The Misadventure of Shelrock Holmes (33 page)

"An Irreducible Detective Story" from FURTHER FOOLISHNESS (New Yorf(, Lane, /p/6; London, Lane, 191 7), was written primarily to lampoon the so-called short-short story. This is not a deduction — it is clearly revealed by the author's own preface which reads: "Among the latest follies in fiction is the perpetual demand for stories shorter and shorter still. The only thing to do is to meet this demand at the source and chec\ it. The story below, if left to soa\ overnight in a barrel of rainwater, will swell to the dimensions of a dollar-fifty novel."

T

JLlI

.HE MYSTERY had now reached its climax. First, the man had been undoubtedly murdered. Second, it was absolutely certain that no conceivable person had done it.

It was therefore time to call in the great detective.

He gave one searching glance at the corpse. In a moment he whipped out a microscope.

"Ha! Ha!" he said, as he picked a hair off the lapel of the dead man's coat. "The mystery is now solved."

He held up the hair.

"Listen," he said, "we have only to find the man who 1 hair and the criminal is in our hands." The inexorable chain of logic was complete. The detective set himself to the search.

For four days and nights he moved, unobserved, through the stre, of New York scanning closely every face he passed, looking for a man who had lost a hair.

On the fifth day he discovered a man, disguised as a tourist, his head enveloped in a steamer cap that reached below his ears. The man was about to go on board the Gloritama. The detective followed him on board.

"Arrest him!" he said, and then drawing himself to his full height, he brandished aloft the hair.

"This is his," said the great detective. "It proves his guilt. "Remove his hat," said the ship's captain sternly. They did so.

The man was entirely bald.

"Ha!" said the great detective, without a moment of hesitation. "He has committed not one murder but about a million."

PART FOUR:

BY DEVOTEES AND OTHERS

"I think, sir, when Holmes fell over that cliff, he may not have killed himself, but all the same he was never quite the same man afterwards."

— A Cornish boatman's comment to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Detective: THINLOCK BONES Narrator: WHATSONAME

THE ADVENTURE OF THE TABLE FOOT

by ZERO (ALLAN RAMSAY}

This sketch appeared originally in "The Bohemian' magazine, London, issue of January 1894. So far as your Editors have been able to determine, it has never been reprinted, and since copies of "The Bohemian" are hard to come by these days, we are happy to ma\e available this rare early travesty.

"The Adventure of the Table Foot" illustrates the purely farcical approach, which is not nearly so effective as shrewdly plotted burlesque.

I

CALLED one morning — a crisp cold wintry December day — on my friend Thinlock Bones, for the purpose of keeping him company at breakfast, and, as usual about this time of the morning, I found him running over the agony columns of the different newspapers, quietly smiling at the egotistical private-detective advertisements. He looked up and greeted me as 1 entered.

"Ah, Whatsoname, how d'you do ? You have not had breakfast yet. And you must be hungry. I suppose that is why you drove, and in a hansom too. Yet you had time to stay and look at your barometer. You look surprised. I can easily see — any fool would see it — that you've not breakfasted, as your teeth and mouth are absolutely clean, not a crumb about. I noticed it as you smiled on your entry. You drove — it's a muddy morning and your boots are quite clean. In a hansom — don't I know what time you rise? How then could you get here so quickly without doing it in a hansom? A bus or four-wheeler couldn't do it in the time. Oh! The barometer business. Why, it's as plain as a pikestaff. It's a glorious morning, yet you've brought an umbrella thinking that it would rain. And why should you think

232 THE ADVENTURE OF THE TABLE FOOT

it would rain unless the barometer told you so ? I see, too, some laborer pushed up against you as you came along. The mud on your shoulder,

you know."

"It was a lamppost that did it," I answered.

"It was a laborer," quietly said Bones.

At that moment a young man was shown in. He was as pale as death and trembling in every limb. Thinlock Bones settled himself for business, and, as was the usual habit with him when he was about to think, he put his two long tapered hands to his nose.

"What can I do for you, sir?" asked Bones. "Surely a young swell like you, with plenty of money, a brougham, living in the fashionable part of the West End, and the son of a Peer, can't be in trouble."

