The Early Punch Parodies of Sherlock Holmes

by Bill Peschel

  NOTE.—There are, it seems, rumours about to the effect that my marvelous friend, Picklock Holes, is dead. Some even go so far as to assert that he never existed. I leave these two factions to fight the matter out. If he is dead he must have existed; if he never existed he cannot have died. This shows the folly of relying on rumour.— Samuel Potson.

  II.

  As soon as we entered the drawing-room all the little Gumpshons clapped their hands with delight, and surrounded their Uncle Picklock, each of them attempting to infer from the expression on the great detective’s countenance what it was that he carried in his left coat-tail pocket. “I know what it is,” said Edgar Allan Poe Gumpshon, a boy of fifteen; “it’s plum-cake. I know it must be, because I never seed it, so it ain’t seed-cake.” Gaboriau Gumpshon, aged thirteen, opined it was a packet of bull’s-eyes, “ ’cos that’s what detectives always carry on dark nights,” whilst Ann Radcliffe Gumpshon declared with certainty that it must be nuts, for she had just heard a cracker explode in the street.

  “Children,” said Picklock Holes, “you are nearly right. Your powers have much improved. I am delighted to see that you are kept up to the mark;” and, speaking thus, he produced from his pocket an apple, which he presented to Edgar, a pocket-knife which he handed to the jubilant Gaboriau, and a pincushion, which was immediately clasped and carried off in the chubby hand of little Ann Radcliffe.

  “A year ago,” said Picklock, turning to me, “these children could not have reasoned inductively with one half of their present approximate accuracy; but my dear sister, Heaven bless her! is a wonderful teacher, the best and cleverest of us all. Indeed, indeed you are, Philippa,” he continued, warmly embracing Mrs. Gumpshon. “I am a mere bungler compared to you. But come, let us to business.” At a signal from Lady Holes the happy children trooped off to bed, and we elders were left alone.

  Sir Aminadab opened the conversation. “I sent for you, my dear boy,” he said, “because I have just received from one of my agents in the North information of an important case which demands immediate investigation. Neither Hayloft nor Skairkrow can go, having business that keeps them in London. I look, therefore, to you to cover the family name with new lustre by solving this extraordinary mystery.” Here the old man paused, as though overcome by emotion. Picklock encouraged him with an expressive look, and he continued:—

  “This morning,” he said, “I received from my agent this letter.” He drew a sheet of paper from his breast-pocket, and read, in tremulous tones, as follows:—

  “Tochtachie Castle, Daffshire.

  “Sir,—Lord Tochtachie has been robbed. I overheard him last night conversing with the Hon. Ian Strunachar, his eldest son, who used the following words: ‘Not a doubt of it. They have stolen a march—’ More I could not hear at the moment. The case is of immense importance, and I trust you will lose no time in sending a competent investigator. I have, of course, concealed both my presence here and my knowledge of the theft from his lordship.

  “Yours faithfully,

  “David McPhizzle.”

  “There, my boy, is the case. Will you go and help a Scotch representative peer to recover his own? Think how terrible it must be to lose the march or boundary that separates your ancestral domain from that of a neighbour whose whole course of life may be antipathetic to you. Will you go?”

  A wave of emotion passed over my friend’s face. I could see that a struggle of no ordinary kind was raging in his breast. Finally, however, he looked at me, and his mind, I knew, was made up. In another ten minutes we had bidden adieu to his family, and were speeding northwards in the Scotch express.

  Over the details of the journey it is not necessary to linger. Suffice it to say that on the following morning we arrived at Tochtachie, and took up our quarters in a deserted barn situated in the very centre of the estate. From this point we pursued our investigations. Our first proceeding was to interview the local constabulary, but we found them as obtuse and as foolishly incredulous as policemen are all the world over. One of them, indeed, went so far as to hint that Holes was “havering,” which I understand to be an ancient Gaelic word signifying metaphysical talk, but a look from the great detective chilled him into silence. Day by day we worked, and not even the night gave us a rest from our self-sacrificing labours. We mapped out the whole district into square yards; we gathered the life-history of every single inhabitant on the estate; we left no clue untracked, no loophole unblocked, no single piece of evidence unexamined, no footstep unmeasured. We collected every scrap of torn letter, every crumpled telegram-form. The very heather of the moor, and the trees growing in the policies of the Castle were compelled by Holes’ marvellous inductive powers to yield to us their secrets, until after weeks of patient toil we at last judged ourselves to be in possession not only of the stolen march, but also of evidence that would bring conviction home to the guilty party. We had paused, I remember, by a heap of granite at the roadside. Holes seemed strangely excited. “A march,” I heard him muttering, “is performed by footsteps; steps are often made of stone. Can this be it? It must be! It is!” Then, with a shout of triumph, he gave orders to have the heap loaded on to a country cart, which was to follow us to the Castle.

