Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 38, No. 4. Whole No. 215, October 1961

So I was trying to figure out how I might get over this legal hurdle when someone yelped, “Boo!” I jerked up, and who should be facing me but Joanie — Joanie Webster, a cute chick with whom I was involved in a moderately active romance.

A chance meeting, this. I made an affable gesture. Joanie settled down between me and dozing Grandpa, and said in her blithe manner, “What dark unhappy thoughts are troubling the genius?”

Evidently my beloved had mistaken creative concentration for mental anguish. “No, it’s just that I had this terrific idea for an invention,” I explained. “Fame and fortune practically in the palm of my hand. But then a legal point came along to louse it up.”

“Dear me,” said Joanie. “Fame and fortune, eh? Bernie, if you had a magic lamp that could make you any famous person who ever lived, who would be your first choice?”

Irrelevance typical of Joanie. But just for the heck of it I complied by giving the old gray cells a nudge. In the next moment the answer sort of roared into me. And I said, somewhat shaken by the spectacular concept of it all, “Dr. Watson, co-occupant of a flat at 221B Baker Street, London, England.”

“Oh, that Dr. Watson,” Joanie said. “No, you can’t include fictional characters.”

Ping! a sour note. My Uncle Simon is a Baker Street Irregular. One of my most burning ambitions is to have the honor some day of being a member of that fabulous Holmesian society. And Joanie had unwittingly struck at the heart of what B.S.I. stood for. Perhaps an ill portent for our future compatibility.

“Look, I don’t want to get into a hassle with you about this,” I told Joanie. “But just as a point of information it happens to be a fact that some pretty famous and distinguished people take the position that Dr. Watson and Holmes are not mere fictional characters.”

Joanie smirked and said, “All right, so my genius believes in the Easter Bunny, the Good Fairy, and Santa Claus. No harm in it.”

I found myself stating with icy calm, “Only a real dumb cluck could make such an idiotic analogy.” That did it, of course. Joanie flushed, jumped up off the bench, clipped, “Goodbye, Mr. Halper. Don’t call us, we’ll call you.” And she stalked off.

I watched Joanie’s bobbing ponytail retreat along the path. A once-flourishing romance possibly dealt a fatal blow. Oh, well, I thought, c’est la vie. But now that Washington Square had melancholy associations for me, a change of scenery seemed in order. As I was about to take off, a low deep voice said, “Why not Holmes?”

Its source, I realized, was Grandpa at the other end of the bench, now peering at me with deep-sunken eyes in a yellowish, mummylike face. I sort of blinked at him and he added, “I couldn’t help overhearing your conversation with the young lady. May I ask why, given a choice, you wouldn’t rather be Holmes?”

The query, despite its busybody aspects, had certain validity. I mean, why not Holmes? So I gave it a bit of thought and said, “Well, even in make-believe, I can’t imagine myself — or anyone else — stepping into Holmes’s shoes. There was — and could be — only one Sherlock Holmes.”

Grandpa gave that a bit of thought. “A very good answer, my boy,” he said, “and one that would have amused Holmes. Even as I feel sure Holmes would have been intrigued by the gentleman brooding over a paint brush on the bench facing us.”

I checked. Yep, there was a man alone on the bench across the path. A middle-aged, skinny little guy with glasses, wearing a straw hat and seersucker suit.

“I see a citizen examining a brush,” I said to Grandpa. “What’s extraordinary about that?”

Grandpa sighed, put big gnarled hands on the head of his cane, and said, as he laboriously hoisted himself up to his feet, “Yes, dear Watson also was rather obtuse that way. No offense meant, my boy.”

Off he went, following his cane in a stiff-legged, old-man shuffle. Well! I confess to some pretty wild thoughts as my eyes trailed that tall, spare, stooped figure. Until reason intervened. Obviously, I’d had an amusing encounter with senility of an off-beat nature. Nothing to throw the Baker Street Irregulars into a hysterical tizzy.

Then I glanced again at the little guy across the path and was startled to see him now on his feet, headed straight smack toward me, brush in one hand, a paper bag in the other. Next thing I knew, he was sharing my bench and blurting out in a kind of stuttery squeak, “Excuse me, but would you be interested in earning ten dollars?”

“Doing what?” I asked warily.

“Help me get rid,” he said, “of those twelve hideous birds in my apartment.”

Oh, brother! Yet I detected no boozy breath, saw no mad glitter in the eyes blinking behind the glasses. Just a frail, gray, neatly respectable wisp of a man who looked as if he’d had the pants scared off him. Maybe by something as simple as a couple of pet crows, belonging to a neighbor, making an entry through an open window to indulge in minor thievery.