Art by Mark Evan Walker |
by Steve Hockensmith
Urias Smythe
Smythe & Associates
Publishing, Ltd.
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, New York
Dear Mr. Smythe:
I am delighted to hear that my latest literary effort meets with your approval and look forward to seeing it printed with the usual Smythe & Associates panache. Admittedly, I would have preferred it had you kept the title I supplied, “The Double-A Western Detective Agency”—free advertising for our fledgling enterprise here in Ogden. But I will bow once again to your instincts as to the fickle tastes of the reading public. I won’t dwell on the fact that I offered up the alternative you’ve chosen to use (“Cowboy Brothers Battle the New Mexico Death Baron!”) as a joke to illustrate exactly the kind of title I didn’t want. No, I shall not dwell on that at all—though I will perhaps take more care with the jokes I make in the future. (This would, no doubt, make my brother a happy man. Or a slightly less unhappy one, anyway.)
I wasn’t idle while awaiting word on the new book. In fact, I had but a few days to work the cramps out of my writing hand before fate—with a little assistance from the United States Postal Service—offered fodder for a whole new adventure. The A.A. Western Detective Agency is still very much in need of clients, and a potential one had contacted our partner Col. Crowe with a case that seemed right in my brother’s line: A Colorado newspaperman had been stopped by a menacing, cloak-clad bandit who relieved him not of his valuables but of that morning’s edition.
Old Red wasn’t thrilled about the where of it: in Littleton, just below Denver and a long day of rail travel south of Ogden. The who, what, why, and how were enticing enough to coax him to the depot, though, despite his hatred of trains. When we stepped off in Littleton he looked peaked and grumpy, but only slightly more so than usual, and I complimented him on how he’d weathered the preceding hours of shimmying and shaking.
“I suppose practice really does make perfect,” I said. “Why, another dozen or so trips on trains and maybe you’ll be able to ride one without looking like you’re gonna upchuck.”
I waited with bated breath to see which response this would get: icy silence or “Feh.” I am not a gambling man, but I’d have staked my life savings ($345.23, thank you very much) on it being one or the other.
“Yeah . . . maybe,” Old Red muttered, and he went striding off past the little snow-dusted depot building, carpetbag in hand.
I guess it’s a good thing I’m not a gambling man.
I’d say I know my brother like the back of my hand even though it’s another kind of backside he more often brings to mind. (The kind attached to a horse.) But as you’ll no doubt recall from “Cowboy Brothers Battle the New Mexico Death Baron!” (née “The Double-A Western Detective Agency”), there’s been a change in him of late on account of distressing news from abroad.
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 Art by Jason C. Eckhardt
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by Terence Faherty
EDITOR’S NOTE
We here present the earliest known draft of Sherlock Holmes’s famous treasure-hunt mystery, “The Musgrave Ritual.” Like the prior entry in this scholarly series, “The Gloria Scott,” “The Musgrave Ritual” dates from Holmes’s first years as an investigator, before Dr. John Watson became his collaborator and biographer. The good doctor seems to have been even more ruthless when preparing these early cases for publication than he was when reworking the investigations in which he took part. As this recently rediscovered draft shows, “The Musgrave Ritual,” like “The Gloria Scott,” was thoroughly reimagined before its appearance in The Strand Magazine. Sherlockians will note with interest that this version of “Musgrave” is also a precursor to another tale, “The Greek Interpreter,” in that it features a character whose intelligence is equal to, if not greater than, Holmes’s own.
As has been our practice, we have placed Watson’s editing notes and corrections in the body of the text in parentheses.
In any public house or snooker parlor, my friend Sherlock Holmes was the most amiable companion one could hope to meet. But within his own rooms, he was prone to lapse into habits that would drive a fellow lodger to contemplate blunt instruments and sharp objects and even hair-trigger revolvers in an un-healthy manner. It was not just his indoor batting practice, though I’ve always held cricket to be a pastime best enjoyed in the open air, or his malodorous experiments with home brewing, the products of which would regularly fire off their corks like so many Boxer cartridges. No, the chief problem was Holmes’s tendency to accumulate paper. Like many a careless person, he was afraid to throw a single sheet away lest it should later prove valuable. But he would only stir himself at long intervals to examine the bits of scrap obscuring our carpet to gauge the worth of each.
One winter evening as we sat by the hearth, I suggested that he might want to plow the current drifts before a stray spark from the fire ignited them—and us. Acknowledging our peril with a sigh, he retreated to his bedroom, emerging a moment later dragging a large packing case adorned with faded advertisements for a patent medicine, “Hostetter’s Celebrated Stomach Bitters.” When he pried off the lid, I could see that it was already one-third full of ribbon-bound packets.
“If you knew what treasures lie within, Watson, you’d be begging me to empty this box rather than fill it.”
“That’s what you think,” I replied. “Do you know how long it’s been since we last saw our gasogene?”
“The bottom layer,” Holmes said, ignoring my question, “contains the records of my earliest cases.”
“Less stalling and more stuffing, please.”
“They document some of my best work, if I say so myself.”
“You are saying so,” I observed.
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