August Derleth - The Solar Pons Omnibus Volume 1 Read online

  AUGUST DERLETH

  The

  Solar

  Pons Omnibus

  VOLUME ONE

  EDITED BY BASIL COPPER

  WITH DRAWINGS BY FRANK UTPATEL

  AND A FOREWORD BY ROBERT BLOCH

  ARKHAM HOUSE PUBLISHERS, INC.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The Casebook of Solar Pons, copyright 1965 by August Derleth

  The Chronicles of Solar Pons, copyright 1973 by April R. Derleth and Walden W. Derleth

  "In Re: Sherlock Holmes"—The Adventures of Solar Pons, copyright 1945 by August Derleth; copyright renewed 1973 by April Derleth and Walden Derleth

  The Memoirs of Solar Pons, copyright 1951 by August Derleth; copyright renewed 1979 by April Derleth Smith and Walden W. Derleth

  Mr. Fairlie's Final Journey, copyright 1968 by August Derleth

  A Praed Street Dossier, copyright 1968 by August Derleth

  The Reminiscences of Solar Pons, copyright 1961 by August Derleth

  The Return of Solar Pons, copyright 1958 by August Derleth

  Copyright © 1982 by April R. Derleth and Walden W. Derleth

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without the permission of Arkham House Publishers, Inc., Sauk City, Wisconsin.

  Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

  Derleth, August.

  The Solar Pons omnibus.

  "A Mycroft & Moran book"—Half t.p.

  1. Detective and mystery stories, American.

  I. Copper, Basil.

  II. Title PS3507.E69A6 1982 813'.0872'08 76-17995

  ISBN 0-87054-009-2 (v. 1)

  ISBN 0-87054-010-6 (v. 2)

  ISBN 0-87054-006-8 (set)

  Printed in the United States of America First Edition

  an ebookman scan

  Contents

  Foreword by Robert Bloch

  From the Notebooks of Dr. Lyndon Parker

  The Adventure of the Sotheby Salesman

  The Adventure of Ricoletti of the Clubfoot

  The Adventure of the Unique Dickensians

  The Adventure of the Haunted Library

  The Adventure of the Aluminium Crutch

  The Adventure of the Circular Room

  The Adventure of the Purloined Periapt

  The Adventure of the Lost Locomotive

  The Adventure of the Five Royal Coachmen

  The Adventure of the Frightened Baronet

  The Adventure of the Missing Huntsman

  The Adventure of the Amateur Philologist

  The Adventure of the Seven Sisters

  The Adventure of the Limping Man

  The Adventure of the Shaplow Millions

  The Adventure of the Innkeepers Clerk

  The Adventure of the Crouching Dog

  The Adventure of the Perfect Husband

  The Adventure of the Dog in the Manger

  The Adventure of the Swedenborg Signatures

  The Adventure of the Spurious Tamerlane

  The Adventure of the Rydberg Numbers

  The Adventure of the Praed Street Irregulars

  The Adventure of the Penny Magenta

  The Adventure of the Remarkable Worm

  The Adventure of the Retired Novelist

  The Adventure of the Missing Tenants

  The Adventure of the Devil's Footprints

  The Adventure of the Sussex Archers

  The Adventure of the Cloverdale Kennels

  The Adventure of the Lost Dutchman

  The Adventure of the Grice-Paterson Curse

  The Adventure of the Dorrington Inheritance

  The Adventure of the Norcross Riddle

  The Adventure of the Late Mr. Faversham

  The Adventure of the Black Narcissus

  End of Volume 1 of the Solar Pons Omnibus

  Foreword by Robert Bloch

  IN 1965, during my first visit to London, I made a pilgrimage to Praed Street.

  But as I drew closer to the teeming tumult of Paddington Station, my mind was far away—over thirty years and four thousand miles away—returning to Sauk City, Wisconsin, and my first visit with August Derleth.

