Sherlock Holmes in New York

by D. R. Bensen

  “He’s drugged!”

  The girl shrank back from his blazing stare. “Only—only a few grains of laudanum, that’s all, monsieur, and only when I must go out. I would not harm the boy!”

  “You have assuredly harmed his mother! What brought you—his friend!—to take part in this outrage?”

  The dancer sank into a rickety wooden chair and stared hopelessly at the worn carpeting. “I had no choice. A man came to me three days ago … Charles Nickers, a tumbler with the Twickenham Toffs.”

  “Ah,” said Holmes. “Yes, I had the distinct pleasure of arresting his brother, Bill, in London about two weeks ago. The Twickenham Toffs have long been part of Professor Moriarty’s organization—but that’s no matter to you, Miss Romaine. Now, what did this tumbler want of you?”

  “He said … unless I did as I was bidden, my brother, Anatole, in Paris would be murdered!”

  “I see. And what were your orders—in addition to persuading Scott Adler to take part in a prank directed at his governess?”

  “To bring him here and engage a room facing the street. Originally, my room was in the rear. I was to say to the opera that I was ill. Then … twice a day I must inform Mr. Nickers that the boy is here and that no one had inquired after him.”

  “Inform him? By what means?”

  “Each day, at eleven and again at six, he watches across the street. I open the curtain and nod. That is all.”

  Sherlock Holmes looked at his watch.

  “Then it’s almost time for him to be at his post,” he murmured. He turned to the girl. “Mademoiselle, you have received Moriarty’s instructions. Now you shall hear mine! When your Charles Nickers arrives, you will give the proper signal, just as you’ve been told to do. And you will continue to give that signal twice a day until I relieve you of the responsibility. Do as I say, and you will emerge from this dismal matter unharmed, as will your brother. Fail me in any respect, Miss Nicole Romaine, and you will be held accountable for the death of Scott Adler!”

  The girl shrank back appalled.

  “Mon dieu!” she cried.

  “Yes, I should have said exactly the same thing in your place, if I were French.” Holmes nodded toward the window. “Is he out there?”

  Nicole Romaine went to the window, drew the curtain, and looked into the street.

  “If so,” said Holmes, “give the signal.”

  The girl gave a simple slow inclination of her head, looked intently outwards for a moment, then stepped back and closed the curtain once again.

  “He has gone.”

  “Good!” said Holmes. “Now …”

  He eased the door to the room open and peered into the hallway, then pulled his own room key from his jacket pocket and handed it to the girl.

  “I am in room thirty-two. Take the key. It is three doors along from you, on the opposite side of the corridor. Go and unlock the door. When the way is clear, signal to me. Now!”

  Holmes opened the door wide enough for the girl to leave, and she slipped through it and hurried down the corridor. He kept watch on her as she came to the door of room 32, quickly opened it, and stepped inside. In a moment she emerged again, glanced in both directions, and gave him an urgent wave.

  Sherlock Holmes turned to the sleeping boy on the couch, swept him up in his arms, and ran from the ballet dancer’s room, covering the few yards’ distance down the corridor in no more than two seconds.

  Inside his own room, still holding the blanket-wrapped form of Scott Adler, Holmes faced Nicole Romaine and spoke urgently.

  “Back to your room, mademoiselle, and remember, to do exactly as I say. This boy’s life depends upon that!”

  The girl clasped her hands in front of her and spoke fervently. “Yes, yes! I will obey you utterly!”

  “Do so!”

  Sherlock Holmes gently kicked the door shut behind her and then laid the sleeping boy down on the bed. The large trunk which had accompanied “Bandini” to the hotel stood in the center of the floor, and Holmes knelt by it and opened it. Inside was a network of intertwined ropes attached to the sides and ends of the trunk, forming a hammock, on which rested some folded blankets and leather straps. On it Holmes now placed Scott Adler, cushioning him with the blankets and securing him in place with the straps. Taking out his pocket-knife, he opened the awl blade it contained, and tested the clusters of small holes unobtrusively bored near the handles of the trunk. Satisfied that the supply of air would be sufficient, he closed the trunk.

