The Misadventure of Shelrock Holmes by Anthology Page B

Clothes-lines. She was by way of being a tester. She had to go across them hand over hand, and if they bore her weight, they were passed by the censor."
    "And if they didn't?"
    "Apparently that predicament had not occurred at the time of our problem, and so cannot be considered."
    "I think Gryce is right about the slumming," remarked Luther Trant, "but the reason for the lady hanging from the clothes-line is the imperative necessity she felt for a thorough airing, after her

    tenemental visitations; there is a certain tenement scent, if I may express it, that requires ozone in quantities."
    "You're too material," said the Thinking Machine, with a faraway look in his weak, blue eyes. "This lady was a disciple of New Thought. She had to go into the silence, or concentrate, or whatever they call it. And they always choose strange places for these thinking spells. They have to have solitude, and, as I understand it, the clothes-line was not crowded?"
    Rouletabille laughed right out.
    "You're way off, Thinky," he said. "What ailed that dame was just that she wanted to reduce. I've read about it in the women's journals. They all want to reduce. They take all sorts of crazy exercises, and this crossing clothes-lines hand over hand is the latest. I'll bet it took off twenty of those avoirdupois with which old Sherly credited her."
    "Pish and a few tushes!" remarked Raffles, in his smart society jargon. "You don't fool me. That clever little bear was making up a new dance to thrill society next winter. You'll see. Sunday-paper headlines: STUNNING NEW DANCE! THE CLOTHES-LINE CLING! CAUGHT ON LIKE WILDFIRE! That's what it's all about. What do you
    know, eh?"
    "Go take a walk, Raffles," said Holmes, not unkindly; "you re sleepy yet. Scientific Sprague, you sometimes put over an abstruse theory, what do you say?"
    "I didn't need science," said Sprague, carelessly. "As soon as 1 heard she had her hair down, I jumped to the correct conclusion. She had been washing her hair, and was drying it. My sister always sticks her head out of the skylight; but this lady's plan is, I should judge, a more all-round success."
    As they had now all voiced their theories, President Holmes rose to give them the inestimable benefit of his own views.
    "Your ideas are not without some merit," he conceded, "but you have overlooked the eternal-feminine element in the problem. As soon as I tell you the real solution, you will each wonder why it escaped your notice. The lady thought she heard a mouse, so she scrambled out of the window, preferring to risk her life on the perilous clothes-line rather than stay in the dwelling where the mouse was also. It is all very simple. She was doing her hair, threw her head
    over forward to twist it, as they always do, and so espied the mouse sitting in the corner."
    "Marvelous! Holmes, marvelous!" exclaimed Watson, who had just come back from his errand.
    Even as they were all pondering on Holmes's superior wisdom, the telephone bell rang.
    "Are you there?" said President Holmes, for he was ever English
    of speech.
    "Yes, yes," returned the impatient voice of the chief of police. "Call off your detective workers. We have discovered who the lady was who crossed the clothes-line, and why she did it."
    "I can't imagine you really know," said Holmes into the transmitter; "but tell me what you think."
    "A-r-r-rh! Of course I know! It was just one of those confounded moving-picture stunts!"
    "Indeed! And why did the lady kick off her slipper?"
    "A-r-r-r-h! It was part of the fool plot. She's Miss Flossy Flicker of the Flim-Flam Film Company, doin' the six-reel thriller, 'At the End of Her Rope.' "
    "Ah," said Holmes, suavely, "my compliments to Miss Flicker on her good work."
    "Marvelous, Holmes, marvelous!" said Watson.
    Detective: SHERLOCK HOLMES Narrator: WATSON
    THE UNIQUE HAMLET by VINCENT STARRETT
    "The Unique Hamlet" is Vincent Starrett's most devout achievement in a lifelong "career of Conan Doyle idolatry" It is unanimously