The Big Book of Sherlock Holmes Stories

by Otto Penzler

  Holmes paused while he crammed his pipe with fresh shag, then tossed his pouch over to me as he continued.

  “The singular circumstance which I alluded to just now concerns the presence of the sharpened comb at the side of Mrs. Staunton’s body.”

  “Then the different theories,” I put in, “evolved by the more sensational sheets to explain away that very aspect of the case were all inaccurate?”

  “Do you mean those wild and absurd explanations advanced by unimaginative reporters?” he cried impatiently. “That Staunton suffered a mental lapse? That he lost his nerve? That he became careless and overconfident?” He gestured angrily. “Piffle, Watson, sheer piffle! Such implausible solutions outraged every logical faculty I possess! I read them all and found them to be wholly inconsistent with the facts, and with the character of the criminal himself.”

  He leaned forward in his chair, an intent look on his face as he added: “Because it was the cunning and resourceful manner in which he murdered Arnold Foote and disposed of his body that gave me my first clear insight into the workings of his mind. This, in turn, enabled me to forge the links in my chain of reasoning which led me eventually to true solution.”

  “How did you bring this about?” I asked.

  “By referring to my notes on the case, and the reading of a staggering pile of newspapers which carried a complete day-by-day account of the court proceedings. Having thus gathered in my harvest—and a goodly crop it proved to be!—I surrounded myself one evening with a motley assortment of shag, cushions, and hot coffee, and proceeded to thresh it out. It cost me a night’s sleep, but at dawn I had my solution to the mystery.”

  “I should be very glad to hear what it was.”

  “And you shall, Watson, but all in good time. First, I should like to recapitulate briefly the sequence of events in the murder of Foote. It will serve to refresh your memory and thus enable you to obtain a firmer grip on the essentials.”

  He snuggled more deeply into his chair, and made certain that his brier was drawing properly before resuming.

  “The true facts in the death of the ’cellist came out, as you know, in Henry Staunton’s confession made soon after his arrest at Newhaven. This document is of particular interest, for not only did it tell us how the crime was done, but it also served to cast a revealing light upon what was to come.

  “Staunton contrived, by a simple yet effective ruse, to entice this none-too-bright musician to his home on Oakley Crescent and there killed him by plunging a steel bodkin impregnated with an alkaloid into the base of his skull. Following a preconceived plan, the murderer then hid the body and calmly went to spend some hours with acquaintances in a near-by cafe.”

  “One moment, Holmes,” I broke in, “there is one aspect of this which has never been clear to me. Where was his wife on this particular evening?”

  “Have you forgotten that, following upon a last bitter quarrel, Mrs. Staunton had left him?”

  “By Jove!” I exclaimed, “you are quite right! It had completely slipped my mind.”

  “Yet, it was of enormous importance,” he observed. “But to return to Staunton. Having now established some sort of alibi, he returned some time around two a.m. leading a horse and cab which he had cooly appropriated without the owner’s knowledge, and used it to carry the body to the river.”

  “Now that I come to think of it,” I interjected, “that cabby never found out the grisly service his cab had rendered a murderer that night.”

  “Neither did he ever learn that a would-be murderer had been spying his movements, and knew of his habit of spending some time indoors on wet nights,” added my friend. “And took full advantage of it later. Doubtless, the bad weather aided him, but his having donned the cabby’s own hat and waterproof, which he had flung inside his vehicle—thus affecting a perfect disguise—was a master stroke of daring and of quick thinking, besides demonstrating a swift grasp of opportunity. Barely ten minutes after he had hurled Foote’s body over the hand railing of the bridge, the cab was back at its place and no one the wiser.”

  I gave a reminiscent nod. “Staunton actually bragged about that exploit, I remember.”

  “And with some justification. The crime had been so cunningly planned, and had been carried out with such careful regard to detail and timing, that not a hitch occurred to mar it. I tell you, Watson, that the police might have been hard put to secure his conviction had he not made that wild, damning admission when he was arrested.”

