No Police Like Holmes Read Free Page B

news release or an alumni mag article in this lunacy, which I would then tweet a link to.
    â€œThink of it as a game,” Chalmers said, leaning back on the couch, relaxed and in his element. “It’s a chase that’s always changing. Sometimes you know what you’re looking for, but you don’t know where to find it. Other times you know who has some unique item and the challenge is to make it yours. In Moscow, for example, I once talked a policeman out of a Russian first edition of His Last Bow .”
    â€œAnd you almost went to Lubyanka Prison or someplace equally awful on smuggling charges when you tried to take it out of the country,” his wife reminded him.
    Chalmers nodded at the memory. “There was no real crime involved, of course, except the extortion directed at me. Generous amounts of hard currency got me out of that pickle rather quickly. Overcoming obstacles - whether corrupt foreign officials or rival collectors - only adds zest to the game, Jeff.”
    Just thinking about it was enough to light the fire of battle in Chalmers’s clear blue eyes.
    â€œOh, my collection isn’t the largest,” he went on, “but it is distinctive. No one else, for example, owns fully half the hand-written manuscript of The Hound of the Baskervilles .”
    I could imagine a nice photo spread of that, but why only half the MS? “Where’s the rest of it?” I asked.
    â€œScattered,” Chalmers said, “as it has been for more than a century. The manuscript was broken up and sent to book dealers as part of a promotion for the book’s American publication in 1902. Various libraries and just a few private collectors own the other pages. One sold not so long ago for seventy-eight thousand dollars. Alas, I was not the purchaser.”
    â€œThen you obviously haven’t been able to get everything you’ve gone after,” I said.
    Chalmers sat forward. His grip on the cane tightened. “Perhaps not, young man, but I always left the other fellow knowing he’d been in a fight. I play to win. Isn’t that right, Renata?”
    She nodded, her smile slipping a bit.
    â€œAnd now you’re just going to give away the Woollcott Chalmers Collection,” I said. “I don’t understand that part, either.”
    With an avuncular smile, Chalmers pointed his cane at Mac. “Blame your brother-in-law. He talked me into it.”
    Staying at a bed and breakfast in Savannah, Georgia, a couple of years back, I met a man who had once sold a refrigerator to an Eskimo in Alaska (who used it as a cigar humidor). Well, that guy had nothing on Sebastian McCabe when it comes to persuasion. But Mac refused the credit.
    â€œSlander!” he thundered. “Calumny and character assassination! I talked you into nothing. I had heard that you were ready to share your collection, Woollcott, and I merely suggested that St. Benignus College would be a most grateful recipient.”
    Chalmers nodded. “True enough. There comes a time when hoarding it all to yourself is no longer satisfying. It becomes rather like Renata playing her violin to an empty concert hall or an actor performing to a darkened theater. Besides, after forty years the challenge has mostly disappeared. So I decided to give the collection away while I’m still alive to enjoy the gratitude - and the tax deduction.”
    â€œPerhaps Jefferson would enjoy a private tour of the exhibit right now,” Mac rumbled.
    The whole collection wasn’t even unpacked yet, but some of the highlights were set up in a room next to the one where the speakers would be holding forth in the colloquium. Although I’d written about the exhibit in press releases and talked about it in pitching stories, I hadn’t yet had a chance to see it. So I was mildly curious.
    â€œBut you can’t just leave the party,” I told Mac. “You’re the host.”
    Mac looked at his watch, which