Authors: Dan Simmons
Bonfield had taken off his cap and looked as if he was preparing to rip clumps of his hair out by the roots.
Holmes glanced at his watch and removed his pipe. “It’s getting late, Inspector. You’re my liaison while we follow the carriage route that will carry President Cleveland to the Exposition grounds, and then I am scheduled to receive a quick tour of the White City itself. But we’ll have to trot to get to the Lexington Hotel by their departure time.”
“We’ll let the horse do the trotting,” said Inspector Bonfield. He whistled and a sleek black carriage, driven by a uniformed Chicago P.D. patrolman, glided up. The driver jumped down and opened the carriage door for them.
* * *
There were two carriages waiting for Bonfield and Holmes outside the Lexington Hotel at the intersection of 22nd Street and Michigan Avenue. The first was an oversized canopy-covered surrey with three bench-rows of seats facing forward rather than the usual two, plus a fourth bench seat looking backward. It was filled with uniformed police officers.
The second was an open carriage—much more comfortable looking—and the driver was a big man with bright blue eyes and a trim salt-and-pepper beard that looked a bit like that of former President Ulysses S. Grant. Holmes estimated from the man’s hands that he might be around sixty, but there were no wrinkles, save for a few laugh-lines, on his face. He wore a working man’s comfortable corduroy trousers and well-worn boots, but also a rather expensive-looking wool hacking jacket. Most noticeable was the black slouch hat set back on his head as if he wanted the April sun to turn his winter-pale forehead pink.
Inspector Bonfield said, “Mr. Sherlock Holmes, may I have the honor of introducing you to our mayor-elect, Mr. Carter Henry Harrison.”
The handshake was firm without being bruising. “I’m delighted, absolutely delighted, to meet you, Mr. Holmes!” said Harrison.
“Mayor-elect?” asked Holmes.
“I was elected for a fifth term—not sequential, I’m ashamed to say—on April fourth,” said Harrison. “But I don’t officially take office until the twentieth. But Mayor Washburne was busy sulking and cleaning out his office so I jumped at the chance to show you the route we’ll be taking with President Cleveland.”
One of the police officers was walking back to the mayor’s carriage and the mayor said in a very soft voice to Bonfield, “Uh-oh, here comes McClaughry.”
Holmes could see by the badges McClaughry was the Superintendent of the Chicago Police Force. Mayor Harrison introduced him as such and again there was a handshake, this one even more enthusiastic.
“Mr. Holmes, I have been so looking forward to meeting you!” said Chief McClaughry. “When I was warden of the Illinois State Prison at Joliet, I was responsible for creating America’s first full system of
bertillonage
. You use that system, I believe.”
“To be honest, I know and respect Monsieur Bertillon and have worked with him in Paris, but I’ve found that many of his categories of identifying criminals—bone length, centimeters of forehead, and all that—are rather unworkable. So these days I concentrate almost exclusively on fingerprints.”
“Ahhh,” said Superintendent McClaughry, seeming a bit cast down by Holmes’s lack of enthusiasm toward the full category of
bertillonage
. “Yes, well we have fingerprint cards, as well. More than five hundred at present. Do you keep your own cards, sir, or depend upon Scotland Yard’s?”
“I’m sorry to say that Scotland Yard has not yet adopted fingerprinting as a universal practice,” said Holmes. “But I have an assistant who visits the prisons and we make our own cards—photograph of the suspect on front, prints of all fingers and the palm on back. I believe I have about three thousand such cards on file.”
Superintendent McClaughry was visibly startled at this information.
“Bob,” said Mayor-elect Harrison, “it’s time to move out. You’re welcome to ride with us and Bonfield can ride with the patrolmen.”
“No, I shall ride with my men,” McClaughry said stiffly. “It was a great, great pleasure, Mr. Holmes, and I do hope we meet again when we have time to discuss Bertillon’s methods and other forensic matters.” A final handshake and the chief of police marched back to his crowded surrey.
“Hop on up here next to me, Mr. Holmes,” said Harrison. “Bonnie, you get in back with Mr. Drummond. I believe you know Drummond, do you not, Mr. Holmes?”
Holmes nodded at the Secret Service director. “Yes. A pleasure to see you here, sir.”
Drummond smiled and returned the nod.
“All right, it’s time,” said the mayor-elect and touched the two horses gently with his whip.
