by H. F. Heard
Along with Ellery Queen and the Sherlockians, the editors who published the 1964 Lancer paperback edition of A Taste for Honey decided to drag Mr. Mycroft out of the closet. In their inside-cover promotional piece, “The Mantle of the Master,” the copywriter opines, “Sherlock Holmes will never die. He will live as long as the last mystery fan draws breath, and as long as sleuths like Mr. Mycroft carry on his traditions of deduction.” Furthermore, the back cover copy asks, “Who is Mr. Mycroft? The true identity of this magnificent, inscrutable old gentleman is a deep secret—but there are echoes of Baker Street in his voice, and a familiar glean in his eyes that miss no clue.” In case the densest of readers might miss these oblique hints that were so scrupulously buried in the text, Lancer plastered an image on the cover of a man with a hawk-like nose wearing a deerstalker cap and holding a curved-stem pipe between his thin lips. As one bookseller commented, how’s that for subtlety?
So we have, by name, Ellery Queen, Christopher Morley, Lancer Books, Jack Tracy, John Bennett Shaw, Paul D. Herbert, Otto Penzler, Jon L. Lellenberg, Dilys Winn, Jacques Barzun, Ann Byerly, Glenn J. Shea, Walter Clemons, and John L. Breen declaring Mr. Mycroft to be Sherlock Holmes. After considering the obvious, Stacy Gillis in her Foreword concludes, “this is certainly not the Mycroft of the Holmes stories …” (xv). Vanguard, I’m afraid, is alone in stating, then reaffirming its stance, that Mr. Mycroft is Mycroft Holmes, for which it received an all-around thrashing. Jay Michael Barrie adds some interesting new material, drawing from his firsthand association with both H. F. Heard and Christopher Wood.
Finally, Peter Blau, from a 2008 perspective, takes a broad-based position: “Who is Mr. Mycroft? We don’t really know, but Sherlockians see echoes of Sherlock Holmes. Vanguard suggested that Mr. Mycroft is Mycroft Holmes, which led to minor controversy when some Sherlockians pointed out that the only echo is the name, and Vanguard prepared a detailed (although unconvincing) rebuttal. But there’s something else to consider: three of the characters in the book also have echoes from Heard, Wood, and one of Wood’s servants. And in the end we still don’t know, but it’s easy to see that Mr. Mycroft has many characteristics that remind one of Sherlock Holmes, including the name of his brother Mycroft, and it’s interesting to discover that there also are echoes of Heard himself, and two other people he knew, in the book. It’s not at all uncommon, after all, for an author to have had more than one inspiration for a particular character.”
Taking all these data into consideration, and by utilizing powers of deductive reasoning that would put Sherlock Holmes to shame, we are now able conclusively to state with absolute and unequivocal certainty the answer to our question, who is Mr. Mycroft. Add 1 ¾ cups Sherlock, a dash of Mycroft Holmes, 5 ounces of Heard, ½ cup archetypal investigator, 3 tablespoons quintessential justice seeker, and voila. The true identity of Mr. Mycroft is, and will forever remain … Mr. Mycroft.
Notes
1. Christopher Morley, ed., Murder with a Difference: Three Unusual Crime Novels (New York: Random House, 1946), p. ix.
2. Philip Nutman, Scream and Scream Again: The Uncensored History of Amicus Productions (Des Moines: Little Shoppe of Horrors, No. 20, June 2008), p. 54.
3. Ibid. (Actually in the 29 Oct. 1965 written agreement between Amicus and Heard, the specific name “Mycroft” does not appear, only the word “character.”)
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid., p. 57.
6. Ibid., p. 54.
7. Ibid., p. 55.
8. Baker Street Miscellanea No. 25, Spring 1981, p. 23.
9. When A Taste for Honey was originally published in 1941 it reportedly sold a half-million copies, which was a huge number for its day.
10. Baker Street Miscellanea No. 25, Spring 1981, p. 20.
11. The “later stories” to which Mr. Herbert refers are Heard’s 1949 novel The Notched Hairpin: A Mycroft Mystery, and his March 1949 short story, “The Enchanted Garden,” which appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine (Vol. 13, No. 64). Both will be reprinted in the forthcoming editions of the Blue Dolphin Mr. Mycroft Commemorative Series.
12. Michael Young, The Elmhirsts of Dartington: The Creation of a Utopian Community (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982), p. 207.
13. Alison Falby, Between the Pigeonholes: Gerald Heard 1889–1971 (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008), p. 14.
14. “Rockledge Neighborhood #8,” accessed 21 Sep. 2008 @ http://www.Iagunabeachcity.net/development/historic/5%20R.ockledge%20Neighborhood.pdf.
15. Christopher Isherwood, Diaries Volume One: 1939–1960, ed. Katherine Bucknell (HarperCollins Publishers, 1997), p. 242.
16. Alison Falby, email message to the author dated 17 Jun. 2008.
17. William H. Forthman, email message to the author dated 10 Dec. 2007.
18. Blau, who joined the Baker Street Irregulars in 1959 and serves as its current secretary, edits and publishes the monthly newsletter Scuttlebutt from the Spermaceti Press. His comments herein are from an email message to the author dated 13 Sep. 2008.
