Dan Simmons - The Fifth Heart

Eventually Roosevelt did get into the bushes to distract the animal. After an hour of trying to lure him out, he finally thwacked his way into the willows using the barrel of his Winchester to clear his way and with a huge Bowie knife in his teeth. That image alone made the others at the table laugh and James laughed along with them.

“The blind stalking the blind,” said Roosevelt. “And in the end, so to speak, the bear was blinder. Or I was luckier.”

James enjoyed the anecdote—and had no doubt that it was true—but it reminded him that none of them—King, Roosevelt, or him—had mentioned the street brawl with the would-be street thieves just forty minutes earlier. Henry James did not know the etiquette involved in discussing violent street fights—perhaps a gentleman was not supposed to mention it if he came out on the winning side—or perhaps King and Roosevelt wanted to save James from embarrassment the same way they had saved him from what certainly would have been a severe beating, if not stabbing, and violent robbery less than an hour earlier. James made a mental note to have his protagonist behave precisely this way if he went straight to a fine dinner with friends directly after such a violent altercation.

But, James admitted to himself, he doubted if any of his characters would ever have such a violent encounter.

The conversation was turning to current events but Henry James’s thoughts kept orbiting his afternoon and what seemed the absolute imperative of telling someone in authority about Professor Moriarty’s plans for presidential assassination, the uprising of the anarchists, and mob warfare.

The other men were discussing finances—specifically the much-ballyhooed but never-quite-arrived “Panic of ’93”—and this gave James a perfect opportunity to become lost in his own thoughts without seeming rude. Everyone at the table, save perhaps for Teddy Roosevelt, knew that Henry James was a writer; he had no finances. One was delightfully liberated from endless male chatter about investments when one could not afford a single investment.

If I don’t hear from Holmes , James was thinking, perhaps I should go to Washington’s major and superintendent of police. Or perhaps to President Cleveland himself . That last thought made him cringe.

It would be possible. Several of his friends at this table—Hay, Cabot Lodge, perhaps young Roosevelt—had dined with the president several times, maybe even Adams who frowned on knowing all recent presidents. James might have an emergency meeting arranged for as soon as tomorrow morning .

To say what? he thought. To report that while I was hiding out in the rafters of a former chicken slaughterhouse, I happened to hear Professor James Moriarty—who is considered a fictional character by most people, even possibly, most probably, his nemesis Sherlock Holmes—planning to assassinate the President of the United States and ten or more other heads of states and perhaps scores of top government officials in America and almost a dozen European nations . . . and not only carry out these assassinations, but simultaneously instigate anarchist uprisings and gang riots in all these scores of cities here and abroad .

“ . . . it can be traced back to the failure of the wheat crop on the Buenos Aires exchange . . .” Cabot Lodge was saying.

Hay waved that supposition away. They were all smoking cigars now, save for Roosevelt, Dr. Granger, and James.

“It’s the railroad speculation, pure and simple,” said Hay.

“Whatever it is or was or will be, you business types were talking about the ‘Panic of ’93’ as long ago as November of ’92. Something had better arrive soon or a lot of speculators selling short will be very disappointed.”

Was this the renowned Sherlock Holmes’s plan? To grab President Grover Cleveland’s massive arm and pull him away from the button that would start every machine at the Columbian Exposition a few seconds after noon on May 1, tugging down the huge president and crying “Get down, you fool!” the way that young Captain Oliver Wendell Holmes was supposed to have done with President Lincoln at Fort Stevens in 1864? James doubted that.

“There was a clear prelude to panic in February when the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad went bankrupt by overextending itself,” said Cabot Lodge.

“I thought Cleveland handled the Treasury crisis rather handily,” said Hay, “by convincing Congress to repeal the Sherman Silver Purchase Act just days after his inauguration.”

“For a Democrat—the only one elected president in my living memory—Cleveland does seem to be a man of action,” said Dr. Granger.

“He could have taken on my grizzly bare-handed,” said Roosevelt. “They would have weighed in the same before the bout.”

“Now Theodore,” said Henry Adams.

I can’t delay leaving tomorrow , thought James. If I stay, I’ll never see the end of these conspiracies or complications. There’s simply no other choice but to get word of Professor Moriarty’s meeting with the gangs and the anarchists and to repeat what the . . . what had The Times of London called him after Reichenbach Falls? . . . the Napoleon of Crime had said about the planned assassinations, uprisings, and lootings .

I’ve been caught up in one of the romance-adventure novels I so despise—something less even than H. Rider Haggard’s overly violent, overly specific potboilers—and the only way I can escape is to walk away from everything I’ve seen and heard today . . . everything I’ve seen and heard the last few weeks since the Seine. That way lies reality. Or at least literature. Anything is better than this penny-dreadful tale I’ve found myself in .

“The Free Silver Movement is the wild card in this game,” said Hay. “Especially with the American farmers supporting it.”

“If people and failing banks start demanding gold for their notes . . .” Henry Adams said as if he were thinking aloud.

“In the West and Midwest, more than three hundred banks have already closed,” said Roosevelt.

“In the West and Midwest,” said Hay, gesturing to his servant to pass a new bottle of wine around, “anyone with two barrels, a plank, and a cigar box full of quarters can declare themselves a bank.”

I have to leave tomorrow , thought James with a sudden pain in his chest and left arm. I must leave tomorrow. Buy a garden trowel along the way so I can bury the snuffbox with Alice’s ashes securely inside it. I was tempted to go to Newport where she and Miss Loring seemed so happy after Alice had the house on the point built for them, but I think Katharine Loring has had just about enough of Alice’s company. No, my dear, darling, caustic, death-desiring Alice needs to lie in the same soil as our parents and Aunt Kate .

And then I have to rush to make that noon train to New York. I can’t miss that German steamship’s—the Spree wasn’t it?—departure time on Tuesday morning. Once aboard I can relax, I can think, I can take the time and energy to sort out what has been reality and what illusion over these past weeks. Mr. Sherlock Holmes will simply have to fend for himself in this multifaceted mess of a mystery. One thing is certain—I’ll never be his adoring Boswell the way Dr. Watson is, if he is a real person or even if he’s a product of Conan Doyle’s literary imagination, faithfully chronicling the detective’s triumphs. It’s a poverty of triumphs I’ve seen him produce .

A servant slipped in with a slip of paper on a silver tray. The young man whispered to Hay who nodded and gestured toward James.

It was a telegram. James could not wait until later to open it—it had to be Holmes’s response to his news about Moriarty and his urgent plea—so he slit it open and read it as he held it below the plane of the table. The telegram was moderately succinct: