Sherlock Holmes: The American Years

by Michael Kurland

  Holmes tapped my elbow. “I should inform you that one of those ragged lads barged through here again just as you were involved in—” he paused to find the word—“cheering.”

  “The boy snatched it?”

  “I would have stopped him in that event,” Holmes said. “I turned and saw him after he had pushed past. His hands were empty but I would stake a guinea that he dislodged the umbrella—and I’d venture it was deliberately done.”

  I labored to puzzle through it. The Englishman’s penchant for finding felons at every turn was suspect, but he’d offered a plausible explanation for the umbrella’s disappearance. If true, the culprit himself or a confederate would be retrieving it at that moment. What to do?

  “Here, could you . . .” I dropped to my knees and folded nearly double, working to get my face beneath the bench. Ashcroft grumbled and resisted my efforts with his ham-pillar legs. Seated beyond him, Mrs. Ashcroft, whose panniered dress took up a good three feet of bench and fit her like a circus tent—she couldn’t have gone within eight points of the wind in it—began expressing herself in a voice carrying all the honeyed sweetness of a #6 bastard file. Added note: Give Aunt Polly steel spectacles, nigh-crippling rheumatism, and pinch her face!

  From a torturous corkscrew position I was rewarded with a narrow view of the Pavilion’s netherworld. Squinting down at bottles, cartons, tins, wrappers and heaven knew what, I thought I saw a handle protruding from a heap of sodden newspapers half-submerged in a puddle. Rainwater, I hoped, not tobacco juice—or worse. When my eyes adjusted, I saw that it was only a broken-off buggy whip.

  I angled my head sidewise for a wider view. Two dark figures lurked near the frontward seats. They lacked collars and proper headwear—the smaller of the two wore a jockey’s cap of the style affected by ballists—and they lacked tickets, certainly. I might have admired their pluck if not for the fact of the smaller one clutching my umbrella under his arm.

  “You, boys!” I called.

  They spun and stared at my sidewise countenance suspended below the benches like a holiday bulb. The smaller looked down guiltily at the umbrella, spoke urgently to the other, tugged the jockey cap lower to hide his face, and poised for flight.

  “I ain’t the cops,” I said assuringly. “Come over here.”

  The larger boy yanked the umbrella from the smaller, and with wary steps moved a bit closer.

  “That’s mine,” I told him. “I’m obliged to you for rescuing it.” We studied each other. I could see that he was a gap-toothed, freckled, filthy specimen. After some deliberation, he seemed to reach a conclusion about me and thumbed his grubby nose.

  “Why, pickle your devilish hide!” It came out louder than I’d intended, and I heard Mrs. Ashcroft’s shocked gasp. With a motion worthy of Barnum’s India Rubber Man, I reached back and fished out my billfold, jostling Ashcroft as I did so. “Boys?” My voice oozing with trust, I said, “That umbrella you’re holding? It’s a paying proposition to bring it up to me.”

  “How much?”

  I waved a banknote. “A whole dollar.”

  “Let’s see yer bill,” the boy said. “Drop it down.”

  “That old cat won’t fight.” I snorted at his impertinence. “Hurry that umbrella up here, and the cash is yours.”

  The boy consulted his smaller mate, who shook his head; they seemed to argue. “How can we know you’ll pay?” demanded the bigger one, twisting the umbrella in his grimy hands. The other hung back, his face shadowed.

  “I told you so.”

  “He sed, she sed,” the boy intoned mockingly.

  “It’s a keepsake!” I took a long breath to quell my anger. “It’s valuable—but only to me. I’m square as a dry-goods box. I’ll give you the money.”

  The boy cocked his head. “Give it first.”

  “Confound your polysyllabled insolence!” Recoiling, I knocked my head against the edge of the bench and swore with some spirit.

  “If you PLEASE!” said Ashcroft.

  I stared down at my umbrella, seeing in my mind’s eye the applauding London banqueters, and with a regretful sigh I released the dollar. Curious how the stripling scoundrel, with his ragged knickers, looked enough like my boyhood Hannibal companions—indeed, something in his thin frame, reddish hair, and freckled features whispered to my memory of myself—but this boy conducted his affairs like the meanest Yankee trader. The bill fell into his clutching hand and disappeared.

