The Twelve Crimes of Christmas (35 page)

I could still smell the dry rot of the house in
my nostrils, and I knew it would take days before I could get it out of my
clothes.

“This is one day I’d like to cut out of the
calendar permanently,” I said.

“And leave them alone to their troubles. It
would serve them right.”

“They’re not alone,” I said. “Jessie is with
them. Jessie will always be with them until that house and everything in it is
gone.”

Al frowned. “It’s the queerest thing that ever
happened in this town, all right. The house all black, her running through the
streets like something hunted, him lying there in that room with only the walls
to look at, for—when was it Jessie took that fall, counsellor?”

By shifting my eyes a little I could see in the
mirror behind Al the reflection of my own face: ruddy, deep jowled, a little
incredulous.

“Twenty years ago,” I heard myself saying. “Just
twenty years ago tonight.”

THE ADVENTURE OF
THE UNIQUE DICKENSIANS

by August Derleth

If imitation is the sincerest
form of flattery, the plethora of Holmesian pastiches produced since the 1880s
might have been gratifying to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, had not so many of them
been so poor.

Among
the best of the imitators of the Sacred Writings was August (William) Derleth,
who was born in Sauk City, Wisconsin, and who, starting at the age of thirteen,
produced a large and varied collection of literary products. Cofounder of
Arkham House and Mycraft & Moran, publishers of supernatural and mystery
books, he claimed that he was “the most versatile and voluminous writer in
quality writing fields.” Mystery fans, however, remember him for his creation
of Solar Pons.

“This Christmas season,” said Solar Pons from
his place at the windows of our quarters at 7B, Praed Street, “holds the
promise of being a merry one, after the quiet week just past. Flakes of snow
are dancing in the air, and what I see below enchants me. Just step over here,
Parker, and have a look.”

I turned down the book I was reading and went
over to stand beside him.

Outside, the snowflakes were large and soft,
shrouding the streetlight, which had come on early in the winter dusk, and
enclosing, like a vision from the past, the scene at the curb—a hansom cab, no
less, drawn by a horse that looked almost as ancient as the vehicle, for it
stood with a dejected air while its master got out of the cab, leaning on his
stick.

“It has been years since I have seen a hansom
cab,” I said. “Ten, at least—if not more. And that must surely be its owner.”

The man getting out of the cab could be seen
but dimly, but he wore a coat of ankle length, fitting his thin frame almost
like an outer skin, and an old beaver hat that added its height to his, and when
he turned to look up at the number above our outer entrance, I saw that he wore
a grizzled beard and square spectacles.

“Could he have the wrong address?” I wondered.

“I fervently hope not,” said Pons. “The wrong
century, perhaps, but not, I pray, the wrong address.”

“No, he is coming in.”

“Capital, capital!” cried Pons, rubbing his
hands together and turning from the window to look expectantly toward the door.

We listened in silence as he applied below to
Mrs. Johnson, our landlady, and then to his climbing the stairs, a little wheezily,
but withal more like a young man than an old.

“But he clutches the rail,” said Pons, as if he
had read my thoughts. “Listen to his nails scrape the wall.”

At the first touch of the old fellow’s stick on
the door, Pons strode forward to throw it open.

“Mr. Solar Pons?” asked our visitor in a thin,
rather querulous voice.

“Pray come in, sir,” said Pons.

“Before I do, I’ll want to know how much it
will cost,” said our client.

“It costs nothing to come in,” said Pons, his
eyes dancing.

“Everything is so dear these days,” complained
the old fellow as he entered our quarters. “And money isn’t easily come by. And
too readily spent, sir, too readily spent.”

I offered him a seat, and took his hat.

He wore, I saw now, the kind of black
half-gloves customarily worn by clerks, that came over his wrists to his
knuckles. Seeing me as for the first time, he pointed his cane at me and asked
of Pons, “Who’s he?”

“Dr. Parker is my companion.”

He looked me up and down suspiciously, pushing
his thin lips out and sucking them in, his eyes narrowed. His skin was the
color of parchment, and his clothes, like his hat, were green with age.

“But you have the advantage of us, sir,” said
Pons.

“My name is Ebenezer Snawley.” Then he turned
to me and stuck out an arm. “They’re Pip’s,” he said, referring to the clerical
cuffs, which I saw now they were. “No need for him to wear
’em
.
He’s inside, and I’m out, and it would be a shameful waste to spend good money
on gloves for the few times I go out in such weather.” His eyes narrowed a
trifle more. “Are you a medical man?”

I assured him that I was.

“Have a look at that, Doctor,” he said, indicating
a small growth on one finger.

I examined it and pronounced it the beginning
of a wart.

“Ah, then it’s of no danger to my health. I
thank you. As you’re not in your office, no doubt there’ll be no fee.”

“Doctor Parker is a poor man,” said Pons.

“So am I, sir. So am I,” said Snawley. “But I
had to come to you,” he added in an aggrieved voice. “The police only laugh at
me. I applied to them to have the nuisance stopped.”

“What is the nature of the nuisance?” asked
Pons.

“Aha! you’ve not told me your fee for consultation,”
said Snawley.

“I am accustomed to setting my fee in
accordance with the amount of work I must do,” said Pons. “In some cases there
is no fee at all.”

