The Adventure of the Thirteenth Club

Today’s parody comes from the latest volume in the 223B Casebook series: “Sherlock Holmes Jazz Age Parodies and Pastiches I: 1920-1924.” (Amazon Kindle)Stories from the 223B casebook — stories published during Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s lifetime (plus later ones I liked) — are published here every Wednesday. The list of those published at PlanetPeschel can be found here. The list of those published at Peschel Press (I’ll unite these listings, I promise!) can be found here.

The Adventure of the Thirteenth Club

(A hitherto unpublished experience of Sherlock Holmes)

Ralph Wotherspoon

Over the course of this series, we have seen Sherlock engaged in a games such as chess and billiards, but this is his first foray into bridge. The years following the war saw an explosion of interest in games and pastimes. The first crossword puzzle books appeared on the market, and Mah-Jongg became so popular that demand for sets outstripped the supply of calf bones used to make the pieces.

There was also a similar mania for bridge. In 1904, the auction game was developed in which players begin the game by bidding for the right to play the hand. In 1925, Harold Stirling Vanderbilt (1884-1970) of the railroad family (his sister was Consuelo, who would be married off to the Duke of Marlborough in a loveless marriage) created scoring innovations that fuelled interest in the game. In the 1930s, promoter Ely Culbertson (1891-1955) would publicize contract bridge with international challenge matches. But thanks to Wotherspoon, Sherlock was already here, matching cards and wits against his old nemesis.

Ralph Wotherspoon (1897-1979) was an Oxford-educated journalist and humorist whose light touch appeared in newspaper articles, plays, and magazines such as London Opinion, Bystander, and Gaiety, where this article appeared in its June issue. He served in World War I, and during the next war contributed to the British military services paper Blighty. He was the author of Ready-Made Rhymes (1927) and co-author of Some Sports and Pastimes of the English (1937).

My friend Mr. Sherlock Holmes laid down the paper and favoured me with one of his rare smiles.

“What would you say to a little bridge this evening, Watson?”

“I should like it above all things.”

“And your practice?”

“I am rather out of practice, I admit.”

“I mean your medical practice.”

“Oh, that is quiet and I have an accommodating neighbour.”

“Excellent,” said Holmes. “I have asked Moriarty to join in a friendly rubber. He is almost due.”

“Moriarty?” I echoed in astonishment. “But surely he will not come?”

“I am inclined to think that he will. Where a rubber is concerned Moriarty is indefatigable.”

“Who will make a fourth?”

“Lestrade has kindly consented to act in that capacity.”

“I am glad to hear it. We may need him.”

Holmes shrugged his shoulders impatiently.

“My dear Watson, if he is to make a fourth, we shall need him,” he rejoined somewhat petulantly.

At the moment there was a knock at the door.

“Come in,” said my companion.

Our old colleague, Inspector Lestrade, entered, as lean and ferret-like as ever.

“Ah, Lestrade, capital,” said Holmes. “We hunt in couples once again. You will find an extra tumbler on the sideboard, and there are cigars in this box. Pray help yourself.”

With a short greeting, the detective seated himself and lit the cigar which had been offered to him.

“Think our gent’s a likely comer, Mr. Holmes?” he asked bluntly.

The answer was unexpected.

“Good evening,” said a well-remembered voice, apparently from the window.

With one accord we turned our heads in that direction. The curtains parted and the familiar figure of Moriarty stood before us. In his right hand he carried a revolver. Though I was fully prepared for something of the kind, my heart sank within me. Holmes, however, was more than equal to the occasion.

“Why, Moriarty, this is like old times,” he observed heartily. “You know Lestrade, of course. Watson, you will find the cards on the mantelpiece. If you will help me with the table, Lestrade — thanks. Now I think we have everything ready. I trust we find you in good health, Professor?”

“Just the same, Mr. Holmes, just the same,” said his venerable antagonist. “I am taking no chances,” he added, tapping the revolver significantly.

“Very wise,” said Holmes approvingly, “but then you were always careful. Suppose we cut. . . . Ha, unless I am very much mistaken, it is the Doctor and myself. Professor, you are, for once, on the side of the law. My deal, I fancy.”