"Good God, you're right, how do you know it all?" cried the

youth.

"I deduct it," said Thinlock, "you tell me it all yourself. But proceed."

"My name is St. Timon — "

"Robert St. Timon," put in Bones.

"Yes, that is so, but — "

"I saw it in your hat," said Bones.

"I am Robert St. Timon, son of Lord St. Timon, of Grosvenor

Square, and am — "

"Private Secretary to him," continued Thinlock. "I see a letter marked Private and Confidential addressed to your father sticking out of your pocket."

"Quite correct," went on St. Timon, "thus it was that in my confidential capacity I heard one day from my father of an attachment, an infatuation that someone had for him, an elderly -

"Lady," said Thinlock Bones, from the depths of his chair, showing how keenly he was following the depths of the plot as it was unfolded to him by his peculiar habit of holding his bloodless hands to

his nose.

"Right again," said the young man. "Mr. Bones, you are simply

marvelous. How do you manage it?"

"It is very simple," Bones replied, "but I will not stop to explain. Whatsoname here understands my little methods quite well now. He will tell you by-and-by."

THE ADVENTURE OF THE TABLE FOOT 233

"It was an elderly and immensely wealthy lady, then," Robert St. Timon continued, "named the Honorable Mrs. Goran -

"A widow," Bones interrupted.

"Wonderful," said St. Timon, "the Honorable Mrs. Goran, a widow. It was she who was simply head over ears in love with my father, Lord St. Timon. He, although a widower, cared little for her but —

"A lot for her money," said the quick-witted detective.

"How do you divine these things? You guess my innermost thoughts, the words before they are out of my mouth. How did you know it?" St. Timon asked.

"I know the human race," Thinlock Bones answered.

"Well, if he could manage he wanted to inherit her money without marrying her. Would she leave him her riches if he did not propose, was the question ? How to find out ? He was a comparatively young man and did not unnecessarily wish to tie himself to an octogenarian, although a millionairess. But he mustn't lose her wealth. If when she died he was not her husband, would he get the money ? If the worst came to the worst he must marry her sooner than let the gold slip out of his grasp. But he must not espouse the old lady needlessly. How was he to find out? A project struck him, and the means offered itself. We were both asked to a dinner party at the Countess Plein de Beer's where we knew the Honorable Mrs. Goran would be present, and-

"You both accepted," interrupted Bones. "Oh," he went on before the other could ask the reasons of his swift and accurate deductions, "oh, it's very simple. I saw in 'The Daily Telegraph's London Day

by Day.'"

"Yes, we accepted," continued St. Timon, "and this was our plan of campaign: I was to take the old doting lady down to dinner and to insinuate myself into her confidence — aided by good wine, of which she was a devoted admirer — in a subtle fashion and thus to extract the secret out of her. I was to find out — by the time she had arrived at the Countess's old port — whether my father was her heir or not. Whether she had left him her money without being his wife. Time was short, and if she had not my father was to propose that very night after dinner. The signal agreed on between my father and

THE ADVENTURE OF THE TABLE FOOT

me was that if he was her heir without being her husband I was to kick him under the table and he would not propose — otherwise he would. Oh! Mr. Bones," he sobbed, turning his piteous white face to Thinlock, "this is where I want your great intellect to help me, to aid me and explain this mystery.

"The plan worked admirably," he went on, "I gleaned every fact about the disposition of her money after her death from her when she was in her cups —or rather her wineglasses. My father was her absolute and sole heir, and I thanked the heavens with all my heart that I was spared such a stepmother. I kicked, as arranged, my father under the table, but oh! Mr. Bones, immediately after dinner my father went to her and asked her to be his wife and she has accepted him! What does it all mean, what does it all mean!!"

"That you kicked the foot of the table instead!" quietly replied the greatest detective of modern times as he unraveled the intricate plot and added another success to his brilliant career.

