Authors: Dan Simmons
“A rat!” screamed the man, his tone almost delirious. “A fucking rat!”
Before James could even think of scuttling backward, the man raised his shotgun, aimed it directly at James from sixty feet or so below, and fired. Five or six other men with shotguns leaped to their feet and also fired directly at James.
H
enry Adams and John Hay both had telephones in their homes. Hay used his all the time, especially related to the consulting he was doing for the State Department. Adams disliked using his, but did so most frequently to call John Hay, who lived in the mansion adjacent to his. Essentially they were just talking through two walls and—due to all the telephonic static and cackling and crossed lines—it would probably have been easier to open windows and shout at one another.
“You’re trying to back out of this evening’s dinner, aren’t you, Henry,” said Hay after listening to Adams for a minute or so. It was already Saturday afternoon.
“Well . . . I didn’t feel that I offered much at your last gathering,” said Adams. “People in perennially low moods should not be allowed to appear at persistently gay high-society gatherings.”
“That would rule out about ninety-three percent of us,” laughed Hay.
“And would improve the quality of conversation exponentially,” said Adams.
“True, Henry, true. But do come tonight. It’s simple fare and stag.”
“What happened to all the lovely ladies, including your daughter Helen?” asked Adams.
“Nannie Lodge, Helen, Clara, and Edith Roosevelt—who’s in town only briefly with her husband—are all pouring coffee at the huge DAR Gala Fundraiser for Our Civil War Veterans,” said Hay.
“Where’s that being held this year?”
“In the Capitol Rotunda,” said Hay.
“They’ll either freeze or swelter,” said Adams.
“Probably both.”
“Is Lizzie Cameron cutting cake for the geezers as well?”
“No, she’s going to the opera tonight,” said Hay.
“With Don?”
Hay laughed. “When was the last time Lizzie was chaperoned to the opera or to any other cultural event by her husband
Don?
”
“Who then?” asked Adams.
“Her cousin—whatshisname. The old venerable who bored the brass off the andirons at the Vanderbilts’ big do last November.”
“You mentioned Edith Roosevelt, which suggests that the Boy will be one of the stags in attendance tonight,” said Adams. “Are you really going to put Harry and Teedie in the same pit again so soon?”
“The Boy hates it when we call him by his childhood name of ‘Teedie’,” said Hay.
“He hates it when we call him ‘the Boy’, too, but he loves us more than he hates it. Are you really going to put Harry and Teddy at the same table again, Hay?”
“Teddy’s terribly remorseful about what he said and about being boorish at our last dinner gathering,” said Hay.
It was Adams’s turn to laugh. “I’ve never seen Theodore Roosevelt remorseful to anyone over anything he said, did, stabbed, or shot.”
“True,” said Hay. “But upon reflection, probably Edith’s, he realized that words like ‘effeminate’ and ‘coward’ weren’t appropriate when directed at one of America’s finest men of letters.”
“It would have been more fun fifty years ago,” said Adams. “Or even thirty. We would be past the process of selecting seconds by now and they probably would have chosen the dueling ground and oiled and charged the pistols.”
“Harry seems more like a rapier man to me,” said Hay. “And he would have gotten to choose the weapons.”
“Rapier wit,” said Henry Adams. “None sharper or more pointed.”
“But Teddy truly
is
sorry and has begged for a chance to show that he can behave,” said Hay. “He wants you witness to his good behavior.”
“I was a witness the last time he showed it,” said Adams. “That was in ’seventy-three or ’seventy-four, I believe.”
“Seriously, Henry. This is just us men tonight. We’ll argue politics—politely, of course—scratch when and where we want to, belch ditto, talk like sailors, drink like sailors, and toast the missing fairer sex until Benson and my other men have to carry us to our respective beds. I’ve invited Dr. Granger because . . . well, you know.”
Adams knew. Dr. Elias Granger was older than most of them, in his mid-sixties now, and had been in deep mourning ever since he’d lost his wife four years ago. With just men, Granger could relax and exercise the happiness which had been his hallmark right up to his wife’s death. In mixed company, he rarely spoke when the ladies were present any longer, as if doing so might hurt his dead wife’s feelings. Adams, seven years a widower now, thought he understood. If it hadn’t been for Lizzie Cameron and, to a lesser extent, Nannie Cabot Lodge, he probably wouldn’t be accepting dinner invitations either—at least those with the fairer sex present. As it was, he not only attended such mixed dinners now but had resumed hosting his famous “breakfasts”—held closer to the noon hour than morning—which included Lizzie, Nannie, and other local delights.
“Sounds very nice and I like old Granger,” said Adams, “but . . .”
“Before you get beyond ‘but’,” interrupted John Hay, “I forgot to tell you that Clarence King will be there. With his proverbial bells on, he said, and, knowing Clarence, possibly with real ones.”
“King!” cried Adams. “I thought he had headed off for Mexico or Chile or Patagonia or one of those swarthy-lady places he prefers.”
“I thought so too, Henry, but he’s back in town . . . briefly, as I understand it . . . and would love to dine with us.”
“Who else will be there tonight?” asked Adams.
“Teddy and James, of course, King, Rudyard Kipling taking time out from his Cosmos Club . . .”
“I’d come just to hear Kipling tell a tale,” said Adams, “but every time Teddy’s there and tale-telling, Rudyard just curls his legs up under him like a teenaged girl and listens all night, mesmerized.”
“A great story-teller recognizes a great story-teller,” said Hay. “Cameron can’t make it but Cabot Lodge will be there again . . .”
“While his wife pours coffee and cuts cake under the Great Dome,” said Adams.
“Exactly. And about Harry . . . did I tell you that he’s staying with us again? As long as he’ll be in Washington, I believe.”
“No,” Adams said, his voice low. “You didn’t tell me that.”
“Well, he is,” said Hay. “And tonight should be a rather more unbuttoned social evening than our last dinner turned out to be.”
“Harry James unbuttoned,” muttered Adams. “Now there’s an image that refuses to coalesce in the focal lens of my inner eye.” Adams waited a few seconds and had to clear his throat before speaking again. “Will . . . Mr. Holmes be there again?”
Either not picking up on Adams’s tone or ignoring it, Hay said, “Oh, no. Holmes has disappeared. Definitely left town was the last I heard, possibly gone back to England. Either way, he shan’t be at our table tonight and I’m glad of it.”
“Why?” asked Adams.
“Because my daughter Helen has become besotted by the man,” barked Hay. “She asked me the other day how much a detective earns and if such an income might support a married couple in the comfort to which she’s accustomed. She also wondered if great detectives were regularly knighted by Queen Victoria.”
“Good Lord,” said Adams. “She certainly didn’t phrase it all that way.”
“She might as well have,” said Hay. “Oh, Saint-Gaudens will be there tonight, but he says he must leave early, before brandy and cigars—some senator’s wife he’s chiseling in granite.”
“She poses at night?”
“Whenever the senator is out of town,” said Hay.
“Kipling, our dear Clarence King, Saint-Gaudens, Cabot Lodge without Nannie—he rarely speaks at the table when Nannie’s there but can be rather witty when it’s just other men—and then, of course, a chance at a front row seat for the second round between the Boy and Harry,” said Adams. “I can’t pass this up. I’ll be there tonight.”
“With bells on?”
“I do have a jester cap I can bring and possibly convince myself to wear after we open the fourth bottle,” said Adams.
“Save that jester’s cap for young Theodore . . . just in case,” said Hay.
The two were still chuckling when they hung up their telephones.
* * *
The roar of the shotgun blast, though fifty feet below him, was deafening to James. Chicken feathers flew into the air on both sides below him where the canvas covered the thinner rafters. His own higher, thicker beam shook as some sort of shot rattled against its bottom and sides. Cringing into the narrowest straight line the portly James could manage, he still felt a shot—almost certainly bird shot—rip at his left sleeve and stipple his left forearm with pinpricks. He clamped his jaws tight so that he would not cry out.
“You missed him!” shouted one of the gangsters below. “Look out . . . let me . . .” Two shots in rapid succession, each with the sharper, clearer report of a rifle rather than a shotgun blast. James felt at least one of the bullets slam into his beam some six or eight feet in front of him. The entire beam shuddered as if it were a tree taking the first, hard swing of an ax.
