chapters that Mr. Sherlock Holmes assumed command of the _Gehenna_, which
was nothing more nor less than the shadow of the ill-starred ocean
steamship _City of Chicago_, which tried some years ago to reach
Liverpool by taking the overland route through Ireland, fortunately
without detriment to her passengers and crew, who had the pleasure of the
experience of shipwreck without any of the discomforts of drowning. As
will be remembered, the obstructionist nature of the Irish soil prevented
the _City of Chicago_ from proceeding farther inland than was necessary
to keep her well balanced amidships upon a convenient and not too stony
bed; and that after a brief sojourn on the rocks she was finally disposed
of to the Styx Navigation Company, under which title Charon had had
himself incorporated, is a matter of nautical history. The change of
name to the _Gehenna_ was the act of Charon himself, and was prompted, no
doubt, by a desire to soften the jealous prejudices of the residents of
the Stygian capital against the flourishing and ever-growing metropolis
of Illinois.
The Associated Shades had had some trouble in getting this craft.
Charon, through his constant association with life on both sides of the
dark river, had gained a knowledge, more or less intimate, of modern
business methods, and while as janitor of the club he was subject to the
will of the House-boat Committee, and sympathized deeply with the members
of the association in their trouble, as president of the Styx Navigation
Company he was bound up in certain newly attained commercial ideas which
were embarrassing to those members of the association to whose hands the
chartering of a vessel had been committed.
“See here, Charon,” Sir Walter Raleigh had said, after Charon had
expressed himself as deeply sympathetic, but unable to shave the terms
upon which the vessel could be had, “you are an infernal old hypocrite.
You go about wringing your hands over our misfortunes until they’ve got
as dry and flabby as a pair of kid gloves, and yet when we ask you for a
ship of suitable size and speed to go out after those pirates, you become
a sort of twin brother to Shylock, without his excuse. His instincts are
accidents of birth. Yours are cultivated, and you know it.”
“You are very much mistaken, Sir Walter,” Charon had answered to this.
“You don’t understand my position. It is a very hard one. As janitor of
your club I am really prostrated over the events of the past twenty-four
hours. My occupation is gone, and my despair over your loss is
correspondingly greater, for I have time on my hands to brood over it. I
was hysterical as a woman yesterday afternoon—so hysterical that I came
near upsetting one of the Furies who engaged me to row her down to Madame
Medusa’s villa last evening; and right at the sluice of the vitriol
reservoir at that.”
[Picture: You are very much mistaken, Sir Walter]
“Then why the deuce don’t you do something to help us?” pleaded Hamlet.
“How can I do any more than I have done? I’ve offered you the
_Gehenna_,” retorted Charon.
“But on what terms?” expostulated Raleigh. “If we had all the wealth of
the Indies we’d have difficulty in paying you the sums you demand.”
“But I am only president of the company,” explained Charon. “I’d like,
as president, to show you some courtesy, and I’m perfectly willing to do
so; but when it comes down to giving you a vessel like that, I’m bound by
my official oath to consider the interest of the stockholders. It isn’t
as it used to be when I had boats to hire in my own behalf alone. In
those days I had nobody’s interest but my own to look after. Now the
ships all belong to the Styx Navigation Company. Can’t you see the
difference?”
“You own all the stock, don’t you?” insisted Raleigh.
“I don’t know,” Charon answered, blandly. “I haven’t seen the
transfer-books lately.”
“But you know that you did own every share of it, and that you haven’t
sold any, don’t you?” put in Hamlet.
Charon was puzzled for a moment, but shortly his face cleared, and Sir
Walter’s heart sank, for it was evident that the old fellow could not be
cornered.
“Well, it’s this way, Sir Walter, and your Highness,” he said, “I—I can’t
say whether any of that stock has been transferred or not. The fact is,
I’ve been speculating a little on margin, and I’ve put up that stock as
security, and, for all I know, I may have been sold out by my brokers.
