by Dan Simmons
“What would you like me to do?” Adams said softly as the two men stood in the open doorway. The late-March morning air was still chill. “Watch out my window and send you a report on whether this Sherlock Holmes looks fictional or not?”
“You still do not dine out all that much, do you, Henry?” Holmes asked bluntly.
“Not really,” said Adams. In the seven years since Clover’s death, he’d come to be known as a recluse and now the invitations—save from Clarence King when he was in town or John Hay next door, old members of the Five of Hearts—no longer came in. “You know how it is in this town,” Adams heard himself saying. “If you accept someone’s dinner invitation, then the favor must be returned. I dine here now usually with the occasional fellow old widower or young bachelor.”
“Well, you’ll be invited by Hay to dine Sunday evening with a young widower whom we both know well and, since this Mr. Sherlock Holmes is reputed to be one of the other guests, I had hoped you’d write me about that.”
“A young widower whom we both know well . . .” began Adams as he walked Holmes outside under the arches and that damned cross. “You don’t mean . . .”
“I do mean,” said Holmes, almost crossly to Adams’s sensitive ear. “The Boy.”
“The Boy . . . oh, dear me,” was all that Adams could muster.
He waved to Holmes’s carriage—knowing full well that Wendell never looked back—until it disappeared around the corner.
“The Boy,” muttered Adams, feeling that he had made a great mistake in coming home several days sooner than he’d originally planned. “Oh dear me.”
Seven Inches Below Floor Level and Sinking
Holmes much preferred their new living areas in Mrs. Stevens’s home to being a guest at the home of John and Clara Hay. It was true that even here at this boarding house, Henry James was still residing in the same house as Holmes, but the door to James’s bed-sitting-room was down a long hallway and they no longer had to see each other constantly or to share each meal. But first and foremost in importance was his freedom—the second story had its own outside door and wooden staircase and each tenant received a key to that door. Holmes was free now to come and go whenever he pleased—and in whatever guise he chose—without scrutiny by Henry James or the Hays’ servants.
This morning he was in no disguise; he wore his London-tailored suit, waistcoat, top hat and gloves, long black scarf, and was carrying his cane sheathing a three-sided razor-sharp 30-inch sword.
Across Lafayette Square, Holmes hailed a hansom cab and told the driver to take him to the Metropolitan Police Department Headquarters at the corner of Fifth and Louisiana. Once there he had the driver park across the street from the old rundown precinct house.
Holmes didn’t have to wait more than ten minutes before the Major and Superintendent of the Metropolitan Police, William C. Moore, came down the steps, glanced irritably at his watch, and hailed a cab. Holmes ordered his driver to follow that cab, even though he knew where it was headed.
Holmes had never met Major and Superintendent Moore but he’d studied photographs of him and there was no mistaking that white, General Robert E. Lee–type beard. And he knew that the irritability he’d glimpsed ran deep this morning since the major and superintendent was not accustomed to being summoned anywhere by anyone, much less to the unimportant Maltby Building by order of someone in the mere State Department.
Holmes’s cab drew to the curb at the corner of New Jersey Street and Constitution Avenue just as Moore had alighted and almost bumped into the former Major and Superintendent of the Metropolitan Police, William G. Brock. Where Moore’s beard looked full, white, and happily plumped, former Major and Superintendent Brock’s beard was a straggly gray that matched his haggard appearance.
“What are you doing here . . .” began Moore.
“I might ask the same of you, sir,” snapped Brock.
The two men disliked one another intensely. More to the point, Holmes did know former Major and Superintendent Brock by sight and vice versa. Brock had reason—or thought he did—to hate Holmes even more than he detested the current Major and Superintendent of Police.
Holmes waited until the two men, still grumbling and demanding answers from one another, went into the building before he stepped out of his cab and paid the driver.
Holmes had asked John Hay about the Maltby Building the previous week, mentioning only that he’d passed by the odd-looking building, and Hay had laughed and explained that the lift inside was treacherous because the Maltby Building, a five-story apartment building purchased twenty years earlier to provide overflow space for Senate offices, had been built on the site of an old stable by its New York developer. Essentially, “as is true of so many things in Washington,” Hay had said, the building had been built on sand. The massive elevator had begun sinking into the sand, dragging the entire building down with it, and now to enter the lift one had to step up or down some seven inches. “What’s more,” added Hay with an additional laugh, “those offices still remaining in the Maltby Building are freezing in the winter, literally intolerable in the summer, and cramped at all times.”
