Sherlock Holmes In America Read online

  “‘Es el Doctor! Dr. Watson, yes?’ he said eagerly.

  “‘After a moment’s astonishment, I recognized a patient I had treated not two weeks before even though he could not pay me, a man who had gashed his leg so badly in a fight on the wharf that his friends had carried him to the nearest physician. He was profoundly happy to see me, a torrent of Spanish flowing from his lips, and before two minutes had passed of him gesturing proudly at his wound and pointing at me, Portillo’s dispute had been forgotten. I did not press my luck, but joined them for another glass of that wretched substance and bade them farewell, Portillo’s unblinking black eyes upon me until I was out of the bar and making for Front Street with all speed.

  “The next day, I determined to report Portillo’s presence to the colonel, for as little as I understood, I now believed him an even more sinister character. To my dismay, however, I found the house in a terrible uproar.”

  “I am not surprised,” Holmes nodded. “What had happened?”

  “Sam Jefferson stood accused of breaking into Charles Warburton’s darkroom with the intent to steal his photographic apparatus. The servant who opened the door to me was hardly lucid for her tears, and I heard cruel vituperations even from outside the house. Apparently, or so the downstairs maid said in her state of near-hysterics, Charles had already sacked Jefferson, but the colonel was livid his nephew had acted without his approval, theft or no theft, and at the very moment I knocked, they were locked in a violent quarrel. From where I stood, I could hear Colonel Warburton screaming that Jefferson be recalled, and Charles shouting back that he had already suffered enough indignities in that house to last him a lifetime. Come now, Holmes, admit to me that the tale is entirely unique,” I could not help but add, for the flush of colour in my friend’s face told me precisely how deeply he was interested.

  “It is not the ideal word,” he demurred. “I have not yet heard all, but there were cases in Lisbon and Salzburg within the last fifty years which may possibly have some bearing. Please, finish your story. You left, of course, for what gentleman could remain in such circumstances, and you called the next day upon the colonel.”

  “I did not, as a matter of fact, call upon the colonel.”

  “No? Your natural curiosity did not get the better of you?”

  “When I arrived the following morning, Colonel Warburton as well as Sam Jefferson had vanished into thin air.”

  I had expected this revelation to strike like a bolt from the firmament, but was destined for disappointment.

  “Ha,” Holmes said with the trace of a smile. “Had they indeed?”

  “Molly and Charles Warburton were beside themselves with worry. The safe had been opened and many deeds and securities, not to mention paper currency, were missing. There was no sign of force, so they theorized that their uncle had been compelled or convinced to provide the combination.

  “A search party set out at once, of course, and descriptions of Warburton and Jefferson circulated, but to no avail. The mad colonel and his servant, either together or separately, against their wills or voluntarily, left the city without leaving a single clue behind them. Upon my evidence, the police brought Portillo in for questioning, but he proved a conclusive alibi and could not be charged. And so Colonel Warburton’s obsession with war, as well as the inscrutable designs of his manservant, remain to this day unexplained.

  “What do you think of it?” I finished triumphantly, for Holmes by this time leaned forward in his chair, entirely engrossed.

  “I think that Sam Jefferson—apart from you and your noble intentions, my dear fellow—was quite the hero of this tale.”

  “How can you mean?” I asked, puzzled. “Surely the darkroom incident casts him in an extremely suspicious light. All we know is that he disappeared, probably with the colonel, and the rumour in San Francisco told that they were both stolen away by the Tejano ghost who possessed the house. That is rubbish, of course, but even now I cannot think where they went, or why.”

  “It is impossible to know where they vanished,” Holmes replied, his grey eyes sparkling, “but I can certainly tell you why.”

  “Dear God, you have solved it?” I exclaimed in delight. “You cannot be in earnest—I’ve wracked my brain over it all these years to no avail. What the devil happened?”

