“So you get the King of Scandinavia to do your bidding with a cable?” said Clarence King, who’d decided to sit down in the chair Holmes had just vacated. “Including having one of the most respected diplomats in Washington and his wife and daughter lie to two people so respected as John Hay and Henry James? And you expect us to believe that?”
“Believe what you will,” Holmes said carelessly. He’d crossed to a window and opened the slats of the louvered wooden shutters and was peering out onto the street.
“The dialogue in Norwegian . . .” said Henry James.
“Was far from fluent on my part,” said Holmes, half turning from the window so that his rather distinctive silhouette was visible against the light. “My greatest fear was that the daughter, young Oda—despite being coached by her father to go along with the fiction that I was Norwegian—would blurt out a criticism of my pathetic Norwegian, most of which I picked up while spending time with His Majesty King Oskar the Second in London for two months in eighteen eighty-eight, and again for nine weeks in the winter-spring of eighteen ninety-one, shortly before my ‘death’ at Reichenbach Falls.”
“You must have handled a very delicate domestic problem,” King said sarcastically, “to put European royalty so deeply into your debt.”
“I did, actually,” said Holmes. “But that is not the reason that His Majesty the King of Scandinavia ordered his emissary to lie during a social occasion. Rather, King Oskar the Second well knows the reasons both for my mission to Tibet and my mission here in Washington. He knows the enemies we face . . . and they are his enemies as well, gentlemen. Should these people have their way, His Majesty is on a long and distinguished list of targets who will be murdered in the next few months or years.”
Clarence King sighed and steepled his fingers. “ ‘These people . . . ’ Now we have the conspiracy talk and the paranoia. Are there no traits of madness you will not trot out for our distraction, Mr. . . . Whoever You Are?”
Holmes laughed almost boyishly at King’s comment. Without answering, he fished in his inside jacket pocket and removed what looked to be four photographs. Setting two of them back in his pocket, he handed the first of the two remaining photos to King. “Would you hand that around to Mr. Hay and Mr. James? Thank you.”
James waited. When the photograph finally came his way he saw that it was almost certainly blown up in size since the subject was in two-thirds profile against a grainy and blurry background of a crowded street. The photo was of a dark-complexioned man with black hair brushed straight back, a carefully trimmed mustache that looked rather military in origin, and fiercely angled eyebrows. The man looked to be in his late forties or early fifties, but only a tendency toward jowls betrayed his age.
“That is Colonel Sebastian Moran, a veteran of the Indian Army and formerly of the First Bangalore Pioneers. He was mentioned in various dispatches during the different Afghan wars, received a medal for killing nine Afghans in a hand-to-hand fight in Kabul, and was considered by many to be the finest hunter and rifle marksman in Asia . . . perhaps in the world. His full name is John Sebastian ‘Tiger Jack’ Moran, although very few people know that.”
“Colonel Sebastian Moran . . .” muttered Clarence King when James handed the photograph back to him. “By God, I read his books! Heavy Game of the Western Himalayas and Three Months in the Jungle. Hunting memoirs . . . and cracking good tales!”
Holmes, now standing with his back to the window, nodded. “He published both of those in the early eighteen eighties. He gave his publisher his birth date as being eighteen forty, but in truth it was eighteen thirty-four. Colonel Moran will be sixty years old next February.”
“He certainly does not look that old in the photograph,” said John Hay. “When was the photo taken?”
“A year and a half ago. In Calcutta,” said Holmes. “You see, Colonel Moran followed me to India from Switzerland in order to assassinate me. He was paid quite a large amount of money for my assassination . . . assassination is the Colonel’s major source of income, just ahead of guiding fat, rich gentlemen-hunters to where they can kill dangerous animals and far ahead of his less taxing profession of separating fat, rich gentlemen from their money at various card tables.”
“Hired to kill you . . .” sighed King. “And now comes the paranoia.”
