A Double Barrelled Detective Story

“But where is she, then?” some one said. “She didn’t stay here. We can see that much, anyway.”

Stillman moved about in a circle around the place, with the lantern, pretending to hunt for tracks.

“Well!” he said presently, in an annoyed tone, “I don’t understand it.” He examined again. “No use. She was here – that’s certain; she never walked away from here – and that’s certain. It’s a puzzle; I can’t make it out.”

The mother lost heart then.

“Oh, my God! oh, blessed Virgin! some flying beast has got her. I’ll never see her again!”

“Ah, don’t give up,” said Archy. “We’ll find her – don’t give up.”

“God bless you for the words, Archy Stillman!” and she seized his hand and kissed it fervently.

Peterson, the new-comer, whispered satirically in Ferguson’s ear:

“Wonderful performance to find this place, wasn’t it? Hardly worth while to come so far, though; any other supposititious place would have answered just as well – hey?”

Ferguson was not pleased with the innuendo. He said, with some warmth,

“Do you mean to insinuate that the child hasn’t been here? I tell you the child has been here! Now if you want to get yourself into as tidy a little fuss as—”

“All right!” sang out Stillman. “Come, everybody, and look at this! It was right under our noses all the time, and we didn’t see it.”

There was a general plunge for the ground at the place where the child was alleged to have rested, and many eyes tried hard and hopefully to see the thing that Archy’s finger was resting upon. There was a pause, then a several-barrelled sigh of disappointment. Pat Riley and Ham Sandwich said, in the one breath,

“What is it, Archy? There’s nothing here.”

“Nothing? Do you call that nothing?” and he swiftly traced upon the ground a form with his finger. “There – don’t you recognize it now? It’s Injun Billy’s track. He’s got the child.”

“God be praised!” from the mother.

“Take away the lantern. I’ve got the direction. Follow!”

He started on a run, racing in and out among the sage-bushes a matter of three hundred yards, and disappeared over a sand-wave; the others struggled after him, caught him up, and found him waiting. Ten steps away was a little wickieup, a dim and formless shelter of rags and old horse-blankets, a dull light showing through its chinks.

“You lead, Mrs. Hogan,” said the lad. “It’s your privilege to be first.”

All followed the sprint she made for the wickieup, and saw, with her, the picture its interior afforded. Injun Billy was sitting on the ground; the child was asleep beside him. The mother hugged it with a wild embrace, which included Archy Stillman, the grateful tears running down her face, and in a choked and broken voice she poured out a golden stream of that wealth of worshiping endearments which has its home in full richness nowhere but in the Irish heart.

“I find her bymeby it is ten o’clock,” Billy explained. “She ’sleep out yonder, ve’y tired – face wet, been cryin’, ’spose; fetch her home, feed her, she heap much hungry – go ’sleep ’gin.”

In her limitless gratitude the happy mother waived rank and hugged him too, calling him “the angel of God in disguise.” And he probably was in disguise if he was that kind of an official. He was dressed for the character.

At half past one in the morning the procession burst into the village singing, “When Johnny Comes Marching Home,” waving its lanterns, and swallowing the drinks that were brought out all along its course. It concentrated at the tavern, and made a night of what was left of the morning.

PART II

I

The next afternoon the village was electrified with an immense sensation. A grave and dignified foreigner of distinguished bearing and appearance had arrived at the tavern, and entered this formidable name upon the register:

Sherlock Holmes.

The news buzzed from cabin to cabin, from claim to claim; tools were dropped, and the town swarmed toward the center of interest. A man passing out at the northern end of the village shouted it to Pat Riley, whose claim was the next one to Flint Buckner’s. At that time Fetlock Jones seemed to turn sick. He muttered to himself,

“Uncle Sherlock! The mean luck of it! – that he should come just when….” He dropped into a reverie, and presently said to himself: “But what’s the use of being afraid of him? Anybody that knows him the way I do knows he can’t detect a crime except where he plans it all out beforehand and arranges the clues and hires some fellow to commit it according to instructions…. Now there ain’t going to be any clues this time – so, what show has he got? None at all. No, sir; everything’s ready. If I was to risk putting it off…. No, I won’t run any risk like that. Flint Buckner goes out of this world to-night, for sure.” Then another trouble presented itself. “Uncle Sherlock ’ll be wanting to talk home matters with me this evening, and how am I going to get rid of him? for I’ve got to be at my cabin a minute or two about eight o’clock.” This was an awkward matter, and cost him much thought. But he found a way to beat the difficulty. “We’ll go for a walk, and I’ll leave him in the road a minute, so that he won’t see what it is I do: the best way to throw a detective off the track, anyway, is to have him along when you are preparing the thing. Yes, that’s the safest – I’ll take him with me.”

