The Big Book of Sherlock Holmes Stories (83 page)

“By leaving me, my dear chap,” said Combs. “I am expecting a lady—er—an important client—at almost any moment, and her case is too private even for your ears.”

And as I descended the stairs I heard him tuning his beloved 'cello, the gift—er—yes——

(Writing as A. Conan Watson, M.D.)

OF THE MANY
clever ideas of the great American humorist John Kendrick Bangs (1862–1922), none equaled his notion of “condensed novels.” He published
Potted Fiction
(1908) with the subtitle
Being a series of extracts from the world's bestsellers put up in thin slices for hurried consumers
.

In his foreword, Bangs notes that “This library of Condensed Best Sellers is designed to meet the literary needs of those who have troubles of their own so numerous that they have not much spare time to devote to the trials and tribulations of the heroes and heroines of the hour. It is the purpose of the United States Literary Canning Company, of Pennsylvania, to put up in small packages, of which this is a sample, the most talked of literary products of our best, if not most famous, authors.”

And thus was born
Reader's Digest
. Well, no, not really, but the spoof produced by Bangs is only slightly different from that enormously successful publishing enterprise. The concept was clearly a popular one, as the following testimonials illustrate.

From the mayor of Squantumville, S.D.: “Since using six cans of your
Potted Fiction
our Common Council has closed the Carnegie Library as superfluous.” And from an insomniac of twenty years: “Your literary capsules have just arrived, and they are a revelation. I took two upon retiring last night, and have not waked up since. Many thanks.”

“A Pragmatic Enigma” was first published in the magazine section of the April 19, 1908, issue of
The New York Herald
; it was first collected in book form in
Potted Fiction
(New York, Doubleday, Page & Co., 1908).

IT WAS A
drizzly morning in November. Holmes and I had just arrived at Boston, where he was to lecture that night on “The Relation of Cigar Stumps to Crime” before the Browning Club of the Back Bay, and he was playfully indulging in some deductive pranks at my expense.

“You are a doctor by profession, with a slight leaning toward literature,” he observed, rolling up a small pill for his opium pipe and placing it in the bowl. “You have just come on a long journey over the ocean and have finished up with a five hour trip on the New York, New Haven, and Hartford Railroad. You were brushed off by a coloured porter and rewarded him with a sixpence taken from your right hand vest pocket before leaving the train. You came from the station in a cab, accompanied by a very handsome and famous Englishman; ate a lunch of baked beans and brown bread, opening with a Martini cocktail, and you are now wondering which one of the Boston newspapers pays the highest rates for press notices.”

“Marvellous! Marvellous!” I cried. “How on earth do you know all this?”—for it was every bit of it true.

“It is the thing that we see the most clearly that we perceive the more quickly, my dear Watson,” he replied, with a deprecatory gesture. “To begin with, I know you are a doctor because I have been a patient of yours for many years. That you have an inclination toward literature is shown by the fact that the nails on the fingers of your right hand are broken off short by persistent banging on the keys of a typewriting machine, which you carry with you wherever you go and with which you keep me awake at night, whether we are at a hotel or traveling on a sleeping car. If this were not enough to prove it I can clinch the fact by calling your attention to the other fact that I pay you a salary to write me up and can produce signed receipts on demand.”

“Wonderful,” said I, “but how did you know I had come on a long journey, partly by sea and partly by rail on a road which you specify?”

“It is simplicity itself,” returned Holmes warily. “I crossed on the steamer with you. As for the railroad, the soot that still remains in your ears and mottles your nose is identical with that which decorates my own features. Having got mine on the New Haven and Hartford, I deduce that you got yours there also. As for the coloured porter, they have only coloured porters on those trains for the reason that they show the effects of dust and soot less than white porters would. That he brushed you off is shown by the streaks of gray on your white vest where his brush left its marks. Over your vest pocket is the mark of your thumb, showing that you reached into that pocket for the only bit of coin you possessed, a sixpence.”

“You are a marvel,” I murmured. “And the cab?”

“The top of your beaver hat is ruffled the wrong way where you rubbed it on the curtain roller as you entered the cab,” said Holmes. “The handsome and famous Englishman who accompanied you is obvious. I am he, and am therefore sure of my deduction.”

“But the lunch, Holmes, the lunch, with the beans and the cocktail,” I cried.

“Can you deny them?” he demanded.

“No, I cannot,” I replied, for to tell the truth his statement of the items was absolutely correct. “But how, how my dear fellow, can you have deduced a bean? That's what stumps me.”

