The Case of the Baker Street Irregulars Read online

  The Case of the Baker Street Irregulars

  Anthony Boucher

  Introduction

  Not long ago, I was stunned to learn that a friend who is otherwise quite rational, and even intelligent, believes Sherlock Holmes is a famous fictional detective created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. What’s more, hers is not an isolated case. Extraordinary as it seems, many others share this delusion. They don’t question it or think twice about it. They just accept it as fact, the way seven-year-olds used to know (before they got so sophisticated) that the moon was made of green cheese.

  It looks as if the astronauts have settled the green cheese theory of moon matter once and for all—even to the satisfaction of all but the most obstinate seven-year-olds. Now someone has to rectify the Holmes misconceptions.

  As any member of the Baker Street Irregulars knows, Sherlock Holmes is not a famous fictional detective. He is a famous real-life detective, born in Yorkshire, England, on January 6, 1854. His most dramatic adventures were recorded by his friend and associate, Dr. John H. Watson. Conan Doyle, although his heirs brazenly dispute it, served the secondary, if valuable, role of Watson’s literary agent.

  Furthermore, it is inaccurate and premature to discuss Holmes in the past tense. He still lives, of course (has anyone read his obituary?), on the Sussex Downs, quietly keeping bees. He is old now, having learned the secrets of long life from the Dalai Lama on a trip to Tibet, and he does not receive visitors or accept cases. He does, however, continue to work on a monumental book, The Whole Art of Detection, which should be published in the near future.

  To what secret, esoteric knowledge are the Baker Street Irregulars privvy that they know all this? None. It is all there, in black and white, in the four novels and fifty-six short stories that comprise the Canon, as it is respectfully called. If the tales are read carefully, in the proper spirit (and perhaps with the proper spirits), ideally on a cold, foggy March night, where the rattle of a horse-drawn hansom cab just might be heard to echo in the distance, the reader could easily become a Baker Street Irregular.

  The requirements for becoming an Irregular are not great. They were outlined some years ago by the late Edgar W. Smith, a Vice-President of General Motors and the long-time head of the society. An Irregular, he said, is any kindred soul “who feels his pulse quicken and his steps seem lighter whenever, in a darkling world, he turns the corner of reality into the most magic of all streets.”

  In several cases, Holmes employed a gang of street urchins to help gather information. To make the tongue-in-cheek distinction between them and the regular officials of Scotland Yard, he called them his Baker Street Irregulars. Sherlock Holmes admirers have taken the name for themselves, ever since the first annual dinner nearly fifty years ago.

  It was a fitting evening. The air was heavy with damp, the ground covered with a thick, grey-colored soup that moments before had been powdery white flakes. A small handful of men tramped through endless slush until they reached the unmarked door. On the other side were warmth, smoke thick enough to be worthy of the vilest fog on England’s moors, and smooth amber liquid to help erase the icy memory of the bitter December night air.

  On just such a night in 1895 London, Sherlock Holmes might have called to his roommate, “Come Watson, quickly. The game’s afoot!” On this night, in 1934 New York, a few enthusiasts met to celebrate the birthday of the man they most respected, admired and loved. The Baker Street Irregulars were officially born.

  Alexander Woollcott, the noted actor and critic (the titular character of The Man Who Came to Dinner was based on him) rolled up to the door in a somewhat shabby hansom cab, wearing a cape and a preposterous red deerstalker cap which he insisted on sporting for the entire evening.

  William Gillette, who made a career of portraying Holmes on the stage, was there. So was Gene Tunney, the former heavyweight boxing champion, Frederick Dorr Steele, the finest illustrator of the Holmes stories, and Christopher Morley, perhaps the most beloved man of letters in American literary history.

  The ranks of the Irregulars, past and present, include Frederic Dannay, half of the Ellery Queen collaboration; Franklin D. Roosevelt, even during the presidential years; Robert L. Fish, who wrote the book on which Bullitt was based and now writes stories about Schlock Homes of Bagel Street; Rex Stout, creator of the eccentric fat detective Nero Wolfe; and Isaac Asimov, the prolific science and fiction writer.

