The Victorian Rogues MEGAPACK ™: 28 Classic Tales

by Maurice Leblanc

  “Rapidly rising,” replied the editor.

  “I am glad of that,” asserted the intruder, suavely, “and can assure you that the temperature outside is as rapidly falling.”

  The great detective spread his hands before the glowing electric fire, and rubbed them vigorously together.

  “I perceive through that evening paper the sum of six thousand pounds in gold.”

  Doyle interrupted him with some impatience.

  “You didn’t see it through the paper; you saw it in the paper. Goodness knows, it’s been mentioned in enough of the sheets.”

  “As I was about to remark,” went on Sherlock Holmes imperturbably, “I am amazed that a man whose time is so valuable should waste it in counting the money. You are surely aware that a golden sovereign weighs 123.44 grains, therefore, if I were you, I should have up the kitchen scales, dump in the metal, and figure out the amount with a lead pencil. You brought the gold in two canvas bags, did you not, Sir George?”

  “In the name of all that’s wonderful, how do you know that?” asked the astonished publisher.

  Sherlock Holmes, with a superior smile, casually waved his hand toward the two bags which still lay on the polished table.

  “Oh, I’m tired of this sort of thing,” said Doyle wearily, sitting down in the first chair that presented itself. “Can’t you be honest, even on Christmas Eve? You know the oracles of old did not try it on with each other.”

  “That is true,” said Sherlock Holmes. “The fact is, I followed Sir George Newnes into the Capital and Counties Bank this afternoon, where he demanded six thousand pounds in gold; but when he learned this would weigh ninety-six pounds seven ounces avoirdupois weight, and that even troy weight would make the sum no lighter, he took two small bags of gold and the rest in Bank of England notes. I came from London on the same train with him, but he was off in the automobile before I could make myself known, and so I had to walk up. I was further delayed by taking the wrong turning on the top and finding myself at that charming spot in the neighbourhood where a sailor was murdered by two ruffians a century or so ago.”

  There was a note of warning in Doyle’s voice when he said:—“Did that incident teach you no lesson? Did you not realise that you are in a dangerous locality?”

  “And likely to fall in with two ruffians?” asked Holmes, slightly elevating his eyebrows, while the same sweet smile hovered round his thin lips. “No; the remembrance of the incident encouraged me. It was the man who had the money that was murdered. I brought no coin with me, although I expect to bear many away.”

  “Would you mind telling us, without further circumlocution, what brings you here so late at night?”

  Sherlock Holmes heaved a sigh, and mournfully shook his head very slowly.

  “After all the teaching I have bestowed upon you, Doyle, is it possible that you cannot deduct even so simple a thing as that? Why am I here? Because Sir George made a mistake about those bags. He was quite right in taking one of them to ‘Undershaw’, but he should have left the other at 221B, Baker Street. I call this little trip ‘The Adventure of the Second Swag’. Here is the second swag on the table. The first swag you received long ago, and all I had for my share was some honeyed words of compliment in the stories you wrote. Now, it is truly said that soft words butter no parsnips, and, in this instance, they do not even turn away wrath. So far as the second swag is concerned, I have come to demand half of it.”

  “I am not so poor at deduction as you seem to imagine,” said Doyle, apparently nettled at the other’s slighting reference to his powers. “I was well aware, when you came in, what your errand was. I deduced further that if you saw Sir George withdraw gold from the bank, you also followed him to Waterloo station.”

  “Quite right.”

  “When he purchased his ticket for Haslemere, you did the same.”

  “I did.”

  “When you arrived at Haslemere, you sent a telegram to your friend, Dr Watson, telling him of your whereabouts.”

  “You are wrong there; I ran after the motor car.”

  “You certainly sent a telegram from somewhere, to someone, or at least dropped a note in the post-box. There are signs, which I need not mention, that point irrevocably to such a conclusion.”

