The Misadventures of Sherlock Holmes Read online

  We have also—this time without regret—omitted a translation of the numerous “Sherlock Ol-mes” pastiches counterfeited, so to speak, in the pulp-factories of Barcelona. These were written by anonymous hacks and spread throughout the Spanish-language countries of the world. You will understand our restraint when you read the following synopsis, generously supplied by that indefatigable enthusiast, Mr. Anthony Boucher. It is a typical example of what happened to Holmes in Memorias Últimas—a potboiler-potpourn of sex and sensation titled Jack, El Destripador (Jack the Ripper).

  The story opens in the office of Mr. Warm [sic], chief of police of London. Holmes has just returned from handling a delicate affair in Italy, and Warm brings him up to date on the latest development in London crime: Jack the Ripper. There have been 37 (!) victims so far—all women.

  Holmes’s ancient rival, detective Murphy, enters with news of the 38th—the singer Lilian Bell. After a crude exchange of insults, Holmes and Murphy agree to a wager as to who will catch the Ripper. The stakes are £1000, to which Warm adds 25 bottles of champagne for the winner.

  Next we see the bedroom of the fair Lilian, with her disembowelled corpse tastefully arranged amid flowers on the bed. Her maid, Harriette Blunt, is disconsolate. Her brother, Grover Bell, is wondering about her will. Josias Wakefield, representative of the Requiescat in Pace Funeral Directors, calls to measure the body. His activities are curious, including the discovery of Lilian’s false tooth and the deduction from it that she smoked opium. He drops his magnifying glass under the bed and there finds a disguised individual whom he recognizes as Murphy. Murphy clenches his fist and rages:

  “Man, or rather devil, I know you! You are—you are—”

  “Sherlock Holmes, detective, at your service,” said the other laughing. And vanished.

  Holmes next disguises himself as an opium addict, to the admiring amazement of his assistant, Harry Taxon (!), and slips out of his house to keep such a disreputable masquerade from his landlady, Mrs. Bonnet (!). He visits an opium den run by a half-caste Mrs. Cajana, secures opium from her, and then blackmails her for information on the threat of exposing her racket. He learns that Lilian Bell was a customer, and that Mrs. Cajana gets her drugs from a mysterious person known to her only as “The Indian Doctor.” Suddenly a scream is heard from the next room. They dash in and find a beautiful damsel with her belly ripped open. Holmes spies the Ripper escaping, pursues him, but the Ripper makes good his flight by daringly jumping aboard a moving train.

  Holmes identifies the latest (and 39th) victim by her custom-built shoes as Comtesse de Malmaison. He visits her father, the Marquis, a harsh old gentleman who thinks his daughter’s death served her right if she spent her time in opium dens.

  Holmes questions the Comtesse’s maid. She tells him that the Comtesse used the opium den as a blind—to cover up assignations with her American riding instructor, Carlos Lake.

  Holmes grills Lake and learns that the only other person who knew of this arrangement was Dr. Roberto Fitzgerald, a prominent and respectable West End physician of Indian antecedents, who had made an appointment to meet the Comtesse at Mrs. Cajana s. The Doctor was to examine the Comtesse for a contemplated abortion.

  Holmes shadows the Doctor’s wife—

  “When you wish to learn a man’s

  secrets, you must follow his wife,”

  and witnesses a lover’s tryst in Hyde Park between her and Captain Harry Thomson. He overhears Ruth Fitzgerald, the Doctor’s wife, arrange to flee from her brutal, half-mad husband and take refuge with her lover’s mother.

  Holmes then disguises himself as a retired soap manufacturer named Patrick O’Connor, calls on Dr. Fitzgerald, and warns him of his wife’s elopement. The Doctor has a fit, literally, and denounces all the tribe of Eve as serpents that must be destroyed. He has a terrible scene with Ruth, after which he quiets himself with a shot of morphine.

  Holmes next disguises himself as Ruth Fitzgerald (!)—

  “Englishwomen are usually slender rather than full-

  fleshed, and their stature is at times surprisingly tall.”

  He manoeuvers Ruth away from her rendezvous and saunters along “with that special gait with which public women stroll the street.” Dr. Fitzgerald comes along and recognizes “him.”