“Got it!” shouted the man who’d yelled immediately before the rifle shots. The mob roared.
James dared a peek down the left side of his beam.
Most of the men, save for the anarchists, were out of their chairs now, milling in a circle, slapping each other on the back and laughing, the rigid separation of neighborhood gangs forgotten. A man with a rifle was holding up a large gray rat—quite dead—by the tail and turning in a circle to receive the plaudits of his criminal cohorts.
“SILENCE!” Moriarty’s voice was so loud and commanding that Henry James almost lost his balance and rolled off his beam. The mobs fell silent at once.
“Grogan will visit each of your leaders in the next week with precise instructions on where you’ll muster on May one, what armaments you’ll bring and which will be provided for you, exactly where the killing zones for the police will be, your precise positions for the ambushes, and information on where the anar . . . excuse, me . . . socialists will have already begun their bombing. We’re finished for tonight. But leave in small groups to get back to your own gang areas and beer halls. We don’t want the cops picking any of you up tonight, much less arresting clusters of you. And I’ll have Lucan Adler kill any man who speaks to the police—even if that man is being held in protective custody at police headquarters.”
That seemed to sober the mob into true silence. The man with the rifle tossed away the dead rat. The groups began filing out of the main front and back sliding doors of the old warehouse.
James leaned over to peek again at Moriarty, but the derby-hatted hoodlum named Grogan was the only one still standing on the platform. Moriarty had disappeared.
* * *
James continued lying on his side on the high beam until his muscles and bones were in such pain that he thought he might scream. He lay there as the last of the anarchists and gang members walked boldly out into the darkness beyond the sliding doors; he stayed there until the man they’d called Grogan had shut off the lights and been the last to leave. And still he lay there, his left arm hurting, for another hour or more, listening to the scurrying of rats in the rafters near him.
He was sure he would hear heavy footsteps coming up the stairway at any second. He’d pulled the panel up behind him using the peg set on the inside for that purpose but he was sure that anyone coming up the steps would turn the gas lamp back on, see the unlatched top corners of the trap door, and open it behind him.
Eventually he could stand the pain and darkness no longer. James got to his hands and knees, feeling dizzy and not trusting his balance in the darkness, and backed up along his beam until his heels contacted the trap door. He tapped it open with the least force and sound he could manage.
Then he was out on the death-black upper landing and all but unable to stand. He had to pull himself up with his hands on the wall above the trap door until he stood weakly there, still leaning on the wall, his knees and back hurting far more than the lacerations on his right arm under what he could feel as the torn sleeve of his jacket and shirt.
There was no light coming through the frosted glass of the office door on the opposite side of the absurdly narrow landing. Could he possibly have been lying on that beam long enough for it to grow dark outside? He started to raise the strength of the single weak gas lamp on the wall but then thought better of it. If someone was waiting on the dark staircase below, the resumption of light on his landing would make him a perfect target.
He found his hat and walking cane where he’d left them on the floor of the landing.
Remembering how steep and narrow the staircase was, James descended carefully in the darkness, taking each step with care, his arms extended so that he could touch the peeling wall on either side of the staircase, his cane finding each step in the darkness.
At each flickering landing, he expected to encounter someone waiting for him. No one was there. Still, when he reached the bottom of the last flight and was standing at the door through which he’d entered, it took him a minute or two to work up courage to open the door. A terrible thought made him grab the wall again for support:
What if they’ve locked this door? Locked me in?
They hadn’t. He stepped out into twilight. The cul-de-sac was empty except for himself, standing there so incongruously, so
obviously
.
It was about sixty normal paces to the end of the dead-end alley and the beginning of the unpaved street but it felt like half a mile to the aching writer.
He turned right on the unnamed street, trying to remember a general direction back to the civilized parts of town. There were other people on the street—all men as far as he could tell—but most were clustered near the few lighted saloons. James stayed near the dark buildings across the street from these lighted buildings, walking where the sidewalk would be if the muddy lane had been a real street. At least there was less horse manure on the sides.