by Otto Penzler
Mr. Allen said, “Remarkable, Dr. Watson. You have missed in only one particular.”
“Yes,” said Holmes. “The branch of service. Mr. Allen is a naval officer. When I heard his accent, I too knew he was American, and said he’d come a long way, implying he’d just come off a transatlantic voyage. He didn’t deny it. And we all know that the weather the past week has been positively vile. Yet he didn’t think it worth a mention, because he’s spent half his life at sea.” He nodded to Allen. “I’m sorry to waste your time, sir. Watson and I play these games. What brings you to us, Captain Allen?”
“I’m afraid it’s a matter of the utmost urgency and secrecy, gentlemen.”
Holmes strolled to the window and looked down at the street. “I assure you that I have been engaged in matters of trust many times before. And Dr. Watson has been with me every step in most of these affairs. He is not only an accomplished Royal Medical Officer who has been through the Afghan campaigns, he is also a man of the utmost discretion.”
“I believe you, Mr. Holmes. I have permission from the highest levels to include Dr. Watson in what I’m about to impart.”
“Excellent.”
“No doubt you know that in my country, in the city of Buffalo, New York, the Pan-American Exposition opened on the first of May. It’s been a highly publicized affair.”
“Yes, of course,” Holmes said. “A celebration of the future, really, wouldn’t you say? Calling the world together to witness the wonders of electricity.”
“That’s certainly one of the aspects that have made us most proud. It was hoped that President McKinley would visit in June, but he had to postpone because of Mrs. McKinley’s ill health. At least that was the public story.”
“If there’s a public story, then there must be a private story,” said Holmes.
“Yes. There were indications that there might be a plot on the president’s life.”
“Good heavens,” I said.
“I know how shocking it must be to you. Your country is renowned for its stability. Not since Charles the First in 1649 has there been the violent death of a head of state, and when your late, beloved Queen Victoria’s reign ended a few months ago, it had lasted nearly sixty-four years. In my country, during just the past forty years, as you know, there have been a civil war that killed six hundred thousand men, and two presidents assassinated.”
“It’s not a record that would instill complacency,” I admitted, but Holmes seemed to be lost in thought.
He said, “Who is suspected of plotting to kill President McKinley?”
“I’m afraid that I’ve reached the limit of what I’m authorized to say on that topic at present,” Captain Allen said.
I felt the same frustration I often have at official obfuscation in my own military experience, where a doctor is outside the chain of command. “If your business is a secret from Holmes, then how can you expect him to help you?”
“I spoke as freely as my orders allowed. My mission is to deliver a request that you two gentlemen come for a personal and private meeting with the President of the United States, who will tell you the rest.” He reached into his coat and produced a thin folder. “I have purchased a pair of tickets on the SS Deutschland of the Hamburg Amerika line. The ship is less than a year old, a four-stack steamship capable of twenty-two knots that has already set a record crossing the Atlantic in just over five days.”
“Very fast indeed,” I conceded.
Holmes lit his pipe and puffed out a couple of times to produce curlicues of bluish smoke. “How did the President of the United States come to think of me, when he can have many capable men at his command within minutes?”
“President McKinley is an avid reader. I gather he’s read of your accomplishments in The Strand Magazine.”
I confess that when I heard those words, I found that my ears were hot and my collar suddenly seemed to have tightened around my neck. Vanity is a powerful drug, able to strengthen the heartbeat and circulation extraordinarily.
Holmes said, “I can answer for myself, because I only have to answer to myself. I shall be happy to meet with the president. When does the Deutschland weigh anchor?”
“High tide is tomorrow at nineteen hundred.”
Holmes turned to me. “And you, Watson?” It was not the first time when I thought I detected in Holmes a slight resentment of my relationship with the lovely creature who was, within the year, to become my second wife. It seemed to me a tease, almost a challenge, an implication that I was no longer my own man and able to have adventures.
I did not take the bait and say something foolish in an attempt to save face. “I must speak with a dear friend of mine before I give you my word. But I’m almost certain I will join you.”
