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They had now reached the road which turns off to Sleepy Hollow; but Gunpowder, who seemed possessed with a demon, instead of keeping up it, made an opposite turn, and plunged headlong downhill to the left. This road leads through a sandy hollow shaded by trees for about a quarter of a mile, where it crosses the bridge famous in goblin story; and just beyond swells the green knoll on which stands the whitewashed church.
As yet the panic of the steed had given his unskilful rider an apparent advantage in the chase, but just as he had got half way through the hollow, the girths of the saddle gave way, and he felt it slipping from under him. He seized it by the pommel, and endeavored to hold it firm, but in vain; and had just time to save himself by clasping old Gunpowder round the neck, when the saddle fell to the earth, and he heard it trampled under foot by his pursuer. For a moment the terror of Hans Van Ripper’s wrath passed across his mind, – for it was his Sunday saddle; but this was no time for petty fears; the goblin was hard on his haunches; and (unskilful rider that he was!) he had much ado to maintain his seat; sometimes slipping on one side, sometimes on another, and sometimes jolted on the high ridge of his horse’s backbone, with a violence that he verily feared would cleave him asunder.
An opening in the trees now cheered him with the hopes that the church bridge was at hand. The wavering reflection of a silver star in the bosom of the brook told him that he was not mistaken. He saw the walls of the church dimly glaring under the trees beyond. He recollected the place where Brom Bones’s ghostly competitor had disappeared. ‘If I can but reach that bridge,’ thought Ichabod, ‘I am safe.’ Just then he heard the black steed panting and blowing close behind him; he even fancied that he felt his hot breath. Another convulsive kick in the ribs, and old Gunpowder sprang upon the bridge; he thundered over the resounding planks; he gained the opposite side; and now Ichabod cast a look behind to see if his pursuer should vanish, according to rule, in a flash of fire and brimstone. Just then he saw the goblin rising in his stirrups, and in the very act of hurling his head at him. Ichabod endeavored to dodge the horrible missile, but too late. It encountered his cranium with a tremendous crash, – he was tumbled headlong into the dust, and Gunpowder, the black steed, and the goblin rider, passed by like a whirlwind.
The next morning the old horse was found without his saddle, and with the bridle under his feet, soberly cropping the grass at his master’s gate. Ichabod did not make his appearance at breakfast; dinner-hour came, but no Ichabod. The boys assembled at the schoolhouse, and strolled idly about the banks of the brook; but no schoolmaster. Hans Van Ripper now began to feel some uneasiness about the fate of poor Ichabod, and his saddle. An inquiry was set on foot, and after diligent investigation they came upon his traces. In one part of the road leading to the church was found the saddle trampled in the dirt; the tracks of horses’ hoofs deeply dented in the road, and evidently at furious speed, were traced to the bridge, beyond which, on the bank of a broad part of the brook, where the water ran deep and black, was found the hat of the unfortunate Ichabod, and close beside it a shattered pumpkin.
The brook was searched, but the body of the schoolmaster was not to be discovered. Hans Van Ripper as executor of his estate, examined the bundle which contained all his worldly effects. They consisted of two shirts and a half; two stocks for the neck; a pair or two of worsted stockings; an old pair of corduroy small-clothes; a rusty razor; a book of psalm tunes full of dog’s-ears; and a broken pitch-pipe. As to the books and furniture of the schoolhouse, they belonged to the community, excepting Cotton Mather’s History of Witchcraft, a New England Almanac, and a book of dreams and fortune-telling; in which last was a sheet of foolscap much scribbled and blotted in several fruitless attempts to make a copy of verses in honor of the heiress of Van Tassel. These magic books and the poetic scrawl were forthwith consigned to the flames by Hans Van Ripper; who, from that time forward, determined to send his children no more to school, observing that he never knew any good come of this same reading and writing. Whatever money the schoolmaster possessed, and he had received his quarter’s pay but a day or two before, he must have had about his person at the time of his disappearance.
The mysterious event caused much speculation at the church on the following Sunday. Knots of gazers and gossips were collected in the churchyard, at the bridge, and at the spot where the hat and pumpkin had been found. The stories of Brouwer, of Bones, and a whole budget of others were called to mind; and when they had diligently considered them all, and compared them with the symptoms of the present case, they shook their heads, and came to the conclusion that Ichabod had been carried off by the Galloping Hessian. As he was a bachelor, and in nobody’s debt, nobody troubled his head any more about him; the school was removed to a different quarter of the hollow, and another pedagogue reigned in his stead.
