James was disappointed—or perhaps relieved, it was hard for him to record his emotions at the moment—when “Sigerson” was introduced to Mr. Vollebæk, and the two men clicked heels and bowed at the same moment, but exchanged greetings in English.
The early courses were passed in easy conversation. John and Clara Hay were experts at involving everyone at a table in conversation. The only element even approaching politics was the Vollebæks’ united enthusiasm at the pageantry of Grover Cleveland’s inauguration a few weeks earlier and their eagerness to look in on the Columbian Exposition—Chicago’s World’s Fair—in May before they returned to Norway for the summer. Miss Vollebæk appeared to have given her attention only to the many inaugural balls around the city that night and weekend of March 4.
“Oda is of the age now where every ball is an opportunity to meet eligible young men,” said Mrs. Linnea Vollebæk in her soft Scandinavian accent.
“Mother!” cried Oda, blushing fiercely.
“Well, it is true, is it not?” laughed her father. Emissary Vollebæk dabbed at his lips with the napkin. “My baby girl will soon be finding herself a husband.”
While Oda blushed more deeply, Clara Hay smiled and said, “Why, we have two of America’s most eligible bachelors at this table, Your Excellency.”
When Mr. Vollebæk raised an eyebrow in polite interrogation, Clara went on, “Mr. James and Mr. King have long been considered prize catches for the young lady who finally lands one or the other.”
“Is this true, Mr. James? Mr. King?” asked Mrs. Vollebæk in a tone that actually sounded interested. “Are you both still eligible bachelors?”
Henry James hated this. He always hated it when he was teased about this at someone’s table. He’d been irritated by it for decades, but at least he knew his response by heart.
Smiling softly and bowing his head ever so slightly as if he were being knighted by the Queen, James said, “Alas! I am on the cusp of turning fifty years old and at that age an old bachelor may no longer be called ‘eligible’, but, rather, ‘confirmed’. It appears all but certain now that the only marriage I shall enjoy in this lifetime is to my art.” When he saw a flicker of confusion in Mrs. Vollebæk’s lovely eyes, he added, “To my writing, that is, since I am only a poor scribbler and currently a playwright.”
“Mr. James, as I believe I mentioned to you, my darlings,” said Mr. Vollebæk, “is one of the greatest of all living American writers.”
James bowed his head again in response to the compliment, but smiled and said, “Based on sales of my work in recent years, my publisher—alas again, even my readership—might well disagree with you, sir. But I thank you for the generous words.”
“And how about you, Mr. King?” teased Mrs. Linnea Vollebæk as she leaned forward over the table the better to see the geologist/explorer. The emissary’s wife was still young enough to be attractive when she teased in a coquettish manner. “Are you wed to your profession?”
Clarence King raised his glass of wine to the lady. “Not in the least, ma’am. My problem is that I keep being introduced to the loveliest young ladies in New York, Boston, and Washington—including, of course, now to your truly beautiful daughter Oda . . .”
King raised the glass higher and then drank from it while poor Miss Vollebæk began blushing wildly again. “But, as our friend Harry puts it so well, alas!” continued King. “All of America’s and England’s . . . and Norway’s . . . finest beauties are so wonderfully pale, while some strange inclination in my make-up has made the dusky ladies of the South Seas the avatar and pinnacle of feminine beauty for me.”
John Hay began to laugh at this and most people at the table joined him.
“Have you been to the South Seas, Mr. King?” asked Mrs. Vollebæk.
“Alas, no,” said King with a mischievous smile. He was obviously enjoying tweaking at James for using the lady-poet’s word. “But Henry Adams and John La Farge spent a couple of years traveling from island to island in the Pacific, sending me long letters describing the beauty of the dusky ladies there.” He finished his wine. “Darn their mangy hides.”
John Hay nodded to a servant, and everyone’s wine glasses were refilled in an instant. “Clarence has been to Cuba and the Caribbean,” said Hay.
“And to Mexico and Central America and points south of there, but . . . alas . . .” He bowed his head in a caricature of defeat.
