The Big Book of Sherlock Holmes Stories (146 page)

“I believe I know, but we must wait until morning.”

It was quite unusual for Mrs. Hudson to interrupt our breakfast with news of an early morning visitor, but she did so the following day, announcing that Inspector Lestrade had come calling once more.

“Send him up, by all means!” Holmes exclaimed. “He may have news for us, Watson.”

The inspector apologized for his early arrival. “I thought you'd want to know, Mr. Holmes, that the dead man has been identified. He was missing off the Irish freighter
Antrim
, and the captain identified him as a third mate named Sean Drexel.”

“I suspected as much,” Holmes said. “Watson and I visited Parkleigh's last evening and his name was mentioned. He was there shortly before his death.”

“Parkleigh's!” Lestrade repeated. “How did you ever find such a place?”

“It matters not. Could the Metropolitan Special Constabulary supply us with a police boat this morning?”

“It might be arranged, but to what purpose?”

“Give me a boat and I will deliver the murderer before noon.”

Within the hour we finished breakfast and Holmes donned the pea jacket and red scarf he'd worn before when we ventured onto the Thames. “Do you have your revolver, Watson?”

“You believe I'll need it?”

“Perhaps.”

Lestrade insisted on coming with us in the launch, and we met it at Westminster Wharf. Its green running lights had been removed from the sides so it was not readily identifiable as a police boat, and we set off down river toward Wapping. A morning mist still hung over the water, but the sun was gradually burning it off. We passed tugboats pulling lines of loaded barges, but Holmes paid no attention to the river traffic. He seemed alone with his thoughts until we had gone under Tower Bridge. Then he sprang instantly to life.

“Steer us toward the south shore,” he instructed the officer at the wheel. There was another man tending the coal-fired steam engines below deck. As the launch moved closer to shore, Holmes scanned the damp soil with his binoculars. The tide was still low, though it was beginning to rise as it had on the previous morning.

“What are we looking for?” Lestrade asked. “And why here? The murder occurred on the opposite bank.”

Without lowering the glasses from his eyes, Holmes began to speak. “The facts of the case seem clear enough. The casino chip in the victim's pocket led Watson and me to Parkleigh's in nearby Wapping. There we learned that a valuable ticker tape machine, used for receiving race results, had been stolen during the early morning hours, after three o'clock. This is a relatively heavy machine, and since some sort of carrying case was necessary to protect the glass dome, the thief would have wanted someone to help transport it out of the casino. The seaman Sean Drexel was recruited and given a five-pound casino chip as a down payment.”

“How can you possibly know that, Holmes?”

“Drexel was barred from the casino floor because of his seaman's attire. He could only have acquired that chip if someone on the ground floor gave it to him.”

“Come now,” Lestrade argued. “I can think of another explanation. A fellow seaman, having visited the casino, might have brought it back to their ship and given it to him.”

But Holmes shook his head. “No, Inspector. If that were the case the fellow seaman would surely have remarked upon the proper attire for admittance to Parkleigh's.”

The police launch was moving closer to shore, and we were directly opposite the place on the north shore where the body was found. “Soon, now,” Holmes said, almost to himself.

“You believe the killer came across the river to this area?” Lestrade asked. “Why not the other direction? Why not the north side?”

“You are full of questions today,” my friend answered, a slight smile on his lips. “He obviously left the scene of the crime by boat. Working alone, he would have had to drag his heavy
box back up to the street if a vehicle awaited him, and there were no drag marks. The use of a boat implies a destination across the river in an easterly direction. If he were going west it would have made more sense to hire a vehicle and go back over Tower Bridge. But there is no other bridge to the east of Tower. Rather than risk a long carriage ride and the driver's suspicions as to his cargo, he acquired a small boat, no doubt a rowboat, to carry himself and his loot across the river. His destination was a location in this area where the tape machine could be installed to deliver early race results.”

