The Seventh Bullet

by Daniel D Victor

  Because Holmes was not due in New York this soon, I was especially delighted with my perspicacity; in fact, by the time Rollins, who had been waiting for us at the pier, deposited me back at the hotel, I was in fine fettle. Not even the delay caused by a suspicious puncture, a nail driven into the side of one of our tyres, dampened my spirits. To be sure, as we left the docks, I turned to look behind us to see if we were still being followed, but there were too many headlamps to tell with any certainty. Perhaps I should have been worried, but in reality I was quite pleased with myself for having outwitted my old friend. Whenever I recalled how he had so callously deceived me almost two decades before by re-appearing in the guise of an ageing bookseller when the entire world thought he had drowned three years earlier at the falls of Reichen-bach, I grew angry, and this anger fuelled my desire to pierce the duplicity of his innumerable disguises.

  I looked behind me in vain, however, upon entering the hotel. I even traversed the grand lobby several times to ascertain if the mysterious bearded man was already inside. At last, seeing no sign of him, I was about to enter the lift when a young man in hotel livery marched past me shouting “Dr. Watson! Dr. John Watson! Message for Dr. John Watson!”

  I turned round at the first call of my name and in the process did indeed catch a glimpse of the bearded man darting past the potted palms and into Peacock Alley. Obviously, I should have been more vexed by this shadow, but there was that familiarity about his figure that put me at my ease. Ordinarily, I might have longed for my revolver that was upstairs in my trunk, but I was too pleased with my own detecting to be concerned: the height, the agility, the disguise created by the hirsute mask, and an absent consulting detective. Not this time, Mr. Sherlock Holmes.

  “Dr. John Watson!” the boy repeated.

  Lost in my momentary reverie, I had forgotten to claim my message. Still pleased with my deductive powers, I picked the paper off the silver tray the lad was carrying, tipped him, and began to read.

  Watson [the dispatch ran],

  I await you upstairs in our rooms. Try to avoid bringing along that wretched man with the false beard.

  It was signed:

  Sherlock Holmes.

  ________

  * Author’s note: Watson is, of course, referring to the first Waldorf-Astoria Hotel whose demolition began on October 1, 1929, in order to free the site for the construction of the Empire State Building. In yet another of the many ironies connected with this narrative, the engine of Lieutenant Colonel William Smith’s airplane, which had crashed into the Empire state Building on a foggy morning in the summer of 1945, careened across Thirty-third Street and into the art studio of Henry Hering, a sculptor then at work on a bust of David Graham Phillips. Not only was the sculpture destroyed, but so were almost all of the existing photographs of Phillips from which Hering was working.

  Six

  THE DIARY

  “To think is to aspire, to think is to long for immortality, for infinite development upward and ever upward—for eternal life, eternal happiness, eternal love. These are the dreams of thought. And the tragedy is that they are but dreams.”

  —David Graham Phillips, The Mother-Light

  No sooner had I stepped from the lift than I heard the familiar—albeit muffled—strains of a violin filling the hall. Despite my concern over the vexing identity of the man who had been following me—or perhaps because of it—never did I find that music so comforting, for I could tell in a moment by the distinctive bowing that Sherlock Holmes had indeed arrived from England.

  “Holmes!” I cried in a burst of enthusiasm as I fairly bounded into the sitting room.

  Standing before me in that familiar mouse-coloured dressing gown, violin at his chin, he nodded in reply but continued his fiddling until he reached what I had come to recognise as a crescendo. With a dramatic weaving and twisting that were as much a part of his musical repertoire as Paganini, he finished his performance with a spirited but—at least to my untrained ear— cacophonous flourish.

  “Watson, my old friend,” he said when he had concluded. “Pray forgive me for not greeting you sooner; but, with all due respect, I had to complete my homage to Sarasate. Ever since his death, his music has contained an even greater poignancy.”

  “But not, I think, as clearly attacked as I’ve heard before,” I ventured.

