Dan Simmons - The Fifth Heart

“Now stop it, darling!” cried Lizzie Cameron, pretending to hit her husband on the shoulder. “No gloomy talk while we’re wishing Harry bon voyage.”

“It’s not gloomy if it means you’ll be in London to see me soon,” said James and lifted his hat as he walked up the gangplank at the ship’s final all-passengers-aboard, all-visitors-ashore whistle of steam. “Adieu!” he called over the scream of escaping steam.

Henry James hated epilogues and refused to use them in his fiction. He said that life granted us no “epilogues”, so why should art or literature? Life, as he knew all too well, was just one damned thing after another. And there were no real summings up in life and definitely no curtain calls.

I feel much the same way about epilogues—as you may also—but this one is here and we have to deal with it.

By his last evening on the high seas—the steamer United States was scheduled to touch at Portsmouth but then go on to Genoa, where James had decided to start the last leg of his trip to see William and his wife Alice and their children in Lucerne—Henry James was bored.

The weather was perfect and the seas so calm that all the experienced travelers and even the crew kept commenting on it. James didn’t care to play backgammon or the other silly games going in the common areas, so he read—either in his pleasant cabin or on his pleasant lounge chair, a blanket across his legs and lap, or while lunching alone. He’d been set at a table of important people for every evening’s meal, but the men’s “importance” was in business, and Henry James listened and nodded politely but had little if anything to say on the subject. He thought a lot about his play and about these days he was wasting when he should be writing.

It was sunset of that fourth evening when James was leaning on the mahogany railing in the first-class section, looking behind the ship at its wake and the beautiful sunset into the Atlantic, when he realized that another man had moved very close and was leaning on the rail next to him.

“Holmes!” he cried, then looked around to see if anyone had noticed his absurd shout. The detective was no longer wearing his sling but his right hand was still bandaged.

“Why are you here?” asked James. “Where are you going?”

“I believe the ship is headed to Portsmouth and then on to Genoa,” Holmes said softly. He looked thinner and much more pale than he had in America.

“Why didn’t you tell me . . .”

“That I’d booked passage on the same ship you were taking back to Europe?” said Holmes with that thin, fast flick of a smile. “I didn’t think you’d be overjoyed to hear the news. I planned to make the entire crossing, no matter how far you were going, without letting you know I was aboard.”

“But where have you been hiding yourself?” asked James.

Again that flicker that never quite resolved itself into an actual smile. “If you want the blunt truth, Harry, I’ve been in my cabin puking my kidneys out and trying not to scream like a gorilla on fire for more than four days and nights.”

James took half a step back along the rail at the crude language. “But the crossing has been so smooth . The ocean’s been a mill pond. Even the old ladies who get seasick looking at a large cup of tea have been healthy and busy on this crossing.”

Holmes nodded and James could see that his forehead was beaded with sweat despite the pleasant coolness of the evening and the ship’s movement through the fresh air.

“I decided that I had to go off that heroic medicine that I was injecting into myself several times a day there in America,” Holmes said softly. “Did I mention that heroin substance by name?”

“No,” said James. “I thought you . . . I wasn’t sure what I thought . . .”

“Anyway,” said Holmes with that smile, “even two months’ use of that stuff makes stopping the use of it a terrible experience. I may see Dr. Watson in the coming months, and he would be most disappointed in me if I came back to England addicted to some new poison.”

“So you’ve quit this heroic drug for good?”

“Oh, yes,” said Holmes. “But that’s not why I came up to find you, James.”

“Why did you?”

“Because, after my four and a half days and nights of vomiting, my head was suddenly clear and I realized why you were so out of sorts and brooding those last days in America.”

James looked away and felt the bile rise in his own throat. “It’s what I did,” he said at last. “I shall never truly get over it.”

“And what do you think you did? ” asked Holmes.

James rounded on Holmes with some of the old ferocity in his gray eyes. “I killed a man, Holmes. I shot and killed a human being. He was a villain and deserved to die . . . but not by my hand. I’m an artist, a creator, not . . .” He trailed off.

“That’s what I thought you thought,” said Holmes. “And you’re crazy, Henry James. You should have been at the debriefings with Drummond and Colonel Rice and the others after the unpleasantness, rather than wandering away.”

“What are you talking about, Holmes?”

Holmes held up his bandaged right hand and wrist. “Your rifle didn’t kill anyone, James. It passed through Lucan Adler’s shirt sleeve . . . and perhaps brushed him enough to make him flinch and save my life from that blade . . . then it burned its way across the back of my hand and went on its merry way into the lake. You . . . shot . . . and . . . killed . . . no . . . one.”

James felt like crying from a sense of relief that almost made him sick, but instead gripped the wooden rail harder and stared into the disappearing sun behind the ship.

“Oh,” said Holmes, “when I was finished with my little drug withdrawal adventure, I realized that I forgot to tell you about two relevant telegrams that I received in New York shortly before we sailed.” Holmes took the flimsies from his breast pocket.

James, even though he felt that he could take his first deep breath in weeks, listened with some dread.

“The first one was from our friend Agent Drummond and is purely informational,” said Holmes, unfurling the folded flimsy with some difficulty with his bandaged hand. “I quote:

PLEASE BE INFORMED THAT IRENE ADLER ESCAPED CUSTODY AT THE COLUMBIAN EXPOSITION INFIRMARY THE DAY AFTER YOU LEFT CHICAGO STOP GUARD MEMBERS FOUND THAT SHE HAD CUT HER HAIR OVER THE SINK QUITE SHORT WE BELIEVE, AND THAT ONE OF THEIR OWN GUARDSMEN HAD BEEN OVERPOWERED, STRIPPED OF HIS OUTER CLOTHING, TIED AND GAGGED, AND STUFFED IN A CLOSET STOP IRENE ADLER MAY HAVE ESCAPED IN A COLUMBIAN GUARDSMAN UNIFORM POSING AS A MAN STOP BE ON THE LOOKOUT FOR A WOMAN WITH HER LEFT ARM STILL IN A SLING STOP SHE MAY BE ARMED AND IS CONSIDERED EXTREMELY DANGEROUS STOP DRUMMOND”

James hadn’t meant to but he started laughing and found it difficult to stop. Holmes joined in and it only made James laugh the harder. He really couldn’t have said why he was laughing so hard. It’s just that everything unreal finally felt . . . over .

“This telegram I received in New York right before we sailed will sober you up fast enough, James. I assure you.” Holmes unfolded the flimsy and read carefully, in a slightly deeper voice than usual. “From my brother Mycroft, who never concerns himself about the cost of extra words in a telegram. Neither of us does. From Mycroft:

SHERLOCK IMPERATIVE THAT YOU CONTINUE ON TO GENOA ABOARD THE SHIP UNITED STATES AND THEN MAKE YOUR WAY NORTH TO LUCERNE SWITZERLAND AS QUICKLY AS YOU CAN STOP I WILL BE THERE IN TEN DAYS STOP THIS IS A CONFERENCE OF INTERNATIONAL IMPORTANCE STOP YOUR PRESENCE IMPERATIVE STOP MYCROFT