The Big Book of Sherlock Holmes Stories

by Otto Penzler

  “Please look upon the place as your own” left Mr. M. free to stroll away and he seemed quite content to use his fieldglasses looking at the birds and blooms.

  “Now,” said Mr. Hess, all vivacity and I must confess, getting more likable every moment, “my idea is that we put the human interest, if I may so describe my collaborator, right in the middle of the scene. You will be the focus round which the garden is, as it were, draped.” Then he paused and exclaimed, “Why, of course, that’s the very word—why didn’t I think of it before? I wonder whether you would be kind enough to agree—it would make the picture really wonderful.”

  Again I was a little at a loss, but the small man’s enthusiasm was quite infectious. “How can I help further?” I asked.

  “Well, it was the word drape that shot the idea into my head, darting like one of these sweet birdkins. Don’t you think, Mr. Silchester, that men’s clothes rather spoil the effect here?”

  He looked down on his own little store suit and smiled. It was true enough but a sudden qualm shook my mind. The thought of stripping and posing, with Mr. Mycroft in the offing—well, I felt that awkward blush again flowing all over me. Whether my little host guessed my confusion or not, his next words put me at ease. “Do you think that you’d consent to wear just for the photo a robe I have?”

  My relief that I was not to be asked to disrobe but to robe made me say, “Of course, of course,” and without giving me any further chance to qualify my consent, off hurried little Hess. He was not gone more than a couple of minutes—not enough time for me to go back to where Mr. Mycroft was loitering near the gate at the other end of the pool—before once again he appeared, but nearly hidden even when he faced me. For what he was holding in his arms and over his shoulder was one of those Polynesian feather cloaks of which I had remarked to Mr. Mycroft that I thought they were one of the finest of all dresses ever made by man.

  “Of course,” Hess said, “this isn’t one of the pieces that go to museums. I always hoped that somehow I would make a picture of this place in which this cloak would play the leading part.”

  All the while he said this he was holding out the lovely wrap for me to examine and as he finished he lightly flung the robe over my shoulder. “Oh, that’s it, that’s it!” he said, standing back with his head on one side like a bird. And looking down, I could not help thinking that I too was now like a bird and, to be truthful, a very handsome one.

  So, without even casting a look behind me to see if Mr. Mycroft was watching and perhaps smiling, I followed Mr. Hess as he led the way, saying over his shoulder, heaped with the Polynesian robe, “I said right in the centre and I mean to keep my word.” It was clear what he meant, for already he was mounted on the steps of the horseshoe-arch bridge and was going up them. Yes, I was to be the clou of the whole composition. When we reached the very apex of the arch, he held out the cloak to me, remarking, “You will find it hangs better if you’ll just slip off your coat.” I agreed and obeyed. I had already laid aside my cane. He was evidently quite an artist and was determined to pose me to best possible effect. He tried a number of poses and none seemed to him good enough. “I have it!” he finally clicked out. “Oh, the thing gets better and better! Why you aren’t in the movies…But of course after this…photogenic—why, it’s a mild word! I’m not asking for anything theatrical—only an accent, as it were—just the natural inevitable drama, one might say. The cloak itself sets the gesture. You see, the sun is high above and you are the centre of this pool of flowers and birds. And so we would get perfect action, perfect face lighting, and perfect hang of drapery if you would just stretch up your arms to the sun and let the light pour on your face. You stand here, with your back to the garden—its high-priest offering all its life to the sun.”

  While the little man had been saying this, he had been arranging the robe to make it hang well, tucking it in at my feet. “The shoes mustn’t show, you know,” he said, as he stooped like a little bootblack and arranged my train; then he shifted my stance until he had me close to the balustrade, for only there could he get the light falling full on my upturned face. One couldn’t help falling in with his fancy—it was infectious. I rolled up my sleeves so that now, as I stood looking into the sun, I confess I could not help feeling the part. I forgot all about my old spider, Mr. Mycroft. I was one with nature, transformed by the robe which covered every sign of the civilized man on me, and by my setting. Mr. Hess darted back to the other side of the arch, up which we had come, and began—I could see out of the corner of my upturned eye—to focus his camera.

