No Police Like Holmes by Dan Andriacco

that exit line, but Kate tugged on my shoulder. “She still looks at you the same way, too, T.J. And not like a friend.”
    Session Two
2:00
“Nick Carter, Alias Sherlock Holmes” - Professor Malcolm Whippet, Licking Falls State College
2:30
“Sherlock Holmes in Scandinavia” - Lars Jenson, Lund, Sweden
3:00
“Holmes and Drugs: Was Sherlock’s Coke the Real Thing?” - Dr. Noah Queensbury, BSI, Cincinnati
3:30
Interval: Field Bazaar
4:00
“Disguise in the Canon” - Barry Landers, St. Benignus College
4:30
“And Ladies of the Canon” - Kathleen Cody McCabe, Erin, Ohio

Chapter Thirteen - I Can’t Believe This
    Listening to Professor Malcolm Whippet of Licking Falls State College, the first speaker of the afternoon session, was like suffering a Chinese water torture of words.
    Whippet was a frail figure in his late sixties, medium height, thin, with a high forehead, fringes of gray hair, age spots on his head and hands, and gray-green eyes. He was so slight he hardly seemed to be there at all.
    Whenever he had to turn the pages of the paper he was reading, he stopped his nasal monotone to lick his fingers. After a few introductory comments (“Let us begin with the obvious - Sherlock Holmes was an American”), Professor Whippet’s presentation on “Nick Carter, Alias Sherlock Holmes” turned out to be a pastiche, an imitation Holmes story. Whippet lacked, however, a few tools of the storyteller’s art, such as a sense of pace, an ear for dialogue, and a rudimentary notion of plot. Also, he couldn’t write.
    â€œâ€˜Yes, my faithful Watson, it is quite so!’” he read. “‘All these years I have concealed my true identity even from you. I am indeed Nicholas Carter, the famous American detective!’”
    Putting a hand over my mouth to stifle an impolite sound, I looked around the room to see how this was going over with the Sherlockian set. A lot of people were shifting in their seats, including Lynda and Matheson. They were still sitting next to each other and Lynda wasn’t sending any lovesick looks my way, contrary to my sister’s observation.
    Mac had deposited himself in a wingback chair next to me at the back of the room. I leaned over to tell him, “I can’t believe this. How do this guy’s students stand it?”
    â€œStudents?” Mac repeated with dismay. He raised an eyebrow. “Surely you jest. Professor Whippet has tenure, not students. Do not demean the man’s achievements, Jefferson. It takes considerable talent to make Sherlock Holmes this boring. I had no idea he had it in him.”
    Whippet droned on. I looked at my watch: two-eleven. When it seemed like half an hour had passed, I looked at it again: two-fourteen. Would it never end? It did, finally, but not until the speaker had run five minutes over his allotted time and brought into his story Mycroft Holmes (revealed as one of Nick Carter’s operatives), Grover Cleveland, Fu-Manchu, Jack the Ripper, Count Dracula, Oscar Wilde, the Prince of Wales, and Tinker Bell.
    When the concluding cliché had been uttered, the applause of a grateful crowd shook the room. Nobody called for more.
    Next up on the program was a man Mac introduced to my surprise as Lars Jenson, the most prominent Swedish publisher of the Sherlock Holmes stories. I’d known he was coming, of course - from a conference in New York, not directly from Sweden. But I had never connected his name with the stoop-shouldered fellow from the rare book room, the one with the whitish-blond hair hanging over one eye à la Carl Sandburg. Dressed in a double-breasted blue suit, pink shirt, wide paisley tie, and socks with little clock designs on them, he didn’t look like my idea of a publisher.
    When he opened his mouth, Jenson sounded like the Swedish Chef on The Muppet Show . Approximately every other word started with either a “y” or a