We took our places, Lestrade cut to Holmes, and the latter dealt. I faced Holmes, with Lestrade on my left. Moriarty, to my right, laid his revolver on the table within easy reach and rubbed his hands complacently.

“What are we playing for?” he asked amiably.

Holmes named some modest points which were unanimously agreed to, and we picked up our cards. I glanced at my partner. His face, mask-like in its impassiveness, gave no hint of the intense emotion under which I knew he must be labouring.

“I pass,” he said briefly.

“No Trumps,” declared Moriarty.

“Two Clubs,” I murmured tentatively. I had the King and four small ones.

“No,” growled Lestrade.

After careful consideration Holmes shook his head.

“No, Watson,” he said; “discretion is the better part. We must pass.”

“Two No Trumps,” said Moriarty inexorably.

“Can you improve on that, Watson?” inquired my partner anxiously.

“I fear not,” I answered. “Can you?”

“Lestrade has yet to speak,” he reminded me.

“I — eh — what — oh — no,” grunted the official detective, apparently half asleep.

“And I also ‘No,’” said Holmes, “Two No Trumps it is, Your lead, Watson.”

I lead a small Club. Lestrade, as dummy, exposed his hand, and the game began in earnest.

My partner put on the Queen, but Moriarty took the trick with the Ace in his own hand and proceeded to establish a long suit of Spades. Holmes had no cards of value, but never for an instant relaxed his attention, following suit with meticulous accuracy, and drawing furiously at a long cherry-wood pipe with which he was occasionally wont to replace his beloved clay. The game was soon over. Moriarty made no mistake and won every trick. My King of Clubs was useless.

“Why, it’s Grand Slam,” I cried.

“So it would appear from the fact of there being thirteen tricks to the credit of our opponents,” said Holmes in his most didactic manner.

“Or from the fact of our not having made one,” I retorted in some vexation.

“Not necessarily, Watson,” replied my friend good-humouredly. “I may have something up my sleeve.”

Lestrade laughed noisily.

“I shouldn’t wonder,” he remarked.

Moriarty regarded Holmes benignly.

“Too bad, Mr. Holmes — too bad,” he chuckled. “The luck was against you. I had a hundred aces.”

“But honours are easy,” returned Holmes quietly. “What became of the thirteenth Club?”

Moriarty started and reached for his revolver but, with his habitual promptness of action, Sherlock Holmes had sent the weapon clattering to the floor and flung himself at the other’s throat before Lestrade and I had time to rise from our places. Our participation in the struggle speedily sufficed to pin Moriarty down into his chair and hold him there. Then, with a deft movement, Holmes dived his hand into his old enemy’s pocket and produced a card. It was the two of Clubs,

“As I suspected, Watson,” he ejaculated — “the missing Club! So, Professor, you add the gentle art of revoking to your other accomplishments?” he continued dryly.

Moriarty glared at him with the face of a fiend.

“It’s a lie,” he hissed venomously, “a clumsy lie.”

“A lie is it?” said Holmes soothingly. “I think not, but let us make sure.”

So saying he collected the cards with which we had been playing and handed them to me with the request that I should count them.

I did so while Lestrade maintained his bull-dog grip on our prisoner’s collar.

“There are fifty-one,” I announced.

Holmes nodded with evident satisfaction.

“Just as I thought,” he said briskly. “The two of Clubs completes the pack, and Moriarty is revealed to us in the regrettable role of card-sharper. We forge yet another link in the long chain of evidence. A little more — nay, a very little more — and the trap descends. It is inevitable.”

At this speech Moriarty indulged in a passionate outburst of rage.

“You infernal trickster — you meddlesome blackguard — you ignorant fool!” he stormed.

“Tut!” interposed Holmes curtly. “This is undignified. I must really ask you to withdraw. You may let him go, Lestrade — for the present. He cannot escape us.”

Lestrade released his hold and Moriarty rose unsteadily to his feet. The expression on his face was one of indescribable malevolence.

“You have the laugh of me, Mr. Holmes, but, curse you, I’ll be even with you yet,” he snarled. “You need not think this is the end. We shall meet again, and next time I shall hold the cards.”

“No more words,” said Holmes sharply. “Get out!”

