Robert Barr - Vintage Mysteries - 70+ Stories in One Volume (Thriller Classics Collection)

'Has he fainted?' cried Sir George.

'No, merely electrocuted. A simple device the Sheriff of New York taught me when I was over there last.'

'Merciful heavens! Cannot he be resuscitated?'

'My dear Newnes,' said Doyle, with the air of one from whose shoulders a great weight is lifted, 'a man may fall into the chasm at the foot of the Reichenbach Fall and escape to record his adventures later, but when two thousand volts pass through the human frame, the person who owns that frame is dead.'

'You don't mean to say you've murdered him?' asked Sir George, in an awed whisper.

'Well, the term you use is harsh, still it rather accurately sums up the situation. To speak candidly, Sir George, I don't think they can indite us for anything more than manslaughter. You see, this is a little invention for the reception of burglars. Every night before the servants go to bed, they switch on the current to this chair. That's why I asked Holmes to press the button. I place a small table beside the chair, and put on it a bottle of wine, whisky and soda, and cigars. Then, if any burglar comes in, he invariably sits down in the chair to enjoy himself, and so you see, that piece of furniture is an effective method of reducing crime. The number of burglars I have turned over to the parish to be buried will prove that this taking off of Holmes was not premeditated by me. This incident, strictly speaking, is not murder, but manslaughter. We shouldn't get more than fourteen years apiece, and probably that would be cut down to seven on the ground that we had performed an act for the public benefit.'

'Apiece!' cried Sir George. 'But what have I had to do with it?'

'Everything, my dear sir, everything. As that babbling fool talked, I saw in your eye the gleam which betokens avarice for copy. Indeed, I think you mentioned the January number. You were therefore accessory before the fact. I simply had to slaughter the poor wretch.'

Sir George sank back in his chair wellnigh breathless with horror. Publishers are humane men who rarely commit crimes; authors, however, are a hardened set who usually perpetrate a felony every time they issue a book. Doyle laughed easily.

'I'm used to this sort of thing,' he said. 'Remember how I killed off the people in "The White Company". Now, if you will help me to get rid of the body, all may yet be well. You see, I learned from the misguided simpleton himself that nobody knows where he is today. He often disappears for weeks at a time, so there really is slight danger of detection. Will you lend a hand?'

'I suppose I must,' cried the conscience-stricken man.

Doyle at once threw off the lassitude which the coming of Sherlock Holmes had caused, and acted now with an energy which was characteristic of him. Going to an outhouse, he brought the motor car to the front door, then, picking up Holmes and followed by his trembling guest, he went outside and flung the body into the tonneau behind. He then threw a spade and a pick into the car, and covered everything up with a water-proof spread. Lighting the lamps, he bade his silent guest get up beside him, and so they started on their fateful journey, taking the road past the spot where the sailor had been murdered, and dashing down the long hill at fearful speed toward London.

'Why do you take this direction?' asked Sir George. 'Wouldn't it be more advisable to go further into the country?'

Doyle laughed harshly.

'Haven't you a place on Wimbledon Common? Why not bury him in your garden?'

'Merciful motors!' cried the horrified man. 'How can you propose such a thing? Talking of gardens, why not have buried him in your own, which was infinitely safer than going forward at this pace.'

'Have no fear,' said Doyle reassuringly, 'we shall find him a suitable sepulchre without disturbing either of our gardens. I'll be in the centre of London within two hours.'

Sir George stared in affright at the demon driver. The man had evidently gone mad. To London, of all places in the world. Surely that was the one spot on earth to avoid.

'Stop the motor and let me off,' he cried. 'I'm going to wake up the nearest magistrate and confess.'

'You'll do nothing of the sort,' said Doyle. 'Don't you see that no person on earth would suspect two criminals of making for London when they have the whole country before them? Haven't you read my stories? The moment a man commits a crime he tries to get as far away from London as possible. Every policeman knows that, therefore, two men coming into London are innocent strangers, according to Scotland Yard.'

'But then we may be taken up for fast driving, and think of the terrible burden we carry.'

'We're safe on the country roads, and I'll slow down when we reach the suburbs.'

It was approaching three o'clock in the morning when a huge motor car turned out of Trafalgar Square, and went eastward along the Strand. The northern side of the Strand was up, as it usually is, and the motor, skilfully driven, glided past the piles of wood-paving blocks, great sombre kettles holding tar and the general débris of a re-paving convulsion. Opposite Southampton Street, at the very spot so graphically illustrated by George C. Haité on the cover of the Strand Magazine , Sir Arthur Conan Doyle stopped his motor. The Strand was deserted. He threw pick and shovel into the excavation, and curtly ordered his companion to take his choice of weapons. Sir George selected the pick, and Doyle vigorously plied the spade. In almost less time than it takes to tell it, a very respectable hole had been dug, and in it was placed the body of the popular private detective. Just as the last spadeful was shovelled in place the stern voice of a policeman awoke the silence, and caused Sir George to drop his pick from nerveless hands.

'What are you two doing down there?'

'That's all right, officer,' said Doyle glibly, as one who had foreseen every emergency. 'My friend here is controller of the Strand. When the Strand is up he is responsible, and it has the largest circulation in the—I mean it's up oftener than any other street in the world. We cannot inspect the work satisfactorily while traffic is on, and so we have been examining it in the night-time. I am his secretary; I do the writing, you know.'

'Oh, I see,' replied the constable. 'Well, gentlemen, good morning to you, and merry Christmas.'

'The same to you, constable. Just lend a hand, will you?'

The officer of the law helped each of the men up to the level of the road.

As Doyle drove away from the ill-omened spot he said:—

'Thus have we disposed of poor Holmes in the busiest spot on earth, where no one will ever think of looking for him, and we've put him away without even a Christmas box around him. We have buried him for ever in the Strand .'

Table of Contents

In some natures there are no half-tones; nothing but raw primary colours. John Bodman was a man who was always at one extreme or the other. This probably would have mattered little had he not married a wife whose nature was an exact duplicate of his own.

Doubtless there exists in this world precisely the right woman for any given man to marry and vice versâ ; but when you consider that a human being has the opportunity of being acquainted with only a few hundred people, and out of the few hundred that there are but a dozen or less whom he knows intimately, and out of the dozen, one or two friends at most, it will easily be seen, when we remember the number of millions who inhabit this world, that probably, since the earth was created, the right man has never yet met the right woman. The mathematical chances are all against such a meeting, and this is the reason that divorce courts exist. Marriage at best is but a compromise, and if two people happen to be united who are of an uncompromising nature there is trouble.