by Dan Simmons
At the bottom, Holmes paused a moment and played the light on all sides. It was a narrow shaft, hardly broader than his shoulders, and it would have been problematic for anyone who suffered from claustrophobic panics. Holmes smiled, thinking that he must look like some archaeologist entering a newly discovered tomb in Egypt or Babylon or Troy.
But there were no hieroglyphics on these three granite walls, nor switches or niches or clues. Only the ladder and this black curtain.
Raising the lantern and opening the shutter a little wider, Holmes pushed the curtain aside and stepped forward, making sure that there was granite beneath his feet before taking his steps.
“What do you see?” James’s voice came down the shaft in a harsh, urgent whisper.
“Just a moment,” said Holmes.
The room was a rectangular prism about six feet wide and eight feet long that had been laid under the footing for the monument sculpture and the paved and graveled hexagon above. Holmes estimated that there were probably two feet of solid concrete or even granite above his head. Then soil.
Carved into the granite to his left was a long niche about shoulder high. It was filled with books. To his immediate right there was a granite column extending from the wall, also about shoulder height. On it was a small lantern. Holmes was tempted to light it with his prototype cigarette lighter—the resident lantern’s light would be better than the beam from his dark lantern—but he wanted to be sure to leave no signs of his having been here.
The rest of the granite wall to his right was carved into a larger niche, rising only some three feet from the floor, and on the upper surface of that niche was a narrow bed cushion with two pillows set at the far end. The whole bed was only about six feet long and Holmes would have had to curl his legs up if he’d lain on it. He did not. The bed was made up neatly and Holmes touched the blanket and sheets: warm, not cold or moldy-feeling. They must be changed regularly.
Holmes would wager money that these were the only times in his 55 years of life that Henry Brooks Adams had ever made his own bed.
There was a second narrow granite column at the far end and a second small lantern on it. Tucked by that lantern was a book. Holmes picked it up—it was leather bound—and played the lantern’s beam over it.
The Light of Asia: The Teacher of Nirvana and the Law by Sir Edwin Arnold. It had caused a slight stir in America and England when it was released in 1879, but Holmes had read only part of it before impatiently setting it aside. He thought Arnold’s writing was insufferably prolix. Still, he remembered the review in The Times of London, written by the noted Japanologist Lafcadio Hearn, when the 1883 edition came out: “After all, Buddhism in some esoteric form may prove the religion of the future . . . What are the heavens of all Christian fancies after all but Nirvana—the extinction of individuality in the eternal.”
Indeed, thought Holmes.
After carefully setting the book back in place above the pillows by the second lantern, Holmes stepped back through the curtain into the short vertical shaft. “Come down, James.”
“I cannot,” came the whisper in return.
“You really should,” said Holmes. “Otherwise you shall spend a lifetime wondering if I was telling the truth. Trust me that there is nothing disturbing here.”
There came down a sound like stifled hysterical laughter. In an urgent whisper, James said, “Everything about this moment is disturbing, Holmes. We have invaded the deepest part of a good man’s privacy, intruding into his mourning and perhaps into his madness. Our behavior is criminal. Unspeakable.”
“Agreed,” said Holmes. “But it’s done. Come down and look and then we’ll finish our business here.”
“Hold the lantern higher,” Henry James whispered and ponderously started down the iron ladder.
* * *
Five minutes later they were both up in the aboveground part of the monument again. The chair with its padded seat was broad enough for both of them to perch on it if each steadied himself with a leg outstretched to the granite ledge on one side.
“There’s no view through the eyes,” whispered James. It was true. They were able to make out the inverted features of the sculpture’s face now with the aid of the lantern beam, but although the eyes had seemed empty of bronze from casual inspection outside the piece, now they could see two oval slugs of metal—not bronze—covering those openings. Holmes had seen those non-bronze insets within the otherwise open, downcast eyes when he’d held the lantern up to inspect the sculpture.
“Look for a lever,” whispered Holmes. “These plugs are attached to . . . ahh!”
The lever mechanism was on James’s left side.
“Put your hand on it, but don’t open it yet,” said Holmes, his mouth close to James’s ear. “Let me turn out the lantern first and let our eyes adapt to the darkness for a moment.”
It was disconcerting for Holmes to spend that moment pressed so close to another man. He could feel James inching away, putting most of his weight on his left foot so as to avoid touching.
“Now,” whispered Holmes.
The shutters over the eyes made almost no noise as the metal rod above them rose and they lifted the eye plugs out of place.
Their angle of vision was good—the androgynous sculpture’s head was angled forward and the face partially sheltered by the cowl, but the eye openings were larger than life-size and, with Holmes taking the right eye and James the left, they could see the entire hexagon before them, the benches, and the stars above the enclosure of trees. The space was empty.
After a moment, they both sat back. The view was still good.
“This is how Adams sees and hears people’s reactions without being observed in turn,” whispered James.
Holmes nodded.
“I’m not sure that . . .” began James but silenced himself when Holmes firmly gripped his upper arm.
Someone had entered the shrub-bounded enclosure outside.
Both Holmes and James leaned forward, instinctively not putting their eyes too close to the oval openings to be sure that starlight did not cause a gleam.
