SHERLOCK HOLMES IN NEW YORK (2 page)

The Professor sank back further in his chair, fairly
panting with the emotion that had surged through him
in the course of his tirade. Holmes looked at him for a moment, then slowly shook his head.

"Have you? I, on the other hand, have the same
plan for you that I have always had: to see you swing
at the end of the hangman's rope. I have no doubt,
Professor, that it is
my
plan that will prevail."

He stood above the wizened Professor for a moment, a brooding sternness shadowing his face. He
might have been an avenging angel taking the measure
of a demon of the Pit for a fated forthcoming strug
gle.

A piece of crystal crunched under one evening pump
as he shifted his stance slightly. He glanced down,
and his face lightened with a wry smile.

"Pity about the chandelier. It was the only thing in
the room that showed a
little
style. Don't bother to
get up, Professor. I'll see myself out."

He turned and was gone from the room.

Professor Moriarty sat for many minutes, his claw-
like hands cradling the blued metal of the revolver with
an almost urgent affection, gazing with a curiously pas
sionless abstraction at a point in space between him
self and the wall. Then, moving decisively, he laid
down the weapon and strode to the blackboard. Wip
ing it clean, he picked up the chalk and began chart
ing his next project in large but meticulously neat
letters:

1. SHERLOCK HOLMES TO . . .

Some three days after the singular confrontation just
described, on the 22
nd
of March of this year of 1901
to be precise, a dismal morning found me finishing a
quite satisfactory breakfast in the lodgings I had so
often shared with Sherlock Holmes. The practice of
my profession, and two marriages which left me twice
a widower, had seen me domiciled elsewhere for long periods of time, but I was well aware that the cluttered
rooms at 221B Baker Street were now truly my home,
and one which suited me eminently. Mrs. Hudson is a
jewel of a landlady, with a rare understanding of the sort of breakfast required to start a day; and, trying though he is at times, Sherlock Holmes is a fellow-
tenant of the kind guaranteed to keep a constitutionally
torpid medical man stimulated and on his toes!

As he entered the sitting room, where breakfast
had been laid, however, he seemed sunk in morose
introspection, and flung me a glum "'Morning, Watson. Breakfasting?" His faded purple dressing-gown
hung on him a little.

"Now how, Holmes," said I
gravely, "did you work that out?"

I took a sip of my tea and returned to my perusal
of
The Times
, anticipating a small surprise its pages
had in store for him.

Sherlock Holmes was in no mood for persiflage.
"Watson, do you mind curbing your tendency to
ward schoolboy jokes for the moment? You know I've no head for humor when there's nothing to occupy me
but staring at rain-streaked windows on the other side
of the street! Three days since I broke the back of
Moriarty's organization, and there's not been a caller
or a letter worthy of my attention!"

Hands behind his back, his head bowed, he strode
across the room to the bookshelf and cast a sour glance
at the bound volumes containing those cases of his
which, with a constantly expressed distaste and re
luctance (though, I have always felt, a secret pride)
he allowed me to present to the public gaze.

He ran his finger along the gilded tops of the books
as if looking, indeed hoping, to discover dust, and ob
served, "As my biographer, Watson, you've precious
little with which to occupy yourself these days. You'll
soon be afflicted with the same boredom I'm suffering,
I dare say, though I don't suppose you're quite as
congenial a host to the blue devils as I am. I tell you,
it's intolerable! If nothing is to happen for the moment
in the matter of Professor Moriarty, so be it. For the
big game, after all, one must be prepared to wait in
the blind for as long as needs be.
"

"Yet has London lost its flavor with the Queen's
passing? Where are the ingenious stranglers, the con
voluted cracksmen, the bizarre blackmailers of yester
year? Why, the new King's cronies by themselves ought
to account for a torrent of activity ready-made for
a consulting detective!"

Though I was as aware as he that, as Prince of
Wales, the King had acquired many dubious asso
ciates, I was not well pleased with Holmes' comment. I had, as Holmes had not, worn the uniform of my
country, and preferred to consider my monarch as
beyond the reach of a subject's light censure; though I admit that His Majesty Edward VII may well test this
principle farther than I would like, before his reign
is done.

I let my friend's remark go by, and said merely,
"Well, well, I'm certain matters will look up before
long." I allowed a note of smugness to creep into my
voice as I added, "And, by the bye, within a fort
night's time you will be receiving a letter from America."

Holmes turned from the bookcase and bent on me
a glance which mingled impatience, surprise, and a
trace of hope that something of interest might after all
be in the wind.

"How in the world do you come to know such a
thing?"

"Stealing a bit of your thunder, am I, Holmes?
Mystified you, have I?" said I.

"Thoroughly."

I picked up the newspaper and said, "Well, then,
listen to this item in the theatrical news: 'Our Broad
way correspondent reports that on the thirty-first of
this month Daniel Furman's production of Sir Arthur
Wing Pinero's
The Second Mrs. Tanqueray
will open at the Empire Theater in New York.' Why do you
suppose, Holmes, that the Americans would name a
theater 'Empire' when they're a republic? No mat
ter," for I saw a glint in his eye and a tightening of his
mouth that bespoke a brusque response to this, to my
mind quite legitimate, inquiry. "Ah, yes. 'In addition
to Mr. Kendal, Mr. Huntley, Mr. East, and Miss
Campbell, the distinguished cast will include, in her
first non-singing role—'"

"Miss Irene Adler!"

I was dashed, and said so as I laid down the
paper. "Holmes, I was dead set on astonishing you!"

