My reputation was at stake, so I said, significantly:
“Good! Good! I was merely trying one of my disguises on you, madame, and you were completely taken in. Of course no one would ever know me for Sherlock Holmes if I manifested such dullness.”
“Ah!” she said, her face lighting up. “You were merely deceiving me by appearing to be obtuse?”
“Of course,” said I. “I see the whole thing in a nutshell. You married an adventurer; he told you who he was, but you’ve never been able to prove it; and suddenly you are deserted by him, and on going over his wardrobe you find he has left nothing but these articles: and now you wish to sue him for a separation on the ground of desertion, and secure alimony if possible.”
It was a magnificent guess.
“That is it precisely,” said the lady. “Except as to the extent of his ‘leavings.’ In addition to the things you have he gave my small brother a brass bugle and a tin sword.”
“We may need to see them later,” said I. “At present I will do all I can for you on the evidence in hand. I have got my eye on a gentleman who wears silver-tinsel tights now, but I am afraid he is not the man we are after, because his hair is black, and, as far as I have been able to learn from his valet, he is utterly unacquainted with swan’s-down.”
We separated again and I went to the club to think. Never in my life before had I had so baffling a case. As I sat in the cafe sipping a cocaine cobbler, who should walk in but Hamlet, strangely enough picking particles of swan’s-down from his black doublet, which was literally covered with it.
“Hello, Sherlock!” he said, drawing up a chair and sitting down beside me. “What you up to?”
“Trying to make out where you have been,” I replied. “I judge from the swan’s-down on your doublet that you have been escorting Ophelia to the opera in the regulation cloak.”
“You’re mistaken for once,” he laughed. “I’ve been driving with Lohengrin. He’s got a pair of swans that can do a mile in 2.10—but it makes them moult like the devil.”
“Pair of what?” I cried.
“Swans,” said Hamlet. “He’s an eccentric sort of a duffer, that Lohengrin. Afraid of horses, I fancy.”
“And so drives swans instead?” said I, incredulously.
“The same,” replied Hamlet. “Do I look as if he drove squab?”
“He must be queer,” said I. “I’d like to meet him. He’d make quite an addition to my collection of freaks.”
“Very well,” observed Hamlet. “He’ll be here to-morrow to take luncheon with me, and if you’ll come, too, you’ll be most welcome. He’s collecting freaks, too, and I haven’t a doubt would be pleased to know you.”
We parted and I sauntered homeward, cogitating over my strange client, and now and then laughing over the idiosyncrasies of Hamlet’s friend the swan-driver. It never occurred to me at the moment however to connect the two, in spite of the link of swan’s-down. I regarded it merely as a coincidence. The next day, however, on going to the club and meeting Hamlet’s strange guest, I was struck by the further coincidence that his hair was of precisely the same shade of yellow as that in my possession. It was of a hue that I had never seen before except at performances of grand opera, or on the heads of fool detectives in musical burlesques. Here, however, was the real thing growing luxuriantly from the man’s head.
“Ho-ho!” thought I to myself. “Here is a fortunate encounter; there may be something in it,” and then I tried to lead him on.
“I understand, Mr. Lohengrin,” I said, “that you have a fine span of swans.”
“Yes,” he said, and I was astonished to note that he, like my client, spoke in musical numbers. “Very. They’re much finer than horses, in my opinion. More peaceful, quite as rapid, and amphibious. If I go out for a drive and come to a lake they trot quite as well across its surface as on the highways.”
“How interesting!” said I. “And so gentle, the swan. Your wife, I presume—”
Hamlet kicked my shins under the table.
“I think it will rain to-morrow,” he said, giving me a glance which if it said anything said shut up.
“I think so, too,” said Lohengrin, a lowering look on his face. “If it doesn’t, it will either snow, or hail, or be clear.” And he gazed abstractedly out of the window.
The kick and the man’s confusion were sufficient proof. I was on the right track at last. Yet the evidence was unsatisfactory because merely circumstantial. My piece of down might have come from an opera cloak and not from a well-broken swan, the hair might equally clearly have come from some other head than Lohengrin’s, and other men have had trouble with their wives. The circumstantial evidence lying in the coincidences was strong but not conclusive, so I resolved to pursue the matter and invite the strange individual to a luncheon with me, at which I proposed to wear the tinsel tights. Seeing them, he might be forced into betraying himself.