  “First of all, Watson, I fear I must relieve you of a misapprehension. I believe Molly and Charles Warburton were the authors of a nefarious and subtle plot which, if not for your intervention and Sam Jefferson’s, might well have succeeded.”

  “How could you know that?”

  “Because you have told me, my dear fellow, and a very workmanlike job you did in posting me up. Ask yourself when the colonel’s mental illness first began. What was his initial symptom?”

  “He changed his will.”

  “It is, you will own, a very telling starting point. So telling, in fact, that we must pay it the most stringent attention.” Holmes jumped to his feet and commenced pacing the carpet like a mathematician expounding over a theorem. “Now, there are very few steps—criminal or otherwise—one can take when one is disinherited. Forgery is a viable option, and the most common. Murder is out, unless your victim has yet to sign his intentions into effect. The Warburtons hit upon a scheme as cunning as it is rare: they undertook to prove a sane man mad.”

  “But Holmes, that can scarcely be possible.”

  “I admit that fortune was undoubtedly in their favour. The colonel already suffered from an irrational preoccupation with the supernatural. Additionally, his bedroom lacked any sort of ornament, and young Charles Warburton specialized in photographic technique.”

  “My dear chap, you know I’ve the utmost respect for your remarkable faculty, but I cannot fathom a word of what you just said,” I confessed.

  “I shall do better, then,” he laughed. “Have we any reason to think Jefferson lied when he told you of the ghost’s earthly manifestations?”

  “He could have meant anything by it. He could have slit that hole and stolen that firewood himself.”

  “Granted. But it was after you told him of Portillo’s presence that he broke into the photography studio.”

  “You see a connection between Portillo and Charles Warburton’s photographs?”

  “Decidedly so, as well as a connection between the photographs, the blank wall, and the torn out lilac bush.”

  “Holmes, that doesn’t even—”

  I stopped myself as an idea dawned on me. Finally, after the passage of many years, I was beginning to understand.

  “You are talking about a magic lantern,” I said slowly. “By God, I have been so blind.”

  “You were remarkably astute, my boy, for you took note of every essential detail. As a matter of fact, I believe you can take it from here,” he added with more than his usual grace.

  “The colonel disinherited his niece and nephew, possibly because he abhorred their mercenary natures, in favour of war charities,” I stated hesitantly. “In a stroke of brilliance, they decided to make it seem war was his mania and he could not be allowed to so slight his kin. Charles hired Juan Portillo to appear in a series of photographs as a Tejano soldier, and promised that he would be paid handsomely if he kept the sessions dead secret. The nephew developed the images onto glass slides and projected them through a magic lantern device outside the window in the dead of night. His victim was so terrified by the apparition on his wall, he never thought to look for its source behind him. The first picture, threatening the white woman, likely featured Molly Warburton. But for the second plate . . . ”

  “That of the knife plunging into the Texian’s chest, they borrowed the colonel’s old garb and probably placed it on a dummy. The firewood disappeared when a number of men assembled, further off on the grounds, to portray rebels with torches. The lilac, as is obvious—”

  “Stood in the way of the magic lantern apparatus!” I cried. “What could be simpler?”

  “And the headaches the colonel experienced after
wards?” my friend prodded me.

  “Likely an aftereffect of an opiate or narcotic his family added to his meal in order to heighten the experience of the vision in his bedchamber.”

  “And Sam Jefferson?”

  “A deeply underestimated opponent who saw the Warburtons for what they were and kept a constant watch. The only thing he stole was a look at the plates in Charles’s studio as his final piece of evidence. When they sent him packing, he told the colonel all he knew and they—”

  “Were never heard from again,” Holmes finished with a poetic flourish.

  “In fact, it was the perfect revenge,” I laughed. “Colonel Warburton had no interest in his own wealth, and he took more than enough to live from the safe. And after all, when he was finally declared dead, his estate was distributed just as he wished it.”

  “Yes, a number of lucky events occurred. I am grateful, as I confess I have been at other times, that you are an utterly decent fellow, my dear Doctor.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said in some confusion.

