The Misadventures of Sherlock Holmes II

by Sebastian Wolfe (ed)

  The parliamentarian responded absently. He would not dream of violating privacy—no, never—but if he had X-ray vision he would have read:

  ‘Dear Syaloch,

  ‘You were absolutely right. Your locked room problem is solved. We’ve got the jewels back, everything is in fine shape, and the same boat which brings you this letter will deliver them to the vaults. It’s too bad the public can never know the facts—two planets ought to be grateful to you—but I’ll supply that much thanks all by myself, and insist that any bill you care to send be paid in full. Even if the Assembly had to make a special appropriation, which I’m afraid it will.

  ‘I admit your idea of lifting the embargo at once looked pretty wild to me, but it worked. I had our boys out, of course, scouring Phobos with Geigers, but Hollyday found the box before we did. Which saved us a lot of trouble, to be sure. I arrested him as he came back into the settlement, and he had the box among his ore samples. He has confessed, and you were right all along the line.

  ‘What was that thing you quoted to me, the saying of that Earthman you admire so much? “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be true.” Something like that. It certainly applies to this case.

  ‘As you decided, the box must have been taken to the ship at Earth Station and left there—no other possibility existed. Carter figured it out in half a minute when he was ordered to take the thing out and put it aboard the Jane. He went inside, all right, but still had the box when he emerged. In that uncertain light nobody saw him put it ‘down’ between four girders right next to the hatch. Or as you remarked, if the jewels are not in the ship, and yet not away from the ship, they must be on the ship. Gravitation would hold them in place. When the Jane blasted off, acceleration pressure slid the box back, but of course the waffle-iron pattern kept it from being lost; it fetched up against the after rib and stayed there. All the way to Mars! But the ship’s gravity held it securely enough even in free fall, since both were on the same orbit.

  ‘Hollyday says that Carter told him all about it. Carter couldn’t go to Mars himself without being suspected and watched every minute once the jewels were discovered missing. He needed a confederate. Hollyday went to

  Phobos and took up prospecting as a cover for the search he’d later be making for the jewels.

  ‘As you showed me, when the ship was within a thousand miles of this dock, Phobos gravity would be stronger than her own. Every space jack knows that the robot ships don’t start decelerating till they’re quite close; that they are then almost straight above the surface; and that the side with the radio mast and manhatch—the side on which Carter had placed the box—is rotated around to face the station. The centrifugal force of rotation threw the box away from the ship, and was in a direction toward Phobos rather than away from it. Carter knew that this rotation is slow and easy, so the force wasn’t enough to accelerate the box to escape velocity and lose it in space. It would have to fall down toward the satellite. Phobos Station being on the side opposite Mars, there was no danger that the loot would keep going till it hit the planet.

  ‘So the crown jewels tumbled onto Phobos, just as you deduced. Of course Carter had given the box a quick radioactive spray as he laid it in place, and Hollyday used that to track it down among all those rocks and crevices. In point of fact, its path curved clear around this moon, so it landed about five miles from the station.

  ‘Steinmann has been after me to know why you quizzed him about his hobby. You forgot to tell me that, but I figured it out for myself and told him. He or Hollyday had to be involved, since nobody else knew about the cargo, and the guilty person had to have some excuse to go out and look for the box. Chess playing doesn’t furnish that kind of alibi. Am I right? At least, my deduction proves I’ve been studying the same canon you go by. Incidentally, Steinmann asks if you’d care to take him on the next time he has planet leave.

  ‘Hollyday knows where Carter is hiding, and we’ve radioed the information back to Earth. Trouble is, we can’t prosecute either of them without admitting the facts. Oh, well, there are such things as blacklists.

  ‘Will have to close this now to make the boat. I’ll be seeing you soon—not professionally, I hope!

  Admiring regards,

  Inspector Gregg’

  But as it happened, the Cabinet minister did not possess X-ray eyes. He dismissed unprofitable speculation and outlined his problem. Somebody, somewhere in Sabaeus, was farniking the krats, and there was an alarming zaksnautry among the hyukus. It sounded to Syaloch like an interesting case.

