Also edited by Otto Penzler
The Black Lizard Big Book of Locked-Room Mysteries
The Big Book of Christmas Mysteries
The Big Book of Ghost Stories
Zombies! Zombies! Zombies!
The Big Book of Adventure Stories
The Vampire Archives
Agents of Treachery
Bloodsuckers
Fangs
Coffins
The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories
The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps
A VINTAGE CRIME/BLACK LIZARD ORIGINAL, OCTOBER 2015
Introduction and compilation copyright © 2015 by Otto Penzler
All rights reserved. Published simultaneously in the United States in hardcover by Pantheon Books and in trade paperback by Vintage Books, divisions of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and distributed in Canada by Random House of Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Ltd., Toronto.
Vintage is a registered trademark and Vintage Crime/Black Lizard and colophon are trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Owing to limitations of space, permissions to reprint previously published material appear on this page.
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The big book of Sherlock Holmes stories / edited and with an introduction by Otto Penzler.
pages cm
1. Holmes, Sherlock—Fiction. 2. Private investigators—England—Fiction. 3. Detective and mystery stories, English. 4. Detective and mystery stories, American. 5. Watson, John H. (Fictitious character)—Fiction. I. Penzler, Otto, editor.
PR1309.D4B54 2015 823′.108351—dc23 2014047958
Pantheon Hardcover ISBN 9781101870891
Vintage Crime/Black Lizard Trade Paperback ISBN 9781101872611
eBook ISBN 9781101872628
Cover painting © Thomas Gianni
Cover design: Joe Montgomery
www.weeklylizard.com
v4.1
a
CONTENTS
To provide a little guidance through this massive tome, I’ve divided the stories into several categories but admit, immediately, that the effort is of questionable validity, as many of the stories fall into more than one subdivision. (A. A. Milne and P. G. Wodehouse, for example, will be found in the “Literary Writers” section, but since they wrote parodies, they could be found there just as easily.) It’s not unlike making lists of foods that are delicious and foods that are fattening: there will be overlap. The two most reasonable choices are to ignore the categorizations altogether or to suggest that you don’t take them very much to heart and just enjoy the stories.
Cover
Also edited by Otto Penzler
Title Page
Copyright
Introduction by Otto Penzler
Conan Doyle Tells the True Story of Sherlock Holmes’s End by Arthur Conan Doyle
It seems that no author could resist writing parodies of Holmes and Watson—not even their creator.
THE FIELD BAZAAR Arthur Conan Doyle
HOW WATSON LEARNED THE TRICK Arthur Conan Doyle
Familiar as the Rose in Spring
These are the most popular and frequently reprinted Sherlock Holmes stories of all time.
THE UNIQUE “HAMLET” Vincent Starrett
THE STOLEN CIGAR-CASE Bret Harte
THE CASE OF THE MAN WHO WAS WANTED Arthur Whitaker
THE ADVENTURE OF THE TWO COLLABORATORS James M. Barrie
THE SLEUTHS O. Henry
HOLMES AND THE DASHER A. B. Cox
AN IRREDUCIBLE DETECTIVE STORY Stephen Leacock
THE DOCTOR’S CASE Stephen King
The Literature of Crime
Compelled by either whim or serious affection, many literary lions have tried their hand at writing a Holmes adventure. Sometimes they produce a pure pastiche, echoing the tone of Conan Doyle, and sometimes the notion of a parody is irresistible.
THE BROWN RECLUSE Davis Grubb
THE DARKWATER HALL MYSTERY Kingsley Amis
THE CASE OF THE GIFTED AMATEUR J. C. Masterman
THE LATE SHERLOCK HOLMES James M. Barrie
SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE DROOD MYSTERY Edmund Pearson
THE RAPE OF THE SHERLOCK A. A. Milne
FROM A DETECTIVE’S NOTEBOOK P. G. Wodehouse
THE RUBY OF KHITMANDU Hugh Kingsmill
THE ADVENTURE OF THE REMARKABLE WORM August Derleth
THE ENCHANTED GARDEN H. F. Heard
A STUDY IN HANDWRITING Ring W. Lardner
THE CASE OF DEATH AND HONEY Neil Gaiman
MURDER TO MUSIC Anthony Burgess
In the Beginning
Holmes became such a towering literary presence within a few years of his first appearance that parodies were being published in newspapers and magazines at an alarming rate. Most of them were truly dreadful, no more than burlesques based on a single joke that often wasn’t very funny. Some of the earliest (all are from the nineteenth century), and best, are included here, in chronological order—as good a way as any to be presented.