Suddenly he gripped my shoulder. “Quick, Watson, look through these binoculars and tell me what you see!”

I did as he asked. “It seems to be a small warehouse of some sort, probably abandoned.”

“No, no—on the sand leading up to it!”

“Drag marks above the tidal line,” I confirmed. “They might be from a boat.”

“No doubt. And something else besides.”

As we drew nearer I could see that one of the doors stood open a few inches for ventilation. It seemed likely that our quarry was inside. Lestrade directed the officer at the wheel to dock the launch at a pier about a hundred feet down river. As Holmes and I left the vessel, the inspector and the two-man crew were right behind us.

When we neared our destination I drew my revolver. “You won't need that,” Lestrade told me.

“The man is a murderer.”

“It has yet to be proven.”

Holmes flung open the warehouse door, revealing a figure bent over a tape machine identical to the one we had seen at Parkleigh's. “I must interrupt your work,” Holmes said, like the voice of judgment. “The police are here to arrest you for murder, Mr. Tim Thaw.”

When he saw the revolver in my hand, and the officers behind us, Thaw offered no resistance. Instead, he tried to argue his way out. “I know nothing about a murder.”

As the officers took him into custody, Holmes went over to inspect a rowboat and a wooden packing case. The latter had obviously been nailed together by Thaw from scrap boards. “This was an investigation where I suspected I knew the killer's name even before I met him. Thaw told us he'd owned a pub near Henley, and that was the final clue I needed.”

He showed us again the apparent cipher we'd found in the wet sand, only he'd rewritten it to move the second line to the top:

T O M I T

W A H T  Y H

Y V I  Y A H

“Do you see it now?” Holmes asked. “The letters were raised on the bottom of this homemade box made out of scrap lumber. In the damp sand their impression was printed backward, like a metal die. These pieces came from Thaw's old pub sign.” He turned over the box so we could see the embossed bottom:

T I M O T

H Y  T H A W

H A Y  I V Y

“
Timothy Thaw, Hay & Ivy
. You'll note the spacing device between his first and last names, and the ampersand between
Hay
and
Ivy
. Both are painted rather than embossed, so they did not leave their marks in the soil. He cut the sign apart, using the wood for the bottom of the box where it wouldn't be seen. By some curious coincidence all of these letters are symmetrical, appearing the same forward and backward.”

“Why didn't he notice the imprint on the sand?” Lestrade wanted to know.

“Because it was dark when Drexel was killed. Remember the river police spotted the body just after dawn.”

“And Thaw rowed across here alone?”

“No great feat for a young man, especially one from Henley where rowing is a popular
sport, at least at Regatta time. But he had to drag the box up here, and I was counting on its having left marks above the tidal line.”

Lestrade turned to confront their captive. “Do you have anything to say for yourself?”

The man curled back his lips. “He wanted more money. He made threats. I stabbed him. There's nothing more to say.”

“You should have stayed in the pub business,” Holmes said.

FAR BETTER KNOWN
under his Ross Macdonald pseudonym, Kenneth Millar (1915–1983) has long been recognized as a major American novelist, not purely a writer of mystery fiction. His series of detective novels about Lew Archer are ranked alongside the works of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett as the apotheosis of the quintessential American private eye novels of the twentieth century.

Millar had issues with his byline for some time. He had married Margaret Sturm, who took his name and published distinguished crime fiction as Margaret Millar, beginning with
The Invisible Worm
(1941); she was eventually given the Grand Master Award for lifetime achievement by the Mystery Writers of America, as was her husband. Her success in the genre revived his own interest (he had been a devoted reader of mysteries when he was younger), so he published his first four novels under his own name, beginning with
The Dark Tunnel
(1944), but when some readers confused their names, he adopted the pseudonym John Macdonald, only to be confused again, this time with John D. MacDonald. His only book under this nom de plume is
The Moving Target
(1949), which introduced Archer, a lonely, introspective private investigator in the California town of Santa Teresa (a fictionalized Santa Barbara, where the Millars lived). The novel served as the basis for
Harper
(1966), starring Paul Newman as the renamed detective; Newman reprised the Archer/Harper character in 1975 in
The Drowning Pool
. Millar quickly switched his byline to John Ross Macdonald, publishing five novels and a short story collection. He permanently took the Ross Macdonald name in 1956 with the publication of
The Barbarous Coast
.