Allen smiled and nodded. “I thank you both, gentlemen. I’ll leave the tickets with you. Once again, I must bring up the uncomfortable issue of secrecy. I must adjure you both to absolute silence about the nature of your voyage.”
“Of course,” I said, since the request was clearly addressed to me. Holmes could never have been prevailed upon to reveal anything he didn’t wish to. I, on the other hand, was about to go to Queen Anne Street to speak to a beautiful and loving woman, and get her to agree I should go to another continent without being able to tell her which one or why.
What was said during that night’s discussions, and what inducements were offered to break my oath of silence I leave to the reader’s own experience. I did present myself on the London docks at nineteen hundred the next evening with my steamer trunk packed. Holmes, upon seeing me arrive in a carriage, merely looked up and said, “Ah, Watson. Prompt as always.”
We sailed on the tide. The steamship Deutschland was a marvel of modern design, but also of modern impatience. The powerful engines in the stern below decks could be heard and felt without difficulty anywhere on board at any hour of the twenty-four, despite the fact that the bow was more than six hundred feet from them. I had been accustomed after several tours in India to long voyages under sail. The old, graceful, and soothing push of wind, where the only sound is the creaking of boards and ropes as they stand up to the sea is disappearing rapidly. Even HMT Orontes, which brought me back to Portsmouth after my last tour of duty, had its three masts of sails supplemented by steam power below deck. Some day, no doubt, travel by sail will be a pleasure reserved for the leisured rich, the only ones who will be able to afford the time for it.
Our enormous steamship pushed on at full tilt, regardless of the weather. Holmes and I walked the deck and speculated on the true nature of our enigmatic invitation. Rather, I speculated, but Holmes maintained the irritating silence into which he often retreated when a case began. It was something between a boxer’s silent meditation before a match—among Holmes’s several skills was a mastery of the pugilist’s art—and a scientist’s cogitation on a natural phenomenon. Long before the ship steamed its way into New York harbor, I was grateful that its soulless speed would deliver me of the need to be with a man who neither spoke nor listened.
It was late afternoon when the crew tied the bow and stern to cleats, and stevedores hauled our steamer trunks from our cabin. We were on the main deck prepared to step down the gangplank to the new world. Captain Allen joined us, and he engaged a closed carriage to take us to a different dock. “Have either of you been to the United States before?” Allen asked.
“I have,” Holmes said. “In 1879 I traveled here with a Shakespeare company as Hamlet. I hope to play a less tragic part on this visit.”
When we arrived at the new jetty, we found that all the sailors there were in military uniform. They rapidly loaded our trunks aboard a much smaller craft, a Coast Guard vessel of some fifty feet in length, with a steam engine. Once we were aboard, the vessel was pushed from the dock, oriented itself due north, and began to move across the harbor. The air was hot and humid that afternoon, and I was grateful when the vessel began to lay on some speed. I came to understand from one of the crew that the purpose of the ves
sel was to outrun the craft of smugglers and other miscreants and bring them to a halt, so its speed was considerable. Before long we were out of the congested waters of the harbor and heading up the majestic Hudson River.
Much of the land along the river was wooded, but here and there on the shore we could see charming villages, most of them apparently supported by a combination of agriculture and light manufacturing. I could see growing fields of maize and other vegetables on the distant hillsides, but nearer the water were smokestacks and railroad tracks.
As I explored the Coast Guard cutter, I happened upon Allen and Holmes at the bow. “Excellent means of travel,” Holmes said, and Allen replied, “It’s not the usual way, but it was determined that a government vessel would not be suspected to be smuggling two Englishmen to Buffalo.”
“Is the secrecy warranted?” Holmes asked.
Allen said, “If all goes well, we may never know.”
“Indeed.”