  We arrived in the great courtyard at about seven o’clock in the evening. Holes slipped from my side, entered the house, and after a few moments returned to my side. We then clanged the bell, and demanded to see his lordship. In a few moments Lord Tochtachie appeared, surrounded by kilted retainers, bearing torches, and intoning in unison the mournful sporran of the clan. It was a weird and awful sight. But Holes, unemotional as ever, advanced at once to the haughty Scotchman, before whose eye half a county was accustomed to tremble, and, without any ado, addressed him thus: “My Lord, your march has been stolen. Nay, do not interrupt me. Your guards are careless, but not criminal—of that I can assure you. Here is the stolen property; I restore it to you without cost.”

  At this moment the cart rumbled up, and ere the peer had time to utter a word, it had discharged its contents into the middle of the yard. Holes went on, but in a lower voice, so as to be heard only by Lord Tochtachie: “The guilty party, my Lord, is your honoured father-in-law. He dare not, he cannot, deny it. He is, I know, blind and deaf and dumb. These qualities do not, however, exclude the possibility of crime. I have just found these pieces of granite in his morning-room. The proof is complete.”

  At this moment a shot was heard in the Castle, and directly afterwards a frightened butler rushed up to his lordship and whispered to him. “Ha! say you so?” almost screamed Lord Tochtachie. “That amounts to a confession. Mr. Holes,” he continued, “you have indeed rendered me a service. My unfortunate, but guilty father-in-law has shot and missed himself through the head. But in any case the honour of the house is, I know, safe in your hands.”

  I need hardly say that Holes has never violated his lordship’s confidence, and the Daffshire peasants still speculate amongst themselves upon the tortuous mystery of the march which was stolen and restored.

  NOTE.—There is no proof positive given by any eye-witness whose veracity is unimpeachable of the death of the great amateur detective as it has been described in the Strand Magazine for this month. Where is the merry Swiss boy who delivered the note and disappeared? What was the symbolic meaning of the alpenstock with the hook at the end, left on the rock? Why, that he had not “taken his hook.” Picklock Holes has disappeared, but so have a great many other people. That he will turn up again no student of detective history and of the annals of crime can possibly doubt. Is it not probable that he has only dropped out of the Strand Magazine? And is it not equally probable that under some alias he will re-appear elsewhere? Verb. sap.—Ed.

  1894

  Picklock’s Disappearance

  R.C. Lehmann

  The last story in Lehmann’s first series follows Holmes to Reichenbach Falls, but with a surprising twist. When Holmes reappeared in 1903, Lehmann was there with a second series of eight stories.

&
nbsp; Picklock Holes disguised.

  Never in the course of a long and varied experience have I taken up my pen with a heavier heart than that which now beats mournfully within my breast. It has been my enviable lot to follow my hero, my wonderful friend, my arch-prince of detectives through many a strange and startling adventure. While he with his matchless acumen has been engaged in checking the ambitious designs of foreign despots, in unveiling to the startled gaze of statesmen the criminal plots of secret societies, in foiling coalitions, in unravelling the tangled skeins of murder-conspiracies, in bringing dark deeds of crime relentlessly home to ducal perpetrators, in restoring jewels to bereaved countesses, in convicting baronets of burglary, and generally in putting local constabularies in every part of the civilised world to shame; while he, I say, has been engaged in these and similar undertakings I have been ever at his side, the faithful foil, the admiring companion, the irremovable fly on the wheel of his world-renowned exploits. And now that fate has taken him from me I scarce know whither I am to turn. Surely never again shall I meet in this world so wise, so cold, so impassive, so friendly a sleuth-hound of detection; never again shall I behold another upon whom my candid flow of irrepressible wonder will pour itself with so small an effect.

  “Potson,” he would often say to me when I had congratulated him in my impulsive way upon some master-stroke or cunning strategy; “Potson, you are not absolutely clever, but, personally, I do not care for very clever men. They are always wanting to outwit one. The task of course is hopeless, but to counteract it one has to waste valuable time. But you have about you a comfortable non-cleverness, always delightfully ready to burst into admiration whenever I give you an opportunity. Potson, I like you.”

  “Holes,” I replied, overcome by emotion, “you are an extraordinary fellow. I would willingly follow you to the ends of the world.”

