Sherlock Holmes and the Folk Tale Mysteries - Volume 2

by Puhl, Gayle Lange

  “Nothing! Nothing at all!” He strode to the sideboard and poured out a stiff whiskey although it was only eleven forty-five o’clock in the morning. He turned to me, bundled up in my refuge by the fire.

  “How can I make use of my finely-honed talents, Watson, when the best criminals lie doggo in their lairs, penned in by this infernal weather? This pea-souper of a fog has brought major crime to a standstill. Certainly there are newspaper reports of pickpockets and thieves snatching things from people forced out into this thick, frigid mist, but nothing interesting, nothing bizarre. The papers carry little but accounts of injuries caused by men and horses slipping on the treacherous streets along with gloomy weather reports. How is a consulting detective to earn his bread and cheese if the very air itself prevents clients from reaching his door? Confound this dratted fog!”

  “Man cannot control the weather, Holmes,” I said mildly.

  “No, he cannot, but he might stop contributing to the conditions that aggravate it. You, Doctor, of all men are aware of the tons of soot and dirt that rain down through the atmosphere on London from the thousands, nay, millions of chimneys and smokestacks that fill the Thames valley from whence this vapour originates.

  “Excuse me, Watson,” he said when he saw my face. “You must forgive this diatribe. My nerves are at the snapping point from lack of stimulation. I need a case today, if ever I needed one before. I have not had a problem to solve for nearly two weeks and I have been confined to these four walls for too long. I am anxious for any outlet to keep my brain from stagnation.”

  I nodded in agreement. My friend needed, above all else, to have something with which to occupy his great brain, to be able to mull over a mystery, to engage his mental powers in decoding an impossible cipher or researching an esoteric problem. Lacking stimuli, he was prone to endlessly pace the floor or lie motionless and silent on our sofa. Watching him for the past days had put my nerves on edge, ever vigilant as I was over his moods and physical state. Now I leaned forward and plucked from the rug a forgotten telegram that had fallen out of the pile of newspapers he had been reading.

  “Perhaps this is something, Holmes,” I said as I offered it to him.

  Sherlock Holmes took it in his thin, nervous fingers and ripped it open. A moment later I was startled to hear a peal of laughter ring out. Chuckling, he dropped back into his chair and handed me the yellow form.

  “Here is the answer to a prayer, Watson. Not a big case, not an important case, but a case nonetheless. I will take it just for the relief of working again, no matter what the facts prove to be.”

  I read it aloud.

  “I say, I hate to bother you, I truly do, but you see my dog is missing and he must be found before my wife gets home. I know it doesn’t sound like much, no missing jewels or mangled corpse on the library floor, but I really am a desperate man. I will call at 221b Baker Street at noontime today. This is urgent, you see, because my marriage depends on my wife not finding out the dog is missing. I will call at noontime. Don’t forget this is urgent. Bingo Little. “

  “What can this mean, Holmes?”

  “I have no idea, but if a dog is missing, a dog must be found. What a message! Can a man be so afraid of his wife and yet find the courage to consult me without her? It is nearly noon. I look forward to meeting this Bingo Little.”

  Just then the bell rang down below and in a minute Mrs. Hudson ushered in our new client. He was a handsome young man, dressed in the latest Savile Row fashion, and carried a top hat in his hand. He looked from Holmes to me, his face a bit vacuous and well-meaning, but with evident confusion showing as to what he thought his next move should be.

  “Which one of you chaps is Mr. Sherlock Holmes?”

  “My name is Sherlock Holmes, Mr. Little. This is my friend and associate, Dr. Watson. Please hang up your coat and take a seat by the fire. Then you may tell us about your problem.”

  “Oh, I say, thank you.” Bingo Little removed his overcoat, shiny from the droplets of greasy fog outside, dropped into Holmes’ armchair and smiled at us uncertainly. Holmes pulled up the old wooden chair and wedged in between us so that the meagre warmth of the coal-fire had an equal chance to spread to our feet. Mr. Little’s shoes, I noticed, were clad in spats.

