by Bill Peschel
Murray Marble (1885-1919), of Worcester, Mass., was a lifelong invalid who devoted himself to chess, composing more than 300 problems.
It was already late in the afternoon, but as my way home from my round of professional visits happened to lead by the very door of our old chambers in Baker Street, I could not resist the impulse to drop in for a moment to see how Holmes was doing. I saw him so seldom since the honour of Knighthood had been conferred on me; indeed, to-day was the last of March, and I had not seen him since early in February.
I jumped from my motor and started briskly up the old steps, when a crouching figure in shabby black, with bulging pockets and an absurd little felt hat surmounting an enormous head of hair, crept forward and touched me on the arm.
“Mr. Holmes,” he began. I was familiar enough with Holmes’ strange clients to see that this was no beggar, and I explained to him that I was not Sherlock Holmes, and invited him to come into the house with me.
A moment later Holmes, in his old dressing-gown, welcomed us at the door of his room. “Ah, Watson, you are quite a stranger,” he began. He never called me Sir John. “But who is this gentleman you have brought with you? I see that he is a distinguished musician with a passionate fondness for chess.”
“Hardly distinguished,” the man stammered with amazement. “But how could you tell, sir, so much about me?”
“Surely that is very simple,” replied my friend. “Such hair only grows on the musician’s head, and when I glanced at your fore-finger, I ventured the surmise that you were probably a ’cellist.”
“Yes,” put in the visitor, “I belong to the great symphony orchestra; but the chess?”
“Why, my good man, when I see a folding chess-board full of clippings distending your whole form, it requires little imagination to decide that you study problems at every opportunity, even on your way home in the ’bus. But you have not told me your name?”
“My name, sir, is George Tappin.”
“What!” exclaimed Holmes. “Were you the judge in the recent great four-move tourney of the Review?”
It was now my turn to express astonishment. “Since when have you taken up chess?” I asked.
Holmes laughed. “Why, Watson, a man who has as much to do as I with the solving of problems cannot neglect the Goddess Caissa. But surely you remember how useful my knowledge of the Rice Gambit was in that little matter of the Prince of Monaco?”
I nodded gravely, for the affair had come near having international complications.
“We are wandering from your case, Mr. Tappin,” Holmes continued, again addressing the stranger. “In what can I be of service? What is your difficulty?”
“Mr. Holmes, I am being pursued by a strange sound.”
“Ah!” said Holmes, languidly reaching for a cigarette. “And, pray, what does it sound like?”
“That is the mystery, I have not yet heard it.”
Holmes sprang up. “This promises to be interesting, it may be in your line, Watson.”
“No, Mr. Holmes. I know what you mean; I am not insane, although I have almost been driven so. I am being persecuted by these post-cards, which have been coming every morning for a week.”
Here he drew from a pocket a little packet of cards, which he showed to us, each one bearing just one sentence and all referring to the “strange sound.” The first one read: “The strange sound is coming,” and the others told of its nearer approach, the last one saying: “Stop! the strange sound is upon you.”
“These have reached me, Mr. Holmes, as I have said, every morning. They are unsigned, but postmarked right here in London, so whoever is sending them might come up to me any moment in the street. At first I thought that it was some mistake, but yesterday, when I was at the rehearsal at Queen’s Hall, I was called from my seat to the telephone, and a muffled voice said: ‘How about the strange sound?’”
“This is very curious,” said Holmes. “Tell me, Mr. Tappin, can you think of any explanation at all?”
The man’s voice trembled as he answered. “The only thing that I can think of is this: there is great competition to get into the symphony orchestra, especially this year when so many of us have been out of work, and I wonder whether some man desperate for a place is trying to intimidate me into giving up mine, or, perhaps, is trying to hypnotise me into playing my instrument all wrong so as to have me dismissed—he has almost succeeded, too; when I went back from the telephone yesterday I did indeed make some strange sounds. Mr. Holmes, such a man will not stop at sending postal cards; I have come straight to you; tell me what I shall do?”
“Don’t be so apprehensive,” said Mr. Holmes cheerily. “I think the matter is quite a simple one. Tell me, when is your next rehearsal?”
“To-morrow morning, and the concert is in the evening. If I don’t pull myself together before then I can never play through it.”
“You must step in on your way to the Hall in the morning, and meanwhile dismiss these terrors entirely from your mind. I hope I shall have good news for you before then. And you, too, Watson, must arrange to drop in; you’ve not been present at the finish of any of my little experiences for many a long day.”
I did not need to be urged. I was on hand bright and early, having turned over my professional cases for the day to my assistant, young Phil Robertson, M.D. I found Holmes still alone, lying back in his old easy chair, chuckling softly to himself.
“You don’t seem very worried about our friend Tappin,” I said to him when I had taken a chair near by, in the dense cloud of cigarette smoke which already filled the apartment.
“No! He is an easy one to hoax; shall I tell you how I spent my evening?”
“There is nothing I would like more to hear.”
“Well, Watson, I went down to Simpson’s Divan, hoping to find out something about this man Tappin from some of the chess players there. You heard me tell him that he had been prominent in a recent tourney?”
