The Seventh Bullet (23 page)

The heavy mist continued to embrace us as we groped our way to the right into Chandos Street and then left into Portland Place, but the few intermittent breaks in the fog’s density allowed me to marvel at the change in Holmes’s gait. Gone was the walking stick. Normally, he would take long strides that made him sway slightly as his body’s centre of gravity shifted from his left side to his right, but in this guise of Phillips he moved more ponderously and appeared more precisely upright.

A few minutes before the hour, we passed the Langham.
I remember having the feeling we were being watched from a window above us, and when I looked up through a break in the fog I was momentarily startled by a menacing countenance of narrow eyes, flared nostrils, and pointed teeth.

“A hotel gargoyle, Watson,” Holmes reassured me, and we continued on in our measured pace.

We reached the Royal Larder at seven o’clock. It is a poorly lit, highly polished West End establishment full of oak furniture, brass fixtures, a cacophony of singing, and numerous persons aspiring to the upper class. We elbowed our way to opposite ends of the room, Holmes coming to rest at a small, square table in a corner; I, in a chair at the far end of the bar. As soon as he was seated, Holmes struck a match and lit a cigarette, purposely adding great clouds to the shadowy haze already hanging in layers like piles of folded, grey blankets. I then saw him dip into a large side pocket of his flowery jacket and produce what at first glance appeared to be a crumpled ball of black paper.

As I watched him unfold his bundle, however, I realised that he had within his grasp a small, black Alpine hat not unlike that which Phillips himself had been wearing the day he had been murdered. Slowly Holmes placed it upon his head, adjusting its abbreviated brim so that it came down to the bridge of his puttied nose. He then took a pull on the cigarette, inclined his head to smell the white carnation in his lapel, and turned his eyes to the door that communicated with the outside.

A pint of dark ale was my only companion as I gazed along with Holmes at the newcomers who entered: a raucous ginger-haired woman, two American men in formal dress, and two women with painted faces and swelling expanses of
décolletage
whose vocation
I should prefer not to mention.

Despite Holmes’s expectations, we could not, of course, be certain that Buchanan would keep the appointment; and by the time I had begun my second tankard, I was beginning to doubt that he would. He was already a half hour late, and though it was foggy he had only a short distance to walk from his hotel. How many glasses would I have to drink before the man arrived? I wondered. I began to think about the lengthy nights Sherlock Holmes and I had spent together in previous cases so long ago, waiting for equally mysterious events to unfold: the dramatic arrival of Colonel Sebastian Moran and his airgun in that empty house in Baker Street or the emergence of the deadly swamp adder down the bell pull from Dr. Grimesby Roylott’s dummy ventilator. Tonight, however, the wait was not as long.

At eight o’clock Senator Buchanan appeared. As he surveyed the room, no doubt seeking a distinctive black hat, I placed my hand over my brows and turned my head away to conceal my own identity. Making his way between the two women who had arrived before him, he did not notice Holmes at first; but just as one of them giggled and asked the distinguished-looking gentleman with the thick white hair what was undoubtedly an impertinent question, he laid his eyes on the shadow wearing the Alpine hat seated at the rear of the public house—Sherlock Holmes or, rather, the replication of David Graham Phillips.

(I could see the looks of frustration on the women’s faces as Buchanan ignored them; but since Buchanan’s back was to me, I have relied on Holmes’s subsequent account of the meeting to complete this part of the narrative.)

Buchanan’s mouth dropped open as he began to recognise
the ostentatious figure before him. Oblivious to the charms of the hectoring women at either side, he stumbled rather than walked towards Holmes’s table. Stopping two or three feet in front of the spectre who continued to exhale smoke heaven-ward but now much less voluminously, Buchanan whispered, “You’re dead. Everybody knows it.” As if to reaffirm the fact, he repeated, “You’re dead.”

Standing motionless, Buchanan continued to stare.