  The annual dinner now attracts nearly 300 Irregulars from every part of the country. It is one of the last bastions of male chauvinism. One woman is invited to the predinner cocktail party. She is, that year, the woman (as Holmes always referred to Irene Adler, the beautiful opera singer who once outwitted him).

  Members reminisce about Dr. Roland Hammond, who once created quite a stir at the august Racquet and Tennis Club. Ordering three carcasses of beef to be hung in the club’s dining room, he set upon them like a madman with a cataract knife to prove a theory about a point in one of the stories. The bloody demonstration, although effective, was not enthusiastically received by the club and new quarters for the annual dinner were mandated.

  Older members remember Laurence Paine, who returned from the annual dinner meeting of the Baker Street Irregulars to find his apartment burglarized. He could not work up the courage to report it to the police. He was too embarrassed about having to tell them where he’d been.

  And all the members of the Baker Street Irregulars remember Tony Boucher (rhymes with “voucher”), one of the first, one of the most learned, one of the most beloved, and one of the most talented of all the stars who illuminate the annual celebration.

  The by-line on this volume is the pseudonym of William Anthony Parker White (1911–1968). Born into a family with backgrounds in medicine, law, and the Navy, Boucher originally wanted to become an admiral, but while he was attending Pasadena High School, he decided to be a physicist. Later, at Pasadena Junior College, he again changed his mind and stuied linguistics, his goal being to teach languages. He received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Southern California in 1932 and a master’s degree in German from the University of California in 1934, at which time he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.

  He later became sufficiently proficient in French, Spanish, and Portuguese to translate mystery stories from those languages into English, but after spending much time in acting, writing, and directing in the little theater movement while at school, he decided to become a playwright. He was unsuccessful but did manage to gain employment as theater editor of the United Progressive News in Los Angeles (1935–1937). He wrote a mystery novel in 1936 and sold it the following year. During the next several years he wrote a mystery novel every year, including two under the pseudonym H. H. Holmes (a famous murderer); later he signed that name to his science fiction reviews for the Chicago Sun Times and The New York Herald Tribune (1951–1963)

  In the late 1930s Boucher became interested in science fiction and fantasy and, in the early 1940s, wrote stories in this genre as well as mysteries for pulp magazines, which were more remunerative than books were. After spending the years from 1942 to 1947 as a book reviewer specializing in science fiction and mysteries for the San Francisco Chronicle, he reviewed mysteries for Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine for sixteen months. While employed by the Chronicle, he edited the anthology Great American Detective Stories (1945). In 1949 he cofounded and became coeditor of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. He later returned to review books for Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine for eleven years (1957–1968).

  In 1951, Boucher began writing the “Criminals at Large” column for The New York Times Book Review. He continued in this position until his de
ath and contributed 852 columns. His mystery criticism brought him Edgar awards for 1945, 1949, and 1952 from the Mystery Writers of America.

  Boucher was married, had two sons and lived in Berkeley, California. His interests, in addition to Sherlock Holmes, included theological speculation, party politics, cooking, poker, cats, opera (he once conducted a radio series, Golden Voices, in which he played recordings and discussed opera), football, basketball, true crime (he edited The Pocket Book of True Crime Stories(1943), and True Crime Detective magazine), and collecting old records. He was a member of the Mystery Writers of America, for which he served as national president in 1951.

  Boucher died of lung cancer in 1968. On learning of his death, Frederic Dannay said, “In his chosen field Tony was a Renaissance man, a complete man—writer, critic and historian. He was conscientious and a fine craftsman.”

  Although Boucher’s status as a critic overshadowed his reputation as a writer, his talent for inventing entertaining and well-plotted puzzles established him as one of the leading mystery writers of the late 1930s and early 1940s.