  “Bravo, Watson!” he exclaimed with his eyes twinkling. “I believe you’re developing a bent for music. This instrument is most inferior in tone. I borrowed it from a busker near the Baker Street Underground Station. I wished to avoid taking my own to sea. A Stradivarius and salt water don’t mix.”

  We both chuckled for a moment until I recalled his note and the stranger who had been following me. “The bearded man,” I reminded him. “I thought he was you.”

  “Really, Watson. Now it is your turn to disappoint me. When did you ever know me to wear such a preposterous beard? Why, this fellow’s hair is black, and his whiskers are a grizzled brown.”

  “Well, then, Holmes, how did you know he was following me?”

  “Elementary, really. When I arrived not more than thirty minutes ago, I overheard our bearded friend asking the hall porter what your room number was.”

  “The puncture,” I now remembered. “It provided him a significant head start.”

  “I imagined something of the sort,” Holmes observed. “At any rate, as the hall porter replied that you were out, the bearded chap said that he would wait in the lobby and then proceeded to ensconce himself at the turning of a corridor. He could see who entered the hotel, but he himself could not be seen. Or so he thought. Since it was you he had enquired about in the first place, I merely assumed that you were to be the focus of his watch. Was I mistaken?”

  “N-no,” I spluttered, “but why did you not approach him or wait to warn me?”

  “Really, Watson. The melodramatic note, I confess, was a product of my sense of the theatrical. But could any harm come to you in the crowded foyer of the most famous hotel in America? I’m sure our lookout will surface again, and judging from the carelessness of his positioning, I believe that we will encounter little difficulty in locating him when the time comes.”

  As he spoke, he walked to the sideboard and the bottle of wine that stood upon it. “Sherry?” he offered.

  “To celebrate our reunion,” I said. Accepting a glass, I sampled the slightly sweet liquid.

  “A bit lighter than the usual, eh, Watson?” he said. “Actually, it’s amontillado. Think of it as a tribute to Mr. Poe. We’re in his territory now, and whatever I might think of M. Dupin’s ratiocinations, I cannot fault his creator’s taste in sherry.”

  “Speaking of ‘his territory,” I said, “what are you doing here? Aren’t you still supposed to be in England?”

  “Actually, old fellow, I ran into a bit of luck. Do take a seat and let me tell you what I have learned.”

  We sat down in the velvet chairs near a low round table in the centre of the room. An aura of discomfort often attached itself to Holmes when he found himself unaccompanied by his familiar books, friendly chemicals, and artful clutter. On this occasion, however, as if we were both in our old sitting room again, Holmes removed a briarwood pipe from a pocket of his dressing gown, filled the bowl with dark shag, lit the tobacco, and inhaled deeply. A moment later he emitted a great cloud of blue smoke that quickly filled the chamber with its familiar pungent aroma. Indeed, were we to shut our eyes, we might almost have been in the soft, well-worn armchairs of Baker Street once more.

  “To begin with, Watson,” Holmes said, “Goldsborough’s sister and her husband returned to England the day after you sailed. They were a week early. It seems the official he had gone to visit in Rome was no longer there. Thanks to Mycroft, we were able to complete our interview in London last Saturday night, sparing me the trip to Nottingham. After arranging for a fellow apiarist to look after my bees, I left Southampton on Sunday; and, behold, I stand before you seven days later in New York City. The wonders
of modern travel!”

  “Well done, Holmes! And has what the Americans told you elucidated the case before us?”

  “Let us remember, Watson, what we learned from brother Mycroft about Mr. Fitzhugh Coyle Goldsborough. Goldsborough, you will recall, had a great love for music in general and for the violin in particular.”

  I nodded in agreement.

  “He studied with Josef Kasper in Washington for four years and with Jakob Gruen in Vienna for three. He played with orchestras in Pittsburgh and Georgetown.”

  “But what does any of that have to do with Phillips’s murder?” I asked.

  “Why, Watson, you surprise me! What better way to pursue a motive than to understand the psyche of the putative killer? Goldsborough spent two years studying at Harvard College, for example. Does it seem reasonable for a man of the arts as well as the recipient of at least two years of university education to be so compelled by a fictional work of literature that it would lead him to murder?”