  And then he seemed to spoil it all. After some delay he became uncertain. Finally, he came back up to me. “It’s magnificent. I’ve never had the chance to take such a photo. But that’s what so often happens with really great opportunities and insights into art and high beauty, isn’t it?”

  I was more than a little dashed. “Do you mean that you have decided not to take the photo?” I asked. Perhaps there was a touch of resentment in my voice. After all, I had been to a great deal of inconvenience; I had lent myself to a very unusual amount of free model work and laid myself open to Mr. Mycroft’s wry humor which would be all the more pointed if the photo was never taken.

  “No—Oh, of course not!” But the tone had so much reservation in it that I was not in the slightest reassured, and even less so when he showed his hand, for then I was certain he had just thought up a none-too-unclever way of getting out of the whole business. “But as I’ve said, and as I know you know, whenever one glimpses a true summit of beauty one catches sight of something even more remarkable beyond.”

  I snapped out, “Am I to presume that on reconsideration you would prefer not a high light but a foil, not myself but my old sober friend down by the gate?”

  I had been growing quite resentful. But my resentment changed to outrage at the absurdity of his answer. It was a simple “Yes.” Then seeing me flush, he hurriedly added, “I do believe that majestic old figure would make a perfect foil to yours.”

  Of course, this was an amend of sorts, but of a very silly sort. For could the man be such a fool as to think that while I might be generous and accommodating to a fault my old friend would fall in with this charade?

  “I think,” I said with considerable dignity, beginning to draw the robe away from my shoulders, “that when you want models, Mr. Hess, you had better pay for them.”

  But my arm got no further than halfway down the coat-sleeve. For my eyes were held. Looking up at the sun makes you a little dizzy and your sight blotchy, but there was no doubt what I was seeing. That silly little Hess had run along the curb and as I watched was buttonholing Mr. Mycroft. I didn’t wait to struggle into my jacket but running down the steps went to where they stood together by the exit. I couldn’t hear what was being said but was sure I guessed. Yet, in a moment, I was again at a loss. For instead of Mr. Mycroft turning down the grotesque offer, beckoning to me, and going out of the gate, Mr. M. was coming toward me, and he and Hess were talking quite amicably. Of course, I could only conclude that Hess had been spinning some new kind of yarn but all I could do was to go right up to them and say, “Perhaps you will be good enough to tell me what you have arranged!”

  I was still further bewildered when it was Mr. M. who answered, “I think Mr. Hess’s idea is excellent. If the picture is to be the success which he hopes, it should have contrast and, if I may put it in that way, significance—a picture with a story. Wasn’t that your telling phrase, Mr. Hess?”

  Hess beamed: “Precisely, precisely! Mr. Mycroft is so instantly intuitive.” And the little fellow looked Mr. M. up and down with a mixture of surprise and complacency that I found very comic and sedative to my rightly ruffled feelings. Still I was quite in the dark as to what had happened to make the three of us so suddenly and so unexpectedly a happy family with—of all people—Mr. M. as the matchmaker. Hess, however, was bubbling over to tell me:

  “Do forgive me, rushing off like that. So impulsive. But that’s the way
I am—‘stung with the sudden splendor of a thought.’ You see, that was the way I was with you, wasn’t I? And I know you’re an artist too and so you must know that when one idea comes, generally an even brighter one comes rushing on its heels,” he tittered. “I was also a bit frightened, I must confess,” he ran on. “What if Mr. Mycroft had refused? I knew if I asked you, you’d say he would; and of course you’d have been right. So I just rushed on to my fate, risked losing the whole picture—the best so often risks the good, doesn’t it?”

  While the little fellow had been pouring out this excited rigmarole, he had been leading us back to the bridge and as Mr. M. followed without any kind of unwillingness, I fell in too. After all, it looked as though we were going to get the photo. As we reached the steps it was Mr. M. who forestalled Hess just as Hess was about to give us some directions. “You would like us, wouldn’t you, to pose on the other side of the bridge-top?”

