Sherlock Holmes Edwardian Parodies and Pastiches II

by Bill Peschel

  “Was this then the explanation of those dazzling eyes? Of that languid and tremulous pose? Of the strange things she had said? Or was it—

  “‘Not at all,’ answered Miss Holmes quietly, as if I had spoken, while she took the box from my hand and replaced the hypodermic instrument, ‘but Daddy really needed sleep, and now—we shall not be interrupted!’

  “She had returned unobserved and again stood looking steadily at me, her face a little flushed and her eyes a little brighter than before. I could stand it no longer. Astonishment and indignation banished sympathy and sentiment.

  “‘Miss Holmes,’ I answered gravely, ‘as I see that you are quite capable of taking care of your father, and yourself, I will bid you good evening.’

  “‘Will you desert me then? O, very well, good evening Dr. Vanderpool.’

  “Was she going to cry or laugh? I neither knew nor cared. Without another word or look, I passed swiftly to the door. It was locked.

  “‘Miss Holmes,’ I cried indignantly, ‘open this door at once.’ She moved toward me, holding out her hand pleadingly.

  “‘Forgive me,’ she murmured, ‘but Doctor, how can I let you go until you have heard my story? You have had cruel thoughts of me, cruel and unjust. First you thought me mad, then weak and foolish, and now—heavens knows what wicked thoughts you entertain. In justice to myself I must explain. But, there—the door is open!—yet if you leave me’—With these words a great sob burst from her bosom, she sank upon the floor, and covered her face with her hands to hide the tears that came creeping out between her fingers.

  “Once more my heart was moved to pity. I raised her tenderly and placed her in an easy-chair, flung myself into another, and said: ‘I will not leave you.’

  “‘You couldn’t, could you?’ and she smiled through her tears.

  “‘No, I couldn’t and I wouldn’t.’

  “She arose quietly and closed the door. Then, resuming her seat, she continued: ‘Now listen, I am going to trust you with my life. My father is known as the greatest detective in the world. But all his supposed skill is due to me alone. On me he depends for every delicate inference. Has he ever gone into any difficult case without consulting me? After accepting a commission, does he not always go off alone for an hour or for a night on pretense of silent meditation? Does he not then return with calm assurance, and with a very sure solution? Why! Daddy never could have found out that you were a surgeon, or that you had been in Spain beyond Gibraltar. Daddy never sees! And yet how proud he is of his success and reputation! He could not live if it should become known that he depends upon a girl for his achievements. This is why he keeps me in seclusion. Who ever heard of Sherlock Holmes’ daughter? I could not have spoken to you, if he had not fallen under the influence of that drug! You are the first man I have met in private since I was fifteen. Do you wonder that I seem strange? That my ways are unconventional, and direct and truthful? It is society that teaches women to lie. I have been debarred from society, therefore I tell the truth. The moment I saw you, I was drawn toward you, I felt that here was the man who could save me from the life I loathe. My instinct rarely fails me, but to assure my judgment, I studied you, I concentrated upon you all the powers of observation and deduction with which I am cursed.’

  “‘With what result?’ I queried.

  “‘With this result. I learned that you were sailing as Mr. Thomas Vanderpool, archaeologist, though actually a surgeon from New York.’

  “‘How did you learn that?’

  “‘One name is on the ship’s register, the other on your luggage. Then I noticed that you have recently been a little embarrassed financially but that you have made unusual efforts to meet your liabilities, or rather those of a near friend. Your efforts have been partially successful, and during your absence the firm in which you are interested has got upon its feet again.

  “‘From a certain air of melancholy, I deduced a girl. Yet you are not in love. No man who is in love with one girl ever looks at another as you have looked at me. From all this I deduced that you must be bound to someone from whom you would be free. From the draft which you gave the purser, and which I observed on his desk when I paid our fare, I learned the name and address of your bankers. From them I learned of your business standing, and of the discovery of your firm, and got what clues I needed to your history. I also learned that the young woman to whom you were engaged—and who, by the way, was never worthy of you—has given you your freedom by marrying in your absence.’

  “She spoke the truth, so far as I knew it, by whatever witchery or second-sight revealed. In my college days I had recklessly engaged to marry a desperate little flirt, who had accepted me, as I afterward learned, for the sake of my father’s name and money. As my father’s affairs had become involved her affections had cooled. We had parted with indifference on her part, with bitterness on mine.