  “You’ll have a bruise or two to show for your adventure, lad,” he said softly, “but they’ll soon disappear under your mother’s kisses.”

  He snapped shut the two brass locks that secured the trunk, and turned a key in both. Straightening up, he inspected himself in the tarnished mirror that hung over the battered chest-of-drawers, and made small adjustments to his wig and clothing. Next, he took a deep breath, flung the door open, and strode into the corridor and down it to the open stairwell.

  Leaning over the railing, he bellowed down to the lobby two flights below, “Signore!”

  In a moment, he could see the foreshortened figure of the proprietor beneath him, staring up in surprise.

  “This is not an albergo for actors, it is a pen-a for pigs! Send-a up for my luggage and-a prepare my bill!”

  Along the corridor in which he now stood, and on the floors above and below him, Holmes could hear the sound of doors being cautiously opened, and was aware of heads poking curiously out behind him. Good: the proprietor would be all the more concerned to be rid of the Great Bandini with no more fuss than was already being made, and would have no time to perceive the fact that Bandini’s trunk was noticeably heavier than when it had been brought in.

  He raised his voice to an enraged howl.

  “I will not-a spend five-a more minutes in this-a place!”

  It was no more, in fact, than four minutes before Holmes, the trunk carefully set on the seat facing him, was in a cab, his hotel bill paid to the white-faced proprietor, and on his way to the Algonquin Hotel.

  Chapter Eleven

  Sherlock Holmes had made it clear that no results could be expected from his efforts during the daylight hours, and had laid no injunction upon myself or Irene Adler save that we be at her residence from six o’clock onwards.

  The lady herself, the outward shell of Holmes with which she had gulled our watchers now being restored to the wardrobe at the hotel, expressed no wish but to return home.

  “I am in no mood for diversion, or even company, Dr. Watson,” said she. “I have often been alone and have grown accustomed to it, but am rarely lonely. This will be a long day, and I shall wish for nothing so much as the setting of the sun, whatever it may bring, but I do not require or wish companionship. Cast yourself loose in this great city, and discover what you may of what it has to offer; I, on my part, may be cheered to think of the experiences you will have, and shall look forward to hearing your account of them.”

  I thought that a most handsome dismissal, and confess I was relieved to have it made so clear that my company was not wanted. Miss Adler is a fine figure of a woman, no doubt of that, but more intense and high-powered than I find comfortable for any extended period.

  Having seen her into a cab, then, I found myself with the better part of a spring day in New York to spend as I would, it then being only ten o’clock.

  I am afraid that, in the event, I did not make the best use of it. In vain to ask me of the treasures of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the wonders of the Natural History Museum, the magnificent view of the city to be obtained from the torch of the Statue of Liberty—even the more worldly delights of Koster & Bial’s “improper Vaudeville” and certain “joints” in Thirty-third and Fifty-seventh Streets where opium may be freely smoked, about which not a few loudly dressed individuals I encountered in my wanderings seemed anxious to inform me. I did, indeed, in a trip up Fifth Avenue in an electric omnibus, the open back of which afforded an incomparable view of a mile or
more of millionaires’ palatial residences, glimpse the famed art museum, but did not enter it. I did have a moment of disorientation when observing what appeared to be Cleopatra’s Needle, so familiar to me in London, poking out of the trees behind the museum, but was informed that it was that obelisk’s twin, presented to New York by the Khedive of Egypt some twenty-five years past.

  What I did, in fact, once I had taken care of the one task I had promised myself to complete—the purchase of a necktie or so, more in keeping with the tone of the New World—was to abandon myself to the city, let myself drift about it as freely as a balloon, with not even the directing intelligence that Mr. Santos-Dumont brings to aerial navigation. A wanderer may not see everything that the shepherded tourist does, but he will see other things of equal interest, and remember them the better for having been surprised by them.