“I presume that President Cleveland will be staying there at the Lexington Hotel,” said Holmes.
“Yep,” said Harrison. “It’s got the largest suite in town. But if it had been me choosing a hotel for the president, I would have picked one on a paved street.”
Holmes had noticed that this stretch of Michigan Avenue was more yellow dirt than pavement.
“Just so it doesn’t rain on Opening Day, we’ll be okay,” said Harrison. “This was the furthest-south high-quality hotel, built just last year, so I suppose it makes sense. It shouldn’t take more than about twenty, twenty-five minutes to get to the Fair going down Michigan Avenue.”
“Too bad Superintendent McClaughry didn’t choose to ride with us,” said Drummond from his place behind the mayor. “We need to discuss C.P.D. security arrangements as well as the Columbian Guard security.”
Harrison chuckled and adjusted the brim of his black slouch hat to keep the sun out of his eyes. “Chief McClaughry is a good man. And a dedicated reformer. He sent me his letter of resignation on the day I was elected.”
“Why?” said Holmes.
Harrison grinned. “All of the things Bob wants to reform—gambling, kickbacks to party officials, drinking, dallying with the ladies of the night—are more or less the things I most enjoy doing.”
“Mayor Harrison has very strong support amongst the working class,” said Inspector Bonfield from behind Sherlock. “Even among the colored folk.”
Holmes decided that this was all the local politics he needed to hear. More than enough, actually. He said, “How many officers in Chicago’s police force, mayor?”
“A little over three thousand,” said Harrison. “We’ll have mounted officers riding along and ahead when the actual procession from the Lexington gets going, but my guess is that a couple hundred thousand folks will be walking and riding behind us. Joining the parade, so to speak.”
“And there are two thousand–some Columbian Guards
inside
the Fair,” said Sherlock.
“That number of uniformed officers,” said Bonfield. “Plus about two hundred plainclothes detectives under my supervision on the fairgrounds—both in the White City and along the Midway Plaisance where we expect the pickpockets and others to do most of their work.”
“Hand-picked detectives?” asked Holmes.
“Handpicked not just from the C.P.D. but from all over the United States,” said Inspector Bonfield.
“Mr. Drummond, what about your agents?” said Holmes.
Mayor Harrison broke in. “When Mr. Drummond showed up this morning and told me that he was from the Treasury Department, I was sure the jig was up. All my back taxes catching up to me.”
“Someday, Mr. Mayor,” Drummond said softly. “Someday.” To Holmes he said, “I’ll have fifty-five Secret Service agents in place when President Cleveland gets to the Exposition grounds. Eight of them are master marksmen and they’ve been checked out with the newest army sniper rifles. Six are on permanent detail with the president.”
“Tall men, I hope,” said Holmes.
“None under six foot three,” said Drummond. “But, of course, no one can be standing in front of the president when he gives his opening address.”
“How many carriages will be in this procession?” asked Holmes.
Harrison grinned again. “My guess is somewhere between twenty and twenty-five coaches. Mr. Cleveland and his immediate entourage will be in a landau. Very Important Chicagoans keep coming out of the woodwork like cockroaches and they all want to be in President Cleveland’s procession to the Fair. All I know for sure is that I’ll be in the last carriage, whatever number that will be.”
“Why is that?” asked Holmes.
“Because I’m going to get the most applause and happy shouts from the crowd of anyone in the procession,” said Harrison who was obviously just stating a fact rather than bragging. “I wouldn’t want President Cleveland to hear that if I were ahead of him. It might hurt his feelings.”
“Does the landau have a top?” asked Drummond.
“A foldable top,” said Inspector Bonfield. “It’ll be folded back so that everyone, even those in the higher buildings, can see the president. Unless it’s raining, of course.”
“Pray for rain,” Drummond said softly, speaking to himself.
“Oh, Mr. Mayor,” said Bonfield. “Mr. Holmes informed me that he knows the whereabouts of Rudolph Schnaubelt . . . the Haymarket Square bomb-thrower.”
“You don’t have to tell me who Rudolph Schnaubelt is, goddamnit,” snarled Harrison. “I’ve had enough nightmares about the sonofabitch. Where do you think he is, Mr. Holmes?”
“I know exactly where he is,” said Holmes and gave the mayor Schnaubelt’s farm business and personal addresses in Buenos Aires.