It is true, an old farmer, who had been down to New York on a visit several years after, and from whom this account of the ghostly adventure was received, brought home the intelligence that Ichabod Crane was still alive; that he had left the neighborhood partly through fear of the goblin and Hans Van Ripper, and partly in mortification at having been suddenly dismissed by the heiress; that he had changed his quarters to a distant part of the country; had kept school and studied law at the same time; had been admitted to the bar; turned politician; electioneered; written for the newspapers; and finally had been made a justice of the Ten Pound Court. Brom Bones, too, who, shortly after his rival’s disappearance conducted the blooming Katrina in triumph to the altar, was observed to look exceedingly knowing whenever the story of Ichabod was related, and always burst into a hearty laugh at the mention of the pumpkin; which led some to suspect that he knew more about the matter than he chose to tell.
The old country wives, however, who are the best judges of these matters, maintain to this day that Ichabod was spirited away by supernatural means; and it is a favorite story often told about the neighborhood round the winter evening fire. The bridge became more than ever an object of superstitious awe; and that may be the reason why the road has been altered of late years, so as to approach the church by the border of the millpond. The schoolhouse being deserted soon fell to decay, and was reported to be haunted by the ghost of the unfortunate pedagogue and the plowboy, loitering homeward of a still summer evening, has often fancied his voice at a distance, chanting a melancholy psalm tune among the tranquil solitudes of Sleepy Hollow.
Stephen Leacock
Nonsense Novels
Maddened by Mystery: or, The Defective Detective
The great detective sat in his office. He wore a long green gown and half a dozen secret badges pinned to the outside of it.
Three or four pairs of false whiskers hung on a whisker-stand beside him.
Goggles, blue spectacles and motor glasses lay within easy reach.
He could completely disguise himself at a second’s notice.
Half a bucket of cocaine and a dipper stood on a chair at his elbow.
His face was absolutely impenetrable.
A pile of cryptograms lay on the desk. The Great Detective hastily tore them open one after the other, solved them, and threw them down the cryptogram-shute at his side.
There was a rap at the door.
The Great Detective hurriedly wrapped himself in a pink domino, adjusted a pair of false black whiskers and cried,
‘Come in.’
His secretary entered. ‘Ha,’ said the detective, ‘it is you!’
He laid aside his disguise.
‘Sir,’ said the young man in intense excitement, ‘a mystery has been committed!’
‘Ha!’ said the Great Detective, his eye kindling, ‘is it such as to completely baffle the police of the entire continent?’
‘They are so completely baffled with it,’ said the secretary, ‘that they are lying collapsed in heaps; many of them have committed suicide.’
‘So,’ said the detective, ‘and is the mystery one that is absolutely unparalleled in the whole recorded annals of the London police?’
‘It is.’
‘And I suppose,’ said the detective, ‘that it involves names which you would scarcely dare to breathe, at least without first using some kind of atomiser or throat-gargle.’
‘Exactly.’
‘And it is connected, I presume, with the highest diplomatic consequences, so that if we fail to solve it England will be at war with the whole world in sixteen minutes?’
His secretary, still quivering with excitement, again answered yes.
‘And finally,’ said the Great Detective, ‘I presume that it was committed in broad daylight, in some such place as the entrance of the Bank of England, or in the cloak-room of the House of Commons, and under the very eyes of the police?’
‘Those,’ said the secretary, ‘are the very conditions of the mystery.’
‘Good,’ said the Great Detective, ‘now wrap yourself in this disguise, put on these brown whiskers and tell me what it is.’
The secretary wrapped himself in a blue domino with lace insertions, then, bending over, he whispered in the ear of the Great Detective:
‘The Prince of Wurttemberg has been kidnapped.’
The Great Detective bounded from his chair as if he had been kicked from below.
A prince stolen! Evidently a Bourbon! The scion of one of the oldest families in Europe kidnapped. Here was a mystery indeed worthy of his analytical brain.
His mind began to move like lightning.
‘Stop!’ he said, ‘how do you know this?’
The secretary handed him a telegram. It was from the Prefect of Police of Paris. It read: ‘The Prince of Wurttemberg stolen. Probably forwarded to London. Must have him here for the opening day of Exhibition. 1,000 pounds reward.’
So! The Prince had been kidnapped out of Paris at the very time when his appearance at the International Exposition would have been a political event of the first magnitude.
With the Great Detective to think was to act, and to act was to think.
Frequently he could do both together.
‘Wire to Paris for a description of the Prince.’
The secretary bowed and left.
At the same moment there was slight scratching at the door.
A visitor entered. He crawled stealthily on his hands and knees. A hearthrug thrown over his head and shoulders disguised his identity.
He crawled to the middle of the room.
