Can you solve a mystery before Sherlock Holmes? - Alex Rosenthal
I called upon my friend,
Mr. Sherlock Holmes,
one day in the autumn of last year
and found him in deep conversation
with a very stout, florid-faced,
elderly gentleman with fiery red hair.
Where I saw merely an unhappy tradesman,
Sherlock observed a Freemason
who had done manual labor,
visited China,
and written quite a bit recently.
And this last inference was
at the heart of the matter.
This gentleman, Mr. Jabez Wilson,
was a pawnbroker.
Two months ago he answered
a peculiar newspaper advertisement.
The mysterious League of Red-Headed Men
had announced an opening
that came with a significant
cash incentive,
and every red-headed man above the age
of 21 in London was encouraged to apply.
Wilson was hesitant to go;
it seemed too strange to be true,
but his assistant of recent employ,
who found the ad in the first place,
convinced him to.
Outside the League’s office,
they found hundreds of men,
all awaiting their shots at the position.
Seeing Wilson's particularly
magnificent hair,
the hosts parted the red sea and ushered
him through to a room with a little man.
This interviewer, one Duncan Ross,
subjected Wilson
to a single, painful test,
then inducted him into the League.
All he had to do to receive his stipend
was spend four hours here every day
transcribing the encyclopedia.
He’d be paid handsomely;
much more than his day job.
Wilson, of course, accepted,
and showed up to that address every day
without fail for two months.
Including today,
when he was shocked to discover a sign
saying that the League had been disbanded.
Ross, meanwhile, had disappeared
without a trace.
So Wilson turned to the one man who might
make red heads or red tails
of these events.
Sherlock accepted the remarkable case
and whisked me
to Wilson’s place of business,
where his assistant,
a young man named Vincent Spaulding,
answered the door.
Sherlock asked him nothing more
than walking directions to the Strand
and concluded the interview.
The great detective proceeded
to examine the area,
then led me on a stroll around the block.
Satisfied, he instructed me,
to my great surprise,
to meet him at Baker Street at 10 pm
to thwart a considerable crime.
I ask you this: what was the crime
and who was going to commit it?
That night, at the doorstep
of 221B Baker Street,
I discovered a carriage waiting.
Inside, Sherlock and two other men:
a bank director and a police officer.
Sherlock explained:
we’d gathered to prevent a robbery.
Not just any robbery, the banker added;
the theft of a massive quantity
of French gold,
on temporary storage in his bank’s
subterranean vault.
The carriage let us out, and there, in the
cold recesses of the bank's basement,
we found ... absolutely nothing
of criminal consequence.
Sherlock told us to hide ourselves
in the darkness,
ready for a fight.
And at long last we heard a scratching,
then a sliding sound.
We leapt into action and, after a scuffle,
detained two men:
Wilson’s assistant Spaulding,
and the man Wilson knew as Duncan Ross.
Sherlock explained: the target
all along had been the French gold.
Spaulding knew it would be here,
so he got himself employed by Wilson
on account of the proximity
of the pawnshop to the bank.
But in order to dig a tunnel undetected,
he’d need Wilson out of the way
for long stretches.
And that was when he dreamed
up the Red-Headed League,
for which he recruited his accomplice.
Every day while Wilson toiled
away for a pittance
compared to the value they’d steal,
Spaulding and Ross dug their tunnel,
finally reaching the bank vault today.
Sherlock wasn’t sure exactly what
Spaulding was up to
until he saw the worn and dusty knees
of his trousers,
and recognized him as notorious
thief John Clay.
He tested the pavement by the pawn shop,
and finding it hollow, rounded the block,
where he discovered the true target.
“Poor Wilson,” I concluded.
“Out of the best job of his life
and 4 pounds per week.”
To which Sherlock retorted,
“Have no pity, Watson;
the man is richer by far in his newfound
knowledge of aardvarks, Abbasids,
acupuncture, and assorted other subjects
that begin with the letter A.”