  “Yet I was bound in honor. To relieve my father’s pressing needs, I had accepted a position on the exploring staff of the Archaeological Institute at a good salary. And now our firm was again prospering, and I was free. My face showed my joy.

  “Elsie looked me straight in the eyes without speaking. A radiant smile over-spread her features; she came closer to me, and laying her hand gently on mine, whispered: ‘Do you still think that I am mad?’

  “‘You, are the most charmingly mad person in the world if you are,’ I answered warmly.

  “‘I am not mad,’ she continued. ‘It is very simple. Look at this.’ She held in her hand an instrument like a gold chronometer. Attached to it, however, in place of a chain, was a slender black cord. She showed me the back of it. It was concave like the receiver of a telephone.

  “‘This is Daddy’s latest pet,’ she said. ‘I would not dare show it to any one else. No, don’t interrupt! It is an improved Marconiphone. The older instruments are big and go off like pistols; this is small and nearly silent, and instead of dots and dashes, repeats the voice.’

  “‘A wireless telephone!’ I exclaimed in surprise.

  “‘Precisely:—now watch me.’

  “She moved the pointer on the dial. ‘That calls Gibraltar,’ she said. She pressed the stem, or what would have been the stem in a watch, and placing her lips at the other side, said in her quiet tone, ‘Give me 243-6. That is the central police station,’ she explained.

  “‘Is this Sergeant Bateson? My friend Mr. Vanderpool wishes to speak with you.’ Then she handed me the ’phone. Still thinking only to humor her delusion, I took the instrument.

  “‘What shall I say to the Sergeant?’ I asked with a smile.

  “‘Oh, anything—ask him if the anarchists have been captured yet.’

  “I put my lips to the transmitter, feeling rather foolish, I confess, and said: ‘Sergeant Bateson, have the anarchists been captured yet?’

  “‘Hold it to your ear, now, quick!’ cried Elsie. I did so, and then indeed I was astounded, for I distinctly heard these words, in a gruff voice: ‘Not yet, but presently, we hope.’ Then came a buzzing sound, and communication was broken.

  “‘Did you hear anything?’ Elsie asked breathlessly.

  “‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘I certainly got an answer.’

  “‘Very well,’ said she, ‘now you know how I talked with your bankers. I would call them up now, but, you see, it’s about midnight in New York. Are you satisfied now?’

  “‘Yes, on that score,’ I answered. ‘Your mind is clear, and I am free at last.’

  “‘Then you will set me free, also?’

  “‘In what way?’’ For the second time I saw in her eyes that flash of purple fire, as she asked gently:

  “‘Are there, then, so many ways by which a young man can release a daughter from her father’s control?’

  “‘You do not mean—,’ I hesitated.

  “‘Well?’

  “‘That I marry you?’

  “‘After all, it is leap year,’ she murmured, drawing close to my side.

  “I felt the i
ntoxicating odor of her hair; I felt her eyes caressing mine; I felt the subtle warmth of her presence; and I am not St. Anthony.

  “My professional instinct came to my rescue. I realized that, after all, my first conclusion was correct, the terrible anxiety for her father had unhinged her reason. I must end the scene at once. I rose and said quietly, ‘You have just given me my freedom. I will enjoy it for a little while.’

  “‘Then you refuse my love?’ she demanded, springing to her feet.

  “‘It is too sudden,’ I said.

  “It was then that I saw in her eyes the red fire of anger. With one indignant sob she turned erect, then pointing to the door, exclaimed, ‘Go! I neither dispute nor detain you! One day you will be sorry. You will remember Elsie Venner with tears. Well did my father name me for the heroine of the fatal snake-charm! I will go back to my lonely vigil by my father’s side! I will return to my desolate lodgings, but never again will I lift a finger as my father’s unknown, unthanked guardian angel. Go you back to your lancet and your spade, and let my father catch his anarchists if he can,—and for me,—for me there are no more castles in Spain!’

  “With these words, she uttered a terrible laugh and heedless of my relentless supplications, swiftly whirled the pointer on her golden dial, again called up the Police Station at Gibraltar, and pronounced the words, ‘Granite—garnet!’ Then brushing haughtily past me, as I stood distressed and bewildered, vanished down the corridor. I never saw her again.

