Sherlock Holmes Edwardian Parodies and Pastiches I by Bill Peschel

Author:Bill Peschel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History
Publisher: Bill Peschel
Published: 2015-08-01T16:00:00+00:00

Rushem was pleased, as I had fully intended he should be, by my multum in parvo mode of expression. I think he impulsively added a ten to the salary he was about to propose, and I was employed on the spot.

Behold me, therefore, seven days later, in the Strangers’ Room of the Diogenes Club, Pall Mall, seated opposite Mycroft Holmes, in the gentle act of interviewing him.

“Briefly, Mr. Holmes,” said I, for the twentieth time mentally sizing him up to my combined satisfaction and mystification, “what my paper’s readers want is to know whether there is any truth in the widespread rumours that you are setting up in competition with your brother, lately reappeared?”

Mycroft Holmes looked up sharply from his cigar-ash in evident surprise and disappointment. “Softly, softly, my dear fellow,” he expostulated at once; “this is scarcely the proper beginning if I remember—if I know myself. It is for me to speak first, I believe, and so we shall commence over.” He drew his ponderous weight higher up in his arm-chair and fixed his narrow eyes on mine in a manner well calculated to be impressive.

“In the first place,” he continued at once, “it must be a source of some satisfaction to you, even though a citizen of a republic, to be aware that you are descended in an almost direct line from a king of France, that another of your forbears was for months the companion of a monarch of England, and that two other progenitors of yours fell at Waterloo, fighting on opposite sides.”

“Indeed, it is!” I acknowledged before I thought; and then, I frankly confess, I sprang up in the most intense amazement: I had come fully prepared for the usual demonstration of keen powers of observation and deduction, but I had certainly expected them to be applied to matters of the present or, at least, recent. So I did exactly what I had previously resolved not to do: I exclaimed in accents of extreme astonishment, “Mr. Holmes, this is marvellous! How on earth do you do it?”

Mycroft Holmes smiled contentedly. “I shall tell you,” he said, “presently. Now, we shall return to the interview. It is desired to know whether I shall set up in competition with my brother, Sherlock: briefly, I shall not.”

He paused, evidently to gather his forces, a frown coming over his low forehead, and continued, “Sherlock Holmes is—” in such a tone that I could not repress an involuntary, “Yes?” of expectancy and suspense.

“Sherlock Holmes is a vain coxcomb and an arrant charlatan,” went on Mycroft explosively. “The strain he exhibits comes into our line in the middle of the eighteenth century: there was a fellow married a Holmes, a certain would-be detective named Quiller, who rejoiced in the sobriquet of—”

“Foxy!” I cried, exultation mingling with my surprise.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.