The Big Book of Sherlock Holmes Stories (40 page)

“But how do you account for the disappearance of the money?”

“The money has nothing to do with the matter. If he was a deep man, and knew the stupidness of Scotland Yard, he probably sent the notes to an enemy. If not, they may have been given to a friend. Nothing is more calculated to prepare the mind for self-destruction than the prospect of a night ride on the Scotch Express, and the view from the windows of the train as it passes through the northern part of London is particularly conducive to thoughts of annihilation.”

“What became of the weapon?”

“That is just the point on which I wish to satisfy myself. Excuse me for a moment.”

Mr. Sherlaw Kombs drew down the window on the right-hand side, and examined the top of the casing minutely with a magnifying glass. Presently he heaved a sigh of relief, and drew up the sash.

“Just as I expected,” he remarked, speaking more to himself than to me. “There is a slight dent on the top of the window frame. It is of such a nature as to be made only by the trigger of a pistol falling from the nerveless hand of a suicide. He intended to throw the weapon far out of the window, but had not the strength. It might have fallen into the carriage. As a matter of fact, it bounced away from the line and lies among the grass about ten feet six inches from the outside rail. The only question that now remains is where the deed was committed, and the exact present position of the pistol reckoned in miles from London, but that, fortunately, is too simple even to need explanation.”

“Great heavens, Sherlaw!” I cried. “How can you call that simple? It seems to me impossible to compute.”

We were now flying over northern London, and the great detective leaned back with every sign of
ennui
, closing his eyes. At last he spoke wearily:

“It is really too elementary, Whatson, but I am always willing to oblige a friend. I shall be relieved, however, when you are able to work out the A B C of detection for yourself, although I shall never object to helping you with the words of more than three syllables. Having made up his mind to commit suicide, Kipson naturally intended to do it before he reached Brewster, because tickets are again examined at that point. When the train began to stop at the signal near Pegram, he came to the false conclusion that it was stopping at Brewster. The fact that the shot was not heard is accounted for by the screech of the air-brake, added to the noise of the train. Probably the whistle was also sounding at the same moment. The train being a fast express would stop as near the signal as possible. The air-brake will stop a train in twice its own length. Call it three times in this case. Very well. At three times the length of this train from the signal-post towards London, deducting half the length of the train, as this carriage is in the middle, you will find the pistol.”

“Wonderful!” I exclaimed.

“Commonplace,” he murmured.

At this moment the whistle sounded shrilly, and we felt the grind of the air-brakes.

“The Pegram signal again,” cried Kombs, with something almost like enthusiasm. “This is indeed luck. We will get out here, Whatson, and test the matter.”

As the train stopped, we got out on the right-hand side of the line. The engine stood panting impatiently under the red light, which changed to green as I looked at it. As the train moved on with increasing speed, the detective counted the carriages, and noted down the number. It was now dark, with the thin crescent of the moon hanging in the western sky throwing a weird half-light on the shining metals. The rear lamps of the train disappeared around a curve, and the signal stood at baleful red again. The black magic of the lonesome night in that strange place impressed me, but the detective was a most practical man. He placed his back against the signal-post, and paced up the line with even strides, counting his steps. I walked along the permanent way beside him silently. At last he stopped, and took a tape-line from his pocket. He ran it out until the ten feet six inches were unrolled, scanning the figures in the wan light of the new moon. Giving me the end, he placed his
knuckles on the metals, motioning me to proceed down the embankment. I stretched out the line, and then sank my hand in the damp grass to mark the spot.

“Good God!” I cried, aghast. “What is this?”

“It is the pistol,” said Kombs quietly.

It was!