I’ve been so upset by this unfortunate occurrence that I haven’t seen the
market reports for two days. Really you’ll have to be content with my
offer or go without the _Gehenna_. There’s too much suspicion attached
to high corporate officials lately for me to yield a jot in the position
I have taken. It would never do to get you all ready to start, and then
have an injunction clapped on you by some unforeseen stockholder who was
not satisfied with the terms offered you; nor can I ever let it be said
of me that to retain my position as janitor of your organization I
sacrificed a trust committed to my charge. I’ll gladly lend you my
private launch, though I don’t think it will aid you much, because the
naphtha-tank has exploded, and the screw slipped off and went to the
bottom two weeks ago. Still, it is at your service, and I’ve no doubt
that either Phidias or Benvenuto Cellini will carve out a paddle for you
if you ask him to.”
“Bah!” retorted Raleigh. “You might as well offer us a pair of skates.”
“I would, if I thought the river’d freeze,” retorted Charon, blandly.
Raleigh and Hamlet turned away impatiently and left Charon to his own
devices, which for the time being consisted largely of winking his other
eye quietly and outwardly making a great show of grief.
“He’s too canny for us, I am afraid,” said Sir Walter. “We’ll have to
pay him his money.”
“Let us first consult Sherlock Holmes,” suggested Hamlet, and this they
proceeded at once to do.
“There is but one thing to be done,” observed the astute detective after
he had heard Sir Walter’s statement of the case. “It is an old saying
that one should fight fire with fire. We must meet modern business
methods with modern commercial ideas. Charter his vessel at his own
price.”
“But we’d never be able to pay,” said Hamlet.
“Ha-ha!” laughed Holmes. “It is evident that you know nothing of the
laws of trade nowadays. Don’t pay!”
“But how can we?” asked Raleigh.
“The method is simple. You haven’t anything to pay with,” returned
Holmes. “Let him sue. Suppose he gets a verdict. You haven’t anything
he can attach—if you have, make it over to your wives or your fiancées.”
“Is that honest?” asked Hamlet, shaking his head doubtfully.
“It’s business,” said Holmes.
“But suppose he wants an advance payment?” queried Hamlet.
“Give him a check drawn to his own order. He’ll have to endorse it when
he deposits it, and that will make him responsible,” laughed Holmes.
“What a simple thing when you understand it!” commented Raleigh.
“Very,” said Holmes. “Business is getting by slow degrees to be an exact
science. It reminds me of the Brighton mystery, in which I played a
modest part some ten years ago, when I first took up ferreting as a
profession. I was sitting one night in my room at one of the Brighton
hotels, which shall be nameless. I never give the name of any of the
hotels at which I stop, because it might give offence to the proprietors
of other hotels, with the result that my books would be excluded from
sale therein. Suffice it to say that I was spending an early summer
Sunday at Brighton with my friend Watson. We had dined well, and were
enjoying our evening smoke together upon a small balcony overlooking the
water, when there came a timid knock on the door of my room.
“‘Watson,’ said I, ‘here comes some one for advice. Do you wish to wager
a small bottle upon it?’
“‘Yes,’ he answered, with a smile. ‘I am thirsty and I’d like a small
bottle; and while I do not expect to win, I’ll take the bet. I should
like to know, though, how you know.’
“‘It is quite simple,’ said I. ‘The timidity of the knock shows that my
visitor is one of two classes of persons—an autograph-hunter or a client,
one of the two. You see I give you a chance to win. It may be an
autograph-hunter, but I think it is a client. If it were a creditor, he
would knock boldly, even ostentatiously; if it were the maid, she would
not knock at all; if it were the hall-boy, he would not come until I had
rung five times for him. None of these things has occurred; the knock is
the half-hearted knock which betokens either that the person who knocked
is in trouble, or is uncertain as to his reception. I am willing,
however, considering the heat and my desire to quench my thirst, to wager
that it is a client.’