  I remember this little conversation all the more distinctly because, taking place as it did in an unfrequented thoroughfare of the Bloomsbury district, Holes was immediately afterwards able to infer from a large stain of milk upon the pavement in front of one of the houses that a bald and fraudulent solicitor was at that moment lying in a fit on the floor of the dining-room. This was how he proved it:

  “Milk,” he said, “has been spilt here. To spill milk is a blunder which is often worse than, and, therefore, at least equal to, a crime. We have therefore got the certainty of a crime. A solicitor has to deal with crimes. We thus get the fact that we have here a solicitor who has committed a crime. Now fraud is a crime. Therefore, substituting fraud for crime we obtain a solicitor who has committed fraud. I said a moment back that this solicitor was not only fraud but baldulent—”

  “Pardon me,” I ventured to interrupt, “pardon me, my dear Holes, you mean bald and fraudulent.”

  “Of course,” he retorted, without moving a muscle; “I said so, bald and fraudulent. Now mark how beautifully it works out. A detected criminal is invariably angry. This man has been detected by me. To be angry is merely another way of saying that one has lost his hair. He is, therefore, proved beyond possibility of doubt to be bald. With regard to the fit, the process of induction is no less delicate and convincing. A solicitor wears clothes which fit him, whether well or badly matters not. He has, therefore, a fit. Have I proved my case?”

  “Holes,” I said, “you are a wonderful fellow.”

  We informed the neighbouring policeman, but I cannot now remember if matters proceeded to a conviction. The incident, however, remains in my mind as one of the most remarkable proofs of my friend’s almost superhuman powers.

  And now, as I said, I have lost him, and must proceed as best I can to give some account of his disappearance. We were engaged in investigating the mysterious circumstances connected with the theft of one of our best-known public monuments. I do not care to be more precise, though some day in defence of my friend I may have to tell the story in detail. But at present the honour of a great family is involved, and I prefer to mention no names. I had noticed that Holes had been even more taciturn than was usual with him during the course of his investigations, but at the time I attributed little importance to this. One night he came quietly into my rooms, and after removing from my coat a speck of dust, which proved, he said, that I had been assaulted by a ticket-of-leave man in Southampton Street at 5.45 that very afternoon, he sat down opposite me in an armchair. “Potson,” he said, “there is something in this business which is out of the common. At every turn I encounter a hidden force. I walk in Piccadilly and am splashed with mud by a passing hansom; I turn into Regent Street, and a Music Hall singer—I knew him by his prosperous, well-fed appearance—insists on shaking hands with me. Discouraged by these accidents I stroll into Jermyn Street, when a regiment of Life-Guards charging up Bury Street all but tramples me under foot. There is more in all this than meets the eye. Potson, I am being pursued.”

  “But surely,” I said, “they know you too well. Who would venture to pursue you? Would anyone venture to fly in the face of the public and of probability by tracking one who has always been himself the tracker?”

  But my words were unavailing. He insisted upon it that he was being shadowed, and left me with this impressive warning: “If I do not return to you to-morrow before six o’clock you will know that I am somewhere else. Do not look for me in the Serpentine.”

  On the following day I awaited the arrival of six o’clock with a feverish impatience. As the hour struck the door did not open, but a scrap of torn paper came fluttering down from the ceiling. I grasped it convulsively, and read these words:

  “Dropping an H.”

  “My dear Potson,—It has been a duel to the death, and both of us perished. By the kindness of my late opponent, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, I have been permitted to expire after him, and to use the few remaining seconds of life that remain in me in writing to you. I knew I was pursued, and I knew it was Sherlock who was dragging me to my doom. I have killed him, but at the penalty of my own life. If you wish to know more do as I should have done under the circumstances. Commend me to Mrs. Potson, and believe me yours inductively,

  “Picklock Holes.”

  That was all. The blow was a terrible one, but when I recovered in a measure I set to work immediately to do what I thought Holes would have done. I assumed a meditative air, I conducted chemical experiments, I despised the police, I picked up clues in unsuspected corners, I proved beggars in rags to be Cabinet Ministers in disguise—but all my efforts were fruitless. My friend’s last behest is to me a sacred command. Some other—not I—may search the depths of the Serpentine and discover there the secret which I have sought in vain.*

  The End.

  [* We’ve got the very man to do it, and when either “Sherlock Holmes” or “Picklock Holes” may be “wanted,” we undertake to produce both or either of them.—Ed.]

  In Paris Out of the Season

  “The Vagrant”

  During his visit to Paris, the writer who signed his articles “The Vagrant” saw the latest detective melodrama and advised Conan Doyle “that there is a great opening for him there. If I may judge by the latest detective drama, the ideas of the Parisian public with regard to the acumen and general power of a detective are still very primitive.”

  He recounts the plot of “La Belle Limonadière” (The Beautiful Lemonade Seller) which features a fictionalized Eugene Vidocq (1775-1857), the criminal who founded the first private detective agency.

  ACD didn’t take Vagrant’s advice then, but five years later, he and William Gillette will collaborate on a Sherlock Holmes play.

