“I’ll look in on you tomorrow after my boat tour,” said James. “See if there’s anything you need.”
“You could tell the porter—the little one with the hare lip—to tell the house doctor that I need a new jug of laudanum,” said Clemens. “And a straw.”
James nodded.
“As far as looking in on me tomorrow,” said Sam Clemens, “there’s no reason to. One way or the other, I’ll be written out of this story by then.”
SEVEN
Friday, April 14, 10:06 a.m.
Even though Friday morning was gray, chilly, and threatening rain, Holmes had hired an open landau for their carriage ride to the Exposition. James brought along his umbrella. Holmes was wearing the bright red scarf that he favored whenever the temperature dropped below 70 degrees. The driver was bundled in wool up on his perch.
Holmes was as taciturn this day as he had been voluble on their boat tour the day before. When James questioned him as to whether he’d driven to the Fair this way before, Holmes said that the mayor of Chicago had driven him this way on Wednesday.
“What is Mayor Harrison like?” asked James.
“Talkative,” said Holmes. But then, after a moment of silence broken only by the sound of horses’ hooves and passing carriages, he added, “And strangely likeable. Almost certainly corrupt, but loved by his constituencies, I think.”
“What is the object of our outing today?” asked James.
“We’re deciding where Lucan Adler will lurk to carry out his assassination,” Holmes said so softly it was almost a whisper.
“I know nothing about the mental processes of assassins,” hissed James.
“All right,” Holmes said in a regular voice, “but I thought you might like to see the Exposition grounds before you leave Chicago tomorrow.”
“We’re leaving Chicago tomorrow?”
“You are,” said Holmes and threw his red scarf over his shoulder.
* * *
The ride to the south side of the city seemed interminable, although James realized it took less than half an hour.
“This will be President Cleveland’s route to the Fair?” whispered James.
Holmes nodded.
James looked at all the buildings, rooftops, alleys. “It would seem that an assassin could secret himself anywhere along here.”
“The Chicago Police Force will have more than a thousand men lining the route so no one can rush the carriage,” Holmes said sotto voce. “Hundreds more behind the procession since Mayor Harrison predicts up to two hundred thousand people following the carriages for at least part of the way.” Holmes leaned closer to James’s ear. “But it won’t matter. Lucan Adler is not going to come in close with a pistol. He will use a rifle. Probably at extreme range.”
James was shocked at the thought. “The last two presidents assassinated in this century were shot at close range with a pistol,” he all but whispered.
Holmes nodded. “Lucan Adler will use a rifle. And we don’t have to worry about the procession route either here or once we’re on the Exposition grounds.”
“We don’t?” said James. “Why on earth not?”
“Lucan Adler doesn’t care a fig for the anarchists’ cause,” said Holmes. “He turns to them because they pay him well. He lives only to kill, preferably from long range. He’s shot and killed eleven foreign leaders or dignitaries in the last two years.”
“Certainly that cannot be the case!” cried James.
From his tweed jacket, Holmes pulled a small piece of paper showing a list of names and countries.
“Good God,” said James.
“He and Sebastian Moran only barely missed assassinating Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth in eighteen eighty-eight,” said Holmes. “And Lucan was still a boy at the time. He no longer works with Moran. All the assassinations on that list were his and his alone.”
James was speechless.
* * *
They approached the Exposition from the northernmost western gate. Two members of the Columbian Guard, conspicuous in their uniforms of blue sackcloth, checked the special credentials that Holmes showed them, and two other guards swung the main gates wide.
Ahead of them, the Midway Plaisance stretched ahead for more than a mile. James saw signs saying that they were now on the Avenue of Nations. When James had heard of the Midway Plaisance, he’d imagined a slightly larger version of the carnivals and fairs he’d known. But ahead of him for thirteen city blocks were concessions and attractions the size of small towns.
They passed a rugged log cabin, which James thought was a strange attraction.
