sewing Society this afternoon, and of course I locked the house all up as usual. The Rogers Group was in the parlor, on a marble-topped table with a scarf of garnet plush. Sirs, every parlor window was protected by safety catches, and the front door was tightly locked; indeed, all the windows and doors were securely fastened.”

  “In a word, that parlor was hermetically sealed!” declared Luther Trant sententiously.

  “Ha! Hermetically sealed!” cried Rouletabille. That is all a case needs to make it interesting!”

  “I left at two o’clock,” went on Mrs. Plummer dramatically, “left at two, and when I returned at four that Rogers Group was gone! Not a vestige of it remained. Gone was the baby and the doctor. Gone the scales and the nurse—gone!”

  “Gone! Gone!” echoed Dupin, wringing his hands. He was often overwhelmed by excessive sympathy, as were the other French gentlemen.

  “And the house hermetically sealed!” pondered Rouletabille exultantly. “There is no problem so delightful as that! Do you remember in The Yellow Room there—”

  “Are there any clues?” asked President Holmes, deliberately cutting short Roly-Poly’s reminiscences.

  “I don’t know, Sir,” replied the lady. “I’ve heard you mustn’t touch a body until the Coroner comes; so I supposed it was the same with robbery. So I locked up the house again and hurried over.”

  “Quite right,” returned the saturnine Holmes approvingly. “I’ll go there at once. Come, Watson.”

  Though seemingly ignored, the others grabbed their hats and all burst out of the door at once, in true detective eagerness to be first on the scene.

  The rain had stopped, so the party stepped briskly along the still-wet pavements; and then, solemnly unlocking her front door, Mrs. Plummer ushered in the ten men.

  “The room! Which is the room?” asked Rouletabille hoarsely; for here was a case in which his very soul delighted.

  “Here!” and Mrs. Plummer dramatically threw open the parlor door.

  Too true, the bay window where for nineteen years the Rogers Group had proudly stood, was empty. Gone indeed the priceless work of art! Gone the kind old doctor, the proud nurse, and the avoirdupois baby!

  “Ha! Footprints!” muttered President Holmes, and in a trice he was down on his knees with magnifying glass, compass, and T-square. But the magnifying glass was not needed, for the footprints were of goodly size. Carefully, Holmes laid a diagram to scale, and with the help of some of the others a paper pattern was cut exactly like the footprints and a duplicate given to each member of the club. From these they were to trace the criminal.

  “And we can do it!” said Vidocq assuredly.

  “Well,” said Mrs. Plummer, as if the words were forced from her by a lashing conscience, “those footprints are mine. When I came in, it was some muddy.”

  “Why did you not tell us in the first place?” demanded Trant.

  “Well, you see, I had on my old shoes, and they always were too big for me, anyway.”

  “Fine example of the eternal feminine!” commented Trant. “But stay! The miscreant must have left. I will photograph this plush chenille cover and these plush chairs in hope of getting his thumbprint.”

  The next few moments brought startling results.

  But the next few moments brought startling results. Dozens of fingerprints were found on the dusty surfaces of brackets and mantel. Then Raffles found a tuft of feathers, doubtless from a lady’s boa. The Thinking Machine found a handker
chief marked “G”, Dupin found an old letter, Vidocq an eyeglass case, and Lecoq a glove. Raffles found a gray barrette, and Holmes picked up a market list.

  “Now, Gentlemen,” said the president, “you each have your separate clues. Go your ways, make your deductions, and meet tomorrow at our rooms, where I will show you the robber.”

  The Infallible Detectives went their ways, secretly incensed at Holmes’ arrogance.

  The next day at three o’clock they all trooped back to the rooms of their association, and each brought with him a lady, a citizen of the town.

  “Ha!” exclaimed Holmes. “The villain seems to be plural.”

  “And feminine,” added the Thinking Machine, looking askance at the buxom dame he had captured.

  “First we must take all their pictures,” declared Holmes.