AN EVENING WITH SHERLOCK HOLMES James M. Barrie
DETECTIVE STORIES GONE WRONG: THE ADVENTURES OF SHERLAW KOMBS Robert Barr
SHERLOCK HOLMES VS. CONAN DOYLE Anonymous
THE DUKE’S FEATHER R. C. Lehmann
THE SIGN OF THE “400” Roy L. McCardell
Holmesless
Even when he’s not physically present, the personality and aura of Holmes cannot be ignored, filling the room with his spirit.
CODEINE (7 PER CENT) Christopher Morley
MRS. HUDSON’S CASE Laurie R. King
THE FINAL PROBLEM Bliss Austin
Not of This Place
We associate Holmes with a certain place and time, mainly London “where it is always 1895,” as Vincent Starrett wrote so simply yet eloquently. However, Holmes appears in various guises, places, eras, and even spiritual levels in a wide range of stories. Also, while the essence of Holmes’s genius lies in his observations and deductions, all based on razor-sharp logic, there are things that may not be rationally explained.
THE ADVENTURE OF THE BOGLE-WOLF Anthony Boucher
THE MARTIAN CROWN JEWELS Poul Anderson
SHERLOCK AMONG THE SPIRITS Anonymous
THE CASE OF THE MISSING PATRIARCHS Logan Clendening
THE DEVIL AND SHERLOCK HOLMES Loren D. Estleman
Keeping the Memory Green
The list of eminent men and women who have demonstrated great affection for “the best and wisest man whom [they] have ever known” (to quote Dr. Watson) is without limit. Although they enjoyed successful careers in other fields, they often kept Holmes by their sides, and those with sufficient talent provided evidence of that kinship by putting pen to paper.
THE STRANGE CASE OF THE MEGATHERIUM THEFTS S. C. Roberts
THE ADVENTURE OF THE NOBLE HUSBAND Peter Cannon
A NIGHT WITH SHERLOCK HOLMES William O. Fuller
THE ADVENTURE OF THE WOODEN BOX Leslie S. Klinger
THE CASE OF THE UNSEEN HAND Donald Thomas
THE ABANDONED BRIGANTINE Sam Benady
THE ADVENTURE OF THE CURIOUS CANARY Barry Day
THE ADVENTURE OF THE MURDERED ART EDITOR Frederic Dorr Steele
THE DARLINGTON SUBSTITUTION SCANDAL David Stuart Davies
THE PROBLEM OF THE PURPLE MACULAS James C. Iraldi
You Think That’s Funny?
Writing a pastiche of a well-known detective, true in tone and with a puzzling mystery, is extremely difficult. Writing a parody is a good deal easier—as the focus can be on a single element of that figure rather than on a range of characteristics—but writing a genuinely funny one may be the most difficult literary feat of all. Sadly, as you will see, not every writer in this section was up to the challenge, but they are included here because several have historical significance. Thankfully, the worst of the parodies are mercifully short.
THE ADVENTURE OF THE SECOND SWAG Robert Barr
SHEER LUCK AGAIN Stanley Rubinstein
A PRAGMATIC ENIGMA John Kendrick Bangs
HERLOCK SHOMES AT IT AGAIN Anonymous
THE REIGATE ROAD MURDER Anthony Armstrong
THE SUCCORED BEAUTY William B. Kahn
THE MARRIAGE OF SHERLOCK HOLMES Gregory Breitman
THE RETURN OF SHERLOCK HOLMES E. F. Benson and Eustace H. Miles
THE UNMASKING OF SHERLOCK HOLMES Arthur Chapman
THE ADVENTURE OF THE DIAMOND NECKLACE George F. Forrest
THE ADVENTURE OF THE ASCOT TIE Robert L. Fish
Contemporary Victorians
Many of today’s most successful mystery writers, most of whom have their own series detectives, have on occasion broken away from the work for which they have had their greatest success to write a new Sherlock Holmes adventure. The good news is that they achieved their goal with greater than expected excellence.
