Dr. Granger—his nose already reddening with drink but his enunciation still perfect—asked if the addition of the baby helped them stay warm up in what the Kiplings had named Bliss Cottage near Brattleboro.
“The dear babe is not big enough to offer much in the way of supportive body heat,” laughed Kipling, “but the exercise of walking back and forth with her on the nights she cries has been very helpful in keeping warm.”
The conversation kept shifting but James could not stop his mind from wandering back to the incredible events of the day and his still urgent need to get in touch with Sherlock Holmes.
Kipling and Roosevelt were queried about their beloved Cosmos Club that sat right across Lafayette Park from Hay’s home, combining the Tayloe House with the Dolley Madison home. Both Kipling and Roosevelt were fanatical about the out-of-doors, and the Cosmos Club, besides being perhaps the most elite and influential men’s club in America, reflected their passions.
“We did start this little organization called the National Geographic Society there five years ago,” said Teddy Roosevelt.
Kipling began laughing himself and when queried, said, “Forgive me, but I remember when friend Theodore first presented himself to the Club with thoughts of joining. Twenty of the older members set out several hundred random fossil-bones on a table in the main dining room and asked Theodore to identify any of them if he could.”
“Could he?” asked Clarence King, obviously very well knowing the answer and already grinning.
Kipling laughed again. James thought it was a pleasant laugh, manly and rich but never caustic at anyone else’s expense. “For the next several hours, Theodore proceeded not only to identify the fossil bones but to separate them into the various living and extinct animals they each represented—he did everything but wire them together, gentlemen—all the while giving a running commentary on the eating, grazing, predatory, and breeding habits of each animal.”
“Teedie’s been a star member of the Cosmos Club ever since,” said Hay, ignoring Roosevelt’s scowl at the use of his childhood name.
Others offered various anecdotes on various topics, even James, but before they’d opened the fourth bottle for the table, Kipling was begging Roosevelt to tell his story about “the grizzly in the bushes out in Dakota.”
Roosevelt grinned and did so. He kept the story short, with just the right amount of detail, but Henry James found it especially humorous. The huge grizzly, it seemed, was old and myopic—almost blind. Roosevelt had lost his glasses during a fast descent on a steep, wooded hillside, so he ended up almost as blind as the bear. His first shot missed. “I missed the heart but caught him in the backside,” said Roosevelt, following the true raconteur’s prime rule of never smiling or laughing at his own tale. “The bear went into a thick mass of high willow bushes, almost too close together for me to push into, and—especially without my glasses—I found myself none too eager to force my way into those bushes where Mr. Grizzly and I could have met up in an instant, long before I could raise my rifle. And the animal was not in the best of moods that morning . . .”
Eventually Roosevelt did get into the bushes to distract the animal. After an hour of trying to lure him out, he finally thwacked his way into the willows using the barrel of his Winchester to clear his way and with a huge Bowie knife in his teeth. That image alone made the others at the table laugh and James laughed along with them.
“The blind stalking the blind,” said Roosevelt. “And in the end, so to speak, the bear was blinder. Or I was luckier.”
James enjoyed the anecdote—and had no doubt that it was true—but it reminded him that none of them—King, Roosevelt, or him—had mentioned the street brawl with the would-be street thieves just forty minutes earlier. Henry James did not know the etiquette involved in discussing violent street fights—perhaps a gentleman was not supposed to mention it if he came out on the winning side—or perhaps King and Roosevelt wanted to save James from embarrassment the same way they had saved him from what certainly would have been a severe beating, if not stabbing, and violent robbery less than an hour earlier. James made a mental note to have his protagonist behave precisely this way if he went straight to a fine dinner with friends directly after such a violent altercation.
But, James admitted to himself, he doubted if any of his characters would ever have such a violent encounter.
The conversation was turning to current events but Henry James’s thoughts kept orbiting his afternoon and what seemed the absolute imperative of telling someone in authority about Professor Moriarty’s plans for presidential assassination, the uprising of the anarchists, and mob warfare.