  Sauk City in the thirties was a sleepy village with nary a suggestion of London about it, and in that prejet era the four-thousand-mile span separating the two communities seemed an almost insurmountable distance to Midwesterners like Derleth and myself.

  People in our time and circumstances were forced to rely upon the only method of transportation which our finances permitted—we journeyed through time and space by book. Writers were our tour guides and the printed page our passport to other lands and other days.

  Thus it was that we embarked on imaginary exploration of the great world beyond. And inevitably our travels brought us to the London of Sherlock Holmes.

  We did not go alone. The foggy streets of the late-Victorian metropolis proved a universally popular destination, and there was always the promise of high adventure when the game was afoot. Millions of others in our stay-at-home generation made the same trip via the same route.

  But Derleth and I were in some ways different from most of our fellow readers. Blessed—or cursed—with a creative imagination, we were not entirely satisfied to follow the beaten paths mapped out by other explorers. We had already left the guided tour to wander through worlds of our own devising. We had learned the secret of traveling in style—and discovered that we, as authors, could write our own ticket.

  Thus it was that in those far-off days Derleth ventured to far-off lands at will, forsaking the familiar for the fantastic. Not that he permanently abandoned Sauk City; anyone reading the many volumes comprising his Sac Prairie Saga will recognize Derleth's lasting affinity for his birthplace. His roots were deep in native soil, and he cultivated it richly.

  But even the most dedicated home-lover enjoys an occasional vacation, and Derleth often chose London as his home away from home. Armchair journeys into the realm of English fantasy were augmented by typewriter trips mounted on his own, resulting in ghost stories with similar backgrounds.

  Based on this precedent, it seemed quite natural that, having exhausted the resources of the resourceful Sherlock Holmes, he would seek to supplement them with further excursions in the company of a surrogate figure of his own choice and creation.

  Hence Solar Pons was born, and grew, and flourished apace. Over the years Derleth earned and enjoyed a reputation as a writer of pastiches in many genres. Among such efforts, there seems little doubt that the Pontine Canon is his most redoubtable achievement.

  During a span of almost a century there have been literally hundreds of Sherlockian imitations, ranging from parody to direct duplication, but no one except August Derleth ever succeeded in capturing the essential charm of Doyle's original concept.

  Doyle is dead, but Sherlock Holmes is immortal.

  Derleth is gone, but Solar Pons lives on. And I like to think that the Praed Street stories survive because they were created not out of envy, rivalry, or ridicule, but out of love.

  Sitting late at night in the slumbering silence of a tiny Midwestern town, poring over the street maps of a great city he had never seen, Derleth fashioned the annals of a doppelganger detective who took on an independent and legitimate literary identity. To Pons's exploits he brought not only expertise but evident expression of his respect, appreciation, and affection for the source of their inspiration. Viewed as Holmesian homage or as a character in his own right, Solar Pons became Derleth's personal guide to an enchanted time and place.

  The Praed Street of which Derleth dreamed, and on which I walked, has never truly existed
as portrayed in the stories of this omnibus collection. And yet, thanks to August Derleth, we can journey there, just around the corner, in the only real world all of us inhabit—the world of imagination.

  Turn these pages and you'll find it.

  ROBERT BLOCH

  The Solar Pons Omnibus

  From the Notebooks of Dr. Lyndon Parker

  WITHIN A FEW months of my joining Solar Pons in his quarters at 7B, Praed Street, and before I turned to chronicling his cases at full-length, I began to keep a notebook —not one of daily accounting, but only of random jottings, having become interested enough in his methods to seek to preserve some of his feats. For, in addition to adventures I later set down, there were many instructive moments in his company, and many lesser problems that came and went, that I wished to set down in some fashion for my own edification, and, later, to refresh my memory, since the memory of man is fallible, and time diminishes it or distorts what is locked in it. The entries that follow all date back to my first year at 7B.

  17 August 1919

  After a brief lecture on the art of observation and deduction in a pub in Camden Town today, Pons singled out a disgruntled-looking young man of not over thirty sitting by himself and put me to the test.