Holmes could not make out any detail save for the shadows of trousered legs—definitely not a woman in a dress—but the man seemed to be very tall and very thin. This impression was confirmed when he sat on the bench directly opposite the sculpture, for his shoulders were higher than the very high back of the bench—higher even than Holmes’s had been when he’d sat there.
James leaned over to whisper directly into Holmes’s ear. “It’s not Adams!”
Holmes shushed him by squeezing harder. The scrape of the man’s boots or shoes against the gravel had been so audible that Holmes suspected the enclosure acted as a sort of hearing gallery, amplifying sound. He suspected that Adams had directed Stanford White to achieve that effect—thus the oddly high back of the benches and the triangle of stone. Holmes worried that any noise from within the sculpture might as easily be carried out to the open area.
James intuited the message and leaned forward again.
For several minutes the man did nothing. As Holmes’s eyes adapted even further to the moonless night, he could see the man’s long arms spread to either side on the back of the bench—the same posture that Holmes had assumed earlier.
After a few minutes of this silent staring match, the man’s arms came down, Holmes could make out pale hands touching pockets of a jacket or waistcoat, clearly heard the scrape of a match, and the man leaned forward to light a cigarette.
That flare of a match should have revealed the man’s face, but Holmes saw only a glow with an arc of blackness cut out of it. He realized at once that the man was wearing a broad-brimmed hat of some sort and the brim had occluded any view of his face.
Had that been an accident or coldly deliberate? Sherlock Holmes never guessed, but his hunch at the moment was that it was the latter.
He and James sat there, uncomfortably perched on the same chair, hardly daring to breathe while the man smoked his cigarette.
A single red glow in the darkness. No features visible. Only the dot of red in the darkness.
The man eventually finished that cigarette, there was a half-seen movement of pale hands, and he lit another one. Again the downturned brim of a hat concealed any features that might have been caught in the brief flare of the match.
He’s playing with us, thought Holmes.
He hadn’t expected Lucan Adler to find him so soon, but Holmes realized that he might have underestimated the speed of gossip about his presence, gossip spreading outward not only from the Hays and their servants and the Cabot Lodges and Camerons and Roosevelt, but from Clemens and William Dean Howells as well. Lucan was the ultimate predator and Holmes realized, with a tightening in his chest not unlike fear, that he had given that predator-assassin more than enough time to find him.
Then why am I alive? thought Holmes. He realized that, without thinking about it, he’d slid his right hand into his traveling coat’s pocket.
Instead of the reassuring handgrip of a pistol—he still had not taken time to buy one here in Washington—his fingers found the short, flexible grip of the cosh—Americans called it a “blackjack”—that he’d brought with him. The tough leather of the working end of the cosh was filled with sand and it was guaranteed, when used properly, to bring even the largest opponent to his knees if not facedown on the ground.
In his trouser pocket, he had his folding penknife with its four-inch blade. In his burglary bag, the short crowbar he’d used to open the monument was the closest thing to a weapon.
The great Sherlock Holmes, thought Holmes with hot irony overriding the stab of panic he’d felt a few seconds earlier. Brings a penknife and a cosh to a gunfight.
He had never wanted to confront Lucan Adler with Henry James at his side. But now, he felt almost certain, he had. He was almost as certain that Lucan knew that Holmes and someone else were in the monument looking at him.
The red glow was extinguished. Holmes tensed, gripping the handle of his cosh. At least if Lucan entered the monument—Holmes had little doubt that the anarchist assassin had watched James and him enter it—there would be so little room that Lucan’s marksmanship with a rifle or pistol would be largely negated.
A perfect space, especially with the open shaft that Lucan might not know was there, for a fight with a knife or cosh, thought Holmes.
But with Henry James in the middle of it.
A third match flared. Again the taunt with the head downward, the large brim of a hat concealing the face. Again the steady glow of the cigarette’s end in the deep darkness of the monument’s enclosure.
They had sat there for more than half an hour, Holmes estimated, staring at the unknown man who was staring at them. Or at least at the sculpture, which would be only a dark shape in the night. Holmes was almost certain that it wasn’t Henry Adams out there—even if he were wrong about the man’s height, would Adams ever wear a hat like that?—and every minute that passed made him more certain that it was Lucan Adler, playing with James and him the way a cat plays with a mouse in the minutes before biting its head off.
Holmes’s legs were cramping in the uncomfortable posture, but worse than that was the rising pain from his three bullet wounds. The one in the lower right of his back was the worst. Holmes realized that in the intensity of his brooding on Adams’s mystery that afternoon and evening, he’d forgotten to take his second injection of heroin. Its absence seemed to make the wounds ache more.
Ten minutes, he gauged, into the third glowing red dot, and Holmes set his mouth almost against James’s ear—he could smell the expensive pomade in his hair—and whispered, “Stay here . . . I’m going out there.”
He could feel rather than actually see James shaking his head no, but Holmes gripped him tightly on the upper arm again, repeating his instruction to stay where he was.
Perhaps Lucan didn’t actually see us enter the monument after all, thought Holmes. If he did not, then James has a chance to survive even if Lucan kills me.
