Sherlock Holmes Edwardian Parodies and Pastiches II

by Bill Peschel

  “I don’t see their note-books,” I objected.

  “Neither do I, but I see one—two—three pencil-points projecting from the tall man’s breast pockets. If I mistake not he represents an evening paper.”

  “Beg pardon, sir,” said a steward, “but three gents from the Western Herald, the Morning News, and the Daily Mail would like to see you.”

  “Surely you won’t see them,” I pleaded.

  “Why not?”

  “Why, the fatigue—after a sleepless night—”

  “In the smoking-room,” said Holmes, briefly, to the steward. “My dear Watson,” he added as he rose—rather feebly—from his deck chair, “for nearly five weeks I have endured the insufferable fatigue of idleness—I want rest in the shape of a little exertion. Yes, the tall man is certainly the one from the evening paper.”

  “How on earth can you tell?”

  “He is the most impatient—he’s started writing already. The other two men are not in a hurry. Wait for me here—I shall be twenty minutes.”

  “Will that be long enough for them?”

  “Quite long enough, I assure you.” He wore such a frank, smiling countenance that I felt sure he did not intend to be communicative. In fact it was barely ten minutes before the tall man came out and asked me if I would like to make a statement.

  “I have nothing to tell you,” I replied, “except that my friend, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, is very much run down, and is travelling for his health—under the name of Shand Hickson.”

  “Ah, that’s something at last—he’s started on the question of the Fremantle dock, and we can’t get him off it.” As we steamed up the Swan River a few minutes later I gathered that Holmes had done most of the interviewing.

  “All three of them,” he said, “are from the other side, and have not been here long. It was always ‘this’ part of the world—‘this’ harbour—‘this’ State—nothing here was ‘ours.’ When I was in Sydney two years ago over the gold-stealing case the Sydney men didn’t talk to me about ‘this’ harbour. They talked as if they had built it and owned it. The Morning News man is from Melbourne. He is on the Perth staff, but came down specially to interview me in case he might not be able to find me in Perth.”

  “And was he disappointed?”

  “Horribly. I foresee a slating in tomorrow’s issue. Perhaps you have laid the praise on too thickly at times, and I need a corrective. Ah, here we are at the wharf.”

  Holmes, who was by no means in the best of health, was more tired than he cared to confess, and after lunch at the Primal Hotel, he retired to his room and did not put in an appearance again till breakfast time the next day. I found him with the Morning News propped against a flower-vase, and a Western Herald waiting to be devoured.

  “Listen to this, Watson,” he chuckled. “Mr. Sherlock Holmes is something of a disappointment. He is not by any means an impressive personality. The artist and the chronicler have combined to flatter him, but it is impossible to disguise the fact that he is not a man of preternatural acuteness, and his chances of being able to deduce a man’s life history from a mud-stain on his right boot are quite problematical. Why the highly-coloured chroniclers of his adventures should enjoy such a vogue, while the work of Balzac and Guy de Maupassant is comparatively neglected, is inexplicable except on the supposition”—and so on, and so on.

  “The Daily Mail was kinder to you. (No fish, thanks.) With the help of an introduction, and a peroration, and a few inaccuracies, it managed to make nearly half a column.”

  “An old lady to see Mr. Hickson,” announced the waitress.

  “Mr. Hickson is at breakfast,” I began, but Holmes was already rolling up his napkin. In spite of the use of his assumed name he evidently scented a “case.”

  It must have been nearly half an hour later when I made my way to the drawing-room and found Holmes standing on the hearth-rug listening to a voluble old lady whose narrative was so entangled with repetitions and obscurities and irrelevant digressions that I did not even attempt to reduce what I heard to coherence.

  Holmes took no notice of my entrance. For the time he had forgotten Perth utterly and was back in Baker-street.

  At last after a farewell at the door, and another on the doormat and a third in the passage, and some concluding remarks from the stairs—the good lady distrusted lifts—Mrs. Wing finally disappeared.

  “That’s a very remarkable woman, Watson,” said Holmes, “she suffers from name-blindness. Don’t tell me that you aren’t familiar with the complaint. You must have met with cases.”

