‘Mr Sherlock Holmes,’ he exclaimed. ‘Why, I could not have wished more dearly to meet any other soul upon earth. And is this Dr Watson? Sir, I have read your accounts of Mr Holmes’s cases with the keenest interest. I must tell you, Mr Holmes, that I am of a scientific turn myself. Indeed, I hope to be leaving for London at the start of the next university year to read for a degree in the physical sciences.’
‘A most commendable ambition,’ Holmes said. ‘But won’t you miss the rewards of schoolmasteririg?’
The young man grinned.
‘Keeping all those cheeky young devils in order for my father? Well, I shan’t altogether miss that, I promise you. And yet you’re right, Mr Holmes, of course. There are rewards for a schoolmaster, and I dare say I shall miss the little blighters in the end after all.’
Holmes offered the young man some hospitality and we all three repaired to the hotel to discuss a bottle of wine. It was some time before Holmes was able to bring the conversation round to the affair of St George’s School so keen was Arthur Smyllie to learn all he could of scientific methods of detection. But at last Holmes contrived an adroitly phrased question about our guest’s present life among his father’s ‘little blighters’.
‘Well, yes, Mr Holmes, they can be nothing but pests at times, I admit, for all that at other times they are delightfully willing to learn every blessed thing I can teach them.’
‘Up to all sorts of tricks, however, I make no doubt,’ Holmes said.
Arthur Smyllie laughed.
‘Oh, yes, indeed. Can you guess what their latest escapade has been?’
‘I am sure I cannot.’
‘Well, one of the little beasts has poured ink all over a precious copy of my father’s book Poems of Childhood. You know that I am the only heir of the man who wrote “For My Infant Son”?’
‘Are you, indeed, Mr Smyllie? And you say that one of your father’s pupils poured ink on a copy of that book?’
‘A copy sir, sir?’ More than just a copy, I assure you. A very precious one, signed by Her Majesty, no less, and enclosed in a glass case together with a letter from the Queen to my father. It really was too bad of the little beast who spoiled it. And yet . . . Well, to tell you the truth, that poem has hung round my neck like a milestone all my life, and I’m not altogether sorry that it was that particular page that received the inky deluge.’
‘I’m surprised that the display case was left open when there are schoolboys about, always apt to carelessness and pranks.’
‘Oh, no, Mr Holmes, the case was never left open. Once a day, true, it is unlocked by the Dux of the school and a page is turned. But he always had to obtain a key from either my father or myself and to return it immediately.’
‘But perhaps the case can be opened without benefit of key?’
‘No, again, Mr Holmes. It’s stoutly locked, I can assure you.’
Holmes smiled.
‘Why then,’ he said, ‘it seems you have produced for me a mystery worthy of my best powers. Who committed the crime within the locked cabinet? And how was the deed done?’
Arthur Smyllie laughed aloud in delight.
‘Yet, you know,’ Holmes interjected with some acerbity, ‘if there were a problem of more importance but with the identical set of circumstances, it would not take me long to put my finger on the crux of it. If it were possible for a room or a cabinet to be opened except with its keys, then I should look pretty sharply to the holders of the keys, whoever they were, for my criminal.’
Young Smyllie lost his cheerful look in an instant.
‘Mr Holmes,’ he said, ‘you are not suggesting that I defaced that book of my father’s?’
‘My dear sir, I am asking only if it has to be the holders of the keys and no one else who could gain access to the volume.’
Arthur Smyllie’s face, formerly so ruddily cheerful, was white now as a sheet.
‘Mr Holmes,’ he said, rising abruptly from the table, ‘I will bid you good night.’
He had left before either of us had had time to remonstrate.
‘Holmes,’ I asked, ‘is there some way to get into that display case without using either of its keys?’
‘My dear Watson, you heard yourself Arthur Smyllie tell us that there was not.’
‘Is there no other key then? A key that one of the boys could have obtained by some means?’
‘If there were such a thing,’ Holmes answered me, ‘we should have heard about it from Hughes. Nothing could keep its existence a secret within a school, believe me.’
‘But then Arthur Smyllie must have defaced the book himself, as indeed his conduct just now can only lead us to believe. But why should he do such a thing? It escapes me.’
‘Oh, come,’ Holmes replied. ‘Did you not hear Arthur tell us that he is going to London University to read for a degree in science? Did you not hear how that poem of his father’s, with its public plea to him to “take up the spangled web of words”, to become a poet in his turn, weighs like a millstone on him?’
I sighed. Holmes’s words were only too convincing.
‘Then I suppose that tomorrow we must go to Dr Smyllie and tell him that no boy in his school committed the outrage,’ I said.
‘Yes, that certainly we must do.’
Our adventures in Hove were not, however, yet ended. We took the only room which the Lion had vacant for the night, and I know that I lay long restless thinking of the message that we had to deliver next day, although it seemed to me that Holmes in the other bed slept soundly enough. So it was I who heard at an hour well after midnight an insistent creaking sound just outside our window. At first I took it for the action of the wind on the branches of the tree that grew close to the building at just that point. But before long I realized that the night was, in fact, singularly calm, and yet the creaking persisted.
