Sherlock Holmes Edwardian Parodies and Pastiches II

by Bill Peschel

  It was so clear a child could have seen it.

  Shomes looked out meditatively to sea. “There are many very clear deductions to be drawn from the turtle’s tracks,” he said. “Most of them are of but little interest. A few fundamentals are worth while, however. From a casual examination of the situation I see unmistakable evidence that the turtle was four hundred and eighty-eight years of age. He was of ruddy complexion and was educated in the straits of Afghanistan. His mother was a loggerhead from Norway. His father was born in the terrapin factory at St. Louis but escaped when a mere infant. Both parents deserted him many years ago. This turtle had eighteen thousand six hundred and eleven children. He had cataract of the left eye. He occasionally ate clams for lunch. His tail had been bit off. His third right upper molar was plugged with a barnacle. The day before he came out on the beach he had gobbled up eighteen catfish and a sting-a-ree.”

  It was extremely hot, but I would not interrupt his brain action.

  As he paused, I happened to glance at the spot where the upper turtle-tracks ended. It seemed to me the sand moved a little. I was not sure, but I watched it somewhat anxiously. It did move! It certainly did! In another second a small black object stuck its head out of the sand, squirmed out, and skedaddled for the water!

  Shomes looked at it out of the corner of his eye and paled to the gills. He hurriedly pulled out a chunk of opium and bit off a mouthful.

  “What a lovely piece of water this is, Rotson!” he remarked tremulously, after a moment.

  The sand moved again. Another of the animals made its appearance and broke for the water. Shomes took another bite of opium. Eighteen separate times the sand moved; eighteen separate animals appeared, each as like its predecessor as one pea is like another. Upon the appearance of the eighteenth, Shomes jumped to his feet and grabbed me round the waist.

  “Rotson!” he shrieked, “if you’ll only see me safely home and to bed, I’ll give you eight million dollars! I will, for truth!”

  Just then the nineteenth appeared and ran over my foot. “Ouch!” I cried, as I kicked him off.

  “Thank Heaven!” muttered Shomes. “You’re seeing ’em, too! They must be real turtles!”

  He bit off some more opium, and when he had gathered some of his scattered nerves he proceeded with his investigations.

  “We must examine the surf,” he said, “but I cannot help thinking we run some risk by so doing. Still, it is absolutely necessary.” He slipped his pistol into his bathing suit and taking his magnifying glass in hand he walked into the waves.

  The moment Shomes got into the water, the interest in his work overcame all fear. He was a transformed man. As I watched him darting hither and thither among the breakers, examining each suspicious spot with his magnifying glass, I was once again reminded of the sleuth-hound which he always brought to my mind. What a wonderful creature he was!

  At last he came to the edge, breathless with satisfaction.

  “Bring me a spade and a bucket, Rotson!” he cried.

  I got them for him. He waded out where the water was up to his neck and carefully spaded up a chunk of it which he deposited in the bucket.

  “I have it, Rot! I have it,” he cried as he came running toward me. With intense interest, I examined the block of water through the magnifying glass he handed me.

  “Do you not see it?” he cried.

  “I see a small round depression about as big as a bean,” I answered.

  “That’s it!” he almost shrieked in his ecstacy. “That’s it! There has been swimming among the breakers a pale-faced, red-headed lady, aged fifty-four. She was five feet three and weighed two hundred and ninety-nine pounds; she wore a green bathing suit with yellow trimming and purple socks. Look at this!” He held up a yellow thread, which looked as though it had been raveled out of something. “She had never been in the surf before. I see no traces of her except on the new waves. But there is one absolute mark of identification. She had a mole on the back of her neck!”

  “This little hole in the water in the bucket shows that!” I cried.

  “Precisely,” was his ecstatic answer.

  “I must take one more look,” he said after a while. “Hold the bucket carefully.”

  He waded back and was measuring some fresh waves with his tape, when suddenly he emitted a blood-curdling shriek, and came galloping to the bank. I thought sure he was killed, but when he got ankle deep, I saw it was only a crab. He saw it, too, and whipping out his revolver, he shot it.

