Sherlock Holmes: Before Baker Street David Marcum (reading eggs books .TXT) 📖

Escott shrugged. “Glad to be of service,” said he, clinking his glass with mine.

A chuckle escaped my lips. “I expect that people will say my one-legged pirate was modelled after my one-legged friend, the poet William Henley. And I must admit that writing a story about someone so afflicted has indeed crossed my mind before. But your performance – not to mention that wobbly parrot – seems to have been just the inspiration I needed to touch off the action. And for that I am truly grateful.”

Escott sat silently for a few moments, as if contemplating his next words. Finally, he gave a brief nod of his head, as if to indicate that he had decided in the affirmative. “Speaking of role-playing, “ said he, “you should know that Escott is my acting pseudonym. In reality, I am called Sherlock Holmes.”

In the Bohemian world of theatre, such news caused no great excitement. “Well then,” said I, “here’s to Sherlock Holmes,” and I raised my glass. “Call me ‘Louis’,” I added with a smile.

“I’m still Jones,” said our other companion with a laugh.

We finished our smokes, and Escott walked Jones and me back through the rain to Reunion House. The showers were not as heavy as earlier in the day, but they were still coming down in a watery curtain. The next evening I would begin my long railway excursion to the west. I had no reason to think that I would ever again hear the name Sherlock Holmes. But at least I could complete this leg of my journey in the belief that, however inadvertently, I might have played some small role in helping forge the career of the world’s first consulting detective.

III

The day after I had read Stevenson’s narrative, I made my way to the London Library in St. James’s Square, where the sub-librarian Lomax procured for me a copy of the novel triggered by Stevenson’s visit to the panto at Booth’s Theatre. Book in hand, I proceeded to the Northumberland Arms near Trafalgar Square. My literary agent, Arthur Conan Doyle, and I had scheduled a holiday meeting at one of his favourite public houses to discuss my idea for a story about Holmes’s recent return to life. It had been just a few months since he had shocked me with his dramatic re-appearance following his encounter with Moriarty at the Reichenbach Falls. After all, Holmes had been thought dead for close to three years. As we exchanged literary strategies, we also enjoyed a tankard or two. Conan Doyle paused, however, when he noted the book at my side.

“Stevenson, I see,” he observed grimly. “What a loss. Another Scotsman with genius – a wonderful teller of tales. If I do say so myself, Louis was one of the great storytellers of the race. He glorified the ‘masculine type’, if you take my meaning. Do you know that there are those who call that book next to you the finest narrative in the English language? It was originally titled The Sea Cook: A Story for Boys. Stevenson employed the pseudonym of ‘Captain George North’ when he first published it. The story appeared in serialized sections in the children’s magazine called Young Folks. He wrote it in the two years following his meeting with Holmes.”

Conan Doyle paused to sample the ale. Then, almost as an afterthought, he added, “Do you know, John, that Stevenson wrote to me just how much he enjoyed Sherlock Holmes? To tell the truth, I didn’t know if he meant the man himself or the hero of your accounts – though he did say that reading one of your stories had given him momentary relief from a bout of pleurisy.”

My agent broke into a round of hearty laughter. “As a doctor myself,” he said, “I regard that as quite a compliment. Don’t you agree?”

I nodded sadly, thinking of Stevenson’s early death.

Later that evening, following a meal of lamb and potatoes, I settled into my armchair in the sitting room with the book in my hands. The tin box and the Stevenson manuscript were no longer in sight. A fire crackled in the hearth, and I prepared myself for a relaxing read. With Christmas but a week away, 221b seemed the most ideal spot in the world. With a satisfied smile, I opened the book called Treasure Island and read: “. . . I remember him as if it were yesterday as he came plodding to the inn door . . . .”

The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual

by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

An anomaly which often struck me in the character of my friend Sherlock Holmes was that, although in his methods of thought he was the neatest and most methodical of mankind, and although also he affected a certain quiet primness of dress, he was none the less in his personal habits one of the most untidy men that ever drove a fellow-lodger to distraction. Not that I am in the least conventional in that respect myself. The rough-and-tumble work in Afghanistan, coming on the top of a natural Bohemianism of disposition, has made me rather more lax than befits a medical man. But with me there is a limit, and when I find a man who keeps his cigars in the coal-scuttle, his tobacco in the toe end of a Persian slipper, and his unanswered correspondence transfixed by a jack-knife into the very centre of his wooden mantelpiece, then I begin to give myself virtuous airs. I have always held, too, that pistol practice should be distinctly an open-air pastime, and when Holmes, in one of his queer humors, would sit in an arm-chair with his hair-trigger and a hundred Boxer cartridges, and proceed to adorn the opposite wall with a patriotic V. R. Done in bullet-pocks, I felt strongly that neither the atmosphere nor the appearance of our room was improved