Dan Simmons - The Fifth Heart

King set that sharpened point a millimeter under the young thug’s left eye, pushing strongly enough to draw blood and a terrified gasp from the would-be highwayman. James half-expected King to pop the boy’s eye out like a street vender scooping out ice cream on a hot summer night.

“There’s a lesson here, boy,” hissed King. “If you’re coming to a knife fight, bring a knife . Otherwise you’ll end up with a Heidelberg scar.”

King flicked the blade right across the young thug’s cheek and blood geysered.

The boy screamed, clasped both hands to his opened cheek to hold together the bloody flaps now exposing his molars, stood, and ran off into the night.

James could only stare at the two men unconscious on the ground as the sound of the boy’s pounding boots dwindled down the dark alleyway. He jumped slightly when someone touched his elbow, but it was only Roosevelt. “That move of yours was rather neat, Mr. James.”

“Very neat, I thought,” said King, cleaning off the stone head of his cane in the dirt and cinders.

“Your right sleeve is ripped and bloody,” said young Theodore. “Did that young brat do that?”

“No,” said James, astounded at how steady his voice sounded, “I . . . fell when getting off a trolley a short while ago. Just tore it up a bit on the gravel.”

King and Roosevelt exchanged a glance, but said nothing. They stepped away from the two forms on the ground, one moaning and weeping, the other still unconscious.

King twirled his newly cleaned cane. “We really were headed for Hay’s place for dinner. Would you care to accompany us, Mr. James?”

“I would, Mr. King,” said the writer.

Two blocks further—where the street lights were closer together, shops were open, the street was evenly paved, and the true sidewalks began again—they saw a cab passing that was large enough for the three of them and Roosevelt hailed it with a whistle that made the horse jump.

Most of the dinner guests had not yet arrived when Roosevelt, King, and James knocked on the door, but Hay immediately took in Harry’s dishabille and told his head butler Benson and another servant named Napier to help Mr. James up to his room. Dr. Granger, who’d arrived early just so that he could have a whiskey and quiet conversation with his old friend Hay, looked at James’s sleeve and said, “I’d best come up to your room with you and have a look at that.”

“It’s nothing,” said James.

“I’ll just get my bag from John’s man,” said the doctor.

Roosevelt, wearing his pince-nez again, grinned and said, “Dr. Granger brings his medical bag to social occasions?”

“Dr. Granger brings his medical bag everywhere he goes,” said Clarence King.

Upstairs, James kicked off his spats first, and when Napier swept them up and said “I’ll have these cleaned immediately, sir,” James snapped, “No, burn them.” He would always see the contemptuous tobacco stain on the one spat no matter how clean it might be.

“Come into the bathroom where it’s bright,” ordered Dr. Granger. “Imagine, a guest room with its own bathroom, running water, and electric lights. Will wonders never cease?”

The sumptuous bathroom was as bright and sterile as a surgical operating room and, when James had removed his sodden and torn shirt and thrown it in a corner, Dr. Granger looked at the lacerated forearm and said, “How did you say you injured your arm?”

“Jumping off a trolley a bit too soon and falling on cinders,” James said, having to avert his gaze even as he spoke.

Granger’s blue eyes could sometimes be as playful as Teddy Roosevelt’s and he only gave James a glance before saying, “All right, but this particular bit of street or alley appears to have been paved with bird shot.”

Napier had brought a small, curved white pan and Dr. Granger used some sort of tong-like instrument to remove the shotgun pellets one by one, each clanking as the round bit of shot dropped into the pan making James blush yet again. Dr. Granger removed twelve of the pellets and put iodine—or something equally as painful—over the extraction cuts and other lacerations where there had been no shot.

“None touched muscle,” said Dr. Granger. “Most barely penetrated the skin. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear you’d been in a slight hunting accident, suffering from a shotgun fired from some distance.”

“I don’t hunt, sir,” said James. He started to pull on the clean white dress shirt Benson had brought from the wardrobe.

“Just a minute,” said Dr. Granger. “You don’t want to get iodine stains all over your shirt sleeve and I don’t want those wounds to get infected. Hold your arm steady . . . there . . . against the wash basin.”

Granger removed a roll of bandage and some scissors from his bag and within a minute James’s entire forearm had been carefully wrapped and taped.

“Feel any better?” asked Dr. Granger.

“I feel like a fool and”—he gestured with the right arm bandaged almost to his elbow—“like an Egyptian mummy.”

“Wait, don’t put on the shirt quite yet,” said the doctor. He was filling a syringe with a dark fluid from a vial.

“Wait, I don’t think . . .” began James but the doctor had already administered the injection in the author’s upper arm. “What was that?”

“Just a little something to help with the pain and to cut down on the chance of tetanus,” said the doctor as he closed the bag.

Damn , thought James. He’d recognized the morphine and should have spoken sooner. Both he and Katharine Loring had been trained in how to administer the liberal doses of morphine to his sister Alice in her last months of dying . . . she’d actually passed away while lost in her morphine dreams . . . and Henry James had vowed never to allow anyone to put the stuff in his own veins. Too late.

And the pain was less. Much less. James thought of Sherlock Holmes and his abominable injections and wondered if this light feeling . . . almost of happiness . . . might be the result of those illicit injections as well.

“If I babble like an idiot during dinner,” said James, “I shall blame it on you and your needle, Dr. Granger.”

“If we’re not all babbling like idiots by the third course,” said the doctor, “we shall have to blame it on Hay for not providing sufficient wine and liquor.”

As the other guests were arriving and just before they repaired to the dining room, Hay saw that James was concerned about something. He gingerly took the author’s left upper arm, led him to the hallway, and said, “What’s wrong, Harry? Can I help?”

James realized that he was biting his lip. “Absurd as it sounds, John,” he said softly, “I find that I simply must get in touch with Mr. Holmes. It’s urgent.”

“Sherlock Holmes?” said his host. “I thought he’d left town.”

“Perhaps he has,” said James, “but I really must communicate something to him. He did leave the address of a cigar store here in town so if perhaps your man could find a boy to carry a message . . .”

“We can do better than that, Harry. We can see if the cigar store has a telephone and contact them directly.”

“Why on earth would a cigar store have a telephone?” said James. He fought down another uncharacteristic urge to giggle aloud.

Hay shrugged as he led the way to his private study. “Strange age we live in, Harry.”

James had noticed the telephone in Hay’s study before, but he’d never seen his host operate it. Now there were several minutes back and forth with someone James understood to be an “operator”—or perhaps general information person—and then Hay grinned, handed the apparatus to James, and said, “Mr. Twill is on the phone. He’s the manager of the cigar store Holmes mentioned and he’s there now.” Hay left the room so that James could have privacy.