  “We expected that,” said Mrs. Green, who had been identified by the G on her handkerchief and was spokeswoman for the party. “We put on our best clothes on purpose. Shall we be in a group or single?”

  The ladies fluttered about in pleasant anticipation of being photographed. The performance over, the detectives questioned their captives, whom they had easily identified by the various clues. Each one declared that she had been in Mrs. Plummer’s parlor between two and four o’clock the afternoon previous.

  “Then,” said Holmes, “do you confess that you purloined Mrs. Plummer’s Rogers Group?”

  “We do!” exclaimed the ladies in a chorus.

  “You admit that you took it with felonious intent, in other words you stole it?”

  “We did,” declared the ladies unanimously. “And you can’t put us in jail for it, because we can prove that we were in the right.”

  “Prove it,” said President Holmes.

  “I am the president,” began Mrs. Green, “and these ladies are members of our Village Improvement Society. In the interests of our work we are often obliged to remove—”

  “Ah, yes,” exclaimed Holmes, “I quite understand—quite—quite! Not another word, I beg of you, my dear Madam! All is understood. You ladies are excused, and Mrs. Plummer has no case, no case at all. Good afternoon, Ladies.”

  “Ah, yes, but stay one moment.” said Rouletabille. his eager eyes agog with intense interest. “Please, please, may I ask the solution of the only question that interested me in this case? How did you get into that hermetically sealed house?”

  Mrs. Green looked at him pityingly. “Sir,” she said, “I took the key out from under the mat, and afterward replaced it.”

  The Mystery of the Three Grey Pellets

  “Not by Sherlock Holmes” (Laurence Kirk)

  The same month that Conan Doyle competed in the Amateur Billiard Championship, this story—with an ad concealed at the end—appeared in the March 1913 issue of Billiard Monthly, published by the English Amateur Billiards Association. Laurence Kirk could not be identified.

  I had called upon my friend, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, one morning and found him perched cross-legged on a pile of cushions and buried in a volume of Browning. Poetry in the morning is strange food for any man to break his mental fast with, but for Holmes to be so feeding his craving appetite almost amounted to the abnormal; and although long experience of my friend’s peculiar habits might have taught me to be surprised at nothing that he did, I confess to feeling more than amazed at this extraordinary spectacle.

  Never in all the years I had known him had I observed any of the softer passions successfully appealing to his cold precise nature; and while I have no doubt he had inherited with all humanity a certain natural proneness to Emotion generally, by deliberate cultivation he had so diminished his natural inheritance in this department that Volition and Intellect might truly be said to be the sole occupants of his remarkable mind. “Poetry? Holmes in love!” The thought staggered me.

  “My dear Watson,” said Holmes, looking up, “I have no objection, of course, to the feelings which my present study excites in you, but I should suggest a little more reserve in your intellectual processes. At the present rate of governmental interference with the individual, I anticipate that in ten years such a public exposure of the mental digestive organs as you are now giving will be regarded as indecent and a punishable offence.”

  “But my dear Holmes,” said I, “this is too much! I have not opened my mouth.”

  He chuckled to himself. “Only a doctor, my dear fellow, could suggest that the way to an understanding of the mind lay through peeping into the open mouth. Did you not stare with wide-open eyes as you caught sight of Browning’s poems in my hand? Did you not hastily look round at my shelves? Obviously to reassure yourself that they were filled with philosophy, scientific works, records of crimes, and so forth. Did you not next run your eyes rapidly round the room in search of a photograph or other indication of the invasion of my life by some charming feminine adventurer? Then did you not hastily scan my features to see if you could find there the glimmering dawn of some soft and tender feeling? It is all so simple to an observer of detail,” he finished, with a half-suppressed yawn, and throwing the book on the floor by his side.

  “But, my dear Watson, I am not in love. Nor do I read Browning to stimulate my emotions. I enjoy him because I am fond of mathematics. Browning to me is as interesting and serves the same purpose as the Differential Calculus. Indeed as an introduction to the Differential and Integral Calculus I am inclined to the opinion that ‘Sordello’ might….”