“To Mr. King finding his dusky beauty,” said little Oda as she raised her refilled glass, and after everyone laughed long and heartily at the young lady’s pluck, they toasted King.
The primary courses were arriving. James found himself agitated with impatience and his appetite depressed as he waited for the inevitable unveiling of “Jan Sigerson” as a humbug. He also realized that he was motioning for his own wine glass to be refilled more than was his usual practice at dinner.
Suddenly the focus turned to Clarence King again, and the men—and even Clara Hay—were taking turns trying to explain the 1872 Great Diamond Hoax (and King’s role as hero in it) to the female Vollebæks. Mr. Vollebæk required no tutorial since it turned out that his uncle had been in New York at the time and had been eager to be an investor in the “miraculous diamond mountain” somewhere in western Colorado. King’s first role had been in finding the mesa-shaped mountain and proving that it was all a hoax; the diamonds, rubies, and other gems found there were real enough, at least $30,000 worth, but they were low grade and purchased in London by the men “seeding” them, just as others had blasted real gold into played-out gold mines in Cripple Creek and elsewhere, to make millions from their $30,000 investment. Clarence King had saved Helmer Halvorsen Vollebæk’s Uncle Halvard—and scores of American millionaires and eager would-be investors—from losing their trousers in the hoax.
“But had not Mr. Tiffany of New York certified that the diamonds and other gems found on the mountain were worth huge fortunes?” asked Mrs. Vollebæk.
“He did indeed,” said King. “But it turned out—as I knew even while Mr. Tiffany was certifying them being worth millions—that the jeweler and his associates had no real experience with uncut diamonds.”
“When you found the mountain, Mr. King,” queried Miss Vollebæk in her delightfully accented tones, “what . . . how do Americans say it? . . . what ‘tipped you off’ that the stones had been planted there?”
King laughed so richly that others joined in for no reason. “My dear young lady,” he said at last. “We arrived at the so-called Diamond Peak on an early November day so cold that our whiskey had frozen in its bottles. We got off our mules on a bare, iron-stained strand of coarse sandstone rock about a hundred feet long and we could not put our boot soles down without dislodging a diamond or other precious stone.
“At first we ran around like children at Christmas, seeking out gems and diamonds as fast as we could, but then my scientific training took over. I noticed that we never found the valuable stones at any place where the earth had not been disturbed. We were finding rubies in anthills, for instance, but only in anthills that had two holes—one where the ants came and went and another, smaller break in the crust on the opposite side. I immediately understood that someone had been pushing the rubies in with a stick.
“Diamonds, rubies, and other valuable gems are never found together in such profusion, Miss Vollebæk. And to prove this to the men in San Francisco and elsewhere who were so eager to buy shares in the fraudulent mining corporation the hoaxers had set up, my friends and I spent two days digging a trench three feet long and ten feet deep down in a gulch where—if this was truly a ‘Diamond Peak’—hundreds of diamonds should have been found beneath the surface. Instead . . . nothing.”
John Hay held his glass of wine in both hands. “And so young Clarence King was awake three more days and nights hurrying back to San Francisco not only to prevent the investors from losing millions, but to stop speculators from scoring big by selling short on the stock.” Hay lifted the glass. “To an honest man!”
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“To an honest man!” said everyone save for Clarence King and lifted their glasses to him. King’s blush was visible even through his deep tan.
“Now,” said His Excellency Emissary Vollebæk when the main course had been served and a temporary hush had fallen over the table, “I would beg everyone’s apology for my rudeness, but I would like to address my fellow countryman, Mr. Sigerson, in our native language for a moment or two.”
“By all means!” cried Hay.
Henry James set his own glass down and found that his hand was shaking.
* * *
Mr. Vollebæk leaned across the table toward Sigerson/Holmes and unleashed a rapid-fire volley of rather melodious Norwegian. “Sigerson” looked as if he were about to speak but then said nothing. Vollebæk followed up with another paragraph.
Sherlock Holmes still remained silent.