  "What do you make of him, Parker?"

  "A labourer," I said.

  "Too general," retorted Pons.

  "He is upset and brooding about something. His face is morose, he hardly touches his ale."

  "Capital!" cried Pons. "Go on."

  "He seems to be engaged in some sort of manual labour. His hands are rough."

  Pons looked at me keenly, his eyes twinkling. "Nothing more?"

  "Except that he seems to have come away hastily. He is in his working clothes."

  "Well, that is a good beginning," said Pons. "You have really missed only a few little details. Come, let us just go over and talk with him."

  So saying, he rose and led the way to the corner where the object of our attention glowered into his ale. The fellow did not look up when we came to pause before him.

  "Forgive me for interrupting your black mood," said Pons, "but perhaps your wife will come around and you can patch up your quarrel."

  The fellow looked up, amazement spreading across his face. After a brief hesitation, he growled, "I'm done with that."

  "Things are never as black as they seem," pursued Pons. "Perhaps by this time she has contemplated your wedding ring long enough to reflect on her position."

  "It's the first time I took it off," he answered.

  "You are by trade a mason?"

  "Aye."

  "Specifically, a brick-layer."

  He nodded.

  "Left-handed, I see."

  The fellow now gazed at Pons with increasing bewilderment.

  "Childless, too."

  "Look here, I don't know your game. . . ." The fellow pushed back his chair and would have got up, had not Pons dropped a coin to the table in front of him.

  "Have another pint, young man," he said, and walked away.

  Once outside, Pons explained the simplicity of it. "The fellow's dark mood coupled with the fact that the band of relatively clean skin on his ring finger betrayed the recent removal of what could only have been a wedding ring suggested that he and his wife had quarreled. He would not be likely to take himself off so violently if there were children to consider.

  "As for his calling —the fingertips of his right hand show the worn, shiny stigma of the brick-layer. Since the mason habitually lays bricks with his left hand while his right is busy with the trowel, it follows that our man is left-handed. Always, in scrutinizing anyone, look for the stigmata of his calling —if there be such. Observe, for instance, this slender young man approaching us. What do you make of the mark on his neck not far below his left ear?"

  I looked as closely as I could at the area Pons designated, and identified it as an acneform dermatergosis.

  "But what does it tell us?" asked Pons. "That is an area too high to be irritated by his collar."

  I could not guess.

  "Why, it is plain as a pikestaff that he plays either the violin or the viola, and I submit that it is the violin. The mark is characteristic of an irritation caused by holding that instrument alongside the chin and against the neck."

  28 September 1919

  In our quarters today Pons surprised me by saying, "I have often reflected upon the fact that you have been somewhat less than comprehensive in your account of yourself to me, Parker."

  "Why do you say so?" I asked.

  "You have impressed me with the Order of Osmanieh bestowed upon you by the Khedivial Government as well as with His Majesty's Government's commission to continue the work at Mansura, Egypt. You have spoken of your education at Dover College, University College, and Heidelberg, and I have been privileged to read your series of articles on ophthalmia in The Lancet. But you are curiously reticent about your years in America. Yet they must have been of some duration."

  "Ten years," I said reluctantly.

  "You have fallen rather pronouncedly into the American idiom and I observe that you speak what can best be described as semi- American."

  "I am not aware of it," I replied, I fear, somewhat stiffly.

  "Oh, it is unmistakable," persisted Pons. "Let me illustrate. Only this morning you spoke of a shop's being 'on' the Edgware Road, whereas we customarily say that it is 'in' this or that street. The American, however, usually says 'on.' You referred yesterday, in speaking of that unfortunate matter of the Curate's Mistake, to a 'stoop' when any Englishman would have said 'porch.' I cite but these two examples, of what I should say is an Englishman's speaking semi-American. You seem to have been spared some of the curious accents affected by Americans, however."

  "Ah, that entire period is a painful one for me," I said.