The other men were discussing finances—specifically the much-ballyhooed but never-quite-arrived “Panic of ’93”—and this gave James a perfect opportunity to become lost in his own thoughts without seeming rude. Everyone at the table, save perhaps for Teddy Roosevelt, knew that Henry James was a writer; he had no finances. One was delightfully liberated from endless male chatter about investments when one could not afford a single investment.
If I don’t hear from Holmes, James was thinking, perhaps I should go to Washington’s major and superintendent of police. Or perhaps to President Cleveland himself. That last thought made him cringe.
It would be possible. Several of his friends at this table—Hay, Cabot Lodge, perhaps young Roosevelt—had dined with the president several times, maybe even Adams who frowned on knowing all recent presidents. James might have an emergency meeting arranged for as soon as tomorrow morning.
To say what? he thought. To report that while I was hiding out in the rafters of a former chicken slaughterhouse, I happened to hear Professor James Moriarty—who is considered a fictional character by most people, even possibly, most probably, his nemesis Sherlock Holmes—planning to assassinate the President of the United States and ten or more other heads of states and perhaps scores of top government officials in America and almost a dozen European nations . . . and not only carry out these assassinations, but simultaneously instigate anarchist uprisings and gang riots in all these scores of cities here and abroad.
“ . . . it can be traced back to the failure of the wheat crop on the Buenos Aires exchange . . .” Cabot Lodge was saying.
Hay waved that supposition away. They were all smoking cigars now, save for Roosevelt, Dr. Granger, and James.
“It’s the railroad speculation, pure and simple,” said Hay.
“Whatever it is or was or will be, you business types were talking about the ‘Panic of ’93’ as long ago as November of ’92. Something had better arrive soon or a lot of speculators selling short will be very disappointed.”
Was this the renowned Sherlock Holmes’s plan? To grab President Grover Cleveland’s massive arm and pull him away from the button that would start every machine at the Columbian Exposition a few seconds after noon on May 1, tugging down the huge president and crying “Get down, you fool!” the way that young Captain Oliver Wendell Holmes was supposed to have done with President Lincoln at Fort Stevens in 1864? James doubted that.
“There was a clear prelude to panic in February when the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad went bankrupt by overextending itself,” said Cabot Lodge.
“I thought Cleveland handled the Treasury crisis rather handily,” said Hay, “by convincing Congress to repeal the Sherman Silver Purchase Act just days after his inauguration.”
“For a Democrat—the only one elected president in my living memory—Cleveland does seem to be a man of action,” said Dr. Granger.
“He could have taken on my grizzly bare-handed,” said Roosevelt. “They would have weighed in the same before the bout.”
“Now Theodore,” said Henry Adams.
I can’t delay leaving tomorrow, thought James. If I stay, I’ll never see the end of these conspiracies or complications. There’s simply no other choice but to get word of Professor Moriarty’s meeting with the gangs and the anarchists and to repeat what the . . . what had The Times of Lo
ndon called him after Reichenbach Falls? . . . the Napoleon of Crime had said about the planned assassinations, uprisings, and lootings.
I’ve been caught up in one of the romance-adventure novels I so despise—something less even than H. Rider Haggard’s overly violent, overly specific potboilers—and the only way I can escape is to walk away from everything I’ve seen and heard today . . . everything I’ve seen and heard the last few weeks since the Seine. That way lies reality. Or at least literature. Anything is better than this penny-dreadful tale I’ve found myself in.
“The Free Silver Movement is the wild card in this game,” said Hay. “Especially with the American farmers supporting it.”
“If people and failing banks start demanding gold for their notes . . .” Henry Adams said as if he were thinking aloud.
“In the West and Midwest, more than three hundred banks have already closed,” said Roosevelt.
“In the West and Midwest,” said Hay, gesturing to his servant to pass a new bottle of wine around, “anyone with two barrels, a plank, and a cigar box full of quarters can declare themselves a bank.”
