The Big Book of Sherlock Holmes Stories
Page 46
I could understand his feelings. The medium mentioned things that could only be known in the innermost domestic circle; such as a knock given to a girl when she was a child, now recalled by the spirit of her brother killed in the war. Sometimes this intimacy was even distressing; as in the picture called up before us of a girl sobbing in a remote chateau in France, and the gloomy admission by a young man present that the memory moved him to remorse. Perhaps the most remarkable case was that of the spirit of a daughter who told her father not to neglect his appearance from grief at her death, seeing that the Shining Ones liked to see him in a single eyeglass and spats. Now the man in question was indescribably shaggy and shabby, but he admitted that he had indeed been thus adorned in happier days.
I was brooding on these things after the others had left, when I heard a step on the stair that told of one of them returning. Dr. Magog himself hurriedly re-entered the room, saying: “I had forgotten my hat. Interesting occasion, wasn’t it?”
“You absolutely amazed me,” I answered.
“You have often told me so, my dear Watson,” he replied.
I sprang to my feet and stood stiffened with incredulous stupefaction, for I had caught a note of something more marvelous than any psychical marvels.
He seated himself languidly and removed the white wig, showing the unmistakable frontal development of the greatest detective in the world. “If you had used my methods, Watson,” he said, “you would have known that a man never forgets his hat except when he is wearing a wig. It was a deplorable lapse. Well, you see, I converted Challenger.”
“A wonderful achievement,” I said. “The discoverer of the prehistoric world.”
“A very appropriate occupation, Watson,” he said. “I should say Dr. Challenger’s powers of scientific observation were just about equal to noticing one of the larger Plesiosauri a few yards off. With a little more attention to minutiae he might even see a mammoth on the mat.”
“But how on earth did you manage it?” I asked. “How did you know of that nursery incident, for instance?”
“The girl was good looking and healthy and she had false teeth. More probably she had them knocked out; and who should knock them out if not her brother?”
“And what about the eyeglass and spats,” I demanded.
“I have myself written a little monograph on ‘The Monacle of Crime,’ and we saw something of its devastating effect when we looked into that little problem of the Haunted Hat Peg. The man had different markings in the two eye sockets, in a way only produced by the single eyeglass. Did you ever know a shabby, unshaven man to wear a single eyeglass? His beard bristled like that of all men who were once clean shaven. I guessed the spats; but I was careful only to say that the higher intelligences would like to see them. There is no accounting for taste.”
“And how did you know,” I asked, lowering my voice, “that the young man had broken the heart of a lady in a chateau?”
“He hadn’t,” replied Sherlock Holmes, “but I could see by his face he would be the last man to deny it. Rather too obvious, Watson. Will you pass me my violin?”
The Case of the Missing Patriarchs
LOGAN CLENDENING
ALTHOUGH AN OUTSTANDING scholar and collector of Sherlock Holmes, Logan Clendening (1884–1945) is now forgotten except for his single short-short story, which Ellery Queen described as “one of the shortest and cleverest pastiches of Sherlock Holmes ever conceived,” and Edgar W. Smith, the head of the Baker Street Irregulars, called a classic piece, even suggesting “The Navel Treatise” as a possible alternative title.
Born in Kansas City, Missouri, Clendening became one of the city’s greatest doctors and most beloved citizens, as famous for his wit and charm as he was for his literary scholarship and medical expertise. His column, “Diet and Health,” was syndicated in nearly four hundred newspapers, and his most important book, The Human Body (1927), was a bestseller that remained in print through successive editions for many years. Its success encouraged him to give up private practice for writing and journalism. His sense of humor came to the front when he was asked why he had quit private practice. He replied, “My boy, about this country are several headstones marking my progress in the operating field. I desisted, I may say, almost by universal acclaim.”