Perfect, Holmes had thought and had cabled his brother Mycroft to have Whitehall “summon” Major and Superintendents Moore and Brock and the others to the Office of Steamboat Inspection on the fourth floor of that building. The Supervising Inspector General of Steamboat Inspection was a certain James A. Dismont, who had been warned by the State Department of this morning’s invasion but had not been told the reason for the gathering. Now when Dismont’s flustered clerk, a certain Andrew McWilliams, according to the sign on his desk, led Holmes into the Inspector General’s crowded office, it was also entry into a din of outraged voices—led by William C. Moore’s.
Holmes rapped his cane soundly on the wooden floor four times and all heads turned in his direction.
“Gentlemen,” said Holmes, using his most commanding tone, “I am Mr. Sherlock Holmes and it is at my request—relayed through Whitehall, your president, and your State Department—that we are all gathered here this morning. Mr. Dismont”—Holmes nodded at the confused Inspector General of Steamboat Inspection—“we shall need the use of your office for only about forty-five minutes and we invite you and your clerk, Mr. McWilliams, to leave the building and enjoy the lovely spring day for the next hour.”
Dismont puffed his cheeks as if ready to argue but then looked at the faces of the important men in his office, nodded curtly, and left, closing the door softly behind him. Holmes made sure that the Inspector General and his secretary were gone from the outer office and then turned back to those same apoplectic faces ready to explode at him. He held up one gloved finger.
“Stop!” he said. “Before any remonstrations or demands are made, please understand that this meeting was approved by Her Majesty Queen Victoria and President Cleveland and arranged by our Whitehall and your State Department . . . precisely for reasons of privacy.”
“My office at police headquarters would have been perfectly private!” thundered Major and Superintendent of Police Moore through his white whiskers.
“No, Major and Superintendent Moore, it would not have been,” Holmes answered softly. “For not only is the entrance to your police headquarters at Fifth and Louisiana being observed by scouts . . . touts, you might call them . . . on the payroll of this city’s criminal gangs, but there are members of your staff and police department also on that payroll.”
“That is . . . outrageous!” roared Moore.
“As outrageous as the charges by Mr. Holmes, more than ten years ago, that my detectives were corrupt!” rasped former Major and Superintendent Brock. “I lost my position in eighteen eighty-three due to such rumor mongering.”
Holmes nodded. “That was unfortunate,” he said softly. “I was invited to America to look into the assassination of your President Garfield . . . more specifically, to see if the assassin Charles Guiteau was connected to the anarchist conspiracy that had later attempted to mu
rder Queen Victoria. My investigations showed that Charles Guiteau acted alone and out of motives concocted only in his insane mind. But those same investigations showed the active corruption of many members of your Detective Bureau—including taking money from known anarchist conspirators.”
Brock turned his back on Holmes and went to the window to look out.
Before Moore could roar again, Holmes said, “Let me introduce the three other gentlemen whom President Cleveland wanted to be here today.”
Holmes nodded toward a short, handsome man standing near Brock and the window. The gentleman’s mustache was waxed and curved in the French fashion, his dark hair was slicked close to his skull, but any sense of dandyism was immediately dismissed by his square jaw, firm mouth, and powerful gaze.
“Mr. William Rockhill, if I’m not mistaken,” said Holmes. “Executive Secretary to the Third Assistant Secretary of State and our liaison with the State Department and various European governments, should the need arise to communicate with these governments.”
Rockhill bowed toward Sherlock Holmes. “Un plaisir de vous rencontrer, Monsieur Holmes.” He bowed to the other men. “Mr. Vice-President. Gentlemen.”
Holmes gestured toward a tall, silent man with his white hair parted in the middle, the only man in the room other than Holmes who was clean-shaven. “You are Mr. Drummond, I presume?”
The tall man bowed slightly. “Andrew L. Drummond, at your service.”