  “That ridiculous vampire business again, eh, Holmes?”

  “Indeed, but I am getting ahead of my story.” Holmes pulled on his pipe and then crossed his right leg over his left. Looking quite comfortable, he seemed prepared to start from the beginning; in the interim I took the opportunity to finish my glass of sherry.

  “Goldsborough’s sister, Anne,” Holmes resumed, “married William F. Stead, American Consul at Nottingham, on the twenty-fifth of February of last year at their family home in Maryland. Originally the marriage was to have taken place in a large church, but naturally the tragic ordeal of the previous month rendered such an ostentatious display inappropriate.”

  “Quite,” I agreed. “The Goldsboroughs must then be a sensible family.”

  “Oh, yes, Watson. The father is a successful member of your own profession, an occupation that, as you know, is most remunerative on this side of the Atlantic. The family has wealthy connections in Maryland and Washington and proudly claims relationship to Admiral Goldsborough of the American Civil War.”

  I nodded approvingly. How, I wondered, could a family of such good breeding and military background spawn so insane a scion?

  “Actually,” Holmes said, “Mrs. Stead spoke very little to me. As she wanted to forget the entire wretched event, it was her husband who did most of the talking. Mr. Stead seems to have faith in our ability to restore the good name of his wife’s family.”

  “Most admirable,” I observed.

  “In his diary—about which I’ll have more to say later— Goldsborough wrote in the middle of October 1910, that he would be earning fifty dollars a week within ten weeks. Which means that he expected to be gaining a substantial income some time in early January of 1911. At that time he was living in a rented room at the rear of the top floor in the Rand School of Social Science on East Nineteenth Street at three dollars a week.”

  “Three dollars a week? A young man from so wealthy a family? Outrageous!”

  “Stead explained how ‘Goldie,’ as he was known to his friends, had ventured out on his own to build his career. And without much success, I might add. For despite his musical accomplishments, Goldsborough was what the Americans term ‘seedy.’ He was, in fact, quite impoverished.”

  “But three dollars a week, Holmes—that’s less than a pound!”

  “It gets worse, old fellow. The Rand School is the home of Socialists.”

  “Outrageous!” I said again. To imagine that a person from such a family could contemplate anarchy when his own family had contributed so much to society seemed beyond comprehension.

  “Be at ease on that point, Watson. Goldsborough was no Socialist. All the residents of the Rand School agreed on that.”

  “Then why move in with those wretched creatures?”

  “Because, Watson, the Rand School faces the National Arts Club in which Phillips and his sister lived.”

  “Why, that is the very place where I dined Thursday last with Mrs. Frevert and the others. Little did I realise then that I was socialising across the road from the killer’s rooms.”

  Holmes smiled at my surprise.

  “But surely,” I thought aloud, “Goldsborough must have been on Phillips’s trail from the start if he went to the trouble to move in so close by.”

  “Perhaps. But within the month of Goldsborough’s move to New York, the poorly dressed fellow was seen dining in a respectable Fifth Avenue restaurant with a well-dressed woman. Not much earlier, he also claimed that he was being followed. He even complained to the mayor, suggesting that the mayor’s secretary had donned old clothing to disguise himself. It’s all in his diary, as you shall see. Nothing came of these allegations, of course.”

  “But, Holmes, what does it all mean?” I asked.

  “Possibly nothing, Watson. You know how I balk at speculation. But certainly the opportunity presented itself for Goldsborough to be influenced by someone who could attract him with money. We don’t know for sure what he was supposed to do to earn it in January of last year, but we certainly know what he accomplished.”

  “But doesn’t that still leave him as our assassin?”

  “Perhaps. However, neither does it rule out a conspiracy, a hypothesis most consistent with Mrs. Frevert’s suspicions. But come, Watson! You must see what I have procured from Mr. Stead’s generosity.”