  I heaved many immense sighs of relief as we pursued our way to the hotel; but Herlock was deeply depressed. He would not talk, and it was evident there was something weighing terribly on his mind.

  “What is it, old fellow?” I asked him at last. “You must not keep anything from me. Tell me the worst.”

  He looked me in the eye. His face was very grave. “Did I not tell you that in this case we had to deal with one of the most astute villains on earth? Have I not recognized him at every turn? There can be no mistake! No possibility of error! That crab, Rotson,” he said slowly, with every effort to control himself, “had on his back . . . thirteen barnacles!”

  It was as if some one had dashed a bucketful of extreme refrigeration down my spine. I gave a great shriek.

  “The sign of the thirteen!” I screamed, and fainted.

  II. The Sign of the Thirteen

  It was afternoon. Herlock and I were seated on the hotel veranda.

  “Hist!” he whispered. “Look at that woman coming down the walk!”

  I looked and saw a ponderous negress carrying a basket of clothes.

  “Hist!” said Shomes. “The woman of the surf! The woman of the yellow-trimmed bath suit and the purple stockings!”

  “But,” I objected, “this is a colored woman. You said the surf woman was pale-faced and red-headed!”

  Herlock looked at me sympathetically. “Has it not occurred to you, my dear Rotson, that this enemy of ours who is conducting this villainous business might anticipate our investigation of this woman and our discoveries as to her distinguishing characteristics? What would he do, such being the case? What would you do? What should I do? Disguise her! The only plausible thing! Hide her in an impenetrable disguise! Stain her face and hands! Dye and frizz her hair! Dress her up as a common laundress! Ah, isn’t he a cute one! It’s a pleasure to do business with such a genius! I’ll bet a carload of beer against a Dutch sandwich that if you’ll creep up behind her you’ll find he’s shaved the mole off the back of her neck! Try it and see!”

  I assumed a nonchalant expression and undertook the dangerous errand. I walked around and about, finally coming casually up behind her. With a great horrible sinking of the heart, I found Shomes was right! There was no mole there!

  There was no mole

  It was difficult for me to bring myself to face this awful crisis. Finally I brought the full power of my reason to bear upon the situation. Thought I, “In such a thing as this, it is my duty to leave no room for doubt. Shomes may be mistaken! His theories may have led him too far! This may, after all, be only an honest, innocent, old colored woman, bringing home some laundry. I must make sure before it is too late!”

  I mustered all my courage and my strength, and with my right hand tightly gripping the revolver in my pocket, I put on a very bold front and walked up to the woman.

  “How many clothes have you in that basket, auntie?” I asked.

  “Jest thirteen, suh,” she answered.

  My reason fled. So did my legs. They felt like a pair of eighty-horse automobiles. When I came to myself again I was in the middle of a deep wood eighteen miles from the hotel.

  III. The Lost Suit Found

  It was just midnight, when, footsore and weary, I crept stealthily up the back stairs, opened the door and slid into bed. Herlock was asleep, and my physical exhaustion at last got the better of my state of mind, and I, too, sank into a restful slumber. It was almost breakfast-time when I was awakened by Shomes getting out of bed.
He was whistling the “Last Rose of Summer” and seemed in a very merry mood.

  “All’s well with the world, Rotson,” he cried cheerily. “Don’t be downcast. I have every reason to believe I now hold in my hand the ends of this vastly tangled skein, and that we should soon be at the end of the trouble, with another success scored in our favor.”

  “‘What!” I gasped. “You do not mean that you have foiled HIM?”

  “Precisely. I think I have the game in my own hands. After you left me yesterday I put eight advertisements in the afternoon papers. I also sent six telegrams. I had one answer to the ads, and one reply-wire. They convince me that I have been on the right track from the first. The wires were of such a nature that you could scarcely understand them, but here is the ad.” He showed me a newspaper:

  WANTED—Name and address of blue-eyed goat who ate 39 clam shells for dinner on the 26th of this month. Answer, Room 13, Hotel — — — — —

  I looked at Herlock inquiringly.

