Read Online Sherlock Holmes: The American Years by Michael Kurland - Free Book Online
Authors: Michael Kurland
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precisely like that? At the mercy of unforeseen, chaotic bursts of providence? How could uncovering “clues” restore order when there wasn’t any particular order to
start
with?
He gave me a withering look, as if my propositions were too ignorant to consider. Undaunted, I piled on more. Detective stories had tidy resolutions, I pointed out, everything tucked in and pat by the end. But this sporting contest testified as much as anythingto the folly of taking such an approach seriously. How could “logic” be applied in order to produce “truth” here, when most of base ball defied rationality?
Holmes nodded absently, and I judged he was showing the white flag. His eyes had an introspective, faraway look. He seemed intent not on me nor on the players but on the movements of itinerant boys. Was his single-rut mind fixated on child outlaws?
Several batters later, a Hartford sailed the ball into an apple tree just inside the fence, knotting the score, 5–5. How we loved it! “Hurrah!” I yelled, subordinating my rebel-yell instincts to local custom. “HooRAW!” Ashcroft whooped and pounded my shoulder with beefy fists. I couldn’t recollect such giddy spirits at a ball game since that long-distant day when Tom Blankenship, my model for Huck Finn, clubbed a ball through Widow Holliday’s kitchen window and smashed a bottle of painkiller on her sill. The widow’s old yellow cat, Last Judgment, sampled the stuff and lit out to settle grudges with every dog in the township.
It was when we settled again after the last out and I checked for the umbrella that I found it was gone. I bounced up again as if visited by angry hornets and stared at the plank bench.
“Something amiss?” said Ashcroft.
“Could you get up?”
“Beg pardon?”
I tried to peer around his outsized hips. “Obliged if you’d elevate yourself.”
When he grudgingly accommodated me, I concluded with sinking heart that the umbrella had not lodged beneath him but must be somewhere in the gloom below the Pavilion benches. How to descend? I surveyed the slope below me: jammed so tight that nohint of aisles existed. Getting to the bottom would be pure hell—and perish all thought of returning.
Holmes tapped my elbow. “I should inform you that one of those ragged lads barged through here again just as you were involved in—” he paused to find the word—“cheering.”
“The boy snatched it?”
“I would have stopped him in that event,” Holmes said. “I turned and saw him after he had pushed past. His hands were empty but I would stake a guinea that he dislodged the umbrella—and I’d venture it was deliberately done.”
I labored to puzzle through it. The Englishman’s penchant for finding felons at every turn was suspect, but he’d offered a plausible explanation for the umbrella’s disappearance. If true, the culprit himself or a confederate would be retrieving it at that moment. What to do?
“Here, could you . . .” I dropped to my knees and folded nearly double, working to get my face beneath the bench. Ashcroft grumbled and resisted my efforts with his ham-pillar legs. Seated beyond him, Mrs. Ashcroft, whose panniered dress took up a good three feet of bench and fit her like a circus tent—she couldn’t have gone within eight points of the wind in it—began expressing herself in a voice carrying all the honeyed sweetness of a #6 bastard file. Added note:
Give Aunt Polly steel spectacles, nigh-crippling rheumatism, and pinch her face!
From a torturous corkscrew position I was rewarded with a narrow view of the Pavilion’s netherworld. Squinting down at bottles, cartons, tins, wrappers and heaven knew what, I thought I saw a handle protruding from a heap of sodden newspapers half-submerged in a puddle. Rainwater, I hoped, not tobacco juice—or worse. When my eyes adjusted, I saw that it was only a broken-off buggy whip.
I angled my head sidewise for a wider view. Two dark figures lurked near the frontward
start
with?
He gave me a withering look, as if my propositions were too ignorant to consider. Undaunted, I piled on more. Detective stories had tidy resolutions, I pointed out, everything tucked in and pat by the end. But this sporting contest testified as much as anythingto the folly of taking such an approach seriously. How could “logic” be applied in order to produce “truth” here, when most of base ball defied rationality?
Holmes nodded absently, and I judged he was showing the white flag. His eyes had an introspective, faraway look. He seemed intent not on me nor on the players but on the movements of itinerant boys. Was his single-rut mind fixated on child outlaws?
Several batters later, a Hartford sailed the ball into an apple tree just inside the fence, knotting the score, 5–5. How we loved it! “Hurrah!” I yelled, subordinating my rebel-yell instincts to local custom. “HooRAW!” Ashcroft whooped and pounded my shoulder with beefy fists. I couldn’t recollect such giddy spirits at a ball game since that long-distant day when Tom Blankenship, my model for Huck Finn, clubbed a ball through Widow Holliday’s kitchen window and smashed a bottle of painkiller on her sill. The widow’s old yellow cat, Last Judgment, sampled the stuff and lit out to settle grudges with every dog in the township.
It was when we settled again after the last out and I checked for the umbrella that I found it was gone. I bounced up again as if visited by angry hornets and stared at the plank bench.
“Something amiss?” said Ashcroft.
“Could you get up?”
“Beg pardon?”
I tried to peer around his outsized hips. “Obliged if you’d elevate yourself.”
When he grudgingly accommodated me, I concluded with sinking heart that the umbrella had not lodged beneath him but must be somewhere in the gloom below the Pavilion benches. How to descend? I surveyed the slope below me: jammed so tight that nohint of aisles existed. Getting to the bottom would be pure hell—and perish all thought of returning.
Holmes tapped my elbow. “I should inform you that one of those ragged lads barged through here again just as you were involved in—” he paused to find the word—“cheering.”
“The boy snatched it?”
“I would have stopped him in that event,” Holmes said. “I turned and saw him after he had pushed past. His hands were empty but I would stake a guinea that he dislodged the umbrella—and I’d venture it was deliberately done.”
I labored to puzzle through it. The Englishman’s penchant for finding felons at every turn was suspect, but he’d offered a plausible explanation for the umbrella’s disappearance. If true, the culprit himself or a confederate would be retrieving it at that moment. What to do?
“Here, could you . . .” I dropped to my knees and folded nearly double, working to get my face beneath the bench. Ashcroft grumbled and resisted my efforts with his ham-pillar legs. Seated beyond him, Mrs. Ashcroft, whose panniered dress took up a good three feet of bench and fit her like a circus tent—she couldn’t have gone within eight points of the wind in it—began expressing herself in a voice carrying all the honeyed sweetness of a #6 bastard file. Added note:
Give Aunt Polly steel spectacles, nigh-crippling rheumatism, and pinch her face!
From a torturous corkscrew position I was rewarded with a narrow view of the Pavilion’s netherworld. Squinting down at bottles, cartons, tins, wrappers and heaven knew what, I thought I saw a handle protruding from a heap of sodden newspapers half-submerged in a puddle. Rainwater, I hoped, not tobacco juice—or worse. When my eyes adjusted, I saw that it was only a broken-off buggy whip.
I angled my head sidewise for a wider view. Two dark figures lurked near the frontward
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