  From the Diary of

  Sherlock Holmes

  Maurice Baring

  Baker Street, January 1.—Starting a diary in order to jot down a few useful incidents which will be of no use to Watson. Watson very often fails to see that an unsuccessful case is more interesting from a professional point of view than a successful case. He means well.

  January 6.—Watson has gone to Brighton for a few days, for change of air. This morning quite an interesting little incident happened which I note as a useful example of how sometimes people who have no powers of deduction nevertheless stumble on the truth for the wrong reason. (This never happens to Watson, fortunately.) Lestrade called from Scotland Yard with reference to the theft of a diamond and ruby ring from Lady Dorothy Smith’s wedding presents. The facts of the case were briefly these: On Thursday evening such of the presents as were jewels had been brought down from Lady Dorothy’s bedroom to the drawing-room to be shown to an admiring group of friends. The ring was amongst them. After they had been shown, the jewels were taken upstairs once more and locked in the safe. The next morning the ring was missing. Lestrade, after investigating the matter, came to the conclusion that the ring had not been stolen, but had either been dropped in the drawing-room, or replaced in one of the other cases; but since he had searched the room and the remaining cases, his theory so far received no support. I accompanied him to Eaton Square to the residence of Lady Middlesex, Lady Dorothy’s mother.

  While we were engaged in searching the drawing-room, Lestrade uttered a cry of triumph and produced the ring from the lining of the arm-chair. I told him he might enjoy the triumph, but that the matter was not quite so simple as he seemed to think. A glance at the ring had shown me not only that the stones were false, but that the false ring had been made in a hurry. To deduce the name of its maker was of course child’s play. Lestrade or any pupil of Scotland Yard would have taken for granted it was the same jeweller who had made the real ring. I asked for the bridegroom’s present, and in a short time I was interviewing the jeweller who had provided it. As I thought, he had made a ring, with imitation stones (made of the dust of real stones), a week ago, for a young lady. She had given no name and had fetched and paid for it herself. I deduced the obvious fact that Lady Dorothy had lost the real ring, her uncle’s gift, and, not daring to say so, had had an imitation ring made. I returned to the house, where I found Lestrade, who had called to make arrangements for watching the presents during their exhibition.

  I asked for Lady Dorothy, who at once said to me:

  ‘The ring was found yesterday by Mr. Lestrade.’

  ‘I know,’ I answered, ‘but which ring?’

  She could not repress a slight twitch of the eyelids as she said: ‘There was only one ring.’

  I told her of my discovery and of my investigations.

  ‘This is a very odd coincidence, Mr. Holmes,’ she said. ‘Some one else must have ordered an imitation. But you shall examine my ring for yourself.’ Whereupon she fetched the ring, and I saw it was no imitation. She had of course in the meantime found the real ring.

  But to my intense annoyance she took it to Lestrade and said to him:

  ‘Isn’t this the ring you found yesterday, Mr. Lestrade?’ Lestrade examined it and said, ‘Of course it is absolutely identical in every respect.’

  ‘And do you think it is an imitation?’ asked this most provoking young lady.

>   ‘Certainly not,’ said Lestrade, and turning to me he added: ‘Ah! Holmes, that is where theory leads one. At the Yard we go in for facts.’

  I could say nothing; but as I said good-bye to Lady Dorothy, I congratulated her on having found the real ring. The incident, although it proved the correctness of my reasoning, was vexing as it gave that ignornant blunderer an opportunity of crowing over me.

  January 10.—A man called just as Watson and I were having breakfast. He didn’t give his name. He asked me if I knew who he was. I said, ‘Beyond seeing that you are unmarried, that you have travelled up this morning from Sussex, that you have served in the French Army, that you write for reviews, and are especially interested in the battles of the Middle Ages, that you give lectures, that you are a Roman Catholic, and that you have once been to Japan, I don’t know who you are.’

