The Misadventure of Shelrock Holmes (34 page)

Jones fairly gasped. "What! Major Smythe, one of the highest thought-of and richest men in the city?" he said.

"The same."

In half an hour we were at Smythe's bedside. Despite his protestations, he was pinioned and driven to prison.

"For heaven's sake, Holmes," said I, when we returned to our rooms, "how did you solve that problem so quickly?"

"Oh, it was easy, dead easy!" said he. "As soon as we entered the room, I noticed the cigar smoke. It was cigar smoke from a cigar that had been given a husband by his wife. I could tell that, for I have made a study of cigar smoke. Any other but a hen-pecked man throws such cigars away. Then I could tell by the footprints that the man had had appendicitis. Now, no one but members of the '400' have that. Who then was hen-pecked in the '400,' and had had appendicitis recently? Why, Major Smythe, of course! He is middle-aged, stout, and has a cast in his eye."

I could not help but admire my companion's reasoning, and told him so. "Well," he said, "it is very simple if you know how."

Thus ended the Coldslaw robbery, so far as we were concerned.

It may be as well to add, however, that Jones's arrant jealousy caused him to resort to the lowest trickery to throw discredit upon the discovery of my gifted friend. He allowed Major Smythe to prove a most conclusive alibi, and then meanly arrested a notorious burglar as the thief, on the flimsiest proof, and convicted him. This burglar had been caught while trying to pawn some diamonds that seemed to be a portion of the plunder taken from 72 Chinchbugge Place.

Of course, Jones got all the credit. I showed the newspaper accounts to Holmes. He only laughed, and said: "You see how it is, Watson; Scotland Yard, as usual, gets the glory." As I perceived he was going to play "Sweet Marie" on his violin, I reached for the morphine, myself.

Detective: PURLOCK HONE Narrator: JOBSON

OUR MR. SMITH by OSWALD CRAWFORD

Shortly after the turn of the century, Oswald Crawjurd rebelled against the romantic school of detective fiction, dominated at that time by Sherloc\ Holmes and his multitudinous imitators. Mr. Crawjurd wrote THE REVELATIONS OF INSPECTOR MORGAN (London, Chapman & Hall, 1906), a collection of four realistic detective stories which attempted "to establish the detective police [of England} in that position of superiority to the mere amateur and outsider from which he has been ousted in contemporary fiction."

Mr. Crawjurd went on record to the effect that "the professional is a better man than the amateur detective. ... To thin\ otherwise is a pestilent heresy"

During the following year THE REVELATIONS OF INSPECTOR MORGAN was published in the United States (New Yor{, Dodd, Mead, 7907). For this edition Mr. Crawjurd wrote a special Introduction, which is the source of the passages quoted above. As a final and irrefutable outburst "of indignation against the injustice so long done to the Professional Detective" Mr. Crawjurd wound up his Introduction by taking a roundhouse swing at the arch offender, Sherloc^ Holmes. This literary haymaker too{ the form of a parody titled "Our Mr. Smith" in which The Great Man goes down in utter, ignominious defeat.

The question remains, after reading "Our Mr. Smith": Just what did Mr. Crawjurd prove?

A,

.FTER a hard day's professional work I was sitting in my little room in Baker Street, deeply meditating on a subject never very long absent from my thoughts. Reader, you can guess what that subject

is. I was considering the marvelous analytical faculty of my friend Purlock Hone, when the door opened and Purlock Hone himself appeared on the threshold. In my accustomed impulsive and ecstatic way, not unmingled with that humour which I am proud to say tempers the veneration I feel for that colossal intellect, I was beginning with the trivial phrase, "Talk of the - -!" when my friend cut me short, with "Sh," and put his finger on his lips.

He sat down by the fire without a word, deposited his hat, gloves and handkerchief in the coal scuttle (I have before referred to my friend's untidy habits) and reached to the mantelpiece for my favourite meerschaum. He filled the pipe with long cut Cavendish, and, sitting with knotted brows, smoked it to the end before he spoke a word. Then he said:

"Humph!" It was little enough perhaps, but from Purlock Hone it

meant volumes.

"Well?" I said. "Go on."

He did. He filled the pipe anew, and, for a second time, smoked it to the bitter end.