  "You did not enjoy your sojourn in the States?"

  "No, it was not that. I was graduated from Columbia and then for two years, to 1903, I served as principal medical officer for the Allegheny Sheet & Tube Corporation. Those years were pleasant enough."

  "Ah, it was your marriage."

  "Say, rather, its unfortunate ending. Louisa's death in the Titanic disaster ended not only an entire period in my life, but a kind of life. The war followed hard upon it, and our world has changed since then. I have closed that door —Praed Street is as far from those American years as from my Egyptian sojourn."

  With this he appeared to be satisfied, or, out of delicacy, said no more.

  11 October 1919

  Pons on Calluses, &c. "Certain calluses are almost invariable. The stone-cutter, for instance, is likely to have a broad callus at the base of the little finger of his left hand, on the back, of course, where the chisel rests on the finger. A trumpet player —or a tuba player, for that matter —is likely to show a callus on the right little finger, whereas that of the French horn player will show on the left little finger. The jeweler or engraver may show calluses in several specific places, including the palm of the hand, the tips of thumb and index finger, particularly of the left hand.

  "Men who work with coal tar and petroleum derivatives may show melanosis of exposed parts of their bodies, and anyone working with tetryl in any form is apt to show the red and yellow stains on skin and hair, whereas silversmiths tend to absorb enough silver to give a characteristic slate grey colour to their skin.

  "You will yourself be familiar with the stigmata of disease."

  12 October 1919

  I had been reading Pons's The Varieties of the Criminal Method. When I put the book down, I asked him whether there was such a thing as "the criminal type."

  "I fear that is a fallacy," said Pons. "The fault for its existence is probably traceable to Lombroso, who held that there was such a thing."

  "But you will admit that certain people look like criminals."

  "Nonsense. They may perhaps fit the viewer's concept of what a criminal ought to look like, no more."

  He got up and took down
his files. From them he abstracted four photographs and laid them before me.

  "Which of these is the criminal?" he asked.

  "I suspect they are all criminals or you wouldn't have them in your files."

  "On the contrary. Logical as your deduction is, your conclusion is false."

  I examined the photographs carefully and finally selected one.

  "Why?" asked Pons.

  "You have only to look at him —the beetling brow, the shifty eyes, the thick-lipped sensuous mouth, the cauliflower ear. The fellow looks evil."

  "And the others do not?"

  "No."

  "Why do you say so?"

  "Well, look at the first one. There is an ascetic face, if ever I saw one," I said. "The fellow looks like a minister."

  "He was. The Reverend Athelny Foster."

  I fear I chuckled in triumph.

  "Of Chipping Fulham. The name means nothing to you?"

  "It is surely enough that I identified his calling."

  "He poisoned his wife in favour of a barmaid," said Pons dryly. "Next?"

  "This one is as dignified as a Sunday School Superintendent."

  "You name him so?"

  "No. A judge or a lawyer. And so is the other."

  Pons laughed in that way of his I should describe as "heartless." "The one is a swindler of some renown — Patrick Donovan. The other is indeed a lawyer —Charles Convers. He suffocated a client in order to conceal his peculations from his estate."

  "And what did the 'criminal type' do?"

  "He caught them. He was the late Commissioner John Flinders of New Scotland Yard. I trust that will curb your romanticism."

  17 October 1919

  A lady called to see Pons today. She gave her name as Mrs. Rose Murray. She was simply dressed and wore a little straw hat with straw flowers decorating it, together with a bit of black cloth.

  "A seamstress, I see," said Pons.

  "Yes, sir," she said. "I didn't think it so plain to tell I made my own clothing."

  "The mark of the thimble is easy to see on your finger," said Pons. "Not long widowed?"

  "My husband was killed last March in an accident on the Great Western," she replied. "I have quite got over it, though."

  "Not quite enough to remove that bit of crepe on your hat, and yet enough to call yourself by your own Christian name rather than his."