In the Company of Sherlock Holmes

by Leslie S. Klinger

  “Does anyone take John seriously as a doctor?”

  Greenhough Smith smiled. “Touché. But Watson’s a good man and a damn good writer. Besides, he’d already used ‘A. Conan Doyle’ for a pair of cases about Holmes in Beeton’s and that American magazine, Lippincott’s.”

  “The one where Wilde’s Dorian Gray first appeared?”

  “Yes, that’s the one.” Greenhough Smith drained his glass. “At all events, I suggested it was time to retire the pen name and that John H. Watson should appear as the ‘onlie begetter’ of ‘A Scandal in Bohemia.’ But Watson wouldn’t hear of it. Holmes, I daresay, felt literary celebrity would bring an unwelcome attention to 221B. Personally, though, I think Mary was the chief reason. She grasped immediately how infatuated some women can become with writers and, wise woman, knew her husband could never resist a pretty face or ankle. No, for Holmes’s sake and for marital serenity, it finally seemed sensible just to stick with A. Conan Doyle.”

  Dene signaled the waiter. “Another brandy, for my guest.” When they were again alone, he added, “While all this is mildly interesting, just ten minutes ago you hinted at something more, that Watson hasn’t been the only one using the A. Conan Doyle nom de plume.”

  The Strand’s editor looked a bit shame-faced. “I suppose it’s really my fault. One night E. W. Hornung and I met at Emmuska Orczy’s for dinner. You know how Hornung’s always coming up with puns? Well, that night he made some remark about the author of ‘The Red-Headed League’ being a Conan Doyle rather than the Conan Doyle. Of course, he knew that his brother-in-law couldn’t write a prescription, let alone a short story.”

  “But his dedication of The Amateur Cracksman—‘To ACD, this form of flattery’?”

  “Just irony or another gentle poke. That crook Raffles isn’t the upright gentleman he appears to be; A. Conan Doyle isn’t the author he appears to be. Both present fake facades to the world.”

  Greenhough Smith paused, took a swallow of his brandy and began again. “The whole business really goes back to the 1880s. John H. Watson and Arthur Conan Doyle are longtime friends, and even look enough alike to be taken for brothers. As young medical graduates, they came to know each other in Switzerland when they were both studying with some famous eye specialist there.”

  Greenhough Smith eyed his nearly empty glass, then continued. “About the time he was finishing up A Study in Scarlet, John learned that his old chum was going through a rough patch while trying to establish a practice in some provincial town. Portsmouth or Southsea, I think. In fact, Conan Doyle had no patients to speak of. As Holmes will be the first to testify, John’s a good-hearted soul and knew from first-hand experience what it was like to be alone and desperate in a strange city. To tell you the truth, I don’t think he’s ever fully got over what he went through at Maiwand or even during those first months back in London. Holmes can tell you about the nightmares. . . . But I digress.

  “The long and the short of it is, Watson cut a deal: He would pay his friend Arthur a percentage of his literary earnings in return for the use of his name. Of course, Conan Doyle would also need to pretend that he was the author of first one, then two, and now numerous ‘Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.’ Confused readers did and still do complain: Is Holmes real or fictitious? Were his cases being written up by Watson or being made up by Conan Doyle? Either way, the mystery has been good for publicity, and I’ve made sure such riddles remain unsolved even by Sherlock Holmes.”

  Greenhough Smith finished his second brandy.

  “As time went by, Conan Doyle readily fell in with a literary crowd, though he still found plenty of opportunity to indulge his real passions—cricket and billiards—and to travel back to Switzerland for skiing holidays. Would you believe he even boxes? There are times the man quite reminds me of Jack London, though London can actually write.”

  Dene sniffed, “Conan Doyle has always seemed too much the hearty for my taste. Alfred Douglas once told me that he actually served on a whaling ship. Did you know that? I can just picture him with a harpoon instead of a ski pole in his hand. As for Jack London, please. Let’s just say I’ve spent half my life fleeing from these Wild West, he-man types. Some of my own worst nightmares are about my unhappy time in the Guards. Now Henry James—there’s a writer after my own heart.”