"Your pipe, Jobson, wants cleaning!" -and he gently threw it upon the fire, from which I rescued it before the flames had done it much injury. From any one else this action had seemed hasty, if not inconsiderate; in this gifted and marvellous being it betokened a profound train of abstract and analytical meditation. I waited patiently for some revelation of the subject of his thoughts.

I need not remind the reader that in the spring of this year the world of international politics was gravely agitated. Menacing rumours were about everywhere, the international atmosphere was electrical and mutterings of the tempest were to be heard on every side, but no one could divine where and when the storm would burst — on whom the bolt would fall.

Mysterious messages were daily passing between the Dowager Empress of China and Kaiser William; what did they portend? President Castro of Venezuela was known to be in secret communication with the Dalai Lama. Our eminent statesman, Mr. Keir Hardie, was said to have despatched an ultimatum to the Emperor of Japan and an identical document to President Roosevelt. The aged wife of the Second Commissionaire at the Foreign Office (Irish by birth and of convivial habits) had made certain compromising revelations of

the policy of the government in a tavern in Charles Street, Westminster, and the Cabinet of St. James's was already tottering to its

fall!

I eagerly recapitulated to my friend these various sources of disquietude to the nation, to Europe and the World, and urged him eagerly to enlighten me as to which of these great world problems he was preparing to solve. His answer was characteristic of this remarkable man, characteristic at once of his geniality, his simplicity, his wonderful self-control, his modesty, and at the same time of his refusal, even to me, to commit himself to an avowal.

"Any one of them, or none —or all; I cannot guess," said Pur lock

Hone.

My friend could not guess! I forbore from speech, but I smiled when I reflected that I was in the presence of the man who had more than once interposed to save a British Ministry from defeat, who had maintained the balance of power in Europe by discovering a stolen naval treaty, nay, of the man who had restored the jewelled crown of England when it had been lost for nearly three hundred

years!

"A penny for your thoughts," said Purlock Hone gaily. "Or, come, you shall hear them from me for nothing."

"I defy you to know what I was thinking of," I said impulsively, but a moment later that defiance seemed to me rash, as in truth it proved to be.

"My dear Jobson," said this greatest of clairvoyants, "if you wanted me not to guess your thoughts you should not have smiled and looked towards the portrait of the late Premier. That told me, as clearly as if you had spoken, that you were recalling my little service to the late Unionist Government. I suppose you are unconscious of the fact, but you distinctly hitched the belt of your trousers as you crossed the room, with a sailor-like roll in your walk; what more was needed to tell me your thoughts were of my modest success in the matter of the lost naval treaty?"

"Amazing! And the recovery of the Crown of England?" "You have tell-tale eyes, Jobson, and you rolled them regally as you directed them to the print of His Gracious Majesty over the mantelpiece." "Wonderful man! Stupendous perspicacity!" I muttered.

Purlock Hone filled my rescued pipe for the third time and resumed his smoking. As in most other things, so in his taste for tobacco he resembles no other human being. I happened to know that he had not touched a pipe, a cigar, or a cigarette for a month before.

"Smoking, Jobson, is one of the world's follies. No ordinary man needs tobacco. It is poison!"

"Yet you smoke, Hone, even to excess at times," I said.

"I said no ordinary man, Jobson," retorted my friend.

I quailed under the justice of the reproof. Any other man would have pressed his victory. He generously forbore.

"I smoke only when some very heavy work is before me," he went on; "not otherwise."

Then I had guessed aright! He had some great work in hand. Never before had I seen so deep a frown between those sagacious eyes, never had the thoughtful face been so pale, the whole physiognomy so enigmatic. Never had so thick a cloud of tobacco smoke issued from between those oracular lips.

"I expect a visitor," he observed presently, between two puffs of tobacco smoke.

"Where?" I asked.

"Here," said Hone simply. "I left word at home that any one who called at my place was to come on here. Read this!" He tossed a letter across the table. I read aloud:

"Dear Sir:

I will do myself the pleasure of waiting upon you between five and

six to-day.

Yours faithfully,

JOHN SMITH"

"A pregnant communication, Jobson, eh?"

"I dare say, but I confess I don't see anything peculiar about it." I looked again at the letter. It seemed to me as plain an epistle as any man could write. A dunning tradesman might have written it — a tax collector might have subscribed it.

