Читать книгу Laugh With Leacock - Стивен Ликок - Страница 9

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When a detective story gets well started—when the “body” has been duly found—and the “butler” or the “janitor” has been arrested—when the police have been completely “baffled”—then is the time when the Great Detective is brought in and gets to work.

But before he can work at all, or at least be made thoroughly satisfactory to the up-to-date reader, it is necessary to touch him up. He can be made extremely tall and extremely thin, or even “cadaverous.” Why a cadaverous man can solve a mystery better than a fat man it is hard to say; presumably the thinner a man is, the more acute is his mind. At any rate, the old school of writers preferred to have their detectives lean. This incidentally gave the detective a face “like a hawk,” the writer not realizing that a hawk is one of the stupidest of animals. A detective with a face like an ourang-outang would beat it all to bits.

Indeed, the Great Detective’s face becomes even more important than his body. Here there is absolute unanimity. His face has to be “inscrutable.” Look at it though you will, you can never read it. Contrast it, for example, with the face of Inspector Higginbottom, of the local police force. Here is a face that can look “surprised,” or “relieved,” or, with great ease, “completely baffled.”

But the face of the Great Detective knows of no such changes. No wonder the Poor Nut, as we may call the person who is supposed to narrate the story, is completely mystified. From the face of the great man you can’t tell whether the cart in which they are driving jolts him or whether the food at the Inn gives him indigestion.

To the Great Detective’s face there used to be added the old-time expedient of not allowing him either to eat or drink. And when it was added that during this same period of about eight days the sleuth never slept, the reader could realize in what fine shape his brain would be for working out his “inexorable chain of logic.”

But nowadays this is changed. The Great Detective not only eats, but he eats well. Often he is presented as a connoisseur in food. Thus:

“‘Stop a bit,’ thus speaks the Great Detective to the Poor Nut and Inspector Higginbottom, whom he is dragging round with him as usual; ‘we have half an hour before the train leaves Paddington. Let us have some dinner. I know an Italian restaurant near here where they serve frogs’ legs à la Marengo better than anywhere else in London.’

“A few minutes later we were seated at one of the tables of a dingy little eating-place whose signboard with the words ‘Restauranto Italiano’ led me to the deduction that it was an Italian restaurant. I was amazed to observe that my friend was evidently well known in the place, while his order for ‘three glasses of Chianti with two drops of vermicelli in each,’ called for an obsequious bow from the appreciative padrone. I realized that this amazing man knew as much of the finesse of Italian wines as he did of playing the saxophone.”

We may go further. In many up-to-date cases the detective not only gets plenty to eat, but a liberal allowance of strong drink. One generous British author of to-day is never tired of handing out to the Great Detective and his friends what he calls a “stiff whiskey and soda.” At all moments of crisis they get one.

For example, when they find the Body of Sir Charles Althorpe, late owner of Althorpe Chase, a terrible sight, lying on the floor of the library, what do they do? They reach at once to the sideboard and pour themselves out a “stiff whiskey and soda.” Or when the heroine learns that her guardian Sir Charles is dead and that she is his heiress and when she is about to faint, what do they do? They immediately pour “a stiff whiskey and soda” into her. It is certainly a great method.

But in the main we may say that all this stuff about eating and drinking has lost its importance. The great detective has to be made exceptional by some other method.

And here is where his music comes in. It transpires—not at once but in the first pause in the story—that this great man not only can solve a crime, but has the most extraordinary aptitude for music, especially for dreamy music of the most difficult kind. As soon as he is left in the Inn room with the Poor Nut out comes his saxophone and he tunes it up.

“‘What were you playing?’ I asked, as my friend at last folded his beloved instrument into its case.

“‘Beethoven’s Sonata in Q,’ he answered modestly.

“‘Good Heavens!’ I exclaimed.”

Another popular method of making the Great Detective a striking character is to show him as possessing a strange and varied range of knowledge. For example, the Poor Nut is talking with a third person, the Great Detective being apparently sunk in reveries. In the course of the conversation the name of Constantinople is mentioned.

“I was hardly aware that my friend was hearing what was said.

“He looked up quietly.

“‘Constantinople?’ he said. ‘That was the capital of Turkey, was it not?’

“I could not help marveling again how this strange being could have acquired his minute and varied knowledge.”

The Great Detective’s personality having been thus arranged, he is brought along with the Poor Nut and Inspector Higginbottom to Althorpe Chase and it is now up to him to start to “solve” the mystery. Till a little while ago, the favorite way of having him do this was by means of tracks, footprints, and other traces. This method, which has now worn threadbare, had a tremendous vogue. According to it, the Great Detective never questioned anybody.

But his real work was done right at the scene of the crime, crawling round on the carpet of the library, and wriggling about on the grass outside. After he has got up after two days of crawling, with a broken blade of grass, he would sit down on a stone and play the saxophone and then announce that the mystery is solved and tell Inspector Higginbottom whom to arrest. That was all. He would not explain anything but what the Poor Nut, half crazy with mystification, begged him to do.

“‘The case,’ he at last explained very airily, ‘has been a simple one, but not without its features of interest.’

“‘Simple!’ I exclaimed.

“‘Precisely,’ said he; ‘you see this blade of grass. You tell me that you see nothing. Look at it again under this lense. What do you see? The letters ACK clearly stamped, but in reverse, on the soft green of the grass. What do they mean?’

“‘Nothing,’ I groaned.

“‘You are wrong,’ he said, ‘they are the last three letters of the word DACK, the name of a well-known shoemaker in Market Croydon four miles west of the Chase.’

“‘Good Heavens,’ I said.

“‘Now look at this soft piece of mud which I have baked and which carries a similar stamp—ILTON.’

“‘Ilton, Ilton,’ I repeated, ‘I fear it means less than ever.’

“‘To you,’ he said. ‘Because you do not observe. Did you never note that makers of trousers nowadays stamp their trouser buttons with their names? These letters are the concluding part of the name BILTON, one of the best-known tailors of Kings Croft, four miles east of the Chase.’

“‘Good Heavens!’ I cried, ‘I begin to see.’

“‘Do you?’ he said drily. ‘Then no doubt you can piece together the analysis. Our criminal is wearing a pair of trousers, bought in Kings Croft, and a shoe bought in Market Croydon. What do you infer as to where he lives?’

“‘Good Heavens,’ I said, ‘I begin to see it!’

“‘Exactly,’ said the Great Detective. ‘He lives halfway between the two!’

“‘At the Chase itself!’ I cried. ‘What a fool I have been.’

“‘You have,’ he answered quietly.”

But unfortunately the public has begun to find this method of traces and tracks a “bit thick.” All these fond old literary fictions are crumbling away.