  “Perhaps—but not under that name.”

  “It’s quite simple. Colour-blindness—the inability to distinguish colours—name-blindness, the inability to distinguish names. She has a boarder whose name is either Harry, Harris, or Harrison, but she sometimes calls him Barker, because she has another boarder whose name is Barker, and whom she sometimes calls the old gentleman. You probably gathered that there had been thefts at her house? Well, Mr. Harry, Harris, or Harrison is coming to lunch with us to-day, and he will probably put matters more clearly. In the meantime we will take a turn in the park.”

  “I suppose Mrs. Wing found you through that interview in the Daily Mail?”

  “Yes, but not directly. She is one of those mysterious persons who have plenty of time to talk, and no time to read. Her son, John Philip, or Philip John—sometimes known as “The Boy,” read the interview and told her about me. She had never heard of me before.”

  “Not to know you argues herself unknown,” I quoted, but the quotation was lost on Holmes. Paradise Lost is not a work likely to prove of any assistance to a private detective, and therefore Holmes had no acquaintance with it.

  “Never heard of me before,” he resumed, “but she gained the impression that I was a philanthropist, who investigated mysteries free of charge. The Boy it seems tried to dissuade her—I don’t know why—possibly in order to strengthen her resolution.”

  Not a word would Holmes say about the case during our walk in the Park. He was not in the least impressed with the view of Swan River, and the distant hills, but was greatly struck with the facilities which the Park might afford to a criminal escaping from justice, with its numerous outlets and innumerable hiding-places.

  Mr. John George Harris, a pleasant young fellow, arrived punctually at half past one. (Evidently Mrs. Wing atoned for curtailing his name to Harry by expanding it occasionally to Harrison.) At lunch we talked on indifferent topics but as soon as we had gone upstairs to the balcony he produced a type-written statement, remarking, “There’s the whole thing as briefly as I could put it.”

  “Massingham No. 2,” commented Holmes—“thought those machines were obsolete.”

  “I believe this is the only specimen in Western Australia,” smiled Harris.

  “Very useful as a means of identification,” murmured Holmes. He read the document and handed it to me with out a word. It ran as follows:—

  “My name is John George Harris, and I am a reporter on the Western Herald. I have been staying for some months at Mrs. Wing’s boarding-house, 1,084 Straw-street. My bedroom is on the back verandah, which is walled in. The kitchen is also on the back verandah. A person entering that verandah would have the kitchen door on his left hand and my bedroom door on the right. There is a door opening onto the yard, and this is kept locked at night. I suppose my room was originally intended for a servant’s room, but the servant now sleeps in the coach-house adjoining the wash-house at the further end of the back yard. As you face the house there is a right-of-way on the left and a galvanised iron fence with a door opening into the yard. On the right hand there is a low wooden fence separating the yard from that of the house next door.” (A rough plan of the house and yard was here appended.)

  “On Thursday morning, May 14, before I left for the office, Jane, the servant—Mrs. Wing’s servants are always called Jane—asked me if I had returned from the office the night before about half-past eight. I said, ‘No, certainly no
t.’ She explained that from her room she had heard steps in the yard—and then they seemed to die away. Mrs. Wing, it seems, was in the kitchen at the time, and Jane asked her if she had heard footsteps. Mrs. Wing, like myself, said ‘No,’ but her hearing is not very good—she might have been mistaken.

  “In the afternoon of Thursday, May 14, I went to the top right-hand drawer in my chest of drawers to take out a small leather sovereign-purse, containing four pounds, which I had left there a few days before. It was gone. There was a great deal of litter in the drawer in the shape of old letters, and I turned this out, and also searched all the other drawers, but the purse was not to be found. I at once connected the loss with the mysterious man whom Jane had heard in the yard. In fact, not wishing to make things unpleasant, I kept the news of my loss from the other boarders, and I told Jane plainly, ‘That man that you heard must have climbed into my room by the window and taken the purse.’ She went off at once to tell Mrs. Wing, who was very angry, and refused to admit that I had lost such a purse, or ever owned one. Likewise she refused to believe that Jane had ever heard the alleged footsteps. She dismissed these as being imaginary, like my purse.