  But at that moment there was a tap at the door, and a young man in uniform, laden with three long black tin cylinders, entered and saluted.

  “Good-morning, John,” said Holmes. “What brings you here?”

  “I have got a mystery, Mr. Holmes, sir,” said the uniformed person in a loud whisper, “and I thought as how you would like to hear of it, if you was not too busy, sir.”

  “Certainly, John,” said Holmes; “sit down. This is my friend Dr. Watson who has occasionally helped me in my cases. Doctor, this is John, the Billiard Marker from my club. John has got a surname like other people, I am informed, but up till now even I have been baffled in all attempts to discover it.” John grinned. “But to business. What is the mystery, John?”

  “Well, Mr. Holmes, sir, it’s like this here: Three members of the club entered for the Amateur Championship this year, and though I coached them carefully myself and, though I says it, Mannock could have taken no more pains than what I did, every one of them gents was knocked out in the first round. And I take it hard, sir!” sighed the Marker mournfully. “I take it very hard!”

  “Naturally,” said Holmes. “Proceed.”

  “Not that they were all top-notchers, sir. But the gent what belongs to this here cue,” tapping one of the long tin cylinders, which I now recognised as cue cases, “is entitled on his handicap card record to be in the semi-final; and the gents what belongs to them other cues had a fair chance of getting into the third round. And it’s a mystery, Mr. Holmes, sir, a fair mystery what caused it not to come off.” Here John lowered his voice: “I think myself, sir, as there’s been foul play, and I’ve brought something with me as will show you that I ain’t talking through my hat neither.”

  The Marker produced from a pocket three much-creased envelopes each of which contained a small grey pellet flattened on one side, with some preparation, apparently of an adhesive nature, painted on the flat surface. Holmes examined the pellets with interest, went to a drawer in his desk from which he took a similar pellet, and compared all four under his glass. The examination seemed to satisfy him.

  He replaced his own pellet and resumed his seat, signing to John to continue.

  “One of them envelopes came to each of the gents, sir, exactly on the morning of the day on which he was to play his tie. And every one of them gents behaved in the same way when they opened the envelope.”

  “Ah!” said Holmes, bending forward eagerly, “and how did they behave, John?”

  “They tore the envelope open, sir, looked at the pellet, and said, angry-like,
‘Damn!’ and tossed the envelope and the pellet in the wastepaper basket. I picked up the first out of curiosity, sir, after the gent had gone out. I did not know what to make of it, but stuck it behind the marking board for no reason at all. Well, the gent lost his tie that night, got an awful beating, and went abroad immediately.

  “Then the second gent got an envelope delivered to him on the morning of his tie, and cursed when he opened it, and threw it away suddenly. And I picked it up to see what had made him swear and found it was one of them pellets. And I remembered the first, and kept them both.

  “And that gent lost his tie, Mr. Holmes, by half the game. And he went abroad too, sir. And then the day of the third gent’s tie came round, and he got an envelope; and he opened it, and damned, and threw it away, just like the others. And when I got hold of it I found the same kind of pellet. And the last gent lost his tie, gentlemen, and packed up and followed the others abroad. And there’s all the envelopes and the three little pellets, Mr. Holmes. And now I ask you what is it? There’s foul play on, sir, but what is it?”

  Holmes handed me the envelopes. “Do you observe anything remarkable about these envelopes, Watson?” he asked.

  I examined them carefully. “They have all been addressed by the same person,” said I, “they all bear the postmark ‘Greek Street, Soho,’ and on the inner flap the letter S has been repeated three times, S.S.S.—evidently the sign or badge of some secret society.”

  “That’s just my opinion, sir,” said John. “Greek Street, Soho, is the worst quarter in London, full of foreigners. And some of them foreigners have got our members into their power and sent them there pellets as a warning. And, of course, it put the poor gents off their game seeing as how they would be thinking all the time they was playing of escaping to the continent out of the clutches of their enemies.”