The Big Book of Sherlock Holmes Stories (26 page)

“Quick!” said Holmes, “after him!”

We both ran in the same direction as fast as we could. Hindered by the darkness and by our unfamiliarity with the ground, however, we made poor progress. The fleeing choir-master and his two strange pursuers had already vanished into the gloom of the cathedral. When at last we entered the building the sound of hurrying footsteps far above us was all we could hear. Then, as we paused, for an instant at fault, there came another dreadful cry, and then silence.

Men with lights burst into the cathedral and led us up the staircase toward the tower. The twisting ascent was a long business, and I knew from Holmes's face that he dreaded what we might find at the top. When we reached the top there lay the choir-master, Jasper, overpowered and bound by Mr. Tartar. The latter, then, had been one of the men I had seen behind the monument.

“Where is Neville?” said Holmes quickly.

Tartar shook his head and pointed below.

“This man,” said he, indicating Jasper, “fought with him, and now I fear he really has a murder to answer for.”

One of the men in the group which had followed us to the top stepped forward and looked down toward Jasper. It was the man whom we had seen step out of the tomb. I started when I saw that except for the wig and a few changes in his costume it was the same man who had called himself “Datchery.”

Jasper gazed up at him and his face was distorted with fear.

“Ned! Ned!” he cried, and hid his face on the stone floor.

“Yes, yer may hide yer face,” said old Durdles, trembling with rage, “yer thought yer had murdered him,—murdered Mr. Edwin Drood, yer own nephew. Yer hocussed him with liquor fixed with pizen, same's yer tried to hocus Durdles, an' tried to burn him up with quicklime in the tomb. But Durdles found him, Durdles did.”

He advanced and would have ground the head of the prostrate choir-master under his heel, if some men had not held him back.

“Of course,” said Holmes to me on the train back to London next morning, “no one in Cloisterham thought of suspecting the eminently respectable Mr. Jasper. They started with the presumption of his innocence. He was a possible object of suspicion to me from the first. This was because he was one of the two men who last saw Edwin Drood. When we had our interview with him—Jasper, I mean—I recognized him as the frequenter of a disreputable opium den near the docks. You may remember that I have had occasion to look into such places in one other little problem we studied together. He was, then, leading a double life. That was as far as I had gone when I returned to London last night. But while there I had a talk with Mr. Grewgious, as well as with poor young Landless and his sister. From them I learned that Jasper was in love with his nephew's betrothed, and had, indeed, been persecuting her with his attentions, both before and after Edwin's disappearance. From Mr. Grewgious's manner I became convinced that he, at any rate, viewed Jasper with profound suspicion. But he was a lawyer, and very cautious; he evidently had no certain proof. Other hints which were dropped led me to suspect that he was not mourning the death of young Drood.

“This was a curious thing—the whole crux to the mystery lay in it. I sat up all night, Watson, and consumed about four ounces of tobacco. It needed some thinking. Why, if Jasper had plotted murder, had he failed to carry it out? The opium, the opium, Watson—you know, yourself, that a confirmed opium-smoker is apt to fail, is almost sure to fail, in any great enterprise. He tries to nerve himself before the deed, and ten to one he merely stupefies himself, and the plot miscarries. This morning I saw Mr. Grewgious again, and charged him in so many words with keeping secret the fact that Drood was alive. He admitted it, and told me that Drood was in Cloisterham masquerading as Datchery.”

“But why should he do that?” I asked, “why did he let Neville rest under suspicion of murder?”

“Because he had no certain proof of Jasper's guilt,” said Holmes, “and he was trying to collect evidence against him. He was himself drugged when the attempt was made upon his life, he was rescued on that occasion by Durdles, and his disappearance was connived at by Mr. Grewgious. The lawyer further told me of the ring which Edwin Drood carried with him, and
which the would-be murderer overlooked when he took the watch and pin. Then, it was only necessary for me to drop a hint to Jasper about the ring. That sent him back to the tomb, into which he supposed he had flung Drood's body to be consumed by quicklime. There he found the living, and not the dead Edwin Drood, as you saw. But the opium was really the clew to the whole thing—I went to see the old hag who keeps the den he frequented, and learned from her that he babbled endlessly about the murder in his dreams. He had arrived at a point where he could not distinguish between the real attempt at murder and a vision. He acted as in a vision when he tried to commit the deed, and so it failed.

