Sherlock Holmes In America (38 page)

Holmes gazed for a moment at Cumberland, who was looking more miserable by the moment.

“While Armitage was performing his errand at Garth's office, I went to the address on the letter, found the two young men, and got the whole story out of them,” Holmes resumed. “Two summers ago, Cumberland briefly played professional baseball for a suburban team managed by a tight-fisted fellow named Brian O'Hara.”

“O'Hara promised me twenty dollars but paid me only five,” Cumberland muttered. “He claimed the box-office receipts had only been a quarter of what he expected.”

“Thus,” said Holmes, “the missing three quarters referred to by Cumberland. He asked some other players, including Gustavson, whom he knew as Oscar, if they had been similarly shorted, and learned they had not, but also that O'Hara was an unscrupulous employer who would cut every corner he could, and would often test new men by reneging on promises.”

Cumberland turned to Stagg. “I was so mad, Coach, I quit the team then and there. I never thought of myself as a professional, and after that experience I never even wanted to be a professional. I found another job, and as soon as I could, I sent O'Hara's lousy five bucks back to him.”

“And how did Garth come into it?” Stagg asked him.

“He'd heard about my mistake some way and approached me one day after practice.”

“Blackmail?”

“That's not how he put it. Oh, no, he was my friend. He was going to help me out. He claimed O'Hara was threatening to go to you with the truth. Garth said he knew a way to deter O'Hara, but it would be dangerous for me to be on campus. Not dangerous to me, Coach! Garth convinced me that if his plan failed, and O'Hara made his information public, my presence on campus would destroy University of Chicago football, and your own reputation with it.”

“And how was that to happen?” Stagg demanded skeptically.

“I don't know. I was confused. Gustavson is studying law and had it in his mind that O'Hara's breach of contract, plus my return of the one quarter he did pay me, somehow removed the taint of professionalism from my record.”

“That's nonsense, boy!”

“I wasn't convinced either,” Cumberland said ruefully. “I was working on that letter to Gustavson when a message came from Garth to leave the campus immediately. Coach Stagg, all I wanted was to play football for the University of Chicago!”

Stagg's features hardened, his stare intensified, and we glimpsed for that moment his practice-field visage. “You jackass! You should have come to me and explained what was happening! Perhaps I could have helped you.”

“I didn't think you'd understand. Everybody knows how down you are on professionals. Of course, I know now that Garth never meant to help me. He just wanted me out of the way until after the Carlisle game.”

“And he did all this to convince me to write for his newspaper?” Stagg said incredulously.

Holmes shook his head. “Garth was heavily involved in illicit gambling on college football games. He was depending on his wagers on the Carlisle Indians to erase a large debt to the bookmakers, needed Cumberland out of the way, and had uncovered the means to do so. Implicating Warner was secondary. His two aims fit neatly together, but his indebtedness to the bookmakers was the more dangerous problem.”

Stagg shook his head sadly, his anger dissipated as swiftly as it had come. “We're all of us imperfect sinners. God willing, this incident made you grow as a man, Cumberland.”

“You know, Stagg,” I said tentatively, “once Holmes and I confronted Garth, he promised to destroy the evidence he had of Cumberland's secret, and leave town for points west. To make sure, Holmes and I accompanied him to the railroad station to bid him farewell, and he has every incentive never to return to Chicago. As for O'Hara, the man had no role in Garth's plans for the definitive reason that he died last winter. Thus, no one ever need know any of this. I shall be discreet, and I'm certain Holmes will.”

“What are you suggesting, Armitage?” Stagg demanded.

“That Cumberland can still play for Chicago.”

“But you did play professionally, didn't you, Cumberland?” Stagg said.

“Technically I suppose I did,” Cumberland replied sadly, “even if what I got barely covered my carfare.”

Stagg shook his head. “Then I'm sorry. Once you crossed the line and accepted money, even if you returned it, there was no going back. I sympathize with your desire to play, but I cannot knowingly violate a rule. If you had played any games for me in the regular season, I would have had to notify the Big Ten conference that we would forfeit our victories.”

Cumberland nodded, accepting the coach's verdict. “Were you ever tempted to turn pro yourself, Coach?”

“Back in the eighties, six National League teams offered me pitching contracts. The highest bidder would have paid three thousand dollars for one season's work. I declined because of my loyalty to Yale and the low moral character of professional ballplayers. I am thankful football will never emerge as a professional sport, based as it is on school spirit and manliness and teamwork, everything that professionalism destroys.” He extended his hand to Clayton Cumberland. “Good luck to you in your future endeavors.”

When Cumberland had left the office, Stagg said to us, “I regret most of all that this scheme caused me to doubt my fellow coach Glenn Warner. While he will bend the rules at every opportunity, I should have known that he would never break them. It is good to know he is not a cheat.”