We disembarked at a city called Albany. I found all of the names of British places in America—York, Albany, Rochester—disturbing in some fundamental way. It was like emerging from a wilderness trail and hearing that I had arrived at Charing Cross. But I said nothing. At Albany we were transferred to a railroad train, and moved on at still greater speed. We followed roughly the course of a narrow, straight waterway called the Erie Canal, which had for the past seventy years or so brought the natural resources and products of the western parts—lumber, produce, and so on—back to the ports like New York. I found the vastness of the place a bit unnerving. By the time we reached Buffalo we had gone more than the distance between London and Edinburgh, and not left the state of New York, one of forty-five states, and by no means the largest.
The next day at four in the afternoon, we arrived at the train station in Buffalo. It was an imposing piece of architecture for such a distant and provincial place, with patterned marble floors and high stone galleries like a church. There I received my introduction to the peculiarity of the American mind. In the center of the large marble floor was a statue of an American bison covered in a layer of what I believe to be polished brass. Although this beast is commonly called a “buffalo,” it is nothing of the sort, not at all like either the Asian buffalo or the African. The Americans simply like to call it a buffalo, as they like to grant the name “robin” to a native migratory thrush that is not a near relative of a British robin. Further, although the bison posing as a buffalo is the informal mascot of the city, the city’s name has nothing to do with animals. It seems that Buffalo is a corruption of the seventeenth-century French name for the place, “Beau fleuve,” beautiful river, an accurate description of the Niagara, on whose banks the city is situated. The logic was all virtually incomprehensible, but even the dimmest visitor could see that the inhabitants of the place had built themselves what looked like a golden calf and placed it in the station. As I was soon to learn, this was a city that worshipped industry, technological progress, and prosperity as fervently as the biblical sinners worshipped their own false deities. Holmes and I were about to happen upon one of their greatest pagan celebrations: the Pan-American Exposition was a festival of electrical power.
We were rushed from the station to a carriage and taken to the Genesee Hotel at Main and Genesee Streets. The Genesee was one of several large and thriving hotels in the central part of the city, with more under construction. The hotel served to seal my impression of the city, which was full of people from elsewhere, there to sell or buy or negotiate or merely gawk, as a place that grew and changed so rapidly that one had better write down his address because the next time he saw the location it might look different.
Captain Allen waited while we checked in and let the bellmen take our trunks to our suite. Then he took his leave. “I shall call upon you gentlemen at ten this evening on the matter of which we spoke,” he said, turned on his heel, and went out the door. The carriage took him away.
Holmes and I went upstairs to our quarters. “We shall be here for at least a week,” he said. “We may as well do some unpacking.”
I took his advice, and watched out of the corner of my eye as he did the same. He had an array of unexpected items with him that I had not noticed during the six days at sea or the two days of travel into the interior. In addition to the clothing and accessories that he wore in London, there were some clothes and shoes that looked like those of a workman, some firearms and ammunition, an actor’s makeup kit, and wooden boxes that were plain and unlabeled, which he left unopened in the trunk.
We took the opportunity to bathe and dress appropriately for our evening appointment. Holmes was a tall, trim man who looked positively elegant when he chose to, and a visit to the President of the United States was one occasion he considered worthy of some effort. In all modesty I must assert that my somewhat broader body was also suitably dressed. The elegant and tasteful lady I had been courting had, long before the voyage, insisted on going with me to a fine tailor on Savile Row where I was outfitted with several suits I could barely afford.
At exactly ten there was a knock on the door of our suite. Captain Frederick Allen was there to escort us. He conducted us to a waiting cabriolet, and we went down a broad and nicely paved street called Delaware Avenue. On both sides there were stately, well-kept homes of three stories, made of wood or brick or both, and surrounded by impressive lawns and gardens. We stopped at number 1168. When the cabriolet pulled out of earshot to wait, Captain Allen said, “This is the home of a local attorney, Mr. John Milburn, who is serving as president of the Exposition.”
We mounted the steps and a pair of American soldiers in dress blues opened the doors for us, then stood outside for a few moments to be sure that we had not been followed. Then they stepped back inside and resumed their posts. Mr. Allen led us across a broad foyer to a large set of oak doors. He knocked, and the man who opened the door surprised me.