Then he rose.
Great Heaven!
It was the Prime Minister of England.
‘You!’ said the detective.
‘Me,’ said the Prime Minister.
‘You have come in regard the kidnapping of the Prince of Wurttemberg?’
The Prime Minister started.
‘How do you know?’ he said.
The Great Detective smiled his inscrutable smile.
‘Yes,’ said the Prime Minister. ‘I will use no concealment. I am interested, deeply interested. Find the Prince of Wurttemberg, get him safe back to Paris and I will add 500 pounds to the reward already offered. But listen,’ he said impressively as he left the room, ‘see to it that no attempt is made to alter the marking of the prince, or to clip his tail.’
So! To clip the Prince’s tail! The brain of the Great Detective reeled. So! a gang of miscreants had conspired to – but no! the thing was not possible.
There was another rap at the door.
A second visitor was seen. He wormed his way in, lying almost prone upon his stomach, and wriggling across the floor. He was enveloped in a long purple cloak. He stood up and peeped over the top of it.
Great Heaven!
It was the Archbishop of Canterbury!
‘Your Grace!’ exclaimed the detective in amazement – ‘pray do not stand, I beg you. Sit down, lie down, anything rather than stand.’
The Archbishop took off his mitre and laid it wearily on the whisker-stand.
‘You are here in regard to the Prince of Wurttemberg.’
The Archbishop started and crossed himself. Was the man a magician?
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘much depends on getting him back. But I have only come to say this: my sister is desirous of seeing you. She is coming here. She has been extremely indiscreet and her fortune hangs upon the Prince. Get him back to Paris or I fear she will be ruined.’
The Archbishop regained his mitre, uncrossed himself, wrapped his cloak about him, and crawled stealthily out on his hands and knees, purring like a cat.
The face of the Great Detective showed the most profound sympathy. It ran up and down in furrows. ‘So,’ he muttered, ‘the sister of the Archbishop, the Countess of Dashleigh!’ Accustomed as he was to the life of the aristocracy, even the Great Detective felt that there was here intrigue of more than customary complexity.
There was a loud rapping at the door.
There entered the Countess of Dashleigh. She was all in furs.
She was the most beautiful woman in England. She strode imperiously into the room. She seized a chair imperiously and seated herself on it, imperial side up.
She took off her tiara of diamonds and put it on the tiara-holder beside her and uncoiled her boa of pearls and put it on the pearl-stand.
‘You have come,’ said the Great Detective, ‘about the Prince of Wurttemberg.’
‘Wretched little pup!’ said the Countess of Dashleigh in disgust.
So! A further complication! Far from being in love with the Prince, the Countess denounced the young Bourbon as a pup!
‘You are interested in him, I believe.’
‘Interested!’ said the Countess. ‘I should rather say so. Why, I bred him!’
‘You which?’ gasped the Great Detective, his usually impassive features suffused with a carmine blush.
‘I bred him,’ said the Countess, ‘and I’ve got 10,000 pounds upon his chances, so no wonder I want him back in Paris. Only listen,’ she said, ‘if they’ve got hold of the Prince and cut his tail or spoiled the markings of his stomach it would be far better to have him quietly put out of the way here.’
The Great Detective reeled and leaned up against the side of the room. So! The cold-blooded admission of the beautiful woman for the moment took away his breath! Herself the mother of the young Bourbon, misallied with one of the greatest families of Europe, staking her fortune on a Royalist plot, and yet with so instinctive a knowledge of European politics as to know that any removal of the hereditary birth-marks of the Prince would forfeit for him the sympathy of the French populace.
The Countess resumed her tiara.
She left.
The secretary re-entered.
‘I have three telegrams from Paris,’ he said, ‘they are completely baffling.’
He handed over the first telegram.
It read:
‘The Prince of Wurttemberg has a long, wet snout, broad ears, very long body, and short hind legs.’
The Great Detective looked puzzled.
He read the second telegram.
‘The Prince of Wurttemberg is easily recognised by his deep bark.’
And then the third.
‘The Prince of Wurttemberg can be recognised by a patch of white hair across the centre of his back.’
The two men looked at one another. The mystery was maddening, impenetrable.
The Great Detective spoke.
‘Give me my domino,’ he said. ‘These clues must be followed up,’ then pausing, while his quick brain analysed and summed up the evidence before him – ‘a young man,’ he muttered, ‘evidently young since described as a “pup,” with a long, wet snout (ha! addicted obviously to drinking), a streak of white hair across his back (a first sign of the results of his abandoned life) – yes, yes,’ he continued, ‘with this clue I shall find him easily.’
The Great Detective rose.