“‘Done,’ said Watson; and I immediately remarked, ‘Come in.’
“The door opened, and a man of about thirty-five years of age, in a
bathing-suit, entered the room, and I saw at a glance what had happened.
“‘Your name is Burgess,’ I said. ‘You came here from London this
morning, expecting to return to-night. You brought no luggage with you.
After luncheon you went bathing. You had machine No. 35, and when you
came out of the water you found that No. 35 had disappeared, with your
clothes and the silver watch your uncle gave you on the day you succeeded
to his business.’
“Of course, gentlemen,” observed the detective, with a smile at Sir
Walter and Hamlet—“of course the man fairly gasped, and I continued: ‘You
have been lying face downward in the sand ever since, waiting for
nightfall, so that you could come to me for assistance, not considering
it good form to make an afternoon call upon a stranger at his hotel, clad
in a bathing-suit. Am I correct?’
“‘Sir,’ he replied, with a look of wonder, ‘you have narrated my story
exactly as it happened, and I find I have made no mistake in coming to
you. Would you mind telling me what is your course of reasoning?’
“‘It is plain as day,’ said I. ‘I am the person with the red beard with
whom you came down third class from London this morning, and you told me
your name was Burgess and that you were a butcher. When you looked to
see the time, I remarked upon the oddness of your watch, which led to
your telling me that it was the gift of your uncle.’
“‘True,’ said Burgess, ‘but I did not tell you I had no luggage.’
“‘No,’ said I, ‘but that you hadn’t is plain; for if you had brought any
other clothing besides that you had on with you, you would have put it on
to come here. That you have been robbed I deduce also from your
costume.’
“‘But the number of the machine?’ asked Watson.
“‘Is on the tag on the key hanging about his neck,’ said I.
“‘One more question,’ queried Burgess. ‘How do you know I have been
lying face downward on the beach ever since?’
“‘By the sand in your eyebrows,’ I replied; and Watson ordered up the
small bottle.”
“I fail to see what it was in our conversation, however,” observed
Hamlet, somewhat impatient over the delay caused by the narration of this
tale, “that suggested this train of thought to you.”
“The sequel will show,” returned Holmes.
“Oh, Lord!” put in Raleigh. “Can’t we put off the sequel until a later
issue? Remember, Mr. Holmes, that we are constantly losing time.”
“The sequel is brief, and I can narrate it on our way to the office of
the Navigation Company,” observed the detective. “When the bottle came I
invited Mr. Burgess to join us, which he did, and as the hour was late
when we came to separate, I offered him the use of my parlor overnight.
This he accepted, and we retired.
“The next morning when I arose to dress, the mystery was cleared.”
“You had dreamed its solution?” asked Raleigh.
“No,” replied Holmes. “Burgess had disappeared with all my clothing, my
false-beard, my suit-case, and my watch. The only thing he had left me
was the bathing-suit and a few empty small bottles.”
“And why, may I ask,” put in Hamlet, as they drew near to Charon’s
office—“why does that case remind you of business as it is conducted
to-day?”
“In this, that it is a good thing to stay out of unless you know it all,”
explained Holmes. “I omitted in the case of Burgess to observe one thing
about him. Had I observed that his nose was rectilinear, incurved, and
with a lifted base, and that his auricular temporal angle was between 96
and 97 degrees, I should have known at once that he was an impostor
_Vide_ Ottolenghui on ‘Ears and Noses I Have Met,’ pp. 631–640.”
“Do you mean to say that you can tell a criminal by his ears?” demanded
Hamlet.
“If he has any—yes; but I did not know that at the time of the Brighton
mystery. Therefore I should have stayed out of the case. But here we
are. Good-morning, Charon.”
By this time the trio had entered the private office of the president of
the Styx Navigation Company, and in a few moments the vessel was
chartered at a fabulous price.
On the return to the wharf, Sir Walter somewhat nervously asked Holmes if
he thought the plan they had settled upon would work.