I had seen photographs of William McKinley during the election of 1900, and there was no mistaking him. He was tall, about sixty years old, with hair that had not yet gone gray. His brow was knitted in an expression of alertness that made him look more stern than he proved to be. His face broadened into a smile instantly, and he said, “Ah, gentlemen. Please come in. I must thank you for coming halfway around the world to speak with me.”
“It’s a pleasure, sir,” Holmes said, and shook his hand.
I said, “I’m honored to meet you.”
We were inside the library in a moment, and then someone, presumably Allen, closed the door behind us. Holmes said, “I don’t mind if our friend Captain Allen hears what we say.”
The president shook his head. “He knows what I’m about to tell you, and some day in the future having been here might make him subject to unwanted inquiry.”
The president went to the far end of the library and sat in a leather armchair. I noticed he had a glass on the table beside him that appeared to be some local whiskey-like spirit mixed with water. “Would you care to join me in a drink?”
I saw that there were a decanter of the amber liquid and a pitcher of water on a sideboard, and a supply of glasses. In the interest of politeness, I poured myself three fingers of the distillate. Holmes said, “Water for me, Watson, at least until I’m sure I won’t need a clear head.”
I brought him the water and we each sat in armchairs facing the president. Holmes leaned back, crossed his legs at the knee, and said confidently, “You’re a president who has learned of recent plots against his life. You are about to appear in public at an international exposition. I assume that what you want is for me to take charge of your personal security to ensure that you are not assassinated.”
“Why no, sir,” President McKinley said. “I called you all this way because I want you to ensure that I am assassinated.”
“What?” I said. “Perhaps I—”
“Your surprise proves you heard the president correctly,” Holmes said. Then he looked at President McKinley judiciously. “Dr. Watson will agree you ap
pear to be in perfect health, so you’re not avoiding the pain of a fatal illness. I can see from the lack of broken vessels in your facial skin that the alcohol you’re drinking now is not your habitual beverage, but an amenity for guests. You were only recently reelected by a nation grateful for your service. Unless there’s some curious delay in the delivery of bad news in this country, I don’t think there’s a scandal. And if you wanted to kill yourself, you’re fully capable of obtaining and operating a firearm, since you fought in your Civil War. Why would a leader at the apex of his career wish to be murdered?”
“I don’t wish to be murdered. I wish to appear to have been murdered.”
“But why? Your life seems to be a series of victories.”
“I’ve become a captive of those victories,” he said.
“How so?”
“Five years ago, with the help of my friend the party boss Mark Hanna, I assembled a coalition of businessmen and merchants, and ran for president on a platform of building prosperity by giving every benefit to business. Using protective tariffs and supporting a currency based on the gold standard, I helped lift the country out of the depression that had started in 1893, and made her an industrial power.”
“Then what can be the matter?”
“I’m a man who got everything he wanted, and has only now discovered that his wishes weren’t the best things for his country.”
“Why not?”
“Unintended consequences. Mark Hanna got me elected, but in doing so he spent three and a half million dollars. I’m afraid we have irrevocably tied political success to money, and that the connection, once made, will be disastrous for this country. The men with the most money will buy the government they want. I got us out of a depression by favoring business. I believed men of wealth and power would be fair to their workers because it was the right thing to do. Instead, the giant companies I helped act like rapacious criminals. They employ children in inhuman conditions in factories and mines, murder union spokesmen, keep wages so low that their workers live like slaves. Their own workmen can’t buy the products they make, and the farmers live in debt and poverty. Since my reelection, I have been trying to bring sane and moderate regulation to business, but I have had no success. My allies, led by my friend Senator Hanna, won’t hear of such a thing. My opponents don’t trust me because I was champion of their oppressors. I wanted a second term to fix all the mistakes of the first term, but I find I can’t fix any of them. I am clearly not the man for this job.”