  “Can’t bear him myself. What is it poor Clover Adams said? ‘Henry James chews more than he bites off.’ If you ask me, that stout pseudo-Englishman has simply no idea how to tell a story. Was the governess in that novelette of his insane or not? I never could tell. Give me Saki any day.” Greenhough Smith reflected a moment, swirled the fresh brandy in his now refilled glass and, with a sigh, went on with his story.

  “Watson didn’t think the arrangement would last long. Just a year or two. In fact, after the doctor moved his practice to the Sussex Downs, the Holmes adventures stopped appearing altogether for several years. The Watsons were happy, busy, and didn’t need much money living the simple country life. But after the baby died and poor Mary killed herself, John started to spiral downhill. Drink, gambling losses at the track, the old nightmares about Afghanistan, then the Jezail bullet wounds started acting up again, and, finally, one night he picked up his old service revolver, resolved to blow his brains out. What was there to live for? Well, it was Holmes who really saved him, first by inviting him back to 221B and then by urging him to write up more of their cases.”

  “And so,” Dene interjected, “Watson slipped back into harness with The Hound of the Baskervilles.”

  “Well, not exactly,” said Greenhough Smith. “Watson only took up recording the Holmes cases again with ‘The Adventure of the Empty House.’ But long before that Strand readers had been clamoring for another exploit of the great detective and, so far as I knew at the time, Watson never intended to write another word about him. So I asked Fletcher Robinson to take on that sinister Baskerville affair. John, generous as always, was happy to lend his notes and scrapbooks. As a thank you, Robinson quite beefed up Watson’s own role in the whole business. He might have even gone a bit overboard. Still, Robinson knew Dartmoor like a native and he proved a dab hand at all those eerie touches readers like so much. To my mind, Dene, nothing comparably spooky could really touch The Hound until Monty James started bringing out his ghost stories. Still, it was rather cheeky of Robinson to dedicate the book to himself.”

  “Through your editorial machinations then, Fletcher Robinson, using Conan Doyle’s name and Watson’s notes, became the actual author of The Hound of the Baskervilles. And I thought Mycroft was Machiavellian.”

  “Dene, you’re a journalist, at least of sorts. You know what editors are like. When Holmes mentioned the Baskerville mystery late one November night, it lodged in my memory. How could I let such good copy go to waste?”

  “So, if I have this straight, at that point there were two writers behind the Conan Doyle name?”

  “Oh, more than that. I was utterly shameless. After Hornung made his pun, it led me to think of Watson as just ‘a’ Conan Doyle. Why couldn’t there be others? The name was already famous and people would buy just about any tosh bearing the words ‘By A. Conan Doyle.’ One afternoon I was talking with Stanley Weyman when I found myself suddenly asking if he might be willing to write a swashbuckler under a pen name. Weyman was just starting out then—I think he’d only published The House of the Wolf and one or two other books—so he jumped at the chance to do The White Company. Alas, we had a falling out and The Cornhill serialized it. Not long ago, though, I managed to entice our friend Emmuska into taking on Sir Nigel. The gypsy in her was deeply pleased to have a secret identity, much like her own Sir Percy Blakeney, better known as—”

  Dene exclaimed, “Please, don’t,” but it was too late.

  “—as The Scarlet Pimpernel! ‘They seek him here, they seek him there, those Frenchies seek him everywhere. . . .’” By this time Greenhough Smith had leapt to his feet and was brandishing an imaginary sword, assuming so heroic and noble a s
tance that Fred Terry himself, or even Sir Henry Irving, would have envied it. Dene, however, was stricken with embarrassment.

  “That’s really quite enough, my good sir,” he commanded, “please remember where you are and do sit down. I’d rather not have a guest of mine removed from the club for excessive exuberance.”

  Greenhough Smith reluctantly lowered his sword arm and returned to his seat, muttering softly “Is he in heaven? Or is he in hell? That damned elusive Pimpernel.” Zebulon Dene lit another cigarette.

  “So how many Conan Doyles are there?”