“No fee? No fee at all?”

“We do on occasion manifest the spirit of
Christmas,” continued Pons.

“Christmas! Humbug!” protested our client.

“Do not say so,” said Pons.

“Christmas is a time for well-meaning fools to
go about bestowing useless gifts on other fools,” our client went on testily.

“But you did not come to discuss the season,”
said Pons gently.

“You are right, sir. I thank you for reminding
me. I came because of late I have been much troubled by some fellow who marches
up and down before my house bawling street songs.”

“Are they offensive songs?”

Our visitor shook his head irritably. “Any song
is offensive if I do not wish to hear it.”

“Scurrilous?”

“Street songs.”

“Do you know their words?”

“Indeed, and I do, Mr. Pons. And I should. ‘Crack
’em
and try
’em
,
before you buy
’em
eight-a-penny. All new walnuts. Crack
’em
and try
’em
, before you buy
’em
.
A shilling a-hundred. All new walnuts,’ ” he said in mimicry. “And such as ‘Rope
mat! Doormat! You really must buy one to save the mud and dust; think of the
dirt brought from the street for the want of a mat to wipe your feet!’ Indeed I
do know them. They are old London street cries.”

Pons’s eyes now fairly glowed with pleasure. “Ah,
he sells walnuts and rope mats.”

“A ragbag of a fellow. Sometimes it is
hats—three, four at a time on his head. Sometimes it is cress. Sometimes
flowers. And ever and anon walnuts. I could not chew
’em
even if I bought
’em
—and there’s small
likelihood of that. Catch me wasting good money like that! Not likely.”

“He has a right to the street,” observed Pons.

“But Mr. Pons, sir, he limits himself to the
street along my property. My house is on the corner, set back a trifle, with a
bit of land around it—I like my privacy. He goes no farther than the edge of my
property on the one side, then back around the corner to the line of my
property on the other. It is all done to annoy me—or for some other
reason—perhaps to get into the house and lay hands on my valuables.”

“He could scarcely effect an entrance more
noisily,” said Pons, reflectively. “Perhaps he is only observing the Christmas
season and wishes to favor you with its compliments.”

“Humbug!” said Snawley in a loud voice, and
with such a grimace that it seemed to me he could not have made it more
effectively had he practiced it in front of a mirror.

“Is he young?”

“If any young fellow had a voice so cracked, I’d
send him to a doctor.” He shook his head vigorously. “He can’t be less than
middle-aged. No, sir. Not with a voice like that. He could sour the apples in a
barrel with such a voice.”

“How often does he come?”

“Why, sir, it is just about every night. I am
plagued by his voice, by his very presence, and now he has taken to adding
Christmas songs to his small repertoire, it is all the more trying. But chiefly
I am plagued—I will confess it—by my curiosity about the reason for this
attention he bestows upon me. I sent Pip—Pip is my clerk, retired, now, like
myself, with his wife dead and his children all out in the world, even the
youngest, who finally recovered his health—I sent Pip, I say, out to tell him to
be off, and he but laughed at him, and gave him a walnut or two for himself,
and sent one along for me! The impudence of the fellow!” His chin whiskers
literally trembled with his indignation.

Pons had folded his arms across his chest,
clasping his elbows with his lean fingers, holding in his mirth, which danced
around his mouth and in his eyes. “But,” he said, visibly controlling himself, “if
you are a poor man, you can scarcely be in possession of valuables someone else
might covet.”

Plainly now our client was torn between the
desire to maintain the face he had put upon himself, and to lift a little of it
for us to see him a trifle more clearly; for he sat in dour silence.

“Unless,” pursued Pons, “you have valuables of
a more intangible nature. I suspect you are a collector.”

Our visitor started violently. “Why do you say
so?”

“I submit that coat you are wearing cannot be
newer than 1890, the waistcoat likewise. Your cane is gold-headed; I have not
seen such a cane about since 1910. Heavy, too. I suspect it is loaded. And what
you have left outside is a period piece—obviously your own, since you drove it
yourself. No one who had worn your clothing steadily since it was made could
present it still in such good condition.”

“You are as sharp as they say you are,” said
our client grudgingly. “It’s true I’m a collector.”

“Of books,” said Pons.

“Books and such,” assented Snawley. “Though how
you can tell it I don’t pretend to know.”

“The smell of ink and paper make a special kind
of mustiness, Mr. Snawley. You carry it. And, I take it, you are particularly
fond of Dickens.”

Snawley’s jaw dropped; his mouth hung
momentarily agape. “You amaze me,” he said.

“Dr. Parker charges me with amazing him for the
past year and a half, since he took up residence here,” said Pons. “It will do
you no harm. It has done him none.”

“How, Mr. Pons, do you make out Dickens?”

“Those street songs you know so well are those
of Dickens’s day. Since you made a point of saying you should know them, it is
certainly not far wide of the mark to suggest that you are a Dickensian.”

A wintry smile briefly touched our client’s
lips, but he suppressed it quickly. “I see I have made no mistake in coming to
you. It is really the obligation of the police, but they are forever about
getting out of their obligations. It is the way of the new world, I fear. But I
had heard of you, and I turned it over in mind several days, and I concluded
that it would be less dear to call on you than to ask you to call on me. So I
came forthwith.”