  The man replied that he was unmarried, but that he lived in Manchester, that he had never been to Sussex or Japan, that he had never written a line in his life, that he had never served in any army save the English Territorial force, that so far from being a Roman Catholic he was a Freemason, and that he was by trade an electrical engineer—I suspected him of lying; and I asked him why his boots were covered with the clayey and chalk mixture peculiar to Horsham; why his boots were French Army service boots, elastic-sided, and bought probably at Valmy; why the second half of a return ticket from Southwater was emerging from his ticket-pocket; why he wore the medal of St Anthony on his watchchain; why he smoked Caporal cigarettes; why the proofs of an article on the Battle of Eylau were protruding from his breastpocket, together with a copy of the Tablet; why he carried in his hand a parcel which, owing to the untidy way in which it had been made (an untidiness which, in harmony with the rest of his clothes, showed that he could not be married) revealed the fact that it contained photographic magic lantern slides; and why he was tattooed on the left wrist with a Japanese fish.

  ‘The reason I have come to consult you will explain some of these things,’ he answered.

  ‘I was staying last night at the Windsor Hotel, and this morning when I woke up I found an entirely different set of clothes from my own. I called the waiter and pointed this out, but neither the waiter nor any of the other servants, after making full enquiries, were able to account for the change. None of the other occupants of the hotel had complained of anything being wrong with their own clothes.

  ‘Two gentlemen had gone out early from the hotel at 7.30. One of them had left for good, the other was expected to return.

  ‘All the belongings I am wearing, including this parcel, which contains slides, belong to someone else.

  ‘My own things contained nothing valuable, and consisted of clothes and boots very similar to these; my coat was also stuffed with papers. As to the tattoo, it was done at a Turkish bath by a shampooer, who learnt the trick in the Navy.’

  The case did not present any features of the slightest interest. I merely advised the man to return to the hotel and await the real owner of the clothes, who was evidently the man who had gone out at 7.30.

  This is a case of my reasoning being, with one partial exception, perfectly correct. Everything I had deduced would no doubt have fitted the real owner of the clothes.

  Watson asked rather irrelevantly why I had not noticed that the clothes were not the man’s own clothes.

  A stupid question, as the clothes were reach-me-downs which fitted him as well as such clothes ever do fit, and he was probably of the same build as their rightful owner.

  January 12.—Found a carbuncle of unusual size in the plum-pudding. Suspected the makings of an interesting case. But luckily, before I had stated any hypothesis to Watson—who was greatly excited—Mrs. Turner came in and noticed it and said her naughty nephew Bill had been at his tricks again, and that the red stone had come from a Christmas tree. Of course, I had not examined the stone with my lens.

  The Anomaly of

  the Empty Man

  Anthony Boucher

  ‘This is for you,’ Inspector Abrahams announced wryly. ‘Another screwy one.’

  I was late and out of breath. I’d somehow got entangled on Market Street with the Downtown Merchants’ Association annual parade, and for a while it looked like I’d be spending the day surrounded by gigantic balloon-parodies of humanity. But it takes more than rubber Gullivers to hold me up when Inspector Abrahams announces that he’s got a case of the kind he labels ‘for Lamb.’

  And San Francisco’s the city for them to happen in. Nobody anywhere else ever had such a motive for murder as the butler Frank Miller in 1896, or such an idea of how to execute a bank robbery as the zany Mr. Will in 1952. Take a look at Joe Jackson’s San Francisco Murders, and you’ll see that we can achieve a flavor all our own. And when we do, Abrahams lets me in on it.

  Abrahams didn’t add any explanation. He just opened the door of the apartment. I went in ahead of him. It was a place I could have liked if it hadn’t been for what was on the floor.

  Two walls were mostly windows. One gave a good view of the Golden Gate. From the other, on a fine day, you could see the Farallones, and it was a fine day.

  The other two walls were records and a record player. I’d heard of the Stambaugh collection of early operatic recordings. If I’d been there on any other errand, my mouth would have watered at the prospect of listening to lost great voices.

  ‘If you can get a story out of this that makes sense,’ the Inspector grunted, ‘you’re welcome to it—at the usual fee.’ Which was a dinner at Lupo’s Pizzeria, complete with pizza Cams’, tomatoes with fresh basil and sour French bread to mop up the inspired sauce of Lupo’s special calamari (squids to you). ‘Everything’s just the way we found it.’