  “Hard to say, just offhand,” answered the out-of-breath editor. “Let’s see. I gave Stoker the germ—so to speak—of The Parasite. Vampires and what not. Anstey simply reworked Vice-Versa into ‘The Great Keinplatz Experiment.’ Beyond the City, the comical one about the emancipated woman, was actually written by Shaw. I’ll never work with him again. Ouida, you won’t be surprised, suggested the kidnapping novel set in the Middle East. The Tragedy of the Korosko may actually be my favorite Conan Doyle novel. As it happens, a few of these assignments I ended up rejecting, but lesser periodicals were always eager to take them. I’ve worked hard, Dene, so that the Strand has never gone for too long without the name Conan Doyle on its contents page.”

  “This ghost-writing continues then?”

  “Yes, but I’m not sure for how much longer. Why do you ask? Would you care to try a Conan Doyle? I’ve an idea for a kind of Battle of Dorking tale about submarines destroying English sea power. No? Ever been up in an airplane? A shocker about creatures living in the clouds just might”—chuckle—“fly.”

  “I’m afraid such fancies are more in the line of Wells or M. P. Shiel. I prefer to deal with facts and actual, living people. I am a journalist.”

  “Oh, don’t be so high and mighty, Dene. All sorts of people have written under the Conan Doyle name. You didn’t see the hand of Jerome K. Jerome in The Stark-Munro Letters? That combination of humor and religiosity, I thought, would give the game away. Mrs. Bland brought me ‘The Leather Funnel’ and that piece of Grand Guignol about Lady Sannox. They were, she said, relief from all those E. Nesbit children’s books. And I’m sure that working up Captain Sharkey stories provided Barrie with the first inkling for Captain Hook. Anyway, it became all the rage to write a Conan Doyle. But the public, of course, was kept entirely in the dark. Nobody suspected, not even you.”

  “I heard rumors.”

  “But nothing more than that.”

  “Yes, that’s quite true. Which leads me to ask again why you’re telling me all this now. What precisely is the problem? And why do you need my help?”

  Meanwhile at 221B Baker Street:

  “So, Watson, what do you make of it?”

  Holmes strode cross the sitting room and dropped the latest issue of the Strand into his friend’s lap. The good doctor picked it up gingerly.

  “Well, Holmes, to all appearances this is the latest issue of the Strand Magazine.”

  “Precisely, my dear fellow. But do you remark nothing more?”

  Watson carefully scanned the cover, which depicted a bustling street scene. He opened to the contents page. Pictures of the royal family at home. A scientific romance called “The Hollow Earth,” by H. G. Wells. An article on spiritualism by A. Conan Doyle. . . .

  “I don’t see anything.”

  “You never do, Watson. You never do.”

  “Except, I was going to add, this Conan Doyle piece called ‘The Coming Revelation.’ Complete balderdash, if you ask me.”

  “You didn’t write the article yourself?”

  “Lord, no, Holmes. I only do up your cases. I may heighten the atmosphere somewhat, add a little color and dialogue for dramatic effect, but I’m careful to stick to the facts.”

  “Can you, my dear Watson, deduce who did write this article?”

  “I haven’t the foggiest notion. Greenhough Smith—quite on the hush-hush—has been working the A. Conan Doyle name pretty hard in recent years. Employs a whole stable of authors to crank out swashbucklers, romances, every sort of thrilling wonder tale. Anthony Hope, if I’m not mistaken, produced those witty Brigadier Gerard stories—wish I had his talent. . . .”

  “Watson, comparisons are invidious and you have a knack for describing our cases that imbues them with quite the air of romance. As it happens, I know beyond doubt that neither you nor the author of The Prisoner of Zenda produced this fatuous article. You have evidently forgotten that I once undertook a stylometric analysis of all the major contributors to the Strand, Pearson’s, Chambers’ and a dozen other periodicals. The frequency of certain turns of phrase, the pet adjective, the length of paragraphs—all these may be used by the trained mind to establish the identity of an unknown author. This essay lying before us, this glorification of a so-called astral realm, is certainly not the work of any magazine writer known to me. I will admit that for a moment, however, I suspected it could be from the pen of that Blackwood fellow.”

  “Do you mean Algernon Blackwood? Greenhough Smith tells me he’s now at work on some stories about an ‘occult’ investigator named John Silence, still another of these so-called fictional ‘rivals of Sherlock Holmes.’ Yet if you’d never become a consulting detective, I doubt we would have ever heard of Martin Hewitt, Romney Pringle and Professor S.F.X. Van Dusen.”