“Charon is a very shrewd old fellow,” said he. “He may outwit us yet.”
“The chances are just two and one-eighth degrees in your favor,” observed
Holmes, quietly, with a glance at Raleigh’s ears. “The temporal angle of
your ears is 93.125 degrees, whereas Charon’s stand out at 91, by my
otometer. To that extent your criminal instincts are superior to his.
If criminology is an exact science, reasoning by your respective ears,
you ought to beat him out by a perceptible though possibly narrow
margin.”
With which assurance Raleigh went ahead with his preparations, and within
twelve hours the _Gehenna_ was under way, carrying a full complement of
crew and officers, with every state-room on board occupied by some spirit
of the more illustrious kind.
Even Shylock was on board, though no one knew it, for in the dead of
night he had stolen quietly up the gang-plank and had hidden himself in
an empty water-cask in the forecastle.
“’Tisn’t Venice,” he said, as he sat down and breathed heavily through
the bung of the barrel, “but it’s musty and damp enough, and, considering
the cost, I can’t complain. You can’t get something for nothing, even in
Hades.”
[Picture: In the dead of night he had stolen quietly up the gang-plank]
VIII
ON BOARD THE “GEHENNA”
WHEN the _Gehenna_ had passed down the Styx and out through the beautiful
Cimmerian Harbor into the broad waters of the ocean, and everything was
comparatively safe for a while at least, Sherlock Holmes came down from
the bridge, where he had taken his place as the commander of the
expedition at the moment of departure. His brow was furrowed with
anxiety, and through his massive forehead his brain could be seen to be
throbbing violently, and the corrugations of his gray matter were not
pleasant to witness as he tried vainly to squeeze an idea out of them.
“What is the matter?” asked Demosthenes, anxiously. “We are not in any
danger, are we?”
“No,” replied Holmes. “But I am somewhat puzzled at the bubbles on the
surface of the ocean, and the ripples which we passed over an hour or two
ago, barely perceptible through the most powerful microscope, indicate to
my mind that for some reason at present unknown to me the House-boat has
changed her course. Take that bubble floating by. It is the last
expiring bit of aerial agitation of the House-boat’s wake. Observe
whence it comes. Not from the Azores quarter, but as if instead of
steering a straight course thither the House-boat had taken a sharp turn
to the north-east, and was making for Havre; or, in other words, Paris
instead of London seems to have become their destination.”
Demosthenes looked at Holmes with blank amazement, and, to keep from
stammering out the exclamation of wonder that rose to his lips, he opened
his _bonbonnière_ and swallowed a pebble.
“You don’t happen to have a cocaine tablet in your box, do you?” queried
Holmes.
“No,” returned the Greek. “Cocaine makes me flighty and nervous, but
these pebbles sort of ballast me and hold me down. How on earth do you
know that that bubble comes from the wake of the House-boat?”
“By my chemical knowledge, merely,” replied Holmes. “A merely worldly
vessel leaves a phosphorescent bubble in its wake. That one we have just
discovered is not so, but sulphurescent, if I may coin a word which it
seems to me the English language is very much in need of. It proves,
then, that the bubble is a portion of the wake of a Stygian craft, and
the only Stygian craft that has cleared the Cimmerian Harbor for years is
the House-boat—Q. E. D.”
“We can go back until we find the ripple again, and follow that, I
presume,” sneered Le Coq, who did not take much stock in the theories of
his great rival, largely because he was a detective by intuition rather
than by study of the science.
“You can if you want to, but it is better not to,” rejoined Holmes,
simply, as though not observing the sneer, “because the ripple represents
the outer lines of the angle of disturbance in the water; and as any one
of the sides to an angle is greater than the perpendicular from the
hypothenuse to the apex, you’d merely be going the long way. This is
especially important when you consider the formation of the bow of the
House-boat, which is rounded like the stern of most vessels, and comes
near to making a pair of ripples at an angle of ninety degrees.”