Stepping silently on the right-side granite strip, Holmes found the lantern by feel and lifted it in his left hand. He would have to light it again outside, then shutter it quickly. But a bright beam of light shone in Lucan’s face might . . .
He did not finish the thought because he did not really believe it would.
Taking one last glance to make sure that the figure and cigarette glow were still there, Holmes gingerly stepped over his burglary bag, found the opening mechanism by touch, and clicked it open. The click was a small noise, but it sounded as loud as a rifle shot to Holmes’s anxious ears.
The air that rushed in was cold and Holmes realized how overheated the small space had become during the time that he and James had been in there, emanating body heat.
Once outside, Holmes took the risk of pushing the panel shut—another intolerable click—to give James that tiny chance of survival if this was Lucan Adler waiting.
He knelt, fished his mechanical lighter from his trouser pocket in one swift movement, and lighted the dark lantern. He’d already fully shuttered the front, so the only light had been the flare of his lighter—but that had seemed interminable and visible to anyone in the cemetery.
He’d looked away as he flicked the lighter and lit the lantern, not wanting to lose his night vision, but he still had to stand there half a moment and blink before he could fully see again. Holding the lantern forward in his left hand, the fingers of that hand ready to open the shutter all the way in one fast movement, Holmes pulled out the cosh and carried it by his side.
Holmes walked stealthily around the right corner of the enclosure, toward the side where the cleft in the trees allowed access. No light escaped from that opening. Holmes was taking care where he put his feet but did not want to walk too slowly. Surprise, after all, and perhaps a sudden shaft of light in Lucan’s eyes, were almost certainly Holmes’s only hope for surviving the next few minutes.
He got to the opening in the trees and stopped, finally leaning forward to put only his head forward in a fast peek around the edge. Even that movement, he knew, would be target enough for a master assassin with a pistol ready. Holmes knew that even though clouds had occluded the stars, it was still lighter outside the enclosure than within, and his head would be in silhouette.
No shot. No sound.
Holmes looked again, eyes straining, but could not make out the flowing cigarette or the form of the man on the bench. It was simply too dark in that enclosure now. He realized that when the clouds had come in sometime in the last forty-five minutes, he and James had been watching the red glow of the cigarette rather than the dark outline of the man in the blackness.
No further reason to wait, thought Holmes. Raising the lantern high, seeing nothing but darkness ahead in and beyond the entrance cleft, Holmes strode quickly forward, the sound of his brushing branches as loud as an avalanche in his ears.
The instant he was through the cleft in the trees his fingers swept open the shutter on the lantern, his right arm flexing as he hefted the cosh.
The place on the bench where the man had been sitting was empty.
Where had he moved? Anywhere in the enclosure would afford him a perfect shot.
Holmes considered slamming shut the lantern’s shutter—Lucan’s sharpshooter advantages eliminated, just two men in blackness, feeling for each other, and Holmes had the knife and the cosh—but he found he was too impatient for whatever the showdown would bring to follow that saner tactic.
He moved quickly, in erratic patterns, holding the lantern away from his body, aiming the beam this way and then that way. The benches were empty. The graveled hexagon in front of the sculpture was empty. The area around the granite and bronze monument was empty.
Behind the benches. It would have been Holmes’s first choice for a hiding place if he were waiting to shoot a man here.
Holmes leaped up onto the bench and then over the high back, going to a quick crouch on the back side of the bench closest to the open
ing in the trees, lantern beam illuminating the narrow corridor ahead of him between the stone bench and the trees.
Empty.
Rushing forward, still in a crouch so that his head was below the level of the back of the stone bench, he reached the first corner and set the lantern on the ground, its aimed beam shooting to the left.
No shot. No sound.
Holmes looked around, saw this second corridor of space empty, saw no new breaks in the wall of foliage to his right, and he hurried to the last turn, not bothering to pause before he swept around it. He was ready to dash down the lantern in a second if he couldn’t get close enough to blind his opponent with it.
Nothing.
Holmes came out into the opening and checked all the walls of foliage. Someone could have forced his way through the tree branches and hedges and out into the opening, but Holmes certainly would have heard him do so as he approached.
Satisfied that no one else was in the enclosure, he held the lantern high again and walked toward the bronze sculpture on its two-level base. He approached it obliquely, visualizing Henry James dead, his body dropped into the vertical shaft, and Lucan’s young hunter’s eyes at one of the eyehole openings and a pistol pressed against the other opening. The eyes were large enough to pass a bullet from a revolver.
His cape-coat brushed against foliage as he crept toward the seated, brooding, still-powerful sculpture. The combination of darkness and harsh lantern light brought out the draped folds in the robe, the shadows under the cowl, the straight nose and solid chin, the up-raised and folded-in right arm with its fingers disappearing under bronze cheek and chin.
“James?” Holmes had used a normal, conversational voice and the loudness of it in the thick night made him jump.
No response.
Louder—“James?”
“I’m here,” came the oddly muffled reply from the statue’s head.
Holmes imagined the portly writer under duress, the muzzle of a pistol pressed under his double chin. For that matter, he hadn’t been certain that the muffled voice belonged to Henry James.