  “Did you say rivals, Watson? I presume this is another example of your pawky humor. But pray let us not be distracted from the matter at hand. I initially thought the article might be Blackwood’s in part because of his membership in the so-called Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. More puerile and distasteful mumbo-jumbo! It offends the scientist in me. But this isn’t the work of Blackwood, or even that Welsh mystic friend of his, Arthur Machen. I now know the true identity of the article’s author.”

  “Who is it?”

  “Conan Doyle.”

  “Yes, yes, that’s what the byline says, but which one?”

  “You dolt! I mean your friend Arthur Conan Doyle, who has, for reasons yet to be discovered, suddenly taken to writing under his own name.”

  “But that’s ridiculous, Holmes. The man doesn’t care about anything except sport—and, if I’m not mistaken, a comely young woman by the name of Leckie.” Watson paused, reflectively. “Do you think that explains why he’s been so active in divorce law reform? I wonder . . . But frankly, Holmes, Conan Doyle as a writer—it’s ridiculous. Next you’ll be telling me that you want to record your own cases! I’d like to see you write up that business of the lion’s mane.” Watson began to chuckle. “Laughable even to think of it.”

  “Laughable indeed,” replied Holmes. “But not for the reason you think, Watson. I concur with the astute Thomas Carlyle that magazine work is below street-cleaning as a trade.” Nonetheless, the great detective looked thoughtful for a moment, as if he had just had a singular idea, albeit one for which the world was not yet prepared.

  “Please, Holmes,” responded Watson, interrupting his friend’s reverie. “Don’t denigrate my Grub Street labors. After all, my scribbling for the Strand pays half our rent. Besides”—and for a moment the doctor’s usual bonhomie fell away—“writing helps me through the long nights.”

  “All right, Watson. I withdraw my rude comment. It was ungracious of me. But you do recognize, old fellow, what this means? I fear that your literary career may be at an end. Still, unless I very much underestimate my man, Greenhough Smith is probably at this very moment on his way to see a certain journalist—and I don’t mean Langdale Pike. Yes, Watson, this is a case for Zebulon Dene.”

  Three days later, at the Amnesiacs’ Club:

  “This business is already replete with too many Conan Doyles. May I call you by your given name?” said Zebulon Dene. “I trust you will excuse my presumption. Being christened Zebulon Andrew Dene—after an American explorer and my mother’s cousin, the author of The Blue Fairy Book—I am rather sensitive about names myself. But forgive me. These genealogical details can be of little intere
st to you.”

  The handsome, mustachioed sportsman attempted a wan smile. He was beginning to wish he’d never listened to Jean.

  “Yes, you may call me Arthur.”

  Dene continued, “You and John here are, I am assured, well acquainted. Later we may be joined by the editor of the Strand, Mr. Greenhough Smith. Alas, Sherlock Holmes is currently en route to the island of Uffa, about some business there involving underground phenomena. There are rumors, apparently, of something similar to that Blue John Gap cave-monster. In my own opinion, however, I rather suspect he has simply fled London until this whole matter is settled. He is, after all, the fons et origo of this . . . tumult.”

  Arthur Conan Doyle and John H. Watson pulled their armchairs closer to Zebulon Dene, who lounged on his usual red leather settee. He continued:

  “As your fellow physician Dr. Thorndyke might say, let us review the facts. Fact number one: Many years ago, John persuaded Arthur, who was then in financial straits, to allow him to use the pen name A. Conan Doyle for what are commonly referred to as the adventures of Sherlock Holmes. I say commonly called thus, because I know how much Holmes cringes at that penny-dreadful word ‘adventures.’

  “Fact number two: Over time Herbert Greenhough Smith, the editor of the Strand Magazine, gradually began to employ, in a somewhat careless fashion, the name A. Conan Doyle for every sort of fiction, from historical romances to accounts of contemporary life to novels of manners.

  “Fact number three: From private communication with Miss Jean Leckie, I have learned that she was deeply distressed after reading A. Conan Doyle’s A Duet. It is, to all appearances, a largely autobiographical portrait of a happy marriage, one that she believed mirrored that of Arthur and his late wife Louise, usually known as Touie.