“Mr. Drummond is currently Chief of the Secret Service Division of the Department of the Treasury,” said Holmes.
Drummond nodded his head again. His bright blue eyes seemed to show some slight amusement.
“What in blazes do the State Department or Treasury Department have to do with anything?” roared Major and Superintendent Moore. “And for that matter, sir”—the Major and Superintendent raised his cane in Holmes’s direction—“who the blazes are you and by what authority do you summon the Chief of the Metropolitan Police Department?”
Before Holmes could answer, the sixth and final man in the room, the only one not yet introduced, a quiet, balding, mustached man in his early sixties standing in the shadows of a corner, said softly, “I will answer that, Major and Superintendent Moore. I am Vice-President Adlai E. Stevenson. Mr. Sherlock Holmes, England’s most renowned and respected consulting detective, was asked to call today’s meeting on the authority of President Cleveland, who has asked that everyone here might give their full cooperation on an issue of the gravest national importance.”
“Mr. Vice-President . . .” stammered Major and Superintendent Moore and fell silent. Holmes knew from Hay and others that Vice-President Adlai Stevenson, elevated from assistant postmaster to vice-president by a whim of Cleveland’s party at the 1892 Democratic Convention, could walk into almost any party or assembly in Washington and not be recognized. (Nor will Holmes be surprised, four years hence, late in 1897, when he will read a small item in The Times of London—“When asked whether President Cleveland had ever asked his opinion on any matter, Vice-President Adlai E. Stevenson responded—‘Not yet. But there are still several weeks remaining in my term.’ ”)
“The issue in front of us, gentlemen,” said Holmes, noting that even former Major and Superintendent Brock had turned his attention back from the window, “is the anarchists’ plans to assassinate Her Majesty Queen Victoria, and the monarchs, emperors, and elected leaders of at least twelve other nations, beginning with the assassination of President Grover Cleveland on or before this May first.”
* * *
It was Vice-President Stevenson who took charge of moderating the outbreak of gabble into a series of questions and answers with a calm Sherlock Holmes at the swirling conversation’s locus.
Secret Service Chief Drummond: How reliable is this intelligence regarding President Cleveland, Mr. Holmes?
Sherlock Holmes: Very reliable, sir.
Secret Service Chief Drummond: Are there any specifics to this warning or is it the usual vague threat?
Sherlock Holmes: The most specific threat to date suggests that President Cleveland will be assassinated on May first . . . the socialist International Workers’ Holiday since the Haymarket Square incident . . . most probably while he is officially declaring open the Columbian World Exposition in Chicago.
State Department Sec. Rockhill: Is this supposed to be another Haymarket Square operation, Mr. Holmes? Mobs? Bombs thrown? Rampant shooting at police as well as at the president?
Sherlock Holmes: That is always possible . . . but our intelligence suggests that it is more likely to be the work of one or two master assassins hired by the anarchists.
Secret Service Chief Drummond: Do we have the identity of those hired assassins?
Sherlock Holmes: We do. Here are photographs of the two men. The older man is probably well known to you . . . Colonel Sebastian Moran. The younger man is the more able assassin . . . twenty-year-old Lucan Adler . . . and this photographic plate is the first official photograph of Adler. Please be careful with the glass. Can you make close-up copies from that plate, Chief Drummond?
Secret Service Chief Drummond: Of course. (Holding Clover Adams’s photographic plate up to the light while the other men craned to catch a glimpse of the face.) Why . . . this Adler is only a boy.”
Sherlock Holmes: That photograph was taken almost seven years ago, gentlemen. Lucan Adler was thirteen years old . . . a boy, as you say. But even at age thirteen, he was a remarkable hunter and marksman with a rifle and already trained as an assassin by his guardian, Colonel Sebastian Moran.
Former Metropolitan Police Major and Superintendent Brock: Who took this photograph of Lucan Adler?
Sherlock Holmes: I’m afraid I cannot reveal that information at this time. But I assure you that the young man in the photograph is indeed Lucan Adler and that his face, while more angular and more cruel, still looks much the same today.
Secret Service Chief Drummond: How do you know his current appearance, Mr. Holmes?