Meantime the road in front of the tavern was blocked with villagers waiting and hoping for a glimpse of the great man. But he kept his room, and did not appear. None but Ferguson, Jake Parker the blacksmith, and Ham Sandwich had any luck. These enthusiastic admirers of the great scientific detective hired the tavern’s detained-baggage lockup, which looked into the detective’s room across a little alleyway ten or twelve feet wide, ambushed themselves in it, and cut some peep-holes in the window-blind. Mr. Holmes’s blinds were down; but by-and-by he raised them. It gave the spies a hair-lifting but pleasurable thrill to find themselves face to face with the Extraordinary Man who had filled the world with the fame of his more than human ingenuities. There he sat – not a myth, not a shadow, but real, alive, compact of substance, and almost within touching distance with the hand.

“Look at that head!” said Ferguson, in an awed voice. “By gracious! that’s a head!”

“You bet!” said the blacksmith, with deep reverence. “Look at his nose! look at his eyes! Intellect? Just a battery of it!”

“And that paleness,” said Ham Sandwich. “Comes from thought – that’s what it comes from. Hell! duffers like us don’t know what real thought is.”

“No more we don’t,” said Ferguson. “What we take for thinking is just blubber-and-slush.”

“Right you are, Wells-Fargo. And look at that frown – that’s deep thinking – away down, down, forty fathom into the bowels of things. He’s on the track of something.”

“Well, he is, and don’t you forget it. Say – look at that awful gravity – look at that pallid solemness – there ain’t any corpse can lay over it.”

“No, sir, not for dollars! And it’s his’n by hereditary rights, too; he’s been dead four times a’ready, and there’s history for it. Three times natural, once by accident. I’ve heard say he smells damp and cold, like a grave. And he—”

“’Sh! Watch him! There – he’s got his thumb on the bump on the near corner of his forehead, and his forefinger on the off one. His think-works is just a-grinding now, you bet your other shirt.”

“That’s so. And now he’s gazing up toward heaven and stroking his mustache slow, and—”

“Now he has rose up standing, and is putting his clues together on his left fingers with his right finger. See? he touches the forefinger – now middle finger – now ring-finger—”

“Stuck!”

“Look at him scowl! He can’t seem to make out that clue. So he—”

“See him smile! – like a tiger – and tally off the other fingers like nothing! He’s got it, boys; he’s got it sure!”

“Well, I should say! I’d hate to be in that man’s place that he’s after.”

Mr. Holmes drew a table to the window, sat down with his back to the spies, and proceeded to write. The spies withdrew their eyes from the peep-holes, lit their pipes, and settled themselves for a comfortable smoke and talk. Ferguson said, with conviction,

“Boys, it’s no use talking, he’s a wonder! He’s got the signs of it all over him.”

“You hain’t ever said a truer word than that, Wells-Fargo,” said Jake Parker. “Say, wouldn’t it ‘a’ been nuts if he’d a-been here last night?”

“Oh, by George, but wouldn’t it!” said Ferguson. “Then we’d have seen scientific work. Intellect – just pure intellect – away up on the upper levels, dontchuknow. Archy is all right, and it don’t become anybody to belittle him, I can tell you. But his gift is only just eyesight, sharp as an owl’s, as near as I can make it out just a grand natural animal talent, no more, no less, and prime as far as it goes, but no intellect in it, and for awfulness and marvelousness no more to be compared to what this man does than – than – Why, let me tell you what he’d have done. He’d have stepped over to Hogan’s and glanced – just glanced, that’s all – at the premises, and that’s enough. See everything? Yes, sir, to the last little detail; and he’ll know more about that place than the Hogans would know in seven years. Next, he would sit down on the bunk, just as ca’m, and say to Mrs. Hogan – Say, Ham, consider that you are Mrs. Hogan. I’ll ask the questions; you answer them.”

“All right; go on.”

“’Madam, if you please – attention – do not let your mind wander. Now, then – sex of the child?’

“‘Female, your Honor.’

“‘Um – female. Very good, very good. Age?’

“‘Turned six, your Honor.’

