Sherlock Holmes and the Folk Tale Mysteries - Volume 2

by Puhl, Gayle Lange

  “The description would fit tales of the mythical monsters called Grindylows the old people tell to frighten the children when they misbehave,” drawled my friend. “But this has its own unique features. This article intrigues me. I think we will make a stop at Littlebeach on our way back to Weymouth tomorrow.”

  “You can’t believe this twaddle!” I exclaimed. “Such an animal is impossible! You yourself have told me repeatedly that once one eliminates the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

  “That’s it!” Holmes turned to me, his face suddenly alert. “Watson, you are indeed invaluable to me. You have hit on the very thing I neglected to do, an action so basic that for failing to do it I should be forced to turn in my magnifying glass and never be allowed to take another case as long as I live. Thank you, Watson. I am going up to my room.”

  “What about dinner?” I cried in astonishment.

  “I don’t need food for my body, Watson. I need food for my brain and you have just given me much to chew over.” He jumped up and left the lobby.

  Puzzled, I walked into the dining room. We had not eaten all day and I was famished. I had no idea what I had said, but whatever it was had certainly galvanized Holmes into action. The rest of the evening was quiet. I took a corner table, but when two American ladies asked to join me I could not refuse. They were sisters, the Misses Silaco from New York City, USA, on a tour of English humane societies. After I introduced myself as a doctor, I was treated to a long treatise on the anti-vivisection movement, both here and in the United States. The food and wine were only adequate and I when I reached my room later, there was no sign of Holmes, although there was a strong smell of tobacco in the hallway.

  When Holmes joined me at breakfast the next morning we were greeted by Mr. Gull with the news that the Danish big game hunter, Stolt Drabsmanden, had been found in Bournemouth, just having given a lecture on his adventures in Africa to the Philosophical Society of that city. The Dorset Constabulary requested that he come to Littlebeach as a consultant on the case. He was due to arrive at the Littlebeach police station at 10 o’clock that very morning. After breakfast we went spinning back on the road that led to Littlebeach and ultimately to Weymouth. Holmes was silent as the horse and trap with our bags in the back passed the farmhouses and strips of trees that stood off in the fields around us. Finally he turned to me and spoke.

  “I found the account of the “sea monster” very interesting.”

  “Surely you don’t believe in such a thing!” I exclaimed.

  “Don’t think of it as a story of a monster, Watson. Think of it as a story of an unusual occurrence. If you look at it dispassionately, the entire account then takes on a different aspect. By the way, did you know that in China there is a giant salamander, over five feet long, that has a wide mouth and lives in water? You will find a full account of its discovery in the Journal of Exploration of the British Royal Society, issued three years ago. Here is Littlebeach and the police station is just down this street. I am very interested in what Stolt Drabsmanden has to say about the creature.”

  Littlebeach was a tiny group of stone buildings perched on top of a cliff overlooking the sea. The police station was near the cliff’s edge, at the bottom of the High Street, and several officials stood outside, along with a new arrival, the great Danish big game hunter.

  Drabsmanden stood at least a head taller than the Dorsetshiremen, dressed in an Arctic whaling overcoat with a furred hood and carrying an elephant gun, the likes of which I had not seen since my days of Army service in India. His leathery face was solemn and his faded blue eyes squinted into the distance, towards a stand of trees that had to be Skylar’s Woods. He was addressing the group of men in a thick Danish accent as we drove up and stopped the trap.

  “Then it is agreed. We will start at beach and track animal into woods. Its trail is sure to be wide and slimy. After we find lair, it will be simple thing to dispatch it. Then I ship carcass to Antwerp and have it mounted, ready for Royal Natural Museum. Any questions?”

  “Don’t you think you are a little premature in planning to shoot the creature on sight, Mr. Drabsmanden? Wouldn’t it be better to try and capture it alive?” Holmes called from the trap. Drabsmanden turned at the unexpected interruption.

  “You have advantage over me, sir.”

  “My name is Sherlock Holmes. This is my friend Dr. Watson.”