"You have, Watson, you have," said Sherlock
Holmes, his face animated in a way that, in spite of
my disappointment that his nimble mind had divined
my surprise, gladdened me. "Your ability to extract
the single item of unalloyed interest from the entire
mass of wordage in today's number of
The Times
is
an astonishing faculty." He turned and strode briskly
toward the mantelpiece.

I sighed as I laid down the paper and reflected on
my friend's narrow scope of concern. "The one item
of unalloyed interest," indeed! Aside from the prog
ress of the war in South Africa, the contentions of
Turk, Greek, and Bulgar in the Balkans, and a pun
gent if erratic speech by young Mr. Churchill in the Com
mons, there was a most fascinating analysis by the
financial correspondent of the prospects of the largest
steel company in the world, just formed by Mr. Pier
pont Morgan in New York, to be called United States
Steel. Though not as sound as Consols, naturally, it
seemed to me as though a share or so would not be
an imprudent investment. But such matters are al
ways far from the mind of Sherlock Holmes!

Standing at the mantel, he lifted up from it a dainty
music-box ornamented in
porcelain and gold filigree
of such delicacy that it might have been spun sugar.
It was emblematic of that cloying fusion of Germanic
and Mediterranean taste that characterizes Franz
Josef's empire. (As I write, it strikes me that the seem
ingly eternal Franz Josef, Wilhelm of Germany,
Nicholas of the Russias, the Empress of China, the Sultan of Turkey, the Kings of Spain, Portugal, and
Italy—every ruler now living—will be gone by the
time this account is published. Who will sit on those
thrones in that distant time, I wonder?) Holmes
opened the box, and, faint and tinny, the strains of
"Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes" wafted through
the room. It is a sentimental tune, but English to the core, and I have always thought it was that which
prompted Irene Adler to make a present of this par
ticular music-box to Holmes. European of the Europeans, she was; and Holmes, for all his half-French
ancestry and occasional impatience with his more
stolid countrymen, including myself, is as British as
roast beef, impossible to imagine as a German, an
Italian, or an American. I believe Irene Adler recog
nized this and chose to make him a gift that showed
she did so.

Why, of course (being probably the only person,
and assuredly the only woman, who had ever bested
Holmes in the course of his work), she had felt it
necessary to bestow this memento of their encounter
on him was a more difficult matter to fathom. She had
won the game fairly, and, in so doing, showed herself
to have a stronger character and higher standards of
conduct, admitted adventuress though she was, than
the titled personage on whose behalf Holmes had been
induced to act against her. In the baker's dozen of
years that had passed since that "Scandal in Bohemia,"
Holmes had always referred to her as "
the
woman."
Her opinion of him had been suggested by the gift of
the music-box, and by certain envelopes received at
irregular intervals.

Such an envelope—one of ten or so—Sherlock Holmes now removed from the filigreed box, and
opened. I knew that, no matter which envelope it
was, it contained two tickets from any one of a num
ber of theaters in cities around the Continent and
England, for dates ranging back nearly ten years.

"She's never failed to send you opening-night tick
ets, has she?" said I.

"Never," answered Holmes in a low voice. "Row E,
seats one and three—for the last nine seasons." He
replaced the tickets in their envelope and the envelope
in its box, and continued in a musing, almost wistful tone, "One day we must find ourselves in those seats,
eh, Watson? They've gone begging too long, far too
long— Come in!"

Mrs. Hudson, after her discreet knock at our sitting-
room door and Holmes' response, entered, clutching
a large handful of envelopes.

"The post's come, sir," said she, and handed them
to him.

As always, I could not repress a twinge of annoy
ance. Holmes and I shared the expenses of the house
hold on a completely equal basis, and it was indeed I who saw to it that Mrs. Hudson's charges were met to
the penny and to the date. Yet she made no secret of
the fact that she regarded Holmes as the sole tenant of
her rooms and myself as a welcome but inconsequential appendage. I knew that Holmes would, of course, pass over any letters or circulars addressed to me, but
that was not the point: I should have much preferred
Mrs. Hudson to separate our post and hand each
man's to him directly. It was all the more galling that
I could not bring the matter up without appearing
petty.

"Shall I bring some hot tea?" said Mrs. Hudson.

My cup was then quite cold, and the little tea re
maining in the pot was scarcely more than a tepid stew
of leaves.

"Why, yes, that would—"

"Yes, thank you, Mrs. Hudson," Holmes inter
rupted, leafing through the envelopes, "and if you've
got a couple of rashers of streaky bacon, I'll—"

He stopped and held up an envelope bearing a
stamp which I could see at a glance was not British.

"You must apologize to the trans-Atlantic mails, Watson. Your estimate of a fortnight for a letter from
America lacks thirteen days of proving accurate."

I could sense his excitement as he slit the envelope,
drew from within it a smaller one, and opened that.

"Row E as usual," said I. "Seats one and—
Holmes, what is it?"

For I had seen the animated hands suddenly stop
their motion, and a wary, shadowed look appear on
the keen face, a look that deepened into dread as he inverted the smaller envelope over his open hand and
shook from it a number of torn strips of pasteboard.

I rose and inspected the fragments. They were ob
viously the remnants of theater tickets and I could
make out a clearly identifiable portion of a capital let
ter E.

"Good heavens, Holmes!" I exclaimed. "That's a
rum business! Whatever would make her do a thing
like that?"

My words seemed to galvanize Sherlock Holmes
from his inactivity.
"Watson! There's not a moment to be lost. I must
set out for New York this very day. Will you be kind
enough to engage passage immediately?"

"Certainly, Holmes," I replied. "If time is of the
essence, we can gain half a day by taking a Cunarder
from Liverpool. The trains there are—"

"We? I said nothing of—"