Martin Greenberg: Sherlock Holmes In America

Note: the Americans do whiskey atrociously but tobacco very well indeed.

29 September-I managed to talk my way out of a “delightful” hike to a local waterfall today while Sherlock did not. This was amusing.

2 October-“Even the people here are dull,” he complains to me. I could retort that they are not much duller than the folk of the English countryside, but honesty compels me to admit he is not entirely wrong. The guests are almost exclusively members of the upper-middle classes from New York and Boston-pleasant enough, but intellectually limited, and with much the same sort of lives. Of the late war they appear to try to remember as little as possible, though I am certain that among the older generation many lost sons. Sherlock tells me that in a few of the local cemeteries he has explored for their native plant life, there are numerous graves of men who fell in battle ten and twelve years ago.

5 October-I overheard a ridiculous but nonetheless rather interesting conversation today. As a rule, I am fortunate enough to find a corner of the porch where I can be more or less by myself, but today a party invaded the area, taking over a table and ordering lemonade and a light lunch. There were two of them, both in banking, one a collector of ancient Byzantine (or perhaps, just perhaps, late Roman) coins and the other with a recent history of tuberculosis and an overdeveloped anxiety about rabbits. The former, whom I would have assumed to be the steadier of the pair, was regaling his companion with an extraordinary tale.

“I assure you,” said he, “I am not inventing this. Nor have I succumbed to some delusional illness. And I was quite as sober as I am now.”

“Nonetheless,” replied his friend, “you can understand that I find your story difficult to believe.”

“I should not have believed it myself if I had not seen. I scoffed when I first heard of the place.”

“Which is called the Ghost Factory-”

“Ghost Shop.”

“Oh, indeed!”

“That’s only the derisive title of some of the natives who resent the invasion of so many tourists into their quiet town. The place is actually an inn run by a pair of brothers who, several evenings a week, hold mediumistic sittings in an upstairs room.”

“My dear Daniel-”

“I know, I know, but hear me out!”

“I have heard you out. You say that musical instruments play themselves-”

“-are heard to play when no human hand could touch them-”

“-and that dozens of spirits of Red Indians appear-”

“Chinamen too! And child spirits.”

“Popping up through a hidden trapdoor, no doubt.”

This was my private opinion as well, but the storyteller shook his head emphatically.

“No indeed. That’s part of the wonder of the thing. The place has been investigated by an expert in the detection of fraud who has had the floors and walls examined and is prepared to swear there are no secret entrances.” At this point, regrettably, two young ladies joined the gentlemen, and the conversation veered off in a duller direction. I own myself intrigued. The idea of spirits is absurd, of course, but this sounds like quite a complicated hoax. If I can inquire without actually seeming interested in the nonsensical matter, I would like to find out more. Perhaps I can set Sherlock on the scent.

Later-Sherlock uncooperative. “Twaddle!” sniffed he, and proceeded to give me a patronizing lecture on human gullibility. He really can be most tiresome.

8 October-We were joined at dinner tonight by a gentleman Father had met that morning. Sherlock and I observed him with some interest from the door of the dining room, ourselves as yet undetected. He was a man of about forty with a short moustache and beard and an impressive, straight-backed presence.

“Military,” said Sherlock, as if that were not obvious to anyone.

“From his air and bearing,” I pointed out, “he is surely an officer of some rank. A colonel, I would think.”

“And yet not a field officer,” Sherlock murmured thoughtfully. “Look at his hands. No outdoor life or physical labor has roughened them.”

He looked very smug as he said this, and I was forced to concede that he had a point. Fortunately, before I actually had to say so, Father noticed and beckoned us over. He introduced his companion as Mr. Henry Olcott, a reporter for The Daily Graphic. Sherlock and I exchanged glances.

“But with a military background, surely,” said he.

“Possibly as a colonel,” I added.

I regret to say that we rather displeased Father. He does not like us to “show off,” as he puts it, and in this case went so far as to apologize for our rudeness. But when we hurried to voice our own apologies, Mr. Olcott genially waved them off. “They are completely correct,” he said to Father, “and I would only like to know how on earth they worked it out.” Father sighed, but told us to oblige him. “You will see,” he remarked to our guest, “how simple it all is once they explain it.” I believe Sherlock’s vanity must have been tweaked at this, for he had the temerity to add, at the end of our account, “And you were a staff officer, sir, were you not?”

Father opened his mouth reprovingly, but before he could speak, Olcott exclaimed, “But that is wonderful. You are absolutely right. I was a Special Commissioner to the War Department, in charge of investigating fraud in arsenals and shipyards.”

This time Sherlock and I refrained from exchanging glances; indeed, we froze, pinned by the same certainty. But any questions we had were wiped from our minds by Father’s next remark:

“And Colonel Olcott also served on the panel that investigated the murder of President Lincoln.”

Needless to say, all else was forgotten as we listened to his account of the fate of that great and tragic man-of his assassination by the villain Booth, a sometime actor who knew well the interior of the theatre in which he committed his terrible crime. We listened as Colonel Olcott told us of Booth’s broken ankle as he leapt to the stage; his escape by horseback; and his vanishing for twelve days while his fellow assassins-one of whom had attacked the secretary of state, one of whom was meant to kill the vice president but lost his nerve-were apprehended. He also told us of the murderer’s eventual death in a burning barn, of the executions of the other conspirators. Colonel Olcott grew more and more somber as he recalled his story; even after nearly a decade, the sorrow and horror of it clearly have not left him. He spoke with great clarity and attention to detail, leaving an overall impression not only of inbred decency but of hard common sense. Indeed, as he went on, it seemed to me that I had injudiciously jumped to a conclusion-such a man could never be involved with the foolery of something called the Ghost Shop.

I said so to Sherlock later as we were preparing for bed, and he acknowledged as much. “Still,” said he, “it seems almost too much of a coincidence that there should be two investigators of fraud here in this out-of-the-way part of the world at the same time,” and I must agree that the odds of such a thing strike me as high.

9 October (midmorning)-The problem with Sherlock is that he has no respect for the other fellow’s privacy. It never seems to occur to him that a man should be left alone, to smoke and read and mull and go about his business. He is always bustling about discovering things and drawing conclusions that invariably lead to his coming to me with some involved plan of action that involves stirring ourselves to a completely unnecessary degree. So, this morning, he popped up on the veranda just as I was settling in with my after-breakfast cigar, and announced, “It is he!”

I am a man who likes to enter the day gradually, and I did not immediately follow him. “Who?” I inquired irritably. “And whence this penchant for gnomic announcements, Sherlock? It’s very irritating.”