  “Well, Mynheer Holmes, I have spent greater part of thirty years in wild places discovering unknown animals and primitive peoples. I think I much more experienced on safari than you. Now you will excuse us, these officers and I find dangerous sea monster now.”

  The crowd of men moved off toward a stairway that led down to the beach. Holmes shook his head. “I didn’t expect Stolt Drabsmanden to listen to me, Watson,” he said. “He has a reputation in scientific circles of shooting first without determining the nature of the hunted animal and dragging back his prizes in wholesale lots. One thing is clear. We must find his quarry first.”

  He turned the trap around and whipped up the horse. In a few minutes we had left Littlebeach and were approaching Skylar’s Woods from the north. A graded path led us to its outskirts, where we left the trap and plunged into the growth of timber. There were acres of trees stretching out before us on all sides. Branches and twigs tore at our coats as we zigzagged through the bushes and thickets that filled the spaces between the trees. Deep shadows and dappled light bedazzled our eyes as we progressed through the forest. Dried leaves and bracken crunched under our feet. Holmes led the way, examining the forest floor and looking up at the overhead canopy. Somehow he found an almost invisible path that took us deep into the woods. As we rounded a stand of oak I blinked in surprise. Centred in a little clearing was a tiny clapboard cabin with a thatched roof. There were signs of a straggly vegetable garden on one side, with dried cabbage stalks near the paling fence and wooden tomato stands leaning against the hut’s grey walls.

  “Holmes, how did you know this place was here?”

  “I deduced its existence.”

  “Then who is inside?”

  “That will be revealed by good, old-fashioned detective work. I shall walk up and inquire. Meanwhile, stay out here and keep a lookout. That trigger-happy Dane is still searching for his sea monster in the woods, with his organized lynching party. They are bound to make a lot of noise. Warn me as soon as you hear them.”

  Sherlock Holmes knocked on the door. It opened to show a tiny old woman standing on the threshold, leaning on a crooked stick. Her left ankle was wrapped in a thick bandage. She had pure white hair twisted into a long braid that coiled twice around her head and wore a black dress covered by a worn apron. She looked at Holmes with sharp green eyes.

  Sherlock Holmes pulled the Vogelbauer family photograph from out of his pocket and handed it to her. She stared at it wordlessly and then motioned him to enter.

  I was left alone in the garden. I stood silently, my ears straining for any sounds from the forest around me, while I thought over the actions of this case.

  Sherlock Holmes had been shaken by his failure to find the boy’s body. He had seen something in that newspaper story that I had missed. My repeating back to him his own dictum about eliminating the impossible had obviously struck a chord. Somehow all that had led us to this clearing and this little hut. What was happening inside between the old woman and Holmes? Could she know anything about the sea monster? Could she be harbouring it? Where did it come from? Could it have been cast up out of the watery ocean depths by the same storm that sank the Lyric?

  Then I heard a rustling of the underbrush from the east. A moment later there was a babble of voices. Obviously a large crowd of men were approaching the clearing. I pounded on the door of the cabin. “Holmes! Holmes! They’re coming!”

  The door flew open and Sherlock Holmes stepped out, clutching in his arms
a large bundle wrapped in a brown blanket. Behind him I caught a glimpse of the face of the old woman, her eyes wide and frightened as she fumbled to close the door behind him. Holmes strode across the clearing and back on the trail that led to our horse and trap. I scurried behind him as the voices became louder. The hunter and his police escort were rapidly getting closer.

  We retraced our path back to the forest’s edge as quickly as we could. I slipped on slick leaf litter and tripped over protruding roots as we struggled through the underbrush. All along the way we heard crashing in the distance as the search party followed us. At the trap Holmes motioned me to mount to the seat and then he placed the bundle into my arms. I had barely grasped the blanket when he leaped in and with a word and a snap of the whip, had the trap headed toward Weymouth. We galloped for two miles until he pulled up the horse and we settled into a trot.

  “It is six miles to Weymouth, Watson,” he said. “Please fold back the blanket. That poor creature needs some fresh air.”

