by Bill Peschel
“I’ll be ready in two minutes,” said I. “Let me mention to my wife that I’m going. She never objects, you know. In fact, a reader of these chronicles once suggested that she seemed anxious to get rid of me.”
Our voyage across the Atlantic was uneventful, except that it served to initiate me into the workings of the society. Its purpose, as Holmes admitted, was almost purely amusement. He had amassed an enormous fortune by his profession, and was no longer compelled to do detective work for pay. His services to the Prince of Wales—chronicled in “The Adventures of the Thin-Edged Deal-Box”—put him in a position of independence before the close of the last century. He now returns his vast talent to the beneficent task of making life uncomfortable for thieves, through the medium of simple tricks devised by his powerful imagination. Holmes handles a pack of cards in a way to make the king of diamonds wink his other eye, and he discouraged a large number of thieves around the card tables in the smoking-room before we reached New York.
Our first considerable adventure in the metropolis of the new world occurred on a Fourth avenue car on the third day after our arrival. We stood on the front platform as the car bowled along. Suddenly Holmes touched my elbow with an imperceptible gesture.
“You observe,” he said, “the gentleman in checked pantaloons waiting at the next crossing. He will board the car, and will stand with us on the platform.”
No sooner had my companion spoken these words than the man whom he had indicated raised his hand and signaled to the driver to stop the car.
“Holmes, this is marvelous,” I whispered. “How did you know that he would do that?”
“The fellow is a thief,” replied Holmes. “Anybody could deduce that from the obvious fact that he has got along well in New York. His attire told me that. Seeing that he was a thief, I took this”—here he showed me a large and handsome watch—“from my pocket, while the man had his eye upon us. He will board the car with the intention of taking it.”
Holmes wound the watch in an ostentatious manner, and replaced it in his waistcoat pocket. He then stared up at the top of the buildings. I kept my eye on the stranger and in a few minutes had the pleasure of seeing him deftly abstract the watch from Holmes’s pocket. No sooner had he taken it than a bell inside of it began to ring with a noise like fifty alarm clocks. The man was so startled that he forgot to put the watch into his pocket. He stood and stared at it. Whereupon the watch’s case parted and the works fell out. They consisted of a large steel spring and a bell such as is used on alarm clocks.
“The watch is made of brass,” said Holmes as we gathered up the remains of the thief from the platform. “It is a very simple device but somewhat surprising in its action. I do not wonder that the shock has proved too much for our friend here. Let us hope that when he recovers he will see cause to adopt a better mode of life.”
It may well be imagined that, after this amusing incident, I kept close to Holmes during all his rambles through the city. We were frequently disguised as visitors from the rural districts. On such occasions Holmes was always provided with a large, black leather pocketbook, which protruded conspicuously from the side pocket of his coat. A stout elastic band was fastened to it, and the other end of the band was secured to a strong belt around Holmes’ waist. Nothing could be more amusing than to see a member of the light-fingered fraternity seize the pocketbook and rush away. The band would stretch to a length of nearly a rod, and then it would bring the thief back with the velocity of a shot out of a gun, for not one of them ever failed to hold on to the pocket book. Holmes always braced himself for the shock, and received the thief in his arms on the recoil. Some of his brief homilies on such occasions were models in their way.
THE THIEF ON THE RECOIL.
When he tired of the pocketbook trick, he would frequently stroll into the Grand Central railroad station with a large carpet bag. This he would place upon the floor while he went to the window and made a pretense of purchasing a ticket. The bag contained self-acting machinery which drove two strong screws into the floor the instant it was set down. It never could remain upon the floor more than two minutes before one of the gentlemanly fellows who are always waiting there to welcome the coming and speed the parting jay, would grab it and attempt to hurry away. The chances were that he would catch the handles “on the fly,” as they say in America, find that the unexpected resistance would cause him to turn over as neatly as if he had been brought up in a circus.
DISCOURAGING TWO THIEVES.
“This device,” Holmes said on the first occasion of its use, “has enabled me to discourage two thieves at once.”
“My dear Holmes,” I replied, “how do you make that out? I only observed one.”
“Ah, my dear Watson,” he rejoined, “how often must I tell you that your observation is defective. Did you not see that I pretended to buy a ticket?”
“Yes.”
“And I didn’t do it?”
“Certainly not.”
“Well, such conduct as that discourages the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad Company.”
“Just like my stupidity,” I exclaimed. “I saw only the thief who attempted to steal your bag.”
“He was very small potatoes compared to the other one,” said Holmes, as he set the bag again, and walked back toward the window.
I think the neatest of his games, and the one which will be the most generally appreciated since it deals with the oldest of crimes, was played while we were at a millionaires’ luncheon club downtown.
As we sat at the table Holmes directed my attention to a gentleman of imposing appearance who was lunching near us.
“You would not suppose,” said Holmes to me, “that that man, so eminently respectable in appearances was to be the next victim of the society.”
“I will bet you five to one,” said the gentleman who had invited us to the club, “that he will not be the victim of anybody or of anything. That’s old Sam Rhodes, and he’s been in Wall street forty years. He’s been the controlling spirit in more than a thousand railroad deals, and it is estimated that if all the rope with which despairing stockholders have hanged themselves on account of Sam Rhodes were joined in one piece it would reach around the world twice and tie a double bow-knot.”
“And he has never been punished for any crime,” said Holmes.
“Punished!” cried our host, “why he’s worth $40,000,000.”
“His time has come,” said my friend impressively.
We watched Mr. Rhodes while he finished his lunch. When he rose, we followed him, obeying a sign from Holmes. The millionaire went out into the vestibule of the club where the hats, coats and umbrellas of the members were left while they were at luncheon.
Mr. Rhodes selected his hat and coat.
“Did you have an umbrella, sir?” asked one of the attendants. “It’s raining outside, sir.”
“Eh? Umbrella? Certainly, certainly,” said Rhodes.
He hastily selected one from the rack.
Holmes clutched my arm. The millionaire hurried out upon the steps. He opened the umbrella over his head.
About a quart of some dark substance, which I took to be ink, fell out of the umbrella upon Rhodes’ head, and at the same time a thin stream of the same fluid trickled out of a hole in the handle and went up Rhodes’s sleeve.
PUNISHED AT LAST.
“Will you claim the umbrella?” I whispered to Holmes.
“Not just now,” he responded in the same guarded tone. “Mr. Rhodes is a very large man, and from his language and demeanor at this moment I judge him to be of a violent disposition. I am not so young as I was, and perhaps it would be safer not to introduce myself just now.”
We went to the club’s smoking-room, where our host insisted upon opening a bottle of champagne. The mystery in the affair which I had just witnessed weighed heavily upon me, and I could not resist the temptation to ask Holmes for an explanation.
“How is it possible,” said I, “that you were able to pred
ict with certainty that Mr. Rhodes would steal an umbrella, and not only that, but that he would take yours?”
“It was perfectly simple,” said Holmes. “I had bribed the attendant not to let anybody else have it. As for Rhodes’s desiring to take it, I have only to say that it was the best-looking umbrella in the rack.
“So you see I had laid out the whole thing in advance, and that is the whole secret of this detective fiction. It is easy enough for the detective to find the criminal. He is in the confidence of the author who controls destiny as I did in this case. But in real life the detective is obliged to contend against the disadvantage of having to find out about it. Thus but two courses are usually open to him. One is to do nothing but draw his pay, and the other is to convict the first man he can get hold of, whether he is guilty or innocent.”
A Modern Miranda
“Peter Pericarp”
This is one of the more obscure Holmsian pastiches and represents an early form of fanfiction. A group of friends got together to write a round-robin novel, with each person taking a chapter. The result was The Sapling, of which only 40 copies were printed. Holmes appears only in chapter seven, printed below. It was written by “Peter Pericarp,” of whom nothing is known.
In the previous chapter, a character named Harding was seriously injured by a gilt arrow after one or more men attacked a garden party, and Lawrence Hathaway takes Iris home.
On leaving Iris at the flat in Chelsea, Hathaway had at once returned to Mrs. Moreton-Plunkett’s to seek for Mr. Grey. Re-entering the garden by the side-gate and finding that everyone had disappeared, he felt impelled toward the precise scene of the tragic incident, What is that? An arrow! The arrow!! Snatching it, he snapped it into a dozen pieces, then on the very site where Harding fell, ground it to splinters under his heel.
On enquiring at the house he learned that Harding had been at once attended by Dr. Delaney, Mrs. Moreton-Plunkett’s brother who was fortunately present and that the patient (whose injury was less severe than at first stated) had shortly afterwards been removed to a surgical home.
Finding that Mr. Grey had started homeward half-an-hour ago, he at once drove to Cheyne Mansions. Horror upon horrors! Iris had disappeared. Her father, unnerved by the events of the afternoon, seemed unable to realize this further disaster. Lawrence did so only too keenly. Seldom had his usually cool head undergone so severe a trial. For a few moments he paced the room in agitation. Suddenly he stopped as if struck by an idea.
“Mrs. Goodman,” he cried to their excellent housekeeper, “Take care of Mr. Grey!” and without waiting for an answer dashed downstairs and leapt into the hansom he had retained and at once gave the driver his directions.
It must have been quite half past six, though still perfectly light, when, after a three-mile drive, the cab turned out of Oxford Street into a well-known thoroughfare leading towards the Marylebone Road. “221B, ain’t it Sir?” said the cabman, speaking through the trap door in the cab top, and the next moment, after the manner of his kind, pulled up the horse on to his haunches.
Two minutes later Lawrence entered upon an experience which in after years he always regarded as one of the most intensely interesting in his somewhat eventful life. The room in which, and the man before whom, he stood seemed perfectly familiar to him although neither of them had he ever actually seen before. His agitation was at once checked by the consciousness of being in the presence, and therefore under the influence of the most remarkable genius in his own sphere of thought and action that the world had ever known; the man who had snatched at least one Imperial Dynasty from impending annihilation; who had sought, discovered, and removed that which would probably have plunged Great Powers into a sanguinary war; who in a thousand less famous cases, had rescued the weak from the toils and machinations of the unscrupulous; who first checked and now had well-nigh strangled that higher intellectual criminal life which spread like a web over European Society—a life far above the sordid class of clumsy crime with which Scotland Yard and its Continental counterparts are more or less able to grapple.
Sherlock Holmes, for he was none other, was seated at a table covered with chemical appliances. On these his mind, his entire being, seemed concentrated. Of a stranger’s presence, he seemed completely unconscious. “Solved!” he at last cried triumphantly, as a phial of amber-colored fluid rapidly assumed the hue of emerald.
“Oh! pardon me,” said he, picking up Hathaway’s card which the servant had placed on the table five minutes before. “To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?”
“First of all,” said Hathaway, “I must insist that Dr. Watson shall have no finger in this case.”
“I have yet to learn what the case is,” said Holmes, comprehensively scanning his visitor from crown to sole.
“A young lady has disappeared.”
“And you wish to find her. Well, that ought not to present any insuperable difficulty,” he interrupted, “as I see she was with you this afternoon.”
“Few things are more important than trifles,” continued he, detaching at the same time from the seam of Hathaway’s right sleeve a small spring hook of the kind now often used instead of buttons on ladies’ gloves.
“H’m, the fifth hook of a row of eight,” he remarked after carefully examining with a lens the soft vicuna coat sleeve. “Her arm appears to have pressed somewhat heavily on yours, I observe, and ultimately was withdrawn with a jerk. This afternoon too—for the jacket you wore during the morning, as the slight mark on your collar tells me, was a dark blue, cut a third of an inch higher in the neck than the frock coat you now wear.”
Hathaway, as a reader of current literature, was fairly familiar with Holmes’ methods and was determined to evince no surprise at his extraordinary acuteness of perception.
“Pray take that seat,” said Holmes, pointing with a cigarette he had just lighted and which, apparently by accident, slipped from his fingers on to the floor. In stooping for it, as Hathaway turned to sit down, the latter half-fancied he felt a hand brush past the side of his boot. Being now seated, he saw Holmes standing by the window gazing intently into the palm of his own hand. Presently he threw himself back into a chair facing his visitor and, with a look akin to satisfaction, proceeded with his cigarette.
“Now,” said Hathaway, “let me state to you the whole story.”
“Pray spare yourself the trouble,” replied Holmes, “but tell me what is the last report as to poor Mr. Harding.”
“What!” cried Hathaway springing to his feet. “Great Heavens Sir! are you man or fiend? How do you know anything of Harding?”
“Be calm, be calm; I claim no supernatural power. The cause of your call is as clear as day. Read that!” said he, tossing, across the six o’clock edition of the Evening Magnet.
Hathaway resuming his seat, read an account of the “Terrible Termination to a Garden-party” with names and full details even to the “gilt feathers on the arrows” and of course the “blood on the grey cinder path.”
“Gilt feathers on the arrows,” repeated Holmes significantly, “a most remarkable colour for the purpose. Must have been specially ordered.”
“It is all very well,” said Hathaway, rising in angry impatience, “for you to make these guesses because you happen to have seen the evening paper.”
“I never guess,” came the quiet, frigid interruption, “I observe and I deduce. Please carefully examine this small shred of feather,” handing it on a sheet of note paper. “You will note that it is cut obviously for an arrow feather; that it is glued at the inner edge; and lastly that it is gilt. Look closely through the lens and you will discover several particles of cinder—grey cinder—which exhibit clear traces of blood. Within the last three minutes,” continued Holmes, deliberately lighting a second cigarette, “I detached the shred of gilt feather from the edge of your right boot-heel in which there still sticks a small splinter of the arrow itself. Well,” after a pause, “perhaps it was not an unnatural impulse which urged you to c
rush the arrow under foot on the spot where Harding fell.”
Hathaway subsided.
During a brief further conversation Holmes explained the necessity of his crossing by that night’s boat to the Continent on other business and that it was quite uncertain how soon he could give complete personal attention to this case. “But,” said he, “write on the back of this card the name and address of an intimate friend. And I may implicitly rely on his discretion?” inquired Holmes, glancing at the endorsement.
An abrupt conclusion of the interview was at that moment brought about by the sudden opening of the door, when a tall man of foreign appearance with a soft hat drawn down over his eyes, strode into the room.
* * * *
Picture a moderate-sized brightly furnished clean-looking apartment half bedroom, half sitting room. On a couch slanting across the front of the fireplace lies a man clad in a loose dressing gown, his head raised on a pillow immaculately white. The door opens and a woman with nurse’s cap, apron and surgical chatelaine, enters the room.
“How do you feel now?” she inquired.
“Much better, thanks to your nursing!” replied the patient, over whose face passed a flush of pleasure.
“I have brought some illustrated papers,” said Sister Helen pushing before him a small table and placing upon it The Sketch and The Graphic. “Look at these, and do not think of your illness. The wound is far slighter than was believed when the accident occurred a month ago. The fever which supervened was our most serious danger and that I am happy to say we have now overcome.”
Harding had indeed been in a most critical condition. Nothing but the most skillful nursing could have saved him, and that he certainly had experienced at the hands of Sister Helen, the Lady Superintendent at the Paget Nursing Home. She was a bright, cheery, dauntless woman whose spirits no amount of work or worry could check. Though barely thirty her experience was wide and full of interest and included field hospital work in one or two Indian hill campaigns.