When the great Sherlockian scholar and collector Vincent Starrett was forced by financial difficulties to sell his Holmes collection, Clendening wrote to him. “I hear that you have just parted with your own collection, and I think you ought to start another. Why not start with mine? It is small but goodish—it contains a number of the better pieces that you might have difficulty duplicating—and I am boxing it up this afternoon and getting it off to you tomorrow morning. You will really take a load off my mind if you will accept it.”
“The box,” Starrett wrote in his autobiography, Born in a Bookshop (1965), “contained some twenty of the most desirable items in the field, including the desperately rare first printing of A Study in Scarlet. It was the nucleus of a new collection….I suppose no finer thing ever was done for one collector by another.”
“The Case of the Missing Patriarchs” was privately printed in an edition of thirty copies for friends of Edwin B. Hill (Ysleta, Texas, 1934).
THE CASE OF THE MISSING PATRIARCHS
Logan Clendening
SHERLOCK HOLMES IS dead. At the age of eighty he passed away quietly in his sleep. And at once ascended to Heaven.
The arrival of few recent immigrants to the celestial streets has caused so much excitement. Only Napoleon’s appearance in Hell is said to have equaled the great detective’s reception. In spite of the heavy fog which rolled in from the Jordan, Holmes was immediately bowled in a hansom to audience with the Divine Presence. After the customary exchange of amenities, Jehovah said:
“Mr. Holmes, we too have our problems. Adam and Eve are missing. Have been, ’s a matter of fact, for nearly two aeons. They used to be quite an attraction to visitors and we would like to commission you to discover them.”
Holmes looked thoughtful for a moment.
“We fear that their appearance when last seen would furnish no clue,” continued Jehovah. “A man is bound to change in two aeons.”
Holmes held up his long, thin hand. “Could you make a general announcement that a contest between an immovable body and an irresistible force will be staged in that large field at the end of the street—Lord’s, I presume it is?”
The announcement was made and soon the streets were filled with a slowly moving crowd. Holmes stood idly in the divine portico watching them.
Suddenly he darted into the crowd and seized a patriarch and his whimpering old mate; he brought them to the Divine Presence.
“It is,” asserted Deity. “Adam, you have been giving us a great deal of anxiety. But, Mr. Holmes, tell me how you found them.”
“Elementary, my dear God,” said Sherlock Holmes, “they have no navels.”
The Devil and Sherlock Holmes
LOREN D. ESTLEMAN
A DEEP-SEATED AFFECTION for Sherlock Holmes resulted in Loren D. Estleman’s (1952– ) first two published books, Sherlock Holmes vs. Dracula, or The Adventure of the Sanguinary Count (1978) and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Holmes (1979), as well as the recent short story collection, The Perils of Sherlock Holmes (2012).
Nevertheless, among his seventy published books, it is Estleman’s twenty-three novels about Detroit private investigator Amos Walker for which he is best known. Beginning with Motor City Blue (1980), this hard-boiled series has been praised by fans as diverse as Harlan Coben, Steve Forbes, John D. MacDonald, John Lescroart, and the Amazing Kreskin. As one of the most honored writers in America, Estleman was given the Eye, the lifetime achievement award of the Private Eye Writers of America, from which he has also received four Shamus Awards.
He has been nominated for a National Book Award and an Edgar Award, winning twenty additional national writing awards, notably the Owen Wister Award for Lifetime Contributions to Western Lite
rature, the highest honor given by the Western Writers of America.
“The Devil and Sherlock Holmes” was first published in Ghosts in Baker Street, edited by Martin H. Greenberg, Jon Lellenberg, and Daniel Stashower (New York, Carroll & Graf, 2006).
THE DEVIL AND SHERLOCK HOLMES
Loren D. Estleman
THE YEAR 1899 stands out of particular note in my memory; not because it was the last but one of the old century (the numerologists are clear upon this point, but popular opinion differs), but because it was the only time during my long and stimulating association with Sherlock Holmes that I came to call upon his unique services as a client.
