by Lewis Hockley [Percy Longhurst].
Originally published in The Magnet Library (The Amalgamated Press, Ltd.) vol.1 #1 (15 Feb 1908).
THE FIRST CHAPTER.
A Discussion and its Result.
"By George, if he isn't a wonder!"
The speaker brought down his fist with a bang on the desk at which he was seated, exclaimed "By George!" again, and concluded his outburst of feeling with a long-drawn out "Oh!"
The other occupant of the room—a dark, dusty, fusty room of no great size, furnished with a couple of desks, a table, two stools and a chair, a copying press, sundry books on a shelf, and various files of papers—looked up from the book he was perusing, and stared in mild surprise at his companion, who had thus broken the silence which, for the last twenty minutes, singe the departure of Mr. Crosby, the head clerk, to his lunch, had SiBod the dingy office.
"Who! Who's a wonder!" the disturbed reader inquired.
"This chap here," was the answer."
"Well, who's he?"
"Why, in this book—Sherlock Holmes. By George, he's ripping, Bob! I've just been reading how he—"
"Pooh!"
The derisive ejaculation aroused she first speaker from the condition of admiring wonder into which the consideration of Conan Doyle's famous creation had thrown him. Swinging round on his stool, be looked at his companion with a half-angry expression on his face.
He was a fair-haired, blue-eyed young fellow of that period of life when one may be either a boy or a man, according to one's deeds, actions, or character. Frank Dennis by name, good-natured, quick and impulsive, and somewhat imaginative of character, he shared with his present companion of the office the honour of acting as junior clerk to Driver & Driver, Solicitors, of Little Duckingham Street, W.C.
"What do you mean by that?" he demanded, in answer to the "Pooh!"
"Why. that I don't think such a mighty lot of your precious Sherlock Holmes. It's easy as winking for a chap to sit down and write a detective story like those Sherlock Holmes figures in; he knows just what's going to happen, and he can make all his characters do anything he likes. Blessed if I think much of Holmes!"
There was an emphasis and decidedness about the speaker's words and utterance that proved, anyway, he was one of strong opinions—one not easily convinced he was wrong, or afraid to say what he thought. In appearance he was the direct opposite of Frank Dennis, being grey-eyed and black-haired, a trifle greater of bulk, though more loosely built than the other, and with heavier, more strongly-marked features. He looked somewhat the older, also. There was doggedness, resolution, and pertinacity written in his broad, protruding chin and square-set jaw; his cheek bones were somewhat high, eyes deeply set, and far apart. Altogether be had a stronger, if not quite so predisposing a countenance as bis fellow-clerk, chum, and fellow-lodger, Frank Dennis.
Both he, Robert Lomax, and Dennis had been in Driver & Driver's office getting on for two years, and neither of them were quite in love with their job. For the one it gave promise of leading to nothing, for the other it was a long way too slow.
"Suppose you think you could have done as well as Holmes if you'd been in his place," Dennis observed, wish a slightly contemptuous laugh.
"Yes, if I'd had his knowledge and experience."
"That's just it!" Dennis said gleefully. "It was because he had all, that he woe able to unearth mysteries that'd have baffled anyone else."
"Rot! And let me tell you, Frank. I think there's a lot of humbug about this detective business."
"Humbug?"
"Oh, I didn't mean about the business, but the wonderful gifts, the skill and cleverness, I mean, of Holes and all the rest of his crew. It's my firm belief that any ordinary intelligent chap, if he gave his mind to it, could do as well as ever these marvellous fellows in books do."
"Wonder you don't take it on!"
"So I would far two pins," Robert retorted, firing up.
"Pretty ass you'd make of yourself!"
"Not such an ass as you are at present, thinking such a mighty lot of Holmes & Co. Now, if they were all real fellows—"
"They wouldn't be able to do what they did?"
"Bet you they would, and a good deal more!"
"Rats! Chuck it!"
Lomax didn't "chuck it," taking his friend's observation literally, and as "it" was a fair-sized and weighty blotting-pad, and "it" caught Dennis on the ear, small wonder is it that active personal hostilities followed.
