Dan Simmons - The Fifth Heart

JAMES. IF IT IS CONVENIENT FOR YOU, PLEASE MEET ME ON MONDAY AT 3 P.M. AT FOUR THIRTY SIX AND A HALF REVERE STREET IN BEACON HILL, BOSTON STOP IF IT IS NOT CONVENIENT FOR YOU, STILL MEET ME THERE AT THAT TIME STOP

YOU MAY LEAVE YOUR LUGGAGE AT THE NEW NORTH UNION STATION ON CAUSEWAY STREET IN THE WEST END SINCE WE SHALL BE TAKING A NIGHT TRAIN WEST TO CHICAGO THAT SAME EVENING STOP

Sherlock Holmes rang Henry Adams’s new-fangled electrical doorbell button in late morning, about an hour after James’s train had left for New York and then Boston. The tall head butler, Hobson, answered the door and seemed no happier to see Holmes than he’d been during their last encounter.

“Mr. Adams is still in his bath,” said Hobson, making ready to close the door in Holmes’s face.

“That’s all right,” said Holmes, handing his hat and stick to the tall man as he brushed past him, “I shall be happy to wait for Mr. Adams in his study.”

While the flustered Hobson sought out his bathing master, Holmes stepped into the study, poured himself a healthy dose of Scotch with a whisper of water, and sprawled in the chair opposite the infinite expanse of Adams’s green leather desktop.

He lined up two fingers in a straight line with the Executive Mansion window of what had once been the office of President Cleveland’s sister—before she had been replaced by a 21-year-old bride, Miss Frances Folsom. Since Cleveland was 49 on the day of the marriage, the public might have been shocked by the more than 27-year age difference—or, failing that, disconcerted a bit by the fact that his marriage was unusual, since Cleveland had been the executor of his friend, and Frances’s father, Oscar Folsom’s estate, supervising Frances’s upbringing after her father’s death; he’d bought her yellow baby carriage when she was a few days old and he still seemed to be giving her bright things.

Holmes had met with the Steamboat Inspection Committee that Sunday morning—minus former Major and Superintendent of the Metropolitan Police William G. Brock though his place was filled by Chief Daniel O’Malley, head of the 27-man White House Police Force—and while Mr. Rockhill, the State Department Liaison, was complaining that he had to miss church, Holmes was asking Vice-President Adlai E. Stevenson where he planned to be on May first , around noon, just about the time President Cleveland was scheduled to push the button that started everything at the Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition.

Vice-President Stevenson had to think a minute and then refer to a pocket record-keeper, but finally he said, “Oh, I’ll be in the Executive Mansion from ten thirty a.m. until mid-afternoon. Meeting and lunching with delegates from the current regime in the Philippines and then taking part in a formal signing of a Letter of Agreement with them.”

“Where will the meeting and signing take place, Mr. Vice-President?” asked Holmes.

Stevenson had to think about that for a minute but then remembered. “Oh, that will be in what we now call the Small Treaty Room.”

“Would that happen to be the north-facing room whose window one can see directly across the park there? The one directly across from Mr. Henry Adams’s home?” asked Holmes. “The room that was President Cleveland’s sister’s office and reception room during Mr. Cleveland’s first term?”

“Why, yes, I believe that’s the same room,” said Vice-President Stevenson.

Holmes turned to Mr. Drummond, the highly intelligent Chief of the Secret Service branch of the Treasury Department and to Daniel O’Malley. O’Malley had not struck Holmes as especially bright during the short time he’d been conversing with him that morning. “We have reliable indications that an attempt will be made upon Vice-President Stevenson’s life at or around the same time that the president is scheduled to be assassinated in Chicago. The Small Treaty Room is in a direct line to various windows in Mr. Henry Adams’s home less than two hundred yards to the north.”

“Shall we request permission for the event to be moved to another room?” asked Chief O’Malley.

“I would suggest that you keep the vice-president—and his guests—out of the White House for all of that day,” said Holmes. “Perhaps choose an inside room at the State Department and make sure that the change of venue and location remains a tightly held secret.”

Drummond of the Secret Service nodded and Holmes knew that it would be done.

“You see how someone could use a good rifle to make a clear shot into the Small Treaty Room from one of the windows on the Adamses’ home?” asked Holmes, pointing.

“Mr. Adams would never allow that,” said White House Police Chief O’Malley.

“Next to Adams’s house is the home of Colonel John Hay,” Washington P.D. Major and Superintendent Moore informed Holmes. “We can’t be bothering such important people just because of their . . . proximity . . . to the Executive Mansion.”

“Of course not,” said Sherlock Holmes.

“I’ll look into it and talk to you in the next week,” said Andrew Drummond.

Holmes understood that to mean that the Adamses’ house would be thoroughly searched, the best shooting angles analyzed by marksmen, and that the head of the Secret Service—a department with no constitutional responsibilities to protect the president—would have men there on May 1.

Chief O’Malley,” said Holmes, “are you still detaching two of your White House Police to travel with the president as is sometimes the custom?”

“Ahhhh,” said O’Malley and looked around the room as if someone could give him the correct answer. “I could send more men or less men.”

“Fewer,” corrected Holmes. He had the same reaction to hearing the English language abused as he did to watching horses or dogs beaten with no reason. And he was not especially a sentimentalist when it came to horses or dogs. But he had once told Watson that the “less or fewer” issue, along with the use of “I” in such sentences as “He gave the money to Sheila and I”, inflicted on the public by people who considered themselves well-educated, could be drastically reduced in frequency—if not actually abolished—by a few well-aimed pistol shots and an explanatory note that would be pinned to the victims’ chests.

“Think I should send less than the usual two?” asked Chief O’Malley.

Here Vice-President Stevenson stepped in with what might have been the briefest of winks at Holmes. “We know there’s a threat against the White House, Chief O’Malley. And Colonel Sebastian Moran is a famed marksman and soldier of fortune as opposed to these . . . phantoms . . . that the others are looking for. It might be wisest to retain all twenty-seven of your excellent roster of White House police officers on that day. After all, you were trained to protect the Executive Mansion from intrusion, not follow the president around to protect him.”

“True,” said O’Malley. “And it’s the Chicago Police Department’s job to protect the president. The host city always assumes that responsibility.”

“Only partially the responsibility of the Chicago P.D.,” said the Secret Service chief.

Holmes looked at Drummond. No one else had brought this up at any of their meetings.

“What do you mean?” asked Washington’s Major and Superintendent Moore.

In a private moment before the group assembled, Holmes had asked Drummond if he thought that Chicago had the honor of hosting the most corrupt police department in the country. Finally Chief Drummond had nodded. “Now that the last of the Tweed ring is out of New York and the new corrupters haven’t yet taken their place, Chicago is the most corrupt. It runs in their veins like the booze they consume. But there are good men on the force there and very few out of the hundreds who’d aid and abet in the murder of a president.”