John Roger Barrie is the literary executor of H. F. Heard. He expresses deep gratitude to Peter Blau, distinguished member of the Sherlockian community, for lending his expertise in reviewing, proofreading, commenting on, and providing additional sources for this writing, which has substantially benefitted from his input. Thanks also to Alison Falby, William H. Forthman, Paul D. Herbert, Carol Koulikourdi of Cambridge Scholars Publishing Ltd., and Philip Nutman for permissions, and Eric Shirey for his valuable assistance.
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Chapter I
“‘When the flyer, whose flight is not through air, sitting in his cage stretches his wing toward the left.’ I’ve read it a hundred times. It just gets under my skin—not being able to figure it out. I put it away in a drawer after the first few dozen attempts. Then suddenly I’d be sure I had it, snatch it out and start counting the letters, changing them, trying all the tricks. Even the simple plan of alternate letters, you see, begins by promising something—‘We tel’—just tantalizing enough to make one wonder if one wasn’t on the trail and some further variation of the letters might yield a straight message. Why bother? Well, because that’s only a beginning. Because after that picturesque gibberish there’s something that follows. Yes, it isn’t plain sailing, even then, but it’s all the better reading for the eye which has picked it out. There is something here, mark my word, though the casual reader would have dismissed it when he saw it in the paper in which I found it printed, as first to last all one piece—either crook’s code or just one of those pieces of perverse silliness with which the over-leisured amuse themselves. So, you see, I need a start. Now do you tumble to what I’m driving at? I need to get my hand under the edge of this code. I’m asking for bearings.”
The man who had shot all this off at me hadn’t given me a chance to reply. He hadn’t even sat down on coming into my office. He hadn’t even waited for my secretary to show him in or even knocked! What he had said should show I had little chance of understanding what it was that he wanted.… So I spent my time, while he ran on, in looking at him. Though his tone was pretty excited, it didn’t seem to fit his appearance—a quiet sort of little fellow. Big head with black hair which I suppose he rumpled whenever he was puzzled; nervous hands with those knobbly wrists which look as though constant twisting of them had made them get enlarged. He’d a knobbly nose, too.
I had just reached that point in my inventory, when, without waiting for me to give my guess as to his line, he continued: “You’re a decoder, aren’t you?”
“Well, yes,” I answered. “Codes have always interested me.”
“I know; I’ve followed you. That’s part of modern prospecting.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Like everything else today, it has to be teamwork and, worse, teamwork against time. Name your fee and I’ll tell you what I want. I’ve got to find this thing and I’ve got to find it fast.
I think you’re my man, and if you’re not—well, I reckon I’ve only time to make one mistake and then this chance may be gone for good.”
“Mr.________?”
“Intil,” he added.
“Mr. Intil,” I said, “you have come to call on me without making an appointment. What exactly do you want me to do?”
“I’ve said; I’ve told you,” he replied. “Have I come to the wrong place? You are Mr. Silchester, aren’t you?” Taking my nod for enough, he rushed on: “First you wrote that little book on cross-word puzzles and their setting and solving. Then you made that study of the Roger Bacon stuff—whether there was really hidden Greek information in the twirls and twists of the tails of the letters in the actual manuscripts. And I know you’re the author of a dozen articles in The Decoder. I know your style even when you don’t sign. Yes, I know about your lot. You’re just like the chess-champions—they can look and be as dumb as a dolt till you put a board in front of them. Then they just go through it like a water-diviner following a buried drain.”
I let his compliments rest. “You want me to decode that piece of paper?”
“Of course! What have I been saying since I came here!”
“Then hand it to me.”
He hesitated, then put it carefully down on my desk in front of me. The passage which he had copied out, maybe from a press-cutting, ran as he had read it.
“It’s usual ‘agony column’ stuff,” I was remarking, when he cut in, “That’s the disguise—put your sense and your secret where only fools look for fun.”
“Mr. Intil,” I said decisively,” please sit down! As you know my work, you know my method is aboveboard as chess.”
He drew a chair and sat on the edge, watching his beloved copy.
I went on, “You know, therefore, that there are a number of basic tests to make. Anyone can work these out, but, as in chess, some people have a natural knack for eliminating at once the blind alleys.”
While I was saying this, I ran my eye through and across the lines. The born decoder, I’ve found, keeps his mind open, taking in the whole text. Then, if there is a clue, suddenly he’ll see certain letters almost as though they were of slightly different type. These letters generally give him a start on the message. None of us, I believe, ever gets the code message straight off—it glimmers through too briefly and is gone; Any strain or pull and it sinks away. But that diagnostic dip has shown if there is a message, running through and under the disguised surface-sentence—just as a chess master sees there’s a middle game and a “mate” standing out, if he can keep the path clear among all the possible other moves that lead nowhere.
But nothing came through to me—not a hint. To stop strain and keep fresh I raised my eyes. My visitor was looking to and from the paper, glancing at it and then at me.
“Haven’t you gotten a clue?” he questioned.
I said nothing, but again gave that quick total glance. Then I was sure. Of one thing there could be no further question.
