well for the public, Holmes,” said he, “but you can drop it before me. And, Watson, if you go up to the ceiling again I shall make you stay there.”
Here I observed a curious phenomenon. My friend Sherlock Holmes shrank. He became small before my eyes. I looked longingly at the ceiling, but dared not.
“Let us cut out the first four pages,” said the big man, “and proceed to business. I want to know why—”
“Allow me,” said Mr. Holmes, with some of his old courage. “You want to know why the public does not go to your opera.”
“Exactly,” said the other ironically, “as you perceive by my shirt stud.” He added more gravely: “And as you can only find out in one way I must insist on your witnessing an entire performance of the piece.”
It was an anxious moment for me. I shuddered, for I knew that if Holmes went I should have to go with him. But my friend had a heart of gold. “Never!” he cried fiercely. “I will do anything for you save that.”
“Your continued existence depends on it,” said the big man menacingly.
“I would rather melt into air,” replied Holmes proudly, taking another chair. “But I can tell you why the public don’t go to your piece without sitting the thing out myself.”
“Why?”
“Because,” replied Holmes calmly, “they prefer to stay away.”
A dead silence followed that extraordinary remark. For a moment the two intruders gazed with awe upon the man who had unravelled their mystery so wonderfully. Then, drawing their knives—
Holmes grew less and less, until nothing was left save a ring of smoke which slowly circled to the ceiling.
The last words of great men are often noteworthy. These were the last words of Sherlock Holmes: “Fool, fool! I have kept you in luxury for years. By my help you have ridden extensively in cabs where no author was ever seen before. Henceforth you will ride in buses!”
The brute sank into a chair aghast. The other author did not turn a hair.
To A. Conan Doyle,
From his friend, J. M. BARRIE.
Dangerous Ground
This parody, the best of all the numerous parodies, may be taken as an example, not only of the author’s wit, but of his debonair courage, for it was written immediately after our joint failure, which at the moment was a bitter thought for both of us. There is, indeed, nothing more miserable than a theatrical failure, for you feel how many others who have backed you have been affected. It was, I am glad to say, my only experience of it, and I have no doubt that Barrie could say the same.
Before I leave the subject of the many impersonations of Holmes, I may say that all of them, and all the drawings, are very unlike my own original idea of the man. I saw him as very tall—“over six feet, but so excessively lean that he seemed considerably taller,” said A Study in Scarlet. He had, as I imagined him, a thin razorlike face, with a great hawk‘s-bill of a nose, and two small eyes, set close together on either side of it. Such was my conception. It chanced, however, that poor Arthur Paget, who, before his premature death, drew all the original pictures, had a younger brother whose name, I think, was Harold, who served him as a model. The handsome Harold took the place of the more powerful but uglier Sherlock, and, perhaps from the point of view of my lady readers, it was as well. The stage has followed the type set up by the pictures.
People have often asked me whether I knew the end of a Holmes story before I started it. Of course I did. One could not possibly steer a course if one did not know one’s destination. The first thing is to get your idea. We will suppose that this idea is that a woman, as in the last story, is sus-p ected of biting a wound in her child, when she was really sucking that wound for fear of poison injected by some one else. Having got that key idea, one’s next task is to conceal it and lay emphasis upon everything which can make for a different explanation. Holmes, however, can see all the fallacies of the alternatives, and arrives more or less dramatically at the true solution by steps which he can describe and justify.
He shows his powers by what the South Americans now call “Sher locholmitos,” which means clever little deductions, which often have