"What do you make of those t's, Jobson? Does the spacing of the words tell you anything? Are those w's and 1's there for nothing?"

"To me, Hone, they are there for nothing, but then — I am not a Purlock Hone."

He smiled as he regarded me with pity, and cocked his left eye, using one of those fascinating and favourite actions of his that bring him down to the level of our common humanity.

"It is a disguised hand, Jobson, and do you observe the absence of an address?"

The lucid and enlightened explanation that I expected was cut short by a ring at the door bell. Immediately afterwards the maid announced Mr. Smith. A little man with grey side whiskers, a neat black frock coat and carrying a somewhat gampish silk umbrella, entered the room.

"Be seated, Mr. — Smith." The slight pause between the last two words of Hone's sentence was eloquent.

"Which of you two gentlemen is Pur lock Hone, Esquire?" The accent on which "Mr. Smith" spoke was cockney and the tone deprecating.

I looked to Hone to answer. He smiled upon the stranger. It was a smile of complete approval. "Admirable!" said my friend. "Pray go on, sir." The visitor was visibly taken aback.

"I asks a plain question, gentlemen, and I looks to get a plain answer."

"It does you the greatest credit, my dear sir," said Hone. "It would pass almost anywhere;"

The little gentleman with grey side whiskers got red in the face and his eyes grew round. He was obviously angry, or was he only acting anger?

My friend Purlock Hone, as I think I have observed before in the course of these memoirs, often smiles, but seldom condescends to laugh.

Our visitor coloured violently and struck the end of his umbrella on the floor. "Look here," he said, "play-acting is play-acting, but I comes here on business; my name is John Smith, and I don't want none of your chaff."

"Capital! Capital! Go on, Mr. —Smith!"

"I will do so, sir, if you please!" The little gentleman put his hand in the inner breast pocket of his coat and produced therefrom a blue envelope; a quick glance at the superscription showed me that it was addressed to my friend and was written in that bold, regular, cursive

hand which is characteristic of the man engaged in commercial pursuits. My interest was now strongly roused. I waited eagerly i

developments.

The mysterious visitor looked from one to the other of us. As you two gentlemen refuse to say which of you is Hone, Esquire, I'll mak< so bold as to read this communication to the two of you."

"You may do so with perfect safety, Mr.-Smith. My friend

in my confidence."

The little gentleman cast a puzzled look at us both and read as follows: "'To Purlock Hone, Esquire, Dear Sir-Our Mr. Smith will wait on you in respect of our little account already rendered and which you have no doubt overlooked. Early attention to the same wil

1 1 * ' >*

oblige. i i j TT-

The reader paused and looked at my friend. I, too, looked, i face was inscrutable, his lips were grimly closed. My curiosity -shall I say my indiscretion ?—got the better of me.

"And whose Mr. Smith may you be, sir?" I asked.

The little man glibly read out the conclusion of the letter: " 'Yours obediently, Dear Sir, Jones and Sons; Hatters; Oxford Street'And here is the bill, gentlemen. 'To one fancy broad-brimmed sil\ hat-cathedral style; - To one clerical soft felt bowler; - To one slouched Spanish Sombrero; —To one . . . '

Purlock Hone raised his hand, as if deprecating a list of furthei items, and Mr. Smith stopped and stared at him.

"What!" I thought. "Is it a real account for hats — after all! 1 remembered all these unusual forms of head-covering having formed parts of the various disguises in which my friend had walked the streets of London incognito. No! There must be some deep diplomatic secret behind the seemingly simple transaction!

"What is the total amount, Mr. Smith?" asked my friend in muffl

tones.

"Nine, eleven, four, sir."

Without another word Hone walked across to my writing-table, took his cheque book from his pocket, sat down, and wrote and signed a cheque for nine pounds eleven shillings and fourpence.

"There you are, Mr. Smith. No — don't trouble to give me a receipt. The cheque is to order and Jones & Sons' endorsement will be as good as a receipt."

"Mr. Smith" rose quickly as my friend pronounced these, no doubt, pregnant words, bowed, and took his departure with "I wish you good morning, gentlemen." He preserved the deprecating attitude and the cockney accent of the small tradesman to the very last.