“Mr. Intil, this is no word code.”
“How do you know?”
“Why do you come to me unless you think I know?”
“But you haven’t tried!”
“That’s just what I have done.”
“You haven’t worked at it!”
“How do you work to find if a bell is sound? Ring it. I’ve rung this. There’s no letter code here.”
Before I could say more he’d reached over and pocketed his precious paper. “Then you’re just a fraud,” he snapped, “Mr. Sydney Silchester!”
Yes, I’m Mr. Sydney Silchester, whose sole distinctions were that he liked honey and being left alone, and so, quietly living on the rim of life, was nearly pushed over the edge by his honey dealer. How, then, did I get into the position where Mr. Intil thought it worth while to call on me, and I to receive him? I suppose that concerted bee-drive must have roused me. They say ordinary bee stings are good for rheumatism. All I know is that after that escape I’d had from being stung to death, I found myself unable to settle down again.
Not that I moved at once. Like those prickly sea-urchins, I’d not only kept people at bay, I’d actually sunk right in and become embedded. But though my daily round went on outwardly undisturbed, my mind was steadily dragging its anchors. The first sign was that I began quite methodically to do puzzles. Indeed, I’ve several times since noted, that may be the first symptom that a mind is going to come out of its shell. It’s a sort of attempt, I believe, still to keep asleep. We feel that if we thought about anything real it would be too hard and sharp. So when our minds want to think on anything for long and tire of being distracted, we try to put them off with artificial problems. We give them knots which people have tied on purpose for them to untie—for fear they might otherwise start untying the knots which would let the cat out of the bag. Then, of course, as all puzzles go according to plan, it gets more amusing to be the knottier. That leads straight on to teaching knot-tiers, to writing guides to disguises. When you reach that point, you begin to look about for more material to work on. You want a lock meant to resist any but the secret key. You become a decoder.
So, by steps almost unnoticed by myself, I found that my mind had bored its way out of the shell I had built for myself. I was still careful enough not to make actual local acquaintances, but I did enter into correspondence on my special subject and became, in that special world, fairly well known. Much of my work began to lie across the Atlantic. Finally there came a conference in the States which I was asked to attend. There I should meet several experts in this queer little field in which my mind seemed determined to stay and feed, and, maybe, grow. The long and the short of it was that I crossed the Atlantic and, as one might say, while my back was turned Europe blew up.
Several riddle-colleagues pointed out that as money could no longer reach me I had better make some; what is more, that I could quite easily. So, with a little good-will, or interest, or whatever one calls it, I found myself with a small office and quite a considerable and growing mail-and-personal-visit business. I had been advised to settle in some place where money was freely made, where odd fancies could be cultivated and odd interests congregated. Those three requirements are not frequently found combined. Maybe no place in the world combines them to quite the degree to which they may be found in the wide district called Los Angeles—“‘The largest city limits in the world,’ and certainly an urbanity which tolerates more variety than any other town,” I was told. So to “L.A.” I went and found the forecast accurate. I became quite a busy man, seeing sometimes as many as a dozen or even a score of clients a day and keeping an amanuensis who was mistress of my mails and helped me with postal inquiries and the placing of my interviews, and so on.
Perhaps some people will say that this sort of work not only improved my prospects but also mended my manners. I don’t know about that. All I know is that, if a client interested me, I would stand a great deal more from him (both for the fee and also for the interest) than I’d ever have stood from anyone before. That is why I stood Mr. Intil’s onrushes. Why I did more is perhaps harder to explain. In itself, maybe, it was a hunch. Perhaps it was being rapped on my professional knuckles—perhaps the fact that we who use both hunch and analysis are always a little ashamed of our “starter,” prevented me from bowing my rude intruder out. He was pretty certainly a bit crazy, but then what about many of one’s clients, what about my own profession and the way my gift works? And he certainly somehow held my attention.
“No,” I said, “not a fraud. For, first, you have been asked no fee and, secondly, instead of disguising from you my primary method and wasting your time, I told you straight away I couldn’t help.”
His reply was odd: “But who else can I go to—I must—”
“All right,” I said. “You’ve seen my method. I tell you there’s no code here that a word-decoder could unravel. But I’ll tell you something positive as well, which you’ll believe because you already believe it. Though there is no r
egular code here, I am equally sure, as sure as you are, that there is a real meaning and message in this. It’s not a cipher but it is a cryptic communication.” I didn’t add, “And something which I believe is a bit uncanny,” but that was the reason for my next remark—that, and the equally queer feeling that having shown that my method was, at least to start with, un-rational—a hunch—I must justify the hunch method.
My visitor was standing up already, uneasily eyeing me.
“Mr. Intil, if you are as anxious about this as you appear, I will give you one more piece of advice. I’ve let you see my main method—hunch or ‘integral thought’ or what you will. That’s the way, after all, any artist immediately estimates whether a picture is really a work of art. First he gives a look, and knows if it is a masterpiece, in a split second. Then, if it is, he settles down and gets the reasons.”
His only reply to this very reasonable approach was, “Can you, then, tell me someone who can see what this is?” He held his precious slip of paper up in his thumb and finger.