Books: The Pursuit of the House Boat
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John Kendrick Bangs >> The Pursuit of the House Boat
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"'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."
CHAPTER 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 bonbonniere 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."
"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--"
"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 Caesar. "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."
"It's a lucky thing for us that Noah wasn't a Frenchman, eh?" said
Frederick the Great. "How that rain would have fazed him if he had
been! The human race would have been wiped out."
"Oh, pshaw!" ejaculated Noah, deprecating the unseemliness of the
quarrel, and putting his arm affectionately about Bonaparte's
shoulder. "When you come down to that, I was French--as French as
one could be in those days--and these Gallic subjects of my friend
here were, every one of 'em, my lineal descendants, and their hatred
of rain was inherited directly from me, their ancestor."
"Are not we English as much your descendants?" queried Wellington,
arching his eyebrows.
"You are," said Noah, "but you take after Mrs. Noah more than after
me. Water never fazes a woman, and your delight in tubs is an
essentially feminine trait. The first thing Mrs. Noah carried aboard
was a laundry outfit, and then she went back for rugs and coats and
all sorts of hand-baggage. Gad, it makes me laugh to this day when I
think of it! She looked for all the world like an Englishman
travelling on the Continent as she walked up the gang-plank behind
the elephants, each elephant with a Gladstone bag in his trunk and a
hat-box tied to his tail." Here the venerable old weather-prophet
winked at Munchausen, and the little quarrel which had been imminent
passed off in a general laugh.
"Where's Boswell? He ought to get that anecdote," said Johnson.
"I've locked him up in the library," said Holmes. "He's in charge of
the log, and as I have a pretty good general idea as to what is about
to happen, I have mapped out a skeleton of the plot and set him to
work writing it up." Here the detective gave a sudden start, placed
his hand to his ear, listened intently for an instant, and, taking
out his watch and glancing at it, added, quietly, "In three minutes
Shem will be in here to announce a discovery, and one of great
importance, I judge, from the squeak."
The assemblage gazed earnestly at Holmes for a moment.
"The squeak?" queried Raleigh.
"Precisely," said Holmes. "The squeak is what I said, and as I
always say what I mean, it follows logically that I meant what I
said."
"I heard no squeak," observed Dr. Johnson; "and, furthermore, I fail
to see how a squeak, if I had heard it, would have portended a
discovery of importance."
"It would not--to you," said Holmes; "but with me it is different.
My hearing is unusually acute. I can hear the dropping of a pin
through a stone wall ten feet thick; any sound within a mile of my
eardrum vibrates thereon with an intensity which would surprise you,
and it is by the use of cocaine that I have acquired this wonderfully
acute sense. A property which dulls the senses of most people
renders mine doubly apprehensive; therefore, gentlemen, while to you
there was no auricular disturbance, to me there was. I heard Shem
sliding down the mast a minute since. The fact that he slid down the
mast instead of climbing down the rigging showed that he was in great
haste, therefore he must have something to communicate of great
importance."
"Why isn't he here already, then? It wouldn't take him two minutes
to get from the deck here," asked the ever-auspicious Le Coq.
"It is simple," returned Holmes, calmly. "If you will go yourself
and slide down that mast you will see. Shem has stopped for a little
witch-hazel to soothe his burns. It is no cool matter sliding down a
mast two hundred feet in height."
As Sherlock Holmes spoke the door burst open and Shem rushed in.
"A signal of distress, captain!" he cried.
"From what quarter--to larboard?" asked Holmes.
"No," returned Shem, breathless.
"Then it must be dead ahead," said Holmes.
"Why not to starboard?" asked Le Coq, dryly.
"Because," answered Holmes, confidently, "it never happens so. If
you had ever read a truly exciting sea-tale, my dear Le Coq, you
would have known that interesting things, and particularly signals of
distress, are never seen except to larboard or dead ahead."
A murmur of applause greeted this retort, and Le Coq subsided.
"The nature of the signal?" demanded Holmes.
"A black flag, skull and cross-bones down, at half-mast!" cried Shem,
"and on a rock-bound coast!"
"They're marooned, by heavens!" shouted Holmes, springing to his feet
and rushing to the deck, where he was joined immediately by Sir
Walter, Dr. Johnson, Bonaparte, and the others.
"Isn't he a daisy?" whispered Demosthenes to Diogenes as they climbed
the stairs.
"He is more than that; he's a blooming orchid," said Diogenes, with
intense enthusiasm. "I think I'll get my X-ray lantern and see if
he's honest."
CHAPTER IX: CAPTAIN KIDD MEETS WITH AN OBSTACLE
"Excuse me, your Majesty," remarked Helen of Troy as Cleopatra
accorded permission to Captain Kidd to speak, "I have not been
introduced to this gentleman nor has he been presented to me, and I
really cannot consent to any proceeding so irregular as this. I do
not speak to gentlemen I have not met, nor do I permit them to
address me."
"Hear, hear!" cried Xanthippe. "I quite agree with the principle of
my young friend from Troy. It may be that when we claimed for
ourselves all the rights of men that the right to speak and be spoken
to by other men without an introduction will included in the list,
but I for one have no desire to avail myself of the privilege,
especially when it's a horrid-looking man like this."
Kidd bowed politely, and smiled so terribly that several of the
ladies fainted.
"I will withdraw," he said, turning to Cleopatra; and it must be said
that his suggestion was prompted by his heartfelt wish, for now that
he found himself thus conspicuously brought before so many women,
with falsehood on his lips, his courage began to ooze.
"Not yet, please," answered the chairlady. "I imagine we can get
about this difficulty without much trouble."
"I think it a perfectly proper objection too," observed Delilah,
rising. "If we ever needed etiquette we need it now. But I have a
plan which will obviate any further difficulty. If there is no one
among us who is sufficiently well acquainted with the gentleman to
present him formally to us, I will for the time being take upon
myself the office of ship's barber and cut his hair. I understand
that it is quite the proper thing for barbers to talk, while cutting
their hair, to persons to whom they have not been introduced. And,
besides, he really needs a hair-cut badly. Thus I shall establish an
acquaintance with the captain, after which I can with propriety
introduce him to the rest of you."
"Perhaps the gentleman himself might object to that," put in Queen
Elizabeth. "If I remember rightly, your last customer was very much
dissatisfied with the trim you gave him."
"It will be unnecessary to do what Delilah proposes," said Mrs. Noah,
with a kindly smile, as she rose up from the corner in which she had
been sitting, an interested listener. "I can introduce the gentleman
to you all with perfect propriety. He's a member of my family. His
grandfather was the great-grandson a thousand and eight times removed
of my son Shem's great-grandnephew on his father's side. His
relationship to me is therefore obvious, though from what I know of
his reputation I think he takes more after my husband's ancestors
than my own. Willie, dear, these ladies are friends of mine.
Ladies, this young man is one of my most famous descendants. He has
been a man of many adventures, and he has been hanged once, which,
far from making him undesirable as an acquaintance, has served merely
to render him harmless, and therefore a safe person to know. Now, my
son, go ahead and speak your piece."
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