With a smothered exclamation the Napoleon of Crime turned his rounded back upon us and, peering and blinking, shuffled from the room. Lestrade and I regarded Holmes in silence.

“Mr. Holmes, you’re a blooming wonder,” said the man from the Yard candidly.

Holmes seemed not ill-pleased at the compliment.

“I confess to a little legerdemain,” he said smilingly. “I am not without practice in the manipulation of cards — indeed, I have contributed to the literature of the subject — and it occurred to me that a small demonstration of my abilities in this direction might be of some entertainment. The positions of the cards this evening were known to me from the first. You may recollect that I dealt them.”

“But, Holmes — the cut,” I interrupted. “Lestrade cut to you. How do you explain that?

“That was the unkindest cut of all,” said Sherlock Holmes wickedly. “In other words a simple instance of the substitution of one pack for another. Lestrade cut and, in taking up the cards, I effected the exchange with a species of flourish that even to an amateur conjurer like myself presented no very great difficulties.

“I now had a pack in which I knew the order of the cards and from which I had taken the liberty of removing the four two’s. The pack consisted, therefore, of forty-eight cards, but you did not observe, Watson, nor you, Lestrade, that our respective hands contained only twelve cards in place of the regulation thirteen. I had extracted the four deuces as being the cards least likely to arouse comment by their absence. What do you suppose I did with them?”

“You concealed them up your sleeve,” I affirmed unhesitatingly.

“Excellent, my boy,” said Holmes, clapping me on the back. “We shall make something of you yet. Yes, the four deuces were literally up my sleeve. I had intended to safeguard myself to some extent by adding three of them in the shape of a bogus trick to the sequence of tricks Moriarty had in front of him. Three cards, one on top of the other and turned face downwards, are indistinguishable from four, and there would thus certainly appear to be thirteen tricks on the table when the hand was concluded, So closely, however, did the sly, old fox watch me that I had no chance and, at the end of the game, there were only twelve tricks visible. This was, I admit, questionable, and I was ready with apologies, if not with explanations, but, at this point, you, Watson, were of the greatest satisfaction to me, By your firmly expressed belief that Moriarty had made Grand Slam because you yourself had not made a single trick, you removed from his mind any inclination he may have felt to count the number of tricks he had actually made. Do you follow me?”

“Perfectly,” I replied. “What a blind fool I have been, to be sure.”

“The two of Clubs,” Holmes continued gravely, “I was reluctantly compelled to produce from the Professor’s pocket at what I considered was the psychological moment. The remaining three cards I, somewhat dexterously, included with the other forty-eight as I handed them to be counted.

“Well, gentlemen, that constituted my little practical joke at our old friend’s expense. It was perhaps a trifle theatrical but, as Watson is well aware, I can never resist a touch of the dramatic.”

Footnotes

Rubber: A bridge game consists of playing several hands that ends when one team reaches a certain point level. A team must also win two out of three games to be declared the winner. This is called a rubber of bridge, and the origin of the word is mysterious. It has nothing to do with the elastic matter, but was recorded as early as 1599 as a way to refer to the deciding match of a series of games (sometimes called “the rubber game of the match”). Most experts say it refers to lawn bowling, where teams roll balls toward a small ball that acts as a target. The goal is to get as close to the target ball without hitting — that is, rubbing — it. The word became applied to a tie-breaking game as a “rubber match,” then to a deciding match to games in general.

Old times: Moriarty made a similar entrance in William Gillette’s Sherlock Holmes play in 1899.

Two No Trumps: To win, Moriarty and Lestrade must take eight out of 13 possible tricks.

Grand Slam: Moriarty took all 13 tricks.

Honours: Holding a high card in a suit, from Ace (the highest) to 10.

Revoking: Failing to follow suit. In other words, when Moriarty started a trick by pulling a high club from Lestrade’s cards (because he was dummy), he did not play the two of Clubs from his own hand, but a different card.

At this point, your editor’s integrity compels him to note that Holmes’ accusation, given the evidence seen so far, is completely nonsensical. The two of Clubs is a low-value card. It makes little sense to palm it, even if he was sure that Clubs would be the trump in the next deal. This aspect of the story will not improve, as you shall see.