Sherlock Holmes:
Before Baker Street
Edited by David Marcum
With Illustrations by
Sidney Paget
© David Marcum 2017
David Marcum has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editor of this work.
First published in 2017 by Belanger Books
CONTENTS
Editor’s Introduction: Before Baker Street by David Marcum
Foreword by Steven Rothman
The Adventure of the Bloody Roses by Jayantika Ganguly
The Vingt-un Confession by Derrick Belanger
The Adventure of the Gloria Scott by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The Adventure of the Dead Ringer by Robert Perret
The Devil of the Deverills by S. F. Bennett
The Painting in the Parlour by David Marcum
The Incident of the Absent Thieves by Arthur Hall
Mr. Chen’s Lesson, by Derrick Belanger
The Adventure of the Amateur Emigrant by Daniel D. Victor
The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
A Day at the Races by Mark Mower
The Strange Case of the Necropolis Railway by Geri Schear
APPENDIX
Sources:
Afterword by Derrick Belanger
About the Contributors
COPYRIGHT INFORMATION
All of the contributions in this collection are copyrighted by the authors listed below. Grateful acknowledgement is given to the authors and/or their agents for the kind permission to use their work within these volumes.
“The Vingt-un Confession” and “Mr. Chen’s Lesson” and “Afterword” ©2017 by Derrick Belanger. All Rights Reserved. First publication, original to this collection. Printed by permission of the author.
“The Devil of the Deverills” ©2016 by S.F. Bennett. All Rights Reserved. First publication, original to this collection. Printed by permission of the author.
“The Adventure of the Gloria Scott” and “The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual” by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. First published in 1892 and 1893 respectively. In the Public Domain.
“The Incident of the Absent Thieves” ©2016 by Arthur Hall. All Rights Reserved. First publication, original to this collection. Printed by permission of the author.
“The Adventure of the Bloody Roses” ©2017 by Jayantika Ganguly. All Rights Reserved. First publication, original to this collection. Printed by permission of the author.
“Editor’s Introduction: Before Baker Street” and “The Painting in the Parlour” ©2016, 2017 by David Marcum. All Rights Reserved. First publication original to this collection. “No. 24 Montague Street” originally appeared in a slightly different form in The Baker Street Journal, (Vol. 66, No. 2, Summer 2016). Printed by permission of the author.
“A Day at the Races” ©2016 by Mark Mower. All Rights Reserved. First publication, original to this collection. Printed by permission of the author.
“The Adventure of the Dead Ringer” ©2016 by Robert Perret. All Rights Reserved. First publication, original to this collection. Printed by permission of the author.
“Foreword” ©2017 by Steven Rothman. All Rights Reserved. First publication, original to this collection. Printed by permission of the author.
“The Strange Case of the Necropolis Railway” ©2016 by Geri Schear. All Rights Reserved. First publication, original to this collection. Printed by permission of the author.
“The Affair of the Aluminium Crutch” ©2016 by S. Subramanian. All Rights Reserved. First publication, original to this collection. Printed by permission of the author.
“The Adventure of the Amateur Emigrant” ©2016 by Daniel D. Victor. All Rights Reserved. First publication, original to this collection. Printed by permission of the author.
Editor’s Introduction: Before Baker Street
by David Marcum
All around the world, a person can see a deerstalker hat and immediately think of Sherlock Holmes. While it’s been argued that no such hat specifically appeared in the original stories – the closest reference was the mention of an ear-flapped traveling cap in “Silver Blaze” – there are other indicators that this was Holmes’s hat, despite arguments to the contrary. The various illustrations by Sidney Paget that were included with the originally published stories in The Strand magazine show a variety of Holmesian headgear, but the regular inclusion of the beloved deerstalker cannot be ignored. (One might argue that the Paget illustrations carry an extra level of legitimacy and verification, since Watson and his Literary Agent, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, would have certainly had to approve them at the time, and having both known Holmes, they would have been able to certify what was authentic and what wasn’t.)
After the deerstalker, there are other things that suggest the Great Detective. There is the pipe – often sadly represented as a Calabash, which was never used in The Canon. (It was added by William Gillette, as the apocryphal tale goes, so that it could be better seen by the audience during his phenomenally successful Holmes play.) Then there is the famous phrase, also never actually uttered in just that exact way in the Canon, and again credited to Gillette, “Elementary, my dear Watson.” The list goes on – behaviors, such as Holmes’s rapid-fire deductions and enthusiastic (to the point of ruining his health) investigations; hansom cabs and pea-souper fogs, and other aspects of London life in the late Victorian era; the always satisfying presentation of Our Hero and his friend and Boswell as they venture forth to discover the truth and to make things right; and of course the vision of that great mind contemplating a terribly knotty three-pipe problem until at last – after minutes or hours or even days of intense concentration – a light gleams from the detective’s eyes as the internal storm passes, and he lifts his head to state with great mastery, “Now I understand.”
Along with all of these other things, there is something else that is immediately associated with Sherlock Holmes. It’s not an object, such as a hat or a pipe. It’s not an action, such as a series of brilliant revelations to unmask a criminal. No, it is a place…
221b Baker Street
Just the mention of that address is enough to suggest mystery and adventure and heroism. Over many years, this humble London location was