Others in the room began to stare as well. They, however, were looking not at the dandified gentleman seated at the table, but at the transfixed senator, frozen in front of Holmes like Macbeth before the ghost of Banquo.

From my own position, I could see a macabre grin begin to cross Holmes’s face.

“Don’t smile at me!” Buchanan snarled, his voice beginning to increase in volume. “Don’t say
I
did it. They all wanted someone to do it. Don’t blame me if I was the only one with enough guts.”

Suddenly Holmes jumped to his feet and pointed his index finger accusingly at Buchanan.

“No!”
the Senator screamed as more heads throughout the room turned in his direction. “Leave me alone!” he cried as he took two small steps backward. Then he turned quickly and, after knocking over a chair, ran through the doorway and out into the fog that seemed to suck him up.

Holmes and I both sprang for the door, but before we could reach it the two women who had accosted Buchanan snaked their arms around our own.

“’Ere, now, luv,” the one next to me said, “wot’s your ‘urry?”

“There’s two of you, and there’s two of us,” the other said with
a lascivious wink.

Once we were able to extricate ourselves and escape into the fog, Buchanan was nowhere to be seen. A murky halo of light from the front of the Langham beckoned, but when we enquired at the desk and even interrogated people in the lobby, it became clear to us that the senator had not set foot in the hotel since his departure for the public house.

London is a large city, and for that reason one may rightly deduce that—fog or no fog—it is easy to lose oneself. Such an axiom, of course, applies much more readily to an unknown soul than to a person of fame or notoriety.

“He won’t get far, Watson,” Holmes assured me. “It’s difficult to travel in weather like this. Besides, too many people know the celebrated Mr. Buchanan. Tonight we can notify our old friend Stanley Hopkins at the Yard to keep an eye open for his whereabouts. Hopkins has just been made a Chief Inspector and should be able to help us. But as it will be impossible to find Buchanan ourselves in this fog, let us begin early tomorrow morning making enquiries within the American community. A former United States senator should not be too hard to track down.”

“What a world of twaddle it is! If men and women could only learn to build their ideals on the firm foundation—the only foundation—of the practical instead of upon the quicksand of lies and pretenses, wouldn’t the tower climb less shakily, if more slowly, toward the stars?”

—David Graham Phillips,
The Husband’s Story

“Q
uick, Watson! We’ve not a moment to lose!”

Thus was I roughly roused from a sound sleep on the morning of Friday, April 10, by Sherlock Holmes.

“Quick, man!” he repeated. “I have only my own sluggishness to blame. Get dressed! We’re off to Waterloo!”

Still drowsy from our escapades of the night before, I donned my clothes as rapidly as I could, for Holmes had already secured a hansom, which was waiting just beyond my front door. Not until we were securely seated inside did I dare ask him what had transpired.

Impatiently drumming his long fingers on the arm of the seat, he explained the events of the morning. Holmes had returned to the Langham to ask about Buchanan. Although the senator had still not come back and his distraught wife had no knowledge of his whereabouts, Holmes encountered the Buchanan’s companions of two nights previous, Colonel and Mrs. Astor, who were in the process of leaving the hotel. The Astors, it turned out, were departing for America on that very day; and, after impatiently enduring great praise from them once my friend had made known his identity, Holmes learned that Buchanan had in fact enquired the night before as to when the Astors were leaving England. It seems that Buchanan, aware in advance of his friends’ theatre plans, had been able to make his way through the fog to the playhouse in Drury Lane where they were in attendance. During the interval in a most agitated state—indeed, to Astor, looking as if he’d seen a ghost—the senator expressed his intent to leave the country as soon as possible.

“I don’t jolly well blame him,” I interjected.

Astor, Holmes continued, had informed Buchanan that he was sailing today and suggested that, although the ship was no doubt fully booked, some arrangements could certainly be made for a man of the senator’s importance.

“In short, Watson, unless we arrive in Southampton by midday— that is, in less than two hours—Mr. Buchanan will be on his way to America. I myself only returned just now to collect my revolver.”