  “Ýou are the detective chappie, aren’t you? I mean, the man in the papers who solves all those mysterious mysteries, what? I can never figure out how you do it. Solve the mysteries, I mean. Bits of tobacco ash and old hats must litter every crime scene. Read about you in the press, you see. Jolly old press, so knowledgeable about race results and how to wear one’s socks. Anyway, I’m in trouble. After he disappeared I didn’t know who else to consult. I have a friend, Bertie Wooster, who has a man, Jeeves, who is an absolute whiz at problems like this, but Bertie went off to the French Riviera and took Jeeves with him and while Bertie did tell me where they were staying I have forgotten the address.”

  Sherlock Holmes smiled at this odd speech.

  “I am that “detective chappie”, Mr. Little. Please tell me of your problem. Besides the facts that you are newly married, hold membership in the Drones Club, and like your hats perfectly fitted, I can determine little else.”

  Mr. Little started and dropped his topper, which rolled toward the fire. I rescued it from the threatening embers and handed it back.

  “I say, are you some kind of wizard? You must be a roar at dinner parties. Call me Bingo. Everything you said is spot-on. How did you know all that?”

  “Your telegram mentioned your wife, Mr. Little, in such a way that for such a young man you must have been married for only a short time. The dew is still on the rose, and you are going to great lengths to conceal from her this adventure of yours, thus showing me that the honeymoon period of your relationship is still active and you are unwilling to disappoint her. She still sees you as her knight in shining armour and you do not want her to discover your human feet of clay.”

  Mr. Little pulled his smartly shod feet back from the fire and said, “You read me like a book, Mr. Holmes. How did you know about my membership in the Drones?”

  “In the course of my work I have made a small study of the various customs and mores of the prominent London clubs. Your suit lapels are covered in breadcrumbs. The throwing of bread rolls at table is a notable feature of the Drones. As for your taste in hats, I saw the sticker with Bodmin’s name emblazoned thereon inside yours. Nothing more needs to be said.”

  Our client’s face was slack in astonishment. “I say, you are the cat’s whiskers, Mr. Holmes! Please, call me Bingo. Wait until I tell Bertie about you! Are you sure you never ran into his man Jeeves? Do you eat a lot of fish?”

  Holmes waved off that line of questioning and urged Bingo Little to tell us his tale. In a few minutes we had it all, and it promised to be as remarkable a case as Mr. Sherlock Holmes had ever handled.

  “I am newly-married, Mr. Holmes, and to a wonderful girl. She is Rosie M. Banks, authoress of Only a Factory Girl, Mervyn Kane, Clubman, ‘Twas Once in May and other works. We hit it off from the start like a couple of lovebirds. But now I am within a toucher of being in very serious trouble in the home.”

  “Pray continue, Mr. Little.”

  “I know you are not a married man, Mr. Holmes, but please understand that in a marriage circumstances can arise which will cause the female lovebird to get above herself and start throwing her weight about. If my one and only gets on me what it appears inevitable that she must get on me, it will keep her in conversation for the rest of our married lives. She is a sweet little thing, one of the best, but women are women and I think there can be no doubt that she will continue to make passing allusions to this affair right up to the golden wedding day.”

  “An affair?” I asked.

  “Nothing like that, Dr. Watson,” said our client. “It began like this. My old partner in sickness and in health just finished
another novel, entitled Life Among the Coffee Cups, and three days ago, just before the fog descended, she took off on a book tour that sent her though the Northern Counties, the Lake district and sections of Scotland. She was scheduled to be gone a week. As we bade goodbye to each other in Euston Station she appeared concerned and said she was worried about me being all alone while she was gone and that she thought I needed some companionship.

  “You see, she was taking our latest housemaid along to see to her wardrobe and hair, and just the day before our cook had received a sudden summons home to Lyme Regis because her niece was stricken with housemaid’s knee. I would be left alone in the flat. Since our marriage I had managed to become a dab hand at grilling on the balcony and last summer my tossed salads were considered quite the bees’ knees among the younger set on the Cote D’Azur. Also my club has an adequate chef and an excellent wine cellar. She wasn’t worried about my meals; she was worried about the empty hours I would have to endure until she returned to the old homestead.

  “I assured her that I could find all the companionship in the world among my fellow Drones, but that just made her frown even more. “Huddled up in the Drones library is not my idea of companionship, Bingo, darling,” she replied. It wasn’t mine, either; I had been thinking of the card room, but at this point I let her get her thought out. “I think you need fresh air and exercise and a new interest to occupy you until I get back. So, I have arranged a little surprise that will be waiting for you at home after lunch.”