“Then,” observed Sir Walter, with a sigh of disappointment, “we must
change our course and sail for Paris?”
“I am afraid so,” said Holmes; “but of course it’s by no means certain as
yet. I think if Columbus would go up into the mizzentop and look about
him, he might discover something either in confirmation or refutation of
the theory.”
“He couldn’t discover anything,” put in Pinzon. “He never did.”
“Well, I like that!” retorted Columbus. “I’d like to know who discovered
America.”
“So should I,” observed Leif Ericson, with a wink at Vespucci.
“Tut!” retorted Columbus. “I did it, and the world knows it, whether you
claim it or not.”
“Yes, just as Noah discovered Ararat,” replied Pinzon. “You sat upon the
deck until we ran plumb into an island, after floating about for three
months, and then you couldn’t tell it from a continent, even when you had
it right before your eyes. Noah might just as well have told his family
that he discovered a roof garden as for you to go back to Spain telling
’em all that San Salvador was the United States.”
“Well, I don’t care,” said Columbus, with a short laugh. “I’m the one
they celebrate, so what’s the odds? I’d rather stay down here in the
smoking-room enjoying a small game, anyhow, than climb up that mast and
strain my eyes for ten or a dozen hours looking for evidence to prove or
disprove the correctness of another man’s theory. I wouldn’t know
evidence when I saw it, anyhow. Send Judge Blackstone.”
“I draw the line at the mizzentop,” observed Blackstone. “The dignity of
the bench must and shall be preserved, and I’ll never consent to climb up
that rigging, getting pitch and paint on my ermine, no matter who asks me
to go.”
[Picture: Judge Blackstone refuses to climb to the mizzentop]
“Whomsoever I tell to go, shall go,” put in Holmes, firmly. “I am
commander of this ship. It will pay you to remember that, Judge
Blackstone.”
“And I am the Court of Appeals,” retorted Blackstone, hotly. “Bear that
in mind, captain, when you try to send me up. I’ll issue a writ of
_habeas corpus_ on my own body, and commit you for contempt.”
“There’s no use of sending the Judge, anyhow,” said Raleigh, fearing by
the glitter that came into the eye of the commander that trouble might
ensue unless pacificatory measures were resorted to. “He’s accustomed to
weighing everything carefully, and cannot be rushed into a decision. If
he saw any evidence, he’d have to sit on it a week before reaching a
conclusion. What we need here more than anything else is an expert
seaman, a lookout, and I nominate Shem. He has sailed under his father,
and I have it on good authority that he is a nautical expert.”
Holmes hesitated for an instant. He was considering the necessity of
disciplining the recalcitrant Blackstone, but he finally yielded.
“Very well,” he said. “Shem be it. Bo’sun, pipe Shem on deck, and tell
him that general order number one requires him to report at the mizzentop
right away, and that immediately he sees anything he shall come below and
make it known to me. As for the rest of us, having a very considerable
appetite, I do now decree that it is dinner-time. Shall we go below?”
“I don’t think I care for any, thank you,” said Raleigh. “Fact is—ah—I
dined last week, and am not hungry.”
Noah laughed. “Oh, come below and watch us eat, then,” he said. “It’ll
do you good.”
But there was no reply. Raleigh had plunged head first into his
state-room, which fortunately happened to be on the upper deck. The rest
of the spirits repaired below to the saloon, where they were soon engaged
in an animated discussion of such viands as the larder provided.
“This,” said Dr. Johnson, from the head of the table, “is what I call
comfort. I don’t know that I am so anxious to recover the House-boat,
after all.”
“Nor I,” said Socrates, “with a ship like this to go off cruising on, and
with such a larder. Look at the thickness of that puree, Doctor—”
“Excuse me,” said Boswell, faintly, “but I—I’ve left my note—bub—book
upstairs, Doctor, and I’d like to go up and get it.”
