Dan Simmons - The Fifth Heart

“A fascinating bit of information,” said Holmes who, unlike James, was not in the least winded by the endless flights of steps. “And now that I’ve learned it, I will eliminate it from my memory.”

James thought it just a figure of speech, but Col. Rice stopped and faced Holmes. “You can do that, sir? Remove things from your memory?”

“I have to do that,” Holmes said in a serious tone.

“Why?” said the Colonel.

“I was born with what some experts are now calling a ‘photographic memory’,” said Holmes. “It is my misfortune to remember everything. Give me a page of a magazine and, after glancing over it, I can recall every word, comma, and full stop on the page. But the mind is a little attic, as I once tried to explain to my associate Dr. Watson, and someone with a profession as defined as mine must be careful what to store there. If I know for certain that the information cannot help me in my detection—say the fact that the sun does not go around the Earth or the details of this great mass of Canadian cheese—I simply delete it from memory.”

“Delete it?” said James with wonder and doubt in his voice.

“I imagine a red delete button, mentally push it, and the memory is gone,” said Holmes. “Otherwise my brain would be a grab bag of odds and ends rather than a finely tuned engine for ratiocination.”

“Delete button,” said Colonel Rice and shook his head. “Now I’ve heard everything.”

Mr. Drummond, Holmes, James, and the colonel had toured the upper regions of the Agriculture Building, the east-entrance Peristyle, the gigantic Manufactures and Liberal Arts Building, and the south side promenade of the Electricity Building, sharing a quick and late lunch with Colonel Rice in the canvas-covered temporary cantina set up for the workers.

It was at the northeast corner of the Agriculture Building that Holmes pointed to a post set at the end of the narrow promenade. A cable ran from the post down for several hundred feet to a 7- or 8-foot tall, lighted channel marker thirty feet or more from the seawall.

“Does this have a purpose?” asked Holmes. “Perhaps holding down the Agriculture Building in high winds?”

Colonel Rice clamped down on his cigar stub and grinned. “There’s another one just like it at the southeast corner of the Manufactures and Liberal Arts Building across the way. Someone had the idea of dangling the flags of all the nations along the cables so that folks on the ships docking at the end of the pier would feel sort of welcomed with open arms.”

“Is it still to come then?” asked Holmes.

Rice shook his head. “The halyards just wouldn’t rig right, the wind was tearing the test flags all to hell, so the idea was abandoned. They just haven’t got around to removing the cables yet.”

“That cable is rather low to the beacons, light posts, whatever they are,” said Drummond. “Isn’t that a navigation hazard for small boats?”

Rice shook his head again. “Those beacons are there to warn away even the smallest crafts. All the area under water out to the beacons’ tiny little concrete islands is filled with chunks of rock and concrete dumped when we built the sea wall. They’d rip the bottom out of a skiff.”

James was deeply impressed by the Peristyle with its long row of Corinthian columns and great triumphal arch through which passengers arriving from the water would enter the Fair and see the grand view.

“The Peristyle connects the little casino building at the end of the main Casino Pier there to the south to the Music Hall there on the north end,” said Col. Rice. “Forty-seven giant columns . . . one for each of the states and territories. This has a promenade up there, but just accessible by a stairway at the south end.”

“By all means, let us enjoy the view,” said Holmes.

Above the Columbian Arch at the center of the Peristyle Promenade—which did offer an amazing view both into the White City and out onto Lake Michigan—they were perfectly lined up with the front of the Administration Building where the president would be giving his talk.

“What is the distance, do you estimate, Colonel?” asked Holmes.

Rice squinted. “Five hundred thirty yards. No more than five-fifty.”

“Certainly that is too far for someone with a mere rifle to aim and shoot with any certainty,” said Henry James.

Rice, Drummond, and Holmes exchanged glances.

Rice spoke first. “The best of modern military rifles can give you five-inch groups at up to a thousand yards,” he said softly, removing the cigar as if out of respect for such an achievement. Rice turned to Holmes. “Do you know what kind of weapon this Lucan Adler intends to use?”

“Yes,” said Holmes, “we believe we do. He’s assassinated four powerful figures in Europe since last autumn and in each case he’s used a Model Eighteen Ninety-three Mauser rifle, most probably with a twenty-power telescopic sight attached. He doesn’t leave casings behind, but each dead man seems to have been killed by seven-millimeter rimless bullets. The ’ninety-three Mauser—which was released early last autumn in major sales to Spain and the Spanish troops in Cuba—is a bolt-action with a five-round clip.”

Colonel Rice seemed to grimace. “I don’t know the Mausers—much less this new one. Do you know the muzzle velocity?”

“Twenty-three hundred feet per second,” said Holmes.

“And actual operational range?”

“A little over two thousand yards. I believe twenty-one hundred and sixty is the precise number.”

This meant nothing to James, but it seemed to affect Colonel Rice almost viscerally. For the first time, the stocky gentleman not only took the soggy stogie out of his mouth but removed his worn derby and rubbed his balding head. “My God,” he whispered. “If we’d had that rifle at Gettysburg.”

Holmes nodded. “You could have used aimed fire—individual targets—almost as soon as the Confederates came out of the trees a mile away across that wide, deadly space. With five rounds without reloading.”

Rice let out a deep breath. “Well, it doesn’t matter much. Your Lucan Adler fellow will want to get in as close as he can.”

“Why is that?” asked James. “Especially if he can shoot a target a little more than a mile away?”

Rice smiled. “A man ain’t a paper target,” he said and James sensed that the failure in grammar was deliberate with this man who’d ended the war as a Brigadier General. “Walking at an average rate—two miles per hour—a man walks about two feet in the time it would take a bullet to reach him.” He pointed at the Administration Building due west of them down the long Lagoon. “That would be a miss. Of course, President Cleveland will be standing still and facing this way, but the shooter has probably sighted in his rifle he’d have to hold over eighteen inches.”

“I don’t understand,” said James.

Agent Drummond held out his hands as if framing the target area in front of the distant Administration Building. “That means, Mr. James,” he said softly, “that to shoot accurately enough to hit the president in the chest—and we admit that it is a broad target—Lucan Adler would have to use his telescopic sight to aim about eighteen inches high—say at the top of the president’s forehead.”

“I would think that shooting for the head would be preferable,” said James, appalled at hearing his own words.

Colonel Rice said, “Our heads move around a lot more than we think—especially when giving a speech. Center of the body’s mass is the surest target.”

They were all silent for a long, sickening moment. Finally Rice said, “Well, shall we tour the Manufactures and Electricity Buildings, have some lunch, and get this over with?”