Holmes laughed.

“You are not observant, my dear Watson,” he said. “How could I help knowing when I paid the bill?”

In proof he tossed me the luncheon cheque, and there it was, itemised in full.

“Aha!” I cried. “But how do you know that I am wondering which one of the Boston papers pays the best rates for press notices?”

“That,” said he, “is merely a guess, my dear Watson. I don't know it, but I do know you.”

And this was the man they had said was losing his powers!

At this moment there came a timid knock on our door.

“A would-be client,” said Holmes. “The timidity of his knock shows that he is not a reporter. If it were the chambermaid, knowing that there were gentlemen in the room she would have entered without knocking. He is a distinguished man, also, who does not wish it known that he is calling, for if it were otherwise he would have been announced on the telephone from the office—a Harvard professor, I take it, for no other kind of living creature in Boston would admit that there was anything he did not know, and therefore no other kind of a Bostonian would seek my assistance. Come in.”

The door opened and a rather distinguished looking old gentleman carrying a suit case and an umbrella entered.

“Good morning, professor,” said Holmes, rising and holding out his right hand in genial fashion and taking his visitor's hat with his left. “How are things out at Cambridge this morning?”

“Marvellous! Marvellous!” ejaculated the visitor, infringing somewhat on my copyright, in fact taking the very words out of my mouth. “How did you know I was a professor at Harvard?”

“By the matriculation mark on your right forefinger,” said Holmes, “and also by the way in which you carry your umbrella, which you hold not as if it were a walking stick, but as if it were a pointer with which you were about to demonstrate something on a chart, for the benefit of a number of football players taking a four years' course in Life, at an institution of learning. Moreover, your address is pasted in your hat, which I have just taken from you and placed on the table. You have come to me for assistance, and your entanglement is purely intellectual, not spiritual. You have not committed a crime nor are you the victim of one—I can tell that by looking at your eyes, which are red, not with weeping, but from reading and writing. The tear ducts have not been used for years. Hence I judge that you have written a book, and after having published it, you suddenly discover that you don't know what it means yourself, and inasmuch as the critics over the country are beginning to ask you to explain it you are in a most embarrassing position. You must either keep silent, which is a great trial to a college professor, especially a Harvard professor, or you must acknowledge that you cannot explain—a dreadful alternative. In that bag you have the original manuscript of the book, which you desire to leave with me, in order that I may read it and if possible detect the thought, tell you what it is, and thus rid you of your dilemma.”

“You are a wonderful man, Mr. Holmes,” began our visitor, “but if you will let me—”

“One moment, please,” said Holmes, eying the other closely. “Let us deduce next, if possible, just who you are. First let us admit that you are the author of a recently published book which nobody understands. Now, what is that book? It cannot be ‘Six Months' by Helinor Quinn, for you are a gentleman, and no gentleman would have written a book of that character. Moreover, everybody knows just what that book means. The book we are after is one that cannot be understood without the assistance of a master like
myself. Who writes such books? You may safely assert that the only books that nobody can understand these days are written by one James—Henry James. So far so good. But you are not Henry James, for Henry James is now in London translating his earlier works into Esperanto. Now, a man cannot be in London and in Boston at one and the same time. What is the inevitable conclusion? You must be some other James!”

The hand of our visitor trembled slightly as the marvellous deductive powers of Holmes unfolded themselves.

“Murmarvellulous!” he stammered.

“Now, what James can you be if you are not Henry?” said Holmes. “And what book have you written that defies the interpretation of the ordinary mind hitherto fed on the classic output of Hall Caine, Laura Jean Libbey, and Gertrude Atherton? A search of the Six Best Sellers fails to reveal the answer. Therefore the work is not fiction. I do not recall seeing it on the table of the reading room downstairs, and it is not likely, then, to be statistical. It was not handed me to read in the barber shop while having my hair cut and my chin manicured, from which I deduce that it is not humour. It is likely, then, that it is a volume either of history or philosophy. Now, in this country to-day people are too busy taking care of the large consignments of history in the making that come every day from Washington in the form of newspaper dispatches to devote any time to the history that was made in the past, and it is therefore not at all probable that you would go to the expense of publishing a book dealing with it. What, then, must we conclude? To me it is clear that you are therefore a man named James who has written a book on philosophy which nobody understands but yourself, and even you—”

“Say no more!” cried our visitor, rising and walking excitedly about the room. “You are the most amazingly astonishing bit of stupefying dumfounderment that I have ever stared at!”

