Dan Simmons - The Fifth Heart

“Wiggins Two also answers to the name Moth,” said Holmes. “Sometimes pronounced in the old English form that rhymes with ‘mote’.”

“Since a mere mote but a mighty mote I am indeed, Misteh Jimes,” said the boy.

A conductor stepped down and spoke through a cloud of steam. “It is time to board, gentlemen.”

It turned out that the Wiggins Two Moth had his own first-class bedroom right next to the one shared by Holmes and James, but the boy stayed in their compartment until the train had left the Boston suburbs behind and they were flashing past small white farms, stone walls, and green pastures.

“Well, I guess I’ll go check on what the Yanks call a club car and round me up a pint,” Wiggins Two said, sliding open the compartment door.

“They won’t sell alcohol to a boy,” said James.

“Oh, no, sir,” agreed the Moth, clinking coins together in his pocket. “But they understand that I’m just fetchin’ a couple of glasses for me two guardians, kindly gentlemen that they are.”

Then they were alone and Holmes leaned forward and spoke to James where he sat dazed on the bench opposite. “You had something private and important to tell me, James.”

Caught off guard, James needed a minute to arrange the events of the previous weekend in succinct but complete form, but then the words came rolling out of him.

“You actually saw Professor Moriarty on the street and followed him?” interrupted Holmes with a tone of amazement.

“Yes, that’s what I’ve been telling you!”

“How did you know it was Moriarty?”

“Because I looked at his photograph in the mathematics-physics magazine at the Library of Congress,” spluttered out James. “And he was photographed in Leipzig just last year, eighteen ninety-two, so I knew you’d lied twice—once to the world with your and Dr. Watson’s tale of you and the Professor dying at Reichenbach Falls, and then you lying to me about having only made up Moriarty—created him as a figment of your imagination, were your exact words. Why did you lie to me, Holmes?”

The detective’s cool, gray gaze met the author’s angry, gray glare.

“Anything I’ve said that distorted the truth in some small way was done to protect you from harm, James,” said Holmes.

“ ‘Distorted the truth in some small way’,” repeated James with a dramatic scoffing noise. “I’d say that denying the existence of Professor James Moriarty and his plans for assassinations and widespread anarchy and riots is a bit more than ‘some small way’! ”

Holmes only nodded slowly, as if not in full agreement yet on the seriousness of his infraction to honor, trust, friendship . . . and it just made Henry James all the more angry. “Professor Moriarty is a fiend in human form, Holmes! I saw him! I heard him! He was planning and coordinating the deaths of hundreds of people—the unwitting police in a dozen cities, the President and Vice-President of the United States, God knows how many innocent bystanders—as coolly as a businessman might announce a new sales campaign to his staff.”

“That’s rather well put, James,” Holmes said with another twitch of an approving smile. “Well said, indeed.”

James only grunted. He was in no mood to receive Mr. Sherlock Holmes’s approval.

“Continue with your story of Saturday afternoon’s encounter,” said Holmes.

Later, James was surprised to see from Holmes’s watch that it had taken him another half hour to tell the whole story. He was blushing slightly, since the part about concealing himself while the mob members took turns firing shotguns and rifles at the “rat” was more florid and less likely than any fiction he’d ever produced.

James readied himself for a long cross-examination, an interrogation, from the slightly frowning detective, but all Holmes said was, “How did you feel?”

“How did I feel? ” James realized that he had almost shouted the words, glanced apprehensively toward the compartment’s closed doors, and moderated his tone. “All that information for you—times of the assassination, plans for mob uprising and anarchists’ murders across the United States, in London and in Europe, and you want to know how I felt? ”

“Yes,” said Holmes. “For instance, when you thought they were shooting at you and the shotgun blast shook the entire beam you were hiding on. How did you feel , James?”

The author had to pause a moment. He knew that the question really did not deserve an answer—there were far too many important questions he could and should have answered about the assembly of thugs and Professor Moriarty’s plans—but he also realized that he’d quietly been asking himself the same question for the last two days. How had he felt during this, the most out-of-all-context almost absurdly unreal-feeling event of his lifetime. Frightened? Yes, but that was not the primary sensation.

“Alive,” he said at last. “I felt very much . . . alive.”

Holmes grinned his full grin, patted James’s knee as if the master author were a retriever dog who’d brought back the pheasant unchewed, and said, “That being the case, I think you are going to enjoy the next couple of weeks.”

Holmes arrived in Haymarket Square and immediately spotted Inspector Bonfield standing across the street near the alley. Carriage and cargo traffic was heavy on Desplaines Street as was pedestrian traffic. Holmes waited for a break in the traffic and jogged across the street, accepting the inspector’s eager handshake almost before Holmes had come to a stop.

“It’s very good to see you again, Mr. Holmes,” said Inspector Bonfield.

“And you, Inspector. Congratulations on your various promotions.” Holmes had been here in May and June of 1886, gathering evidence for the trial of the anarchists who’d been behind the Haymarket riot where 8 policemen and 3 civilians had died. Bonfield had been a Captain then but the information he’d brought to the prosecution in the trial of the 8 anarchists had quickly earned him “Inspector” status and the supervision of the Chicago Police Department’s Detective Bureau. Bonfield had also been detached to the Columbian Exposition to train and supervise the 200 or so plainclothes detectives who, among them, knew the face and modus operandi of every pickpocket, thief, and con artist in a seven-state region. The so-called “Columbian Guard”, all decked out in baby-blue uniforms and, on occasion, their red and yellow capes, carried a cute little ornamental sword. Bonfield’s plainclothes boys carried a heavy sap, a pair of brass knuckles, and a loaded pistol in their suit pockets.

“The promotions were aimed poorly,” said Bonfield, who still seemed as quiet, reserved, and competent as Holmes had found him seven years earlier. “All accolades should have gone to you, Mr. Holmes.”

The detective waved that away. “I see you have a statue commemorating that May fourth,” said Holmes. “And a uniformed police officer to guard it.”

Bonfield nodded. “That’s a twenty-four-hour guard, Mr. Holmes. Vandals—either the anarchists or those countless thousands who’ve come to look at the anarchist-killers as social heroes—have beaten the statue apart with sledgehammers, scribbled obscene graffiti on it, painted it green—very disrespectful. So now we keep a man here all day and all night.”

Holmes pulled out his pipe and began tamping in tobacco. Henry James had convinced him, for the sake of his American friends if for no other reason, to use a more expensive and less shockingly aromatic brand of tobacco while he was here in the States.