  “On Sunday, May 17, my cousin, George Harris Hildersley, who had been visiting various parts of the goldfields on business, returned to Perth, and dined with me at 1,084. I ought to explain that when he left Perth he placed in my charge his viola in a case, which was not locked. He was giving up his room, he did not wish to take the viola about with him, and he preferred to leave it with somebody whom he knew. After mid-day dinner he offered to give us a tune if Alderton, another boarder, would play the accompaniment. He opened the case, which had been standing on the piano—we have no fiddlers in our house—and the viola was gone like the purse. I did not dare let Mrs. Wing know of this fresh development. Hildersley went off in a great hurry, explaining that he had forgotten an appointment, and (for Mrs. Wing’s benefit) he thanked me in her hearing for taking care of the viola.

  “On Tuesday, May 19, Jane came to me just before lunch and asked me to look at something that she had found in Mr. Barker’s room, when she was sweeping out his fireplace. (Barker is a selfish old man, not on very good terms with the rest of us, and he is allowed a fire in his bedroom.) The thing was a fiddle-bridge. ‘Looks as if it might have come from your friend’s fiddle,’ she said. So it might, but I explained that it was a different sort of thing altogether. I couldn’t believe that Barker would steal the instrument and burn it. However Jane was fool enough to let Mrs. Wing know all about it and then the fat was very much in the fire. Barker pays more in extras than would cover my week’s bill—and here was I apparently accusing him of theft, though I had no such intention. Mrs. Wing suggested that it must be very unpleasant for me to be living among such a lot of thieves, and that if I would clear out of the house, perhaps the next man who took that room would be more lucky. I am leaving to-day.”

  Holmes smoked reflectively without a word while I was reading the paper. When I handed it back to him, he commented, “A clear statement—so far as it goes.”

  “I thought I had put everything in,” said Harris, whose professional pride was evidently hurt.

  “Not half,” laughed Holmes. “Have you the bridge with you?”

  “Here it is.”

  “You are quite right, Mr. Harris—this bridge is a different sort of thing altogether from the bridge of your cousin’s viola. It is a violin-bridge, and a small size at that, and, moreover, it has never been used.”

  “How can you tell that?”

  “Look at the four nicks which have been cut for the strings to pass over. These should, of course, be placed at equal intervals, but here we have our third string much too far from the fourth, and the second too far from the third, and the first and second almost touching each other. Besides, if you will examine these nicks, you will see that they have been cut slightly slant-wise. No, that bridge could never have been used.”

  “Then you imply that Jane stole the viola, and—for purposes of her own—practically charged Barker with having burnt it?”

  “I imply nothing,” said Holmes, “though that is a possible explanation. Has Jane a lover—a ‘boy,’ I think you say in these parts?”

  “None, so far as I know. She is always rather distant in her manner to the boarders—wouldn’t-speak-to-you-if-I-wasn’t-obliged—that sort of air.”

  “And the landlady’s son—does he sleep in the house?”

  “No, he lives at Fremantle, but when he is working in Perth he takes lunch and dinner at 1,084.”

  Holmes asked various other questions some of which seemed to puzzle Harris a good deal. Then he sat for some minutes meditating—and smoking.

  “Well, Holmes,” I said at last, “what do you think of it?”

  “I think,” he said, “that I must take Mr. Harris’s room for a day or two.”

  “As Sherlock Holmes?” asked Harris.

  “No.”

  “You prefer to be ‘Shand Hickson’ still?”

  “No, I am going to drop the Hickson as well. I will write a polite note to Mrs. Wing intimating that ‘Sherlock Holmes regrets that he is not able to carry out her wishes,’ and then if you and Watson will entertain each other for a few minutes, I will rejoin you.”

  Probably neither of us found the other very entertaining—I remember only that conversation flagged more than once before there was a knock at the door, and a rather elderly, sallow-faced man, who looked like an invalid, entered, walking with a slight limp.

  “I have puzzled Watson more than once,” remarked the newcomer with a smile.