“Can you defeat the Carlisle team without Cumberland?” Holmes asked.

“It will not be easy, even though their superb quarterback Mt. Pleasant was injured in the Minnesota game and may not be able to play. They are very fast, particularly a most talented end named Exendine. Some say one of their newer players, a young man named Thorpe, will be even better, though that is difficult to imagine. If Exendine breaks free of our defense, he will catch passes all afternoon. My plan is not to let him. My defenders will knock down Exendine and their other ends at the outset of every play, and not let them up until the play is over.”

“And that is within the rules?” Holmes asked.

“Yes, perfectly.”

“Wouldn't it be fairer,” I ventured, “if only the man with the ball could be brought down? It would certainly reduce those grievous football injuries I'm constantly reading about.”

With a slight smile, Stagg replied, “Perhaps I'll suggest that to the committee. But for now, I must take advantage of the rules as written if I expect to outsmart Warner. Mr. Holmes, you must be my guest on the sidelines, and you too, Armitage. It is the very least I can do to repay you for solving my mystery and easing my mind.”

The University of Chicago's football stadium is called Marshall Field, a pun on the name of the real-estate developer who donated the land. On the day of the game, the skies were clear, the weather pleasantly cool, the grandstands filled. Someone estimated the crowd at between twenty-five and thirty thousand. At either end of the field, hundreds of spectators unable to get a seat watched standing on wooden platforms. Stagg had welcomed us cordially, but once play began, his focus was entirely on the game.

The plan to knock down the Carlisle ends proved quite effective for most of the game. Pop Warner was beside himself, smoking cigarettes incessantly as he prowled the sidelines. Probably (though I'm no lip-reader), smoking was not the only way he violated Stagg's purist standard of proper coachlike behavior. The injured Mt. Pleasant had been replaced by a chap named Hauser, and for much of the contest it seemed unlikely we would see his throwing arm tested.

Early in the fourth quarter, Carlisle had an eight to four lead, much too close to satisfy Warner. He called Hauser and the star end Exendine to the sidelines and gave them some quick instructions, as Stagg watched suspiciously from our side of the field. The center snapped the ball to Hauser, but Exendine, instead of running toward his inevitable knockdown, ran off the field and behind the Carlisle bench. Hauser evaded the Chicago tacklers as long as he could, then delivered a long throw downfield. Exendine, having run some twenty-five yards behind the Carlisle bench, ran back onto the field of play, and caught the pass with no Chicago defender near him. The Carlisle Indians went on to win by a score of eighteen to four.

“An admirable piece of misdirection,” Holmes remarked in a low voice. “But is that stratagem within the rules?”

“I daresay it won't be after the next rules committee meeting,” I said.

Amos Alonzo Stagg, who had come perilously close to violating his personal ban on profanity, had his own opinion. “That's unethical, unprofessional, dishonest, and dishonorable! Pop Warner is a cheat!”

Note: Two books were useful in verifying details of Armitage's account:
Touchdown
(Longmans, Green, 1927), by Amos Alonzo Stagg and Wesley Winans Stout; and
Carlisle vs. Army
(Random House, 2007), by Lars Anderson.

Michéal Breathnach

“Michéal Breathnach” lives in his ancestral home in the Burren at Carrowney Cleary, County Clare, just a few miles from the market town of Lisdoonvarna and the rollicking seaside village of Doolin where, between the jigs and the reels, he occasionally gets some work done. For
Ghosts in Baker Street
, he contributed “The Coole Park Problem,” co-written with his daughter, Clare, which was inspired by a long ramble in Yeats's haunted wood on Lady Gregory's old estate near Gort in County Galway. “The Song at Twilight” was suggested by the Canonical tale, “His Last Bow,” with its tantalizing references to Holmes's time in Chicago and Buffalo. Michéal Breathnach is also the Irish
nomde-plume
of the American writer, Michael Walsh.

Chicago, July 1912

M
rs. Murphy's chowder was, of course, inedible, but then I was not here for Mrs. Murphy's chowder. I was here for Miss Maddie McParland.

Forgive me for being blunt. The finer points of literary style are Watson's, as my feeble effort concerning the business of the Lion's Mane so vividly illustrates. A few minutes' consultation with the
Britannica
and the solution to that mystery would have readily presented itself. Still, we all of us are human, all too human, as Nietzsche said, and I am not as young as I used to be.

How I do miss my amanuensis, my Boswell. I am not a man given to personal reflection, nor do I possess that experience with women on several continents which distinguished my long-suffering but everamiable companion when it came to matters of the heart. But Watson has finally abandoned me, and so cannot help me now, whether literarily or in the realm of
das ewig-Weibliche
, and so I alone am left to tell thee. I trust my allusions are clear and in order.