Detective: SHERLOCK HOLMES Narrator: WATSON

THE SIGN OF THE "400" by R. K. MUNKITTRICK

This obscure parody, though it appeared in the American humor-magazine, "Pucl(" issue of October 24, 1804, is now virtually unknown. It was brought to your Editors attention by Mr. Christopher Morley, Gasogene-and-Tantahis of The Ba^er Street Irregulars and a charter-enthusiast in all matter Sherlocfyan. Printer's copy was generously provided by Edgar W. Smith, Hon. "Buttons' of the same devotional organization}-"The Sign of the '400' " — an exceptionally felicitous parody-tjfl e — belongs to the "Punch" school of burlesque. Like the Pic{loc{ Holes series by R. C. Lehmann and "The Adventure of the Table Foot" by Zero (Allan Ramsay}, it exploits the reductio ad absurdum technique, leaning heavily on mere farce and lacking the really clever plot jramewor\ which is so essential to classic permanence.

.OR THE nonce, Holmes was slighting his cocaine and was joyously jabbing himself with morphine — his favorite 70 per cent solution — when a knock came at the door; it was our landlady with a telegram. Holmes opened it and read it carelessly.

1 The Baker Street Irregulars held their first formal meeting in Chris Cella's Restaurant in New York City on the evening of June 5, 1934. On the same evening the first dinner of the Sherlock Holmes Society of London was being held, appropriately, in Canute's Restaurant in Baker Street. The American organization now boasts two branches. The Boston Chapter, founded in 1940, is called The Speckled Band; its officers are P. M. Stone, Hon. Chairman ("Stoker") and James Keddie, Jr., Hon. Treasurer ("Cheetah"). On the night of January 8th, 1943 a Chicago Chapter was inaugurated, headed by the Doyen of Sherlockholmitis, Mr. Vincent Starrett. The following telegram, sent to The Baker Street Irregulars convening simultaneously at the Murray Hill Hotel in New York City, announced the formation of the new Chicago Chapter:

THREE GARRIDEBS AND A NOBLE BACHELOR MAKE DUTIFUL IF UNSTEADY BOW TO UNSTEADY BUT DUTIFUL PARENT IRREGULARS. DIVISION OF OPINION WHETHER WE ARE RED CIRCLE, RED-HEADED LEAGUE, DANCING MEN, OR WISTERIA LODGE, BUT GAME'S AFOOT.

"H'm!" he said. "What do you think of this, Watson?"

I picked it up. "COME AT ONCE. WE NEED YOU. SEVENTY-TWO CHINCH-BUGGE PLACE, s. w.," I read.

"Why, it's from Athelney Jones," I remarked.

"Just so," said Holmes; "call a cab."

We were soon at the address given, 72 Chinchbugge Place being the town house of the Dowager Countess of Coldslaw. It was an old-fashioned mansion, somewhat weather-beaten. The old hat stuffed in the broken pane in the drawing room gave the place an air of unstudied artistic negligence, which we both remarked at the time.

Athelney Jones met us at the door. He wore a troubled expression. "Here's a pretty go, gentlemen!" was his greeting. "A forcible entrance has been made to Lady Coldslaw's boudoir, and the famous Coldslaw diamonds are stolen."

Without a word Holmes drew out his pocket lens and examined the atmosphere. "The whofe thing wears an air of mystery," he said,

quietly.

We then entered the house. Lady Coldslaw was completely prostrated and could not be seen. We went at once to the scene of the robbery. There was no sign of anything unusual in the boudoir, except that the windows and furniture had been smashed and the pictures had been removed from the walls. An attempt had been made by the thief to steal the wallpaper, also. However, he had not succeeded. It had rained the night before and muddy footprints led up to the escritoire from which the jewels had been taken. A heavy smell of stale cigar smoke hung over the room. Aside from these hardly noticeable details, the despoiler had left no trace of his presence.

In an instant Sherlock Holmes was down on his knees examining the footprints with a stethoscope. "H'm!" he said; "so you can make nothing out of this, Jones?"

"No, sir," answered the detective; "but I hope to; there's a big

reward."

"It's all very simple, my good fellow," said Holmes. "The robbery was committed at three o'clock this morning by a short, stout, middle-aged, hen-pecked man with a cast in his eye. His name is Smythe, and he lives at 239 Toff Terrace."