James realized that his heart was pounding as if it wanted to escape his ribcage. In seconds it would be revealed that the man he had brought into the family circle of his dear friends the Hays was an imposter and it would be equally obvious that James had known that “Sigerson” was an imposter.
Or would it be so obvious? James looked at the suspended moment as if it were a scene in one of his novels or short stories. How should “his character” respond to the coming revelation—a hoax much more damaging to those at this table than King’s long-ago Great Diamond Hoax? James could feign the shock and surprise and anger that the others here—especially John and Clara—would actually be feeling.
But then Holmes might very well reveal everything—James’s complicity from the beginning—and James would have to choose between calling the uncloaked “Sigerson” a liar . . . pistols at dawn at 20 paces! . . . or simply apologizing profusely with whatever dignity might remain, announce that he would leave Washington that very evening, and leave the table after bowing in apology to everyone there.
James felt sick to his stomach. He was sure that Holmes would explain their ruse in terms of solving the “mystery” of Clover Adams’s suicide and he knew that this would send another seismic tremor of shock through the Hays. (Which would be nothing to the level of shock and betrayal that Henry Adams would feel next week when he arrived home to hear this terrible story from his neighbors and intimate friends. Henry James had not forgotten that Clover’s death was so traumatic to Adams that his historian friend had never once mentioned the day or details of her death in the more than seven years since the event.)
James felt actively dizzy as the nausea and excess of wine mixed to make the table and all the silent, waiting people around it seem to rise and fall before him. He set both his palms flat against the white linen, pressing down hard to try to stop the vertigo.
Then Holmes/Sigerson began to speak.
* * *
It sounded like Norwegian to James. And while Holmes started speaking slowly, the trickle of what-sounded-like-Norwegian soon turned into a torrent. When Holmes paused, Mr. Vollebæk asked a fast question in even-more-rapid Norwegian and “Sigerson” replied at the same rate—a long few paragraphs in a language that Henry James refused to believe that Sherlock Holmes had picked up in a quick study session or two.
James looked at the two Vollebæk women, but mother and daughter’s faces showed interest, not astonishment or disbelief of any sort.
Emissary Vollebæk apparently posed another question. The Norwegian explorer—Sherlock Holmes—laughed and responded for half a moment in the quick, fluid language of Jan Sigerson’s supposed homeland.
As a writer, Henry James often—more frequently than not if truth be told—felt somewhat detached from events and conversations occurring around him. Even as he worked at being a man on whom nothing was lost, the world often seemed more like a template for fiction than something that should be indulged in for its own sake. But this Sunday evening in March, James felt as if he had completely floated out of his body and were hovering over the table, a ghost watching the still-living chatting in an indecipherable language. Or perhaps like a spectator at a play—the way he felt while watching the touring acting groups in England rehearse or actually act the lines from his first effort, The American. Detached, critical, unconvinced, but strangely enchanted.
Except that now he felt convinced and horrified.
Emissary Helmer Halvorsen Vollebæk turned to the Hays, King, and James, and said, “Again I apologize for the rudeness of us speaking our native language and thank you for your patience and kind indulgence. But speaking to Mr. Sigerson has convinced me of something I only guessed at before hearing him speak . . . things are not completely as has been represented regarding Mr. Sigerson.”
James felt his breath catch in his throat. So Holmes’s attempt at Norwegian had been deficient. How could it not be? An Englishman can’t fool a Norwegian into believing that he, the Englishman, is a native Scandinavian. James had simply been disoriented by Holmes’s whole-throated attempt.
“ . . . we had read and heard that Mr. Sigerson was a Norwegian explorer,” continued Helmer Halvorsen Vollebæk in an apologetic tone. “But after speaking with him for only these few minutes, my family and I realize that Mr. Sigerson is almost certainly the preeminent explorer from our nation at the present time. The London and American papers spoke of Mr. Sigerson’s . . . ah . . . penetration of certain mountain ranges in India, but we had no idea of how unique and spectacular his explorations into Tibet in the past two years truly were. Also, Mr. Sigerson is from Løiten, my own tiny hometown in Hedmark County—fewer than one hundred people live there—and Mr. Sigerson grew up knowing my cousin Knut who still lives there.”