  I had not forgotten the incident. Staunton, caught off guard when tendered the customary warning, had hotly denied all responsibility for the death of his wife, while conceding by his denial implications of guilt for the murder of Arnold Foote.

  “Staunton possessed the three most dangerous qualities of the criminal,” continued Holmes; “cunning, resourcefulness, and daring. And, I might add, used them effectively.”

  “Then why did he not destroy that infernal comb?” I asked. “Surely self-preservation alone ought to have dictated so obvious a course.”

  “That, my dear fellow, was one of the very questions I asked myself when reviewing the case. How could a man of Staunton’s calibre have overlooked so incriminating a piece of evidence? What had impelled this crafty schemer to make use of that strange and terrible matacalda twice in rapid succession—an obvious and fatal blunder?”

  Holmes stopped to knock out the cold ashes from his pipe. Then he refilled it slowly, deep in thought, his brows drawn low, his eyes half closed.

  “I could not reconcile these two facts,” he resumed, “with Staunton’s crafty and ingenious mind. Twist and turn them as I might, they refused to fit into an otherwise orderly pattern.” He frowned. “Something was wrong, Watson. Instinctively I felt that somewhere in my chain of reasoning lay a defective link. By a process of elimination I succeeded in discovering my error. It lay in having until now gone along on the assumption that, having killed Arnold Foote, Staunton, of necessity, had also murdered his wife. But, I reasoned, if he had indeed committed both crimes, was it conceivable that he should bungle the second after having so cunningly covered up his tracks in the first? It was illogical, hence inadmissible.

  “Confronted with this misconception, I began to cast about for an alternative theory, one which, while retaining the known facts, would enable me to reach a totally different conclusion. In view of the lapse of time, this could no longer be reached by the ordinary methods of observation and confirmation; only analytical deductions from these facts could give me the correct interpretation of them. Feverishly I began to go over my notes, sensing that somewhere among them was the answer I sought.”

  “You were successful?” I asked quickly.

  “Beyond expectation,” he replied, then relapsed once more into a deep thoughtful silence, his arms propped up on his knees, holding his pipe between his hands, contemplating the glowing sea-coals.

  “Were I the ideal reasoner you so often have made me out to be,” he began, after a long interval of silence, “I should have quickly perceived the significance underlying the Staunton maid’s replies to my questions as to why she had replaced the comb.”

  “But what possible connection could there be between her replies and the solution to the death of Mrs. Staunton?”

  “Do you recall her words?” he asked, countering my question with one of his own.

  “Vaguely,” I answered. “Was it not something about the ‘poor lass lying dead on the floor’?”

  “Good old Watson!” he said, with a dry chuckle.

  “Well, she also referred to her mistress’s fondness for that particular comb, and to the fact—and this is noteworthy—that she always took it with her wherever she went. We know that Mrs. Staunton, following the last quarrel with her husband, had packed a few things and had then fled from the house.”

  “Swearing never to return,” I put in, as some of the details returned to me.

  “Quite so. Now, at such moments of stress, a woman’s instinct is to carry aw
ay her most cherished and useful possessions, is it not?”

  “You mean…,” I began.

  “I am prepared to stake my reputation on it,” he put in, anticipating my question, “that when she left Oakley Crescent, the tortoise-shell comb was in her possession!”

  I stared at him in blank surprise. “But if that is the case, how could Staunton have poisoned it?”

  “Since he did not have access to the comb at any time during the three days which preceded her death, it was utterly impossible for him to have done so,” he replied quietly.

  “Really, Holmes,” I cried, lifting my hands in a helpless gesture, “I am now more confused than ever. Would it not be better if you revealed the steps you took to unravel this intricate puzzle? How did you eventually solve it?”

  “Simply by applying my oft-repeated formula. Having eliminated the impossible—that is, Staunton’s complicity in the death of his wife—I had now to contend with whatever remained, however improbable, in order to arrive at the truth. No sooner had I reached this conclusion than the facts began to arrange themselves in their proper order. The old conceptions had perforce to give way to the new. Viewed thus from an entirely different angle, the true elements in the case now assumed their rightful perspective. The answer, of course, lay with the poisoned comb. Its very presence at the side of Mrs. Staunton’s body finally suggested the true, the only possible solution.

