Dan Simmons - The Fifth Heart

Holmes tucked away the telegram flimsies and the two men looked bleakly at each other.

“Your older brother and my older brother both in Lucerne,” said Henry James in a disbelieving, stunned voice. “And us there with them? Inconceivable.”

“I agree,” Holmes said glumly.

Suddenly a young man with his heavy coat thrown over his shoulders and an oversized derby pulled down absurdly low walked past. The youthful voice said, “Good evening, Mr. Holmes.”

James jerked his head around but caught only a glimpse of the young man’s strong chin, high cheekbones, and dark hair clipped American military-short on the sides and in back.

“Friend of yours?” asked Henry James.

The sun had disappeared. All the ship’s electric lights came on suddenly, brilliantly, the way they had at the Chicago World’s Fair that Opening Night. Before the lights came on like fireworks, in the gloom and instant of the youth’s passing them, Sherlock Holmes had seen the young man’s left arm in a black sling under the open, caped overcoat.

Holmes passed his good arm through Henry James’s and leaned with the older man over the railing. The sea air was so fresh as to be intoxicating.

“We’ll deal with Lucerne and older brothers when we come to them,” Holmes said, sounding happy for the first time since Henry James had first met him that rainy night along the Seine two months earlier.

“In the meantime, my friend,” said Holmes, “this could turn out to be a very interesting journey after all.”

I wish to acknowledge the following people for their help in allowing me to write The Fifth Heart .

My wife, Karen.

My agent, Richard Curtis, to whom this book is dedicated. “I wish I had a better book for so good a man.” (Robert Louis Stevenson’s inscription to Henry James.)

My publishers, Reagan Arthur and Michel Pietsch, who encouraged me to go ahead with this rather odd pairing of Sherlock Holmes and Henry James.

My new editor, Joshua Kendall, whose understanding of the best complexities I can produce and whose suggestions were wonderfully helpful.

Also Gretchen Koss, chief of publicity; Catherine Cullen, senior publicist; Peggy Freudenthal, executive production editor.

To my much-needed and respected copy editor, Susan Brandanini Betz, whose self-proclaimed “obsessive compulsion disorder” (on getting words, facts, dates, names, and such right) served me and the novel wonderfully well.

Finally, thank you again to my good friend and excellent sociologist, Dr. Dan Peterson, who provided the many mixed CDs of “Music to Listen to While Writing Good Novels.” The CDs were superb. Any failure to provide “good novels” is completely my own.

Thank you all.