The Mystery Of The Missing Page

THE weather was rotten, and had been so for weeks. It rained and rained to such an extent that one began to be lieve that Vila was really the one place of the ninety-nine others mentioned by travellers and Islands wiseacres as the scene of Somerset Maugham’s famous drama “Rain.”

We —that is wife and self and one daughter of ten —were hard put to it to know what to do with ourselves. We had played all the card games we knew, and had read all the books there were, and had at last taken a pack of cards apiece and played patience. My wife and daughter cheated shamelessly—they cer tainly got “out” more times than I did.

At last, I got fed up, and began to walk about the house; and, finally, for want of something better to do, I began to rummage in an old cupboard in a back room that seemed to have been left as a sanctuary for cockroaches. There 1 found, under a pile of bills, receipts, cata logues, and circulars, some old English magazines. I turned them over eagerly to see if I had read them before, and found that I had not.

Also, joy of joys, many of them con tained Sherlock Holmes stories. That would please my wife —I know that she, like most women, found joy in detective thrillers. I announced my find, and was duly elected to start right away and read them aloud.

So, while the rain pattered merrily down, I read Sherlock Holmes stories night after night, and each one was pro claimed better than the last. It went on until my wife began to deduce, from the mud on my boots, whether I had come straight home from the office or had strayed into the Hotel Vila Boulangerie

Magasin Bar on the way. I began to pine for some kind of family hobby that was less educative to the feminine mind.

However, there were a couple of stories left, and I went to them manfully. The last one was a real thriller. Never had the wiliest mystery-solver of all ages been more ingenious in his deductions and disguises. Never had his “Dear Watson” been more emphatic in his praises. And, to make things better from the women’s point of view, Sherlock had for the first, last, and only time in his life evinced an admiration for one of the opposite sex that promised to ripen into love.

I read on.

Sherlock Holmes had, by a series of adroit disguises, cunning deductions and smart ruses, discovered the hiding place of the missing photograph that was to save the honour of a more or less well known European monarch. He had ex plained it all to Watson. Nothing re mained but to call a hansom at 9 next morning, drive to a certain address, cold bloodedly announce himself to a certain lady as Mr. Sherlock Holmes, and say: “My dear young thing, the photograph which you so cleverly managed to have taken, showing yourself in the loving embrace of the King of Jugavia, and with the possession of which you threaten his honour and happiness and the union of two of the more or less solvent monar chies of Europe, is in the secret cabinet behind that mirror. I’ve got the goods on you, lassie. You make up, and you’ve got false hair and, even now, your nose is shining. You have had your face lifted and you were born in the year and that’s a long time ago. So come across and hand over.”

Right on schedule the next morning Sherlock, Watson and the King, the lat ter all dressed up in his incognito, han somed to the villa in St. John’s Wood.

A white-capped maid met them at the door and said: “If one of you is Mr.

Sherlock Holmes, my mistress told me to tell you that she had departed for Europe before breakfast.”

Sherlock brushed past her into the drawing I passed on, with my reading, to the next page and somehow found that things didn’t connect. My spellbound audience of wife and child were looking at me in a bewildered manner.

I made a halt; and then, by a com parison of the numbers of the pages, I deduced that there was a page missing, and that I had wandered into the middle of another story.

This discovery brought more dismay to my audience than Sherlock experi enced on finding the bird flown.

Then followed a hunt through the house for the missing page. We searched everywhere.

I called the houseboy in and said: “You lookim one something paper all same belonga book yere.”

He looked wise and brought me the page of a Sydney Mail, about six times the size. I chased him out, and he brought back the page of a Sankey hymn book, about a quarter of the size.

The next day, family driven, I made all kinds of enquiries from people who might have had the magazines before us.

I reread parts of some of the yarns again, to try and brush myself up in the science of deduction. No use! The missing page was missing, all right.

The only sleuth we had ever had in Vila had been snapped up, a couple of years ago, by the Secret Service Depart ment in London, so I had to admit myself baffled.

It was on Sunday that I happened to wander past the hut of our boy-of-all work and chief-boot-polish-waster. He was entertaining a friend from his native village, and was evidently trying to im press him. I stopped to listen.

“Yim yere,” Mr. Kiwi Cobranugget was saying. “’E one something. ’E no coat, ’e no trowsis, ’e no lava-lava. Master, ’e got one all same. One belonga master ’e all broke up yere under arm” —and he broke into that loud Kanaka guffaw that sets the white man’s nerves on edge and fills him with an unchristian hatred of his brown brother.

I took a peep in, and I saw him point ing to one of a large assortment of pic tures on the wall, most of them taken from illustrated papers and magazines.

This particular one was the picture of a tall, gaunt man in a dressing go\vn, covered wih wheels and flowers and little wiggly bits, and, seemingly, in earnest

conversation with a quiet man seated in an armchair.

It was my old friend Sherlock, explain ing the last stages of the great drama to his friend Watson. It was the missing PC ;f went back into the house and said to my wife: “My dear, if I really found the end of that story, would you like to buy me a nice birthday present?”

She said: “Of course, darling! What would you like?”

I said: “I think I should just ( love to have a nice new dressing gown.”

Harry Dawkins.