“That’s the dreaded Sitting Bull’s cabin,” said Holmes. “Unfortunately, Mr. Burnham, the director for the whole Exposition, couldn’t get Sitting Bull since the army killed him three years ago. So Chief Rain-in-the-Face occupies it now, when he’s not performing for Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show just beyond the Exposition grounds. Rain-in-the-Face claims that he’s the man who killed General Custer, and his fellow Sioux don’t dispute it.”
James looked at men wearing thick robes of hide and hair. They must have been insufferably hot even in this day’s cool temperatures.
“Lapland Village,” said Holmes. “God help them in July.”
Some brown men wearing almost nothing at all except some leaves around their waists walked by.
“Cannibals,” said Holmes. “From Dahomey.”
“Of what benefit to the Columbian Exposition are cannibals?” asked James.
“It’s a World Exhibition,” answered the detective. “Daniel Burnham is trying to bring the world to a million Americans who could never afford to travel out to it.”
“What kind of man is Burnham?” asked James.
“Handsome. Commanding. Busy. And driven. Very, very driven.”
“I suppose one would have to be to build a complex like this in so short a time. But it looks far from finished.”
“On May first it won’t be quite finished,” said Holmes, “but except for Ferris’s Wheel that is still going up, it will be all tidied up and it will look finished. Burnham is working the crews day and night, quite literally.”
A man with an ostrich on a short rein crossed in front of their carriage.
“California,” said Holmes, which did not enlighten James.
“Good heavens,” said James as they passed what looked to be an entire Austrian village, complete with stone buildings, towers, and inns.
“A good place to get a stein of beer and some schnitzel once the Fair opens,” said Holmes.
James saw a large empty area boldly captioned CAPTIVE BALLOON PARK, but there was no balloon there yet. “What makes a balloon captive?” he asked.
“Ropes,” said Holmes.
They’d come to the center of the Midway and now James saw how large Mr. Ferris’s Wheel was going to be. Only half of the 264-foot-tall structure was completed but the axle near the top of the finished half-frame looked as huge as a horizontal redwood tree made of steel. There was a protective wooden wall around the work site, but suddenly one of the workmen on the upper tiers of steel beams and wooden frame shouted something and swung down from level to level like some arboreal creature. The workman jumped down to a lower level, used the top of the seven-foot safety fence as a jumping point, and landed right next to Holmes’s halted landau.
With a shock, James recognized Wiggins Two—young Moth—dressed in the same workman’s clothing as the other steelworkers and carpenters laboring on the Ferris Wheel site. The boy had slept on a cot in Holmes’s room their first night in Chicago and James hadn’t seen him—or really thought about him—since.
“Mornin’ to you, gennelmen,” said Wiggins.
“Greetings, Moth,” said Holmes. “You appear to have found employment.”
The boy grinned widely. “I ’ave at that, Mr. ’olmes. And at full workman’s wages. The supervisor, ’e says—‘Moth ’ere, ’e’s just a runt’—but Mr. Ferris, who was ’ere supervising the supervisor as it were,
says ‘I saw ’im climb, Baines. ’E’s more monkey than runt and stronger than most of your men. Give ’im a job on both the framing and steel work. We need more monkeys,’ ’e says. And so ’e did. Oh, and I ain’t called Moth no more—they call me Monk now, short for ‘monkey’.”
“Do you mind that name?” asked James, leaning forward on his umbrella to see and speak beyond Holmes to his left.
The boy grinned again. “I love it, Mr. Jimes. You see, the tough blokes on London’s streets they called me ‘Moth’ the old English way, what rhymes with ‘mote’, don’t you see. And I was always bein’ a mote in some fellow’s eye and I didn’t like that feelin’. Although I admit that I did like the way my Mote spoke, although maybe Monk shall speak the same.”
“How did you speak when you were Mote?” asked James.