  “There are only two men on earth who would understand that ad,” he remarked. “You see, of course, that it is a cipher—a cipher which staked the entire game on a single deal! You observe that the figure 39 is the third multiple of 13, and 26 is the second. It meant win or lose; success or ruin! It was a desperate chance, but I took it! And look! Look here at the result!”

  With trembling hands I unfolded the little slip of paper he handed me. On it was written in red ink: “P.D.Q. 13 and 13 alone!”

  “Tell me all about it,” I said, after I had recovered from this.

  “Not too fast,” said Herlock smilingly. “Wait until after breakfast. By the way, suppose you ask Miss Blank to sit at our table this morning. We might as well have a little fun out of it, you know.”

  All during the meal Shomes was in the gayest of spirits, and we all caught the infection. Even Miss Blank seemed for the while to forget the terrible ordeal through which she was passing, and joined in the merry-making. At last, the hot cakes and maple syrup came in and Shomes served them.

  “I ask you to scrutinize those cakes closely, Miss Blank,” he said. “I’m sure you’ll find them unusually good.”

  Miss Blank deftly speared a butter-ball with her fork and gracefully swabbed the top one. Then she added a little syrup. We were intently watching her movements. As she plied her knife, lo and behold! A tiny edge of blue appeared in the middle of the cake!

  Hanging from the end of her fork was the lost bathing suit

  “What’s this?” she screamed, and with that, she caught up the cake, peeled it off, and there—yes, there—hanging from the end of her fork, was the lost bathing suit!

  IV. The Mystery Explained

  After Shomes had gracefully received and re-received the congratulations of the entire hotel population, and had telegraphed his photograph to all the afternoon papers, he lighted a pipe and proceeded to tell us all about it.

  “I feel that I must apologise for the way in which I returned the bathing suit to Miss Blank, my dear Rotty,” he remarked. “Fact is, you know, I can’t ever resist a chance for a little of the theatrical. It’s just like sunshine to a hot-house flower for me to feel a little lime-light. Some day I may get over it, but not yet; I hope not yet. Of course, as I told you, I was from the very first on to the desperate villain and I knew I could skin him to a marrow-bone! I knew it! And he did, too! I could almost hear him mutter to himself when he heard I had taken up the case, ‘Shomes is on my trail! All is lost!’ There was but one thing for him to do—to slide out of the whole thing as gracefully as possible!

  “You know I always tell you to put yourself in the other man’s place. What would the other man have done? What should I have done had I found myself with an irresistible web woven about me by an opponent I knew to be my superior? When I felt those meshes tightening, ever tightening, by that wonderful unseen hand, until I saw that all was lost! What should I have done? Why, I should simply have thrown up the deal and pretended the bathing suit had never been lost! And that’s just what HE did! I knew it! I could read him like an open scroll! I gave him two days to put the suit back, and yesterday afternoon I quietly went down to the bath house, and there, way round behind a seat, hid in a corner, I found it!”

  “And what did the advertisements have to do with it?” I asked, when I had recovered from the cataleptic petrifaction which succeeded this astounding statement.

  “My dear Rot,” said Shomes, “you must not try to understand all the combinations of us professionals. There are a great many things about detective work which you will not be able to comprehend for many years.”

  Holmlock Shears Opens Hostilities

  Maurice Leblanc

  Much like his gentleman thief Arsene Lupin, Maurice Leblanc (1864-1941) didn’t have a problem appropriating someone else’s possession for his own use. In this case, it was Holmes, renamed Herlock Sholmes or Holmlock Shears, depending upon the publisher, after Conan Doyle objected.

  Holmes first meets Lupin in “Sherlock Holmes Arrives Too Late” (1907). While he succeeds in untangling the mystery behind an ancient riddle, a disguised Lupin makes off with the treasure and strands Holmes. To add a gentlemanly insult to injury, he leaves his car for Holmes’ use and even returns the pocket watch that he lifted off him.