  Hesitantly I did as I was bid. I didn’t know what I expected to see, a many-armed sea monster or a giant Chinese salamander, but it surely wasn’t the startled face of Lonnie Vogelbauer that I found looking up at me from the depths of the thick cloth. We stared at each other for a moment, and then he opened that unusual mouth and said something in a foreign tongue that I recognized. His words were in Hindi!

  “That explains the strange noises the “sea monster” made that the children and the policeman heard,” said Holmes. “Remember, the child was born and raised in India, with native servants.” He smiled at the boy. “This is Dr. Watson, son. Say hello properly.”

  “Hello, Dr. Watson,” the young boy responded. “I am very glad to meet you. Mrs. Waverly said you and Mr. Holmes are taking me to my mother.”

  “That is correct, Lonnie,” I replied. “Who taught you Hindi?”

  “I learned Hindi from my amah and English from my parents. We were coming to England in a big ship but there was a storm. Mrs. Waverly found me in the water and gave me soup. It was good.”

  “That is enough, Master Vogelbauer,” said Holmes. “Close your eyes now and take a little rest. Soon we will be in Weymouth and your mother will be very happy to see you.”

  Obediently the young boy turned his head and snuggled into the blanket. I held him securely and turned a questioning eye to Sherlock Holmes.

  “You quoted my own dictum to me, Watson,” Holmes said. He clucked at the horse and smiled. “‘After eliminating the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’ But I had not done my basic work; I had not eliminated the impossible. After listening to Mrs. Vogelbauer’s story I had accepted her conclusion that her son had drowned. All my calculations and actions were based on the actions of a stormy sea on a dead body. When my deductions proved wrong and the child’s body wasn’t found, I considered that he had been lost at sea. Then we arrived at the hotel and read that newspaper article. Your timely remark reminding me of my failing sent me on another train of thought.

  “I had to approach the question from an entirely new direction. Working from the new theory that the boy survived, I considered what would have happened after the storm. He most likely would have been thrown up on one of the numerous beaches between Weymouth and West Lulworth, but the fact that his recovery was never reported seemed sinister.

  “We have both noticed that young Vogelbauer has an unusual appearance, one that strangers might even consider ugly. Two young children, seeing something totally unfamiliar and trying to describe it to adults, could easily exaggerate what they saw and create an unbelievable story. Even a policeman, a trained observer, could file a distorted report of a “sea monster” only glimpsed through thick underbrush in a darkling forest.

  “I considered the chances that a missing child and a mysterious “sea monster” could show up in the same area at the same time and found them very low. I eliminated the impossible and decided the child was more likely to be real than the monster.

  “His last sighting had been in Skylar’s Woods. The wreck had been two weeks ago. It was doubtful that a six-year old boy could survive on his own for that long a time, so it was apparent that someone was taking care of him. When I found that person I would find the child. Since the sightings had all been of the child alone, I deduced that he wasn’t being held prisoner.

  “Therefore I decided that there was a dwelling in the woods where Master Vogelbauer was being cared for, even given exercise, but the occupant was for some reason unable to report his presence to the authorities. An elderly person, unable to get out easily, seemed the best answer to that question. It was at that point in my reasoning that I felt confident enough to lay out a search plan for the woods, in order to find the child.

  “The calling in of Stolt Drabsmanden, the famous big game hunter, by the police this morning was a complication. His trigger-happy methods presented a real danger to the boy. It was imperative that we find him first. I knew there had to be a shelter in that wood and that the boy would be inside.

  “Mrs. Waverly was the person caring for the child. She and I had a chance to talk before you gave the alarm. She had found him on the beach just after the storm. She dressed his wounds from the wreck, fed him and let him rest up, but the day she was planning on taking him to Littlebeach, she twisted her ankle badly and was unable to walk. That is why no one knew where he was. She has only infrequent visitors because she has spent her life gathering arcane lore about the herbs and healing roots of the forest and the locals avoid her, believing her to be a witch.

