This story was first published in 1925, making it one of the first efforts from A. B. Cox, a prominent golden age mystery writer probably best known today for the books he wrote under the pseudonym Frances Iles.
The fact that it is only two pages long is all I can think of to recommend it. It’s a trivial piece that’s basically just a single gag, and the gag doesn’t land. A “dasher” (I guess a looker, in modern terms) of a young lady named Cissie Crossgarters writes to Holmes complaining that the man who proposed marriage to her while under the influence of the Demon Rum doesn’t want to go through with it the morning after. One would have thought Cissie more likely to consult with a lawyer on a matter such as this, as there is no mystery to resolve, but it’s all just a set up to Holmes himself getting engaged to Cissie at the end.
This doesn’t sound like Holmes, and that’s the main problem I had with the story. For parody to work you have to take elements in the original and distort or exaggerate them in some way, not change them entirely. Cox makes a lot of play here about Holmes ending nearly everything he says to Watson with “what?”, “what, what?” or even “what, what, what?” I don’t know if Holmes ever talked like this in any of the canonical stories. I could be wrong, but the fact that I don’t recall him ever saying “what, what?” at least means it’s not something that ever stood out. So why did Cox want to run with it? I get that it’s a joke, but it’s a joke I don’t get.
Alex Good 
That sounds worse than an AI rendition!
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Also Dasher is the fastest reindeer in Father Christmas’s sleigh, if you didn’t know that already 😁.
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But it’s a team! No reindeer can go faster than the slowest!
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This is true, and when Dasher was chomping at the bit so to speak when he was the lead reindeer, and the others couldn’t keep up, FC had to change things round, and so put Rudolph in the lead spot instead, which delivered a more steady pace for all, and also helped FC with navigation when it was a foggy night or heavy snow, him having a glowing red nose you see. 🤶
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I don’t think anyone would care about it if it had been written by someone else. It’s still pretty obscure. And yeah, AI could do better.
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Glad I avoided the Holmes pastiches…
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They’re pretty hit and miss. But I have several anthologies worth to work through!
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Sounds more dicey than the Conan pastiches 🙂
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I know I really enjoyed Iles’ Before the Fact, the basis for Hitchcock’s Suspicion………
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Yeah, he wrote a couple of classic novels as Iles. Hard to believe the same guy wrote this, even as a gag.
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