The Misadventure of Shelrock Holmes (9 page)

"Oh!" he said, accompanying his exclamation with an angry gesture. . . .

"A watch," said Devanne. "Can he have . . ."

The Englishman did not reply.

"What! It's your watch? Is Arsene Lupin returning you your watch? Then he must have taken it! ... He must have taken your watch! Oh, this is too good! Holmlock Shears's watch spirited away by Arsene Lupin! Oh, this is too funny for words! No, upon my honor . . . you must excuse me ... I can't help laughing!"

He laughed till he cried, utterly unable to restrain himself. When he had done, he declared, in a tone of conviction:

"Yes, he's a man, as you said."

The Englishman did not move a muscle. With his eyes fixed on the fleeting horizon he spoke not a word until they reached Dieppe. His silence was terrible, unfathomable, more violent than the fiercest fury. On the landing stage he said simply, this time without betraying any anger, but in a tone that revealed all the iron will and energy of his remarkable personality:

"Yes, he's a man, and a man on whose shoulder I shall have great pleasure in laying this hand with which I now grasp yours, Monsieur Devanne. And I have an idea, mark you, that Arsene Lupin and Holmlock Shears will meet again someday. . . . Yes, the world is too small for them not to meet. . . . And when they do . . ."

Detective: SHERLOCK HOLMES

THE ADVENTURE OF THE CLOTHES-LINE

by CAROLYN WELLS

"The Adventure of the Clothes-line" first appeared in "The Century," issue of May 79/5 — but to the best of your Editors' knowledge this is the first time Carolyn Wells's parody has ever been published in boo\ form.

Holmes is depicted as the president — who would challenge his right? — of the Society of Infallible Detectives. If you will loof( at the frontispiece of this volume, which served as one of the original illustrations in "The Century" magazine, you will see Holmes literally towering above his colleagues — The Thinking Machine, Raffles, M. Lecoq, and others —perfect symbolism on the part of that great Sherlockjan artist, Frederic Dorr Steele.

Shortly after the death of Carolyn Wells, a large part of her library was sent to the Parf(e-Bernet Galleries of New Yorf^ City for auction. Through the kindness of Mr. Alfred Goldsmith, the eminent bookseller (and one of Carolyn Wells's most intimate friends), and Messrs. Swann and Gaffney of the Galleries, your Editors were permitted to examine the Wellsian booi{s before they were catalogued.

It was a remarkable experience, this browsing among a lifetime of booJ{s, each touched with the memory of one of America's most prolific detective-story writers. There was almost a complete collection of Carolyn Wells's own worlds — numbering ijo-odd different titles! Through the further \indness of Mary O'Connell, to whom this portion of Miss Wells's library was willed, your Editors were permitted to buy certain booths in advance of the auction. Those are prized booths now — a first edition of Rodrigues Ottolengui's FINAL PROOF (New Yorl(,

Putnam, 1898), a first edition of Jacques Futrelle's THE THINKING MACHINE ON THE CASE {New Yorf(, Appleton, 7908), and a jew English anthologies.

Later, during the auction, Mr. Goldsmith successfully bid in for your Editors on a copy of Poe's TALES (London, Wiley & Putnam, 1845) —a rare and important boo\, in the original cloth, enclosed in a morocco slipcase, and enhanced by one of Carolyn Wells's charming and ironic bookplates. But we have strayed off the main road into bibliobypaths . . .

Passing from boo\ to boo\, opening an occasional volume and dipping like bees into its honey, your Editors were deeply impressed by the catholicity and vigor of Miss Wells's literary taste. Certain deductions were obvious — or, shall we say, elementary? That Miss Wells loved the excitement of life on the printed page was all too clear — her favorite boo\s were by Walt Whitman and Herman Melville; but judging from the treasured Conan Doyle volumes which she %ept throughout her life, she must always have had a warm spot in her affections for that towering figure of a man, Sherloc\ Holmes.