  “I see the world in terms of cause and effect. If you had not been the sort of man willing to treat a rogue wounded in a knife fight who had no means of paying you, it is possible you would not have had the opportunity to tell me this story.”

  “It wasn’t so simple as all that,” I muttered, rather abashed, “but thank—”

  “And an admirable story it was, too. You know, Watson,” Holmes continued, extinguishing his pipe, “from all I have heard of America, it must be an exceedingly fertile ground for men of mettle. The place lives almost mythically in the estimations of most Englishmen. I myself have scarcely met an American, ethically inclined or otherwise, who did not possess a certain audacity of mind.”

  “It’s the pioneer in them, I suppose. Still, I cannot help but think that you are more than a match for anyone, American or otherwise,” I assured him.

  “I would not presume to contradict you, but that vast expanse boasts more than its share of crime as well as of imagination, and for that reason commands some respect. I am not a complete stranger to the American criminal,” he said with a smile.

  “I should be delighted to hear you expound on that subject,” I exclaimed, glancing longingly at my notebook and pen.

  “Another time, perhaps.” My friend paused, his long fingers drumming along with the drops as he stared out our front window, eyes glittering brighter than the rain-soaked street below. “Perhaps one day we may both find occasion to test ourselves further on their soil.” He glanced back at me abruptly. “I should have liked to have met this Sam Jefferson, for instance. He had a decided talent.”

  “Talent or no, he was there to witness the events; you solved them based on a secondhand account by a man who’d never so much as heard of the Science of Deduction at the time.”

  “There are precious few crimes in this world, merely a hundred million variations,” he shrugged. “It was a fetching little problem, however, no matter it was not matchless. The use of the magic lantern, although I will never prove it, I believe to have been absolutely inspired. Now,” he finished, striding to his violin and picking it up, “if you would be so kind as to locate the brandy and cigars you mentioned earlier, I will show my appreciation by entertaining you in turn. You’ve come round to my liking for Kreutzer, I think? Capital. I must thank you for bringing your very interesting case to my attention; I shall lose no time informing my brother I solved it without moving a muscle. And now, friend Watson, we shall continue our efforts to enliven a dreary afternoon.”

  GHOSTS AND THE MACHINE

  Lloyd Rose

  Lloyd Rose, former chief drama critic of the Washington Post, has written for the New Yorker and the Atlantic and is the author of three Doctor Who novels for BBC Books.

  Excerpts from the journal of Mycroft Holmes, autumn 1874

  25 September—Sherlock is bored.

  This condition is not my doing, as I keep reminding him. I no more wanted this educational trip to the green wilds of American New England than he, but if between us we could not dissuade Father, then there’s an end to it. I have accommodated myself most comfortably. This agreeable inn—a spacious, rambling, white-frame structure—has a number of airy porches furnished with wicker armchairs of generous proportion. While Father explores the golf links, I sit and admire the mountains, now shifting from green to crimson and gold, and concentrate on my Adam Smith.

  Note: the Americans do whiskey atrociously but tobacco very well indeed.

  29 September—I managed to talk my way out of a “delightful” hike to a local waterfall today while Sherlock did not. This was amusing.

  2 October—“Even the people here are dull,” he complains to me. I could retort that they are not much duller than the folk of the English countryside, but honesty compels me to admit he is not entirely wrong. The guests are almost exclusively members of the upper-middle classes from New York and Boston—pleasant enough, but intellectually limited, and with much the same sort of lives. Of the late war they appear to try to remember as little as possible, though I am certain that among the older generation many lost sons. Sherlock tells me that in a few of the local cemeteries he has explored for their native plant life, there are numerous graves of men who fell in battle ten and twelve years ago.