“As for your theory about Miss Landless being Datchery—well, my dear fellow, I am glad for the sake of that proper, clerical gentleman, Mr. Crisparkle, that his intended wife has not been masquerading in trousers at the Cloisterham inns. Poor Landless—I shall never forgive myself for his death. His murderer will meet the fate he richly deserves, without a doubt.

“And now, Watson, we were discussing bees. Have you ever heard of planting buckwheat near the hives? I am told they do wonderfully on buckwheat.”

Being the Only True Version of Holmes's Adventures

A. A. MILNE

FEW CHARACTERS IN
the world of children's literature are as beloved as Christopher Robin and Winnie-the-Pooh, created by Alan Alexander Milne (1882–1956) with four iconic books written for his son. Born in London, Milne went to Cambridge and became a journalist, eventually taking the position of assistant editor of
Punch
.

Although not a prolific writer of mystery fiction, he did produce one of the most influential detective novels of all time when he produced
The Red House Mystery
(1922) near the beginning of the golden age of detective fiction. In this popular book, described by Alexander Woollcott as “one of the three best mystery stories of all time,” Milne introduces the jolly, “oh, what fun!” approach to crime in the person of Antony Gillingham, a slightly zany amateur detective whose nickname is “Madman.” Milne's play
The Fourth Wall
(1928; U.S. title:
The Perfect Alibi
) was a success; the audience saw the murder committed and then witnessed every logical step taken to uncover and apprehend the criminal.

“The Rape of the Sherlock” was Milne's first published piece of fiction, as he recounts in his book
It's Too Late Now: the Autobiography of a Writer
(1939). He submitted it to
Punch
, which rejected it, but it was accepted by London's
Vanity Fair
. To describe it as trivial overpraises it. It is included here as a curiosity—nothing more.

“The Rape of the Sherlock: Being the Only True Version of Holmes's Adventures” was first published in the October 15, 1903, issue of London's
Vanity Fair
.

Being the Only True Version of Holmes's Adventures

A. A. Milne

IT WAS IN
the summer of last June that I returned unexpectedly to our old rooms in Baker Street. I had that afternoon had the unusual experience of calling on a patient, and in my nervousness and excitement had lost my clinical thermometer down his throat. To recover my nerve I had strolled over to the old place, and was sitting in my arm-chair thinking of my ancient wound, when all at once the door opened, and Holmes glided wistfully under the table. I sprang to my feet, fell over the Persian slipper containing the tobacco, and fainted. Holmes got into his dressing-gown and brought me to.

“Holmes,” I cried, “I thought you were dead.”

A spasm of pain shot across his mobile brow.

“Couldn't you trust me better than that?” he asked, sadly. “I will explain. Can you spare me a moment?”

“Certainly,” I answered. “I have an obliging friend who would take my practice for that time.”

He looked keenly at me for answer. “My dear, dear Watson,” he said, “you have lost your clinical thermometer.”

“My dear Holmes—” I began, in astonishment.

He pointed to a fairly obvious bulge in his throat.

“I was your patient,” he said.

“Is it going still?” I asked, anxiously.

“Going fast,” he said, in a voice choked with emotion.

A twinge of agony dashed across his mobile brow. (Holmes's mobility is a byword in military Clubs.) In a little while the bulge was gone.

“But why, my dear Holmes—”

He held up his hand to stop me, and drew out an old cheque-book.

“What would you draw from that?” he asked.

“The balance,” I suggested, hopefully.

“What conclusion I meant?” he snapped.

I examined the cheque-book carefully. It was one on Lloyd's Bank, half-empty, and very, very old. I tried to think what Holmes would have deduced, but with no success. At last, determined to have a dash for my money, I said:

“The owner is a Welshman.”

Holmes smiled, picked up the book, and made the following rapid diagnosis of the case:

“He is a tall man, right-handed, and a good boxer; a genius on the violin, with an unrivalled knowledge of criminal London, extraordinary powers of perception, a perfectly enormous brain; and, finally, he has been hiding for some considerable time.”

“Where?” I asked, too interested to wonder how he had deduced so much from so little.

“In Portland.”

He sat down, snuffed the ash of my cigar, and remarked:

“Ah! Flor—de—Dindigul—I—see,—do—you—follow—me—Watson?” Then, as he pulled down his “Encyclopaedia Britannica” from its crate, he added:

“It is my own cheque-book.”