Again the gap-toothed grin. “So me supervisor, Mr. ’iggens, asks the lot of us at lunch—‘How do I woo this Italian lady what lives in the tenement wi’ me and never seems to notice me none?’ And nobody speaks a word ’cause Mr. ’iggens has an ’orrible temper, he does, but I says to ’im, I says—‘My complete master, Mr. ’iggens sir, you must jig off a tune at the tongue’s end, canary to it with your feet, ’umor it with turning up your eyelids like, sigh a note and then sing a note, something through the throat, you see, as if you swallowed love with singing love, as it were, then sometime through the nose as if you snuffed up love by smelling love, all the time with your ’at penthouse-like all tilted o’er the shop of your eyes and with your arms crossed on your thin-belly paisley waistcoat like a rabbit on a spit, or mebbe your ’ands in your pockets, such as that French geezer in the old painting, and . . . this is important, sir . . . keep not too long in one tune, but a snip and away. These are compliments, y’see, these are humors as it were, these betray nice wenches nicely—mostly them what would be betrayed without these tricks, I fully admit—but doing as I say makes you a man of note—do you note, sir?—men that are most affected by these do these. And that concludes my penny of observation,’ I says to ’im.”
Holmes threw back his head and laughed that sharp, barking laugh of his. James could only stare.
“You’ll go far Moth . . . I mean Monk,” said Holmes and handed the boy a ten-dollar bill.
“Thankee, sir,” said the boy, putting the bill in his cap, “and I ’ope it doesn’t inconvenience you none that I h’ain’t going back to England but will seek to find me fortune here by becomin’ an American.”
“Not at all,” laughed Holmes. “You were a pleasure to work with when you were Wiggins Two of Baker Street but now is the time for you to show your true worth to the world.”
“Mr. Ferris says this might not be the last Wheel ’e builds,” said the boy. “Although the others most likely would be smaller, like. If I do well on the ’igh steel ’ere—I might travel with ’is workers to other states, even other countries.”
“May it be so, Monk,” said Holmes and told the coachman to drive on. He turned back to shout at the boy, “If you ever need anything—anything at all, Wiggins—you know where to find me.”
The boy grinned and nodded. “I do,” he said. “I will. And God bless you, Mr. Sherlock ’olmes.”
When they’d traveled further, past what Holmes described as the Algerian Village where robed ladies watched them through their veils as they passed by, then an empty street that Holmes said would be bustling Cairo in a week, complete with real Egyptians, James said, “The lines from Love’s Labor’s Lost. Where on earth did Wiggins pick those up?”
“I take my favorite and most promising lads to the theater,” said Holmes. “I’d say that if they were born into better circumstances many would have grown up to be MP’s, but in truth most are too smart and too honest for Parliament.”
James thought about that as they passed a gigantic zoo, complete with gigantic zoo smells. The author heard a lion roar and perhaps a hippopotamus making hippopotamus noises. He did not look up. Far to the west there came a roar of a happy crowd from Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, which had been open for weeks and getting huge crowds.
Their carriage turned right into a dazzling array of gigantic buildings interspersed with canals, lagoons, bridges, and ponds. The largest lake was to their left—James could see the well-planned Wooded Island in its center—and the row of Great Buildings lined up to their right reminded James of the cliffs of Dover.
“We’re officially in the White City now,” said Holmes. “That’s the Woman’s Building we’re just passing.”
James could say nothing—he was surprised to find that he was physically stunned by the beauty, size, and layout of the White City, this “mere fairgrounds” as he’d thought of it in Washington. It felt to him like stepping into a clean, white, safe, sane future.
“It’s a little less than a mile to the Administration Building outside of which your President Cleveland will be speaking,” Holmes said softly so the driver could not hear. “Everything from this point forward is a potential assassin’s roost.”
Leaning on his umbrella, James turned to look at the man next to him. Holmes’s eyes were bright with excitement.
“And I need your help, James, to find where Lucan Adler plans to do his deadly deed on the first of May.”
EIGHT
Friday, April 14, 10:42 a.m.