Sherlock Holmes: I’ve encountered him in recent years.
Former Metropolitan Police Major and Superintendent Brock: (Laughing derisively.) What? The famous Sherlock Holmes “encountered” our assassin and the fellow is not in custody? How can this be? Are the faculties of the famous detective slipping some with age, sir?
Sherlock Holmes: Lucan Adler stalked me, Mr. Brock. And two years ago he put three rifle bullets into me and through me from extremely long range. My survival was pure chance with some aid from the fact that the bullets were steel-jacketed—in the way of military ammunition—so they passed through me rather than tumbled. Had they been ordinary rounds, the softer bullets would have taken out my lungs, heart, and spine.
(A long silence ensues.)
Metropolitan Police Major and Superintendent Moore: On whose evidence . . . on what basis . . . are we to believe in this grand anarchists’ conspiracy? The May one date for the attack on President Cleveland? All of it?
Sherlock Holmes: On the basis, sir, of specific intelligence obtained by Her Majesty’s Secret Service. The information has been corroborated by the new Prefect of Police of Paris, Monsieur Louis Jean-Baptiste Lépine, and by Inspector Hanaud of the French Sûreté, as well as through other intelligence gathered by the Belgian and French Secret Services. And, finally, gentlemen, we act based on additional information obtained through my own investigations in the seven years since I provided evidence to the Chicago police regarding the Haymarket Square Massacre.
Former Metropolitan Police Major and Superintendent Brock: The general opinion in the United States now, Mr. Holmes, is that the Haymarket Trial was a one-sided farce, headed by an unfair judge and overzealous prosecutors. The general opinion now, Mr. Holmes, is that the five hanged men were martyrs to the workers’ movement—martyrs for the eight-hour workday.
Sherlock Holmes: If what you say is true, Mr. Brock, then the general opinion in the United States is an ass.
Metropolitan Police Major and Superintendent Moor
e: It seems certain, Mr. Holmes, that Illinois’s new governor, Mr. Altgeld, is going to pardon the three convicted Haymarket men who were given a fifteen-year sentence rather than death . . . Schwab, Fielden, and Neebe. A pardon with full amnesty. As Mr. Brock said, people are now of the opinion that the entire Haymarket Trial was a farce—unfair—and that Fischer, Lingg, Parsons, Spies, and Engel were unfairly executed.
Sherlock Holmes: Only four of the guilty men were hanged, sir . . . Engel, Spies, Parsons, and Fischer. Lingg, the bomb-maker, took his own life by biting into a blasting cap that he’d hidden in his cell. It blew his face off. Yet it still took him some hours to die.
Former Metropolitan Police Major and Superintendent Brock: Yet Governor Altgeld and many, many other people are saying now, seven years later, that these men were heroes of the working class.
Sherlock Holmes: These eight men were murderers and conspirators to murder. I proved this to the satisfaction of the Chicago police and to the courts. Not the least by breaking their code in the anarchist paper the Arbeiter-Zeitung . . . a code which coordinated the making of the bombs, the arming of the anarchists, and their ambush of the police that May Day at Haymarket Square.
Secret Service Chief Drummond: But no one ever caught the man who was said to have actually thrown the bomb . . . Schnaubelt.
Sherlock Holmes: Rudolph Schnaubelt.
Secret Service Chief Drummond: Yes. Schnaubelt just disappeared. Vanished. Probably forever.
Sherlock Holmes: Not forever, Chief Drummond. I found Rudolph Schnaubelt in France five years ago this May.
(The room again fills with gabble until Vice-President Stevenson raises his hand. When silence descends, the vice-president opens his palm to the Major and Superintendent of the Metropolitan Police Force.)
Metropolitan Police Major and Superintendent Moore: I heard nothing about Schnaubelt’s apprehension.
Sherlock Holmes: I am afraid that Mr. Schnaubelt died before he could be taken into proper custody. He threw himself through a glass window and drowned in the fast-running Swiss river below. But not before he admitted to—boasted of, I should say—his part in the conspiracy and his act of throwing the bomb at the police from the Chicago alley opening onto Haymarket Square on May fourth, eighteen eighty-six.