“But can’t we telegraph ahead for the police to detain him?” I asked.

“On what evidence, old fellow? That he bolted my performance as David Graham Phillips? Such a reaction might simply be
regarded as a theatre critic’s entirely appropriate review. That he met Goldsborough at a concert? The authorities would justifiably laugh. No, my friend, unless we can extract a full confession from the senator, I am afraid that he will return to America where there is no great desire to unravel a case which the police in New York have already labelled ‘closed.’”

We arrived at Waterloo Station a few minutes before ten. Holmes hurriedly purchased two first-class tickets for the boat-train to Southampton but was cautioned by the clerk that the train was probably on its way by now. We rushed into the great hall and, thanks to the sunshine filtering through the glass roof, immediately located platform 12, the home of the White Star boat-train. Unfortunately, it was more than half the station away. Worse, at that very moment, off in the distance, we could see the green flag go up and hear the blare of the warning whistle. Before we had a chance to move—though God knows that even if we had, neither one of us could have run fast enough to catch it—we watched the railway carriages pull out of the station, gathering speed with every passing moment. We could see the unusually long and crowded parade of first-class coaches with their dark-blue broadcloth and gold-braided furnishings; but of Buchanan we saw nothing.

“Well, Holmes—” I began dejectedly, but to my surprise he was no longer at my side. He was instead springing up the stairs towards the doors through which we had previously entered.

By the time I caught up to him outside the station, he’d already squeezed his way through gangs of people, slipped between the arriving hansoms and motor cars at the kerb, and hailed a taxi, a black Renault, which was now idling in the roadway. “My man,”
he was saying to the driver as I puffed up to his side, “get us to Southampton before midday, and it’ll be worth your while.”

“’Ere,” the driver sniffled, dragging a sleeve across his florid and bulbous nose, “are you serious, guv’nor?” He was wearing a dark ulster with the collar turned up and, despite the relative warmth of the morning, a red-tartan scarf draped round his neck. It was only too obvious that he was suffering from a cold.

Holmes threw several large coins on to the seat beside the fellow whose avaricious grin exposed a missing front tooth. Nonetheless, he seemed hesitant. “I-I’m not sure—” he began.

“Not sure?” Holmes repeated. “Not sure? Make up your mind then! Be quick, man! We’ve no time to waste haggling!”

I could not help thinking how rapidly Rollins would have had the yellow Packard on the move. Finally, after drawing his sleeve once more across his red nose, the driver said decisively, “’Op in!”

Our departure was anything but speedy, however. The heavy traffic approaching the station in the Waterloo Road prevented the quick start we had hoped for. Indeed, only when the soot-begrimed buildings of London gave way to the less cramped cottages of the countryside did Holmes lean back in his seat. Outwardly he appeared calm; only the resumption of his finger-drumming, this time on the black leather cushion between us, gave witness to his inner turmoil. For a quarter of an hour, Holmes and I said nothing.

Searching to break the silence as we rumbled along, I observed at last, “The boat-train seemed excessively crowded today. Quite a number of first-class carriages.”

“A new ship, Watson,” Holmes said tersely. “Lots of rich, Americans who want to be part of history.”

“But how do we know that Buchanan is going to America at
all?” I asked, trying to distract him from worrying about that over which he had no control. “Many ships bound for America call at nearby cities before braving the Atlantic. Mine stopped at Cherbourg.”

“Capital, Watson!” Holmes said, seeming to brighten. “Your esoteric knowledge never ceases to amaze me. Buchanan’s boat does indeed stop at Cherbourg and then at Queenstown, but I’m sure we have nothing to fear from his jumping ship. Buchanan has too much at stake in America—his connections with Hearst for one, his wife’s family for another—which means, of course, his fortune for a third. Besides, remember how many people might be implicated if it can be shown that Phillips’s murder had been concealed. Why, such a scandal could reach all the way to a former Chief Executive. And Roosevelt is, after all, seeking to regain the presidency this year.”