  “The mention of fresh air and exercise seemed to me to have sinister connotations, but as much as I teased and kissed her, she refused to tell me what the surprise was. Soon the train puffed out of the station, my wife waving her handkerchief at me from her First Class window, and I slunk back to the Drones for an apprehensive lunch.

  “After a quiet meal, made possible because many of the members had been called back to the estates of their various aunts and uncles to account for their movements since last Quarter Day, I finished my meal by flinging my bread roll at Oofy Prosser, our one member who is both a millionaire and has no living relatives, and went home. Our love nest is a modern flat on the second floor of a nifty little building just off Park Lane. I had barely taken off my coat and settled in the living room with a fresh pack of cards to practice my trick shuffle that I planned on dazzling the boys with at Catsmeat Potter-Pirbright’s birthday party next week when the doorbell rang.

  “When I opened the door I found two burly men standing in the hall, holding a large wooden crate with a brown paper bundle on top. They didn’t stop to introduce themselves, but staggered in and deposited the crate on the foyer tiles.

  “Sign here, mate,” said the burlier of the two men. He thrust a clipboard at me. The other man proffered a stubby pencil.

  “What am I signing for?” I inquired as I scribbled my autograph.

  “Do I look like a man who would peek into another man’s crate?” asked the first man. He scowled at me and took back the clipboard. I considered him for a moment. He didn’t look like a man who would peek into another man’s crate. With his broken nose and his enormous biceps, he looked like a man who would rip you limb from limb for looking at him cross-eyed, but not like one who would peek into another man’s crate. The other man snatched back his pencil and frowned at me in a fine imitation of his friend.

  “No,” I answered. “How do I get this open?”

  “The second man pulled a crowbar from his belt and held it out with a sneer. I thanked him with a smile and applied the bar to the crate.

  “An instant later I was flat on the floor with a great slobbering hound, all gleaming sharp white teeth, rough scarlet tongue and glowing red eyes astride my supine body. Dimly I heard terrified shouts and the distant sound of a slamming door.

  “My head was abuzz. A continuous growling came from the beast and he nuzzled and licked around my throat and face as if he were cleaning a large patch of skin to be ready for surgery. His weight pressed me down like guilt on a new sinner and the very blackness of his coat filled my sight like the darkness of Egypt. I reached up in a hopeless effort to push him away and my fingers encountered a leather collar around his neck. A tag hung from the buckle and I managed to read it. It was inscribed “Cuddles.”

  “Off, Cuddles!” I shouted. To my amazement he scrabbled away. By the time I had gotten off the floor and managed to pour myself a restoring snifter from the drinks table, Cuddles had taken possession of the couch in the living room and was chewing on a throw cushion in a morose manner.”

  “Please give me a description of the dog,” said Holmes. I pulled out my notebook from my smoking jacket pocket and took up my pen.

  “Well, it was a six-foot couch and he filled it pretty well,” replied Mr. Little. “His coat was black, and he had enormous gleaming teeth and blood-red eyes. The interior of his mouth was also red, he had dripping flews and his massive tongue hung outside every time he opened his mouth. He looked like a cross between a mastiff and a bloodhound, with some Irish wolfhound and a lot of North American Grizzly bear thrown in. He turned his head and stared at me like I was the next thing on the menu and howled as if his tummy hurt. In short, Mr. Holmes, he looked like the hound from Hell. Did I mention his glowing red eyes?”

  “Yes, you did.”

  “Well, I didn’t want to leave out such a salient feature. I noticed an envelope on the floor by the crate, doubtless dropped by the deliverymen in their haste to leave the two of us alone. I managed to move over and pick it up, while Cuddles kept an eye on me as if I were a burglar trying to pull a fast one on his shift. The note was from my wife. Here it is.”

  Holmes took the note and handed it to me. I read it aloud.

  “Here, Bingo, darling, is a little something to keep you company while I am gone. Please walk him twice a day and remember to give him food and water. I have included a supply of Donaldson’s Dog Joy and other needed items to make him comfortable. I expect to find you both the best of friends when I return. Love, your very Own.”