This I did, and while my impressions were confirmed by his demeanor, no positive evidence grew out of it.
“I’m hungry as a bear!” he said, as I entered the club, clad in a long, heavy ulster, reaching from my shoulders to the ground, so that the tights were not visible.
“Good,” said I. “I like a hearty eater,” and I ordered a luncheon of ten courses before removing my overcoat; but not one morsel could the man eat, for on the removal of my coat his eye fell upon my silver garments, and with a gasp he wellnigh fainted. It was clear. He recognized them and was afraid, and in consequence lost his appetite. But he was game, and tried to laugh it off.
“Silver man, I see,” he said, nervously, smiling.
“No,” said I, taking the lock of golden hair from my pocket and dangling it before him. “Bimetallist.”
His jaw dropped in dismay, but recovering himself instantly he put up a fairly good fight.
“It is strange, Mr. Lohengrin,” said I, “that in the three years I have been here I’ve never seen you before.”
“I’ve been very quiet,” he said. “Fact is, I have had my reasons, Mr. Holmes, for preferring the life of a hermit. A youthful indiscretion, sir, has made me fear to face the world. There was nothing wrong about it, save that it was a folly, and I have been anxious in these days of newspapers to avoid any possible revival of what might in some eyes seem scandalous.”
I felt sorry for him, but my duty was clear. Here was my man—but how to gain direct proof was still beyond me. No further admissions could be got out of him, and we soon parted.
Two days later the lady called and again I reported progress.
“It needs but one thing, madame, to convince me that I have found your husband,” said I. “I have found a man who might be connected with swan’s-down, from whose luxuriant curls might have come this tow-colored lock, and who might have worn the silver-tinsel tights—yet it is all MIGHT and no certainty.”
“I will bring my small brother’s bugle and the tin sword,” said she. “The sword has certain properties which may induce him to confess. My brother tells me that if he simply shakes it at a cat the cat falls dead.”
“Do so,” said I, “and I will try it on him. If he recognizes the sword and remembers its properties when I attempt to brandish it at him, he’ll be forced to confess, though it would be awkward if he is the wrong man and the sword should work on him as it does on the cat.”
The next day I was in possession of the famous toy. It was not very long, and rather more suggestive of a pancake-turner than a sword, but it was a terror. I tested its qualities on a swarm of gnats in my room, and the moment I shook it at them they fluttered to the ground as dead as door-nails.
“I’ll have to be careful of this weapon,” I thought. “It would be terrible if I should brandish it at a motor-man trying to get one of the Gehenna Traction Company’s cable-cars to stop and he should drop dead at his post.”
All was now ready for the demonstration. Fortunately the following Saturday night was club night at the House-Boat, and we were all expected to come in costume. For dramatic effect I wore a yellow wig, a helmet, the silver-tinsel tights, and a doublet to match, with the brass bugle and the tin sword properly slung about my person. I looked stunning, even if I do say it, and much to my surprise several people mistook me for the man I was after. Another link in the chain! EVEN THE PUBLIC UNCONSCIOUSLY RECOGNIZED THE VALUE OF MY DEDUCTIONS. THEY CALLED ME LOHENGRIN!
And of course it all happened as I expected. It always does. Lohengrin came into the assembly-room five minutes after I did and was visibly annoyed at my make-up.
“This is a great liberty,” said he, grasping the hilt of his sword; but I answered by blowing the bugle at him, at which he turned livid and fell back. He had recognized its soft cadence. I then hauled the sword from my belt, shook it at a fly on the wall, which immediately died, and made as if to do the same at Lohengrin, whereupon he cried for mercy and fell upon his knees.
“Turn that infernal thing the other way!” he shrieked.
“Ah!” said I, lowering my arm. “Then you know its properties?”
“I do—I do!” he cried. “It used to be mine—I confess it!”
“Then,” said I, calmly putting the horrid bit of zinc back into my belt, “that’s all I wanted to know. If you’ll come up to my office some morning next week I’ll introduce you to your wife,” and I turned from him.
My mission accomplished, I left the festivities and returned to my quarters where my fair client was awaiting me.