  The doomed man, ruined by his own self-complacency, merely smiled in his superior manner, not noticing the eager look with which Doyle awaited his answer.

  “Wrong entirely. I neither wrote any telegram, nor spoke any message, since I left London.”

  “Ah, no,” cried Doyle. “I see where I went astray. You merely inquired the way to my house.”

  “I needed to make no inquiries. I followed the rear light of the automobile part way up the hill, and, when that disappeared, I turned to the right instead of the left, as there was no one out on such a night from whom I could make inquiry.”

  “My deductions, then, are beside the mark,” said Doyle hoarsely, in an accent which sent cold chills up and down the spine of his invited guest, but conveyed no intimation of his fate to the self-satisfied later arrival.

  “Of course they were,” said Holmes, with exasperating self-assurance.

  “Am I also wrong in deducting that you have had nothing to eat since you left London?”

  “No, you are quite right there.”

  “Well, oblige me by pressing that electric button.”

  Holmes did so with much eagerness, but, although the trio waited some minutes in silence, there was no response.

  “I deduct from that,” said Doyle, “that the servants have gone to bed. After I have quite satisfied all your claims in the way of hunger for food and gold, I shall take you back in my motor car, unless you prefer to stay here the night.”

  “You are very kind,” said Sherlock Holmes.

  “Not at all,” replied Doyle. “Just take that chair, draw it up to the table and we will divide the second swag.”

  The chair indicated differed from all others in the room. It was straight-backed, and its oaken arms were covered by two plates, apparently of German silver. When Holmes clutched it by the arms to drag it forward, he gave one half-articulate gasp, and plunged headlong to the floor, quivering. Sir George Newnes sprang up standing with a cry of alarm. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle remained seated, a seraphic smile of infinite satisfaction playing about his lips.

  “Has he fainted?” cried Sir George.

  “No, merely electrocuted. A simple device the Sheriff of New York taught me when I was over there last.”

  “Merciful heavens! Cannot he be resuscitated?”

  “My dear Newnes,” said Doyle, with the air of one from whose shoulders a great weight is lifted, “a man may fall into the chasm at the foot of the Reichenbach Fall and escape to record his adventures later, but when two thousand volts pass through the human frame, the person who owns that frame is dead.”

  “You don’t mean to say you’ve murdered him?” asked Sir George, in an awed whisper.

  “Well, the term you use is harsh, still it rather accurately sums up the situation. To speak candidly, Sir George, I don’t think they can indite us for anything more than manslaughter. You see, this is a little invention for the reception of burglars. Every night before the servants go to bed, they switch on the current to this chair. That’s why I asked Holmes to press the button. I place a small table beside the chair, and put on it a bottle of wine, whisky and soda, and cigars. Then, if any burglar comes in, he invariably sits down in the chair to enjoy himself, and so you see, that piece of furniture is an effective method of reducing crime. The number of burglars I have turned over to the parish to be buried will prove that this taking off of Holmes was not premeditated by me. This incident, strictly speaking, is not murder, but manslaughter. We shouldn’t get more than fourteen years apiece, and probably that would be cut down to seven on the gr
ound that we had performed an act for the public benefit.”

  “Apiece!” cried Sir George. “But what have I had to do with it?”

  “Everything, my dear sir, everything. As that babbling fool talked, I saw in your eye the gleam which betokens avarice for copy. Indeed, I think you mentioned the January number. You were therefore accessory before the fact. I simply had to slaughter the poor wretch.”

  Sir George sank back in his chair wellnigh breathless with horror. Publishers are humane men who rarely commit crimes; authors, however, are a hardened set who usually perpetrate a felony every time they issue a book. Doyle laughed easily.

  “I’m used to this sort of thing,” he said. “Remember how I killed off the people in @The White Company@. Now, if you will help me to get rid of the body, all may yet be well. You see, I learned from the misguided simpleton himself that nobody knows where he is today. He often disappears for weeks at a time, so there really is slight danger of detection. Will you lend a hand?”