“The South Sea Soup Co.” is Millar's first fictional writing, produced for
The Grumbler
, his Kitchener, Ontario, high school magazine, in 1931. (Curiously, his high school sweetheart, Margaret Sturm, also had her first story published in the same issue.) It was first published commercially in a chapbook,
Early Millar: The First Stories of Ross Macdonald & Margaret Millar
(Santa Barbara, California, Cordelia Editions, 1982), which was limited to one hundred fifty paper-bound copies and fifteen hardcover copies.

THE AMBITIOUS YOUNG
investigator, Herlock Sholmes, yawned behind his false moustache and poured for himself a cocaine-and-soda. He then lightly tapped with his knuckles a Burmese wacky-wara, which he had secured from an Odd-Fellows' Temple in French Indo-China. For it was thus he summoned his obtuse assistant, Sotwun. Sotwun crawled into the room, an idiotic expression on his face.

“I say, Sotwun, I'm sorry to disturb your reading of the ‘Ju-Ju Journal' for March 1, 1927.”

Sotwun stood awed by Herlock's amazing perspicuity and perspicacity. “How did you know that I was reading that, huh?”

Sholmes smiled and explained:

“Well, there's a minute speck of fresh plaster-of-paris on your nose. The only place there is fresh plaster-of-paris in these rooms is the nose on the bust of Julius Caesar in the next room, which I repaired this morning. Therefore your nose must have touched the nose of the bust. As I have often noticed your resemblance to a monkey, physically and mentally, Sotwun, I thought you must have imitated some picture you saw. The only picture in this house of people touching noses is in the Ju-Ju Journal for March 1, 1927, which I scanned several years ago.”

When Sotwun had overcome his astonishment, Sholmes explained the reason for his summons.

“Sotwun, has the South Sea Soup Company yet accepted my application for the position as head of their detective force, whose business is to discover oysters in their oyster soup? No? How strange!

Just then Herlock sneezed.

“Aha!” said he. “The phone!”

Instead of ringing, his telephone had been made to loose a quantity of gas whenever there was a call. This gas had the peculiar property of causing one to sneeze. Thus Sholmes could be informed of the call without any undesirable noise.

He lifted the receiver. Immediately he recognized the voice of a man sixty-three years of age, wearing a brown suit and other clothes, who had been married eighteen times.

The strained voice said, “Mr. Sholmes? Oh! Come quickly to the office of the South Sea Soup Company. Mr. Ox-Tailby has been murdered!”

Nonchalantly flicking an imaginary speck of dust from his eyebrow, Sholmes quickly undressed himself and donned his clothes again, thus changing his appearance from that of a handsome, thoughtful, young man to that of a good-looking, pensive youth. He then bounded out of the room and down the stairs, eight at a time, tying his shoelace and lighting his opiumpipe on the way.

He then hailed a passing cab and rode his bicycle, with Sotwun running behind, to the office of the South Sea Soup Company.

With a burst of speed he burst into the room, bursting his vest-buttons.

There on the floor lay the corpse of Oswald Ox-Tailby, the gravel commissioner in the company's
barley department, a bullet-wound in its chest. The body, to the experienced eye of Herlock Sholmes, was evidently quite dead.

Sholmes thought steadily for a full second. Then,—“Aha! Sotwun, go and ask Raring Riley, my Limehouse man, to look up Jamaica Jo.”

For seventeen minutes and forty-five seconds the occupants of the room, friends and colleagues of the murdered man, stared at Herlock's thoughtful brow. Then Sotwun came into the room with somebody behind him.

