A Dark Knight's Fable

It's October thirty-first, and the evening of Professor Moriarty's birthday is upon you. As you couldn't make it to New Mexico for the annual Unhappy Birthday celebration of the Brothers Three (which is being held on November 8 this year), you are spending the evening at home, quietly sipping mulled cider and re-reading "The Final Problem." Perhaps later you'll slip "The Adventures" tape into the video recorder and fast-forward to the part where Moriarty takes a dive off the Tower of London. Or,in a less bloodthirsty mood, look up the few works of Jean Baptiste Greuze that appear in your art books, and contemplate what the Napoleon of Crime's office must have looked like. A nice sedentary Sherlockian evening in the cozy environs of your own home; that is your entire plan for the evening. The doorbell, however, rings.

"Trick or treat!" comes the persistent youthful cry of the season.

Halloween! Somehow that most pagan of holidays has crept up on you from the lower Stygian rows of your calendar and found you in a candyless house. You gawk in horror at the sack-toting urchin on the front steps and realize . . . it's Sherlock Holmes!

Of course it's Sherlock Holmes. It says "Sherlock Holmes" in fluorescent orange letters across the chest of the masked youth's flame-retardant poly vinyl suit, and to reinforce the fact is a tomahawk-nosed caricature of the great detective emblazoned on the costume, just below the legendary name. The plastic mask that the precious lad wears has a calabash pipe and the front half of a deerstalker molded into it, confirming your deduction once and for all. This is Sherlock Holmes.

"And who might you be?" you ask in words and tone learned from years of hearing your mother's repetition of the same question.

"Sherlock Holmes," whispers a voice from the bushes beside the porch.

"Sh'lock Holmes," the urchin repeats, adjusting his sack for easier treat delivery.

"Wait a minute," you mumble, and in a controlled, easy walk, step back from the door . . . then race through the house in search of treats -- any treats. Fruit, old after-dinner mints, anything to placate the young tradition -- follower at the door. But in the end, you find there is only one sweet left in the house: the red licorice pipe you'd been given by a Sherlockian collector friend not two months before. With a sigh, and then a smile of pure whimsy, you return to the door and drop the candy pipe into the young pseudo-Sherlock's sack.

"Thank you," he recites,and, having performed that practiced litany of the betokened, scampers off your porch, to be joined by a large, dark form from the bushes ... undoubtedly Watson.

"Beware of airguns," you call under your breath as the pair vanishes into the shadows between the streetlamps. On your way back to the mulled cider and "The Final Problem," you turn off all the lights, save the one small lamp to read by, to discourage any further children of the night from appearing at your door. Settling down with your copy of The Memoirs, you find the Sidney Paget illustration of Professor Moriarty glowering up at you from the page.

"Look out, you cretinous old birthday boy," you whisper with a chuckle of pure mischief. "Sherlock Holmes has his cherry-licorice pipe now . . . and he's been warned."

Eventually you retire, pleasantly sleepy from your evening's singular celebrations, and when, in the wee hours of the next morning, you awake, you realize that something strange has occurred. Unlike years past, no toilet paper drapes your trees, no one has spray-painted or egged your car, and no one has soaped or waxed scribbles of incomprehensible profanities on your windows. In fact, the only "vandalism" you notice appears in the lower right-hand corner of your bedroom window, and that is only two, splendidly drawn letters:

V. R.

(Printed in Plugs & Dottles, November 1984)