Holmes said something brief in Norwegian.
Mr. Vollebæk laughed. “Oh, yes, and my Aunt Oda after whom our daughter was named.”
“Incredible coincidence,” said John Hay.
“I always say, ‘It’s a small world’,” said Clara Hay.
James felt that he might be having a heart attack. His chest felt so constricted that he had to will himself to breathe in and out.
“I asked Mr. Sigerson about his surname,” continued Vollebæk, “since ‘Sigerson’ is not a common Norwegian name—or at least not a common spelling of it. As I expected and as Mr. Sigerson explained, his family name had been Sigurdson but his grandfather had married a German lady—they had lived a few years in England—and the spelling had been changed for convenience’ sake during that time and never changed back.”
Henry James’s mind was churning. Obviously “Jan Sigerson”—or “Sigurdson”—was not the English consulting detective impersonating a Norwegian explorer; rather, Jan Sigerson/Sigurdson was a real Norwegian, a real explorer, who—for reasons probably not sane—was pretending to be the most likely fictional English personage known as Sherlock Holmes.
Then to whom was I introduced three years ago at Mrs. O’Connor’s benefit party with Lady Wolseley?
The most logical guess—the only logical guess—was that it was Jan Sigerson playing out his fantasy of being the written-about detective.
But the Sherlock Holmes stories had not yet begun being published in The Strand in 1889.
True, thought James, but he was vaguely aware of Gosse or one of his Holmes-fanatical friends mentioning that the first Holmes novel or novella (he was not sure which)—A Study in Scarlet—had appeared as early as 1887, to be followed by—what was the title?—The Sign of the Five? The Sign of the Four?—something like that—in Lippincott’s Magazine 1889. Gosse had said that the book version had come out the following year. Only after these initial forays into print did Sherlock Holmes begin to appear regularly in The Strand Magazine. A demented Jan Sigurdson/Sigerson would have heard much talk, both in England and on the Continent, about the London detective.
James later vaguely remembered something baked being brought for dessert, but whether he’d eaten a slice of cake or pie or baked Alaska, he later had no memory.
* * *
The men gathered in John Hay’s impressive study. Clara Hay and the
Vollebæk ladies had conferred and decided that they were not that interested in images of cold, high places. Hay, King, Sigerson, Emissary Vollebæk, and James were served their brandy in the study. Servants had already set up a screen and Sigerson’s rented magic-lantern projector—all polished wood and brass—and had fueled and primed it. The men took their seats in various deep leather chairs or couches. James was so rattled that he drank off half his snifter of brandy without agitating it or inhaling the fumes in preparation.
The silent servants drew the blinds and let themselves out. Sigerson ignited the projector lamp and a rectangle of bright light illuminated the square screen that covered one wall of books.
“I only brought a few of my glass slides,” said Jan Sigerson. “There are few crimes more heinous than boring one’s audience.”
“Bored by images of the Himalayan peaks and Tibet?!” cried Clarence King. “I hardly think so!”
“Clara will be sorry she missed this and may ask for an encore,” said Hay.
“I will be most happy to provide it,” said Sigerson with a short, quick, northern-European bow. “This first image is of our approach to the Himalayas in northern Sikkim.” An image filled the screen.
“Dear God,” cried King. “Are those tiny specks beyond the moraine there men and mules?”
“Men and mules and Tibetan ponies, yes,” said Sigerson.
“It gives one perspective on how truly astounding the Himalayan Range is,” said Mr. Vollebæk.
“They make the Alps and the American Rocky Mountains look like molehills,” said King.
“Here is the Jelep La that we mentioned earlier,” said Sigerson. “La, of course, means ‘pass’ in Tibetan.” An image changed to a line of small ponies and heavily bundled men—no more than two dozen—crossing boulder-fields amidst near vertical snow slopes on either side. “It seemed formidable at the time but was no more than fourteen thousand feet at its summit.”