  By now others were bending down to see the cause of the disturbance. Holmes’s sharp features appeared a row above me. Had he moved to find room or was he standing on his hands? The boys conferred below, the smaller tugging at the umbrella before once more retreating to the shadows.

  “What’s the trouble?” I demanded.

  A burst of booing lifted away most of the other faces.

  “Come up here and collect your cash!”

  The boy lifted his head. “Want more,” he said succinctly.

  “Why, you sawed-off, infernal, perfidious—” My endearments were overwhelmed by new eruptions of crowd displeasure. “It’s too many for me,” I told him when it subsided, “as to exactly why you crave a prince’s ransom to return my possession!”

  “ ‘Cuz of the risk,” he answered. “We get pinched for no tickets, they’ll clap us in the calaboose.” At this the smaller boy made another failing try at the umbrella.

  “Okay, two dollars.” The sawed-off swindler would see me reduced to bacon and beans. I reached for my billfold but did not find another small-denomination bill. “Holmes!” I said, knowing better than to ask that money-squeezing ass Ashcroft, “lend me a dollar—I’ll beat this game yet!” I reached to him above the bench.

  “You’re taking the wrong approach,” he said, but handed over a silver coin.

  I lowered myself again as loudest-yet boos crescendoed from the crowd. The smaller boy saw his chance and this time succeeded in carrying off the umbrella toward the front of the Pavilion, where between spectators’ rumps I caught a glimpse of crimson socks flashing across home plate.

  “Come back!” I yelled, arms flailing.

  “Do you mind?” Ashcroft’s knee jabbed painfully into my ribs.

  “We’d all like to enjoy the proceedings,” Mrs. Ashcroft chimed in, her acid tones eating into my brain.

  I reared up in protest, knocked my cranium in the same spot, and shouted, “Enjoy ‘em over the part of me you see best!” This provoked sounds of outrage and what felt like the point of a bayonet jabbing my rear. I pivoted, thumping my poor head yet head again, and saw them glaring down at me, Mrs. Ashcroft’s parasol held aloft in a two-handed grip. I’ll take their measure, I vowed grimly, and looked down again to find that the bigger boy had recovered the umbrella.

  “Here,” I told him, and tossed the other dollar.

  He scarcely looked at it, but peered around anxiously for his companion. “I want five.”

  “WHAT IN THUNDER FOR?” As I felt the parasol’s retaliatory probe, a red haze clouded my wits. My feet kicked backward and met solid resistance, simultaneously barking my shins and bringing a rain of blows.

  “That’s enough from you!” said Ashcroft, and took hold of my ankles.

  “Hands off!” I struggled furiously to free myself. “I’ll flay you both!” Then, seeing the boy turn and flee: “NOT YOU!” He headed for the Pavilion’s opposite side, umbrella in hand. “WAIT!” Clutching the bench, I saw him disappear outside into the crowd. “COME BACK! STOP!” I broke away from Ashcroft, thrust myself upright, and plunged down the Pavilion stand, angry spectators boiling in my wake. “Vile ruffian!” yelped a woman whose picture hat I’d knocked askew.

  By the time I thumped to the ground, there remained no trace of the boys. The constabulary, of course, had witnessed nothing. While the game careened through its late innings I lingered dumbly at the foot of the Pavilion, bitter lamentations—Carry me home to die, and the like—coursing though my head. I vaguely knew that Boston was winning, but my fancy was caugh
t by the rhubarbs that continued to erupt, the nines swarming on the diamond in shifting formations of reds and blues. Hadn’t old-time jousting tournaments provoked such contentious pageantry? In my daybooks I’d jotted notes for a tale of medieval England wherein a modern-day Yankee introduces lethal firearms and other nineteenth-century delights, provoking a cataclysmic conflict. Should I have him bring base ball to the Round Table? Divide the knights into rival nines? The notion of wiping them out at a single stroke captivated me, and I pulled out pencil and scorecard again. When I ceased jotting and looked up again, the teams had departed the field and the Pavilion was nearly empty. I stood amid a litter of spoiled food and oilpaper wrappers and cigar stumps and rumpled scorecards and newspapers, my heart low. But then, gradually, a miracle of restorative vision began to emerge. Soon I was busy hatching a scheme to regain my pilfered prize.