“Well I’ll be dipped in shit,” said Harrison. “Bonnie, can’t you send some of your boys down there to Buenos Aires to get that murdering reptile?”
“We have no extradition arrangements with Argentina, Mr. Mayor.”
“God damn it, I know that,” said Harrison. “I mean
get
him. A black bag job. Haul that goddamn anarchist back here to Chicago for a fair trial and very public hanging.”
“If the Argentinian authorities were to discover a plot like that, it would mean war,” Bonfield said softly.
“It’ll be a sad day when the United States of America can’t whip some pissant country like Argentina,” said Harrison. “Okay, Bonnie, maybe we could just send someone down to shoot the sonofabitch. Bang! Take a picture of the corpse for the Chicago papers. No muss, no fuss.”
“We should talk about this later,” said Bonfield.
“You’re right!” laughed Harrison. “I have my favorite literary hero of all time right here in my carriage to ask questions of. Tell me, Mr. Holmes, in ‘The Sign of the Four’, you were injecting a seven-percent solution of cocaine into your arm or wrist when you were bored. Was that accurate?”
“A habit I abandoned after my friend Dr. Watson convinced me that—how did the good doctor put it?—that the game was not worth the candle.” Holmes saw no reason to mention his morning injection of this more powerful heroic drug or the fact that he planned to inject it twice more before this day was over.
“Ah, good,” cried Harrison. “So tell me, if you are free to do so, in that same adventure, do you think the lovely Miss Mary Morstan had romantic designs on you? Did she just settle, as we say, by marrying Dr. Watson?”
Holmes looked up at the clear sky and sighed. This was going to be a long carriage ride.
C
an I get you something to help you feel better?” asked James.
“A .40-caliber six-shooter so that I can blow my brains out,” said Sam Clemens. “Or, since I am a devout coward, perhaps some painless poison that tastes like lemonade.”
“Anything other than that?” asked James. He was sitting on a chair by the window a few feet from where Clemens, in his nightshirt, lay in bed. There were medicines and half-filled glasses on the bedside table and a pile of newspapers tossed on the only other chair.
“One doctor says this is just a bad case of the common grippe and he’s predicted every day in the last eleven days that I’d be up and out of this bed on the next day,” said Clemens between coughs. “The other doctor who’s looked in on me says that it’s pneumonia and that at my advanced age . . . fifty-eight . . . I should get my will in order and start getting measured for my coffin. I have the strongest urge to put these two medicos in a pit and see which one comes out alive.”
James smiled at that.
“What brought you and Mr. Sherlock Holmes to the Great Northern Hotel anyway?” asked Clemens, setting down his awful-smelling cigar long enough to drink from a tall glass of colored fluid, grimace at its taste, and pick up the smoking cigar again.
“Holmes chose it,” said James. Clemens had one of the corner rooms which included three tall windows in the curving bay, and James had all three open to the relatively fresh air of downtown Chicago. This hotel was at the corner of Jackson and Dearborn and this was about all that James knew of Chicago geography.
“He overheard a clerk telling a bellboy to take up a fresh pitcher of water with lemons to your room,” added James. “That’s how I knew you were here. I was surprised. When I was told you were ill, I thought I should check in on you.”
“That’s right neighborly,” said Clemens and stopped to cough. It was a deep, phlegmy cough and James leaned back a little more into the fresh air. “I plan to leave for New York tomorrow, Mr. James, if I have to do so in a coffin with a chunk of aged Limburger cheese on my chest for verisimilitude. I may have to ask you to be my pallbearer.”
Clemens coughed and drank from the glass again. He poured more colored liquid from a quart-size bottle into the glass.
“Is that cough syrup of some sort?” asked James.
“Of some sort,” said Clemens and took another long drink. “It’s laudanum. Liquid opium. A gift from the gods. My second doctor isn’t shy about prescribing it by the hogshead barrel. So far it’s the only thing that’s smoothed this cough.”
Wonderful
, thought James.
Holmes is injecting himself with that new heroin drug every day and Clemens—Mark Twain!—is busy turning himself into a laudanum addict
.
“Did you get your business done here in Chicago?” asked James. “You told us in Hartford that you had people to see.”
Clemens snorted. “I made the rounds of interested investors in Paige’s typesetting machine, but they are small-minded, James. Small-minded. They insist on seeing a working example of the typesetter. They are prejudiced in favor of earning their money back with interest.”