“But Moriarty?” I gasped.

“There is no such man,” he said. “It is merely the name of a soup.”

ONE OF THE
most popular and beloved humorists of the twentieth century, Sir Pelham “Plum” Grenville Wodehouse (1881–1975) had a long, illustrious, and prolific literary career that began with works in several genres, including straightforward detective stories. “From a Detective's Notebook” is similar to some of his later ventures into the literature of mystery or crime, which are generally nonsensical, such as
Hot Water
(1932),
Pigs Have Wings
(1952), and
Do Butlers Burgle Banks?
(1968).

As a young man he became a banker, but by the time he was twenty-two, he was earning more as a writer than as a banker and resigned to devote his full time to producing short stories, novels, and occasional pieces, which he did with enormous success for the next seven decades. His first novel was
The Pothunters
(1902), but his greatest creations, the Hon. Bertie Wooster and his friend and valet, Jeeves, did not make their appearance until
The Saturday Evening Post
published “Extricating Young Gussie” in 1915. Wooster is the good-hearted but intellectually challenged young man who ceaselessly finds himself in difficulties with his aunt, a girl, or the law, relying on Jeeves to get him out of trouble.

For much of his life, Wodehouse spent half his time in America and half in England; he became a U.S. citizen in 1955. He wrote scores of screenplays and teleplays beginning in 1930, and provided the book and lyrics for numerous musicals, including
Anything Goes
(1934), for which he wrote the book with Guy Bolton; Cole Porter wrote the music and lyrics.

Shortly before his death, he was given a knighthood as Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II.

“From a Detective's Notebook” was first published in the May 1959 issue of
Punch
; it was first collected in
The World of Mr. Mulliner
(London, Barrie & Jenkins, 1972).

WE WERE SITTING
round the club fire, old General Malpus, Driscoll the QC, young Freddie ffinch-ffinch and myself, when Adrian Mulliner, the private investigator, gave a soft chuckle. This was, of course, in the smoking-room, where soft chuckling is permitted.

“I wonder,” he said, “if it would interest you chaps to hear the story of what I always look upon as the greatest triumph of my career?”

We said No, it wouldn't, and he began.

“Looking back over my years as a detective, I recall many problems the solution of which made me modestly proud, but though all of them undoubtedly presented certain features of interest and tested my powers to the utmost, I can think of none of my feats of ratiocination which gave me more pleasure than the unmasking of the man Sherlock Holmes, now better known as the Fiend of Baker Street.”

Here General Malpus looked at his watch, said “Bless my soul,” and hurried out, no doubt to keep some appointment which had temporarily slipped his mind.

“I had at first so little to go on,” Adrian Mulliner proceeded. “But just as a brief sniff at a handkerchief or shoe will start one of Mr. Thurber's bloodhounds giving quick service, so is the merest suggestion of anything that I might call fishy enough to set me off on the trail, and what first aroused my suspicions of this sinister character was his peculiar financial position.

“Here we had a man who evidently was obliged to watch the pennies closely, for when we are introduced to him he is, according to Doctor Watson's friend Stamford, ‘bemoaning himself because he could not find someone to go halves with him in some nice rooms which he had found and which were too much for his purse.' Watson offers himself as a fellow lodger, and they settle down in—I quote—‘a couple of comfortable bedrooms and a large sitting-room at 221
B
Baker Street.'

“Now I never lived in Baker Street at the turn of the century, but I knew old gentlemen who had done so, and they assured me that in those days you could get a bedroom and sitting-room and three meals a day for a pound a week. An extra bedroom no doubt made the thing come higher, but thirty shillings must have covered the rent, and there was never a question of a man as honest as Doctor Watson failing to come up with his fifteen each Saturday. It followed, then, that even allowing for expenditure in the way of Persian slippers, tobacco, disguises, revolver cartridges, cocaine, and spare fiddle-strings, Holmes would have been getting by on a couple of pounds or so weekly. And with this modest state of life he appeared to be perfectly content. In a position where you or I would have spared no effort to add to our resources he simply did not bother about the financial side of his profession. Let us take a few instances at random and see what he made as a ‘consulting detective.' Where are you going, Driscoll?”

“Out,” said the QC, suiting action to the word.

Adrian Mulliner resumed his tale.