Journalistic London will not soon forget the sensation that was caused by the record of the investigations of Sherlaw Kombs, as printed at length in the next day's
Evening Blade
. Would that my story ended here. Alas! Kombs contemptuously turned over the pistol to Scotland Yard. The meddlesome officials, actuated, as I always hold, by jealousy, found the name of the seller upon it. They investigated. The seller testified that it had never been in the possession of Mr. Kipson, as far as he knew. It was sold to a man whose description tallied with that of a criminal long watched by the police. He was arrested, and turned Queen's evidence in the hope of hanging his pal. It seemed that Mr. Kipson, who was a gloomy, taciturn man, and usually came home in a compartment by himself, thus escaping observation, had been murdered in the lane leading to his house. After robbing him, the miscreants turned their thoughts towards the disposal of the body—a subject that always occupies a first-class criminal mind after the deed is done. They agreed to place it on the line, and have it mangled by the Scotch Express, then nearly due. Before they got the body halfway up the embankment the express came along and stopped. The guard got out and walked along the other side to speak with the engineer. The thought of putting the body into an empty first-class carriage instantly occurred to the murderers. They opened the door with the deceased's key. It is supposed that the pistol dropped when they were hoisting the body in the carriage.

The Queen's evidence dodge didn't work, and Scotland Yard ignobly insulted my friend Sherlaw Kombs by sending him a pass to see the villains hanged.

THE SHERLOCK HOLMES
stories published in
The Strand Magazine
in 1891 and 1892 were a national sensation, so it is not surprising that when the first twelve were collected and published as
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
the book became an instant bestseller. The first printing of ten thousand copies was published on October 14, 1892. Demand required a second printing, and then a third. It has never been out of print, either in Great Britain or the United States (where it was published one day after the English edition).

With astonishing speed, a parody written by an anonymous journalist was published on October 29, 1892, in
The National Observer
, a London magazine. The publication began as the
Scots Observer
until it was moved from Edinburgh, coincidentally Arthur Conan Doyle's birthplace, to London in 1889, after which it was renamed the
National Observer
. One of its editors was the famed poet William Ernest Henley. Among the writers it published were Rudyard Kipling, George Bernard Shaw, Thomas Hardy, James M. Barrie, H. G. Wells, and the unknown humorist who anonymously produced “Sherlock Holmes vs. Conan Doyle.”

In this little episode, one of the very first recorded Sherlock Holmes parodies, the detective speaks his mind about the man who seems to get it all wrong when chronicling his adventures: Arthur Conan Doyle.

IN VIEW OF
the recent publication of Mr. Sherlock Holmes's more celebrated cases (writes our representative) I called upon the famous scientific detective for the purpose of elucidating if possible some of his more eventful and thrilling episodes in his adventures.

I found the celebrated sleuth-hound, whose fame is now European, seated before a comfortable fire in his cosily furnished rooms in Baker Street. His chin was sunk upon his chest, and his lynx eyes were fixed upon the ceiling with that hawk-like expression which his portraits have rendered so familiar to us.

“Good evening,” he said, without turning his head or altering his gaze, as I entered. “You could not have come at a better time. I was just off to bed. You wish to interview me,” he added, as his eyes literally pierced me through and through.

“You wear a high hat on Sundays, you are fond of cream tarts, Mr. William Watson is your favourite author, and seventeen years and six months ago you had a cousin who died.”

“Really, Mr. Holmes,” I stammered in amazement. “It is quite true, though how on earth you know—”

“It is very simple,” he said, smiling. “Moreover, it saves me from
ennui
—it and cocaine. Life, my dear sir (your name, by the way, begins with a D, as I see from your handkerchief), is only interesting because it is mysterious. What is ordinary is merely that which is not remarkable, and if you could open all the windows and sail over this vast city, you would behold strange secrets. I do not seem to be able to persuade you of the importance of the improbable,” he said reflectively.

“I have come, Mr. Holmes,” I began hastily, knowing from Dr. Conan Doyle's account of his weakness for this vein of reflection, and fearing to be taken beyond my depths; “I have come to ask you about the book—”

“You mean,” he interrupted, “my treatise on the 742 ways of saying the word ‘damn!' ”

“No, I refer to Dr. Doyle's collection of your adventures.”

“I have heard of the man,” said Mr. Holmes. “It is my business to know about all kinds of people. But I've never met him. If you will look in my Index, under the heading Plagiarists—”

“But,” I objected, “Dr. Doyle is a novelist.”

“True, but he is also a plagiarist—the very worst kind of plagiarist, seeing that he steals from life. Oddly enough, as there was no classical concert this evening, I was just dipping into the very book to which you refer.”

He waved his hand towards the table, and leaned back in his chair with a little soft laugh. As he put his fingertips together and, closing his eyes, assumed a languid expression of weariness. I guessed what was coming, and so seized my opportunity and my note book.