It was the last day of April, and because I had not yet made up my mind whether to invest in South African securities, I was refreshing my recollection by way of recent numbers of the Times and Telegraph about developments in the souring relationship between the Boers and the British in Johannesburg. The day was Sunday, and my professional consulting-room was empty. This situation presented the happy prospect of uninterrupted study outside the melancholy surroundings of my lonely quarters in my wife’s temporary absence, as well as a haven from personal troubles of more recent vintage.
I was, therefore, somewhat disgruntled to be forced to disinter myself from the pile of discarded sections to answer the bell.
“Ah, Watson,” greeted Sherlock Holmes. “When I find you squandering your day of rest in conference with your cheque-book, I wonder that I should have come in chains, to haunt you out of your miser’s destiny.”
I was always pleased to encounter my oldest of friends, and wrung his hand before I realised that he had once again trespassed upon my private reflections. It was not until I had relieved him of his hat, ulster, and stick, and we were comfortable in my worn chairs with glasses of brandy in hand to ward off the spring chill, that I asked him by what sorcery he’d divined my late activity.
“The printers’ ink upon your hands, on a day when no newspapers are delivered, is evidence; the rest is surmise, based upon familiarity with the company and the one story that has claimed the interest of every journal in the country this past week. Having experienced war at firsthand, you are scarcely an enthusiast of sword-rattling rhetoric; but you are a chronic investor, who prides himself upon his determination to wrest every scrap of intelligence from a venture before he takes the plunge. The rest is simple arithmetic.”
“You haven’t lost your touch,” said I, shaking my head.
“And yet I fear I shall, should I remain in this calm another week. There isn’t a criminal with imagination left on our island. They have all emigrated to America to run for public office.”
His voice was jocular, but he appeared drawn. I recognised with alarum the look of desperation which had driven him to unhealthy practices in the past. Instead, he had come to me, and I was heartily glad to serve as substitute.
“Well, I don’t propose to ask you to investigate the Uitlanders in South Africa,” I remarked.
He threw his cigarette, which he had just lit, into the grate, a gesture of irritation.
“The fare would be a waste. Anyone with eyes in his head can see there will be war, and that it will be no holiday for Her Majesty’s troops. Heed my advice and restrict your gambling to the turf.”
Holmes was prickly company when he was agitated. Fortunately, I did not have to cast far to strike a subject that might distract him from his boredom, which in his case could be fatal. The situation had been nearly as much on my mind of late as the squabbling on the Ivory Coast. However, a cautious approach was required, as the circumstances were anathema to his icy faculties of reason.
“As a matter of fact,” I teased, “I have been in the way of a matter that may present some features of interest. However, I hesitate to bring it up.”
“Old fellow, this is no time in life to acquire discretion. It suits you little.” He lifted his head, as a hound does when the wind shifts from the direction of a wood where game is in residence.
“My dear Holmes, let’s pretend I said nothing. The thing is beneath you.”
“You are an open book, unequal to the skills of a confidence-man dangling bait. Get on with you, and leave the techniques of obverse alienism to the likes of Dr. Freud.” In spite of the irony in his speech, he was well and truly on the scent.
“It is just that I know your opinions on the subject.”
“What subject is that?” he demanded.
“The supernatural.”
“Bah! Spare me your bogey tales.”
He pretended disappointment, but I knew him better than to accept appearances. He could disguise his person from me with wigs and rubber noses, but not his smouldering curiosity.
“You are aware, perhaps, that I am a consulting physician to the staff of St. Porphyry’s Hospital in Battersea?”
“I know St. Poor’s,” he said. “My testimony at the Assizes sent a murderer there, bypassing the scaffold, and there are at least two bank robbers jittering in front of gullible medical experts who ought to be rotting in Reading Gaol.”
I could not determine whether he was wishing incarceration upon the robbers or the doctors. Either way, I was annoyed.
“St. Porphyry’s is a leader in the modern treatment of lunacy. It’s not a bolt-hole for charlatans.”
