Tales of Tonga

An Episode from the Dangling Prussian

Narford Corsby was a house-agent who lived with his wife in a two-story bungalow on Stepney Road in Bermondsey. His wife was exceedingly corpulent, and that fact, combined with Corsby’s tendency toward overexcitement had left them childless, even after twenty-three happy years of attempting reproduction. As with so many childless couples, Narford and his wife Orsina eventually became estranged to the habits and traits of pre-adult members of their own species. In short, they would have barely known a brat from a rat if it bit them.

A rat did bite Orsina once when she was cleaning the cellar. Fortunately, a passing doctor (and expert at observation) named Joe Bell identified the bite marks as those of rodentia commonus and talked the pair out of adopting the rat, which they had already named Harry, after a local fishmonger noted for his winning personality.

Our story catches up to them in 1884, a warm summer’s evening, in which Narford had decided to begin reading Charles Reade’s The Cloister and the Hearth. He had just finished the first part about the cloister when a sound came from their hearth.

"Narfy," Mrs. C chirped at her husband, "I believe there are sounds coming from our hearth."

"It’s the wind," replied Corsby, wanting to make any distractions from his reading as short as possible. He was very anxious to see what the cloister was going to do with the hearth and why.

"But Narfy," Mrs. C went on, "it sounds like a child is in our chimney!"

"You’re hallucinating, just like those two drunken brothers of yours. Henry and John are forever thinking there’s something up the chimney. Besides, dearest, you wouldn’t know a child’s squeaking from a rat’s squeaking if it bit you."

"It’s a child in the chimney, I tell you. Look, there’s his little foot sticking down!"

"I have to admit, darling, that that foot and the descending leg attached to it does look like that of a child. You’ll pardon me if I remain skeptical, as I have no reason to believe a child would want to come down our chimney."

"He’s playing a game, Narfy! That’s what they do. Oh, look another foot! And a little loin-cloth!"

"The chimney soot has made him coal-black, precious dove of my heart. Perhaps you should run a bath for the lad."

"Look, he has a little wooden flute! Oh, Narfy, I think he’s going to plays us a song! Oh, play, chimney-child! Play your little child tunes for us!"

Pfffft!

"Dearest! Oh, look what you’ve done boy ... she’s fallen into a swoon!"

Pffffft!

Longing for the company of a real Andaman Island woman, Tonga lifted the cash out of Narford Corsby’s wallet and went out for a beer.

****************************

"STOP THAT BOY! SOMEONE STOP THAT BOY!" a voice shrieked somewhere down Curzon Street, barely audible amidst the noisy bustle of the busy thoroughfare.

The urchin with the brown paper-wrapped package heard the shriek, but only laughed to herself as she dashed down an alley. Her ears picked the shrieks out of the street noise easily, just as anyone could hear their name in a crowded room. It was her name after all, her first name, anyway. As for the "boy" part ... well, that was part of her street persona. She could live with it. Stopthat Jones could live with other people thinking a lot of things, just so long as she got her day’s bread and cheese out of the deal.

Stopthat ducked down behind a rain barrel at the far end of the alley, and settled herself to check out her prize. It took a bit of tugging to get the strings off the package, but once she did the brown paper virtually fell open. Jackpot.

It was a box of wax phonographic cylinders. One of the miracles of the modern age, music stored in a little tube like saltpeter in an apothecary jar. This was better than standing outside of Halle’s concert with ear pressed to the door, straining to hear the melodies inside. This was better than the a capella stylings of the market vendors when their mood turned tuneful. This was better than all that, because these musics were all hers.

Stopthat pulled out one of the tubes of wax and held it up to her ear, then her eye. Finally she put it up to her mouth, and softly, began to sing.

"I’m called little Buttercup, Dear little Buttercup, Though I could never tell why . . . But still I’m called Buttercup, Poor little Buttercup, Sweet little Buttercup, I."

As the song came out of her wax phonographic cylinder, Stopthat’s heart swelled with joy as she listened to the beautiful song that was hers. And as she thrilled to the song held in the cylinder, she sang louder.

"I’ve snuff and tobaccy, and excellent jacky; I’ve scissors and watches and knives; I’ve ribbons and laces to set off the faces of pretty young sweethearts and wives!"

Stopthat had never owned anything that was worth anything, but now she had not one song, but a whole box of them! She began to dance a merry jig as her sound got louder still, louder than caution would ever let her voice go before. Let the people out on the street hear her song, nobody was taking her phonographic tubes away from her! These wax cylinders would be with her forever!

"I’VE TREACLE AND TOFFEE, I’VE TEA AND I’VE COFFEE, SOFT TOMMY AND SUCCULENT ...."

Pfffffft!

Pulling his blowgun back through the knothole into the rain barrel, Tonga wrapped his little hands around his own precious cylinder of death, rested his head against it, and went back to sleep.

****************************

Herbert Romney pulled his kidney pie out of the oven, using the skirt of his leather apron for a hot pad. He set the pie up on the cutting block to cool, then returned to the kitchen table to finish writing the letter. He dipped his pen in the bottle of red ink, meditated for but a half-second, then resumed his work where he’d left off:

"... and that Freemason rumor I’ve heard has me in real fits, too, old Boss. Instead of clipping har’s ears next time, I think I’ll carve my gram’s initials in two or three of them. Good old ‘V.R.’, that should cause a stir! I’m very anxious to ..."

