The Misadventure of Shelrock Holmes by Anthology Page A

kicked it off because it was too tight. Women always kick off their slippers when playing bridge or in an opera box or at a
    dinner." "And always when they're crossing a clothes-line?" This in Lupin's
    most sarcastic vein.
    "Naturally," said Holmes, with a taciturnine frown. "The footprint clearly denotes a lady of wealth and fashion, somewhat short of stature, and weighing about one hundred and sixty. She was of an animated nature — "
    "Suspended animation," put in Luther Trant, wittily, and Scientific Sprague added, "Like the.Coffin of Damocles, or whoever it was."
    But Holmes frowned on their light-headedness.
    "We must find out what it all means," he said in his gloomiest way. "I have a tracing of the footprint."
    "I wonder if my seismospygmograph would work on it," mused Trant.
    "I am the Prince of Footprints," declared Lecoq, pompously. '7
    will solve the mystery."
    "Do your best, all of you," said their illustrious president. "I fear you can do little; these things are unintelligible to the unintelligent. But study on it, and meet here again one week from tonight, with your answers neatly typewritten on one side of the paper."
    The Infallible Detectives started off, each affecting a jaunty san-guineness of demeanor, which did not in the least impress their president, who was used to sanguinary impressions.
    They spent their allotted seven days in the study of the problem; and a lot of the seven nights, too, for they wanted to delve into the baffling secret by sun or candlelight, as dear Mrs. Browning so poetically puts it.
    And when the week had fled, the Infallibles again gathered in the Fakir Street sanctum, each face wearing the smug smirk and smile of one who had quested a successful quest and was about to accept his just reward.
    "And now," said President Holmes, "as nothing can be hid from the Infallible Detectives, I assume we have all discovered why the lady hung from the clothes-line above that deep and dangerous chasm of a tenement courtyard."
    "We have," replied his colleagues, in varying tones of pride, conceit, and mock modesty.
    "I cannot think," went on the hawk-like voice, "that you have, any of you, stumbled upon the real solution of the mystery; but I will listen to your amateur attempts."
    "As the oldest member of our organization, I will tell my solution first," said Vidocq, calmly. "I have not been able to find the lady, but I am convinced that she was merely an expert trapezist or tight-
    rope walker, practising a new trick to amaze her Coney Island audiences."
    "Nonsense!" cried Holmes. "In that case the lady would have worn tights or fleshings. We are told she was in full evening dress of the
    smartest set."
    Arsene Lupin spoke next.
    "It's too easy," he said boredly; "she was a typist or stenographer who had been annoyed by attentions from her employer, and was trying to escape from the brute."
    "Again I call your attention to her costume," said Holmes, with a look of intolerance on his finely cold-chiseled face.
    "That's all right," returned Lupin, easily. "Those girls dress every old way! I've seen 'em. They don't think anything of evening clothes at their work."
    "Humph!" said the Thinking Machine, and the others all agreed
    with him.
    "Next," said Holmes, sternly.
    "I'm next," said Lecoq. "I submit that the lady escaped from a near-by lunatic asylum. She had the illusion that she was an old overcoat and the moths had got at her. So of course she hung herself on the clothes-line. This theory of lunacy also accounts for the fact that the lady's hair was down — like Ophelia's, you know."
    "It would have been easier for her to swallow a few good moth balls," said Holmes, looking at Lecoq in stormy silence. "Mr. Gryce, you are an experienced deducer; what did you conclude?"
    Mr. Gryce glued his eyes to his right boot toe, after his celebrated habit. "I make out she was a-slumming. You know, all the best ladies are keen about it. And I feel that she belonged to the Cult for the Betterment of