  “It’s a marvellous make-up!” ejaculated Harris. “Looks exactly like the real thing.”

  “That was the intention,” said Holmes drily. “Mrs. Wing is an impossible woman to work with—I see that. If I went to her house in my own character, she would be at my elbow all day long. No, she must think that I have abandoned the case, and we must manage a paragraph in the personal column to the effect that Mr. Sherlock Holmes is spending a few days at—well, at any place inaccessible to Mrs. Wing.”

  “That’s easy,” said Harris; “I’ll fix that.”

  “And if you care to occupy my room at the hotel till I return, I’ll fix the manager. Come, Watson; we may as well see about this room. Not too fast—remember that I’m an invalid.”

  I did not see Holmes again after he had transferred his belongings (or a portion of them) to Mrs. Wing’s house, till the following morning, when “Mr. Robert Baines” was announced as I was finishing a late breakfast. There was no one else in the dining-room.

  “Watson, I have a rival!”

  “Professional or amateur?” (A “rival” in Holmes’s case could mean nothing but a rival in the art of detection).

  “Well—neither, exactly. As a matter of fact, he is a dog—a collie dog, by the name of Kip.”

  “Whose dog?”

  “Barker’s. He knows what has happened—what Mrs. Wing knows, the world knows—and he is determined to prevent a repetition of the thefts. He is naturally annoyed at being suspected, and the other boarders suspect him, in order to annoy him.”

  “He is not popular?”

  “He is hated. He is selfish, querulous, exacting—he expects the whole establishment to be ‘run’ to suit him. By the way, Jane’s name is not Jane, as I think Harris mentioned. It is merely Mrs. Wing’s name for the servant, whoever that servant may be. She doesn’t like being called Jane, and still less does she like being called Selina, as one man called her at dinner yesterday. I don’t know whether it is her right name or not.”

  “Is the matter of any importance?”

  “It may be—it is just one of those trifles which may explain everything, or nothing. Of course, the boarders are not favourably disposed towards Kip.”

  “Hate me, hate my dog?”

  “Exactly so—but there is no professional jealousy between Kip and myself. We are the best of friends already, and he has practically promised me his co-ope
ration.”

  Holmes proceeded to entertain me with a brief sketch of his fellow-boarders, whom he had met for a short half-hour during which time he had been toying, invalid-fashion, with soup and rice pudding—seeing nothing, but noting everything. Suddenly he asked:

  “I suppose there is some place in the yard where you could keep a dog?”

  “I think so. Are you going to keep a dog?”

  “I think so. No, not a bloodhound!—just a collie, like Kip. There ought to be no difficulty about that.” And there was not, but Holmes declined to say for what purpose the dog was to be purchased.

  Next morning I received a note from Holmes, containing merely the words: “Jane is Selina.” An hour later he arrived and took his dog (which was supposed to be mine), out for an airing in the Park. For several mornings the “airing” was repeated, but I was not invited to accompany Holmes on any of these excursions.

  One Saturday morning Holmes and the dog did not return. At dinner time I received another brief note:

  “Come round to the yard gate at 11.45. You can push back the bolt from the outside.—S.H.”

  I was punctual to the minute. There was no light in Holmes’s room, but the window was open, and a low whistle invited me to enter. Tiger, “my” dog, was lying muzzled on the floor. (Kip was apparently asleep).

  “Can’t bark,” whispered Holmes. Not another word was said.

  It must have been about five minutes after midnight, when the bolt of the gate was again drawn back, and a man entered the yard. Kip, the watch-dog, made no sign. Barker’s confidence in the animal’s detective powers was evidently misplaced. The man made his way to the kennel, and I heard the chain rattle. Kip gave one feeble bark, which was speedily stifled. Peering over the window-ledge, I could just make out that the man seemed to be dragging the dog towards the gate.

  “At him!” cried Holmes.

  Tiger leaped out of the window, and Holmes and I speedily followed. The dog made straight for the man, sprang upon him, and brought him to the ground, uttering shriek after shriek as he fell. The door of the coach-house opened, and a woman came out.