Pfffffft!

Just like mum used to make, Tonga thought to himself, dishing up a big helping of steaming hot kidney pie.

****************************

Ford Emil Roon was a tragic case. He was a highly intelligent individual, with a keen sense of what could be. He might have met with runaway success in any number of fields, but, as with most tragedy, Ford Emil Roon was a man in the wrong place at the wrong time. You might say it was his drinking habits that got the best of him, which would be true, but it wasn’t that he was an alcoholic, in any sense. He was just a man who happened to pick the wrong bar to do his drinking in.

Shortly after the publication of A Study in Scarlet in Beeton’s Christmas Annual in 1887, Roon’s fine and foresighted mind recognized the great things that were foreshadowed in the person of one Sherlock Holmes. Holmes brought science and reason to criminal justice, a field ripe for change and technological advancement. Holmes’s ideas and methods were plainly the way of the future to Roon, and he undertook to study everything he could about this already-great human being. So it was that Ford Emil Roon became, unbeknownst to history, the world’s first Sherlockian.

Roon collected all of Holmes’s privately printed pamphlets, tracked down the odd articles Holmes had had published in even odder publications in his younger days, he even made several visits to Baker Street itself, trying to persuade the detective to accept his apprenticeship. Holmes, who still felt he had yet to perfect his art, politely turned Roon down, time after time. Roon continued his studies from a distance, amassing numbers of unpublishable works (he was, unfortunately, no Watson) on the Holmes philosophy and technique, even after that tragic day in 1891 when Reuter’s dispatch reported the death of Holmes at Reichenbach Falls. Unable to persuade either Mycroft Holmes or Dr. Watson to allow him access to Holmes’s personal papers, Roon became certain that Watson’s account of Holmes’s death, published in 1893, was the last new material he would read on his role model and object of study.

Sensing an end to his great work ahead, Ford Emil Roon sought the solace of companions who understood what Sherlock Holmes had meant to the world. And he found them in an establishment on Montague Street called "The Dangling Prussian."

They were a queer lot, the Sherlockians he met in the Prussian. Their own views of Holmes were often tangential or just plain skewed. But at least they understood his vision, and the ale at the Prussian was better than most, so Roon made the pub a regular stopping place. Unfortunately, Ford Emil Roon had no idea that the Dangling Prussian suffered from a temporal anomaly, and that by frequenting the place, he, too would begin to suffer from the same anomaly.

So in 1903, when it became known to the world that Sherlock Holmes had not perished in 1891 as previously thought, Ford Emil Roon was not around. He was still ordering ale in a place where it was always 1895. And in 1895, Sherlock Holmes was still thought to be dead by the greater portion of the world. A few of the Dangling Prussian’s patrons knew better, but they weren’t telling.

So it was that on one particular evening in the ever-present 1895, Ford Emil Roon was sitting in the Dangling Prussian, having a glass of bitters and discussing the systematic training/art in the blood dichotomy. At the table with him were Keefauver, the post-eminent Sherlockian methodologist; Ret Chang Crenson, a Shaolin priest from one of China’s more ancient and revered monasteries, not some cheap California version as tend to be shown in syndicated television clone series featuring porky, aging actors trying for a comeback; and Cassaday Funk, the literate half of the famed duo Funk and Wagnal and later bass player for the group Grand Funk Railroad. Funk was quoting his hero, role model, and lexiconic source Gordon R. Speck as he was wont to do when Roon interrupted rather forcefully, smashing the end off a whiskey bottle by slamming it on the table edge. He waved it in Cassaday Funk’s face.

"I’ll cut ya, man! I mean it, I’ll cut ya!"

"You ain’t gonna cut nobody, punk," Funk retorted. "You ain’t got the guts."

"I’m warning you, man!" Roon screamed, beginning to exhibit a marked facial twitch. "I’ll mess you up bad!"

"Look at that time," Keefauver said, tapping his wrist and rising from his chair. "The Sisters of St. Vitus are having a dance tonight, and I promised Kathy I’d take her. She’ll have a fit if she can’t go."

"The greatest wisdom shall come from he who is most foolish," Ret Chang Crenson said, nodding in agreement.

"NOBODY LEAVES THE PARTY, MAN!" Roon freaked, "NO-BODY!"

Pfffffft!

"There mosquitos in here, man?" Ford Emil Roon asked civilly, his concentration broken.

Pfffffft!

"As I was saying," Keefauver took up the conversational gauntlet, "it’s been a lovely evening, but I have to go."

"And I," added Crenson.

Pfffffft!

Ducking back inside the men’s room, Tonga put one end of his blowpipe up to his eye to check for stuck blow-thorns. Confused beyond what his primitive brain could handle, he decided to call it a night. Somewhere outside the Prussian, a Shaolin priest was opening his hand beneath a gaslight to show his companion the three poison thorns he had snatched from the air in pretending to wave good-bye.

"David Carradine’s really let himself go," the companion sighed, to the priest’s confusion.

Finis