“I remembered that much.”
“The first thing which I picked up was a copy of the Review containing his award. I am sorry to say it was very poor. He had given the prizes to some second-rate stuff which, I suppose, had caught his fancy, entirely overlooking what a man at the Divan told me was a really magnificent problem by Devoure. As the prize was the largest that has been offered for chess problems in many years, I at once suspected that this foreigner, Devoure, might have been none too well pleased at the result. When my informant told me, further, that Devoure had been for about ten days on a visit to this country, the mystery was cleared. Devoure is evidently amusing himself by a little mystification at the expense of our good friend the musician.”
“But what is it all about?” I queried eagerly. “What will it lead up to; he can’t make him lose his place in the orchestra?”
“Lose his place, Watson! And to think that an English sovereign should have promoted you to Knighthood, presumably for your brains! Do you know what day of the year it is?”
“Why yes!” I answered. “It must be April.”
“April, of course it’s April Fool’s day, and I suspect the fools are not far off!”
I felt a little injured at this old-time sally, and to change the topic asked: “What form do you suppose this Devoure’s joke has taken?”
“We shall know right away, for, if I am not mistaken, that is now our client’s footstep on the stair.”
Tappin came into the room as he spoke, his face more perplexed than ever. In his hand he held another post-card; it read “Here is the strange sound! I wish you many April Fishes,” and was signed “Jacques Devoure.”
Below was this diagram : —
“And what sort of a problem is it?” asked Holmes.
“A very poor one,” answered the composer-player sourly. “I thought Devoure could do better; he had a problem in the Review tourney which would have ranked high if it had not been for a dual mate! But this problem isn’t even ‘sound,’ so if he intends a pun on that word, the Fishes will have to be ea
ten by him.”
Holmes, meanwhile, was looking attentively at the diagram, while Tappin went on garrulously: “You see, he intends a simple tour with the Knight at d2; his key with the Pawn unpins it. This is all pretty enough, but he has overlooked that the King can move to f6, with just the same result—the man ought to know better! He should clearly have added a Black Pawn at e7 to prevent the King’s move.”
Holmes lay back in his chair and laughed convulsively. “You must look again, Mr. Tappin; you have been favoured with one of the world’s great problems. Believe me, it is quite sound, yes, it is strangely sound. The manner of its announcement may have been unconventional, but it has deserved its prolonged heralding. It is, indeed, a Strange Sound!”
ANSWER
No. XIV.—1 K f6, P f1 claiming White S; 2 S e3 mate.
White Q or B; 2 Qc2 mate.
White R; 2 RxR mate.
Black clearly cannot claim a White King. The other defences are obvious. The “try” by 1 P e3 fails when Black promotes his Pawn to a White Knight, because the P e3 then prevents the Knight mating. Certainly a strange sound-ness.
Editor’s note: In algebraic chess notation, K was reserved for the king, so another letter had to be found to represent knights. At the time, S was used because it came from the German word for springer, which can mean either knight or jumper. Later, N replaced S.
The idea behind the problem is that the queen is threatening to move to c2 but can’t because the king would take the adjacent pawn, and the knight at d2 can’t move out of the way because that would reveal a discovered check by black’s bishop. Tappin let his animosity for his opponent overrule his intelligence and is assuming that there’s a mistake in the setup, hence his suggestion of adding a blocking pawn at e7. But Holmes, aware of the promotion-to-any-color-piece rule, figures out that the correct answer is to move the white king out of the way, threatening Nd2-f1 mate. Black’s only chance is to promote his pawn to a white piece (which the white knight is not allowed to capture), and let white figure the rest out.
The promotion-to-either-color rule was based on an interpretation of the British Chess Association rulebook established in 1862. Law XIII said, “When a pawn has reached the eighth square, the player has the option of selecting a piece, whether such piece has previously been lost or not, whose names and powers it shall then assume, or of deciding that it shall remain a pawn.” Since it did not specifically ban using an opponent’s piece, it was assumed that it was a legal move. The opposing-color rule was changed by the World Chess Federation (FIDE, or Fédération Internationale des Échecs) after it was formed in 1924.
A black piece turned into a white piece? A strange “sound” indeed.
Sherlock Holmes Solves Mystery of Missing Platinum at University
Problem Breaks Monotony of the Marvelous Sleuth’s Week of Inactivity After Two Unusual Cases
Specialist in Science of Deduction Consulted After Campus Authorities Failed in Inquiry
Lays Down Startling Views Regarding Faculty Men’s Familiarity With Current Events
“Boswell Whatson”
Illustrated by Anonymous
The University of Minnesota has one of the largest collections of Sherlockiana in the world, so it’s appropriate that it was the scene of a parody, possibly written by a member of the university! This story in the Minneapolis Sunday Tribune of May 17, complete with secondary headlines and subheads, shows that the writer knows the Canon and understands how a typical story plays out. The writer also is familiar with the university and its members.
