Will the Real John Clayton Please Stand Up?

Some Sherlock Holmes societies are named after stories. And I'll admit it, I envy the people who belong to those groups. If they feel like contributing to the Sherlockian scholarship surrounding their namesake, they have a pretty easy time of it. I mean, they've got a whole blamed story to work from. And those societies whose name is based on one of the novels.... sheesh.

In Peoria, we like a little more of a challenge. Why else would we name our local scion after a cab belonging to an obscure figure in The Hound of the Baskervilles?

Thus the body of literature produced by the Hansoms of John Clayton on their namesake has always been rather small. Recently, however, I came across a strange contradiction in John Clayton lore and feel compelled to bring it to the public eye.  

Sidney Paget is well known to Sherlockians as the illustrator of the Holmes Canon. He was the original, and as such probably knew Dr. Watson pretty well. Paget may have gotten to know several familiar faces from the Holmes stories as he strove to capture each of them for The Strand Magazine.  

Which leaves us with a question:  what happened with John Clayton?  

In the September 1901 issue, Paget depicts Clayton atop his cab with the sun glinting off his clean-shaved chin. The cabbie seems to have sideburns and a large moustache, perhaps even in the handlebar style.  

The very next month, when Paget illustrates Clayton's visit to 221B Baker Street, the cabbie suddenly has a beard and no moustache whatsoever. Sure, you can pass this off as a lapse on the artist's part, but what if it isn't? What if Paget was actually trying to tell us something?  

In a tale filled with as much subterfuge and false identities as Hound, a phony Clayton would be just one more log on an already blazing fire.  

The problem with a false John Clayton, however, is the worries that it brings about the real thing. If the guy that showed up at 221B was really Stapleton in disguise, had he killed the poor cabbie just to silence him?  

On the other hand, if the Clayton that came to 221B was real and the other one was false, why was he loaning out his cab and then lying about it later? What sort of intrigue was he involved in?  

At least in possibility two, the Hansoms' namesake is still alive.  

Having brought up the possibility that John Clayton met his end prematurely, I'd now like to ask you to forget all about it and be totally objective as we solve this puzzle in the most purely American fashion: we're going to vote on it.

Just like the thin-Elvis/fat-Elvis postage stamp vote, we're going to conduct a Plugs & Dottles reader survey to see which Clayton is considered the true one.  

We'll take intricate deductions, woman's instinct, eye-witness accounts (if any of our subscribers are that old)... anything but wild guesses in deference to the Master (you can still guess, just don't tell us).  

Send us your vote now!

(Printed in Plugs & Dottles, August 1996)