A CASE OF MIS-IDENTITY Colin Dexter
THE STARTLING EVENTS IN THE ELECTRIFIED CITY Thomas Perry
THE CASE OF COLONEL WARBURTON’S MADNESS Lyndsay Faye
THE INFERNAL MACHINE John Lutz
THE SPECTER OF TULLYFANE ABBEY Peter Tremayne
THE ADVENTURE OF THE AGITATED ACTRESS Daniel Stashower
THE ADVENTURE OF THE DORSET STREET LODGER Michael Moorcock
THE ADVENTURE OF THE VENOMOUS LIZARD Bill Crider
THE CASE OF THE FRIESLAND OUTRAGE June Thomson
THE STRANGE CASE OF THE TONGUE-TIED TENOR Carol Buggé
THE HUMAN MYSTERY Tanith Lee
HOSTAGE TO FORTUNE Anne Perry
THE ADVENTURE OF THE MISSING COUNTESS Jon Koons
THE ADVENTURE OF ZOLNAY, THE AERIALIST Rick Boyer
THE ADVENTURE OF THE GIANT RAT OF SUMATRA John T. Lescroart
The Footsteps of a Gigantic Author
It is not only today’s mystery writers who have turned their creativity to producing Sherlock Holmes stories. Many of the classic writers of an earlier time have also taken the challenge of adding an adventure to the list of the great detective’s cases.
DID SHERLOCK HOLMES MEET HERCULE…? Julian Symons
A TRIFLING AFFAIR H. R. F. Keating
RAFFLES: THE ENIGMA OF THE ADMIRAL’S HAT and RAFFLES ON THE TRAIL OF THE HOUND Barry Perowne
THE ADVENTURE OF THE CIPHER IN THE SAND Edward D. Hoch
THE SOUTH SEA SOUP CO. Kenneth Millar
THE ADVENTURE OF THE CLOTHES-LINE Carolyn Wells
SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE MUFFIN Dorothy B. Hughes
THE MAN FROM CAPETOWN Stuart M. Kaminsky
BUT OUR HERO WAS NOT DEAD Manly Wade Wellman
THE ADVENTURE OF THE MARKED MAN Stuart Palmer
Permissions Acknowledgments
INTRODUCTION
OTTO PENZLER
ABOUT A HUNDRED years ago, Sherlock Holmes was described as one of the three most famous people who ever lived, the other two being Jesus Christ and Houdini. There are some who claim that he is a fictional character, but this notion is, of course, absurd. Every schoolchild knows what he looks like, what he does for a living, and most know many of his peculiar characteristics.
The tall, slender, hawk-nosed figure, with his deerstalker hat and Inverness cape, is instantly recognizable in every corner of the world. In addition to the superb stories describing his adventures written by his friend, roommate, and chronicler, Dr. John H. Watson (with the assistance of his literary agent, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle), Holmes has been impersonated on the stage, television, radio, and in countless motion pictures. More than twenty-five thousand books, stories, and articles have been written about him by famous authors, amateur writers, and scholars.
This collection of Sherlock Holmes parodies and pastiches is the largest ever assembled. It contains serious pastiches by distinguished literary figures, equally good stories by less exalted Sherlockians, and some truly dreadful parodies included here for historical interest more than reading pleasure. They are, mercifully, brief.
Inevitably, I have drawn on the work of others. The first and greatest anthology of its kind is The Misadventures of Sherlock Holmes (1944), edited by Ellery Queen, a brilliant, pioneering anthologist whose best collections—101 Years’ Entertainment: The Great Detective Stories 1841–1941 (1941); its sequel, To the Queen’s Taste (1946); The Female of the Species (1943); and others—are true cornerstones of detective fiction.
Other scholars and aficionados who have unearthed material and whose books have provided access to rare and obscure material are Robert Adey, Richard Lancelyn Green, Charles Press, Marvin Kaye, and Mike Ashley.
My deep affection for Holmes, now exceeding fifty years of reading, has resulted in the addition of stories to this massive tome that never before have been collected in a book devoted to the great detective. While I may not fully concur with Watson’s assessment that Holmes is “the best and wisest man whom I have ever known,” an accolade reserved for a very few dear friends, he has been a trusted and worthy companion for the greatest percentage of my life.