I have to leave tomorrow, thought James with a sudden pain in his chest and left arm. I must leave tomorrow. Buy a garden trowel along the way so I can bury the snuffbox with Alice’s ashes securely inside it. I was tempted to go to Newport where she and Miss Loring seemed so happy after Alice had the house on the point built for them, but I think Katharine Loring has had just about enough of Alice’s company. No, my dear, darling, caustic, death-desiring Alice needs to lie in the same soil as our parents and Aunt Kate.
And then I have to rush to make that noon train to New York. I can’t miss that German steamship’s—the Spree wasn’t it?—departure time on Tuesday morning. Once aboard I can relax, I can think, I can take the time and energy to sort out what has been reality and what illusion over these past weeks. Mr. Sherlock Holmes will simply have to fend for himself in this multifaceted mess of a mystery. One thing is certain—I’ll never be his adoring Boswell the way Dr. Watson is, if he is a real person or even if he’s a product of Conan Doyle’s literary imagination, faithfully chronicling the detective’s triumphs. It’s a poverty of triumphs I’ve seen him produce.
A servant slipped in with a slip of paper on a silver tray. The young man whispered to Hay who nodded and gestured toward James.
It was a telegram. James could not wait until later to open it—it had to be Holmes’s response to his news about Moriarty and his urgent plea—so he slit it open and read it as he held it below the plane of the table. The telegram was moderately succinct:
JAMES. IF IT IS CONVENIENT FOR YOU, PLEASE MEET ME ON MONDAY AT 3 P.M. AT FOUR THIRTY SIX AND A HALF REVERE STREET IN BEACON HILL, BOSTON STOP IF IT IS NOT CONVENIENT FOR YOU, STILL MEET ME THERE AT THAT TIME STOP
YOU MAY LEAVE YOUR LUGGAGE AT THE NEW NORTH UNION STATION ON CAUSEWAY STREET IN THE WEST END SINCE WE SHALL BE TAKING A NIGHT TRAIN WEST TO CHICAGO THAT SAME EVENING STOP
HOLMES
16
God Might Envy Him
Sherlock Holmes rang Henry Adams’s new-fangled electrical doorbell button in late morning, about an hour after James’s train had left for New York and then Boston. The tall head butler, Hobson, answered the door and seemed no happier to see Holmes than he’d been during their last encounter.
“Mr. Adams is still in his bath,” said Hobson, making ready to close the door in Holmes’s face.
“That’s all right,” said Holmes, handing his hat and stick to the tall man as he brushed past him, “I shall be happy to wait for Mr. Adams in his study.”
While the flustered Hobson sought out his bathing master, Holmes stepped into the study, poured himself a healthy dose of Scotch with a whisper of water, and sprawled in the chair opposite the infinite expanse of Adams’s green leather desktop.
He lined up two fingers in a straight line with the Executive Mansion window of what had once been the office of President Cleveland’s sister—before she had been replaced by a 21-year-old bride, Miss Frances Folsom. Since Cleveland was 49 on the day of the marriage, the public might have been shocked by the more than 27-year age difference—or, failing that, disconcerted a bit by the fact that his marriage was unusual, since Cleveland had been the executor of his friend, and Frances’s father, Oscar Folsom’s estate, supervising Frances’s upbringing after her father’s death; he’d bought her yellow baby carriage when she was a few days old and he still seemed to be giving her bright things.
Holmes had met with the Steamboat Inspection Committee that Sunday morning—minus former Major and Superintendent of the Metropolitan Police William G. Brock though his place was filled by Chief Daniel O’Malley, head of the 27-man White House Police Force—and while Mr. Rockhill, the State Department Liaison, was complaining that he had to miss church, Holmes was asking Vice-President Adlai E. Stevenson where he planned to be on May first, around noon, just about the time President Cleveland was scheduled to push the button that started everything at the Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition.