  “The next morning, before I was up, we passed an east-bound steamer, to which, as I was informed, two ladies in black had been transferred with bag and baggage. They were supposed to be mother and daughter.

  “About three weeks after my return to New York, I received the following letter:

  “London, Sept. 17, 1893.

  “THOMAS VANDERPOOL, M. D.,

  “New York, N.Y.

  “Dear Sir:—

  “Permit me to apologize for what under any but the most extraordinary circumstances would have been a cruel and criminal affront.

  “Mr. Holmes and myself have for some months been engaged in a most interesting and at times perilous enterprise, undertaken in behalf of the young king of Spain. The life of a monarch and the integrity of an empire were at stake.

  “The life of the king was threatened by anarchists. Intimations of the danger came to Mr. Holmes while he was at work on another problem in London.

  “In fact, the mistress of a notorious villain whose arrest Mr. Holmes had caused, used a sign while bidding goodbye to her lover, which was recognized as belonging to a group of Spanish anarchists whose headquarters are in Barcelona.

  “Mr. Holmes traced them to their secret rendezvous, appeared among them in the guise of the absent prisoner, having taken care that the woman be detained in London, took part in their counsels, and learned the details of their plot. He then caused himself to be secretly enrolled among the royal bodyguard.

  “At the moment when a bunch of grapes treacherously impregnated with a deadly poison was presented to the king, Mr. Holmes sprang forward with uplifted sword, swallowed the fatal fruit himself, raised the cry of ‘Treason!’ struck wildly at the terrified assassin and fell to the floor in pretended agony.

  “Taking advantage of the uproar which immediately filled the palace, he made his way to the outskirts of the town, where I was waiting for him with the disguise in which you first observed us, and after narrowly escaping the vigilance of the enraged anarchists who were buzzing throughout lower Spain, succeeded in reaching the Normannia. The poison, whose effect had been delayed by our energetic movements, then did its work and but for my timely action, upheld by your kindly companionship, our labors would have had a sudden ending. Having prevented the assassination, our interest in the case was nearly over. It remained to follow and apprehend the leader of the anarchists whom Mr. Holmes had never seen, as he kept himself always in the background. We were informed that he had fled to New York which therefore became our own destination.

  “Now, my dear Sir, to make a long story short, you bear a striking resemblance to this infamous and wily anarchist. Your outdoor labors in Greece have darkened your complexion to a Spanish hue; you had permitted your black hair to grow long; and this desperate anarchist is an accomplished surgeon.

  “Mr. Holmes felt sure that you were his man, but realized the difficulty of securing evidence sufficient to convict. He therefore laid a plan by which he hoped to entrap you. Knowing that the desperado of whom he was in pursuit was peculiarly susceptible to the allurements of the fairer sex, and withal a coward at heart, I was to impersonate the supposed daughter of the great detective, and, under pretense of great distress and symptoms of mental disturbance, enlist your sympathy and gain your affection and confidence.

  “At the right moment I was to mention my father’s name, and present him before you under circumstances which could not fail to elicit such evidences of alarm as would have been decisive against you.

  “Had you manifested the least sign of fear or anxiety, you would have been arrested and conveyed to the dungeons of Madrid, where I fear you would have found more rope than justice.

  “But for the second time in his life, Mr. Holmes was mistaken in his man. You were found to be not only the innocent archaeologist whom you professed to be, but also a gentleman of exceptional integrity and honor.

  “‘The matter of the supposed Marconiphone is easily explained. Mr. Holmes transformed an old watch case into a simple hand telephone, whose wire led to his own ear in the next apartment. Of your own history we really knew nothing other than such simple facts as Mr. Holmes deduced from certain indications needless to rehearse.

  “‘The real criminal has been apprehended and hanged.

  “‘Mr. Holmes begs you to accept with his apologies, to which I sincerely add my own, the enclosed draft on London for £1,000 as your fair share of the enormous fee which he has received from his Imperial Majesty.

  “‘Faithfully yours, Watson.”