  “My wife—on the streets!”

  And the Ripper emerges full blast. He attacks Holmes but is frustrated; the detective has wisely donned a steel cuirasse.

  Meanwhile, back in Warm’s office, the chief of police is listening to Murphy’s report. Holmes, still looking like a loose woman (even more so), drags in Dr. Fitzgerald, and Murphy acknowledges that he has lost the bet.

  Further comment, you’ll agree, is unnecessary.

  We have omitted too John Chapman’s The Unmasking of Sherlock Holmes, because this pastiche is devoted primarily to subtle literary criticism rather than to story.[16] In this article which appeared in “The Critic,” issue of February 1905, Mr. Chapman reports an imaginary conversation between the two greatest detectives in print—C. Auguste Dupin and Sherlock Holmes.

  Dupin, appearing suddenly in the rooms on Baker Street, strikes terror into the heart of Holmes, who looked “at the little Frenchman on the threshold as if M. Dupin had been a ghost.” Dupin accuses Holmes of filching “the product of another’s brain and palming it off as his own.”

  Holmes admits that “it looks like a bad case against me. I’ve drawn freely upon you, M. Dupin.” And Dupin, with a last admonition to Holmes not to overwork the exaggerated reports of his death, vanishes, leaving Holmes as shamefaced as a schoolboy caught with stolen apples.

  The debt Holmes owed to Dupin—rather, that Doyle owed to Poe—is not a moot point. The first person to admit it was Sir Arthur Cohan Doyle himself. In his Preface to the Author’s Edition of 1903 (comparatively unknown in the United States), Doyle frankly revealed this indebtedness when, like the great and true gentleman he was, he stated that “Edgar Allan Poe was the father of the detective tale, and covered its limits so completely that I fail to see how his followers can find any fresh ground they can confidently call their own . . . The writer sees the footmarks of Poe always in front of him . . . I can only claim the very limited credit of doing it from a fresh model and from a new point of view.”

  But it is to Doyle’s everlasting fame that while he took up where Poe left off, his “fresh model” of the immortal Dupin performed the impossible feat of achieving even greater immortality.

  Further omissions, listed for the benefit of those who have a passion for completeness, include:

  James L. Ford’s The Story of Bishop Johnson, in “The Pocket Magazine,” issue of November 1895

  Allen Upwards The Adventure of the Stolen Doormat, a parody of a certain “criminal specialist in Baker Street” who signed himself H-lm-s, in the author’s book, The Wonderful Career of Ebenezer Lobb, London, Hurst and Blackett, 1900

  Charlton Andrews’s The Bound of the Astorbilts and The Resources of Mycroft Holmes, in “The Bookman,” issues of June 1902 and December 1903, respectively

  J. Alston Cooper’s Dr. Watson’s Wedding Present, in “The Bookman,” issue of February 1903

  George F. Forrest’s The Adventure of the Diamond Necklace in Misfits: A Book of Parodies, Oxford, Harvey, 1905, featuring detective Warlock Bones and narrator Goswell, the latter name obviously a “switch” on Boswell rather than on Watson

  Robin Dunbar’s Sherlock Holmes Up-to-Date, a socialistic satire in the detective business, Chicago, Kerr, 1909

  Maurice Baring’s From the Diary of Sherlock Holmes, which first appeared in “Eye-Witness” (London), November 23,1911, then in “The Living Age” (U.S.), June 20, 1912, and finally in the author’s book, lost diaries, London, Duckworth, 1913

  Cornelis Veth’s De Allerlaatste Avonturen Van Sir Sherlock Holmes (The Very Last Adventures of Sir Sherlock Holmes), Leiden, 1912—a book of parodies containing The Moving Picture Theatre, The Adventure of the Bloody Post Parcel, The Adventur
e of the Singular Advertisement, and The Adventure of the Mysterious Tom-Cat, the last a burlesque of The Hound of The Baskervilles changed to “The Tom-Cat of the Cookervilles”

  James Francis Thierry’s The Adventure of the Eleven Cuff-buttons, New York, Neale, 1918, a long novelette in which Hemlock Holmes triumphs over Inspector Letstrayed

  J. Storer Clouston’s The Truthful Lady, a parody of Dr. Watson with Sherlock Holmes present only in spirit, in the author’s book, Carrington’s Cases, Edinburgh, Blackwood, 1920

  H.F. Heard’s A Taste for Honey, New York, Vanguard, 1941, and reply paid, New York, Vanguard, 1942, in which the name Sherlock Holmes is never mentioned; but the detective, who calls himself Mr. Mycroft, is none other than The One and Only in beekeeping retirement

  The publication of this anthology marks the first time the great parodies and pastiches of that “Extraordinary Man,” as Mark Twain affectionately called him, have been collected in a single volume.