“It is perhaps,” Mr. Holmes resumed, “just as well, my good man, that people will not stick to the truth, otherwise my occupation—and it is a pleasant way of passing the time—would be gone. This man (who is a stranger to me), has compiled a book purporting to be my adventures. It is, in fact, a garbled version of some very inferior incidents in my professional career;
but where or how he got hold of them, I cannot say, although my mind is already made up.

“You see Watson could never keep his tongue quiet, and he was the densest of men I ever saw, as you may have perceived. If a man wore a muddy coat, he would wonder how I knew he had been splashed. And then Scotland Yard has always been jealous of me. They may have given me away.

“But in any case, it is of no consequence. Dr. Doyle, by the way, I am in a position to state, has written eight other books; and this one appeared originally in the columns of a magazine, where it ran for twelve months. Am I not right?”

“Certainly, but how—”

“It is merely the faculty of observation,” he replied. “By examining the book, I find out all that. Obviously, too, he is a man of few scruples and no respect for the truth. He is an unfair man, striving, like all in his class, to make ‘copy' where he can.

“I have been grossly misrepresented by him. Do you really think I made that blunder in ‘A Scandal in Bohemia'? Do you imagine I had as little a finger in ‘The Engineer's Thumb' or ‘The Copper Beeches' as he makes out? And do you suppose I interfered as ineffectually in the ‘Five Pips' as he represents?”

“What do you suppose was his object, Mr. Holmes?”

The famous detective looked me full in the face.

“Gain,” said he simply.

I stared back in astonishment.

“Yes,” he resumed; “it is all easy when you see the explanation. You see the book is large and expensively brought out; moreover it is issued by a publisher who caters to the millions. Hence it is clear a very large sale is anticipated. Why? Because the book is supposed to contain a popular element, and that popular element is myself.

“Now, it follows that Dr. Doyle must have heard of me, through Watson or the police; that he saw I should suit his game (which was money); having invented spurious stories about me that he hit upon a publisher similarly unscrupulous. With my name and a fairly accurate account of those interesting cases of mine, ‘The Blue Carbuncle' and ‘The Speckled Band,' he made a good start; and after that anything would sell, even stuff like ‘The Engineer's Thumb' or ‘The Noble Husband.' It is a case of moral degeneration.”

“What else do you gather of Dr. Doyle?” I asked.

Mr. Holmes yawned.

“He is evidently a smoker; for your smoker always attributes the odious vice to his hero (I need hardly say I never touch tobacco). It is clear too he is not a teetotaler.”

“One word more, and I have done: Should you say Dr. Doyle was young or old?”

Mr. Holmes got up and stretched himself. “I need only refer you to the colour of the book.”

(Writing as Cunnin Toil)

THE FULL AND
diverse life of Rudolph Chambers Lehmann (1856–1929) included several separate careers. He entered the Henley Royal Regatta for twelve straight years (1877–1888) and finished dead last in every heat in which he competed; nonetheless, he wrote
The Complete Oarsman
(1908), for many years the standard text on the subject, and was a coach at Oxford, Cambridge, Trinity (Dublin), and Harvard.

He was a member of the bar and the High Sheriff of Buckinghamshire, where the family had a house large enough to be given a name, Fieldhead, and was elected to serve in Parliament from 1906 to 1910 as a member of the Liberal Party. But it is as a literary figure that he is most remembered today. A founder of
Granta
while an undergraduate at Cambridge University in 1889, a magazine that continues to flourish today, he was also a frequent contributor to the British humor magazine
Punch
for thirty years, producing light verse, parodies, and sketches, soon being added to the editorial staff. The Picklock Holes stories, the first series of Sherlock Holmes parodies, were published from August to November 1894 and were collected in book form as
The Adventures of Picklock Holes
in 1901. Other works collected from his contributions to
Punch
are
A Spark Divine: A Book for Animal-Lovers
(1913) and
The Vagabond and Other Poems from
Punch (1918).

“The Duke's Feather” was first published in the August 19, 1893, issue of
Punch
; it was first published in book form under the author's real name in
The Adventures of Picklock Holes
(London, Bradbury, Agnew, 1901).