  At the St. James’s Theatre

  Max Beerbohm

  From the May 6 issue of The Saturday Review came this review of E. Temple Thurston’s play John Chilcote, M.P. It’s a great pity that Max Beerbohm (1872-1956) never turned his pen to a Holmes pastiche. The critic and humorist displayed a fine ear for Conan Doyle’s narrative style, and his short-story collection A Christmas Garland (1912) demonstrated his ability to parody the authors of his day. To learn why George Bernard Shaw nicknamed him the “Incomparable Max,” turn to his sole novel Zuleika Dobson (1911) and S.N. Behrman’s memoir Portrait of Max.

  “Holmes and I had just finished a somewhat late breakfast. I pushed the morning paper across to him, remarking ‘That rising politician, John Chilcote, seems to have made a great speech in the Commons last evening.’

  “Holmes puffed another cloud of tobacco smoke, and took no notice of my remark. I knew by the more than usual rigidness of his face that he was thinking deeply—probably about that somewhat gruesome problem of the driver-less van in Russell Square, which, I knew, was very much on his mind just now. A moment later the servant entered and handed a visiting-card to him. Before he had time to say that he was not at home, a fashionably-attired lady had followed the servant into the room. She was closely veiled, but I could see that her face, which was one of extreme beauty, was deadly pale. Her tightly-clasped hands betokened that she was labouring under some strong emotion.

  “Holmes rose from his chair, and, fingering the pasteboard, directed a swift glance at me before he turned to his visitor and said suavely ‘Mrs. John Chilcote?’ I almost leapt from my chair, so strange did the coincidence appear to me.

  “‘To what,’ asked Holmes, ‘do I owe the honour of this visit?’

  “The lady commenced a confused apology for intruding on us, but Holmes held up his long thin hand, and, with the words ‘Pray compose yourself, Madam,’ motioned her to a chair.

  “‘I see,’ said Holmes, ‘that you left your house in a great hu
rry this morning, and that you did not wish to be observed.’

  “The lady started violently. ‘How did you . . .’

  Evidently, I am growing old. Sherlock Holmes is dead, and to young readers of this Review he is not even a dear memory. But I was at an impressionable age when he burst upon the world; and so he became a part of my life, and will never, I suppose, be utterly dislodged. I cannot pass through Baker Street, even now, without thinking of him. Long ago I had decided exactly which were the two windows of the sitting-room where Watson spent his wondering hours; and, only the other day, I had a rather heated dispute with a coeval who had also long since “placed” that sitting-room—“placed” it, if you please, on the side of the street opposite to that where it really was (need I say that I mean the right-hand side as one goes towards Regent’s Park?). My sentiment for Sherlock Holmes was never one of reverence unalloyed. Indeed, one of the secrets of his hold on me was that he so often amused me. I would have bartered a dozen of his subtlest deductions for that great moment when he said (presumably on the eve of his creator’s departure for a lecturing tour in America) “It is always a joy to me to meet an American, for I am one of those who believe that the folly of a monarch and the blundering of a minister in far gone years will not prevent our children from being some day citizens of the same world-wide country under a flag which shall be a quartering of the Union Jack with the Stars and Stripes.” I learned that speech by heart, years ago; and, to this day, I generally try it on any American to whom I am introduced—sometimes with most surprising results. Sir Arthur (then mere Mr.) Conan Doyle’s own attitude towards life, and his own extraordinary versions of the familiar things around us—what would Sherlock have been without these assets? Last Monday evening, at the St. James’s Theatre, it must have been the account of John Chilcote’s speech in the House of Commons that first turned my thoughts Sherlockwards, and gave me a clue to what the play ought to have been. One of the characters rushed in to describe the triumph to Mrs. Chilcote—to tell how, when her husband resumed his seat, “there was one of those spontaneous outbursts of applause which no etiquette, no decorum, can quell.” This picture of the House of Commons as a place in which the members sometimes so far forget themselves as to clap their hands, and are reminded by the Speaker that “a court of law is not a theatre,” somehow instantly transported me into the sphere of Sir Arthur’s innocent activities. I had been told in the first entr’acte that John Chilcote M.P was adapted from a book of the same name, and that this book was very popular. Yet I made no resolve to read this book. The theme of it was surely too ridiculous, too incredible, to be pursued seriously through many pages. Even for a magazine story but ah! in that form Sherlock would have saved it. Why did not the novelist lay the theme at Sir Arthur’s feet?