  “I suppose I must,” cried the conscience-stricken man.

  Doyle at once threw off the lassitude which the coming of Sherlock Holmes had caused, and acted now with an energy which was characteristic of him. Going to an outhouse, he brought the motor car to the front door, then, picking up Holmes and followed by his trembling guest, he went outside and flung the body into the tonneau behind. He then threw a spade and a pick into the car, and covered everything up with a water-proof spread. Lighting the lamps, he bade his silent guest get up beside him, and so they started on their fateful journey, taking the road past the spot where the sailor had been murdered, and dashing down the long hill at fearful speed toward London.

  “Why do you take this direction?” asked Sir George. “Wouldn’t it be more advisable to go further into the country?”

  Doyle laughed harshly.

  “Haven’t you a place on Wimbledon Common? Why not bury him in your garden?”

  “Merciful motors!” cried the horrified man. “How can you propose such a thing? Talking of gardens, why not have buried him in your own, which was infinitely safer than going forward at this pace.”

  “Have no fear,” said Doyle reassuringly, “we shall find him a suitable sepulchre without disturbing either of our gardens. I’ll be in the centre of London within two hours.”

  Sir George stared in affright at the demon driver. The man had evidently gone mad. To London, of all places in the world. Surely that was the one spot on earth to avoid.

  “Stop the motor and let me off,” he cried. “I’m going to wake up the nearest magistrate and confess.”

  “You’ll do nothing of the sort,” said Doyle. “Don’t you see that no person on earth would suspect two criminals of making for London when they have the whole country before them? Haven’t you read my stories? The moment a man commits a crime he tries to get as far away from London as possible. Every policeman knows that, therefore, two men coming into London are innocent strangers, according to Scotland Yard.”

  “But then we may be taken up for fast driving, and think of the terrible burden we carry.”

  “We’re safe on the country roads, and I’ll slow down when we reach the suburbs.”

  * * * *

  It was approaching three o’clock in the morning when a huge motor car turned out of Trafalgar Square, and went eastward along the Strand. The northern side of the Strand was up, as it usually is, and the motor, skilfully driven, glided past the piles of wood-paving blocks, great sombre kettles holding tar and the general débris of a re-paving convulsion. Opposite Southampton Street, at the very spot so graphically illustrated by George C. Haité on the cover of the Strand Magazine, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle stopped his motor. The Strand was deserted. He threw pick and shovel into the excavation, and curtly ordered his companion to take his choice of weapons. Sir George selected the pick, and Doyle vigorously plied the spade. In almost less time than it takes to tell it, a very respectable hole had been dug, and in it was placed the body of the popular private detective. Just as the last spadeful was shovelled in place the stern voice of a policeman awoke the silence, and caused Sir George to drop his pick from nerveless hands.

  “What are you two doing down there?”

  “That’s all right, officer,” said Doyle glibly, as one who had foreseen every emergency. “My friend here is controller of the Strand. When the Strand is up he is responsible, and it has the largest circulation in the—I mean it’s up oftener than any other street in the world. We cannot inspect the work satisfactorily while traffic is on, and so we have been examining it in the night-time. I am his secretary; I do the writing, you know.”

  “Oh, I see,” replied the constable. “Well, gentlemen, good morning to you, and merry Christmas.”

  “The same to you, constable. Just lend a hand, will you?”

  The officer of the law helped each of the men up to the level of the road.

  As Doyle drove away from the ill-omened spot he said:—

  “Thus have we disposed of poor Holmes in the busiest spot on earth, where no one will ever think of looking for him, and we’ve put him away without even a Christmas box around him. We have buried him for ever in the Strand.”

  JEFF PETERS AS A PERSONAL MAGNET, by O. Henry

  Jeff Peters has been engaged in as many schemes for making money as there are recipes for cooking rice in Charleston, S.C.