  “Yes, that’s it—just where I had Mr. Silchester.”

  I took up my position, picking up the robe, putting down my jacket. Hess arranged the fall of the robe as before. I must admit he was neat at that sort of thing. He moved me to exactly the spot I had held, asked me once more to raise my bared arms to the sun and throw back my head—“Just like a priest of Apollo,” was his phrase, a phrase which I didn’t quite like Mr. M. hearing. And even when Hess remarked to Mr. Mycroft, “with Mr. Silchester it’s an inevitable piece of casting, isn’t it?”—Mr. M. replied only, “Yes, quite a pretty piece of casting.” I could only imagine that now Mr. Mycroft saw that the little fellow was obviously as harmless as a hummingbird—and about as brainless.

  But Hess couldn’t stay content with one triumph; he must try to crown it with another. “And you, Mr. Mycroft, you too are going to be perfectly cast,” and he chuckled.

  “I am ready to fall in with any of your plans for philanthropy,” was Mr. Mycroft’s answer. The pomposity might have been expected but the agreeability was certainly one more shock of surprise.

  “Now,” and the little man had put down his camera and was fussing like a modiste round a marchioness client whom she was fitting for a ball dress, “now, Mr. Silchester is set and ready. You, Mr. Mycroft, would you please just sit here, just behind him, on the balustrade. You see, my idea has about it something of what great artists call inevitability! The group casts itself—it’s a great piece of moving sculpture. Here is Mr. Silchester gazing with stretched-out arms at the glorious orb of day, his face flooded with its splendor, the very symbol of youth accepting life—life direct, warm, pulsing, torrential…” As he ran on like this I began to have a slight crick in my neck, and with one’s head thrown back my head began to throb a little and my eyes got quite dizzy with the sunlight. “Now, please, Mr. Silchester,” said the voice at my feet, “hold the pose for just a moment more while I place Mr. Mycroft,” and I heard our little artist in tableau vivant cooing to Mr. Mycroft. “And you, you see, are the wisdom of age, grey, wise, reflective, a perfect contrast, looking down into the deep waters of contemplation.”

  Evidently Mr. Mycroft fell in with all this, even to having himself shifted until he was right behind me. I remember I was a little amused at the thought of Mr. Mycroft being actually put at my feet and, more, that there I stood with the leading role and with my back to him—he who was so used to being looked up to. Perhaps it was this thought that gave one more stretch to the tiring elastic of my patience. And in a moment more evidently Mr. Mycroft’s cooperation had been so full that Hess was content. The little fellow ran back down the steps of the other side of the bridge and I could just see from the corner of my rather swimming eyes that he had picked up his camera and was going to shoot us. But again he was taken with a fussy doubt. He ran back to us. We were still too far apart. He pushed us closer till my calves were actually against Mr. Mycroft’s shoulder blades.

  “The composition is perfect in line and mass,” murmured Hess, “it is a spot of highlighting color that’s wanted and right near the central interest, the upturned, sun-flooded face. Mr. Silchester, please don’t move an inch. I have the very thing here.”

  I squinted down and saw the little fellow flick out from his button-hole the hibiscus blossom which he was wearing. I saw what was coming. The beautiful Samoans did always at their feasts wear a scarlet hibiscus set behind the ear so that the blossom glowed alongside their eye. In silence I submitted as Hess fitted the flower behind my left ear and arranged the long trumpet of the blossom so that it rested on my cheek bone. Then at last he was content, skipped back to his camera, raised it on high, focussed….There was a click—I am sure I heard that. And I’m equally sure there was a buss, or twang. And then involuntarily I clapped my hands to my face and staggered back to avoid something that was dashing at my eye. I stumbled heavily backwards against Mr. Mycroft, felt my balance go completely, the cloak swept over my head and I plunged backwards and downwards into the dark.