“Well?” she said.
“It’s all right, Mrs. Lohengrin,” I said, and the lady cried aloud with joy at the name, for it was the very one she had hoped it would be. “My man turns out to be your man, and I turn him over therefore to you, only deal gently with him. He’s a pretty decent chap and sings like a bird.”
Whereon I presented her with my bill for 5000 oboli, which she paid without a murmur, as was entirely proper that she should, for upon the evidence which I had secured the fair plaintiff, in the suit for separation of Elsa vs. Lohengrin on the ground of desertion and non-support, obtained her decree, with back alimony of twenty-five per cent. of Lohengrin’s income for a trifle over fifteen hundred years.
How much that amounted to I really do not know, but that it was a large sum I am sure, for Lohengrin must have been very wealthy. He couldn’t have afforded to dress in solid silver-tinsel tights if he had been otherwise. I had the tights assayed before returning them to their owner, and even in a country where free coinage of tights is looked upon askance they could not be duplicated for less than $850 at a ratio of 32 to 1.
X. GOLF IN HADES
“Jim,” said I to Boswell one morning as the type-writer began to work, “perhaps you can enlighten me on a point concerning which a great many people have questioned me recently. Has golf taken hold of Hades yet? You referred to it some time ago, and I’ve been wondering ever since if it had become a fad with you.”
“Has it?” laughed my visitor; “well, I should rather say it had. The fact is, it has been a great boon to the country. You remember my telling you of the projected revolution led by Cromwell, and Caesar, and the others?”
“I do, very well,” said I, “and I have been intending to ask you how it came out.”
“Oh, everything’s as fine and sweet as can be now,” rejoined Boswell, somewhat gleefully, “and all because of golf. We are all quiet along the Styx now. All animosities are buried in the general love of golf, and every one of us, high or low, autocrat and revolutionist, is hobnobbing away in peace and happiness on the links. Why, only six weeks ago, Apollyon was for cooking Bonaparte on a waffle iron, and yesterday the two went out to the Cimmerian links together and played a mixed foursome, Bonaparte and Medusa playing against Apollyon and Delilah.”
“Dear me! Really?” I cried. “That must have been an interesting match.”
“It was, and up to the very last it was nip-and-tuck between ‘em,” said Boswell. “Apollyon and Delilah won it with one hole up, and they got that on the put. They’d have halved the hole if Medusa’s back hair hadn’t wiggled loose and bitten her caddie just as she was holeing out.”
“It is a remarkable game,” said I. “There is no sensation in the world quite equal to that which comes to a man’s soul when he has hit the ball a solid clip and sees it sail off through the air towards the green, whizzing musically along like a very bird.”
“True,” said Boswell; “but I’m rather of the opinion that it’s a safer game for shades than for you purely material persons.”
“I don’t see why,” I answered.
“It is easy to understand,” returned Boswell. “For instance, with us there is no resistance when by a mischance we come into unexpected contact with the ball. Take the experience of Diogenes and Solomon at the St. Jonah’s Links week before last. The Wiseman’s Handicap was on. Diogenes and Simple Simon were playing just ahead of Solomon and Montaigne. Solomon was driving in great form. For the first time in his life he seemed able to keep his eye on the ball, and the way he sent it flying through the air was a caution. Diogenes and Simple Simon had both had their second stroke and Solomon drove off. His ball sailed straight ahead like a missile from a catapult, flew in a bee-line for Diogenes, struck him at the base of his brain, continued on through, and landed on the edge of the green.”
“Mercy!” I cried. “Didn’t it kill him?”
“Of course not,” retorted Boswell. “You can’t kill a shade. Diogenes didn’t know he’d been hit, but if that had happened to one of you material golfers there’d have been a sickening end to that tournament.”
“There would, indeed,” said I. “There isn’t much fun in being hit by a golf-ball. I can testify to that because I have had the experience,” and I called to mind the day at St. Peterkin’s when I unconsciously stymied with my material self the celebrated Willie McGuffin, the Demon Driver from the Hootmon Links, Scotland. McGuffin made his mark that day if he never did before, and I bear the evidence thereof even now, although the incident took place two years ago, when I did not know enough to keep out of the way of the player who plays so well that he thinks he has a perpetual right of way everywhere.
