The Dreamers: A Club by John Kendrick Bangs (affordable ebook reader TXT) 📕

P.S.—Please send word to the magazines that all articles by Dewey must be written by Me. Terms, $500 per word. The strain has been worth it.

[185]

Being the tale told by the holder of the eleventh ball, Mr. Fulton Streete

“It is the little things that tell in detective work, my dear Watson,” said Sherlock Holmes as we sat over our walnuts and coffee one bitter winter night shortly before his unfortunate departure to Switzerland, whence he never returned.

“I suppose that is so,” said I, pulling away upon the very excellent stogie which mine host had provided—one made in Pittsburg in 1885, and purchased by Holmes, whose fine taste in tobacco had induced him to lay a thousand of these down in his cigar-cellar for three years,[186] and then keep them in a refrigerator, overlaid with a cloth soaked in Château Yquem wine for ten. The result may be better imagined than described. Suffice it to say that my head did not recover for three days, and the ash had to be cut off the stogie with a knife. “I suppose so, my dear Holmes,” I repeated, taking my knife and cutting three inches of the stogie off and casting it aside, furtively, lest he should think I did not appreciate the excellence of the tobacco, “but it is not given to all of us to see the little things. Is it, now?”

“Yes,” he said, rising and picking up the rejected portion of the stogie. “We all see everything that goes on, but we don’t all know it. We all hear everything that goes on, but we are not conscious of the fact. For instance, at this present moment there is somewhere in this world a man being set upon by assassins and yelling lustily for help. Now his yells create a certain atmospheric disturbance. Sound is merely vibration, and, once set[187] going, these vibrations will run on and on and on in ripples into the infinite—that is, they will never stop, and sooner or later these vibrations must reach our ears. We may not know it when they do, but they will do so none the less. If the man is in the next room, we will hear the yells almost simultaneously—not quite, but almost—with their utterance. If the man is in Timbuctoo, the vibrations may not reach us for a little time, according to the speed with which they travel. So with sight. Sight seems limited, but in reality it is not. Vox populi, vox Dei. If vox, why not oculus? It is a simple proposition, then, that the eye of the people being the eye of God, the eye of God being all-seeing, therefore the eye of the people is all-seeing—Q. E. D.”

I gasped, and Holmes, cracking a walnut, gazed into the fire for a moment.

“It all comes down, then,” I said, “to the question, who are the people?”

Holmes smiled grimly. “All men,” he replied, shortly; “and when I say all[188] men, I mean all creatures who can reason.”

“Does that include women?” I asked.

“Certainly,” he said. “Indubitably. The fact that women don’t reason does not prove that they can’t. I can go up in a balloon if I wish to, but I don’t. I can read an American newspaper comic supplement, but I don’t. So it is with women. Women can reason, and therefore they have a right to be included in the classification whether they do or don’t.”

“Quite so,” was all I could think of to say at the moment. The extraordinary logic of the man staggered me, and I again began to believe that the famous mathematician who said that if Sherlock Holmes attempted to prove that five apples plus three peaches made four pears, he would not venture to dispute his conclusions, was wise. (This was the famous Professor Zoggenhoffer, of the Leipsic School of Moral Philosophy and Stenography.—Ed.)

“Now you agree, my dear Watson,” he[189] said, “that I have proved that we see everything?”

“Well—” I began.

“Whether we are conscious of it or not?” he added, lighting the gas-log, for the cold was becoming intense.

“From that point of view, I suppose so—yes,” I replied, desperately.

“Well, then, this being granted, consciousness is all that is needed to make us fully informed on any point.”

“No,” I said, with some positiveness. “The American people are very conscious, but I can’t say that generally they are well-informed.”

I had an idea this would knock him out, as the Bostonians say, but counted without my host. He merely laughed.

“The American is only self-conscious. Therefore he is well-informed only as to self,” he said.

“You’ve proved your point, Sherlock,” I said. “Go on. What else have you proved?”

“That it is the little things that tell,” [190] he replied. “Which all men would realize in a moment if they could see the little things—and when I say ‘if they could see,’ I of course mean if they could be conscious of them.”

“Very true,” said I.

“And I have the gift of consciousness,” he added.

I thought he had, and I said so. “But,” I added, “give me a concrete example.” It had been some weeks since I had listened to any of his detective stories, and I was athirst for another.

He rose up and walked over to his pigeon-holes, each labelled with a letter, in alphabetical sequence.

“I have only to refer to any of these to do so,” he said. “Choose your letter.”

“Really, Holmes,” said I, “I don’t need to do that. I’ll believe all you say. In fact, I’ll write it up and sign my name to any statement you choose to make.”

[191]