The Seventh Bullet

by Daniel D Victor

  At last she was finished, and I knew my friend well enough to know that her importuning had reached him. Holmes leaned forward and took one of Mrs. Frevert’s hands.

  “My dear lady,” he said, “I appreciate your intentions. And I sympathise with your desires. But, as I am sure my former colleague and ever-faithful friend Dr. Watson has told you, I am retired. Even if I wanted to help you, what could I do? For the past eight years I’ve done very little detecting—save for the most singular death of a neighbour. I’m too old. My most constant endeavours lately have been to solve whatever puzzles surround the tending of my apiary. Composing a monograph on the segregation of the queen bee has been consuming all of my time, certainly not the study of the criminal mind, and especially not the criminal mind in America. No, I must protest. I grant you the grounds for your concern, but I am not your man.”

  Holmes had voiced his reservations with an earnestness befitting the situation, but there was something about his manner—perhaps the way he continued to lean forward at the edge of his seat— not the position of one who was backing away—that suggested otherwise. Mrs. Frevert must have sensed his ambivalence as well. I do believe that had she accepted his words as he spoke them, Holmes might have escaped his involvement in the case; but she did not and, therefore, I knew he could not refuse her.

  “Mr. Holmes,” she said, “I live quite comfortably, and in addition to your usual fees I will be more than happy to pay for your voyage to New York and for hotel accommodations while you are there.”

  “It is not the money, Mrs. Frevert,” he replied. “In truth, I have always wanted to see New York. And yet—” Despite his trailing voice, I began to detect that keen energy in his spirit that always shone in his eyes when he was on the hunt. Mrs. Frevert must have seen it as well.

  “For my brother,” she pleaded.

  “And the principles for which he stood,” Holmes affirmed softly. “Very well, Mrs. Frevert,” he said at last, “if you’re satisfied with an old veteran like myself on unfamiliar terrain, I will accept your offer.”

  “Thank you! Thank you, Mr. Holmes!” She beamed. “When will you begin?”

  Her electric enthusiasm contrasted with my own sense of melancholic exclusion. After all, I had brought her here, and I, too, wanted to see New York. In our younger years, I reminisced, Holmes would have—

  “I’ll need some time to get my things in order,” he was saying, “but I shall remain in touch with Watson and—” A glance at my downcast face caused him to stop. “Why, Watson,” he laughed, “you certainly don’t expect me to work on my own!”

  I was dumbfounded. I was not prepared to go to America however much I might desire it. To be sure, my practice on Queen Anne Street had been dwindling since I myself had begun considering retirement. I had in fact already sent a number of my patients round the corner to Dr. Larraby of Harley Street, a most reliable colleague, but I still had a few remaining to whom I owed some loyalty—and, of course, I was also married.

  “You’re right, Watson. I have no right to ask. Just as Mrs. Frevert should not have asked me. But this is no ordinary case. I share Mrs. Frevert’s concern that some very important people may be involved, and thus I could use your tactful guidance, old fellow—that is, if Mrs. Watson could spare you for some weeks.”

  It was true that my wife had spoken to me of wanting to visit an elderly aunt who lived in Lincolnshire. Perhaps my absence would provide her with the perfect opportunity for such a trip; at the very least, I would encourage her to go. Holmes needed me, after all, and the invitation to America, which Mrs. Frevert had likewise extended to me, seemed very alluring indeed. I therefore offered Holmes tentative affirmation of my decision to join him.

  Her preliminary business completed, Mrs. Frevert joined me in bidding adieu to Holmes and Mrs. Hudson, and together we mounted the dog cart that had reappeared some time earlier. It would return us to Fulworth from where we would retrace our path to Eastbourne and then back to London. The afternoon had grown darker, but I sensed that the American lady’s effervescent appreciation of Holmes’s willingness to help her could brighten the gloomiest of journeys.