  Best of all I like to hear him tell of his earlier days when he sold liniments and cough cures on street corners, living hand to mouth, heart to heart with the people, throwing heads or tails with fortune for his last coin.

  “I struck Fisher Hill, Arkansaw,” said he, “in a buckskin suit, moccasins, long hair and a thirty-carat diamond ring that I got from an actor in Texarkana. I don’t know what he ever did with the pocket knife I swapped him for it.

  “I was Dr. Waugh-hoo, the celebrated Indian medicine man. I carried only one best bet just then, and that was Resurrection Bitters. It was made of life-giving plants and herbs accidentally discovered by Ta-qua-la, the beautiful wife of the chief of the Choctaw Nation, while gathering truck to garnish a platter of boiled dog for the annual corn dance.

  “Business hadn’t been good in the last town, so I only had five dollars. I went to the Fisher Hill druggist and he credited me for half a gross of eight-ounce bottles and corks. I had the labels and ingredients in my valise, left over from the last town. Life began to look rosy again after I got in my hotel room with the water running from the tap, and the Resurrection Bitters lining up on the table by the dozen.

  “Fake? No, sir. There was two dollars’ worth of fluid extract of cinchona and a dime’s worth of aniline in that half-gross of bitters. I’ve gone through towns years afterwards and had folks ask for ‘em again.

  “I hired a wagon that night and commenced selling the bitters on Main Street. Fisher Hill was a low, malarial town; and a compound hypothetical pneumocardiac anti-scorbutic tonic was just what I diagnosed the crowd as needing. The bitters started off like sweetbreads-on-toast at a vegetarian dinner. I had sold two dozen at fifty cents apiece when I felt somebody pull my coat tail. I knew what that meant; so I climbed down and sneaked a five dollar bill into the hand of a man with a German silver star on his lapel.

  “‘Constable,’ says I, ‘it’s a fine night.’

  “‘Have you got a city license,’ he asks, ‘to sell this illegitimate essence of spooju that you flatter by the name of medicine?’

  “‘I have not,’ says I. ‘I didn’t know you had a city. If I can find it to-morrow I’ll take one out if it’s necessary.’

  “‘I’ll have to close you up till you do,’ says the constable.

  “I quit selling and went back to the hotel. I was talking to the landlord about it.

  “‘Oh, you won’t stand no show in Fisher Hill,’ says he. ‘Dr. Hoskins, the only doctor here
, is a brother-in-law of the Mayor, and they won’t allow no fake doctor to practice in town.’

  “‘I don’t practice medicine,’ says I, ‘I’ve got a State peddler’s license, and I take out a city one wherever they demand it.’

  “I went to the Mayor’s office the next morning and they told me he hadn’t showed up yet. They didn’t know when he’d be down. So Doc Waugh-hoo hunches down again in a hotel chair and lights a jimpson-weed regalia, and waits.

  “By and by a young man in a blue necktie slips into the chair next to me and asks the time.

  “‘Half-past ten,’ says I, ‘and you are Andy Tucker. I’ve seen you work. Wasn’t it you that put up the Great Cupid Combination package on the Southern States? Let’s see, it was a Chilian diamond engagement ring, a wedding ring, a potato masher, a bottle of soothing syrup and Dorothy Vernon—all for fifty cents.’

  “Andy was pleased to hear that I remembered him. He was a good street man; and he was more than that—he respected his profession, and he was satisfied with 300 percent profit. He had plenty of offers to go into the illegitimate drug and garden seed business; but he was never to be tempted off of the straight path.

  “I wanted a partner, so Andy and me agreed to go out together. I told him about the situation in Fisher Hill and how finances was low on account of the local mixture of politics and jalap. Andy had just got in on the train that morning. He was pretty low himself, and was going to canvass the whole town for a few dollars to build a new battleship by popular subscription at Eureka Springs. So we went out and sat on the porch and talked it over.