“Oh, yes,” said Holmes. “Colonel Moran tried twice . . . once in Calcutta, again in Darjeeling . . . but was unsuccessful in both attempts. Then, having spent almost all of the money paid to him for the botched job and not wanting to wait for me to re-emerge from Tibet, the good colonel returned to London. For one of the world’s greatest hunters, Moran has surprisingly little patience.”
“I fail to see what any of this has anything to do with . . .” began John Hay.
“Imagine my surprise then, when I came back to Sikkim from Tibet over the high passes, to be shot three times by a high-velocity rifle fired from almost a mile from my position.”
The room fell thickly silent. James could hear a servant’s shoes against carpet on the main staircase and a carriage passing outside.
“Shot three times by a high-velocity rifle,” said Clarence King at last. “Then you are . . . must be . . . quite dead. So we have been dealing not only with a liar and imposter but with a ghost.” King checked his watch. “And my time here is almost up. I must . . .” He looked up, saw what Holmes was doing, and fell silent—aghast.
Holmes had removed his jacket and waistcoat and collar and cravat and was in the process of unbuttoning his shirt.
John Hay stood. “My dear sir . . .”
“This will take only a few seconds,” said Holmes. He was wearing no undershirt. He folded his shirt carefully across the back of the closest chair, turned sideways to the window, and opened the louvered shutters.
For the second time—and even more clearly now—Henry James saw the two terrible round wounds on Holmes’s upper right back near the shoulder blade—“entrance wounds” he believed they were called when caused by bullets—and the livid spiderweb tracery of scars radiating from them. There was a third pattern of white scars just above the man’s right hip.
Holmes turned around so that the light fell on his chest and belly and right side.
There was another cratered round scar—the “exit wound” James had heard it called—on Holmes’s upper right chest and below and to the left of it a few inches, a more complicated and ghastly scar, not circular, with even more scars radiating from it. Just above his right hip was the pattern of exit scars of the third wound.
Holmes’s long, white fingers touched each of the wounds starting with the highest just under his collarbone. “As I said, the assassin fired from almost a mile away and struck me three times, ratcheting the bolt-action of his powerful rifle and firing three times in less than two seconds. This third wound . . .” He touched the latticework of scars above his hip. “Struck me as I was falling.” He moved his fingers, which were as steady as a surgeon’s, back up to the terrible white web of scarring of the second wound. “The second round did not pass through me and my savior—and surgeon in this instance—had to dig it out. She started from the back and then realized that it was closer to the surface in the front, under my chest muscles. It was a long process and she had no anaesthetic.”
“She?” Clarence King said in a strangely dulled voice.
“My savior and surgeon?” said Holmes, calmly putting his shirt back on. “She is an English missionary named Annie Royle Taylor who had just made an attempt to travel to Lhasa—her Saviour had spoken to her in a dream and said that her destiny was to carry Christ’s word to Lhasa, the Dalai Lama, and to all of the Forbidden Kingdom. So Miss Annie Taylor had shaved her head and dressed herself in Tibetan males’ clothing, but she was discovered far from Lhasa, turned back, and escorted back to the border by Tibetan guards. My own Tibetan helpers, assigned to me by His Holiness the Dalai Lama to escort me over the newly opened passes, had just bidden me farewell on the south side of the final pass a
nd were heading their ponies homeward north again when they heard the three shots and were kind enough to return to where they’d last seen me. I was unconscious and bleeding badly. My Tibetan friends brought me to the nearby border trading post of Yatung. There was no doctor there, but the Tibetans and Sikkimese had grudgingly allowed Miss Taylor to take up residence nearby as she waited for her next covert attempt to enter Tibet. Perhaps the locals allowed her to stay there because her first name, ‘Annie’, sounds very much like the Tibetan word for ‘nun’—and so this missionary, who’d studied medicine and had occasion to practice it in the slums of London and again in China—staunched the bleeding, dug the second bullet out of me, and arranged blood transfusions that saved my life.”
“Incredible,” whispered John Hay.
“Yes, isn’t it,” agreed Holmes.
“How do we know that those supposed scars aren’t just more make-up?” demanded Clarence King.