  “A few days ago the boy felt well enough to walk as far as the beach, but he fell in the water and came back dripping wet and with some cuts and bruises. He told her some children had thrown stones at him. She kept him in for a couple of days. The next time he went out he was surprised in the woods by a man on a bicycle. The child was shaken by all that he has been through, which is not a surprise, and he ran back to Mrs. Waverly, terrified by the encounter. He hadn’t been out of her sight since. It took some convincing for him to agree to come with us.”

  I looked down at the unfamiliar burden in my arms. The boy was asleep. The scratches and abrasions he had suffered from the wreck of the Lyric had healed, but there was evidence of fresh injuries from the stones that had been thrown at him by the boy from the Whale and Minnow. I held him a little tighter. What emotional wounds this child must have borne! To literally be thrown out into the world from his mother’s loving arms, to struggle to live with only a stranger to care for him, and then to bear up against the violence shown him by frightened, ignorant people! Little Lonnie Vogelbauer, I decided, was one of the bravest people I had ever met.

  We stopped briefly in Overcombe so Holmes could send a telegram to Mrs. Vogelbauer, telling her of the recovery of her son and asking her to come to Weymouth by the next train. He left young Lonnie and me at a café near the train station while he drove off to return the rented trap and horse. I took a table inside and managed a swift examination of the boy, finding no serious injuries. Then I ordered us both lunch and watched in amusement as young Vogelbauer consumed two fish-paste sandwiches and innumerable cream buns, washing it all down with a large glass of fresh milk.

  Sherlock Holmes rejoined us with our bags and, urged by the boy, actually ate a cream bun with his cup of coffee. His gentle questioning brought out information about Lonnie’s life in India with his parents and his experiences after the wreck of the Lyric. Finally we led him to the station, where the latest train from Waterloo soon pulled in and the anxious form of Mrs. Vogelbauer appeared on the platform.

  Young Vogelbauer ran into her arms. Their reunion was touching. Holmes and I stood back, unwilling to intrude.

  Holmes looked thoughtful. Then he spoke. “Do you hear the music, Watson?”

  I looked at him in surprise. “I hear no music, Holmes. I can hear the idling train, the sound of traffic on the
street and some voices behind us, but not music. What do you mean?”

  “When she first came to our rooms, Mrs. Vogelbauer told us that she did not inherit her father’s great talent. Rest assured, my friend, right now her heart is singing.”

  I looked at the two figures embracing each other on the now-deserted platform. I realized that I could hear the music, too.

  The Case of the Hunted Hound

  It was late November and the sight outside our windows at 221b Baker Street was bleary and drear. A pea-souper of a fog had descended on London. The wind had died away and for two days the city had sat draped in a thick yellow veil of icy water vapour and soot. It made the cobblestones in the streets slick and grimy and coated the buildings in a cold greasy slime. It was taking one’s life in one’s hands to venture out on the wet, slippery streets. The unnatural fog forced the gas lamps lining Baker Street to waver and burn fruitlessly during the sunless days and blur into near invisibility during the ever-lengthening nights. Even the gaslight that burned in our sitting room had to work against the wisps of atmosphere that slipped in through the cracks around the windows and the door as it flavoured our lungs with coal smoke and damp. Our fireplace glowed fitfully instead of burning with its usual cheery blaze. Sherlock Holmes and I pulled our armchairs nearer to the hearth in an effort to extract any heat at all from the mound of sea-coal Mrs. Hudson had kindled there.

  This morning we sat before the fire, Holmes in his dressing gown and I in my smoking jacket, as we opened the post with gloved hands to ward off the chill of the room. Holmes’ Bunsen burner was kept lit under a kettle of hot water and I had busied myself in making pot after pot of strong tea rather than distress Mrs. Hudson, who was coping with her own domestic problems below stairs. I helped myself liberally to the warming beverage in a futile effort to keep warm the inner man. Holmes had spent the time since breakfast puffing on his old clay, adding another layer of stuffiness to the air, as he carefully read every word of the several newspapers to which he subscribed. Finally he stood up and flung the last aside.