  My next sensation was that I was being held. I hadn’t hit anything. But I was in as much pain as though I had. For one of my legs was caught in some kind of grip and by this I was hanging upside down. For suddenly the bell-like extinguisher in which I was pending dropped away—as when they unveil statues—and I was exposed. Indeed I could now see myself in the water below like a grotesque narcissus, a painfully ludicrous pendant.

  How had I managed to make such a grotesque stumble? I could only suppose that the long gazing at the sun had made me dizzy and then some dragon-fly or other buzzing insect had darted at me—probably at that idiotic flower—which in spite of my fall still stuck behind my ear. That had made me start and I had overturned. For though the flower held its place, the cloak was gone and now lay mantling the surface of the pond some six feet below me.

  These observations, however, were checked by another dose of even more severe pain. I was being hauled up to the balustrade above me by my leg and the grip that paid me in foot by foot was Mr. Mycroft’s sinewy hands. When my face came up far enough for me to see his, his was quite without expression. He did have the kindness to say, “Sun dizziness, of course,” and then over his shoulder where I next caught sight of the anxious face of little Hess, “Don’t be alarmed. I caught him just in time. I fear, however, that your valuable cloak will not be the better for a wetting.”

  The little fellow was full of apologies. While this went on Mr. Mycroft had helped me into my jacket, given me my cane and led me, still shaken, to the gate, accompanied all the way by a very apologetic Hess. When we were there Mr. Mycroft closed the incident quietly. “Don’t apologize, Mr. Hess. It was a brilliant idea, if the execution fell a little below expectation,” and then putting his hand up to my ear, “I am sure you would like this flower as a souvenir of an eventful day. I hope the picture-with-a-meaning will develop.”

  As we swirled away in a taxi, every sway of the car made me nearly sick. When we were home Mr. Mycroft broke the silence: “I have a call to make and one or two small things to arrange.”

  Mr. Mycroft didn’t come back till dinner was actually being put on the table and he too looked as fresh as snow, after a hot shower and a clean change of linen, I felt. He was kind, too, about the meal. The avocado-and-chive paste served on hot crackers he praised by the little joke that the paste showed symbolically how well my suavity and his pungency really blended. The Pacific lobster is a creature of parts but it needs skill to make it behave really à la Thermidor, and I was pleased that the chef and I had made my old master confess that he would not know that it was not a Parisian langouste. The chicken à la King he smilingly said had something quite regal about it while the bananes flambées he particularly complimented because I had made them out of a locally grown banana which, because it is more succulent than the standard varieties, lends itself to better blending with alcohol. Indeed, he was so pleased that while the coffee was before us he asked whether I’d like to hear the end of the story in which I had played so important a part. Of course I admitted that nothing would give me more pleasure. But I was
more than usually piqued when he said quietly, “Let me begin at the end. As we parted I said I was going to make a call. It has been answered as I wished. Do not fear that we shall have to visit the bird sanctuary again. It is closed—permanently. Now for my story. It seemed for both of us to be marked by a series of silly little misadventures. First, it was my turn to fall and you kindly helped me. Then, on our second call, it was your turn to endure the humiliation of an upset. But each served its purpose.”

  “But what did you gain from skidding on our first visit?” I asked.

  “This,” said Mr. Mycroft, rising and taking from the mantelshelf, where I had seen him place his fountain pen when he sat down to dinner, the little tube.

  “That was only a recovery, not a gain,” I said.

  “No,” he replied, “it garnered something when it fell. To misquote—as both of us like doing—‘Cast your pen upon the waters and in a few moments it may pick up more copy than if you’d written for a week with it!’ ”

  My “What do you mean?” was checked as he carefully unscrewed the top.

  “See those little holes,” he said, pointing to small openings just under the shoulder of the nib; then he drew out the small inner tube. It wasn’t of rubber—it was of glass and was full of fairly clear water.

  “This is water—water from the pond in the bird sanctuary. It looks like ordinary pond-water. As a matter of fact, it contains an unusually interesting form of life in it.”

  I began to feel a faint uneasiness.