Holmes had buttoned up his waistcoat and was in the act of sliding on his jacket when he paused. “Would you like to set your fingers into the wounds?” he asked softly. “You can, especially in the surgical incisions. Almost up to the knuckle of your index finger. Here, I shall remove my shirt again . . .”
“No!” cried King, waving for Holmes to stop the unbuttoning.
“So you are saying that Colonel Sebastian Moran did wait through the winter and tried to assassinate you as you came down out of Tibet in the spring of eighteen ninety-two,” said Hay.
“Not at all,” said Holmes, shooting his cuffs. “This man is the one who shot me three times from so far away. He’s perhaps the only marksman in the world who could have pulled off that shot and he’s long since displaced Colonel Sebastian Moran as the world’s deadliest assassin.” He’d set the second photograph in his outside jacket pocket, but now he handed it to be circulated in their small circle.
When it came to James, he was surprised to see a blurred photo of a much younger man than Moran—very short hair in a widow’s peak, sharp cheekbones, ears close set to his head, eyes that appeared all black in the image.
“You’re looking at the only known photograph—taken on a busy Indian street by a British Secret Service agent in New Delhi who was murdered the day after he sent that photograph to his superiors in Whitehall—of Colonel Sebastian Moran’s son. It’s a poor image, but the only photograph police and intelligence services have of this young man. He was illegitimate of course—Colonel Moran left a brace of bastards in his wake across India, Africa, Europe, and England—but this child was sired to a young adventuress in Warsaw. Surprisingly, Moran took the boy from his mother at a young age and raised him himself, dragging the boy around the world with him and using the lad as a sort of gun-carrier and general assistant in his Asian and other long hunting expeditions and . . . I am sure . . . on more private missions of paid assassination. The boy learned quickly. His first name is Lucan. He has in recent years, as I said, replaced his father as the most accomplished assassin the modern world has had the misfortune to know, but, totally unlike his father, he never kills for money. Lucan kills for his fanatical political beliefs. In this case his goal and god is . . . Anarchy.
“In that sense, never assassinating his enemies for pay, he is as much unlike his father, Colonel Moran, as any man on earth could be. But they both ended up serving the same master in Sikkim along the border of Tibet . . . the international group of anarchists who first paid Colonel Moran to follow me to India in eighteen ninety-one and then dispatched Lucan early the following year after his father had failed.”
“Anarchists,” muttered Clarence King. “Now comes the conspiracy.”
“A very real conspiracy, I’m afraid,” said Holmes. “I was also skeptical about the international threat of anarchists when I came to America in September of eighteen eighty-one to investigate your President Garfield’s assassination—and, indeed, there was no direct conspiracy involved there. But I later became certain that Colonel Moran had been the assassin in the pay of the anarchist terrorists at Chicago’s so-called Haymarket Square riots in eighteen eighty-six. The rifle shots that killed three of the four dead civilians and four of the seven dead policemen were fired, I proved to the American police and authorities beyond any doubt, from a rooftop half a block from the square. Colonel Moran and one henchman, not Lucan, used the same modern Lebel rifles that the colonel left behind in his attempt to assassinate Her Majesty in London the following year.”
“I’ve never read any of this anywhere,” said Hay.
“And you shan’t,” said Holmes. “At least until the Anarchist threat against England, Europe, and the United States is dealt with.”
“It seems a rather haphazard and random threat, Mr. Holmes,” said Hay.
James thought, Does John now believe that this is Sherlock Holmes with whom we’re dealing?
“Not haphazard or random at all, in their scheming,” said Holmes. “They have a list of presidents and royalty whom they plan to assassinate. In eighteen eighty-seven, as I said, they hired Moran to assassinate Her Majesty, Queen Victoria, at her own Golden Jubilee. Moran came far too close to succeeding. He did leave his new Lebel rifles—the first to use smokeless ammunition—behind in London, and using certain techniques I’ve refined over the years, I was able to ascertain that it was one of the same rifles used at Haymarket Square.