“In the early days of their association Watson
speaks of being constantly bundled off into his bedroom because Holmes needed the sitting-room for interviewing callers. ‘I have to use this room as a place of business,' he said, ‘and these people are my clients.' And who were these clients? ‘A grey-headed, seedy visitor, who was closely followed by a slipshod elderly woman,' and after these came ‘a railway porter in his velveteen uniform.' Not much cash in that lot, and things did not noticeably improve later, for we find his services engaged by a stenographer, an average commonplace British tradesman, a commissionaire, a City clerk, a Greek interpreter, a landlady (‘You arranged an affair for a lodger of mine last year') and a Cambridge undergraduate.

“So far from making money as a consulting detective, he must have been a good deal out of pocket most of the time. In
A Study in Scarlet
Inspector Gregson says there has been a bad business during the night at 3 Lauriston Gardens off the Brixton Road and he would esteem it a great kindness if Holmes would favour him with his opinions. Off goes Holmes in a hansom from Baker Street to Brixton, a fare of several shillings, dispatches a long telegram (another two or three bob to the bad), summons ‘half a dozen of the dirtiest and most ragged street Arabs that ever I clapped eyes on,' and gives each of them a shilling, and finally, calling on Police Constable Bunce, the officer who discovered the body, takes half a sovereign from his pocket and after ‘playing with it pensively' presents it to the constable. The whole affair must have cost him considerably more than a week's rent at Baker Street, and no hope of getting it back from Inspector Gregson, for Gregson, according to Holmes himself, was one of the smartest of the Scotland Yarders.

“Inspector Gregson! Inspector Lestrade! These clients! I found myself thinking a good deal about them, and it was not long before the truth dawned upon me that they were merely cheap actors, hired to deceive Doctor Watson. For what would the ordinary private investigator have said to himself when starting out in business? He would have said, ‘Before I take on work for a client I must be sure that that client has the stuff. The daily sweetener and the little something down in advance are of the essence,' and would have had those landladies and those Greek interpreters out of that sitting-room before you could say ‘blood-stain.' Yet Holmes, who could not afford a pound a week for lodgings, never bothered. Significant?”

On what seemed to me the somewhat shallow pretext that he had to see a man about a dog, Freddie ffinch-ffinch now excused himself and left the room.

“Later,” Adrian Mulliner went on, “the thing became absolutely farcical, for all pretence that he was engaged in a gainful occupation was dropped by himself and the clients. I quote Doctor Watson: ‘He tossed a crumpled letter across to me. It was dated from Montague Place upon the preceding evening and run thus:

Dear Mr. Holmes,—I am very anxious to consult you as to whether or not I should accept a situation which has been offered me as a governess. I shall call at half past ten tomorrow if I do not inconvenience you
.

Yours faithfully
,

Violet Hunter

“Now, the fee an investigator could expect from a governess, even one in full employment, could scarcely be more than a few shillings, yet when two weeks later Miss Hunter wired ‘please be at the Black Swan Hotel at Winchester at midday to-morrow,' Holmes dropped everything and sprang into the 9:30 train.”

Adrian Mulliner paused and chuckled softly.

“You see where all this is heading?”

I said No, I didn't. I was the only one there, and had to say something.

“Tut, tut, man! You know my methods. Apply them. Why is a man casual about money?”

“Because he has a lot of it.”

“Precisely.”

“But you said Holmes hadn't.”

“I said nothing of the sort. That was merely the illusion he was trying to create.”

“Why?”

“Because he needed a front for his true activities. Sherlock Holmes had no need to worry about fees. He was pulling in the stuff in sackfulls from another source. Where is the big money? Where has it always been! In crime. Bags of it, and no income tax. If you want to salt away a few million for a rainy day you don't spring into 9:30 trains to go and see governesses, you become a master criminal, sitting like a spider in the centre of its web and egging your corps of assistants on to steal jewels and naval treaties.”

“You mean…”

“Exactly. He was Professor Moriarty.”

“What was that name again?”

“Professor Moriarty.”

“The bird with the reptilian head?”

“That's right.”

“But Holmes hadn't a reptilian head.”

“Nor had Moriarty.”

“Holmes said he had.”

“And to whom? To Watson. So as to get the description given publicity. Watson never saw Moriarty. All he knew about him was what Holmes told him. Well, that's the story, old man.”

“The whole story?”

“Yes.”

“There isn't any more?”

“No.”

I chuckled softly.