Without waking Holmes, I slipped from my bed, put on slippers and a dressing-gown and looked about the darkened room for some weapon. At last I recalled that there was a good set of fire-irons in the chimney place. I crept across and secured the poker.
Armed with this, I advanced to the window, paused for a moment, heard the creaking continue and flung wide the casement. There was a swift movement among the branches of the tree just outside. I leapt forward, snatching with my free hand at a pale form I could vaguely discern. There came a loud yelp. The form wriggled, abominably in my grasp. I raised the poker to deliver a sound blow.
‘Oh, come, Watson, spare the rod,’ said the voice of Sherlock Holmes from behind me.
‘Spare the rod?’ I said refraining from bringing the poker down but keeping a firm grip on my opponent’s clothing. ‘Holmes, we have a burglar here. Pray assist me.’
‘A burglar, yes,’ Holmes answered. ‘But only a small one, I venture to think.’
I heard the sound of him striking a match behind me. The rays from the candle he lit shone out into the night. By then I saw that I was detaining none other than the young red-haired Phillip Hughes.
I hauled him out of the tree and inside.
‘Now, young sir,’ I said, ‘what is the meaning of this new jape of yours?’
But Sherlock Holmes answered for him.
‘No new jape, Watson, I think, since I believe I told you that in my opinion the lad committed no old jape.’
‘But, Holmes, he has this instant proved himself a night prowler, and a determined one at that. There can no longer be any doubt about who blotted that book.’
‘No, Watson, there never has been any doubt about that. But let us hear what brought our determined little ally prowling all the way over to us here.’
The boy looked up at Holmes, his eyes alight with admiration.
‘You knew then that I had come to tell you, sir?’ he asked.
Holmes’s lips curved in a faint smile.
‘I hardly think you would have risked so perilous a journey for any other purpose,’ he said. ‘I take it that you found out from Mr Arthur Smyllie where we lodged?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Then tell us what you have to tell us.’
‘Sir, I think I know how that book got to be covered in ink, sir.’
Holmes’s eyes gleamed momentarily.
‘I wonder if you do,’ he said. ‘Let us hear.’
‘Well, sir, it’s not easy to believe.’
‘The truth very often isn’t. Your human being is a very tricky piece of machinery, my lad.’
‘Yes, sir. Well, sir, I was lying awake tonight, thinking about you coming all the way down from London and everything, and wondering whether you would solve the mystery, sir. Well, not really that. I knew you would solve it, sir, but I wondered what the answer could possibly be. And then, sir, I remembered Thompson Minor. He left last year, sir.’
‘Thompson Minor,’ I exclaimed. ‘Did a boy come back to the school and—’
‘Watson, let young Hughes tell us in his own way.’
‘Of course, of course. Speak up, young fellow me lad.’
‘Yes, sir. Well, I thought about Thompson Minor and the way he used to get into great bates. And then, Mr Holmes, well, he would do things that only hurt him himself. Once when he was in a specially bad temper he threw his champion pocket-knife into the fire, sir. He did really.’
Holmes’s eyes were glowing sombrely now.
‘So, young Hughes,’ he said, ‘draw your conclusions. Bring your account to a proper end, and my friend Watson here shall record it for you.’
The boy looked back at him, white-faced and intent in the candlelight.
‘Sir, Dr Smyllie did it himself, didn’t he, sir? It must have been him. Mr Arthur’s too decent ever to do a thing like that, and the only other key was Dr Smyllie’s. Sir, he did it to spite himself because Mr Arthur won’t be a poet but a scientist, sir. Isn’t that it? Isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ said Sherlock Holmes. ‘That is it, my boy.’
He turned to me.
‘And, as you suggested, Watson,’ he said, ‘in the morning we shall have to go to Dr Smyllie and tell him what his son guessed this evening, that no boy committed our crime. And it’s “Hurrah for St George” and a whole day of holiday.’
The Great Detective
Stephen Leacock
The Great Detective sat in his office. He wore a long green gown and half a dozen secret badges pinned to the outside of it.
Three or four pairs of false whiskers hung on a whisker-stand beside him.
Goggles, blue spectacles, and motor glasses lay within easy reach.
He could completely disguise himself at a second’s notice.
Half a bucket of cocaine and a dipper stood on a chair at his elbow.
His face was absolutely impenetrable.
A pile of cryptograms lay on the desk. The Great Detective hastily tore them open one after the other, solved them, and threw them down the cryptogram-shute at his side.
There was a rap at the door.
The Great Detective hurriedly wrapped himself in a pink domino, adjusted a pair of false black whiskers and cried:
‘Come in.’
His secretary entered. ‘Ha,’ said the detective, ‘it is you!’
He laid aside his disguise.
‘Sir,’ said the young man in intense excitement, ‘a mystery has been committed!’
‘Ha!’ said the Great Detective, his eye kindling, ‘is it such as to completely baffle the police of the entire continent?’
‘They are so completely baffled with it,’ said the secretary, ‘that they are lying collapsed in heaps; many of them have committed suicide.’
‘So,’ said the detective, ‘and is the mystery one that is absolutely unparalleled in the whole recorded annals of the London police?’