  After depositing Mrs. Frevert in her Kensington hotel, I returned wearily to Queen Anne Street. Numerous arrangements needed to be made, not the least of which was pacifying my wife. A journey by rail to the Midlands could not compare with a voyage to New York; but as she detested sea travel, I had little doubt that I would triumph in the end. Would that I could have been so certain about the outcome of the investigation into political assassination upon which we were about to embark—an investigation, I noted sardonically, that was beginning on the Ides of March, the anniversary of the sanguinary murder of Julius Caesar on the floor of the Roman Senate.

  ________

  * Author’s note: For confirmation of Mrs. Frevert’s argument, see Louis Filler, Voice of the Democracy: A Critical Biography of David Graham Phillips (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1978), p. 201, chap. 13. n. 4.

  Three

  FROM QUEEN ANNE TO GRAMERCY PARK

  “When intelligence permeates the masses, then out of the action and reaction of the common and the conflicting interests of an ever-increasing multitude of intelligent men there must begin to issue a democratic self-government.”

  –David Graham Phillips, The Reign of Gilt

  Mrs. Frevert began her return to New York by steamship the following day with the understanding that Holmes and I, since my wife had reluctantly but graciously consented to let me go, would join her across the Atlantic within a fortnight. Two days after Mrs. Frevert’s departure, however, I received a letter by early post announcing a meeting that was destined to alter our plans. It was from Holmes, and it requested that I join him at the Diogenes Club that afternoon at 4:45. Such an invitation could mean but one thing: a rendezvous with Holmes’s older brother Mycroft, a founding member of that institution that prided itself on offering refuge to those unsociable or diffident gentlemen seeking a temporary haven from the vicissitudes of daily life. Such a man indeed was the reclusive Mycroft Holmes, whose involvement with the inner workings of His Majesty’s government was quite well known to me and, of course, to his brother, but to few others. Moreover, since (as I have noted in the tragic affair concerning the Greek interpreter) Mycroft only attended his club from a quarter to five till twenty to eight each evening, that his brother Sherlock and I had been summoned at the very start of his sojourn suggested a meeting of some consequence.

  Unable to secure a cab at my door and with a concern for the time, I made my way on foot that rainy March afternoon to Regent Street, where I hailed a hansom to take me to Pall Mall in which the Diogenes Club was situated. The rain washing down the grey-stuccoed façade of the old building did nothing to render the cold interior any more inviting. Upon hearing my name at the great oaken door of the cavernous entry hall, the hall porter took my umbrella and mackintosh and pointed me in the direction of the Strangers’ Room, the only chamber in the entire building in which talking was permitted. Fortunately, the distance to traverse was but a few yards, for the echoing footfalls I couldn’t avoid making as I trod the black-and-white chequered tiles seemed to announce my presence to every niche of the sepulchral edifice. Only a minute late, I rapped lightly at the door and heard a familiar voice say, “Come in, Watson.” At first glance, Sherlock Holmes and his brother Mycroft, who were both standing by a meagre fire in the grate, seemed as physically different as any two figures could be. Holmes was lean; Mycroft, quite stout. Despite his age, my friend looked wiry, agile; Mycroft, seven years his brother’s senior, appeared lethargic, almost sluggish. It was only when one regarded the heads of the two, the erect and noble bearing, and then the keenness of the steely eyes, that one recognised the adumbrations of mental prowess that united the brothers. The analytical Sherlock himself said of his brother that, had Mycroft not been employed in God-only-knew-how-many machinations for the government, the elder Holmes could easily have outshone
his brother as a mastermind in solving criminal puzzles. My friend, in fact, often consulted him on cases which Mycroft was happy to scrutinise as long as the latter was not required to leave the immediate environs of Whitehall.

  On a small mahogany butler’s table a glass of sherry awaited each of us, but Mycroft’s coldness was not thawed by the wine’s consumption. After a few halfhearted pleasantries, Holmes announced to me the change in our plans.

  “Watson, it would appear that you will have to make the initial part of our trip to New York on your own,” he said.