  I looked at the unfinished highball, now almost colorless with all its ice melted and its soda flat. I looked at the cylindrical ash of the cigaret which had burned itself out. I looked at the vacuum cleaner—a shockingly utilitarian object in this set for gracious living. I looked at the record player, still switched on, still making its methodical seventy-eight revolutions per minute, though there was no record on the turntable.

  Then I managed to look again at the thing on the floor.

  It was worse than a body. It was like a tasteless bloodless parody of the usual occupant of the spot marked X. Clothes scattered in disorder seem normal—even more normal, perhaps, in a bachelor apartment than clothes properly hung in closets. But this . . .

  Above the neck of the dressing gown lay the spectacles. The sleeves of the shirt were inside the sleeves of the dressing gown. The shirt was buttoned, even to the collar, and the foulard tie was knotted tight up against the collar button. The tails of the shirt were tucked properly into the zipped-up, properly belted trousers. Below the trouser cuffs lay the shoes, at a lifelike angle, with the tops of the socks emerging from them.

  ‘And there’s an undershirt under the shirt,’ Inspector

  Abrahams muttered disconsolately, ‘and shorts inside the pants. Complete outfit; what the well-dressed man will wear. Only no man in them.’

  It was as though James Stambaugh had been attacked by some solvent which eats away only flesh and leaves all the inanimate articles. Or as though some hyperspatial suction had drawn the living man out of his wardrobe, leaving his sartorial shell behind him.

  I said, ‘Can I dirty an ashtray in this scene?’

  Abrahams nodded. ‘I was just keeping it for you to see. We’ve got our pictures.’ While I lit up, he crossed to the record player and switched it off. ‘Damned whirligig gets on my nerves.’

  ‘Whole damned setup gets on mine,’ I said. ‘It’s like a striptease version of the Mary Celeste. Only the strip wasn’t a gradual tease; just abruptly, whoosh!, a man’s gone. One minute he’s comfortably dressed in his apartment, smoking, drinking, playing records. The next he’s stark naked—and where and doing what?’

  Abrahams pulled at his nose, which didn’t need lengthening. ‘We had the Japanese valet check the wardrobe. Every article o
f clothing James Stambaugh owned is still here in the apartment.’

  ‘Who found him?’ I asked.

  ‘Kaguchi. The valet. He had last night off. He let himself in this morning, to prepare coffee and prairie oysters as usual. He found this.’

  ‘Blood?’ I ventured.

  Abrahams shook his head.

  ‘Visitors?’

  ‘Ten apartments in this building. Three of them had parties last night. You can figure how much help the elevator man was.’

  ‘The drink?’

  ‘We took a sample to the lab. Nothing but the best scotch.’

  ‘Motive?’

  ‘Gay dog, our Mr. Stambaugh. Maybe you read Herb Caen’s gossip column too? And Kaguchi gave us a little fill-in. Brothers, fathers, husbands . . . Too many motives.’

  ‘But why this way?’ I brooded. ‘Get rid of him, sure. But why leave this hollow husk . . .?’

  ‘Not just why, Lamb. How?’

  ‘How? That should be easy enough to—’

  ‘Try it. Try fitting sleeves into sleeves, pants into pants, so they’re as smooth and even as if they were still on the body. I’ve tried, with the rest of the wardrobe. It doesn’t work.’

  I had an idea. ‘You don’t fit ’em in,’ I said smugly. ‘You take ’em off. Look.’ I unbuttoned my coat and shirt, undid my tie, and pulled everything off at once. ‘See,’ I said; ‘sleeves in sleeves.’ I unzipped and stepped out of trousers and shorts. ‘See; pants in pants.’

  Inspector Abrahams was whistling the refrain of ‘Strip Polka.’

  ‘You missed your career, Lamb,’ he said. ‘Only now you’ve got to put your shirt tails between the outer pants and the inner ones and still keep everything smooth. And look in here.’ He lifted up one shoe and took out a pocket flash and shot a beam inside. ‘The sock’s caught on a little snag in one of the metal eyelets. That’s kept it from collapsing, and you can still see the faint impress of toes in there. Try slipping your foot out of a laced-up shoe and see if you can get that result.’