Vice-President Stevenson had to think a minute and then refer to a pocket record-keeper, but finally he said, “Oh, I’ll be in the Executive Mansion from ten thirty a.m. until mid-afternoon. Meeting and lunching with delegates from the current regime in the Philippines and then taking part in a formal signing of a Letter of Agreement with them.”
“Where will the meeting and signing take place, Mr. Vice-President?” asked Holmes.
Stevenson had to think about that for a minute but then remembered. “Oh, that will be in what we now call the Small Treaty Room.”
“Would that happen to be the north-facing room whose window one can see directly across the park there? The one directly across from Mr. Henry Adams’s home?” asked Holmes. “The room that was President Cleveland’s sister’s office and reception room during Mr. Cleveland’s first term?”
“Why, yes, I believe that’s the same room,” said Vice-President Stevenson.
Holmes turned to Mr. Drummond, the highly intelligent Chief of the Secret Service branch of the Treasury Department and to Daniel O’Malley. O’Malley had not struck Holmes as especially bright during the short time he’d been conversing with him that morning. “We have reliable indications that an attempt will be made upon Vice-President Stevenson’s life at or around the same time that the president is scheduled to be assassinated in Chicago. The Small Treaty Room is in a direct line to various windows in Mr. Henry Adams’s home less than two hundred yards to the north.”
“Shall we request permission for the event to be moved to another room?” asked Chief O’Malley.
“I would suggest that you keep the vice-president—and his guests—out of the White House for all of that day,” said Holmes. “Perhaps choose an inside room at the State Department and make sure that the change of venue and location remains a tightly held secret.”
Drummond of the Secret Service nodded and Holmes knew that it would be done.
“You see how someone could use a good rifle to make a clear shot into the Small Treaty Room from one of the windows on the Adamses’ home?” asked Holmes, pointing.
“Mr. Adams would never allow that,” said White House Police Chief O’Malley.
“Next to Adams’s house is the home of Colonel John Hay,” Washington P.D. Major and Superintendent Moore informed Holmes. “We can’t be bothering such important people just because of their . . . proximity . . . to the Executive Mansion.”
“Of course not,” said Sherlock Holmes.
“I’ll look into it and talk to you in the next week,” said Andrew Drummond.
Holmes understood that to mean that the Adamses’ house would be thoroughly searched, the best shooting angles analyzed by marksmen, and that the head of the Secret Service—a department with no constitutional responsibilities to protect the president—would have men there on May 1.
Chief O’Malley,” said Holmes, “are you still detaching two of your White House Police to travel with the presiden
t as is sometimes the custom?”
“Ahhhh,” said O’Malley and looked around the room as if someone could give him the correct answer. “I could send more men or less men.”
“Fewer,” corrected Holmes. He had the same reaction to hearing the English language abused as he did to watching horses or dogs beaten with no reason. And he was not especially a sentimentalist when it came to horses or dogs. But he had once told Watson that the “less or fewer” issue, along with the use of “I” in such sentences as “He gave the money to Sheila and I”, inflicted on the public by people who considered themselves well-educated, could be drastically reduced in frequency—if not actually abolished—by a few well-aimed pistol shots and an explanatory note that would be pinned to the victims’ chests.
“Think I should send less than the usual two?” asked Chief O’Malley.
Here Vice-President Stevenson stepped in with what might have been the briefest of winks at Holmes. “We know there’s a threat against the White House, Chief O’Malley. And Colonel Sebastian Moran is a famed marksman and soldier of fortune as opposed to these . . . phantoms . . . that the others are looking for. It might be wisest to retain all twenty-seven of your excellent roster of White House police officers on that day. After all, you were trained to protect the Executive Mansion from intrusion, not follow the president around to protect him.”
“True,” said O’Malley. “And it’s the Chicago Police Department’s job to protect the president. The host city always assumes that responsibility.”
“Only partially the responsibility of the Chicago P.D.,” said the Secret Service chief.
Holmes looked at Drummond. No one else had brought this up at any of their meetings.
“What do you mean?” asked Washington’s Major and Superintendent Moore.