‘It is.’
‘And I suppose,’ said the detective, ‘that it involves names which you would scarcely dare to breathe, at least without first using some kind of atomizer or throat-gargle.’
‘Exactly.’
‘And it is connected, I presume, with the highest diplomatic consequences, so that if we fail to solve it England will be at war with the whole world in sixteen minutes?’
His secretary, still quivering with excitement, again answered yes.
‘And finally,’ said the Great Detective, ‘I presume that it was committed in broad daylight, in some such place as the entrance of the Bank of England, or in the cloak-room of the House of Commons, and under the very eyes of the police?’
‘Those,’ said the secretary, ‘are the very conditions of the mystery.’
‘Good,’ said the Great Detective, ‘now wrap yourself in this disguise, put on these brown whiskers and tell me what it is.’
The secretary wrapped himself in a blue domino with lace insertions, then, bending over, he whispered in the ear of the Great Detective:
‘The Prince of Wurttemberg has been kidnapped.’
The Great Detective bounded from his chair as if he had been kicked from below.
A prince stolen! Evidently a Bourbon! The scion of one of the oldest families in Europe kidnapped. Here was a mystery indeed worthy of his analytical brain.
His mind began to move like lightning.
‘Stop!’ he said, ‘how do you know this?’
The secretary handed him a telegram. It was from the Prefect of Police of Paris. It read: ‘The Prince of Wurttemberg stolen. Probably forwarded to London. Must have him here for the opening day of Exhibition. £1000 reward.’
So! The Prince had been kidnapped out of Paris at the very time when his appearance at the International Exposition would have been a political event of the first magnitude.
With the Great Detective to think was to act, and to act was to think. Frequently he could do both together.
‘Wire to Paris for a description of the Prince.’
The secretary bowed and left.
At the same moment there was a slight scratching at the door.
A visitor entered. He crawled stealthily on his hands and knees. A hearthrug thrown over his head and shoulders disguised his identity.
He crawled to the middle of the room.
Then he rose.
Great Heaven!
It was the Prime Minister of England.
‘You!’ said the detective.
‘Me,’ said the Prime Minister.
‘You have come in regard to the kidnapping of the Prince of Wurttemberg?’
‘How do you know?’ he said.
The Great Detective smiled his inscrutable smile.
‘Yes,’ said the Prime Minister. ‘I will use no concealment. I am interested, deeply interested. Find the Prince of Wurttemberg, get him safe back to Paris and I will add £500 to the reward already offered. But listen,’ he said impressively as he left the room, ‘see to it that no attempt is made to alter the marking of the prince, or to clip his tail.’
So! To clip the Prince’s tail! The brain of the Great Detective reeled. So! a gang of miscreants had conspired to—but no! the thing was not possible.
There was another rap at the door.
A second visitor was seen. He wormed his way in, lying almost prone upon his stomach, and wriggling across the floor. He was enveloped in a long purple cloak. He stood up and peeped over the top of it.
Great Heaven!
It was the Archbishop of Canterbury!
‘Your Grace!’ exclaimed the detective in amazement—‘pray do not stand, I beg you. Sit down, lie down, anything rather than stand.’
The Archbishop took off his mitre and laid it wearily on the whisker-stand.
‘You are here in regard to the Prince of Wurttemberg.’
The Archbishop started and crossed himself. Was the man a magician?
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘much depends on getting him back. But I have only come to say this: my sister is desirous of seeing you. She is coming here. She has been extremely indiscreet and her fortune hangs upon the Prince. Get him back to Paris or I fear she will be ruined.’
The Archbishop regained his mitre
, uncrossed himself, wrapped his cloak about him, and crawled stealthily out on his hands and knees, purring like a cat.
The face of the Great Detective showed the most profound sympathy. It ran up and down in furrows. ‘So,’ he muttered, ‘the sister of the Archbishop, the Countess of Dashleigh!’ Accustomed as he was to the life of the aristocracy, even the Great Detective felt that there was here intrigue of more than customary complexity.
There was a loud rapping at the door.
There entered the Countess of Dashleigh. She was all in furs.
She was the most beautiful woman in England. She strode imperiously into the room. She seized a chair imperiously and seated herself on it, imperial side up.
She took off her tiara of diamonds and put it on the tiara-holder beside her and uncoiled her boa of pearls and put it on the pearl-stand.
‘You have come,’ said the Great Detective, ‘about the Prince of Wurttemberg.’
‘Wretched little pup!’ said the Countess of Dashleigh in disgust.
So! A further complication! Far from being in love with the Prince, the Countess denounced the young Bourbon as a pup!
‘You are interested in him, I believe.’
‘Interested!’ said the Countess. ‘I should rather say so. Why, I bred him!’
‘You which?’ gasped the Great Detective, his usually impassive features suffused with a carmine blush.
‘I bred him,’ said the Countess, ‘and I’ve got £10,000 upon his chances, so no wonder I want him back in Paris. Only listen,’ she said, ‘if they’ve got hold of the Prince and cut his tail or spoiled the markings of his stomach it would be far better to have him quietly put out of the way here.’
The Misadventures of Sherlock Holmes II Page 20