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Authors: Philip José Farmer
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drank from the ship’s stores which had been laid in to feed the old tar. The other food looked nauseating, and even if it had been attractive, we’d not have dared to try it. Three days later, after rowing the boat out onto the sea—the mist was gone—we watched the vessel, its port still open, sink back under the waters. And it is still there on the bottom, for all I know.
We decided against telling the authorities about the thing and its ship. We had no desire to spend time in prison, no matter how patriotic we were. We might have been pardoned because of our great services. But then again we might, according to Raffles, be shut up for life because the authorities would want to keep the whole affair a secret.
Raffles also said that the vessel probably contained devices which, in Great Britain’s hands, would ensure her supremacy. But she was already the most powerful nation on Earth, and who knew what Pandora’s box we’d be opening? We did not know, of course, that in twenty-three years the Great War would slaughter the majority of our best young men and would start our nation toward second-classdom.
Once ashore, we took passage back to London. There we launched the month’s campaign that resulted in stealing and destroying every one of the sapphire-eggs. One had hatched, and the thing had taken refuge inside the walls, but Raffles burned the house down, though not until after rousing its human occupants. It broke our hearts to steal jewels worth in the neighborhood of a million pounds and then destroy them. But we did it, and so the world was saved.
Did Holmes guess some of the truth? Little escaped those gray hawk’s eyes and the keen gray brain behind them. I suspect that he knew far more than he told even Watson. That is why Watson, in writing The Problem of Thor Bridge, stated that there were three cases in which Holmes had completely failed.
There was the case of James Phillimore, who returned into his house to get an umbrella and was never seen again. There was the case of Isadora Persano, who was found stark mad, staring at a worm in a matchbox, a worm unknown to science. And there was the case of the cutter Alicia, which sailed on a bright spring morning into a small patch of mist and never emerged, neither she nor her crew ever being seen again.
A SCARLETIN STUDY
BY JONATHAN SWIFT SOMERS III
EDITED BY PHILIP JOSÉ FARMER
BEING A REPRINT FROM THE REMINISCENCES OF JOHANN H. WEISSTEIN, DR. MED., LATE OF THE AUTOBAHN PATROL MEDICAL DEPARTMENT.
It is little wonder that Philip José Farmer ended up editing the following story, keen as he was for both mysteries and puns. In his Wold Newton biography Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life, Farmer makes it clear that Ralph von Wau Wau—the famous canine detective whose intelligence and skills rival those of Sherlock Holmes himself—is indeed a resident of the Wold Newton Universe.
Some readers new to the following tale might wonder why the name Ralph von Wau Wau seems so strangely familiar. They need look no further than Spider Robinson’s brilliantly funny and appropriately pun-filled Callahan stories, in which, by permission of the editor, Ralph has frequently appeared as a character. Similarly, Jonathan Swift Somers III might be familiar to some as the favorite author of Simon Wagstaff, the protagonist of Farmer’s novel Venus on the Half-Shell (Titan Books, 2013).
In “Jonathan Swift Somers III: Cosmic Traveller in a Wheelchair,” a biographical sketch on the present story’s author, Farmer writes the following:
“There is no doubt that Somers modeled his fictional dog, Ralph von Wau Wau, on his own pet. Or is there doubt? The Bellener Street Irregulars 2 insist that there is a real von Wau Wau. In fact, Somers is not the real author of the series of tales about this Hamburg police dog who became a private eye. The Irregulars maintain that Somers is only the literary agent for Johann H. Weisstein, Dr. Med., and for Cordwainer Bird, the two main
We decided against telling the authorities about the thing and its ship. We had no desire to spend time in prison, no matter how patriotic we were. We might have been pardoned because of our great services. But then again we might, according to Raffles, be shut up for life because the authorities would want to keep the whole affair a secret.
Raffles also said that the vessel probably contained devices which, in Great Britain’s hands, would ensure her supremacy. But she was already the most powerful nation on Earth, and who knew what Pandora’s box we’d be opening? We did not know, of course, that in twenty-three years the Great War would slaughter the majority of our best young men and would start our nation toward second-classdom.
Once ashore, we took passage back to London. There we launched the month’s campaign that resulted in stealing and destroying every one of the sapphire-eggs. One had hatched, and the thing had taken refuge inside the walls, but Raffles burned the house down, though not until after rousing its human occupants. It broke our hearts to steal jewels worth in the neighborhood of a million pounds and then destroy them. But we did it, and so the world was saved.
Did Holmes guess some of the truth? Little escaped those gray hawk’s eyes and the keen gray brain behind them. I suspect that he knew far more than he told even Watson. That is why Watson, in writing The Problem of Thor Bridge, stated that there were three cases in which Holmes had completely failed.
There was the case of James Phillimore, who returned into his house to get an umbrella and was never seen again. There was the case of Isadora Persano, who was found stark mad, staring at a worm in a matchbox, a worm unknown to science. And there was the case of the cutter Alicia, which sailed on a bright spring morning into a small patch of mist and never emerged, neither she nor her crew ever being seen again.
A SCARLETIN STUDY
BY JONATHAN SWIFT SOMERS III
EDITED BY PHILIP JOSÉ FARMER
BEING A REPRINT FROM THE REMINISCENCES OF JOHANN H. WEISSTEIN, DR. MED., LATE OF THE AUTOBAHN PATROL MEDICAL DEPARTMENT.
It is little wonder that Philip José Farmer ended up editing the following story, keen as he was for both mysteries and puns. In his Wold Newton biography Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life, Farmer makes it clear that Ralph von Wau Wau—the famous canine detective whose intelligence and skills rival those of Sherlock Holmes himself—is indeed a resident of the Wold Newton Universe.
Some readers new to the following tale might wonder why the name Ralph von Wau Wau seems so strangely familiar. They need look no further than Spider Robinson’s brilliantly funny and appropriately pun-filled Callahan stories, in which, by permission of the editor, Ralph has frequently appeared as a character. Similarly, Jonathan Swift Somers III might be familiar to some as the favorite author of Simon Wagstaff, the protagonist of Farmer’s novel Venus on the Half-Shell (Titan Books, 2013).
In “Jonathan Swift Somers III: Cosmic Traveller in a Wheelchair,” a biographical sketch on the present story’s author, Farmer writes the following:
“There is no doubt that Somers modeled his fictional dog, Ralph von Wau Wau, on his own pet. Or is there doubt? The Bellener Street Irregulars 2 insist that there is a real von Wau Wau. In fact, Somers is not the real author of the series of tales about this Hamburg police dog who became a private eye. The Irregulars maintain that Somers is only the literary agent for Johann H. Weisstein, Dr. Med., and for Cordwainer Bird, the two main
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