Dan Simmons - The Fifth Heart

Howells continued to laugh.

The waiters were bringing their main courses.

On the previous day, Tuesday, March 28, when Holmes had announced to the small group in John Hay’s study that the typewriter that had produced the She-was-murdered cards over the past seven years was the same machine that had typed addresses and cards to the Hays from someone named Samuel Clemens, the room had erupted in babble and surprise. It was Hay who explained that Samuel Clemens was the real name for the famous author who wrote under the nom de plume of Mark Twain.

“I must interview him at once,” Holmes had said. “Either Hay or James shall accompany me.”

“I fear that will not be possible,” said Henry James. “I’ve read over the past few years in the London papers that Mr. Twain . . . Mr. Clemens . . . has been, en famille , on an extensive tour of Europe—Germany, Switzerland, Italy—since eighteen ninety-one, I believe. Something to do with debts, persistent American creditors, and the strength of the dollar on the Continent. The last I read, Clemens and his family had moved on from Florence and to Bad Neuheim, with Mr. Clemens occasionally taking the baths for his rheumatism.”

Holmes looked crestfallen until John Hay said brightly, “Actually, we’re in luck. I received a letter from Sam . . . from Mr. Clemens . . . only two weeks ago in which he said he’d be sailing from Italy on the twenty-second of this month, bound for New York, to carry out several business meetings. I believe he was eventually going to Chicago, to meet with someone there and to get a preview of the Columbian Exposition, before returning to Europe six weeks from now.”

“He’ll be in New York?” Holmes asked.

“He should be there—or on the point of arriving there—even as we speak,” said Hay.

“We must leave at once,” said the detective.

Clara Hay gave her husband a sharp glance and Hay held up his hands. “Alas, I’m too busy this week—socially and otherwise—to take time out for a trip to New York. But I’m sure Harry would enjoy accompanying you. I don’t believe that he and Clemens have met yet. And Harry . . . Sam wrote me that he planned to dine with Howells as soon after he reached New York as he could. Perhaps you could join them.”

“Who is Howells?” asked Sherlock Holmes.

“William Dean Howells,” said Hay. “He’s an old friend of Harry’s as well as of Sam’s, an author of some renown in his own right, but also a well-known critic. Howells was fiction editor of The Atlantic Monthly from ’seventy-one to ’eighty-one—helping not only to publish friends such as Harry and Sam, but to promote them—and wrote a column for Harper’s Weekly until ’eighty-two.”

“Good,” said Holmes. “James can introduce me when the three old literary colleagues are chatting and we can ease our way into the Clover Adams business. If you shall be so kind as to cable Howells of our arrival, we shall leave today for New York.”

“But . . .” said James but could come up with no reason for his not going other than his not wanting to do so.

“Clemens might well have taken the typewriter to Europe with him,” said Hay.

“Not important,” Holmes had said. “The important thing is for Clemens to tell us who had access to his typewriter between December six, eighteen eighty-five, and December six, eighteen eighty-six.”

“But that . . .” began Clara Hay and then stopped. “I see. If the cards were all typed at the same time, you think it must have been between Clover’s death and the first anniversary of her death . . . the first time we all received the typewritten cards.”

“Surely you’re not considering Samuel Clemens . . . Mark Twain . . . as a suspect!” said John Hay.

“Only his typewriter,” replied Holmes. “And before we go any further, we must know who had access to it after Clover Adams’s death.”

“Someone could have typed those cards before her death,” said Clara Hay.

Holmes had smiled thinly at his hostess. “Perhaps. But that person would also have been her murderer. All the more reason to speak to this Twain-Clemens person as soon as possible.” Turning to Henry James, Holmes cried, “Quick, James. Pack some things in your Gladstone bag and let’s be off. The game is afoot!”

“What brings you back to the States, Sam?” Howells was asking.

“Business,” growled the man between bites of his prime rib. “All business. Money, debt, and business. Business, debt, and money. Last night I had dinner with Andrew Carnegie.”

James, who paid little attention to millionaires or their comings and goings, was still impressed.

“How did that dinner go?” asked Howells.

“Just dandy,” said Clemens. “Carnegie wanted to talk to me about yachting, about the price of gold, about the British royal family, about libraries, about my family’s experience living in Europe the past few years, about Swiss tutors, and especially—at great length I might say—about his harebrained scheme for the United States to absorb Canada, Ireland, and all of Great Britain into a single American Commonwealth. I, on the other hand, wanted to talk about him lending me some money . . . or I should say, investing some capital in marvelous and foolproof ventures.”

“I trust your conversations were productive,” said James.

Clemens’s brows came down. “I explained to Carnegie my own investments in Kaolatype, in various other sure-to-be-hits inventions and games, in my publishing house, and especially in Mr. Paige’s typesetting machine, which, by itself, to date, for only the Paige typesetter investment, I have poured something like one hundred and ninety thousand dollars into without ever seeing the godda . . . without seeing the blasted thing work properly for more than two minutes at a time.”

“What did Mr. Carnegie say to these investment possibilities?” asked Howells.

“He leaned forward and whispered to me his secret of getting and staying rich,” Clemens said in a low, conspiratorial tone of voice.

The three other men at the table, even Holmes, also leaned forward conspiratorially to hear the secret from no less an expert than Andrew Carnegie.

“Carnegie said,” whispered Clemens, “and I quote him exactly . . . ‘M’boy, put all your eggs in one basket, and watch that basket .’ ”

While Howells and James laughed and Holmes allowed himself a smile, Sam Clemens continued to scowl. “He was serious,” Clemens growled into the laughter.

“Perhaps the Paige typesetter is your basket,” said Howells.

Clemens grunted. “If it is, it’s a basket without a bottom or handles.”

“Why don’t you just . . . how do you Americans put it? . . . cut your losses and get out?” asked Holmes.

“I’ve invested too much,” growled Clemens. “As a businessman, I give the word ‘fool’ a bad name. Livy says so. My muscular Christian minister friend Joe Twichell says so. All my friends who are not earlobe-deep in debt say so. But I still hope this Paige machine will be the avenue to my own fortune and to my family’s security. The thing not only sets type brilliantly, you see, it automatically justifies . . . something that no typesetting device on the planet can do. The good news is that forty or fifty of Paige’s miracle typesetters are in the process of being produced and The Chicago Tribune is going to give one a trial by fire. Before this trip is over, I plan to make the eight-hundred-mile trip to Chicago to talk to Paige. My goal was to dissolve our partnership during that conversation . . .”

“But James Paige can be very convincing in person,” suggested Howells.