  “As you can imagine, Mr. Holmes, this put a different complexion on things. I could no longer think of this beastly invasion as a calculated attempt on my life by person or persons unknown, but instead had to accept the brute as a gift from my loving wife. What’s more, she clearly intended that we bond and that I spend my time caring for it, worrying about its diet and making sure it gets enough fresh air and exercise. I gulped down the rest of the brandy and eyed man’s best friend in a thoughtful manner.

  “Several questions arose. Did it have a leash? Did it come with dog dishes for food and water? Did we have any Donaldson’s Dog Joy? Did we have enough Donaldson’s Dog Joy? Where would it sleep? If it didn’t like where I put its bed, where would I sleep?

  “It seemed comfortable enough on the couch, so I decided to check the enclosed bundle. Sure enough, there was a complete set of dog dishes, two leashes, various combs and brushes, squeaker toys and a bag of dog food. Regretfully, I didn’t find a packet of animal tranquilizers, but everything else was there. I had decided early on in our acquaintanceship that I never wanted to see Cuddles unhappy if it was humanly possible to prevent that. Accordingly, I carried the bundle’s contents to the kitchen. I briefly considered ducking out the service entrance and spending the rest of the week at the Drones, but Mrs. Bingo had absently-minded locked that door and taken the key with her to Scotland.

  “I readied some food and water for the animal and swung open the kitchen door to see where he was. He was still on the couch, now starting in on the second cushion. I chirruped at him in what I hoped he would take as a friendly manner and he raised his head. It was like Grendel checking out Beowulf for the first time.

  “Here, Cuddles. Here, boy. Yummies.”

  “With a smooth, muscular motion he left the couch and headed right for me. I managed to gain the top of the kitchen table just as he came through the door. He ig
nored my quivering carcass, however, and went straight to the dishes of Donaldson’s Dog Joy and the water.

  “One of the favourable features of the apartments in our building had been the roomy kitchens, well stocked with cupboards and countertops and furnished with the latest of modern appliances. I was dismayed, therefore, to suddenly find myself in a tiny room largely filled with Dog. I scrambled off the table and slipped into the living room. He heeded not my passing.

  “I needed some air. I opened the French doors to the balcony and stepped out into the afternoon light. My old ball and chain was most probably halfway to Chester by now and I was faced with the prospect of seven days alone with Cuddles. All my friends were out of town. Even Oofy Prosser had told me at lunch that he on his way to catch the boat-train to Monaco. I decided to bite the bullet. I would go back inside and do my best to make friends with Cuddles. It was either that or pack a bag to emigrate somewhere far, far away, and I didn’t know where my wife kept the extra suitcases.

  “I returned to the living room and found Cuddles back on the couch. Clearly he had taken it for his own. I remembered that he had moved when I told him to get off me and to come for his dinner, and a faint hope arose in my heart. Perhaps he was trained to follow commands! Accordingly I said, “Sit, Cuddles!” and he Sat. Up.

  “In a few minutes I had learned his entire repertoire. He sat up, lay down, rolled over, offered his paw and even stood still while I attached a leash to his collar. With a happy cry of “Walkies!” we left the apartment and went out for a brisk run.”

  “Then you did make friends with your wife’s gift, Mr. Little. I fail to see a problem here.” said Sherlock Holmes.

  “Please, call me Bingo. After that first trip, during which I took him by the Drones to show him off to McGarry, the barman, we were confined to the old homestead because of this awful fog. During the night it slipped over the house like an oilcloth cover on a parrot’s cage. The squeaker toys helped to pass the time, particularly one shaped like a goat, but still the hours dragged. Cuddles had to get his exercise by running up and down the hallways, which caused comment by the neighbours, and I developed a nice case of cabin fever. Yesterday morning I gave Cuddles the last of the Donaldson’s Dog Joy and was faced with the prospect of a hungry Cuddles by dinnertime. We were getting along famously by then but every once in a while, especially before meals, I had caught a gleam in Cuddles’ eye when he looked at me much as would a French gourmet contemplating a lobster dinner after a week of dieting ordered by his doctor. I had vowed to keep Cuddles happy and I didn’t believe either his happiness or mine would come from an empty dinner bowl.