The chowder, as I said, was execrable, an eldritch admixture of corn, water—no doubt cheap liquor had been added to it as well—and some sort of meat stock dredged up from the bowels of the nearby slaughterhouses, whose stench permeates the insalubrious atmosphere of this most wretched of American cities. All it wanted was a pair of overalls to make the concoction complete.

So also the accommodations and the weather. Chicago is a fearful place at the best of times, but most of the time it is either blistering hot, as it was now, or frightfully cold. The people of this benighted metropolis walk head down, shoulders hunched, alternately nearly naked or bundled up like Esquimaux, cloth caps tugged down tight, like Irish peasants, too-small bowlers squashed onto too-large heads, dandy fedoras attached by strings to their bearers' lapels, so as not to go sailing away into inclement waters of Lake Michigan. The mere act of perambulation is one of the labors of Hercules.

For all of this, I blame my brother. Although it has been some years since one could truthfully say that Mycroft
was
the British Government, he nevertheless still wields enormous influence, especially since the accession of King George IV to the throne of England. Although
nil nisi bonum
and all that, my lack of regard for the former King, the late Edward, was well known, and I regularly rejected all honors and entreaties from His Majesty's Government during the mercifully brief reign of a man Watson chose to cloak as the King of Bohemia during our one unhappy encounter.

Too, the long-ago memory of Miss Irene Adler has long remained with me, and so it was with some reluctance that I welcomed my brother to my humble cottage on the South Downs, where I was content to live out the remainder of my life in peace and solitude, with only Mrs. Hudson and my apiary for company as I scribbled away at my magnum opus
.

As always, on those infrequent occasions when I see my brother, I marvel at the physical dissimilarity between us. If ever, in matters of appearance, two men were less likely to be siblings, then surely he and I were those men: I, hawk-featured, even gaunt as I approach my sixtieth birthday, and Mycroft tending toward the portly as he advanced in both age and wisdom. And yet, in certain qualities of mind and rigorousness of intellect, I dare say that there is some distinct familial resemblance.

He ambled past Mrs. Hudson with the air of a man on a palanquin. “Damn it, Sherlock,” he began without preamble, “if there is an excuse for your insufferable rudeness, I would very much like to hear it.”

Unaccustomed as he was to physical exertion, my brother plopped himself unbidden into a wing chair as I discreetly signaled Mrs. Hudson for tea.

“You have come straight from Whitehall, I perceive,” I said. After all these years, he was used to my little tricks of behavioural detection, but inevitably he rose to the bait.

“How on earth did you know that?”

“Elementary. Had you come from the Diogenes Club, you would have the tell-tale smudge of printer's ink on your left thumb and right forefinger, as you habitually wet your index finger as you turn the pages of the
Times
.”

“Perhaps,” muttered my brother, “but what about my attire or manner suggests Whitehall?”

“Again, child's play. Your right cuff is besmirched with sealingwax, which strongly suggests you have very recently sealed an important envelope and then rushed here without a chance to change your cuffs. That, together with the presence of a Daimler outside my humble doorway, strong suggests that you are here on matters of state. Hence, Whitehall.”

Mycroft looked at me for a moment, that look I knew so well from our childhood, and then moved straightaway to the business which had brought him here. “See here, Sherlock,” he said. “Your country needs you and that is the end of it.”

He then handed me the purpose of my mission: a sealed letter that I was not to open, but rather to deliver in person to a young woman in America of whom I had never heard. I glanced at the envelope, which contained only a single name: “Miss Maddie McParland.” No address was given.

“You are wondering why I cannot simply post this,” observed Mycroft, turning the tables ever so slightly, “but this is no task for the Royal Mail.” His mien was deadly serious. “Make no mistake, brother, this is a matter of the highest urgency. I have given His Majesty my solemn word that, upon the honor of the family name, you will carry out this mission, personally deliver this missive to its intended recipient, and await her reply.”

These were deep waters indeed, and I needed to tread carefully. “Who is this woman,” I asked, glancing at the writing on the envelope, “this Miss McParland?”

“She is a native of Chicago, Illinois, living in what the inhabitants there refer to as the South Side. That is all, for the moment, you need know.” He consulted his pocket watch, then replaced it in the folds of his waistcoat. “You are booked on the
Oceanic
tomorrow at this time. I trust your journey will be speedy, safe, and pleasant.”

I ushered him out of my study. “Won't you stay for tea, Mr. Holmes?” asked the faithful Mrs. Hudson, bearing two steaming cups on a silver tray.