“What kind of clubs do you Stygians use?” I asked.
“Oh, very much the same kind that you chaps do,” returned Boswell. “Everybody experiments with new fads, too, just as you do. Old Peter Stuyvesant, for instance, always drives with his wooden leg, and never uses anything else unless he gets a lie where he’s got to.”
“His wooden leg?” I roared, with a laugh. “How on earth does he do that?”
“He screws the small end of it into a square block shod like a brassey,” explained Boswell, “tees up his ball, goes back ten yards, makes a run at it and kicks the ball pretty nearly out of sight. He can put with it too, like a dream, swinging it sideways.”
“But he doesn’t call that golf, does he?” I cried.
“What is it?” demanded Boswell.
“I should call it football,” I said.
“Not at all,” said Boswell. “Not a bit of it. He hasn’t any foot on that leg, and he has a golf-club head with a shaft to it. There isn’t any rule which says that the shaft shall not look like an inverted nine-pin, nor do any of the accepted authorities require that the club shall be manipulated by the arms. I admit it’s bad form the way he plays, but, as Stuyvesant himself says, he never did travel on his shape.”
“Suppose he gets a cuppy lie?” I asked, very much interested at the first news from Hades of the famous old Dutchman.
“Oh, he does one of two things,” said Boswell. “He stubs it out with his toe, or goes back and plays two more. Munchausen plays a good game too. He beat the colonel forty-seven straight holes last Wednesday, and all Hades has been talking about it ever since.”
“Who is the colonel?” I asked, innocently.
“Bogey,” returned Boswell. “Didn’t you ever hear of Colonel Bogey?”
“Of course,” I replied, “but I always supposed Bogey was an imaginary opponent, not a real one.”
“So he is,” said Boswell.
“Then you mean—”
“I mean that Munchausen beat him forty-seven up,” said Boswell.
“Were there any witnesses?” I demanded, for I had little faith in Munchausen’s regard for the eternal verities, among which a golf-card must be numbered if the game is to survive.
“Yes, a hundred,” said Boswell. “There was only one trouble with ‘em.” Here the great biographer laughed. “They were all imaginary, like the colonel.”
“And Munchausen’s score?” I queried.
“The same, naturally. But it makes him king-pin in golf circles just the same, because nobody can go back on his logic,” said Boswell. “Munchausen reasoned it out very logically indeed, and largely, he said, to protect his own reputation. Here is an imaginary warrior, said he, who makes a bully, but wholly imaginary, score at golf. He sends me an imaginary challenge to play him forty-seven holes. I accept, not so much because I consider myself a golfer as because I am an imaginer—if there is such a word.”
“Ask Dr. Johnson,” said I, a little sarcastically. I always grow sarcastic when golf is mentioned.
“Dr. Johnson be—” began Boswell.
“Boswell!” I remonstrated.
“Dr. Johnson be it, I was about to say,” clicked the type-writer, suavely; but the ink was thick and inclined to spread. “Munchausen felt that Bogey was encroaching on his preserve as a man with an imagination.”
“I have always considered Colonel Bogey a liar,” said I. “He joins all the clubs and puts up an ideal score before he has played over the links.”
“That isn’t the point at all,” said Boswell. “Golfers don’t lie. Realists don’t lie. Nobody in polite—or say, rather, accepted—society lies. They all imagine. Munchausen realizes that he has only one claim to recognition, and that is based entirely upon his imagination. So when the imaginary Colonel Bogey sent him an imaginary challenge to play him forty-seven holes at golf—”
“Why forty-seven?” I asked.
“An imaginary number,” explained Boswell. “Don’t interrupt. As I say, when the imaginary colonel—”
“I must interrupt,” said I. “What was he colonel of?”
“A regiment of perfect caddies,” said Boswell.
“Ah, I see,” I replied. “Imaginary in his command. There isn’t one perfect caddy, much less a regiment of the little reprobates.”
“You are wrong there,” said Boswell. “You don’t know how to produce a good caddy—but good caddies can be made.”
“How?” I cried, for I have suffered. “I’ll have the plan patented.”
“Take a flexible brassey, and at the ninth hole, if they deserve it, give them eighteen strokes across the legs with all your strength,” said Boswell. “But, as I said before, don’t interrupt. I haven’t much time left to talk with you.”