Nonchalantly flicking an imaginary speck of dust from his necklace, Sholmes said, “Allow me, gentlemen, to introduce to you Miss Josephine Bartley, commonly appellated Jamaica Jo!”

It was a woman!

“Miss Bartley,” said Sholmes, “has anyone ever said you were beautiful?”

The woman blushed. “Why, yes, sir. My sweetheart has often said so.”

With a cry of triumph, our hero grasped her by the arm. “Tell me where he lives,” he thundered.

The woman gave him the street and number and he drove his bicycle madly to the designated dwelling. He ran to the door, struck it violently, and deftly handcuffed the man that answered.

Before giving him time to speak, Sholmes flung him across the handle bars of his bicycle and, drawing on his vast resources of Herculean strength, pedalled back to the office.

“Here is your man!” he said, nonchalantly flicking a speck of dust from his moccasins, which he had secured while hunting colleoptera in the Antarctic.

Everyone shouted, “Huh?”

“I suppose you wish me to explain,” said the detective, as he took out his grammar-book to continue his study of the Lithuanian tongue.

Assent was evidenced.

Sholmes began: “The first thing that struck me when I entered this room (besides that dictionary yonder) was that the corpse had a bullet-wound in it. This reminded me of the famous Ugga-Wulla case which you all must remember. In that case the murdered man also had a bullet-wound in him. The similarity of the two crimes is astonishing, as I have just shown you, and consequently I deducted that the same criminal committed them both. I had already solved this Ugga-Wulla mystery, though I forgot to denounce the murderer to the police. The murderer was Black Bleerstone.

“My Limehouse man, Raring Riley, had told me a month before that Black Bleerstone was the lover of this woman, Jamaica Jo. Black Bleerstone, having once used a pair of spectacles from Woolworth's, has very poor eyesight. To confirm the message that Bleerstone was her lover, I asked Jo if anyone had ever called her beautiful. She said that her lover had, and, as only a man with poor eyesight would call her beautiful, her lover is a man with poor eyesight. That man there is her lover, and he has, as you perceive by his powerful spectacles, poor eyesight. And Bleerstone has poor eyesight! The coincidence is too great, and the man that killed Oswald Ox-Tailby stands before you in the person of Black Bleerstone, Jamaica Jo's lover.”

Then forth from the circle of onlookers strode Peter P. Soup, the superintendent of horse-flesh cutting in the chicken-soup department, and said, “Herlock Sholmes, I cannot let an innocent man go to the scaffold. I am the man who killed Oswald Ox-Tailby, for he made the vile insinuation that I did not put any veal in our last week's output of chicken-soup. But I did! Lots of it! Didn't I, my friends?” and he turned a pleading face to his former coworkers.

“No, you didn't. Only horse-flesh,” said they. On these fateful words Sholmes, nonchalantly flicking an imaginary speck of dust from his boxing gloves, which he secured in Hindustan during the Boxer Rebellion, threw himself at Peter P. Soup, self-confessed murderer.

But Soup, with one blow of his mighty fist, strengthened by years of pounding horse meat to make it as tough as ordinary spring chicken, knocked Herlock through the open window.

Sholmes alighted unhurt on the grass below.

Nonchalantly flicking several thousand real specks of dust from his face, Sholmes ran back into the office just in time to see Peter P. Soup place a little white pellet in his mouth. Sholmes tried to take it from him, but he was too late, for the mint from a slot-machine had been swallowed. In a few seconds it began to do its deadly work. Soup fell to the floor, his limbs slowly stiffening. With his last breath he sang that fine old song so reminiscent of slot-machine mints in general, “Rock of Ages.”

After these evidences of his detective abilities, Sholmes was accepted as the head detective of the South Sea Soup Company's detective force.

But he never succeeded in finding an oyster in the oyster-soup, although he found several oyster-shell buttons.