  His first novel, The Case of the Seven of Calvary (1937), features Dr. John Ashwin, professor of Sanskrit, who acts as an armchair detective when a series of bizarre murders are committed in an academic setting, with the only clue the baffling and obscure symbol referred to in the title.

  He also published two novels as H. H. Holmes. Nine Times Nine (1940) is a locked room problem set against the background of a weird Los Angeles cult called The Temple of Light. It was dedicated to John Dickson Carr and solved by Lt. Marshall of the Los Angeles Police Department and Sister Ursula of the Sisters of Martha of Bethany. The next Holmes effort, with the same investigative team, was Rocket to the Margue (1942), the main interest of which is its setting among science fiction writers and fans; Boucher himself appeared in a minor role.

  Much of Boucher’s subsequent short fiction was of the science fiction-fantasy variety, but he occasionally published notable detective stories in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. His Nick Noble series—written mainly in the 1940s—concerns a disgraced former policeman turned wino who sits in a cheap bar drinking sherry and trying to shoo an imaginary fly away from the tip of his nose while solving baffling crime problems brought to him by a policeman friend. Boucher once wrote: “Good detective stories are, as I have often quoted Hamlet’s phrase about the players, ‘the abstracts and brief chronicles of the time,’ ever valuable in retrospect as indirect but vivid pictures of the society from which they spring.”

  Probably his most memorable fictional creation is Fergus O’Breen, a Los Angeles private detective who runs a one-man agency. He is Irish. He is, in fact, very Irish—his hair is bright red, and he has the reputation of being a wild man.

  Born about 1910, O’Breen never knew his mother and his father was an alcoholic whose interests did not extend to his children. His older sister, Maureen, had the responsibility of bringing up Fergus and did a more than satisfactory job.

  O’Breen has been described as “cocksure,” “curious,” “brash,” and “colorful” (he has the habit of referring to himself as “The O’Breen”). All these qualities seem to be the instinctive camouflage of a man who, in another age, might have been a bard, a crusader, or possibly a prophet. He is moderately successful in a financial sense, and his clients, usually pleased with his efforts, speak highly of him and call him a thoroughly nice young man.

  His hobbies are reading, cooking, football, and classical music. His allergy to cats makes him sneeze exactly seven times. Many of his cases are set in Hollywood and are often brought to his attention by his sister, the head of publicity at Metropolis Pictures and one of the smartest women in the industry.

  O’Breen appears in three major cases: The Case of the Crumpled Knave (1939), which deals with the death of an elderly inventor whose anti-gas weapon could be of incalculable value during wartime; The Case of the Solid Key (1941) concerns a little theatre group whose managing director is found dead in a locked room; and his last book-length adventure, The Case of the Seven Sneezes (1942), set on an island off the California coast on which murder repeats a 25-year-old pattern at a silver wedding anniversary. A short story in Far and Away (1955) also features “The O’Breen.”

  One of the great triumphs of the O’Breen family involved Maureen. The Case of the Baker Street Irregulars occurs when a movie studio sets out to make the greatest Sherlock Holmes film of all time. To ensure authenticity, the producer and his publicity girl, Maureen, conceive the plan of inviting members of the Baker Street Irregulars to the studio lot to give their views. The screenwriter, as villainous a devil as Professor Moriarty himself, appears briefly but violently, and the discovery of his body quickly sets off a series of Sherlockian adventures so bizarre that no one can give them credence.

  James Sandoe, the two-time Edgar-winning critic, regarded this volume as Boucher’s best, calling it “a cheerful Sherlockian frolic.”

  It is that, to be sure. It is one of the few Sherlockian mysteries in which Holmes himself does not appear, either under his real name or using some inane bastardization of it, such as Sheerluck Jones or Herlock Soames of Picklock Holes or any of the dozens that have found their way into print.

