Mr. Homes Radiates a Wireless Message

This is the first in a series of Shylock Homes parodies written by John Kenneth Bangs for the newspapers. Over the next eight Wednesdays, we’ll throw another one up. Only one of them I know has been published, so the rest of these haven’t been seen since their initial publication. Enjoy!

The ways of spirits are past finding out. I have had to do with no end of them in my day, and they have appealed to me in ways so varied that a book of considerable proportions might be written on “The Methods of Spook Manifestation.”

For instance, incredible as it may seem, almost all of Shakespeare’s many ghosts have honored me with a visitation. The ghost of Caesar, that appeared before Brutus on the eve of the battle of Philippi, spent a whole night in my company at my camp in the Adirondacks, some years ago, and frankly confessed that he was not the ghost of Caesar at all, but a transparent fakir impressed into the service of Mark Antony to rattle Brutus before the fight, on promise of a government job under the administration of Antony, which the famous Roman forgot to give him when the time came.

Upon another occasion, upon his own invitation, the ghost of Hamlet’s father gave me an interview which I never sought and would not seek again, for the old gentleman was a fearful bore, miasmatic to the last degree, and fuller of malarial germs than I should like to say. It is true he told me much that shed considerable light upon the character of his son, and he definitely settled in my mind the much mooted question of the authorship of the tragedy, demonstrating be yond peradventure that neither Shakespeare nor Bacon had anything to do with it, and setting up a claim for Sir Walter Raleigh and Queen Elizabeth in collaboration, which I found as convincing as it was diverting. He assured me that Hamlet was mad, adding that the prince had every right to be, seeing how he had been treated by actors of subsequent ages, expressing certain drastic opinions as to the methods these gentlemen employed in “doing” him.

“They ‘do’ him all right,” the old spirit ejaculated with some heat, “and if any of ‘em ever venture to shuffle off this mortal coil and come down our way, I and Hamlet’s friends, beginning with Yorick and ending with Horatio, will return the compliment with principal and interest.”

He then began a diatribe against the whole dramatic profession, which finally became so offensive that I had to employ a fire-extinguisher to lay him. His approach was through the vent of a bathtub attached to my room in a hotel at Copenhagen, and he was the most melancholy Dane that ever was.

Other spirits as well have approached my sanctum, and in other ways. To instance a few cases which may not come amiss in convincing the incredulous, Samson, egged on no doubt by tales of the prowess of the strong men of to-day, penetrated to my sanctum one evening not long ago with a highly entertaining paper on “The Jaw-bone as an Aid to the Strenuous Life.” I have copied it from Samson’s somewhat ill-writ manuscript to be published posthumously. It is too drastically good for me to let it go now while there are so many pugilists abroad who have a better liking for the sand-bag than they might have for the views of pioneer of their profession.

Jonah has placed in my hands his impressions of submarine navigation which are undoubtedly interesting, but too crudely written to be immediately available. Noah has asked me to write of “Forty Days on the Vasty Deep or Afloat with a Zoo” indeed he has handed me the manuscript of that diverting work, but his style is as sloppy as were his days, and valuable as the story is historically, I have had no time to pump it into English.

An equally bad case is Elisha’s narrative of “The First Automobile, and How It Scorched.” Even Adam has risen up out of the dim recesses of the past to offer me the full mundane royalties upon “My Summer in a Garden,” as he calls a deliciously humorous series of papers which some day I hope to present to the public.

Shylock Homes has transferred to me his most recent memoirs, and as I have read them over they have proven so absorbingly interesting, that while turning my back upon Boswell, Jonah, Adam and others of equal importance, I could not justify myself in withholding Mr. Homes’ further tales from the public.

Yet before presenting them to your delighted gaze, dear reader, I feel that I should state in as few words as possible the precise manner in which they came into my possession.

Shylock Homes Calls By Radiator

In itself, the story of the great detective’s method of approaching me, is entertainingly original and worthy of that astute mind to which there was no such thing as the truly mysterious.

To put it briefly, Mr. Homes transmitted his periods to me by wireless telegraphy, not, however, by Mr. Marconi’s system, but after a fashion that completely throws the famous Italian inventor’s achievement in the shade, and at the moment not only fjlled me with wonderment, but convinced me that five years in the nether regions had in no wise diminished the marvelous ingenuity of the erstwhile great detective.

The affair happened in my apartment in New York as the small refrigerator I hibernate in Harlem as called by the agent of the tenement of which it is a part. This apartment has many virtues and some drawbacks. Among the latter, and the only feature of the situation that has any bearing upon the narrative is a small steam radiator, richly gilded and gayly decorated with stenciled wreaths of Empire pattern.

