No Police Like Holmes Read Online Free

had a silhouette of Sherlock Holmes on the face. “It is barely ten o’clock. With my charming wife presiding as hostess and ample adult beverages on hand to lubricate the guests, this jamboree will still be going strong long after we get back. We may not even be missed.”
    Further pro forma protests on my part proved predictably futile. Within ten minutes the four of us had piled into Mac’s 1959 Chevy convertible, headed for Muckerheide Center on the St. Benignus campus. The car is fire-engine red with immense tail fins. It’s no vehicle for a grown man at all, but it fits Sebastian McCabe just fine. Chalmers sat in front with Mac, apparently because it was easier on the older man’s bum leg, and I sat in back next to Renata. She was a delightful conversationalist (although I can’t remember a word she said - maybe something about her musical career) and she smelled so good I felt guilty just breathing around her.
    A guard let us into Muckerheide Center, thanks to an advance call to Bobby Deere, who runs the center at night. The place was fully lighted, but eerily empty. The clicks of our heels on the tile floor echoed far down the wide corridors as we walked along.
    On the first floor we passed the darkened offices, the abandoned Information Desk, and the empty racks that hold the campus newspaper when school is in session. Walking up the immobile escalator to the second level, Chalmers moved slowly, relying heavily on his cane. Just outside Hearth Room C, where the display from the Woollcott Chalmers Collection was set up behind closed doors, I realized we weren’t going any farther without help.
    â€œWe need to get a key from that guard,” I said in a near-whisper. The place had me a little spooked. “This baby’s locked.” By way of demonstration, I jiggled the handle. The door didn’t move.
    â€œNo mere lock can stop Sebastian McCabe,” my brother-in-law announced. He did not whisper. From his breast pocket he produced a yellow balloon. “Be so good as to blow this up, please,” he asked Renata Chalmers as he handed it to her. She hesitated, clearly bewildered by Mac’s madcap actions. Apparently she didn’t know him very well.
    â€œHumor him,” I said as Mac lit a cigar. “You may have children of your own some day.”
    Looking resigned rather than enthusiastic, she blew up the balloon. Her husband, at Mac’s request, tied the balloon shut and handed it over to Mac - who immediately applied the hot tip of his cigar to the latex. The balloon popped and something clattered to the floor. Renata picked it up and handed it to Mac - an old-fashioned metal key.
    â€œI believe this will facilitate our entrance,” Mac said.
    Woollcott Chalmers tucked his cane under his right arm and clapped softly in appreciation of this sophomoric parlor trick. “Bravo!” His wife smiled, the rough equivalent of turning on a mega-watt spotlight.
    â€œCan’t you ever do anything the easy way?” I asked Mac.
    â€œWhat would be the fun of that, old boy?”
    He used the key to open the door. At first he fumbled for a light switch, then found it on the wall to his left. The fluorescent tubes on the ceiling blinked on with the flickering brightness of lightning.
    The Chalmers Collection filled the room, some of it spread out on tables, some on the walls, some in bookcases. There were books, posters, calendars, records - anything to which the name or image of Sherlock Holmes had been applied. It was hard to take it all in. And this was only a small sampling of the collection; the bulk of it remained in packing boxes over at the library.
    â€œIncredible,” I said. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
    â€œNor will you,” Chalmers assured me. “There is nothing like it. Perhaps that is immodest, but as Holmes once said, ‘I cannot agree with those who rank modesty among the virtues.’”
    He