  The rain pelting the lone window in the room punctuated his statement with finality. The intimidating thought of undertaking so great a journey and so major an investigation by myself was obviously reflected in my open-mouthed expression.

  “Come, come, Watson. I’ll be joining you as soon as I can. But after some brotherly prodding, Mycroft has presented me with information on the Phillips matter that cannot be ignored.”

  I looked at Mycroft who was now impassively leaning an elbow on the marble mantel.

  “Mycroft,” his younger brother cajoled, “be so good as to fill Watson in on the history of some of the principals in this story.”

  “Very well, Sherlock, although I have already told you that I believe the less mentioned of this affair the better.”

  Holmes nodded. “Please, begin,” he said.

  “This Goldsborough chap,” Mycroft said in short bursts that made speaking seem like an exertion he preferred to avoid, “quite an interesting fellow, really. From a good Washington family. Father’s a doctor. He himself was a musician. A violinist. Once played in the Pittsburgh Symphony. Quite a temper, I’m told. Broke his violin over the pate of someone who didn’t like his poetry. For all Goldsborough’s sins, one hopes that he might serve as a model as far as Sherlock and his own fiddle are concerned.”

  Since neither brother was laughing at this thrust, I allowed myself but the most trifling nod. I hoped it would be construed by both parties as indication of my following the conversation but not an endorsement in front of my old friend of his brother’s musical criticism.

  “Goldsborough had a sister,” Mycroft continued. “Anne. Was engaged to be married at the time of Phillips’s murder to an American in the foreign service here in England.”

  “You can be sure, Watson,” Holmes interrupted, “that no-one connected with any government office who works on British soil goes unnoticed by my brother.”

  “If I may,” Mycroft said, removing his arm from the mantel and standing up to his full height like a wounded soldier attempting to overcome his hurt, “the American in question, one William F. Stead, is attached to the American consulate in Nottingham. Unfortunately, both he and his new wife are somewhere on the continent at present—Rome, I believe—on consular business and are not expected to return before some time next week.”

  As the rain began to diminish, the more the darkness outside the window lessened, and the more superfluous seemed the dim glow in the fireplace. Nonetheless, message completed, Mycroft turned to the grate and held his hands before the dying red embers.

  “I do believe, Watson,” Holmes said, “that before we both go running off to America, I really ought to see if this American and his wife who are both so closely tied to one of the principals in the case have anything of interest to tell me.”

  I was forced to concur, of course, much as I didn’t relish travelling to New York to begin the investigation on my own. Still, the charming Mrs. Frevert, who promised to be so very hospitable, would be waiting, and I could begin gathering information for Holmes as I had done so many times before.

  Suddenly Mycroft turned from the fire to face me.

  “Since you seem determined to get yourself implicated in my brother’s rashness, Doctor,” he said, “I feel compelled to tell you what I have already told him. Mrs. Frevert’s point about the seventh bullet? Absolute poppycock. Typical fancy of an overactive female mind. I can understand my quixotic brother falling for that kind of nonsense, Dr. Watson, but I was counting on you, a man of science, to be more sensible. I had hoped of talking you both out of this fool’s errand, but I see now that I was sadly mistaken.”

  Having finished speaking, Mycroft turned his back on us and resumed facing the grate, a position that Holmes and I rightly took as his announcement that our meeting had ended.

  At least, by the time we left the Diogenes Club, the rain had disappeared.

  Thanks to Mycroft’s arranging my travelling papers, the preparations for the trip went smoothly. Within two days, I had been able to send my wife on a month’s visit to Lincolnshire, refer all of my patients to Harley Street, provide the appropriate instructions to our maid Polly, and pack the various clothes and necessities I thought I would be needing on such an adventure, including my old Eley’s No. 2. “Be sure to carry a pistol, Watson,” Holmes had warned me. “You’re going to America, after all.”