  Why no one thought of doing it before, we shall never understand. But we are grateful the task has been left for us. Perhaps it was ordained that way from the beginning, by Someone who looks after twelve-year-old boys; perhaps this is a token-payment for the moment that, early or late, comes only once in a lifetime.

  Ellery Queen

  HOLMES, Sherlock; b. area 1854, grandson of sister of the French military painter Vernet, younger brother of Mycroft Holmes. Unmarried. Educ. College graduate, irregular student in chemical and anatomical classes of London University at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, London; while a student devised new test for bloodstains, replacing old guaiacum test, through reagent precipitated by hemoglobin and no other substance; private consultive practice begun circa 1887 and continued 23 years; after disappearance and reported death, May 1, 1891, explored Tibet and penetrated Lhassa as a Norwegian named Sigerson, visiting Persia, Mecca and Khartoum before returning to professional practice in London, April, 1894, to complete the destruction of Professor Moriartys criminal gang; retired circa 1903 to small farm upon Sussex Downs five miles from Eastbourne, devoting himself to bee-keeping and giving up professional work except for a mysterious mission to Shantung, 1914, for the Admiralty, clearing up the death of Fitzroy McPherson, and a German espionage case, 1912-1914, which caused him to reside at various times in Chicago, Buffalo and Skibbareen, Ireland, under the name Altamont; received Congressional Medal for services to U. S. Government in so-called “Adventure of the American Ambassador and the Thermite Bullet”; diamond sword from King Albert of Belgium, 1916; and Versailles Plaque (with palms). Club: Diogenes. Author: Monographs, “Upon the Typewriter and Its Relation to Crime”; “Upon the Distinction Between the Ashes of the Various Tobaccos—140 Forms of Cigar, Cigarette and Pipe Tobaccos” ill. with colored plates; “Upon the Influence of a Trade on the Form of a Hand,” ill. with lithotypes; “Upon the Tracing of Footsteps”; “Upon the Dating of Documents”, “Upon Tattoo Marfa”; “Upon the Polyphonic Motets of Lassus” and “Upon Variations in the Human Ear” (two issues of “The Anthropological Journal”); two short accounts of cases: “The Adventure of the Blanched Soldier” and “The Adventure of the Lions Mane”; “The Book of Life,” a magazine article on the theory of deduction, published anonymously, “Practical Handbook of Bee Culture with Some Observations on the Segregation of the Queen.” Assistant and narrator: Dr. John H. Watson. For celebrated cases see: A Study in Scarlet (1887); The Sign of [the] Four (1890); The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892); Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (1894), The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902); The Return of Sherlock Holmes (1905); The Valley of Fear (1915); His Last Bow (1917); The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes (1927). Hobbies: The violin, medieval music, boxing, fencing, bee-keeping, sharpshooting and criminal law. Indulgences: cocaine, morphine and shag tobacco. Residences: Montague Street, near the British Museum, London till x88i; 221B Baker St., London till 1903, Sussex and, later, Devonshire.

  Prepared by Kenneth Macgowan

  Detective: SHERLAW KOMBS

  Narrator: WHATSON

  THE GREAT PEGRAM MYSTERY

  by ROBERT BARR

  Here is one of the earliest—and still, in your Editors’ opinion, one of the finest—parodies of Sherlock Holmes. It appeared less than a year after the publication of the first Sherlock Holmes short story.