“’Um – young, weak – two miles. Weariness will overtake it then. It will sink down and sleep. We shall find it two miles away, or less. Teeth?’

“‘Five, your Honor, and one a-coming.’

“‘Very good, very good, very good, indeed.’ You see, boys, he knows a clue when he sees it, when it wouldn’t mean a dern thing to anybody else. ‘Stockings, madam? Shoes?’

“‘Yes, your Honor – both.’

“‘Yarn, perhaps? Morocco?’

“‘Yarn, your Honor. And kip.’

“’Um – kip. This complicates the matter. However, let it go – we shall manage. Religion?’

“‘Catholic, your Honor.’

“’Very good. Snip me a bit from the bed blanket, please. Ah, thanks. Part wool – foreign make. Very well. A snip from some garment of the child’s, please. Thanks. Cotton. Shows wear. An excellent clue, excellent. Pass me a pallet of the floor dirt, if you’ll be so kind. Thanks, many thanks. Ah, admirable, admirable! Now we know where we are, I think.’ You see, boys, he’s got all the clues he wants now; he don’t need anything more. Now, then, what does this Extraordinary Man do? He lays those snips and that dirt out on the table and leans over them on his elbows, and puts them together side by side and studies them – mumbles to himself, ‘Female’; changes them around – mumbles, ‘Six years old’; changes them this way and that – again mumbles: ’Five teeth – one a-coming – Catholic – yarn – cotton – kip – damn that kip.’ Then he straightens up and gazes toward heaven, and plows his hands through his hair – plows and plows, muttering, ‘Damn that kip!’ Then he stands up and frowns, and begins to tally off his clues on his fingers – and gets stuck at the ring-finger. But only just a minute – then his face glares all up in a smile like a house afire, and he straightens up stately and majestic, and says to the crowd, ’Take a lantern, a couple of you, and go down to Injun Billy’s and fetch the child – the rest of you go ’long home to bed; good-night, madam; good-night, gents.’ And he bows like the Matterhorn, and pulls out for the tavern. That’s his style, and the Only – scientific, intellectual – all over in fifteen minutes – no poking around all over the sage-brush range an hour and a half in a mass-meeting crowd for him, boys – you hear me!”

“By Jackson, it’s grand!” said Ham Sandwich. “Wells-Fargo, you’ve got him down to a dot. He ain’t painted up any exacter to the life in the books. By George, I can just see him – can’t you, boys?”

“You bet you! It’s just a photograft, that’s what it is.”

Ferguson was profoundly pleased with his success, and grateful. He sat silently enjoying his happiness a little while, then he murmured, with a deep awe in his voice,

“I wonder if God made him?”

There was no response for a moment; then Ham Sandwich said, reverently,

“Not all at one time, I reckon.”

II

At eight o’clock that evening two persons were groping their way past Flint Buckner’s cabin in the frosty gloom. They were Sherlock Holmes and his nephew.

“Stop here in the road a moment, uncle,” said Fetlock, “while I run to my cabin; I won’t be gone a minute.”

He asked for something – the uncle furnished it – then he disappeared in the darkness, but soon returned, and the talking-walk was resumed. By nine o’clock they had wandered back to the tavern. They worked their way through the billiard-room, where a crowd had gathered in the hope of getting a glimpse of the Extraordinary Man. A royal cheer was raised. Mr. Holmes acknowledged the compliment with a series of courtly bows, and as he was passing out his nephew said to the assemblage,

“Uncle Sherlock’s got some work to do, gentlemen, that ’ll keep him till twelve or one; but he’ll be down again then, or earlier if he can, and hopes some of you’ll be left to take a drink with him.”

“By George, he’s just a duke, boys! Three cheers for Sherlock Holmes, the greatest man that ever lived!” shouted Ferguson. “Hip, hip, hip—”

“Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah! Tiger!”

The uproar shook the building, so hearty was the feeling the boys put into their welcome. Upstairs the uncle reproached the nephew gently, saying,

“What did you get me into that engagement for?”

“I reckon you don’t want to be unpopular, do you, uncle? Well, then, don’t you put on any exclusiveness in a mining-camp, that’s all. The boys admire you; but if you was to leave without taking a drink with them, they’d set you down for a snob. And, besides, you said you had home talk enough in stock to keep us up and at it half the night.”

The boy was right, and wise – the uncle acknowledged it. The boy was wise in another detail which he did not mention – except to himself: “Uncle and the others will come handy – in the way of nailing an alibi where it can’t be budged.”

