Sherlock Holmes Great War Parodies and Pastiches I

by Bill Peschel

  The Mystery of the Railway Station Sandwich

  We had twenty minutes to wait for the train which was to take us to Little Stoke Pogis by the Pond, whither the great detective had been summoned to investigate the mysterious murders which had set that town all agog.

  “Potson, my dear chump,” said Foams, “you had better get a bite to eat while we are waiting for the train. There will be dangerous work ahead of us when we reach Little Stoke Pogis by the Pond, and there will be no time to think of food.”

  I spoke to the tall, languid goddess in black and ordered two ham sandwiches.

  “Two?” said Foams.

  “Yes, one for you,” I replied. “As a medical man I insist upon your eating something. You haven’t had a real meal in ten days, and if you become interested in this Little Stoke Pogis case you won’t eat until it’s finished, so I insist upon your eating one of these sandwiches I have just ordered.”

  “My dear Potson,” said Foams. “In addition to being a chump you are a tyrant.”

  The goddess in black placed the sandwiches on the counter, and I saw Foams stiffen all over like a pointer on the scent of birds.

  “Potson,” he hissed, “do you notice anything about those sandwiches?”

  “No,” said I, after studying them for several minutes, “they look just like two good ham sandwiches to me.”

  “Good!” Foams fairly ground out the word through clenched teeth. “Good!”

  “Yes,” said I, “see, there’s a nice thick piece of ham in each.”

  “A nice thick piece of ham in each,” continued Foams. “And do you notice that the bread is fresh? Did you ever see fresh bread in a railway sandwich before?”

  When reminded of it thus I had to confess that such a thing was absolutely unknown.

  “This is Moriarity’s work,” said Foams. “He expected we would wait to eat such good sandwiches and thus miss the train to Little Stoke Pogis, his confederates there escaping in the meanwhile. But he didn’t reckon with the intellect of Timelock Foams. I saw through his plan. We do not eat the sandwiches, and we catch the train.”

  But we found the train had gone while Foams was deducing.

  The Mystery of the Missing Shell

  “SHELL MISSING.”

  The words in black type were printed clear across the top of the newspaper. I showed the page to Foams.

  “Now, my dear Potson,” said he, “tell me what impression those words make on the mass of scrambled eggs you are pleased to call your brain?”

  “Some battleship”—I began.

  “Tut, tut, Potson, most of the shells a battleship fires are missing something or other. Stimulate your brain-pan of cold molasses and simulate thinking.”

  “An oyster on the half—”

  “Nonsense, Potson. Your head resembles the trenches insofar as it’s full of mud. An oyster on the half shell would be too common an object to get space on the front page. Try to stir the solid chunk of bone you call your head.”

  “A scrambled—”

  “Stop, Potson, my dear fellow. I know you are going to say ‘egg,’ but don’t do it. The shell is missing from almost every scrambled egg, and there would be no mystery about such a case. I fear, Potson, that you are what some persons call very thick.”

  “A peanut—”

  “Pish, Potson, likewise tush! A peanut is too insignificant to attract attention.”

  I confess I became a little peevish. If my mind does not act so quickly as Foams’s there is no necessity to constantly remind me of the fact.

  “All right,” said I. “Solve the blamed thing yourself.”

  “Absurdly simple, my dear Potson,” rejoined Foams. “An easy process of elimination tells me that a snail had lost its shell. Now a snail rushing along without its shell would be a strange sight, and would attract a lot of attention. Simple, Potson, if you use what you are pleased to call your intellect.”

  Probably Foams was right.

  The Mystery of the Alarm Clock That Didn’t Alarm

  “Potson, you chump!”

  The voice seemed to come from a long way off.

  “Potson, I say. Get up, you chump!”

  The voice sounded as if I were dreaming, but I knew from the use of the word “chump” that the speaker was Foams. I awoke at last.

  As Foams saw my eyes open, he said, “Look at the time, you chump, that is if the cold molasses you call your brains can absorb such a simple impression.”