  Despite the distance of my impending voyage, our leave-taking was hardly a sentimental affair. Holmes gave me my instructions: to gather information on as many of the personages involved with Phillips’s death as I could before his own arrival, which he estimated at about a week after mine. Just before my departure, however, he did offer me some final thoughts on the enormity of the crime we were about to scrutinise, and these he pronounced with the greatest degree of seriousness. “Murder is a monstrous act, Watson,” he said, “but political assassination is more heinous still; in a political murder, not only is the victim destroyed, but also the aspirations of those whose ideals and dreams he champions.”

  With those words still reverberating in my mind, I found myself about to travel south for the second time in less than a week. On this occasion, however, my ultimate destination was not the southern coast of England but rather the eastern seaboard of the United States of America, a prospect that filled me with both excitement and trepidation.

  The boat-train for Southampton left from Waterloo. This, the largest railway nexus in London, was in the throes of reconstruction. Over the first six platforms, workmen were toiling on a mammoth glass and steel roof that allowed a hazy morning sunshine to flood the hall.

  Although many compartments in the first-class carriages were crowded, mine was occupied by only a solitary traveller, an ageing, bespectacled vicar whose balding head was fringed with grey. Reading a well-fingered Bible, he looked up as the warning whistle sounded, but returned to his text once the train had lurched into the start of its eighty-mile journey.

  Rattling past shops and warehouses and later suburban gardens filled with crocuses and daffodils, we soon left London. Indeed, even before the slate-roofed houses of the city had given way to the thatched cottages of the countryside, the vicar had propped his reading glasses on his forehead, closed his eyes, and allowed the soporific swaying of our coach to lull him into a snore-filled sleep. I, however, entertaining images of New York City and the intrigue of a murder case rather than the fantasies conjured in some far-off dream-world, was too filled with anticipation to enjoy a similar repose.

  We streaked past woods of fir that, as the train rumbled through the grassy knolls and dells of northwestern Surrey, were interrupted by clusters of spruce and birch and oak. Then, after skirting ice-blue lakes and reflecting pools with the Hog’s Back in the distance, we started the climb through the tree-shrouded embankments beyond Basingstoke to our highest elevation.

  Having completed my medical training at the large military hospital in the nearby village of Netley, I was familiar with much of the terrain. Consequently, after racing through Winchester and Eastleigh at seventy miles per hour, I recognised the downward sweep towards the coast. Soon we were traversing the distinctive chalk cuttings of the Hampshire Downs and then, parallel to the Itchen, approaching the fields of the coastal plains and the cottages at the outskirts of Southampton. Finally, at no more than a walking pace, we passed the imposing South Western Railway Hotel and crossed Canute Road. Only at the whining full stop of the carriages
did the vicar, snorting gruffly, awaken.

  Eager to disembark, however, I responded with only the quickest of smiles and, collecting my bowler, swung my scarf round my neck, nodded farewell to my still disoriented travelling companion who was rubbing the remains of sleep from his eyes, and stepped onto the platform. Trunk in tow thanks to the help of a porter, I made my way across the recently opened White Star Dock (renamed Ocean Dock in 1919) to R.M.S. Majesty looming in her berth just beyond the railway terminus.

  Inside, I could feel my heart pumping excitedly; outside, against my raw cheeks, I could feel the cool March breeze blowing off the Solent. Above me in a sky turned grey towered the steamer’s three black funnels, great clouds of dark smoke wafting heavenward from each. Blue Peter, the azure flag with a white square at its centre, hung from a forward yardarm indicating, so the porter advised, that the ship was ready for departure.

  Within minutes after I had climbed the gangplank and made my way to C Deck, the tugboats took their positions, the ropes were thrown free, the siren wailed its final warning, and we began to move. The deck shuddered briefly; then, almost imperceptibly at first, the gap between ship and pier began to widen, and Majesty inched towards the entrance to the docks. At no-one in particular, I waved my bowler, joining in the camaraderie among the friends and relatives of other travellers standing on the quay blown about by the wind as they saw their loved ones off to America.