The Administration Building where their voyage ended was essentially an 84-foot square supporting an oversized ribbed and octagonal dome. But it was beautifully made and held pride of place in the entire White City, centered as it was halfway between the main western entrance where the trains would dislodge their passengers and the eastern Peristyle entrance where those coming by boat would enter. There was an acre or more of paved open space around the Administration Building, but to the east was the Grand Basin that ran all the way to the Peristyle, to the north were the large Mines and Electricity buildings with glimpses of the Lagoon and Wooded Island down the narrow streets between them. To the southeast of it was a solid high wall of façades—the Annex, the Machinery Hall, and the Agriculture Building, broached only by the South Canal with its graceful bridges and lighted walkways.
Two men met them when Holmes and James alighted outside the east entrance to the Administration Building.
“Mr. Henry James,” said Holmes, “may I have the honor of introducing you to Colonel Edmund Rice, Commandant of the Columbian Guard and chief of security at the Exposition.”
James shook hands. Holmes had told him on the ride in that Edmund Rice had been awarded the Medal of Honor for the day at Gettysburg thirty years earlier when he’d not only helped stop the Confederate General Pickett’s charge, but was gravely wounded in the counterattack. Rice was a short, stocky man, balding, with a magnificent mustache. His natural expression seemed to be that of a scowl but James soon understood that was somewhat misleading. Colonel Rice was an intensely serious man who could, on occasion, be wittily humorous.
The other man, tall, thin, and immaculately tailored and turned out, was Mr. Andrew L. Drummond, head of the Secret Service.
“Good heavens!” said James. “I had no idea that the United States had a spy agency also called the Secret Service like the British.”
Drummond smiled and explained that he was chief agent in the Treasury Department. “Many of our men are well trained in security measures,” said Drummond, “including bodyguard protection, so we’re helping out where we can with the president’s visit to the Exposition.”
“Shall we get started?” said Holmes.
“Started with what?” asked James. He felt that he was in the wrong place with the wrong people doing the wrong things.
“Looking over the grounds to find where Lucan Adler is going to place himself on May first to kill the President of the United States,” said Holmes.
“You mean to guess where he might try such a thing,” said James.
Holmes gave him a frigid look. “You should know by now, James,” he said flatly. “I never guess.”
On the
steps up to the higher of the Administration Building’s two promenades, Drummond touched James’s forearm slightly and stopped. James stopped as well.
“I just wanted to tell you, Mr. James, in case I never get another chance,” Drummond said softly, “that I believe that you’re the most brilliant writer alive and that The Portrait of a Lady is the masterpiece of the Nineteenth Century.”
James distantly heard his own voice muttering “Most kind . . . very kind of you . . .” and then they were climbing stairs again to the upper promenade. When they came out into the open air, James’s morning surliness had disappeared.
The torches and angels that James had seen through Holmes’s telescope were all too large and solid close up. The line of fluted pillars holding the gas jets which illuminated the dome at night must have been fifteen feet tall along the railing. In the angel tableaus, some of the angels’ wings rose higher than that.
When Drummond made some polite comment about the statuary, Col. Edmund Rice removed the short, never-lit cigar from his mouth and said, “Those damned angels. Getting them up here was harder than reducing Vicksburg. The straps broke on one of them and the thing fell thirty feet, burying one wing four feet into the frozen ground while the rest of it flew all to pieces.”
The four men gathered along the east railing of the upper promenade.
“Down there,” said Colonel Rice, pointing and moving his finger in a square to show size, “will be the platform from which the president will speak. We won’t let more than fifty people on that platform and . . . Drummond . . . Mr. Burnham has given permission for two of your agents to stand near and behind the president during the speech.”
“Any shot wouldn’t come from behind,” Drummond said softly.
“For security reasons, we’re closing off the two promenades here on the Administration Building and if you agree, Mr. Holmes—the wire to me and Mr. Burnham said that your advice was to be listened to and followed whenever possible, God knows why—but if you agree, we’ll close off the promenades on all the high structures in line of sight and rifle range of where the president will be speaking.”