"Manly Wade Wellman - Sherlock Holmes's War of the Worlds" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wellman Manly Wade)

early in 1909.
All our labors would be plagiarism, did we not make positive and grateful acknowledgment to Wells's
The War of the Worlds and his short story, "The Crystal Egg," which is a supplement to the novel;
similarly to the whole Sherlock Holmes canon and to Doyle's The Lost World and other stories
about the fascinatingly self-assured George Edward Challenger. Sherlockians both, we have also
consulted with profit numerous works in the field and have found particular value in William
Baring-Gould's exhaustive and scholarly The Chronological Holmes.
If I may dedicate my share of the present work, let me do so to the memories of the inspiring Sir
Arthur Conan Doyle and Herbert George Wells.
Manly Wade Wellman,
Chapel Hill, North Carolina
INTRODUCTION

The distinguished career of Sir Edward Dunn Malone in journalism and literature, as well as his
bril-liantly heroic service in both World Wars, is too well known to need review here. The present
volume con-tains certain of his previously unpublished writings, re-cently brought to our attention by his
literary executor. His account of some aspects of the so-called War of the Worlds, anonymously
published some years ago under the title of Sherlock Holmes Versus Mars, now proves to be a
greatly modified and abridged version of the original essay found among his private papers. Sir
Edward's private correspondence reveals some dis-pleasure at that modification, and it would
seem that his fear of similar treatment dissuaded him from offering for publication two other
studies of the same event. We have therefore decided to publish the three essaysтАФtwo of them never
published before, the other one presented only in condensed formтАФas a connected narrative.
It has been thought appropriate to add to them two other accounts by John H. Watson, M.D., which
also were previously published in abridged and modified form. In the interests of making the
collection more or less complete, there is further included Dr. Watson's letter to Mr. Herbert George
Wells, which first appeared as a postscript to the anonymous Sherlock Holmes Versus
Mars, but which we here offer as the final section of the volume, in the interests of historical
con-tinuity.
-----THE EDITORS



I
THE ADVENTURE OF THE CRYSTAL EGG
by
Edward Dunn Malone
1


It was one of the least impressive shop fronts in Great Portland Street. Above the iron-clasped door
was a sign, ART AND ANTIQUITIES. In one of the two small windows with heavily leaded
panes a card said RARE ITEMS BOUGHT AND SOLD. The tall man in the checked ulster gazed at
this information, then walked in from the cold December afternoon.
The interior was like a gloomy grotto, its only light a shaded lamp on a rear counter. The shelves were
crowded with vases, cups, and old books. On the walls hung sooty pictures in battered frames.
The tall man paused beside a table strewn with odds and ends and bearing a placard reading FROM
THE COLLEC-TION OF C. CAVE. From an inner door appeared the proprietor, medium-sized,
frock-coated, partially bald. "Yes, sir?" he said.
"I hope to meet someone here, Mr. Templeton," said the other. His hawklike face bent above