  At the time of the book’s publication, 1940, the last Sherlock Holmes story by Dr. Watson was only 13 years old. Since it was published, there have been scores—no, hundreds—of imitations, but few rank as highly as this for ingenuity. A Sherlock Holmes novel was a rarity in 1940; today, more than fifty years after the death of Watson’s literary agent, it is commonplace. But Holmes is no fad, no cult figure. He will endure when we have all been forgotten. He epitomizes another age, a more peaceful and stable one. He is dependable, when all else seems uncertain. His justice invariably triumphs, in an era when justice is beleagured. He is the symbol of Good, in a time when Evil too often has the upper hand. He is a fixed point in a changing world.

  As Vincent Starrett, the dean of Sherlockian scholars once wrote of Holmes and Watson: “… they still live for all that love them well/in a romantic chamber of the heart/in a nostalgic country of the mind/where it is always 1895.”

  Otto Penzler

  New York City

  BIBLIOGRATITUDE

  A full bibliography would, I am happy to say, be out of place in this volume; but I wish here to express my special indebtedness to Vincent Starrett’s classic, The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes; to Edgar W. Smith’s less-known but almost equally invaluable Appointment in Baker Street; to the many bits of Baker Street illumination scattered through the files of The Saturday Review of Literature; and above all to the reminiscences of John H. Watson, M.D., quotations from which appear in this book through the courtesy of Doubleday, Doran and Company, Inc., Harper & Brothers, A. P. Watt & Son.

  All characters portrayed or referred to in this novel are fictitious, with the exception of Sherlock Holmes, to whom this book is dedicated

  METROPOLIS PICTURES

  F. X. WEINBERG

  Memo to RESEARCH

  Get me information at once on Baker Street Irregulars and why should they send me threatening letters.

  F. X. Weinberg

  METROPOLIS PICTURES

  RESEARCH DEPARTMENT

  Memo to F. X. WEINBERG

  Little material available on Baker Street Irregulars. Apparently an informal organization of Sherlock Holmes enthusiasts founded through Christopher Morley’s column in The Saturday Review of Literature. No formal list of members on record, but includes big names—Woollcott, Bottomley, Starrett, O’Dab, etc. Activities recorded principally in SRL, with one write-up by Woollcott in The New Yorker, 12/29/34. Attached find constitution as published in SRL, 2/17/34. (Exhibit A.)

  Also attached is manifesto recently sent to Irregulars and others. (Copy obtained from Author’s Club of Los Angeles.) This should explain threatening letters. (Exhibit B.)

  —GG

  EXHIBIT A

  ARTICLE I

  The name of this soc
iety shall be the Baker Street Irregulars.

  ARTICLE II

  Its purpose shall be the study of the Sacred Writings.*

  ARTICLE III

  All persons shall be eligible for membership who pass an examination in the Sacred Writings set by officers of the society, and who are considered otherwise suitable.

  ARTICLE IV

  The officers shall be: a Gasogene, a Tantalus, and a Commissionaire.

  The duties of the Gasogene shall be these commonly performed by a President.

  The duties of the Tantalus shall be these commonly performed by a Secretary.

  The duties of the Commissionaire shall be to telephone down for ice, White Rock, and whatever else may be required and available; to conduct all negotiations with waiters; and to assess the members pro rata for the cost of same.

  BUY LAWS **

  1) An annual meeting shall be held on January 6th, at which these toasts shall be drunk which were published in The Saturday Review of January 27th, 1934;* after which the members shall drink at will.

  2) The current round shall be bought by any member who fails to identify, by title of story and context, any quotation from the Sacred Writings submitted by any other member.

  Qualification A.—If two or more members fail so to identify,

  a round shall be bought by each of these so failing.

  Qualification B.—If the submitter of the quotation, upon challenge, fails to identify it correctly, he shall buy the round.

  3) Special meetings may be called at any time or any place by any one of three members, two of whom shall constitute a quorum.

  Qualification A.—If said two are of opposite sexes, they shall use care in selecting the place of meeting, to avoid misinterpretation (or interpretation either, for that matter).

  Qualification B.—If such two persons of opposite sexes be clients of the Personal Column of The Saturday Review, the foregoing does not apply; such persons being presumed to let their consciences be their guides.