  5 October—I overheard a ridiculous but nonetheless rather interesting conversation today. As a rule, I am fortunate enough to find a corner of the porch where I can be more or less by myself, but today a party invaded the area, taking over a table and ordering lemonade and a light lunch. There were two of them, both in banking, one a collector of ancient Byzantine (or perhaps, just perhaps, late Roman) coins and the other with a recent history of tuberculosis and an overdeveloped anxiety about rabbits. The former, whom I would have assumed to be the steadier of the pair, was regaling his companion with an extraordinary tale.

  “I assure you,” said he, “I am not inventing this. Nor have I succumbed to some delusional illness. And I was quite as sober as I am now.”

  “Nonetheless,” replied his friend, “you can understand that I find your story difficult to believe.”

  “I should not have believed it myself if I had not seen. I scoffed when I first heard of the place.”

  “Which is called the Ghost Factory—”

  “Ghost Shop.”

  “Oh, indeed!”

  “That’s only the derisive title of some of the natives who resent the invasion of so many tourists into their quiet town. The place is actually an inn run by a pair of brothers who, several evenings a week, hold mediumistic sittings in an upstairs room.”

  “My dear Daniel—”

  “I know, I know, but hear me out!”

  “I have heard you out. You say that musical instruments play themselves—”

  “—are heard to play when no human hand could touch them—”

  “—and that dozens of spirits of Red Indians appear—”

  “Chinamen too! And child spirits.”

  “Popping up through a hidden trapdoor, no doubt.”

  This was my private opinion as well, but the storyteller shook his head emphatically.

  “No indeed. That’s part of the wonder of the thing. The place has been investigated by an expert in the detection of fraud who has had the floors and walls examined and is prepared to swear there are no secret entrances.” At this point, regrettably, two young ladies joined the gentlemen, and the conversation veered off in a duller direction. I own myself intrigued. The idea of spirits is absurd, of course, but this sounds like quite a complicated hoax. If I can inquire without actually seeming interested in the nonsensical matter, I would like to find out more. Perhaps I can set Sherlock on the scent.

  Later—Sherlock uncooperative. “Twaddle!” sniffed he, and proceeded to give me a patronizing lecture on human gullibility. He really can be most tiresome.

  8 October—We were joined at dinner tonight by a gentleman Father had met that morning. Sherlock and I observed him with some i
nterest from the door of the dining room, ourselves as yet undetected. He was a man of about forty with a short moustache and beard and an impressive, straight-backed presence.

  “Military,” said Sherlock, as if that were not obvious to anyone.

  “From his air and bearing,” I pointed out, “he is surely an officer of some rank. A colonel, I would think.”

  “And yet not a field officer,” Sherlock murmured thoughtfully. “Look at his hands. No outdoor life or physical labor has roughened them.”

  He looked very smug as he said this, and I was forced to concede that he had a point. Fortunately, before I actually had to say so, Father noticed and beckoned us over. He introduced his companion as Mr. Henry Olcott, a reporter for The Daily Graphic. Sherlock and I exchanged glances.

  “But with a military background, surely,” said he.

  “Possibly as a colonel,” I added.

  I regret to say that we rather displeased Father. He does not like us to “show off,” as he puts it, and in this case went so far as to apologize for our rudeness. But when we hurried to voice our own apologies, Mr. Olcott genially waved them off. “They are completely correct,” he said to Father, “and I would only like to know how on earth they worked it out.” Father sighed, but told us to oblige him. “You will see,” he remarked to our guest, “how simple it all is once they explain it.” I believe Sherlock’s vanity must have been tweaked at this, for he had the temerity to add, at the end of our account, “And you were a staff officer, sir, were you not?”

  Father opened his mouth reprovingly, but before he could speak, Olcott exclaimed, “But that is wonderful. You are absolutely right. I was a Special Commissioner to the War Department, in charge of investigating fraud in arsenals and shipyards.”

  This time Sherlock and I refrained from exchanging glances; indeed, we froze, pinned by the same certainty. But any questions we had were wiped from our minds by Father’s next remark: