by Bill Peschel
Anonymous
This was published in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle of Jan. 29, and credited to Harper’s Bazaar, where it appeared in the next day’s issue.
“You have just been married,” he said, as he stopped on his way down the railway car and addressed a young man who occupied a seat with a young lady.
“How did you know that?” asked the young man, in surprise.
“Never mind how,” replied the other. “I know that you have just been married. So has this young lady. You have just been married to each other. You are the bridegroom and she is the bride.”
“You are right, stranger,” the young man admitted, “but I’ll be dinged if I know how you found it out.”
“I’ll tell you that later, but just now I’ll merely add that you were married this morning, and that you are now on your honeymoon trip. Am I right?”
“You are, stranger, but won’t you tell us how you discovered these things so accurately?”
“Yes, I will tell you. I discovered them through my cultivated powers of observation. I noticed you two snuggling up to each other, regardless of whether school kept or not. When you thought no one was looking I saw you steal a kiss. I noted the rice in your hat when you placed it on the rack, and I perceived that some of it had got entangled in your bride’s shirt waist. I observed, too, that the lady is dressed in dainty white, that she takes her lavender glove off her left hand over and anon and admires the two rings on her third finger—one a plain gold circlet and the other set with a sparkling stone. I noted the blissful expression in both your faces, and the rapt way in which you gaze into each other’s eyes.
“Beside this, I observed you board the train, and I noticed that you were escorted to the station by a merry throng of young men and maidens; and in addition to all this I saw your trunks put on board the baggage car. Their handles were decorated with white satin bows—delicate attentions from thoughtful friends who wished to make your launch upon the sea of matrimony as auspicious an occasion as possible.
“I may add,” the speaker went on, “while expressing my congratulations and best wishes, that I am Herlock Shomes, the great detective.”
Mr. Shomes went on into the smoking car, and the bridegroom turned and said to the bride, in an awe-struck whisper:
“Melinda, it’s no use! They are on to us.”
Perspicacity of Herlock Sholmes
It Didn’t Take Him a Minute to Tell the Three Months’ Veteran the Story of His Life
Anonymous
This story reflected a time when memories of the Civil War, which ended four decades before, had faded but not quite vanished. In fact, there were still enough survivors around to make a respectable showing at Gettysburg in 1913 to mark the battle’s 50th anniversary. While the story is sourced to a Minnesota newspaper, this was found in the Buffalo Evening News for March 17.
Herlock Sholmes retained vivid recollections of the war. He had not participated in the sanguinary conflicts with any degree of recklessness for at the time they were going on he was resting in that seclusion which is natural to every man at the beginning of his life and from which he is powerless to escape save by the natural course of events. Still he possessed vivid recollections. He would have been a poor detective if he had not, says the St. Paul Dispatch.
Besides he had attended numerous camp-fires and beaneries, and any man who can’t come home from a camp-fire with more vivid recollections than a bill collector is full of a denseness difficult to comprehend. And Sholmes never blundered. Association with the comrades enabled him to single them out at a glance, and whenever he was in doubt he always referred feelingly to the battle of Gettysburg as the greatest Confederate victory of the war. As this was enough to make any comrade leave his wife, Sholmes always profited by the finish.
One night when toasting his shins by the fire—and there was bread in the house at that—the door swung open and in strode a man with gray whiskers. Of course, he had other things with him, but there’s no sense in being too definite about these things.
“Ah, general,” said Sholmes. “I see you belonged to the three months’ service.”
The man trembled. Why not? His wife was a leading member of the W.C.T.U. and he had a veteran’s thirst. He had trembled before.
“How can you tell?” he gaped.
“Because,” said Sholmes, grimly, “you have more badges on you than the commander-in-chief.”
The man faltered. Why shouldn’t he? He was full of faults, and any man with faults falters.
“Lost that arm at Antietam, didn’t you,” pursued Sholmes, sternly.
“Yes, but—”
“And your leg at Chancellorsville, eh?”
“Certainly, but how—”
“Guerrilla bullet nipped that niche out of your ear when you were climbing Lookout mountain, didn’t it?”
“It did, but who—”
“Captured unaided a squad of Confederate cavalry at Chickamauga, didn’t you; swapped lies and tobacco with the rebel pickets while you were on guard, and accidentally discovered that the man you shot full of holes was your long lost brother. Eh, didn’t you?”
Sholmes paused for reply There was none. He continued:
“Sat on the river bank one night and heard the Union and rebel bands play ‘Yankee Doodle’ and ‘Dixie,’ and then join in the sweet refrain ‘Home, Sweet Home,’ while the soldiers thought of home and mother, and played pinochle, didn’t you? Fell in love with the rebel girl that nursed you, and then shot her brother, because duty demanded it, didn’t you? You came face to face with Stonewall Jackson, and would have killed him if the rammer of your revolver hadn’t slipped down into the cylinder, wouldn’t you? O, I know. I am Herlock Sholmes, the cleverest thing that ever chewed prunes and swallowed the stones. Grabbed up the flag when the color-bearer was soaked in the neck with a minie ball, and planted it on the enemy’s breastworks, while a storm of leaden hail swept ’round you and shivered your whiskers, didn’t you, eh?”
“For heaven’s sake, stop!” pleaded the veteran; “how did you know all this?”
“Because,” said Sholmes sternly, “these things happened to every man in the three months’ service. How do I know? Because they all tell the same thing and it must be so.”
Sholmes looked up and saw the man had fainted. He went after a bucket of water and brought him to. He only brought one bucket of water. Still he brought him to.
The $10,000 Robbery
Hemlock Jones as a Detective Discovers the Culprit
Anonymous
This groaner of a story, pulled from the New York Journal, appeared in the April 30, edition of the Utica Daily Union.
“Go ahead; tell me all about it,” said Hemlock Jones, leaning back in his chair and closing his eyes, as if about to go to sleep.
“It was this way,” began our visitor, Jonathan Beagle, the head of a large department store, “When I reached my office, on the fourth floor of the store this morning I took from the safe a package of bank notes amounting to $10,000, intending to deposit it in the bank as soon as I had looked over my mail. I laid the packet on top of the desk, in front of a small clock, and began to open my letters. It was just 11 o’clock when a floorwalker knocked at the door and shouted that there was a disturbance at the bargain counter. Having had experience of the serious consequences of bargain rushes, I at once jumped up and ran to the scene of the trouble expecting to be back in a few minutes. I was detained much longer, however, and I when I returned to my room the $10,000 had disappeared. My door has a spring lock, and I closed it when I ran out, and it seems that the thief must have entered my room from the adjoining room, which is occupied by nine young women bookkeepers. I do not suspect any of them but—”
“Never mind that,” interrupted Hemlock Jones. “Did you notice anything unusual about the room when you returned?”
“No—Oh, yes! I almost forgot to tell about the clock,” replied Mr. Beagle. “When I came back I noticed that it had stopped at five minutes past 11. I thoug
ht it queer because I had wound the clock an hour before. But of course that had nothing to do with the robbery. I gave the clock a shake and it is going all right now.”
Hemlock Jones at once went to the store. After taking a look at the office, he told Mr. Beagle to go outside and send in the bookkeepers one by one. The first girl stayed less than five seconds in the office and came out smiling. So did the next five. But the seventh girl did not reappear for nearly ten minutes and when she did come out she was accompanied by Hemlock Jones and was crying bitterly.
“This is the culprit,” said Hemlock Jones. “She has confessed. She couldn’t help it in the face of the evidence I have against her.”
The girl was taken away by a floorwalker, and we asked Hemlock Jones how he had discovered the guilty one.
“It was as easy as getting run over by a cable car,” he answered, suppressing a yawn. “I knew beforehand the certainty that if one of those girls took the money I could detect the thief the minute she entered the room.”
“But how? how?” we asked.
“You will understand when I tell you how I worked it,” was the reply. “As each girl entered I asked, ‘What time is it?’ Of course she looked at the clock and answered. The first six were all right, but the moment the seventh girl turned her face to the clock the ticking ceased—the clock stopped. I had the thief in hand; there was no doubt about it. The person who was responsible for the stopping of the clock when the money disappeared this morning and the girl who stood before me were one and the same. I charged her with the theft, and she broke down and confessed.”
“But how did she stop the clock?” asked Mr. Beagle in amazement.
“Just look at her face,” replied Hemlock Jones. “Wouldn’t it stop any clock that was ever put together?”
A Nineteenth-Century Miracle
“Z. Z.” (Louis Zangwill)
Louis Zangwill (1869-1938) lived his life in the shadow of his older brother. Known as “The Dickens of the Ghetto,” Israel Zangwill wrote celebrated novels about Jewish life, and his play The Melting Pot turned the phrase into an American idiom. On the staff of The Idler, Israel raised a glass frequently with Conan Doyle at the magazine’s riotous afternoon teas. He extended his talents to the mystery genre by writing The Big Bow Mystery, the first locked-room story.
Louis’ attempt at a mystery novel was less successful. The set-up of A Nineteenth-Century Miracle, is engaging—a man swept overboard in the English Channel is found drowned in an artist’s studio in London a half-hour later. But Zangwill is more interested in the romance between the widow and the painter than the solution, which relies on coincidences and, in one case, outright lying to the reader. Worse, he treats badly the consulting detective, Mr. Warlock-Jones. He fails to solve the case, and his attempt to woo the widow is rebuffed with the chilly observation “fancy marrying a master detective, and being doomed all one’s life to listen to his gruesome reminiscences.” That he’s not taken seriously by anyone is demonstrated by this excerpt from the widow’s letter to her lover.
“You are not supposed to know, of course, that Mr. Warlock-Jones is investigating the mystery for me, and as he thinks a conversation with you might be of assistance to him, he has not only authorized me to tell you that fact, but begs you to let him know through me what evening and at what time you could receive him. I forbade him to intrude on you without making an appointment. He might, for instance, pop up suddenly through the middle of the floor, and I did not want him to frighten you in that ridiculous way.
“It strikes me this Mr. Warlock-Jones is a bit of a humbug. By this I do not mean to call into question his ability in his own profession. But he is a terrible poseur, and, as it seems to me, is more intent on impressing you with his supernatural powers than on probing the mystery. It appears he has a theory, but he looks very solemn about it, and I can’t induce him to talk it over with me, not even by making love to him!
“He is very sly. As you are not supposed to know, he was at the inquest the whole time. But I am far from believing everything he says. He makes deliberate statements in order to make you admire him, and I should not be surprised if he pretends he was hidden under your bed on that terrible night. He asks you questions, and says, “Ah! that’s just what I expected,” when you know very well he had been expecting just the opposite answer.
“In fact, as you will have gathered from all this, I begin to see through him, and to think that half the wonderful things he has done are all moonshine, and that the other half weren’t wonderful. For Heaven’s sake, don’t let him get scent of this letter. If you merely keep it in your pocket he may read all these libels on him right through your clothes, and then I shall get into trouble with him.”
Holmes and the Startled Banker
Anonymous
This story appeared in the May 8th issue of The Weekly Magazine, an obscure regional paper.
I was in the room of my friend, the great Hemlock Coombs, the detective. I was engaged in sitting on a chair. Suddenly my friend continued to remain silent, and then broke into a low chuckle.
“You are troubled in your mind,” he said, looking at me, sternly. “You are regretting that suspender button that you dropped in the contribution box last Sunday.”
“How do you know that?” I faltered, turning pale.
Hemlock laughed harshly.
“By the uneasy manner in which you squirm around on that chair,” he said, his eyes glittering.
Often had I been astonished at the marvelously introspective character of my friend’s mind. Mechanically I removed to another seat. It was an old-fashioned haircloth chair I had been sitting on, and one of the wire springs had worked loose and thrust its sharpened point through my clothing. I thought best not to mention this fact to my friend. Detectives, I have noticed, are but human. Some are scarcely that.
A pair of boot-heels clicked nervously on the outside stairs. Badlock Tombs raised a warning finger.
“Notice the boot-heels,” he said hoarsely; “it is a hired girl who has unexpectedly lost the family baby while flirting with a policeman in the park. She has come here to enlist my extraordinary intuitive faculties so that she may not have to return home without the baby and get discharged.”
I have before spoken of the remarkable instantaneousness of my friend’s conclusions. I was prepared, therefore, at his hastily changing his name to Townclock Fumes. This sudden substitution of another name was of great help to him in his business.
The door then shot open and a dishevelled man rushed into the apartment.
“Can you tell me—” he was beginning in an agitated voice when Shylock Plumes interrupted him.
“Your trowsers are torn across the knees,” he said, coolly. “Your assailant was a desperate burglar with red hair, who in the struggle hastily pulled you over an ironbound trunk.”
The stranger uttered an astonished gasp.
“I wish to inquire—” he began again.
“Your watch chain is broken,” said Hemlock Booms. “It was an old-fashioned watch, a key-winder, as I perceive by your thumb-nail, which is badly broken by frequent opening of the back lid.”
The visitor grasped himself desperately by the throat. I could see that my friend’s remarkable genius made a great impression on him.
“I came here to ask—” he again essayed.
“There is a dent in your hat,” broke in Padlock Booms, incisively; “one of last year’s style, showing that you are a clerk with a large family, but a salary that is quite otherwise. You have been the victim of a base assault by one of the most inveterate of the criminal classes, and I can see by the manner in which your coat is split up the back. Your nervous manner is, perhaps, natural, but calm yourself, for in the hands of the great Sherlock Rooms your case is—”
The great detective was here interrupted by the visitor jumping straight up in the air.
“What are you talking about?” he howled, foaming at the mouth. “I am William Wogglestone, President of the Fourth N
ational Bank. There’s a leak in my home gas-pipe, and I went in the cellar this noon to investigate. Falling over the coal shovel and smashing the lamp, I was forced to crawl around the furnace in the dark and get out the best way I could—”
“And your visit here,” I cried, breaking into the situation in spite of myself.
“My visit here?” he shrieked, clawing at the air. “Why, I merely called to ask if you could direct me to the gas company’s office for there’s that leak and the gas meter whirling round like lightning!”
With a concluding growl, the bank president, ruin staring him in the face, dashed wildly through the door and down the echoing stairs.
Languidly assuming his own name Hemlock Coombs took a small syringe and injected an ounce of morphine into himself, though really it didn’t seem necessary.
Fifteen minutes later the Scotland Yard detectives had again arrested the wrong man for the Great Boovabloo Diamond Robbery.
The Fatal Gas Bill
Anonymous
Publishing fiction in an 1890s newspaper was not without its risks to the reader’s enjoyment of the story. The style at the time demanded headlines with multiple decks, with each line offering more details. In the case of “The Fatal Gas Bill,” published in the May 15 edition of the Buffalo Evening News, the three following headlines told the reader not only whodunit but how the miscreant was discovered!
“I am ready for your story, Mr. Kimberley,” said Hemlock Jones, leaning back and closing his eyes. “I hope there is a little mystery in it, anyhow. All the cases I have had for the last month have been so stupidly simple.”
“Well,” replied the jeweler, says the New York Journal, “this business is a great mystery to me, and I fancy you will not find it easy to lay your hands on the thief. The facts are these: About two months ago I discovered that a diamond brooch worth $200 had been stolen. I had no reason to suspect any of my clerks, so concluded that the thief was on the outside. Ten days later a diamond ring disappeared under circumstances that left no doubt that it was taken by somebody in my employ. I said nothing, but watched my clerks closely. Three weeks ago I missed a diamond-studded watch, and the next day a valuable bracelet. Not caring to destroy every chance of catching the thief by calling in the police, I did detective work myself, following my clerks to their homes, shadowing them at night, and making inquiries about them but my efforts were fruitless. Yesterday another brooch was stolen, and something else may be missed this evening. All I know for certain is that the jewels were stolen by one of three clerks—Edward Blair, James Sutton and John Higgins. Nobody else could have had the opportunity to steal them.”