This gem was posted by Liquor on alt.callahans. Very nice work. If you haven’t noticed it before, Liquor sprinkles puns throughout his stories.
Liquor is back at the bar, waiting for the folx to cover their ears or prepare to hold their noses, as appropriate. He takes a sip of his nero, and starts.
I am sure that all of you have, at some time or another, heard of the fictional persona of A.C. (Doyle, that is) who was the prototypical deductive genius. Even Spider Robinson borrowed a pun about him (but I don’t know to whom to credit the original): “Theres no police like Holmes.”
Of course, he was involved in far more cases than were ever reported in the literature of the day. One that comes to mind has occasionally been referred to as “The case of the Chinese Furrier”, and I do not intend to tell the whole of it. I am just going to tell of the scene, and how the case started.
Before actually starting on the case, Holmes described what he knew of the case to Dr. Watson: “It seems that a Chinese immigrant, one Lee Gan Hoo, established a furriers. It seems that he was not completely legitimate; some of his clients came for the quality product sold from his back room. Eventually, he started looking after the quality product, and turned operation of the furriers itself over to his son. Unfortunately, his son paid more attention to games involving hitting balls with bats than he did to the fur trade. Eventually he realized that although his koala-tea was successful, the son had been swindled out of a large number of expensive koala-fur coats.”
“That’s what we are to investigate. You know my methods, Watson — Where shall we start?”
As often, playing an almost comedic role (I always picture Holmes as thin, Watson as fat), Watson stopped short: “This isn’t cricket, Holmes. I don’t give a darn.”
“Come now, Watson, we have to make a fast start at this case somewhere, you don’t want to be a half-fast biographer: We work on the two bases of facts and deductions.”
“I don’t know, Holmes. That’s the third base, man.”
Of course, Holmes had an appropriate comment as well as a logical starting point for the investigation.” Liquor carefully finishes his nero before finishing his narrative.
“Hoo’s son furs, Watson; See conned.”