  Its design had rounded into satisfying shape when movement behind the benches caught my eye. Somebody was there. The thieving brats? With pounding heart I circled around to peer beneath the structure, and caught out Holmes crouched beside a murky puddle, studying the ground through a magnifying lens. “Scouting for catfish?” I inquired with some sharpness.

  He took a final look, straightened slowly, and regarded me with granite eyes; I reckoned he knew I’d lost tolerance for him. Fact was, by then I resented most everything about him: his cultured syllables, his youth, his height, his uniformly black hair (my own auburn thatch had flared gray at the temples), his haughty English demeanor, and—this most of all—his blasted cocksureness. The whole of it had me on the spit and was giving me a slow roast.

  “You disdain my methods,” he said. “Pray allow me to test your observations. Exempli gratia, can you describe the youngsters’ shoes?”

  Of course that boosted my temperature a few more degrees. Their shoes? No images came to mind. “It was dim down here,” I protested, “with all them bodies blocking out the light above.” Holmes appraised me coolly and waited. “I fancy they wore common brogans.”

  He shook his head pityingly, as if I’d confirmed myself as a fraud. “Very well, then, what colors were their shirts?”

  I tried to think but my wits were a hopeless muddle. “Well, not store clothes, that much I can swear. The larger boy’s shirt was—why, gray, I fancy.”

  “Olive,” he corrected, looking smug as pie.

  “And your purpose?” I inquired. “To boost yourself at blind man’s bluff?”

  “Rather to boost, as you put it, my ability to observe.” The tartness of his tone matched mine.

  “Observe what?” I pointed to the spot he’d inspected. “Even if you managed to find the little bastards’ footprints—what then?”

  “Precisely the question,” he replied. “What then? By observing where they stood, I was able to make certain discoveries.”

  I let out a harumph. “Such as?”

  His thin lips tightened in a way that suggested a pleased reptile angling in on his next meal. “For the present, it would be untimely to disclose my methods and findings.” He was lording it up to beat the band. “To do so might bear ill on this case.”

  “Case?” I echoed hotly. “There’s no case here! You’ve hitched your nag to the wrong rig if you think I’ll invest in your fool notions to get my umbrella back.”

  “It might profit you to learn,” he said in icy tones. “that I intend to proffer my services only when asked.”

  “Well, I ain’t asked,” I snapped back. “And I’ve got methods of my own. Tell you what: I’ll wager for any stakes you want that I’ll have my umbrella back within three days—and I’ll manage it without leaving my house to search! Who in perdition needs some self-labeled detective?”

  That riled him! We locked glares, our visages honed to keenest edge. Passersby might have thought us a pair of roosters squared off.

  “Assuming that you actually have one,” Holmes said, “what is your plan?”

  I considered not telling him, but pride impelled me to sketch it out.

  Instead of folding his cards at the genius of my scheme, he said bluntly, “I doubt it will work.”

  “Put up or shut up,” I shot back.

  He rubbed his long chin and considered. “I’d thought to proceed with my journey,” he said at length, “but I’ll agree to stay your three days—more if needed—and succeed where you fail.”

  We shook on it. His hand was larger but pure natural cussedness rendered me his equal. I asked what he intended.

  “Observation and deduction,” he replied, as if naming the pillars of the universe. “And employing methods some might consider . . .” His eyes followed a lingering knot of street urchins clambering over the fence. “. . . irregular.”

  I held back from guffawing. “And the stakes?”

  “When this matter concludes,” he said. “you will know them quite well.” He turned then and moved away with long, brisk, forward-leaning strides, his lean face coursing through the air like a clipper’s prow.

  In truth, I didn’t expect to lay eyes on him again.

  Early the next day I submitted my advertisement card to the Hartford Courant.

  TWO HUNDRED AND FIVE DOLLARS REWARD -At the great base ball match on Tuesday, while I was engaged in hurrahing, two boys walked off with an English-made brown silk UMBRELLA belonging to me and forgot to bring it back. I will pay $5 for the return of that umbrella in good condition to my house on Farmington Avenue. I do not want the boys (in an active state) but will pay two hundred dollars for their remains.