He and his uncle talked diligently about three hours. Then, about midnight, Fetlock stepped down-stairs and took a position in the dark a dozen steps from the tavern, and waited. Five minutes later Flint Buckner came rocking out of the billiard-room and almost brushed him as he passed.

“I’ve got him!” muttered the boy. He continued to himself, looking after the shadowy form: “Good-by – good-by for good, Flint Buckner; you called my mother a – well, never mind what; it’s all right, now; you’re taking your last walk, friend.”

He went musing back into the tavern. “From now till one is an hour. We’ll spend it with the boys; it’s good for the alibi.”

He brought Sherlock Holmes to the billiard-room, which was jammed with eager and admiring miners; the guest called the drinks, and the fun began. Everybody was happy; everybody was complimentary; the ice was soon broken; songs, anecdotes, and more drinks followed, and the pregnant minutes flew. At six minutes to one, when the jollity was at its highest—

Boom!

There was silence instantly. The deep sound came rolling and rumbling from peak to peak up the gorge, then died down, and ceased. The spell broke, then, and the men made a rush for the door, saying,

“Something’s blown up!”

Outside, a voice in the darkness said, “It’s away down the gorge; I saw the flash.”

The crowd poured down the canyon – Holmes, Fetlock, Archy Stillman, everybody. They made the mile in a few minutes. By the light of a lantern they found the smooth and solid dirt floor of Flint Buckner’s cabin; of the cabin itself not a vestige remained, not a rag nor a splinter. Nor any sign of Flint. Search-parties sought here and there and yonder, and presently a cry went up.

“Here he is!”

It was true. Fifty yards down the gulch they had found him – that is, they had found a crushed and lifeless mass which represented him. Fetlock Jones hurried thither with the others and looked.

The inquest was a fifteen-minute affair. Ham Sandwich, foreman of the jury, handed up the verdict, which was phrased with a certain unstudied literary grace, and closed with this finding, to wit: that “deceased came to his death by his own act or some other person or persons unknown to this jury not leaving any family or similar effects behind but his cabin which was blown away and God have mercy on his soul amen.”

Then the impatient jury rejoined the main crowd, for the storm-centre of interest was there – Sherlock Holmes. The miners stood silent and reverent in a half-circle, inclosing a large vacant space which included the front exposure of the site of the late premises. In this considerable space the Extraordinary Man was moving about, attended by his nephew with a lantern. With a tape he took measurements of the cabin site; of the distance from the wall of chaparral to the road; of the height of the chaparral bushes; also various other measurements. He gathered a rag here, a splinter there, and a pinch of earth yonder, inspected them profoundly, and preserved them. He took the “lay” of the place with a pocket-compass, allowing two seconds for magnetic variation. He took the time (Pacific) by his watch, correcting it for local time. He paced off the distance from the cabin site to the corpse, and corrected that for tidal differentiation. He took the altitude with a pocket-aneroid, and the temperature with a pocket-thermometer. Finally he said, with a stately bow:

“It is finished. Shall we return, gentlemen?”

He took up the line of march for the tavern, and the crowd fell into his wake, earnestly discussing and admiring the Extraordinary Man, and interlarding guesses as to the origin of the tragedy and who the author of it might he.

“My, but it’s grand luck having him here – hey, boys?” said Ferguson.

“It’s the biggest thing of the century,” said Ham Sandwich. “It ’ll go all over the world; you mark my words.”

“You bet!” said Jake Parker, the blacksmith. “It ’ll boom this camp. Ain’t it so, Wells-Fargo?”

“Well, as you want my opinion – if it’s any sign of how I think about it, I can tell you this: yesterday I was holding the Straight Flush claim at two dollars a foot; I’d like to see the man that can get it at sixteen today.”

“Right you are, Wells-Fargo! It’s the grandest luck a new camp ever struck. Say, did you see him collar them little rags and dirt and things? What an eye! He just can’t overlook a clue—’tain’t in him.”

“That’s so. And they wouldn’t mean a thing to anybody else; but to him, why, they’re just a book – large print at that.”

“Sure’s you’re born! Them odds and ends have got their little old secret, and they think there ain’t anybody can pull it; but, land! when he sets his grip there they’ve got to squeal, and don’t you forget it.”

“Boys, I ain’t sorry, now, that he wasn’t here to roust out the child; this is a bigger thing, by a long sight. Yes, sir, and more tangled up and scientific and intellectual.”