Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1918-11-12
4 FRENCH SHERLOCK HOLMES

DERICARP had pile of detective stories
= on his table when l last called on him.
There were volumes by Gaboriau, Poe,
Conan Doyle, Anna katherine Greene, Ar
thur Reeve, Jacques Futrelle, and I do not
know how many others. But he was read.
ing a life of Beaumarchais, the brilliant
Paris matchmaker who wrote "The Barber
of Seville" and persuaded the French
king to assist the American colonies.
You seem surprised said he, that I
should be reading fact behind a bulwaril
of fiction. But you know that the really
first-class detective stories are those that
have actually happened. | was just rum
ming over again one that Beaumarchais
wrote in 1876. He applies all the processes
of reasoning which made Conan Doyle rich
and Sherlock Holmes famous more than
century before Doyle thought OF writing
detective fiction. | never saw a prettier
example of deduction from meager data
than Beaumarchais gave in letter to the
London Chronicle on May G, 1876. Let
me read it to you and / think YOU will
agree with me-"
He turned back a page in the open book
and read this
Monsieur, the Editor:
~ am stranger, full Of honor. If it is
not to inform you absolutely who am, it
is at least to tell you in more than one
sense who I am not
DAY before yesterday, at the Pantheon,
after the concert and during the dance, |
found under my feet lady's mantle of black
taffeta lined with the same and bordered
With / ignorant to whom this
mantle belongs never having seen, even at
the Pantheon her who wore it, and all my
Investigations since have not enabled me to
learn anything in relation to her.
IT therefore beg you, NJ. the Editor to
announce in your paper this lost mantle SO
that IT may be returned faithfully to whom
ever shall reclaim It.
but that there may be no error in rela-
tion to 1t, l have the honor to announce TO
you that the person who lost 1t wore a pink
nlume that day in her hair I think she had
diamond pendants in her ears. but am not
SO sure of that as of the rest. She Is tall
and welkformed her hair is sllvery blonde
her complexion dazzlingly white: her neck
is fine and gracefully set her form slender.
and the prettiest little foot in the world. l
have even remarked that she is very young.
| She is lively and distracted; her step is
| light and she has decided taste for the
dance.
ar you ask me, NJ. the Editor why, having
| noted her so well. l did not at once return
| the mantle, shall have the honor to repeat
| what 1 said TO you before, that have never
| seen this person; that I do not know either
her features, or her eyes, or her costume, or
| her carriage and do not know who she is
or what she is like
| "But IL you insist upon knowing how
am able to SO we'll define her, never having
| seen her, ] in turn will be astonished that
| so exact an observer you ldo not know
| that the simple examination of lady's
| mantle is sufficient to give of her 1 the
nations by which she could be-recoGnized,
| ,"Now suppose Monsieur that on examin-
| ing the mantle I found in the hood some
| hair of beautiful blonde attached to the
| stuff also some bits of down escaped from
| the feathers, you will admit that a great
| effort of genius would not be needed to con-
| clude that the hair and the plume of that
| bIonde must in every way resemble the sam
| nlea which have detached themselves. You
1 sasl that perfectly And since similar hair
| never grew from skin of uncertain white
| ness analogy will have taught you, as 1t
| has taught me, that this beautiful silvery
| thing which no observer can dispute without
dishonoring his judgments
| AFT is thus that slightly worn spot In
| the taffeta on the two lateral parts OF the
| ,ntarior of ths hood which could not have
| come from anything but repeated rubbing OF
two small hard bodies in movement showed
| 80 that not that she wore the pendants or
that particular day. but that she does SO or
dinarily and that 1t is hardly probable, be
tween YOU and me- that she would have neg
lscted this adornment on a day of conquest
or OF grand assembly, both which are one
~ I reason badly do not spare me, l bes
YOU. Rigor IL not injustice.
"Ths rest goes without saying, IL ear