  The desk clerk at the Algonquin, agreeing perhaps too readily that I would do well to invest in some more colorful neckwear, suggested that I try the Windsor Arcade, which contains a number of shops of all sorts, and fronts on Fifth Avenue only a few streets north of that in which the hotel stands. Arriving there, I was agreeably surprised to find it remarkably similar to the Burlington Arcade in Piccadilly, though more restrained in its style of architecture. There was indeed an excellent haberdasher’s along its central corridor, and I treated myself to a quarter-dozen of ties, one of a positively alarming electric-blue hue which, it seemed to me, might very nearly serve to light my way through a London fog.

  Having paid for the ties, I told the salesman I was staying at the Algonquin Hotel.

  “I am happy to hear that,” he observed. “It is said to be a swell place.”

  He then wrapped the ties in a neat parcel and pushed them across the counter to me. I placed my forefinger on the parcel and pushed it back to his side of the counter.

  “It’s the Algonquin,” said I. “Dr. John Watson.”

  “I myself am Arnold Bozeman,” said he, and, with his own forefinger returned the ball, as it were, to my court.

  “These are to go to the Algonquin Hotel!” I moved the parcel yet again.

  “I am sure they will be worthy of their surroundings,” said the salesman—not, this time, touching the package, but instead placing his hands behind his back.

  The meaning of his words and actions finally became clear to me.

  “Do you mean you do not deliver purchases made here?”

  “No, sir. Our customers tend to that, at least with small parcels.”

  I was appalled.

  “Surely … you don’t expect me to carry a shop package … in the street?”

  Mr. Bozeman looked at me closely. “I perceive you are English, sir.” I admitted it. He gave a sigh. “This store has its policy. The custom of the country is to carry off what one has bought unless it is a considerable burden. Yesterday, J. P. Morgan himself trotted out with a vest we had renewed the white piping on, nicely wrapped up in brown paper. Yet … you are English, and I have argued with Englishmen on such points before. I will deliver your ties to the hotel myself during the very short time I am allowed for my lunch.”

  I thanked him and left the store, pleased to have encountered an example of the warmth and consideration which the American merchant brings to his business.

  On Fifth Avenue, I hailed a northward-bound electric omnibus, as I have said, and took my seat in one of the eight outside places. The silent, steady ride was a novelty to me, and the dazzling variety of buildings on both sides of the Avenue drew my attention constantly.

  By the time we reached a point somewhat north of the Metropolitan Museum, however, I found myself out of sorts. For very nearly two miles, I saw no building that was not the residence of a millionaire, and, even though the title referred to fortunes reckoned in dollars rather than pounds, it was beyond me what so many people might be doing that was worth so much. I am in general well content with the order of things, but there are some aspects of society the conservative man who wishes to remain so would do well to avoid.

  I abandoned the omnibus and struck eastward, still surprised at being able to see so far along any one street. I walked for a while in the shadow of the elevated railway at Third Avenue, much taken with the jumble of old houses, shops, and open land. A taint carried in the wind told me that a slaughterhouse was not far away, reminding me of my student days at Bart’s, cheek by jowl with the Smithfields abattoirs.

  It may have been because my mind was turning in that direction that I was struck by the name over a pawnbroker’s establishment on the avenue: A. HANZÄHNE. Scarcely a common name, surely, yet one I had encountered in London, and there belonging to a pawnbroker as well, an estimable fellow in the Marylebone High Street who had often passed along information useful to Sherlock Holmes. Might this not be a relative, emigrated to the New World?

  I entered the shop, introduced myself to the proprietor, and found that he was indeed first cousin to my old acquaintance. I gave him the latest news of his kinsman and of the old country, and we chatted most pleasantly a moment or so.

  He eventually moved away from me to attend to a customer, a young woman of good appearance though obviously not affluent. After the transaction, he returned, shaking his head.

  “A sad business, Doctor,” said he. “There’s a young lady, a real trump, married just a year to a nice fellow. They’re as much in love as you ever remember being when you were twenty—and more. But times is hard, and they’ve got no money. She’s just pawned the last good piece of jewelry she had from her mother—been in the family for generations—to buy her husband something for the anniversary present. I gave her what I could, but God knows if she can ever redeem the piece.”