“But I must ask one more question,” I put in, for I was growing excited over a new idea. “You say give them eighteen strokes across the legs. Across whose legs?”
“Yours,” replied Boswell. “Just take your caddy up, place him across your knees, and spank him with your brassey. Spank isn’t a good golf term, but it is good enough for the average caddy; in fact, it will do him good.”
“Go on,” said I, with a mental resolve to adopt his prescription.
“Well,” said Boswell, “Munchausen, having received an imaginary challenge from an imaginary opponent, accepted. He went out to the links with an imaginary ball, an imaginary bagful of fanciful clubs, and licked the imaginary life out of the colonel.”
“Still, I don’t see,” said I, somewhat jealously, perhaps, “how that makes him king-pin in golf circles. Where did he play?”
“On imaginary links,” said Boswell.
“Poh!” I ejaculated.
“Don’t sneer,” said Boswell. “You know yourself that the links you imagine are far better than any others.”
“What is Munchausen’s strongest point?” I asked, seeing that there was no arguing with the man—“driving, approaching, or putting?”
“None of the three. He cannot put, he foozles every drive, and at approaching he’s a consummate ass,” said Boswell.
“Then what can he do?” I cried.
“Count,” said Boswell. “Haven’t you learned that yet? You can spend hours learning how to drive, weeks to approach, and months to put. But if you want to win you must know how to count.”
I was silent, and for the first time in my life I realized that Munchausen was not so very different from certain golfers I have met in my short day as a golfiac, and then Boswell put in:
“You see, it isn’t lofting or driving that wins,” he continued. “Cups aren’t won on putting or approaching. It’s the man who puts in the best card who becomes the champion.”
“I am afraid you are right,” I said, sadly, “but I am sorry to find that Hades is as badly off as we mortals in that matter.”
“Golf, sir,” retorted Boswell, sententiously, “is the same everywhere, and that which is dome in our world is directly in line with what is developed in yours.”
“I’m sorry for Hades,” said I; “but to continue about golf—do the ladies play much on your links?”
“Well, rather,” returned Boswell, “and it’s rather amusing to watch them at it, too. Xanthippe with her Greek clothes finds it rather difficult; but for rare sport you ought to see Queen Elizabeth trying to keep her eye on the ball over her ruff! It really is one of the finest spectacles you ever saw.”
“But why don’t they dress properly?”
“Ah,” sighed Boswell, “that is one of the things about Hades that destroys all the charm of life there. We are but shades.”
“Granted,” said I, “but your garments can—”
“Our garments can’t,” said Boswell. “Through all eternity we shades of our former selves are doomed to wear the shadows of our former clothes.”
“Then what the devil does a poor dress-maker do who goes to Hades?” I cried.
“She makes over the things she made before,” said Boswell. “That’s why, my dear fellow,” the biographer added, becoming confidential—“that’s why some people confound Hades with—ah—the other place, don’t you know.”
“Still, there’s golf!” I said; “and that’s a panacea for all ills. YOU enjoy it, don’t you?”
“Me?” cried Boswell. “Me enjoy it? Not on all the lives in Christendom. It is the direst drudgery for me.”
“Drudgery?” I said. “Bah! Nonsense, Boswell!”
“You forget—” he began.
“Forget? It must be you who forget, if you call golf drudgery.”
“No,” sighed the genial spirit. “No, I don’t forget. I remember.”
“Remember what?” I demanded.
“That I am Dr. Johnson’s caddy!” was the answer. And then came a heart-rending sigh, and from that time on all was silence. I repeatedly put questions to the machine, made observations to it, derided it, insulted it, but there was no response.
It has so continued to this day, and I can only conclude the story of my Enchanted Type-writer by saying that I presume golf has taken the same hold upon Hades that it has upon this world, and that I need not hope to hear more from that attractive region until the game has relaxed its grip, which I know can never be.
Hence let me say to those who have been good enough to follow me through the realms of the Styx that I bid them an affectionate farewell and thank them for their kind attention to my chronicles. They are all truthful; but now that the source of supply is cut off I cannot prove it. I can only hope that for one and all the future may hold as much of pleasure as the place of departed spirits has held for me.