But my hopes that a university member wrote the parody were dashed by Charles Press, a Sherlockian who has also published a collection of parodies. The Minnesota alumnus pointed out (in a newsletter published, appropriately, by the university’s Friends of the Sherlock Holmes Collections) that the story also takes a dig at faculty members who pride themselves on not reading the newspapers! The most likely candidate for author, he concluded, was a Tribune reporter, getting a dig in during a town vs. gown rivalry.
The great detective sat in his arm chair by the fireplace, idly jabbing a newspaper with a needle he had just purchased. He was paler than usual, and he showed the effect of a week of inactivity. Ennui was written in every line of his lean face.
I was standing at the window opening on Harmon place, watching the rain-prodded pedestrians dodging motor cars and musing on that marvelous power which would enable my friend to read the recent history and present errand of each hurrying individual if he so desired.
Week of “Nothing Doing.”
It had been a quiet week for Holmes. Nothing bad had taken place to arouse his interest or spur him to activity since his masterly, but amazingly simply solution of the Mystery of the Three Mounted Suffragettes, which had set all Minneapolis agog and had kept the name of Holmes paramount in public discussion to the news of Mexico.
This had been but child’s play to Holmes and had served only to check, not prevent, his gradual sinking into his present lethargy following his coup in the matter of the Rust Spot on the Bracelet Watch, which had confused headquarters at the same time that it had helped Chief Martinson out of an embarrassing dilemma.
“Some one is at the street door,” said Holmes, breaking the silence. “We are going to have a rift in the monotony.”
The entrance to the building is on the cross street, so I could not command a view of it from the window. I hadn’t any reason to think there was anyone at the door and I said so.
Easy for Holmes.
“It is so simple, my dear fellow,” said Holmes, “when you stop to think. I observed during the last rain that the waterspout over the door had sprung a leak, permitting a small stream of water to pour down on the stone approach in front. It was careless of the landlord not to have had it fixed.” And he lapsed into an attitude of intense weariness.
“I don’t follow you,” I exclaimed, somewhat impatiently. Sometimes Holmes annoys me with his assumption that everyone can fathom his mental processes. “What has the leaking waterspout and the vagrant stream to do with a supposition that there is someone at the door waiting to get in?”
“Just this,” replied Holmes, with great good-nature. “For the last hour I have been listening to the sound of that water falling on the stone. A minute ago the sound changed to a muffled one, as if something resilient had been substituted for the stone. I at once thought of an umbrella. Umbrellas don’t go around the streets of Minneapolis unchaperoned, you know.”
A-Ha! a Visitor!
I had no more to say. A loud knocking at the door brought the housekeeper hurrying, and we heard the stairs creaking to the tread of some one of weight who seemed to be in haste. I stepped forward to meet our welcome visitor and lead him to Holmes.
“I would consult you, sir,” said the stranger, “on a matter of the greatest importance,” at the same time handing his card to Holmes and pausing as if to recover from some agitation. He was a tall man of middle age with a mass of wavy black hair and an investigating countenance. His card bore the inscription: “George B. Frankforter, Dean, School of Chemistry, University of Minnesota.”
Holmes smiled and extended his hand. “I know you well by reputation, Dr. Frankforter,” he said. “While I never had the pleasure of meeting you before, some of your monographs, especially those on the analyses of various gasoline odors, have aided me greatly in a number of rather delicate cases I have had in my care. What can I do for you?”
The chemistry dean explained that a few nights before a number of platinum vessels had been taken from a locked drawer in a locked room in one of the campus buildings. The pieces, 18 in all, worth about $500, had undoubtedly, he said, been stolen. The drawer, found empty the next morning, was unlocked, while the door to the room was locked. There was no sign of violence. The vessels had offered no resistance. The windows on the outer wall had been locked. The thief must have had keys to both door and drawer.
“The case is a peculiarly baffling one,” said the dean. “
The members of my faculty have worked with me to unravel the mystery, but to no avail. Even Mr. Poucher, our inventory clerk, who has aided in the investigation, has found no clue despite his years of opportunity in deciphering the unintelligible as postmaster at the university. I admit we have exhausted our resources. Will you take the case?”
Mr. Holmes Explains It All.
Holmes stretched his long legs toward the fire and smiled his peculiarly illuminating smile. “One of the basic principles,” he said, “that I have taken pains to emphasize in my occasional appearances at the university as special lecturer on the science of deduction, is that one should consider all phases of one’s subject before proceeding to deduce.
“Now, you have concluded that a theft was committed. You are wrong. There has been no theft. Platinum crucibles are of use in other laboratories than those of chemistry. I infer that, being high priced, there may not be too many platinum vessels at the university and that occasionally supplies are borrowed by those entitled to the privilege.
“That is what happened in this case. The fact that the drawer was not locked proves that the taker, doubtless a member of the faculty, had no desire to conceal the fact that the goods were gone. If he had been frightened away, he would have locked the drawer to postpone discovery of the theft, but he might not have tarried to lock the door of the room.
Fear Eliminated as Element.
“However, that he was not frightened away and that he was a coolly reasoning being is indicated by the fact that he saw a value in locking the door to protect whatever else might have been in the room, but could see no need of locking an empty drawer, his motives being irreproachable. Only a highly trained mind would have acted in this way.