  “I make some claim to belated credit,” he went on, “for remembering Mrs. Grant’s words in connection with the poisoned instrument. But the truth is that I was woefully lacking in the mixture of imagination and exact knowledge which you are so fond of depicting. I also claim extenuating circumstances—for what man can cope with the warped mind of a vindictive woman, consumed by a hatred beyond description and a terrible sense of loss?”

  I drew a deep breath. “Holmes,” I begged, “who poisoned the comb? Who brought it back to the house?”

  “Is it not obvious that it was—that it could only have been—Mrs. Staunton herself?”

  “Good heavens!” I exclaimed aghast, staring wildly at his set features, my mind in a turmoil. “Do you mean to say that she…she actually committed suicide in that terrible fashion?”

  “The facts speak for themselves, Watson. No other interpretation is possible.”

  “But why on earth could she not have gone to the police?” I asked, more calmly, now that the first shock had passed. “If she suspected, or knew, that her husband had murdered her lover, why could she not have brought the matter to their attention by less involved means? Why not a direct accusation?”

  “And have the facts of her adulterous relationship aired in open court, to be later blazoned upon every newspaper in the kingdom?” he inquired sardonically. “Really, Watson,” he went on, shaking his head in a puzzled manner, “I never quite get your limitations. Do you still fail to grasp the fact that her suicide, as you call it—that her self-murder, rather—was purely incidental to her scheme of revenge? That by purposely using the same poison—thereby attracting the attention of the police—she sent to the scaffold the man who had destroyed her lover?”

  “Then Staunton’s reiterated denials of all complicity in her death were justified?” I said, musingly.

  “Entirely so,” he replied. “Yet who believed him? Did not counsel for the prosecution stress the fact that Staunton, by insisting that his wife had committed suicide, hoped to escape the extreme penalty? It was futile effort, for without any doubt her violent death swayed the jury when they rendered their verdict.”

  “I wonder how she learned about the poison and its fearful properties?” I said, after a spell of silence. “Any theories, Holmes?”

  He moved his head dubiously. “There, my dear Watson, we trespass into the field of surmise and conjecture. A wife has her own methods of finding out her husband’s secrets. An unguarded word, a threat from him, perhaps even a boast as to the manner in which he had removed his young rival—any of these may have given her an inkling of the truth. The fact that she made use of it with such telling effect amply proves that she was fully aware of its potentialities. We shall have to be content with that.”

  “It was a fearful revenge, Holmes,” I said, breaking into the long silence which followed his last words. “Yet, somehow, I cannot find it in my heart to condemn her too bitterly.”

  “And I,” said my friend, reaching out for his pouch, “find that for the third time in my career, I have been beaten by a woman. Yet I cannot say that I shall ever begrudge Mrs. Staunton her triumph!”

  The Adventure of the Second Swag

  ROBERT BARR

  (Writing as Luke Sharp)

  BORN IN SCOTLAND, Robert Barr (1850–1912) moved to Canada with his family when he was four years old. While a teacher and later headmaster of the Central School of Windsor, Ontario, he wrote short stories that he placed with the Detroit Free Press. When he was twenty-six, he decided to devote himself full-time to writing and moved to Detroit to become a staff writer on that paper, eventually becoming its news editor.

  His contributions to the newspaper were published under the pseudonym Luke Sharp, an amusing name but not one that Barr invented. As a schoolboy in Canada, he had regularly passed a storefront sign that proclaimed “Luke Sharpe, Undertaker,” which he found too memorable to resist.

  Barr’s first Sherlock Holmes parody, “Detective Stories Gone Wrong: The Adventures of Sherlaw Kombs,” published in May 1892, is often described as the first Holmes parody (it is early, yes, but not the first) and has been often anthologized, including in this collection. However, the present story, published more than a decade later and far more obscure, is an even funnier send-up of the great detective.

