MYSTERIES UNRAVELLED

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 79, Issue 45, 22 February 1936, Page 11

MYSTERIES UNRAVELLED

GREAT DETECTIVE POWERS LATE SIR A. CON/XN DOYLE FAMOUS WRITER AS DETECTIVE Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, was himself a successful detective, writes a special correspondent of the Evening Standard, London. This was mentioned to me by his son, Mr. Denis I'. S. Conan Doyle, in a talk about how his father, who died in 1930, came .to write his famous stories. Mr. Conan Doyle is indignant at a suggestion that one of the Sherlock Holmes series was “lifted” from somebody else’s book. In refuting this, he said: “It is not realised by many people that my father had a marvellous deductive brain, and that it really was in this respect the same type of brain which he gave to Holmes. Many Letters Received. “On several occasions he solved mysteries which Scotland Yard had failed to unravel. These were mainly in connection with disappearances. “After the JSherlock Holmes sluries began to appear, he received letters from people in all parts of the world whoso relatives had gone away and about whom no news was obtainable. Frequently the police had been trying to trace the missing people, but had met with no success. “The applicants would send my father all the known facts about the person whom they desired to find. He acted as Holmes might have done. “Sitting in his study—but without the cocaine, the violin and the dress-ing-gown -he analysed all the circumstances, personal characteristics, and I detailed information of every kind I placed before him. Origin of Characters. “Over and over again, by mere analysis and deduction, he was able to inform those who had sought his help where the missing person was to be found. And I do not believe he was ever wrung. “The applications for his assistance grew to such an extent that he was not able to deal with more than a comparatively small proportion of them, but the disappearances he did solve numbered a guod many.” Mr. Conan Doyle denied that his father copied his characters from life. It has been asserted more than once that Dr. Moriarty, the anh-antagonist of Holmes, was modelled on someone whom the author had known. This, Mr. Doyle said, was untrue. Fact Follows Fiction. “'rhe only character bearing a likeness to a known living person,” ho said, “was Holmes himself, who, as most readers are now aware, was suggested by the power of scientific deduction possessed by Dr. Joseph Bell, of Edinburgh.” Mr. Conan Doyle said that in the case of at leust one Sherlock Holmes tale fact had imitated fiction. Some time after the story was published there appeared in a police-court a beg gar whose methods were those of “The Man with the Twisted Lip”—the man who left his prim home in the suburbs every morning and went to the city, there to disguise himself as a cripple and make a good income by imposing on charitable passers by.