Sherlock (he was nearly named Sherrinford) was born on January 6, 1854, on the farmstead of Mycroft (the name of his older brother) in the North Riding of Yorkshire. He solved his first case (eventually titled “The Gloria Scott”) while a twenty-year-old student at Oxford. Following graduation, he became the world’s first consulting detective—a vocation he followed for twenty-three years.
In January 1881 he was looking for someone to share his new quarters at 221B Baker Street when a friend introduced him to Dr. John H. Watson. Before agreeing to share the apartment, the two men aired their respective shortcomings. Holmes confesses, “I get in the dumps at times, and don’t open my mouth for days on end.” He also smokes a vile shag tobacco and conducts experiments with loathsome-smelling chemicals. He fails, however, to mention an affection for cocaine. Although he ruefully notes his fondness for scratching away at the violin while in contemplation, he proves to be a virtuoso who can calm his roommate’s raw nerves with a melodious air. Watson’s admitted faults include the keeping of a bull pup, a strong objection to arguments because his nerves cannot stand them, a penchant for arising from bed “at all sorts of ungodly hours,” and an immense capacity for laziness. “I have another set of vices when I’m well,” he says, “but those are the principal ones at present.” They become friends, and Watson chronicles the deeds of his illustrious roommate, often to the displeasure of Holmes, who resents the melodramatic and sensational tales. He believes that the affairs, if told at all, should be put to the public as straightforward exercises in cold logic and deductive reasoning.
Holmes possesses not only excellent deductive powers but also a giant intellect. Anatomy, chemistry, mathematics, British law, and sensational literature are but a few areas of his vast sphere of knowledge, although he is admittedly not well versed in such subjects as astronomy, philosophy, and politics. He has published several distinguished works on erudite subjects: Upon the Distinction between the Ashes of the Various Tobaccos; A Study of the Influence of a Trade upon the Form of the Hand; Upon the Polyphonic Motets of Lassus; A Study of the Chaldean Roots in the Ancient Cornish Language; and his magnum opus, Practical Handbook of Bee Culture, with Some Observations upon the Segregation of the Queen. His four-volume The Whole Art of Detection has not yet been published. When he needs information that his brain does not retain, he refers to a small, carefully selected library of reference works and a series of
commonplace books. Since Holmes cares only about facts that aid his work, he ignores whatever he considers superfluous. He explains his theory of education thus:
I consider that a man’s brain originally is like an empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it….It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time for every addition of knowledge you forget something you knew before.
An athletic body complements Holmes’s outstanding intelligence. He seems even taller than his six feet because he is extremely thin. His narrow, hooked nose and sharp, piercing eyes give him a hawklike appearance. He often astonishes Watson with displays of strength and agility; he is a superb boxer, fencer, and singlestick player. He needs all his strength when he meets his nemesis, the ultimate archcriminal Professor James Moriarty, in a struggle at the edge of the Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland. The evenly matched adversaries, locked in battle, fall over the cliff; both were reported to be dead. All England mourned the passing of its great keeper of the law, but in 1894, after being missing for three years, Holmes returned. He had not been killed in the fall, after all, but had seen a good opportunity to fool his many enemies in the underworld. He had taken over the identity of a Danish explorer, Sigerson, and traveled to many parts of the world, including New Jersey, where he is believed to have had an affair with Irene Adler (who will always be the woman to Holmes), and to Tibet, where he learned the secret of long life from the Dalai Lama.
When Miss Adler (the famous and beautiful opera singer Holmes first meets in “A Scandal in Bohemia”) died in 1903, Holmes retired to keep bees on the southern slopes of the Sussex Downs with his old housekeeper, Mrs. Martha Hudson. He came out of retirement briefly before World War I, but his life since then has been quiet.
Holmes has outlived the people who have participated at various times in his adventures. In addition to Mycroft, Watson, Moriarty, Irene Adler, and Mrs. Hudson, the best-known auxiliary personalities in the stories include Billy the Page Boy, who occasionally announces visitors to 221B; Mary Morstan, who becomes Mrs. Watson; The Baker Street Irregulars, street urchins led by Wiggins, who scramble after information for Holmes’s coins; Lestrade, an inept Scotland Yard inspector; Stanley Hopkins, a Scotland Yard man of greater ability; Gregson, the “smartest of the Scotland Yarders,” according to Holmes; and Colonel Sebastian Moran, “the second most dangerous man in London.”