“I did not mean to suggest it was. Pray continue. This penchant for withholding the most important feature until the end may please the readers of your tales, but it exhausts my store of patience.”
“To be brief,” said I, “there is a patient there at present who’s convinced himself he’s the Devil.”
He nodded thoughtfully. “That’s on its way towards balancing the account. Bedlam has two Christs and a Moses.”
“Have they succeeded in convincing anyone besides themselves?”
He saw my direction, and lit another cigarette with an air of exaggerated insouciance. Thus did I know he was sniffing at the pit I had dug and covered with leaves.
“It’s no revelation that he’s found some tormented souls in residence who agree with him. There’s more sport in bear-baiting.”
“It isn’t just some of the patients, Holmes,” I said, springing the trap. “There are at least two nurses on the staff, and one doctor, who are absolutely unshakeable in the conviction that this fellow is Satan Incarnate.”
Within the hour, we were aboard a coach bound for Battersea, the telegraph poles clicking past, quite in time with the working of Holmes’s brain. He hammered me with questions, seeking to string the morsels of information I’d already provided into a chronological narrative. It was an old trick of his, not unlike the process of mesmerisation; he worried me for every detail, mundane though it may have been, and in so doing caused me to recall incidents that had been related to me, and which I had seen for myself, but had since forgotten.
My regular practice having stagnated, I had succumbed at last to persistent entreaties from my friend and colleague, Dr. James Menitor, chief alienist at St. Porphyry’s, to observe the behaviour of his more challenging patients twice a week and offer my opinion upon their treatment. In this I suspect he thought my close exposure to Holmes’s detective techniques would prove useful, and I had been rather too flattered by his determination, and intrigued by the diversion, to put him off any longer.
Dr. Menitor was particularly eager to consult with me in the case of a patient known only as John Smith; at which point in my narration I was interrupted by a derisive snort from Holmes.
“A nom de romance,” said he, “lacking even the virtue of originality. If I cannot have imagination in my criminals, let me at least have it in my lunatics.”
“It was the staff who christened him thus, in lieu of any other identification. Dr. Menitor insists upon treating patients as individuals, not as mere case numbers. Smith was apprehended verbally accosting strollers along the Thames, and committed by Scotland Yard for observation. It seems he told the constable that he was engaged on his annual expedition to snare souls.”
“Three days ago. It was fortuitous you dropped in upon me when you did, for Mr. Smith has indicated he will be returning to the netherworld this very night.”
“Walpurgisnacht,” said Holmes.
“Bless you,” said I; for I thought he had sneezed.
“Thank you, but I am quite uncongested. Walpurgisnacht is a Teutonic superstition; not worthy of discussion in our scientific age, but possibly of interest to the deluded mind. Has your John Smith a foreign accent?”
“No. As a matter of fact, his speech is British upper class. I wonder that no one has reported him missing.”
“I know a number of families in the West End with good reason not to in that situation.” He shrugged. “It appears I am guilty, then, of a non sequitur. The date may not be significant. What has he done to support his claim, apart from wandering the hospital corridors, snatching at gnats?”
“Would that were the case. He has already nearly caused the death of one patient and jeopardised the career of a nurse whose professional behaviour was impeccable before he arrived.”
Holmes’s eyes grew alight in the reflection of the match he had set to his pipe. Violence and disgrace were details dear to his detective’s heart.
I continued my report. On his first day in residence, Smith was observed in close whispered conversation with a young man named Tom Turner, who suffered from the conviction that he was Socrates, the ancient Greek sage. Dr. Menitor had been pleased with Turner’s progress since he’d been admitted six months previously, wearing a bedsheet wrapped about him in the manner of a toga, bent over and speaking in a voice cracked with age, when in fact he was barely four-and-twenty; he had of his own volition recently resumed contemporary dress, and had even commenced to score off his delusion with self-deprecating wit, an encouraging sign that sanity was returning.