“Certainly,” said Dr. Johnson. “I judge from your color, which is highly
suggestive of a modern magazine poster, that it might be well too if you
stayed on deck for a little while and made a few entries in your
commonplace book.”
“Thank you,” said Boswell, gratefully. “Shall you say anything clever
during dinner, sir? If so, I might be putting it down while I’m up—”
“Get out!” roared the Doctor. “Get up as high as you can—get up with
Shem on the mizzentop—”
[Picture: Shem in the look-out]
“Very good, sir,” replied Boswell, and he was off.
“You ought to be more lenient with him, Doctor,” said Bonaparte; “he
means well.”
“I know it,” observed Johnson; “but he’s so very previous. Last winter,
at Chaucer’s dinner to Burns, I made a speech, which Boswell printed a
week before it was delivered, with the words ‘laughter’ and ‘uproarious
applause’ interspersed through it. It placed me in a false position.”
“How did he know what you were going to say?” queried Demosthenes.
“Don’t know,” replied Johnson. “Kind of mind-reader, I fancy,” he added,
blushing a trifle. “But, Captain Holmes, what do you deduce from your
observation of the wake of the House-boat? If she’s going to Paris, why
the change?”
“I have two theories,” replied the detective.
“Which is always safe,” said Le Coq.
“Always; it doubles your chances of success,” acquiesced Holmes.
“Anyhow, it gives you a choice, which makes it more interesting. The
change of her course from Londonward to Parisward proves to me either
that Kidd is not satisfied with the extent of the revenge he has already
taken, and wishes to ruin you gentlemen financially by turning your
wives, daughters, and sisters loose on the Parisian shops, or that the
pirates have themselves been overthrown by the ladies, who have decided
to prolong their cruise and get some fun out of their misfortune.”
“And where else than to Paris would any one in search of pleasure go?”
asked Bonaparte.
“I had more fun a few miles outside of Brussels,” said Wellington, with a
sly wink at Washington.
“Oh, let up on that!” retorted Bonaparte. “It wasn’t you beat me at
Waterloo. You couldn’t have beaten me at a plain ordinary game of
old-maid with a stacked pack of cards, much less in the game of war, if
you hadn’t had the elements with you.”
“Tut!” snapped Wellington. “It was clear science laid you out, Boney.”
“Taisey-voo!” shouted the irate Corsican. “Clear science be hanged! Wet
science was what did it. If it hadn’t been for the rain, my little Duke,
I should have been in London within a week, my grenadiers would have been
camping in your Rue Peekadeely, and the Old Guard all over everywhere
else.”
“You must have had a gay army, then,” laughed Cæsar. “What are French
soldiers made of, that they can’t stand the wet—unshrunk linen or
flannel?”
“Bah!” observed Napoleon, shrugging his shoulders and walking a few paces
away. “You do not understand the French. The Frenchman is not a
pell-mell soldier like you Romans; he is the poet of arms; he does not go
in for glory at the expense of his dignity; style, form, is dearer to him
than honor, and he has no use for fighting in the wet and coming out of
the fight conspicuous as a victor with the curl out of his feathers and
his epaulets rusted with the damp. There is no glory in water. But if
we had had umbrellas and mackintoshes, as every Englishman who comes to
the Continent always has, and a bath-tub for everybody, then would your
Waterloo have been different again, and the great democracy of Europe
with a Bonaparte for emperor would have been founded for what the
Americans call the keeps; and as for your little Great Britain, ha! she
would have become the Blackwell’s Island of the Greater France.”
“You’re almost as funny as Punch isn’t,” drawled Wellington, with an
angry gesture at Bonaparte. “You weren’t within telephoning distance of
victory all day. We simply played with you, my boy. It was a regular
game of golf for us. We let you keep up pretty close and win a few
holes, but on the home drive we had you beaten in one stroke. Go to, my
dear Bonaparte, and stop talking about the flood.”