  SAMUEL L. CLEMENS

  The first day, I waited in tip-top spirits. The second, in somewhat tempered spirits. The third, in a rising fever of agitation. The fourth and fifth, in a swamp of despair. It was on the evening of the sixth day that a ragged hostler showed up beneath my porte-cochère claiming he possessed vital information for me alone.

  I took his inventory in a lightning glance: a horse-handler’s typical slouch hat that shaded heavy brows, a bulbous nose, and muttonchop whiskers; his head tilted at a cunning slant, his posture slightly stooped, one leg twisted. From the war, I thought.

  “I’m not a-beggin’, Guv’nor,” he said. “Just an honest stableman.” His voice was gravelly and laced with phlegm, some of which he loosed just then on the fine imported gravel of my driveway. His accents were vaguely Bowery but notes in them rang false. “Are you this Clemens?” he demanded, and from his coat produced a soiled square of newspaper with my notice.

  “Do you have the umbrella?” I countered, stepping closer to peer beneath his brim.

  He took half a step backward.

  “Well, Holmes, do you have it?”

  It hit like a thunderbolt, crumpling him. He straightened slowly and tugged from his face the stage brows and sideburns and putty nose, chagrin like that of an errant schoolboy written on his revealed features. He pointed to his ill-kempt clothes, and when he spoke his voice gradually took on some of its customary assurance. “A close camaraderie exists among the hostlers,” he said. “Become one of them and you can learn much of what there is to know. As a groom out of work, I discovered precisely what I sought.”

  “Then you do have the umbrella!” A rush of feeling came over me. “Grand news!”

  “I have this for you,” he said, and withdrew another paper, this one fresh and neatly folded.

  LETTER OF CONSENT

  The undersigned hereby agrees to:

  • Purchase in London a Smith & Sons city umbrella model #17b, with violetwood toucan-head handle and silver lapband (£25.50 + packaging & freighting) at his earliest convenience.

  • Upon its delivery, place an advert in the Courant. specifying a precise hour of a particular day.

  • On that day, at the given time, deposit the umbrella in a suitable wrapper beneath the Ball Grounds’ Grand Stand.

  • Depart the premises and return no sooner than two hours afterward to that location, there to find and repossess his original umbrella.

  (Signed) _______________
This ___ day of _______ , 1875

  I read it a second time, and then a third, my elation wilting away as my eyes strained to draw sense from of it. “Violetwood? Toucan-head?” I breathed. “Twenty-five pounds? That’s nearly one hundred dollars! ‘Repossess his original umbrella’. . . .” I shook my head like a dog clearing water. “Is this your notion of a prank?”

  “On the contrary,” he replied, “it was your attempt at a prank that produced this. Once certain facts were in my possession, it became obvious that your published threat was not taken as levity by members of the underclasses—in particular, the girl who coveted your umbrella. And, more significantly, her father.”

  “Girl?” I echoed. “What girl! Are you addled?”

  “Not in the least,” he said calmly. “Had you heeded me after the ball match, you would have learned that I collected interesting details from a partial imprint of the smaller child’s shoe. Three details, to be precise. First, I observed that the sole of this cheap McKay-type shoe was narrower than those made for most boys. Second, a perceptible arc in a pattern of nail holes suggested a girl’s tapered rather than squared toe. Third, slightly greater depth at the rear suggested the possibility of a raised heel—again characteristic of manufacture for females.”

  Holmes paused to let these revelations sink in.

  “Then, too, there was the manner in which she grasped the umbrella. You didn’t note it, of course.” His tone said that I was the beau ideal of dunces. “Yet it was instantly evident to me that, although frightened, she wanted something even more than she wanted to flee—she wanted that umbrella. That is why her brother—yes, he was the other one—tried to sway her with more money. But she was adamant. Your silk umbrella, as it happens, was the most wondrous prize ever to grace her vision—it might have come from The Arabian Nights—and once she held it, she naturally wanted it for herself. In the end, her brother—and later her father—indulged her.”

  Holmes favored me with his reptilian smile.