  Holmes walked quickly to the armoire, a majestic structure with a boiserie of floral design. From within it, he removed a small, mauve-coloured Gladstone bag. “The original photographs were not available,” he explained, putting the Gladstone on the round table before us as I barely managed to move the sherry glasses out of danger, “but Stead furnished me copies of these reproductions of Goldsborough’s diary. Given the point of view I expect the local police to have, I’m afraid that these are all that we will have access to.”

  Opening the bag, Sherlock Holmes produced a handful of photographs, each the size of a sheet of foolscap, the uppermost dominated by a bright rectangular image flecked with what appeared to be random inkblots and a handwriting of varying characteristics.

  “Read,” Holmes suggested. “Then we will discuss your conclusions.”

  I picked up the first sheet and examined it more closely. As I would discover in the case of each photograph, the bright rectangle was in fact a reproduction of a different page from Goldsborough’s diary. The entries were spattered with ink, and the hand of the writer was shaky, rendering the script most difficult to comprehend, a condition also complicating the task of identifying the author. Unlike Holmes, I had scant knowledge of graphology, but even I knew that one could determine very little from the photograph of a word that had been drowned in a blot of ink. Nonetheless, I proceeded to decipher the entry before me, which I here reproduce exactly as it was written:

  “June 11, 1910. Certain happenings recently led me to think it advisable to jot down data. I believe David Graham Phillips is trying to fake a case against me or do me serious bodily harm or both. Yesterday afternoon ... I was sitting in my window, when I noticed a pretty-looking woman seated in a second-storey window of the Art Society Building. This woman was about twenty years old or a little more, I should say, and had a large hat with flowers around it. She smiled over at me in a pointed manner, and on first catching sight of me lifted her hand and waved it. I could not decide whether this was an involuntary motion of interest on seeing me or was meant as a sign of encouragement for me to start flirting with her. I got rather the latter impression.”

  “Who can this mysterious woman be?” I asked. “Surely not Mrs. Frevert. This woman is much too young.”

  “Pray continue,” Holmes instructed.

  “A man was half in sight near the window. I think it was David Graham Phillips, but I am by no means sure. I looked steadily at this woman for a few moments, then glanced away just as the man came to the window to look out. I then kept my eyes away from that window as much as I could. The woman, however, continued for perhaps half an hour or three-quarters, enough, longer to sit there and t
ake evident notice of me.

  It occurred to me that when I flirted with her a claim of my having acted in an annoying way might have been circulated to my detriment. I must be careful of what plans this blackguard may have to injure me. The theory that he is seeking to do so rests on stronger evidence than the mere incident just described.”

  “This young woman,” I persisted, “who can she be?”

  “As usual, Watson, you seem to be taking an extraordinary interest in the fairer sex.”

  “An unjust charge, Holmes,” I countered, informing him of Mrs. Frevert’s possessive jealousy that I had learned about from her husband. “Hell has no fury like a woman scorned,” I reminded him.

  “Ever the romantic,” Holmes quipped, “although I must confess that seldom have I heard you attribute to a woman the desire to murder. And yet you raise a significant point.”

  He was right, of course, and I thought he might wish to continue this discussion, but instead he motioned towards the photograph of the diary page and urged me to proceed.

  “A few nights ago (I will try to get the exact date later) I found myself shadowed by a man who by fixed staring at me in an impertinent manner on the street and rattling the spoon in his coffee cup when he came in a tenement restaurant evidently wished to arouse me into beligerency [sic].

  I turned back on this man two or three times, always apparently after he had left my trail, but caught him each time. Now, detectives would probably have sought to irritate me to provoke a scrap. This man’s appearance was as follows. Slightly below medium height, pale projecting lower jaw, as of someone worried or careworn, face rather long, eyes brown, rather dark, and somehow a little small for a face so round. They were somewhat sunken. It looked like a good family likeness to Mr. Adamson, secretary to Mayor Gaynor, but his clothing was worn and second-hand looking. He looked distinctly downcast when he noticed my turning back on him the last time, just as if he realised all his troubles had been in vain. I give these facts for what they may be worth.”