“My thanks to you, madam,” he replied graciously, “but duty calls.”

I saw him to the door. The Channel lay beyond the downs, shimmering in the grey light. But Mycroft's gaze was toward the east, toward the German Ocean. “Sherlock,” he said quietly. “There is someone who would like a word with you.” We stepped outside.

His motorcar was waiting, its engine running. There was a man sitting in the back seat, whom I immediately recognized as Mr. Asquith from his distinctive profile. As I moved to greet him, he rolled his window down and said, “You must fully understand, Holmes, that His Majesty cannot and will not acknowledge your presence in America. Should anything go awry, or should you meet with some misfortune, you are not to communicate with your brother or anyone else connected with this government. I cannot emphasize this point enough, and I trust I make myself clear.”

“Perfectly, Prime Minister,” I replied.

“Very well,” said Mr. Asquith, rolling up his window. Our brief interview was over.

I turned back to Mycroft, puzzlement writ large upon my features. Instead of edifying me, however, my brother did something remarkable: he took my hand in his and held it for a moment before shaking it. It was not until his hand had been withdrawn that I realized he had pressed a small piece of paper into it.

“You have been through many rough adventures in which you have risked life and limb, Sherlock. I think at once of Dr. Roylott, and of the loathsome Milverton, and even of poor Jefferson Hope. I pray that this will not be another of them. And yet . . . ” His voice trailed off.

“Many were the men, Moriarty's men, who have wished me dead, and I still live,” I told him.

“Yes,” he said after some thought. “Your strength has never failed you, nor your iron will, nor your keen mind. But it is a new world upon whose precipice we stand, and one that is not so readily accommodating to men such as we . . . such as we once were.”

He clambered into the rear seat of the Daimler, and lowered the window as the driver made ready to engage the gears. “From now on, and until further notice, your name is James McKenna, laborer and former amateur boxer, of Liverpool. Good luck, brother,” he said.

As they drove away, I looked at the piece of paper, which contained a single address: 3154 S. Normal Avenue.

“Mr. McKenna,” squawked a voice in my ear. That would be Mrs. Murphy. Like other women of her race, she had a pinched, befreckled face, bony fingers that bespoke the miser and watery, pale blue eyes. “You haven't touched your chowder.”

I had been a boarder at her establishment for several days, on the theory that if I was to pass for James McKenna, then what better place to pick up the plumage of this strange bird, the Irish-American, than in his native habitat?

I looked at the steaming bowl before me. “My appetite fails me today, Mrs. Murphy,” I said, upon which voiced sentiment she whisked the vessel away and promptly set it down before another of the lodgers. “Then Mr. Callahan will have it, and that's the end of it. He'll no want of strength on the morrow, for the butcher's work ain't ne'er done but begins anew fresh each day.”

Foregoing the chowder with gusto (as the Americans, with their unhealthy reliance upon Spanish words, say), I rose, took my leave, and set off in the direction my landlady had pointed me. I glanced once more at the piece of paper into which Mycroft had impressed my hand, though I had long since committed it to memory, perhaps as a kind of talisman.

I shall not trouble the reader with an account of the squalor and filth I encountered along the way. Suffice it say that half an hour's walk was never undertaken so briskly, with greater purpose, or more relief when at last my destination was reached: the intersection of W. 31
^st
Street and S. Normal Avenue in a part of the city they called Bridgeport. I turned into Normal Avenue and walked south to number 3154.

The residence I sought was typical for the location or, in local parlance, the “neighbourhood.” It was a small, two-storey building, what the locals call a “prairie bungalow,” or perhaps more descriptively, a “shotgun shack.” Miss Maddie McParland resided on the first—American, second—floor, and so a short trudge to the top of the stairs soon brought me face to face with her door knocker.

I knocked, then knocked again. At last, I could hear a voice on the other side of the transom: “Who is it, please?” The Irish lilt in her voice was unmistakable, even if her accent was wholly American.

“Mr. James McKenna, come all the way from London with an urgent message for you,” I replied. “May I come in, please?”

The door opened. As Watson has told you, I am impervious to the charms of a well-turned ankle, but at this moment I wished I had his powers of description, so comely was the lass who now stood before me. “A message for me? There must be some mistake, good sir. But, please, come in and take some refreshment,” she said.

The flat was rather more well-appointed that one might have suspected by its humble exterior. My own Mrs. Hudson could not have kept it neater or cleaner; there were books on the shelves and the satisfying smell of tea brewing in the kitchen.

I accepted her offer with gratitude and sat down in a comfortable chair near the fireplace while she sat opposite on a kind of divan. “I can't tell you who gave this letter to me, or why,” I began, “but I can assure you this is no joke. Indeed, it is deadly serious.”