“In short,” continued Holmes, pointing his finger sternly at the other, “you are the man who wrote that airy trifle called ‘Pragmatism!' ”

There was silence for a moment, and then the Professor spoke up.

“I do not understand it at all,” he said.

“What, pragmatism?” asked Holmes with a chuckle.

“No, you,” returned the Professor coldly.

“Oh, it's all simple enough,” said Holmes. “You were pointed out to me in the dining room at luncheon time by the head waiter, and, besides, your name is painted on the end of your suit case. How could your identity escape me?”

“Nevertheless,” said the Professor, with a puzzled look on his face, “granted that you could deduce all these things as to my name, vocation, and so on, what could have given you the idea that I do not myself know what I meant when I wrote my book? Can you explain that?”

“That, my dear Professor, is the simplest of my deductions,” said Holmes. “I have read the book.”

Here the great man threw himself back in his chair and closed his eyes, and I, realising that I was about to be a witness of a memorable adventure, retired to an escritoire over by the window to take down in shorthand what Holmes said. The Professor, on the other hand, was walking nervously up and down the room.

“Well,” said he, “even if you have read it, what does that prove?”

“I will tell you,” said Holmes, going into one of his trances. “I read it first as a man should read a book, from first page to last, and when I got through I could not for the life of me detect your drift. A second reading in the same way left me more mystified than before, so I decided to read it backward. Inverted it was somewhat clarified but not convincing, so I tried to read it standing on my head, skipping alternate pages as I read forward, and taking in the omitted ones on the return trip. The only result of this was a nervous headache. But my blood was up. I vowed to detect your thought if it cost me my life. Removing the covers of the book, I cut the pages up into slips, each the size of a playing card, pasted these upon four packs of cards, shuffled them three times, cut them twice, dealt them to three imaginary friends
seated about a circular table and played an equally imaginary game of muggins with them, at the end of which I placed the four packs one on top of the other, shuffled them twice again, and sat down to read the pages in the resulting sequence. Still the meaning of pragmatism eluded me.”

There was a prolonged pause, interrupted only by the heavy breathing of the Professor.

“Go on,” he said hoarsely.

“Well,” said Holmes, “as a last resort I sent the book to a young friend of mine who runs a printing shop and had him set the whole thing in type, which I afterward pied, sweeping up the remains in a barrel and then drawing them out letter by letter, arranging them in the order in which they came. Of the result I drew galley proofs, and would you believe it, Professor, when I again proceeded to read your words the thing meant even less than it did before. From all of which I deduce that you did not know what pragmatism was, for if you had known the chances are you would have told us. Eh?”

I awaited the answer, looking out of the window, for the demolition of another man is not a pleasant thing to witness, even though it involves a triumph for one of our most respected and profitable heroes. Strange to say the answer did not come, and on turning to see the reason why I observed to my astonishment that Holmes and I were alone, and, what was worse, our visitor had vanished with both our suit cases and my overcoat as well.

Holmes, opening his eyes at the same moment, took in the situation as soon as I did and sprang immediately to the 'phone, but even as he took down the receiver the instrument rang of itself.

“Hello,” said he, impatiently.

“Is this Mr. Holmes?” came a voice.

“Yes,” replied the detective, irritably. “Hurry up and off the wire. I want to call the police. I've been robbed.”

“Yes, I know,” said the voice. “I'm the thief, Mr. Holmes. I wanted to tell you not to worry. Your stuff will be returned to you as soon as we have had it photographed for the illustration of an article in tonight's Boston Gazoozle. It will be on the newsstands in about an hour. Better read it; it's a corker; and much obliged to you for the material.”

“Well, I'll be blanked!” cried Holmes, the 'phone receiver dropping from his nerveless fingers. “I fear, my dear Watson, that, in the language of this abominable country, I've been stung!”

Two hours later the streets of Boston were ringing with the cries of newsboys selling copies of the five o'clock extra of the Evening Gazoozle, containing a most offensive article, with the following headlines:

DO DETECTIVES DETECT?

A GAZOOZLE REPORTER DISGUISED AS A HARVARD PROFESSOR

CALLS ON SHERLOCK HOLMES, ESQ.

AND GETS AWAY WITH TWO SUIT CASES

FULL OF THE GREAT DETECTIVE'S

PERSONAL EFFECTS, WHILE

DR. WATSON'S HERO

TELLS WHAT HE DOES NOT KNOW ABOUT