Dan Simmons - The Fifth Heart

King laughed so richly that others joined in for no reason. “My dear young lady,” he said at last. “We arrived at the so-called Diamond Peak on an early November day so cold that our whiskey had frozen in its bottles. We got off our mules on a bare, iron-stained strand of coarse sandstone rock about a hundred feet long and we could not put our boot soles down without dislodging a diamond or other precious stone.

“At first we ran around like children at Christmas, seeking out gems and diamonds as fast as we could, but then my scientific training took over. I noticed that we never found the valuable stones at any place where the earth had not been disturbed. We were finding rubies in anthills, for instance, but only in anthills that had two holes—one where the ants came and went and another, smaller break in the crust on the opposite side. I immediately understood that someone had been pushing the rubies in with a stick.

“Diamonds, rubies, and other valuable gems are never found together in such profusion, Miss Vollebæk. And to prove this to the men in San Francisco and elsewhere who were so eager to buy shares in the fraudulent mining corporation the hoaxers had set up, my friends and I spent two days digging a trench three feet long and ten feet deep down in a gulch where—if this was truly a ‘Diamond Peak’—hundreds of diamonds should have been found beneath the surface. Instead . . . nothing.”

John Hay held his glass of wine in both hands. “And so young Clarence King was awake three more days and nights hurrying back to San Francisco not only to prevent the investors from losing millions, but to stop speculators from scoring big by selling short on the stock.” Hay lifted the glass. “To an honest man!”

“To an honest man!” said everyone save for Clarence King and lifted their glasses to him. King’s blush was visible even through his deep tan.

“Now,” said His Excellency Emissary Vollebæk when the main course had been served and a temporary hush had fallen over the table, “I would beg everyone’s apology for my rudeness, but I would like to address my fellow countryman, Mr. Sigerson, in our native language for a moment or two.”

“By all means!” cried Hay.

Henry James set his own glass down and found that his hand was shaking.

Mr. Vollebæk leaned across the table toward Sigerson/Holmes and unleashed a rapid-fire volley of rather melodious Norwegian. “Sigerson” looked as if he were about to speak but then said nothing. Vollebæk followed up with another paragraph.

Sherlock Holmes still remained silent.

James realized that his heart was pounding as if it wanted to escape his ribcage. In seconds it would be revealed that the man he had brought into the family circle of his dear friends the Hays was an imposter and it would be equally obvious that James had known that “Sigerson” was an imposter .

Or would it be so obvious? James looked at the suspended moment as if it were a scene in one of his novels or short stories. How should “his character” respond to the coming revelation—a hoax much more damaging to those at this table than King’s long-ago Great Diamond Hoax? James could feign the shock and surprise and anger that the others here—especially John and Clara—would actually be feeling.

But then Holmes might very well reveal everything—James’s complicity from the beginning—and James would have to choose between calling the uncloaked “Sigerson” a liar . . . pistols at dawn at 20 paces! . . . or simply apologizing profusely with whatever dignity might remain, announce that he would leave Washington that very evening, and leave the table after bowing in apology to everyone there.

James felt sick to his stomach. He was sure that Holmes would explain their ruse in terms of solving the “mystery” of Clover Adams’s suicide and he knew that this would send another seismic tremor of shock through the Hays. (Which would be nothing to the level of shock and betrayal that Henry Adams would feel next week when he arrived home to hear this terrible story from his neighbors and intimate friends. Henry James had not forgotten that Clover’s death was so traumatic to Adams that his historian friend had never once mentioned the day or details of her death in the more than seven years since the event.)

James felt actively dizzy as the nausea and excess of wine mixed to make the table and all the silent, waiting people around it seem to rise and fall before him. He set both his palms flat against the white linen, pressing down hard to try to stop the vertigo.

Then Holmes/Sigerson began to speak.

It sounded like Norwegian to James. And while Holmes started speaking slowly, the trickle of what-sounded-like-Norwegian soon turned into a torrent. When Holmes paused, Mr. Vollebæk asked a fast question in even-more-rapid Norwegian and “Sigerson” replied at the same rate—a long few paragraphs in a language that Henry James refused to believe that Sherlock Holmes had picked up in a quick study session or two.

James looked at the two Vollebæk women, but mother and daughter’s faces showed interest, not astonishment or disbelief of any sort.

Emissary Vollebæk apparently posed another question. The Norwegian explorer—Sherlock Holmes—laughed and responded for half a moment in the quick, fluid language of Jan Sigerson’s supposed homeland.

As a writer, Henry James often—more frequently than not if truth be told—felt somewhat detached from events and conversations occurring around him. Even as he worked at being a man on whom nothing was lost, the world often seemed more like a template for fiction than something that should be indulged in for its own sake. But this Sunday evening in March, James felt as if he had completely floated out of his body and were hovering over the table, a ghost watching the still-living chatting in an indecipherable language. Or perhaps like a spectator at a play—the way he felt while watching the touring acting groups in England rehearse or actually act the lines from his first effort, The American . Detached, critical, unconvinced, but strangely enchanted.

Except that now he felt convinced and horrified.

Emissary Helmer Halvorsen Vollebæk turned to the Hays, King, and James, and said, “Again I apologize for the rudeness of us speaking our native language and thank you for your patience and kind indulgence. But speaking to Mr. Sigerson has convinced me of something I only guessed at before hearing him speak . . . things are not completely as has been represented regarding Mr. Sigerson.”

James felt his breath catch in his throat. So Holmes’s attempt at Norwegian had been deficient. How could it not be? An Englishman can’t fool a Norwegian into believing that he, the Englishman, is a native Scandinavian. James had simply been disoriented by Holmes’s whole-throated attempt.

“ . . . we had read and heard that Mr. Sigerson was a Norwegian explorer,” continued Helmer Halvorsen Vollebæk in an apologetic tone. “But after speaking with him for only these few minutes, my family and I realize that Mr. Sigerson is almost certainly the preeminent explorer from our nation at the present time. The London and American papers spoke of Mr. Sigerson’s . . . ah . . . penetration of certain mountain ranges in India, but we had no idea of how unique and spectacular his explorations into Tibet in the past two years truly were. Also, Mr. Sigerson is from Løiten, my own tiny hometown in Hedmark County—fewer than one hundred people live there—and Mr. Sigerson grew up knowing my cousin Knut who still lives there.”

Holmes said something brief in Norwegian.

Mr. Vollebæk laughed. “Oh, yes, and my Aunt Oda after whom our daughter was named.”