Dan Simmons - The Fifth Heart

Looking out the broad opening from the spire closest to the Administration Building, Holmes sighted down the length of his cane. “A slight side shot, but the president standing alone to give his speech won’t have Secret Service men or anyone else standing next to him then. The other notables will be seated, yes?”

“Yes,” said Colonel Rice.

“Less than a hundred yards,” said Holmes.

“Yes,” said Colonel Rice.

And that was all for the Electricity Building. After a fast and late luncheon under sun-warmed canvas, Holmes said, “You’ll pardon us a minute, I hope, Mr. James” and stepped to one side to talk with Colonel Rice and Mr. Drummond for about fifteen minutes while James drank another cup of coffee. When the conference was over, Drummond came over to James. “It’s been a delight and deep honor to meet you, Mr. James. Should we cross paths again, I hope it will not be presumptuous of me to bring a few of your novels to sign for me. They would be the pride of my collection and a legacy to my children.”

“Of course, of course,” said James. Drummond shook hands with him, bowed slightly, and left the sun-warmed dining tent. James noted Holmes and Rice’s discussion was over so he joined the two men.

As Holmes was shaking hands good-bye with Rice, the Colonel said, “There’s one thing you haven’t asked about or mentioned, Mr. Holmes.”

“Yes?”

“Wherever your Lucan Adler sniper chooses to shoot from, there’s going to be the slight problem of him getting away after the fact. As we’ve discussed, upon such a terrible event as the shooting of the president, the Columbian Guard will close and lock all gates immediately. I have telephone lines to every exit. No boats will be allowed to leave from the pier. Is your man suicidal? Wanting to be martyr to anarchism?”

“Not in the least,” said Holmes. “Lucan Adler has never carried out an assassination without having a brilliant escape plan in place.”

Colonel Rice gestured to the boulevard along the Lagoon where they stood. “We can shut off access to the promenades and towers as you’ve asked, but that parade ground and all these side streets will be filled with more than a hundred thousand panicked people. And not one of them will get out without being checked out by police or my Columbian Guard.”

“It is a bit of a challenge to think of a sensible escape route, is it not, Colonel?” said Holmes. The detective nodded, tipped his hat, and turned away.

Henry James said his own good-bye to Colonel Rice and followed Holmes through White City streets filled with great crates, rubble, straw, and thousands of workmen.

Henry James’s fiftieth birthday was as cold, lonely, and awful as he might have imagined it if he were writing a short story dipped deeply in pathos.

James had lain awake for much of the night, fighting a nausea that sent him rushing to the lavatory three times before a faint dawn began contouring the outlines of his hotel windows. As he checked out—he had tickets for a 9 a.m. train to New York—he knew that Sam Clemens had left two days earlier and the clerk, when queried, said that Mr. Holmes had checked out “very, very early”.

The rain that had only threatened the previous morning was coming down now in a cold and unrelenting downpour. The chilly air felt more like November with winter beginning in earnest than mid-April. Even the fancily clad doormen were huddled under their umbrellas and looking sour this dark, freezing day.

The previous late afternoon when he and Holmes had returned to the Great Northern from their odd tour of an assassin’s-eye view of the great Columbian Exposition and World’s Fair, James had been surprised to find two telegrams waiting for him.

The first was from Henry Adams and read:

A SLIGHTLY PREMATURE HAPPY BIRTHDAY, HARRY STOP I KNOW YOU MUST BE EAGER TO RETURN TO LONDON AND YOUR MAGNIFICENT WORK, BUT I SINCERELY HOPE THAT YOU RETURN TO WASHINGTON TO STAY WITH ME AS MY GUEST WHEN YOUR BUSINESS IS CONCLUDED STOP WE ARE OLD FRIENDS, HARRY, AND IN A WAY I AM REQUESTING THE PLEASURE OF YOUR COMPANY FOR THE NEXT COUPLE OF WEEKS IN CLOVER’S BELOVED NAME STOP HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MY DEAR FRIEND

James was stunned. He had no idea how Adams had found out that he was in Chicago, much less where he was staying in Chicago, and he knew it was highly unusual that Adams was inviting him as a house guest. He’d rarely had guests stay in his huge home in the years since Clover died.

The second telegram was from the Hays.

HAPPY, HAPPY BIRTHDAY, HARRY. STOP WE UNDERSTAND YOU MAY BE CELEBRATING THIS ESPECIALLY AUSPICIOUS DAY WHILE IN TRANSIT, BUT CLARA AND I DEEPLY AND SINCERELY HOPE THAT YOU WILL ACCEPT ADAMS’S OFFER AND RETURN TO WASHINGTON FOR A WHILE BEFORE HEADING ACROSS THE ATLANTIC STOP WE HAVE SO MUCH WE WANT TO TALK TO YOU ABOUT—IN PERSON STOP CABOT LODGE HAS LAID ON THE SPECIAL TRAIN TO THE CHICAGO FAIR OPENING FOR APRIL 29, WITH SPECIAL ADMISSION PASSES FOR ALL OF US, AND IT WOULD BE CLARA’S AND MY DEEPEST WISH THAT YOU WILL JOIN US ON THAT EXPEDITION STOP HAPPY BIRTHDAY

James had accosted Holmes in the lobby before the detective had reached the elevator to go up to his room.

“Did you cable the Hays and Henry Adams that we were—that I was—staying here in the Great Northern?” snapped James.

Holmes seemed a bit taken aback by the writer’s ferocity. “Of course I did, old fellow. I would have thought you’d want your whereabouts known to some of your dearest friends. Especially right before your fiftieth birthday.”

James felt even angrier at this comment but refused to satisfy Holmes’s sardonic sense of humor by asking how the detective knew that the 15th was his birthday.

“Shall we dine together tonight at that interesting little Italian restaurant just down Jackson Street?” asked Holmes. “The concierge here strongly recommends it. And we may not be seeing each other again for a while.”

James started to say no—stopped—started to ask a question—and stopped again. He just stood there with the telegrams about his dreaded 50th birthday crumpled in his hand and glared at Sherlock Holmes.

“Good then,” said Holmes. “I shall meet you in the lobby promptly at eight p.m.”

During the night, between his bouts of nausea—an old foe of his along with constipation and diarrhea—James had weighed his decision. He’d studied the railway tables. A train leaving the new North Station at 9:45 a.m. went to Pittsburgh where he could transfer for a non-stop express to Washington. The train to New York left from the old downtown station at 9:00 and passed through Cleveland and Buffalo on its way to New York, where he could immediately book passage to Portsmouth on the highly praised new transatlantic steamer the S.S. United States .

In the end, it was the thought of the sunny warmth of his De Vere Gardens rooms, his waiting writing desk, the salons he would be revisiting, the country houses of gentlefolk he’d be invited to . . . that and the visceral sense of safe encirclement by all his books that made him decide for New York and home.

He’d found a porter to carry his baggage piled high on a cart and bought his ticket at the downtown station when, concealed as he was behind the high mound of his luggage and an iron post, he saw Professor James Moriarty moving up and down the first-class coaches peering in the windows.

He’s hunting for me , was James’s first gut-chilling thought. A thought that carried all the weight of certainty.

Two thuggish-looking men came up and reported quickly to Professor Moriarty, who dispatched them up and down the line of waiting cars. Moriarty stepped aboard and began striding through the first-class cars. James could watch his advance—like a high-domed scarecrow with white-straw hair, a mortician’s overcoat, and long strangler’s fingers—as Moriarty strode from carriage to carriage.