This apparatus, by some ingenious stroke of the architect, designed to heat the six rooms of the apartment, was located under the window of the front room, a convenient arrangement by which all the steam that managed to penetrate from the boiler below-stairs to the coils of the radiator was immediately congealed by the icy blast that came through the cracks of the sash. The result can best be imagined by those who have either traveled in the Polar regions, or spent a winter in a similar domicile. Yet I could not find it in my heart to blame the poor little radiator for its shortcomings as a purveyor of heat. It was, of course, no more fitted for the task it had had thrust upon it than a chafing dish would have been under the same conditions, but it was a most sociable little engine.

It was last winter that it happened. It was a bitterly cold Sunday morning, and I was lying away the early morning hours in bed half awake and trying to squeeze out another hour of dreamless rest. Suddenly, the radiator began clicking fiercely.

At first I paid little attention and turned over on my side to doze off again. The radiator rumbled as if disturbed by something and took to sputtering like an angry child, ending up with a clicking that was as short and sharp as that of a telegraphic instrument.

“Oh, shut up, you.” said I. “Can’t you see that I’m not through sleeping yet? Stop your infernal racket.”

“Clickety-click! Clickety-click-click! Click-click-clickety-click.” retorted the radiator, with an insolent rumble that irritated me.

“If you’d work more and talk less, my dear Rady,” I said severely, “you’d be a more valuable addition to the sum total of my comfort. Garrulous frigidity in a radiator is bad form, so shut off your clicking, or I’ll take the poker to you.”

The threat was of no avail and I am glad it wasn’t, for with an impertinent hissing as a starter the radiator followed my protest with “S-s-s-s-s-z-clickety – clickety – click,” and then I realized something that brought me bounding from my bed to the side of the saucy little heater, my hand trembling with excitement, and my brain in a whirl of expectation.

The radiator was clicking out a message.

Fortunately for my understanding of what was happening, in my young days I had made myself a master of the Morse alphabet, and as I listened to the noises which the radiator was making it suddenly dawned upon me that the clickings were actually spelling out words, and this is what they spelled:

“Upon what terms will you edit ‘Further Recollections of Shylock Homes?’ Radiate at once. Collect.”

For a moment I was stunned.

“What in thunder are you talking about, Rady?” I said, getting down on my knees beside it. “Upon what terms will I edit what?”

“ ‘The Further Recollections of Shylock Homes,’ “ repeated the radiator, and it added, again, “Radiate at once. Collect.”

“Radiate at once, eh?” I replied with a hysterical laugh. “Why, certainly. Anything to oblige — but who shall I radiate? What does it mean?”

“It’s the term we use in steam-heated telegraphy for wire,” explained the machine in short, nervous clicks. “He wants you to radiate your answer at his expense as soon as you can. Will you edit his memoirs, and if so what’ll you charge? Brace up. You’re frightfully stupid this morning.”

“None of your impudence,” I retorted.

“All right,” answered the Radiator. “I’ll tell him you don’t see anything in his proposition, and he can click up some body, else with a trifle more intelligence.”

“You’ll do nothing of the sort,” I cried hastily. “Tell him I’ll do it at the regular rates.”

“What are they?” demanded the Radiator.

“What the publisher doesn’t take comes to me,” I said with a laugh.

The Radiator let off an indignant spurt of steam which the cold air from the window immediately turned into an icicle that dropped with a crash to the floor. The reply was ticked off in an instant and then all was silent for a half hour. At the end of this time a second message came to me.

“What do I get?” Shylock Homes queried.

“All the notoriety there is in it and as many of the press notices of the book as you want,” I answered, facetiously, thinking, of course, that the whole episode was an idle fancy and not for an instant dreaming that I was driving a heart-breaking bargain with a defenseless spirit.

“All right. I accept,” the Radiator hissed, a little sadly, I thought, an hour later. “The terms are very, very hard, but I can’t help myself. Get your pads ready and I will begin radiating the manuscript right away.”

Still rubbing my eyes in amazement. I made the necessary preparations, and within the next week had received from Shylock Homes the text of his memoirs, precisely as they appear in the following chapters. There was some trouble with the last three chapters, owing to the clogging up of the steam pipe on the fifth day, and I was compelled to secure the collaboration of a plumber in getting Mr. Homes’ three final papers out. but in every other respect the task was about as easy a one as I ever encountered.