The Mammoth Book of New Sherlock Holmes Adventures - Mike Ashley [78]
“What did you do?” queried Fergus Johnstone.
“We had no choice but to trudge all the way back to MacGlevin’s domain and throw ourselves on his mercy. He seemed none too pleased to see us again, but said he would row us round to the Puffin in his own skiff, which was moored in an inlet just below the castle. You continue, Donald.”
“Just as we were rounding the western head of the island, approaching the Puffin, my father cried out. I looked where he pointed, and there was our little dinghy, neatly tucked in the inlet, just as we had left it. Of course, Mr MacGlevin was a wee bit upset at this, and expressed himself somewhat warmly. Even a whelk would realize, he said, that we had simply taken the wrong path and looked for our boat in the wrong place. His parting words to us as he rowed off, after setting us aboard our own dinghy, were that we should henceforth confine our inept navigational activities to the streets of Edinburgh.”
“There it might have ended,” continued the elder Grice Paterson: “as an embarrassing experience, but no more – although I was still convinced that the boat had not been there when we had looked for it before – but, as we were climbing from dinghy to yacht, Donald found something by his feet. Show them, my boy.”
Donald Grice Paterson put his hand in his pocket, and pulled out a large, wooden-handled clasp-knife. He unfolded the blade, which was broad and strong-looking, with a curiously square end.
“It’s not ours,” said his father, “so how came it in the bottom of our boat?”
“May I see it?” said Holmes. He took the knife and examined it closely. “Made in Sheffield,” he remarked; “which is hardly surprising information. The tip has been snapped off, which must have taken some considerable force.”
The knife was passed around the room, amid much murmuring of interest, but no-one could make any useful suggestion regarding it.
“Someone has been playing tricks upon you,” declared Doctor Oliphant.
“Someone – or something,”said Murdoch MacLeod.
“A mischievous sprite,” suggested Mrs Morton.
Sherlock Holmes offered no observation of his own, and later, when I queried his silence on the matter, he shook his head and smiled.
“My dear fellow,” said he, “you must have observed in the past that an unresolved mystery possesses a charm and romance which its solution can rarely aspire to. It is for this reason that – unless it is likely to involve them in a personal loss – men often prefer mystery to enlightenment. I could have suggested at least seven possible explanations, but all of them were fairly prosaic, I’m afraid, and not really what the company was seeking!”
With that he retired for the night, and there the singular adventures of the Grice Patersons might have remained, but for the surprising sequel.
We were seated at breakfast the following morning when there came the sound of raised voices from the hallway outside. Moments later, the door was flung open, and, ignoring the protests of the manager, in strode a gigantic figure, whose tangled ginger hair and beard identified him instantly as MacGlevin, closely followed by a police constable. The Laird of Uffa’s eyes passed quickly over the assembled diners, until they alighted upon the luckless Grice Patersons.
“There they are!” he roared. “There are the villains! Arrest those men at once, MacPherson!”
Like everyone else, Grice Paterson had been frozen into immobility by this sudden, amazing irruption, his egg-spoon poised half-way to his lips, but now he sprang to his feet.
“How dare you!” he cried angrily. “What is the meaning of this?”
“The meaning,” returned MacGlevin in an equally heated voice, “is that you have abused my hospitality. I took you in out of the dark night, and you have returned this favour by treacherously stealing that which is most dear to my clan, the MacGlevin Buckle!”
“This is nonsense,” snorted