T

JL_H1

.HE MEMBERS of the Society of Infallible Detectives were just sitting around and being socially infallible, in their rooms in Fakir Street, when President Holmes strode in. He was much saturniner than usual, and the others at once deduced there was something toward.

"And it's this," said Holmes, perceiving that they had perceived it. "A reward is offered for the solution of a great mystery — so great, my colleagues, that I fear none of you will be able to solve it, or even to help me in the marvelous work I shall do when ferreting it out."

"Humph!" grunted the Thinking Machine, riveting his steel-blue eyes upon the speaker.

"He voices all our sentiments," said RafHes, with his winning smile. "Fire away, Holmes. What's the prob?"

"To explain a most mysterious proceeding down on the East Side."

Though a tall man, Holmes spoke shortly, for he was peeved at the

inattentive attitude of his collection of colleagues. But of course he still had his Watson, so he put up with the indifference of the rest of the cold world.

"Aren't all proceedings down on the East Side mysterious?" asked Arsene Lupin, with an aristocratic look.

Holmes passed his brow wearily under his hand.

"Inspector Spyer," he said, "was riding on the Elevated Road-one of the small numbered Avenues — when, as he passed a tenement-house district, he saw a clothes-line strung from one high window to another across a courtyard."

"Was it Monday?" asked the Thinking Machine, who for the moment was thinking he was a washing machine.

"That doesn't matter. About the middle of the line was suspended -

"By clothes-pins?" asked two or three of the Infallibles at once.

"Was suspended a beautiful woman."

"Hanged?"

"No. Do listen! She hung by her hands, and was evidently trying to cross from one house to the other. By her exhausted and agonized face, the inspector feared she could not hold on much longer. He sprang from his seat to rush to her assistance, but the train had already started, and he was too late to get off."

"What was she doing there?" "Did she fall?" "What did she look like?" and various similar nonsensical queries fell from the lips of the great detectives.

"Be silent, and I will tell you all the known facts. She was a society woman, it is clear, for she was robed in a chiffon evening gown, one of those roll-top things. She wore rich jewelry and dainty slippers with jeweled buckles. Her hair, unloosed from its moorings, hung in heavy masses far down her back."

"How extraordinary! What does it all mean?" asked M. Dupin, ever straightforward of speech.

"I don't know yet," answered Holmes, honestly. "I've studied the matter only a few months. But I will find out, if I have to raze the whole tenement block. There must be a clue somewhere."

"Marvelous! Holmes, marvelous!" said a phonograph in the corner, which Watson had fixed up, as he had to go out.

"The police have asked us to take up the case and have offered a reward for its solution. Find out who was the lady, what she was doing, and why she did it."

"Are there any clues?" asked M. Vidocq, while M. Lecoq said simultaneously, "Any footprints?"

"There is one footprint; no other clue."

"Where is the footprint?"

"On the ground, right under where the lady was hanging."

"But you said the rope was high from the ground."

"More than a hundred feet."

"And she stepped down and made a single footprint. Strange! Quite strange!" and the Thinking Machine shook his yellow old

head.

"She did nothing of the sort," said Holmes, petulantly. "If you fellows would listen, you might hear something. The occupants of the tenement houses have been questioned. But, as it turns out, none of them chanced to be at home at the time of the occurrence. There was a parade in the next street, and they had all gone to see it."

"Had a light snow fallen the night before?" asked Lecoq, eagerly.

"Yes, of course," answered Holmes. "How could we know anything, else? Well, the lady had dropped her slipper, and although the slipper was not found, it having been annexed by the tenement people who came home first, I had a chance to study the footprint. The slipper was a two and a half D. It was too small for her."

"How do you know?"

"Women always wear slippers too small for them."

"Then how did she come to drop it off?" This from Raffles, triumphantly.

Holmes looked at him pityingly.