  But as we see in this excerpt from The Blonde Lady, their next encounter was more evenly matched. The story starts off with a bang when mathematics professor M. Gerbois buys an antique desk only to have it stolen by Lupin for reasons unknown. When the lottery ticket Gerbois unwittingly left in it—the “number 514, series 23” mentioned below—wins the grand prize, there is a public legal struggle over it between the two men that results in the professor’s daughter, the blonde of the title, being kidnapped. Throw in the seemingly unrelated murder of Baron d’Hautrec and a stolen blue diamond ring, and the stage is set for a dramatic confrontation between Lupin and Sherlock Holmes—I mean Holmlock Shears.

  Holmlock Shears is a man … of the sort one meets every day. He is about fifty years of age and looks like a decent City clerk who has spent his life keeping books at a desk. He has nothing to distinguish him from the ordinary respectable Londoner, with his clean-shaven face and his somewhat heavy appearance, nothing except his terribly keen, bright, penetrating eyes.

  And then, of course, he is Holmlock Shears, that is to say, a sort of miracle of intuition, of insight, of perspicacity, of shrewdness. It is as though nature had amused herself by taking the two most extraordinary types of detective that fiction had invented, Poe’s Dupin and Gaboriau’s Lecoq, in order to build up one in her own fashion, more extraordinary yet and more unreal. And, upon my word, any one hearing of the adventures which have made the name of Holmlock Shears famous all over the world must feel inclined to ask if he is not a legendary person, a hero who has stepped straight from the brain of some great novel-writer, of a Conan Doyle, for instance.

  He at once, when Arsène Lupin asked him how long he meant to stay, led the conversation into its right channel and replied:

  “That depends upon yourself, M. Lupin.”

  “Oh,” exclaimed the other, laughing, “if it depended on me, I should ask you to take to-night’s boat back.”

  “To-night is rather early. But I hope in a week or ten days….”

  “Are you in such a hurry?”

  “I am very busy. There’s the robbery at the Anglo-Chinese Bank; and Lady Eccleston has been kidnapped, as you know…. Tell me, M. Lupin, do you think a week will do?”

  “Amply, if you confine yourself to the two cases connected with the blue diamond. It will just give me time to take my precautions, supposing the solution of those two mysteries to give you certain advantages over me that might endanger my safety.”

  “Yes,” said the Englishman, “I expect to have gained those advantages in a week or ten days.”

  “And to have me arrested on the eleventh?”

  “On the tenth, at the very latest.”

  Lupin reflected and, shaking h
is head:

  “It will be difficult … it will be difficult….”

  “Difficult, yes, but possible and, therefore, certain….”

  “Absolutely certain,” said Wilson, as though he himself had clearly perceived the long series of operations which would lead his friend to the result announced.

  Holmlock Shears smiled:

  “Wilson, who knows what he is talking about, is there to confirm what I say.” And he went on, “Of course, I have not all the cards in my hands, because the case is already a good many months old. I have not the factors, the clues upon which I am accustomed to base my inquiries.”

  “Such as mud-stains and cigarette-ashes,” said Wilson, with an air of importance.

  “But, in addition to the remarkable conclusions arrived at by M. Ganimard, I have at my service all the articles written on the subject, all the evidence collected and, consequently, a few ideas of my own regarding the mystery.”

  “A few views suggested to us either by analysis or hypothesis,” added Wilson, sententiously.

  “Would it be indiscreet,” said Arsène Lupin, in the deferential tone which he adopted toward Shears, “would it be indiscreet to ask what general opinion you have been able to form?”

  It was really most stimulating to see those two men seated together, with their elbows on the table, arguing solemnly and dispassionately, as though they were trying to solve a steep problem or to come to an agreement on some controversial point. And this was coupled with a very delicate irony, which both of them, as experts and artists, thoroughly enjoyed. As for Wilson, he was in seventh heaven.