  “The Great Pegram Mystery” has an interesting bibliographic history. It broke into print in the May 1892 issue of “The Idler Magazine” (London and New York, edited—do you remember?—by Jerome K. Jerome and Robert Barr. Originally it was called “Detective Stories Gone Wrong: The Adventures of Sherlaw Kombs and was signed by the pen-name of Luke Sharp. Two years later, under its present title, it appeared in Robert Barr’s book of short stories, The Face and the Mask (London, Hutchinson, 1894; New York, Stokes, 1895)—and thus the true authorship was acknowledged.

  Mr. Barr’s parody reveals a shrewd grasp of the character of Sherlock Holmes and an equally penetrating comprehension of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s style. You will recognize the inexorable sequence of idiosyncrasies and events—the violin, the contempt for Scotland Yard, the anticipated visitor, the extraordinary deductions, and the minute examination of the scene of the crime by magnifying glass. Alas! only the solution fails to follow the time-honored pattern!

  It is especially fitting that Air. Barr’s burlesque be the chronological leader in our Pageant of Parodies. For Air. Barr made his indelible mark in serious detective fiction too. His historically important book, The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont (London, Hurst & Blackett, 1906; New York, Appleton, 1906), gave us “The Absent-Minded Coterie”, one of the truly great classics among detective short stories.

  I dropped in on my friend, Sherlaw Kombs, to hear what he had to say about the Pegram mystery, as it had come to be called in the newspapers. I found him playing the violin with a look of sweet peace and serenity on his face, which I never noticed on the countenances of those within hearing distance. I knew this expression of seraphic calm indicated that Kombs had been deeply annoyed about something. Such, indeed, proved to be the case, for one of the morning papers had contained an article eulogizing the alertness and general competence of Scotland Yard. So great was Sherlaw Kombs’s contempt for Scotland Yard that he never would visit Scotland during his vacations, nor would he ever admit that a Scotchman was fit for anything but export.

  He generously put away his violin, for he had a sincere liking for me, and greeted me with his usual kindness.

  “I have come,” I began, plunging at once into the matter on my mind, “to hear what you think of the great Pegram mystery.”

  “I haven’t heard of it,” he said quietly, just as if all London were not talking of that very thing. Kombs was curiously ignorant on some subjects, and abnormally learned on others. I found, for instance, that political discussion with him was impossible, because he did not know who Salisbury and Gladstone were. This made his friendship a great boon.

  “The Pegram mystery has baffled even Gregory, of Scotland Yard.”

  “I can well believe it,” said my friend, calmly. “Perpetual motion, or squaring the circle, would baffle Gregory. He’s an infant, is Gregory.”

  This was one of the things I always liked about Kombs. There was no professional jealousy in him, such as characterizes so many other men.

  He filled his pipe, threw himself into his deep-seated arm-chair, placed his feet on the mantel, and clasped his hands behind his head.

  “Tell me about it,” he said simply.

  “Old Barrie Kipson,” I began, “was a stock-broker in the City. He lived in Pegram, and it was his custom to “Come In!” shouted Kombs, without changing his position, but with a suddenness that startled me. I had heard no knock.

  “Excuse me,” said my friend, laughing, “my invitation to enter was a trifle premature. I was really so interested in your recital that I spoke before I thought, which a detective should never do. The fact is, a man will be here in a moment who will tell me all about this crime, and so you will be spared fur
ther effort in that line.”

  “Ah, you have an appointment. In that case I will not intrude,” I said, rising.

  “Sit down; I have no appointment, I did not know until I spoke that he was coming.”

  I gazed at him in amazement. Accustomed as I was to his extraordinary talents, the man was a perpetual surprise to me. He continued to smoke quietly, but evidently enjoyed my consternation.

  “I see you are surprised. It is really too simple to talk about, but, from my position opposite the mirror, I can see the reflection of objects in the street. A man stopped, looked at one of my cards, and then glanced across the street. I recognized my card, because, as you know, they are all in scarlet. If, as you say, London is talking of this mystery, it naturally follows that he will talk of it, and the chances are he wished to consult with me upon it. Anyone can see that, besides there is always—Come in!”

  There was a rap at the door this time.

  A stranger entered. Sherlaw Kombs did not change his lounging attitude.

  “I wish to see Mr. Sherlaw Kombs, the detective,” said the stranger, coming within the range of the smoker’s vision.