"She kicked it off because it was too tight. Women always kick off their slippers when playing bridge or in an opera box or at a

dinner." "And always when they're crossing a clothes-line?" This in Lupin's

most sarcastic vein.

"Naturally," said Holmes, with a taciturnine frown. "The footprint clearly denotes a lady of wealth and fashion, somewhat short of stature, and weighing about one hundred and sixty. She was of an animated nature — "

"Suspended animation," put in Luther Trant, wittily, and Scientific Sprague added, "Like the.Coffin of Damocles, or whoever it was."

But Holmes frowned on their light-headedness.

"We must find out what it all means," he said in his gloomiest way. "I have a tracing of the footprint."

"I wonder if my seismospygmograph would work on it," mused Trant.

"I am the Prince of Footprints," declared Lecoq, pompously. '7

will solve the mystery."

"Do your best, all of you," said their illustrious president. "I fear you can do little; these things are unintelligible to the unintelligent. But study on it, and meet here again one week from tonight, with your answers neatly typewritten on one side of the paper."

The Infallible Detectives started off, each affecting a jaunty san-guineness of demeanor, which did not in the least impress their president, who was used to sanguinary impressions.

They spent their allotted seven days in the study of the problem; and a lot of the seven nights, too, for they wanted to delve into the baffling secret by sun or candlelight, as dear Mrs. Browning so poetically puts it.

And when the week had fled, the Infallibles again gathered in the Fakir Street sanctum, each face wearing the smug smirk and smile of one who had quested a successful quest and was about to accept his just reward.

"And now," said President Holmes, "as nothing can be hid from the Infallible Detectives, I assume we have all discovered why the lady hung from the clothes-line above that deep and dangerous chasm of a tenement courtyard."

"We have," replied his colleagues, in varying tones of pride, conceit, and mock modesty.

"I cannot think," went on the hawk-like voice, "that you have, any of you, stumbled upon the real solution of the mystery; but I will listen to your amateur attempts."

"As the oldest member of our organization, I will tell my solution first," said Vidocq, calmly. "I have not been able to find the lady, but I am convinced that she was merely an expert trapezist or tight-

rope walker, practising a new trick to amaze her Coney Island audiences."

"Nonsense!" cried Holmes. "In that case the lady would have worn tights or fleshings. We are told she was in full evening dress of the

smartest set."

Arsene Lupin spoke next.

"It's too easy," he said boredly; "she was a typist or stenographer who had been annoyed by attentions from her employer, and was trying to escape from the brute."

"Again I call your attention to her costume," said Holmes, with a look of intolerance on his finely cold-chiseled face.

"That's all right," returned Lupin, easily. "Those girls dress every old way! I've seen 'em. They don't think anything of evening clothes at their work."

"Humph!" said the Thinking Machine, and the others all agreed

with him.

"Next," said Holmes, sternly.

"I'm next," said Lecoq. "I submit that the lady escaped from a near-by lunatic asylum. She had the illusion that she was an old overcoat and the moths had got at her. So of course she hung herself on the clothes-line. This theory of lunacy also accounts for the fact that the lady's hair was down — like Ophelia's, you know."

"It would have been easier for her to swallow a few good moth balls," said Holmes, looking at Lecoq in stormy silence. "Mr. Gryce, you are an experienced deducer; what did you conclude?"

Mr. Gryce glued his eyes to his right boot toe, after his celebrated habit. "I make out she was a-slumming. You know, all the best ladies are keen about it. And I feel that she belonged to the Cult for the Betterment of Clothes-lines. She was by way of being a tester. She had to go across them hand over hand, and if they bore her weight, they were passed by the censor."

"And if they didn't?"

"Apparently that predicament had not occurred at the time of our problem, and so cannot be considered."

"I think Gryce is right about the slumming," remarked Luther Trant, "but the reason for the lady hanging from the clothes-line is the imperative necessity she felt for a thorough airing, after her

tenemental visitations; there is a certain tenement scent, if I may express it, that requires ozone in quantities."