  Before we had got fairly started on renewing our conversation, he was called away again, this time to deal with a young man.

  “If that don’t beat all,” he remarked when the business was done. “Now, that’s the husband of the girl that was just in. And wouldn’t you know he’s hocked a set of gold medals he won for swimming at college—to buy his lady something for the anniversary?”

  “As you said, a sad business,” I commented.

  He shrugged.

  “Listen, maybe wanting to give somebody something is better than having something, who’s to say?”

  I took my adieux, promising to give his cousin in London word of our meeting, and went on my way.

  It seemed to me best to strike back toward a less dingy part of the city, and I was making my way in the direction of Fifth Avenue once more, when I heard a confused babble of cries, in which I could clearly make out the words “Help!” and “Doctor!” Through the noise, a terrified, inhuman squealing arose. I ran across to a crowd I saw gathering around the door of a shop, and pushed my way through, saying as authoritatively as I could, “I am a doctor!”

  It was not, however, a human being that stood in need of my services.

  A well-fed and cared-for, but certainly mongrel dog, was cruelly imprisoned in a strange manner. An iron grillwork in front of the shop was secured to a metal post by a length of chain and a padlock; and there had evidently been just enough slack in the chain for the animal to get its head wedged through it in such a manner that it could not withdraw it. This may have been the result of an injudicious leap, for the poor brute was nearly suspended in the air, with only its hind feet touching the pavement, and must soon perish of slow strangulation.

  The crowd was alive with suggestions and comment. Listening to these, I soon learned that the owner of the shop was away and could not be reached; that no one had the key to the padlock; and that it had been generally agreed that any attempt to break the chain with a cold chisel would break the dog’s neck before serving its purpose. A tearful small girl standing by and sobbing was evidently the dog’s owner, and it kept looking at her desperately as though for some last chance of help.

  The girl pulled urgently at the sleeve of a burly man next to her.

  “Help him, Brynie. You c’n do it—you know you c’n
do it! Please!”

  “Nit!” said the man she addressed, looking nervously at a policeman who had joined the crowd. “You know I can’t do dat—not now!”

  “But you got to. Treffs dying, an’ there’s nobody—!”

  “I can’t—an’ shut up dat talk!”

  I could see that the policeman was looking at the man as if he knew him well.

  The girl stopped her sobbing and looked up at him. Her face was still, and very old, suddenly. “Oh … yeah. He’s a … a dog, that’s all. It don’t matter, I guess.”

  “Oh, hell!”

  The man darted an agonized glance at the policeman, reached for the padlock, and, with a few deft movements of his fingers, had it open. The dog dropped to the ground, and he and the little girl were a sudden joyous tangle of fur and shabby skirts.

  The policeman moved up to the dog’s rescuer. “Pretty clever fingers you got, Brynie,” I heard him murmur.

  “Yeah, Riley.” The man’s shoulders slumped.

  “Opened that lock as neat as the fellow that went into Meyer’s market, and the tailor shop, and opened the safe in the back room of the Shamrock—and him doing it all in one week,” observed the officer.

  “Yeah, Riley.”

  “Well.” The policeman cocked his helmeted head and looked at the man. “Now, that’s a low class of goings-on, isn’t it,” said he. “A man that’d take … well, a lot of trouble to save a little girl’s dog … I don’t think he’d be the kind that would do the kind of thing I’m talking of, would you? Not considering the past so much as what’s to come, if you take my meaning.”

  With dawning hope, the man Brynie looked at the officer, then nodded vigorously, and darted off.

  I saw other curious and striking things during the remainder of the day, but was most struck by an incident at the Central Park Zoo, where I found myself in mid-afternoon, contemplating a polar bear and wondering why it persisted in swinging its head back and forth like an animated toy.

  There came an outcry next to me, and, turning, I perceived a boy of perhaps ten, a sullen expression on his fat face, kicking a man who was holding him by the hand. I should have taken them for father and son, except that the boy was overdressed to a degree, in velvet knee-breeches and jacket and patent-leather shoes, and the man, who had the appearance of an out-of-work clerk, was verging on shabbiness.