“The anarchists’ list remains. They currently plan to have your President Cleveland assassinated on May first, Opening Day of the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. I need to stay here in America long enough to stop that.”
“Moran . . . senior or junior?” asked King.
“What?” said Holmes.
“You said that Moran had tried to kill Queen Victoria six years ago,” said King. “Colonel Moran, senior, or young Lucan Moran?”
“Oh, the only ‘Moran’ we’re dealing with is Colonel Moran . . . the father,” said Holmes. “He never gave his son Lucan his name.”
“May I see that second photograph again?” asked John Hay.
Holmes, who’d received it from King after it had gone around the circle of three men, carried it over and set it on the leather desktop in front of Hay.
“I know this man,” whispered Hay. “He was Rebecca Lorne’s . . . Clover Adams’s good friend Rebecca Lorne’s . . . young cousin, Clifton Richards. Also a photographer. Clover enjoyed talking to the young man about their shared art.”
“He bought her the new developing chemicals she used,” said Holmes, not asking a question. “Including the potassium cyanide solution.”
“Yes . . . yes . . . I believe you are correct,” said Hay in a pinched voice.
“I am,” said Holmes. He removed a third image from his jacket pocket and set it on the desk in front of Hay. James and King both stood and moved to Hay’s side to peer down at the photo.
It was obviously a professionally taken photograph, the kind done up for celebrities, and the woman was as beautifully dressed and attractive as any celebrity in any photograph James had ever seen—her dark hair raised in an artful sculpture, her large, dark eyes dancing with subtle lighting, her full lips at the level of her beautiful hands that were raised to grasp the handle of the parasol that shaded her.
“Why, that’s Rebecca Lorne, Clover’s good friend during the last year of her life,” said Hay. “She’s younger here than when I knew her in the months before Clover’s death, but I’m certain it’s the same woman. Very attractive.”
“Yes,” said King. “I also met her then . . . this Rebecca. I remember that Clover first saw her from her window at the Adamses’ former house, the house where Clover died, the Little White House at sixteen-oh-seven H Street just down the block. Clover saw her walking alone in Lafayette Square daily for some weeks before she finally went down to introduce herself. After that they were fast friends, even during Clover’s long period of melancholy.”
“And, strangely,” said Sherlock Holmes, “Mrs. Adams’s melancholy only grew worse despite the best effo
rts of her new friend Miss Lorne—and her young cousin Clifton—to cheer her up.”
Henry James had never seen this woman before, but then, he’d only heard about the delightful Rebecca Lorne in letters.
“I remember Adams saying that Clover had photographed her friend Rebecca several times,” said Hay, touching the borders of the lovely woman’s photograph.
“Ned Hooper told me that two years ago,” Holmes said very quietly.
“And she photographed Clif . . . Rebecca’s cousin . . . as well,” said Clarence King. “I saw work prints of photographs Clover had taken of the young man when they were all on a picnic in Rock Creek Park. She said that he should have been a good photographic subject but she mustn’t have clicked the shutter probably because his head was almost always blurred in movement despite her admonitions for her subjects to be still.”
“Almost certainly a deliberate movement to blur his own features,” murmured Holmes.
“But I believe that one or two images of the cousin came out,” said King. “They just were not up to Clover’s high standards.”
“And Adams still has those photographs?” asked Holmes. “Of the cousin as well as Miss Lorne?”
“I’m sure he does,” said John Hay. “All labeled now and set away in archives.”
“But he’ll never let you see them,” said Clarence King. “Adams can’t speak about Clover, much less about her death, and he would never show her photographs to anyone. Not even the ones she’d shared in public of her father or of Henry or of Richardson, their architect.”
“That’s why I need to get into Adams’s house next door—with the servants out of the way—before Mr. Adams returns home in the coming week,” said Holmes. “If Clover Adams achieved a clear photograph of Rebecca Lorne’s nice young cousin Clifton, it will be only the second photograph the Secret Service or police services around the world will have of the anarchists’ chief assassin. Colonel Moran’s bastard son and brilliant protégé, Lucan.”