On a grim, gray day fit for murder in the Rue Morgue, the ardent Sherlockian Philip Sherman lurks near the tomb of Edgar Allan Poe in the Westminster Burying Grounds.
A devoted adherent to the deductive reasoning of Sherlock Holmes, the great consulting detective, Sherman believes he's solved the mystery of the "Poe Toaster," the mysterious midnight visitor who appears at the tomb on Poe's Jan. 19 birthday, toasts the poet with cognac, leaves the bottle and three roses, then disappears.
"He's defied detection for 55 years," says Sherman, a nattily dressed lawyer and a retired National Guard brigadier general who headed the Selective Service System in Maryland. He's been an admirer of Holmes virtually all his life, which is getting on to 77 years now. The Complete Adventures of Sherlock Holmes was the first book he ever bought.
"It cost me $1.25," he says. "It was the first book I bought with my own money. I guess it was about 1938."
But he adamantly refuses to disclose the identity of the person that he's deduced is the Toaster until he delivers his report to the Six Napoleons of Baltimore on Saturday, when they meet for their 25th anniversary of talks devoted to Holmes at the Enoch Pratt Central Library. The more than 100 members of the Napoleons, a so-called scion society of the Baker Street Irregulars, are dedicated to the preservation, elucidation and expansion of the legend of the master detective. Saturday's talk will be open to the public.
Sherman is a former Gasogene - the leader - of the Six Napoleons. He launched the series of Holmesian lectures at the library 25 years ago. The Gasogene takes his name from the 19th-century seltzer bottle Holmes kept on the sideboard in his study. The Gasogene therefore is full of gas. Six busts of Napoleon were crucial clues for Holmes in The Adventure of the Six Napoleons.
"We have used the best Holmesian methods," Sherman says of the search for the identity of the Toaster. "Deduction. Deduction. Deduction."
His credentials as a Sherlockian investigator are impeccable: "I can only say I'm the owner of the Two Shilling Award."
The Baker Street Irregulars, the street urchins Holmes used as spies, earned a shilling whenever they brought him information. He gave them two shillings for extraordinary undercover work. Sherman earned his award for superlative Sherlockian research and scholarship. He has read many papers at the Six Napoleons symposia.