  . . . Listen, if you doubt me, to a plain unvarnished account of “La Belle Limonadière,” the “Grand drame nouveau en cinq actes, huit tableaux,” which is now running gloomily, but with immense success, at the Ambigu.

  Madame de Mazerolles, a wealthy widow, is, in the first Act robbed and brutally murdered by her stepson, Roland, a dissipated young man, who is incited to the commission of the crime by his wicked mistress Sabi
ne. Vidocq, the great representative of the new school in detection (circa A.D. 1820), is away at the time, and in his absence the investigation falls to his rival Yvrier, who belongs to the old school. In the chamber of death Yvrier soon makes up his mind that the guilty person is one Henri Lebrun, a faithful and gigantic old soldier, much given to beating his breast with both fists and talking at large about his services to his country, his immaculate honesty and his domestic virtues. Suddenly Vidocq enters. He discovers that the assassin has entered by a certain door because a cobweb has been disturbed, he picks up a red flower dropped by the assassin, he pours contempt on the crass stupidity of Yvrier—all quite in the best Sherlock Holmes style. But nothing comes of it all. Poor Henri Lebrun, still beating his breast with fists, is arrested, and after a painful interview with his only daughter (whom he discovers to have been the mistress of George, the son of Madame Mazerolles), he becomes sublime, accuses himself quite unnecessarily of the murder he had never committed, and is marched off to prison amid the execrations of the populace, the triumph of the crass Yvrier, and the loudly expressed determination of Vidocq to bring the guilty to justice and save the life of the innocent Lebrun. Time passes. Lebrun, overwhelmed by an entire absence of proof, is tried and condemned to death. It is the morning appointed for his execution. The curtain rises in the upper floor of a restaurant commanding an extensive view of the guillotine. The sight-seers troop in. First of all comes Roland, the murderer, disguised in black as a wicked Marquis, and accompanied by the infamous Sabine. Hélène Lebrun, the daughter of the condemned man, also troops in to slow music in black. There is a commotion at the door, and the obsequious innkeeper backs on to the stage ushering in Milord Sir John Stilton and his son “Shames.” Sir John is dressed in an enormous green swallow-tailed coat with brass buttons, a striped yellow waistcoat, a pair of yellow knickerbockers, and stockings brilliantly striped with red and black. On his head he wears a low-crowned hat. In one hand he carries an umbrella, while a telescope dangles from his shoulders by a strap. In short, he is tout-ce-qu’il-y-a de plus Anglais. His son Shames is even more aggressively British. Sir John orders lunch: “vous donner moa bifteck” is the obvious formula. Shames concurs with a “Yehs Pappah,” which provokes roars of laughter. But stay what is this? Sir John takes Shames aside: they talk in beautiful French. Can it be? Yes, by Heaven, it is the great Vidocq with his faithful Coco-Latour! We breathe again, for now we know that the innocent man is safe. The procession, however, approaches. The condemned man speaks from below to his daughter in the balcony. He declares his innocence. Now good Vidocq, to the rescue. Display all your arts, convict the guilty, disguised Marquis, and save the estimable Lebrun! But Vidocq looks on impassive, a dull thud is heard and the head of the innocent rolls into the basket. Immediately afterwards Yvrier staggers in. Too late, he says, he has been convinced of Lebrun’s innocence. At the last moment Lebrun looked at him with eyes in which there was no trace of guilt. That last look did it, and now Yvrier in a passion of repentance offers himself to help Vidocq, even in the most subordinate capacity, to track down the guilty, and to remove the stain from Lebrun’s name. I pass over the padding, during which Vidocq appears, for no earthly reason, in numerous disguises, and come to the last scene. Roland has all but killed George Mazerolles in a duel, he has murdered Sabine, who, before dying, rounds on him, and he is now, by a strange conjunction of circumstances, in the very room in which he murdered Madame Mazerolles. Thither also comes everybody else. Vidocq, who is tracking Roland, discovers, through a paper belonging to the late Madame Mazerolles, that Roland, her murderer, was her son, not her step-son, and that he, Vidocq, is the father of Roland. In his youth Vidocq had been a soldier. Somewhere he had met Madame Mazerolles. “Nous nous sommes aimés entre deux batailles, entre deux victoires,” and Roland was the fruit of their love. Horror of horrors! What is he to do? First he tells Roland that he killed not his step-mother, but his mother. At this awful intelligence, Roland faints in an armchair for precisely ten seconds. Recovering himself, he is fain to escape. Vidocq, all his fatherly instincts aroused, says he shall. The weak Yvrier consents, when suddenly, from behind a curtain, appears Hélène Lebrun in black. The murderer of her father must not escape, she declares, whereupon the real detective, vowing that his son shall never be food for the guillotine, shoots him dead with a toy pistol in the region of the left waistcoat pocket. Tableau! Curtain!