  Foams, I deduced, was peeved. I looked at the clock. It was 11:30; a bright, sunny morning.

  “I see it’s 11:30, Foams,” said I, yawning and stretching myself.

  “And I was to have delivered the stolen crown jewels to the Prince of Ruritania at 10:15,” ejaculated Foams.

  “Well,” said I, “why didn’t you?”

  The great detective appeared agitated. He bent and straightened the massive brass rail of the bed in his nervous fingers.

  After a long pause he spoke.

  “I didn’t deliver them,” he said, “because I did not awake in time. Why didn’t you call me, Potson, you chump?”

  “I was asleep, too.”

  “You’re too stupid to be allowed to sleep, my dear Potson.”

  “But I set the alarm clock for 9:30, Foams,” I responded.

  “This must be Moriarty’s work, Potson. That alarm clock didn’t go off.”

  I jumped out of bed and ran to the alarm clock. The hand of the alarm pointed to 9:30 as I had placed it the night before, and the alarm itself was run down.

  I looked at the bell. That was all right, too.

  Here was a mystery indeed.

  “Foams,” I called.

  The great detective paid no attention to me.

  Evidently the alarm had sounded all right at 9:30, and never before had it failed to awaken Foams, whose hearing was as sharp as a rabbit’s.

  “Foams.” Again I addressed the great detective, and again he failed to answer me.

  Foams finally sat down.

  “Potson,” he said, “for the first time in my life I am baffled.”

  “What’s this?” I asked, as I pulled a piece of cotton batting from his ear.

  “Moriarty!” cried Foams. “He wouldn’t do anything so crude as to bust the alarm. He put this cotton in my ears when I was asleep.”

  “Then I solved this mystery,” said I.

  “Tut, tut, Potson, you chump,” answered the great detective. “Accident, that’s all. No brain work.”

  “Anyway I got results,” I answered, and for once the great detective had nothing to say.

  The Terrors of War

  N.R. Martin

  Published soon after the declaration of war in Punch magazine, this extract from a longer article predicted that publishers would soon roll out “war romances” featuring unrealistic examples of stiff-upper-lip derring-do at the front lines and families back home pulling together to support their soldier sons and fathers. The other half of this article parodied the Clayhanger Family novels by Arnold Bennett (1867-1931). Nothing is known of its author, N.R. Martin.

  [Being privileged extracts from two of next season’s War Romances.]

  From: The Military Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes—

  I shrank down into a corner of the reserve trench. The fifteen inches of half-frozen mud caused my old wound from an Afghan bullet to ache viciously. I longed for some wounded to arrive—anything to end this chilly inactivity. A tall officer in staff uniform jumped into the trench beside me.

  “You are wishing yourself back in Baker Street,” he remarked.

  “How did you know?” I exclaimed. “Why, Holmes, what are you doing here?”

  “Business, my dear Watson, business. Moriarty is becoming troublesome again.”

  “But he was drowned.”

  “Far too clever to be drowned in that pool. Merely stranded on the edge like myself. But I had made England too hot for him. You can guess his name.”

  “Not the K—”

&nbs
p; “Watson, Watson, Moriarty was my mental equal. Now he calls himself von Kluck.”

  I was overwhelmed.

  Just then a little group of the staff arrived. I recognised amongst them the figures of General J—and Field Marshal F—, and saluted.

  “The spy in staff uniform is the third on your left, Sir,” said Holmes casually.

  The Field-Marshal beckoned a firing party.

  As the shots rang out I whispered, “How did you know he wasn’t English?”

  “Watson, Watson, did you not see that he had no handkerchief in his sleeve?”

  * * * * *

  “It is all-important, Captain Holmes,” said the British Commander, “that we should ascertain what army is opposing our right wing. Our airmen are useless in this fog. I detail you for this duty.”

  Holmes saluted. “Come, Watson,” he said, and led me through the fog towards the enemy’s lines. We had not walked a mile when we reached a fine chateau.

  “You are cold, Watson,” said Holmes. “Light a fire in the front room whilst I scout for Uhlans.”