Not for tho fret time in their clerical career hast the present situation arisen, therefore they fell to work with a practised rapidity. The stools were kicked out of the way, the table shoved close against the wall, and they got to grips. The arena thus formed for their bout was not large, but it served. Locked together, they swayed backwards end forwards for a few seconds, and then Dennis, giving a sudden wrench, got his right arm end the upper part of his body across Lomax's back from his right side, right across the loins where his fingers joined with these of bis left hand his arm having been passed across his adversary's stomach. Before Lomax quite knew what was happening, he was lifted clean off his feet, his heels elevated. and with a dexterous twist deposited flat on his back with a bang that made a tumbler on the mantelpiece jingle.
"There's a good West Country 'heave' for you!" panted Dennis, who came from that part of England.
"And I'll give you s North Country fall that'll better it," Lomax replied, gathering himself up.
"There was no malice or ill temper in face or voice of either of the contestants. These little wrestling bouts were of frequent, almost daily, occurrence, and they were conducted without the slightest ill-feeling, and left no disagreeable or revengeful thoughts behind.
"If you can," laughed Dennis; and they went together again.
Suddenly Lomax shook himself free, gripped his chum by arm and neck, and backheeled him with a scientific precision and effectiveness that left nothing to be desired. Frank Dennis measured his length on the floor.
"One and one; now for the conqueror!" laughed the victor. "Nothing like a good Cambrian chip for felling a chap."
"We're better men in the West," retorted Dennis; and set to work to prove it.
But the question at issue was not decided—at least, upon that occasion.
The lads were locked in a fierce embrace, twisting and tripping, and stumbling, each with muscles pliant and tough, and bent on obtaining fair, good-tempered, and sportsmanlike mastery, when the office-door opened with a sudden sharp cracking sound, and a visitor stood upon the threshhold of the office, staring at the contending wrestlers with an expression of horror, amazement, and severe disapprobation on hie thin face.
"Good heavens!"
The exclamation had been twice repeated before the lads became aware that their sport had received interruption. Their fingers unloosed, their muscles relaxed, and they fell apart, staring at the interruptor with wide eyed and open mouth.
The thin-faced man, with ferret eyes end straggling side whiskers, who surveyed them, was their boss Zachary
Worrit, Driver being only a name, the owner being long since dead.
"So this—" began Mr. Worritt.
And then Freak Dennis burst out laughing--he couldn't help it. Mr. Worritt's face, so he afterwards informed Lomax, was like that of an indiarubber monkey in a fit.
The solicitor flushed; he opened his mouth widely, as if he had a great deal to say, and then closed it with an ominous snap, like the shutting of a rat-trap.
"You can do your next laughing—and wrestling too, if you like—outside," he said grimly. "You'll do no more here, both of you. You understand? You're both dismissed!"
The lads remained silent, and their employer continued, his anger increasing with every sentence. He was only a little man, physically speaking; two such as he would have been a poor match for either one of his junior clerks, but in power of tongue one would have looked far to have found a worthy rival to him.
"You're a disgrace, the pair of you!" be thundered. "A disgrace to yourselves, and to me, to my office! You ought to be ashamed of yourselves, acting like children or blackguards, and turning my office into some low pothouse. But I suppose you're past feeling ashamed. You shall have no further opportunity; this is your last day here. Pack up your things and go! Go at once! I will not have you here another hour—another minute!"
"But surely, Mr. Worritt—" began Lomax seriously.
"Yes, I do, I won't have my office turned into a bear-garden. This is no gymnasium; this is a workhouse not a
playhouse—"
"A workhouse!" gasped Frank; and again he laughed loudly. The idea tickled him.
But his mirth, instead of turning Mr. Worritt's anger, did but aggravate it. His little black eyes fairly flashed fire, and his voice rose to a shrill scream.
"You shall laugh the other side of your mouths, you vagabonds--you rascals--"
"That's slender, uttered in the presence of a witness," interrupted Robert Lomax; and his employer favoured him with an expression that was murderous.
"Be off!" It was all he could trust himself to say.
Lomax looked at Dennis, and the latter nodded; he began feeling in his jacket pockets.
"Our salaries," said the former, "If you dismiss us—"
"You have given adequate cause for dismissal," returned the solicitor. "Not a farthing will I pay you, and if you choose to sue me you can. Get out!"