  “The Adventure of the Second Swag” was first published in the December 1904 issue of The Idler Magazine; its first book appearance was as a chapbook limited to two hundred copies, The Adventure of the Second Swag (London, Ferret Fantasy, 1990).

  THE ADVENTURE OF THE SECOND SWAG

  Robert Barr

  THE TIME WAS Christmas Eve, 1904. The place was an ancient, secluded manor house, built so far back in the last century as 1896. It stood at the head of a profound valley; a valley clothed in ferns waist deep, and sombrely guarded by ancient trees, the remnants of a primeval forest. From this mansion no other human habitation could be seen. The descending road which connected the king’s highway with the stronghold was so sinuous and precipitate that more than once the grim baronet who owned it had upset his automobile in trying to negotiate the dangerous curves. The isolated situation and gloomy architecture of this venerable mansion must have impressed the most casual observer with the thought that here was the spot for the perpetration of dark deeds, were it not for the fact that the place was brilliantly illumined with electricity, while the silence was emphasised rather than disturbed by the monotonous, regular thud of an accumulator pumping the subtle fluid into a receptive dynamo situated in an outhouse to the east.

  The night was gloomy and lowering after a day of rain, but the very sombreness of the scene made the brilliant stained glass windows stand out like the radiant covers of a Christmas number. Such was the appearance presented by “Undershaw,” the home of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, situated among the wilds of Hindhead, some forty or fifty miles from London. Is it any wonder that at a spot so remote from civilisation law should be set at defiance, and that the one lone policeman who perambulates the district should tremble as he passed the sinister gates of “Undershaw”?

  In a large room of this manor house, furnished with a luxuriant elegance one would not have expected in a region so far from humanising influences, sat two men. One was a giant in stature, whose broad brow and smoothly shaven strong chin gave a look of determination to his countenance, which was further enhanced by the heavy black moustache which covered his upper lip. There was something of the dragoon in his upright and independent bearing. He had, in fact, taken part in more than one fiercely-fought battle, and was a member of several military cl
ubs; but it was plain to be seen that his ancestors had used war clubs, and had transmitted to him the physique of a Hercules. One did not need to glance at the Christmas number of the Strand, which he held in his hand, nor read the name printed there in large letters, to know that he was face to face with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

  His guest, an older man, yet still in the prime of life, whose beard was tinged with grey, was of less warlike bearing than the celebrated novelist, belonging, as he evidently did, to the civil and not the military section of life. He had about him the air of a prosperous man of affairs, shrewd, good-natured, conciliatory, and these two strongly contrasting personages are types of the men to whom England owes her greatness. The reader of the Christmas number will very probably feel disappointed when he finds, as he supposes, merely two old friends sitting amicably in a country house after dinner. There seems, to his jaded taste, no element of tragedy in such a situation. These two men appear comfortable enough, and respectable enough. It is true that there is whisky and soda at hand, and the box of cigars is open, yet there are latent possibilities of passion under the most placid natures, revealed only to writers of fiction in our halfpenny Press. Let the reader wait, therefore, till he sees these two men tried as by fire under a great temptation, and then let him say whether even the probity of Sir George Newnes comes scatheless from the ordeal.

  “Have you brought the swag, Sir George?” asked the novelist, with some trace of anxiety in his voice.

  “Yes,” replied the great publisher; “but before proceeding to the count would it not be wise to give orders that will insure our being left undisturbed?”

  “You are right,” replied Doyle, pressing an electric button.

  When the servant appeared he said: “I am not at home to anyone. No matter who calls, or what excuse is given, you must permit none to approach this room.”

  When the servant had withdrawn, Doyle took the further precaution of thrusting in place one of the huge bolts which ornamented the massive door studded with iron knobs. Sir George withdrew from the tail pocket of his dress coat two canvas bags, and, untying the strings, poured the rich red gold on the smooth table.