  In a moment he returned to me after having looked round the house. It was, I think, the first time the Chateau had known the scent of shag tobacco. A glow of heat rushed through me. I felt like another man.

  “Better than the trenches,” said Holmes, penetrating to my inmost thought. We sat for an hour and then I said, “Holmes, your mission.”

  “Ah, I forgot. Come on.”

  He led me into the thickening fog, and in a few minutes I was surprised to find myself in the British lines. The General emerged as we approached. Holmes saluted. “The Crown Prince’s army is on the enemy’s left, Sir. It is now in rapid retreat.”

  The General shook him warmly by the hand.

  “But, Holmes,” I said, as we went away. “We have done nothing. The lives of thousands of our men may depend on this.”

  “My dear Watson,” said Holmes, tapping the dottel of his pipe into his hand. “I used my eyes. In the house we visited the silver had almost all vanished. Inference—Crown Prince. But two solid silver spoons had been left on the table. Inference—Crown Prince in a hurry. Really, I am ashamed to explain a deduction which an intelligent child could have made.”

  Our Man in Tangier

  Bill Peschel

  Here is another packet from the pile of stories that form the Mark Twain Casebook. Like many entries in his autobiography, Twain was inspired to tell this story after reading something—in this case a travel book about Morocco—that sparked his memory. He had visited the country early in his literary career. In 1867, he booked passage with a tour group to the Middle East aboard the steamship Quaker City. He made a deal with a Sacramento newspaper to publish his letters about his experiences, and they were expanded into his first travel book The Innocents Abroad (1869).

  From July 4 to 17, the Quaker City crossed the Atlantic and stopped at Gibraltar, the British possession on the Spanish side of the strait. Twain and five of his fellow passengers took the opportunity to cross the Mediterranean to Tangier. Although he described it as “a foreign land if ever there was one,” he left only a sketchy account of his activities in Innocents. This story explains why.

  “I started with no special object. Anyone with very little experience of travelling other than by railways could do the same. It would be desirable that they should first make themselves familiar with the general conditions of the country, and it is certainly an advantage to know something of the language.”

  —Frances Macnab, A Ride in Morocco

  among Believers and Traders (1902)

  This is sound advice. I wish I had heard it 40 years before, when I was carried ashore the Tangier beach on the shoulders of a Moor who reeked of sweat, salt, and spices. It would have meant a totally different story than the one I’ll relate. If I had known more about the landscape and its people, and a few words of Arabic, I would have avoided the sad eyes in the hareem, the kidnappings, the serious end of guns and swords, and suffering the storyteller’s worst curse: knowing a keen story and unable to tell a soul.

  I blame Mycroft. That boy had more devilment in him than Huck, and he came by it naturally too, through his blood. If I had known what he was going to get me into, I’d have shoved that fresh-faced child into the Mediterranean halfway between Gibraltar and Tangier. I would have gotten away with it, too. I could have sworn my Quaker City companions to silence, and the Moors wouldn’t care what one white man does to another, so long as they’re not involved.

  We boarded the small steamer in Cadiz, Spain. The boat was not as spacious as the Quaker City. It was not spacious at all. There were too many bodies filling the deck. Most of the space was covered with an awning and every square inch of it was taken up with a body, sitting, laying, and standing. We covered the spectrum of skin tones, from pale white to printer’s ink black and every shade in between. Of clothing, apart from the Western duds in our party, we saw sashes, skullcaps, turbans, trousers, pantaloons, slippers, boots, long robes and bare legs. Moorish merchants and Muhammadian vagabonds. A rag-shop of a congregation.

  Our party stood at the bow soon after casting off, our cigars cheerfully contributing to the cloud that trailed the steamboat. Young Blucher, who was from the Far West and on his first voyage, joined us at the rail. Like a young boy out in nature, he came across an interesting creature and brought him home. This was a young man in a white linen suit and a straw Panama hat. He looked like a young bull, a head taller than Blucher, and his curling locks brushed his collar. He introduced himself as Michael Herndon, late of Oxford. He was off to see Europe, and he wanted to look into Morocco. I mentioned we were doing the same and that we originated with the Quaker City. His eyes lit up.