"With much pleasure!" the irrepressible Dennis replied. "We'll make you a present, sir, of our office-coats."
Five minutes later the two friends were standing at the corner of Little Buckingham Street and tho Strand, staring in an indecisive fashion at the stream of people flowing in both directions.
"I vote we go and get some grub. Cone along!" And off to a teashop the pair went.
"How much have you got, Frank?" was Lomax's first remark when, the meal over, they were outside the shop.
"It's near tho end of the month." he began. "Three half-crowns, a two-bob piece, a shilling. three sixpences,
and fourpence-ha'penny in coppers exactly," he replied.
"Twelve-and-fourpence-ha'penny! Well, that's sixpence more'n I have," his friend observed.
"Question is," he remarked, a minute after, "what are we going to do?"
"Know what I'm going to do," Dennia replied briskly. "I'm going home, fetch Grip, and take him out for a walk."
"Right you are; can't see anything better for the moment," said his friend.
Robert and Frank, Grip at their heels, strolled along one of the squares that lie at the back of Oxford Street.
Grip, the, terrier, a wire-haired, white-coloured dog, with a blackish-grey patch over one eye, and another covering the root of his tail, having nothing to think about, and accepting his unusual outing with philosophic cheerfulness, began to do things.
First he chased a well-fed-looking cat that was sitting on a doorstep, looking as if the entire square was her own property; next he scared the life out of two biggish boys, who mistook his expression of good temper for one of broken-spirited meekness, and made aggravating noises at him as they passed; then he doubled up a snub-nosed pug-dog whose supercilious expression hurt his feelings, and was skirmishing round a cautious-looking collie when something attracted his attention, and be bolted off to the other side of the square, where a solitary cabman rested with his
back against the railings.
"Well, so far as I can see the best thing we—"
"What the dickens!" suddenly interrupted Lomax, turning his head behind him. "What are you up to, Grip? What is it, old chap?"
The fox-terrier had suddenly appeared behind tho two boys. Growling contentedly, he was dabbing his muzzle
against Robert Lomax's leg, his tail going like clockwork all the time. He was trying to attract their attention.
"What's that in his mouth?" cried Frank, his eyes also going to the dog. "Why, he's got a mouse. No, it's a
little rat"
"No it isn't! Here, Grip—here, let's see what you've got. Good dug—good dog--good old chap!" And Lomax, who had bent down towards Grip, detached something from between the animal's jaws and patted him vigorously.
"What is it?"
Lomax stood upright, the object in his hand.
"By George, Frank! It's a purse Grip has picked up!"
There was no one beside themselves in the square, and Frank's head bent towards his chum's as the latter turned the purse over in his hand.
"Open it and see what's inside," he suggested.
But if there was any expectation in Dennis's mind of the purse holding anything of great value he was disappointed.
There was a small miniature portrait frame, gold, and containing the picture of a fair-haired, blue-eyed baby girl, and at the back of this a thin coil of hair, a newspaper cutting of a marriage notice, a visiting-card, but no money.
Silently the boys reed the clipping and the card—the latter bore a name and an address in a town in the United States. The name, a man's, was the same as that of the bridegroom in the marriage notice. The purse itself was of worn and faded green leather, with greatly worn and whitened edges, and fastened by an overlap and clasp.
"Well," observed Dennis, "it isn't worth much, anyway."
Lomax looked up quickly.
"You're wrong there, Frank, it is: or will be."
Dennis stared, laughed, and then "How?" he asked.
"Why, don't you see? This locket is an heirloom, so's the hair and the portrait; I'll bet tho youngster was tho child of that marriage in the newspaper, end the father emigrated to America when his wife and child died. Now he's over here again, come back from his Yankee home to the old country; he was walking along here and dropped tho purse."
Frank Dennis stared and laughed again.
"By Jove, Bob," ho exclaimed, "that isn't bad for you! How on earth—But what are we going to do with it?"
"Find tho owner," was the prompt reply.
"How?"
Lomax looked serious.
"I thought you'd read 'Sherlock Holmes,'" he said.
"I'm with you, then," said Frank, laughing. "By George. Bob, but this--To think of you going off on that tack!"
"Grin if you like," was the sober rejoinder, "We're going to find the owner of this purse."