  “Why, you’re famous,” he told me.

  I told him I was pleased to hear that my Jumping Frog story was not only on everyone’s lips in America, but it had caused a stir in his country as well.

  He said nothing to that. I figured he was stunned by my presence. He had probably never met a famous writer before, Oxford not quite measuring up as a center for literature as New York.

  By now, you’ve no doubt spotted Mycroft Holmes, traveling under an alias. The reason he did this I’ll reserve for later. Rather than cause confusion, I’ll set his alias aside and refer to him direct.

  He pulled out of his coat a Spanish newspaper and pointed to an item on the front page. I was unable to read it, not knowing the lingo. I ciphered through it, though, but could not see my name. Presumably they translated it into Spanish, and I made a note to check a dictionary to see how “Mark Twain” would fare. But I did see “Quaker City,” “Generalissimo Sherman” and “padre Beecher con Brooklyn Church of the Brethren” listed.

  “We’ve heard of Sherman and Beecher’s roles in the abolition of slavery,” Mycroft said. “Are they here?”

  Blucher spoke up, “Certainly! You’re talking with Sherman right now.” He slapped my shoulder. “As for the good reverend, he’s back on the boat, but you know, you could pass for his double.”

  Mycroft lit up with joy and thrust out his hand.

  “General Sherman, it is an honor to meet you. You look not at all as you do in the papers!”

  “It is the uniform, I suppose,” I said. “There’s nothing like a uniform to give a man weight and tone.”

  “They make you look handsomer, too.” The boys exploded in laughter at that, and that made me hold my tongue. I could have told him that Sherman and Beecher were supposed to join the tour—I signed on in the expectation of reporting on them—but they made their excuses at the last minute. I could have made this clear to him, but he was so duped by my impersonation, and so full of good words about my generalship during the war that it would spoil a good joke to have it end so soon, so I accepted the compliments on Sherman’s behalf. And therein lay the seeds of my downfall, as you shall see.

  All because that ass Blucher spoke up and invited him to join us while we toured the city, and he happily accepted.

 
; “I’m sure that Gen. Sherman’s will open doors that would remain barred to an Oxford student,” Mycroft said in a way that made me pause. If you’ve read the stories, you’ll wonder how he could be so easily taken in. To that I’ll answer that he was older, wiser, and far more knowledgeable, that man capable of running the British government (to borrow Doyle’s phrase). When I met him, he was just beginning to bloom. The brains were there, alongside his skill at pulling strings. He just needed seasoning.

  My suspicious thoughts were interrupted by my first meeting with our guide, Si el Aziz. He was a thin, small man who dressed himself in a Western-style suit that would have marked him for a swell in San Francisco. Blucher found him in the Cadiz shipping office when he bought our tickets to Tangier, and he came highly recommended as a guide, particularly from himself. In addition to his services in arranging the tickets and acting as our go-between with customs officials and other thieves, he also bought and sold trade goods between the two ports. In the hold he had three trunks stuffed with tobacco, liquor, and newspapers. The first two were for the locals and the last for the lonely Europeans who hungered for news of the outside world. Considering that we paid for his passage, he stood to reap quite a windfall.

  He had just finished stowing his cargo, so he accepted a cigar from me while Blucher and he talked about how we’ll see Tangier. He had a particular habit of poking his finger into the air and saying, “Yes! Yes!” to most questions we asked him. Our every request would be granted (“Yes! Yes!”) and the mysteries of the Orient would be revealed to us.

  When the business was settled, Blucher made the introductions. I continued in my guise as Sherman, and the devil in him extended the joke to identify Mycroft as Rev. Beecher. Mycroft was clearly stunned at his promotion to the clergy, and tried to raise an objection, but the English tend to be docile in the face of the unexpected, and once Blucher explained to Si our international reputation, he grew even more eager to lead us. The only way to capture his excitement would be to violate the norms of English grammar and include exclamation points in the middle of his speech, like this: