Dan Simmons - The Fifth Heart

Secret Service Chief Drummond:Of course. (Holding Clover Adams’s photographic plate up to the light while the other men craned to catch a glimpse of the face.) Why . . . this Adler is only a boy.”

Sherlock Holmes:That photograph was taken almost seven years ago, gentlemen. Lucan Adler was thirteen years old . . . a boy, as you say. But even at age thirteen, he was a remarkable hunter and marksman with a rifle and already trained as an assassin by his guardian, Colonel Sebastian Moran.

Former Metropolitan Police Major and Superintendent Brock:Who took this photograph of Lucan Adler?

Sherlock Holmes: I’m afraid I cannot reveal that information at this time. But I assure you that the young man in the photograph is indeed Lucan Adler and that his face, while more angular and more cruel, still looks much the same today.

Secret Service Chief Drummond:How do you know his current appearance, Mr. Holmes?

Sherlock Holmes:I’ve encountered him in recent years.

Former Metropolitan Police Major and Superintendent Brock: (Laughing derisively.) What? The famous Sherlock Holmes “encountered” our assassin and the fellow is not in custody? How can this be? Are the faculties of the famous detective slipping some with age, sir?

Sherlock Holmes:Lucan Adler stalked me , Mr. Brock. And two years ago he put three rifle bullets into me and through me from extremely long range. My survival was pure chance with some aid from the fact that the bullets were steel-jacketed—in the way of military ammunition—so they passed through me rather than tumbled. Had they been ordinary rounds, the softer bullets would have taken out my lungs, heart, and spine.

(A long silence ensues.)

Metropolitan Police Major and Superintendent Moore:On whose evidence . . . on what basis . . . are we to believe in this grand anarchists’ conspiracy? The May one date for the attack on President Cleveland? All of it?

Sherlock Holmes:On the basis, sir, of specific intelligence obtained by Her Majesty’s Secret Service. The information has been corroborated by the new Prefect of Police of Paris, Monsieur Louis Jean-Baptiste Lépine, and by Inspector Hanaud of the French Sûreté, as well as through other intelligence gathered by the Belgian and French Secret Services. And, finally, gentlemen, we act based on additional information obtained through my own investigations in the seven years since I provided evidence to the Chicago police regarding the Haymarket Square Massacre.

Former Metropolitan Police Major and Superintendent Brock:The general opinion in the United States now, Mr. Holmes, is that the Haymarket Trial was a one-sided farce, headed by an unfair judge and overzealous prosecutors. The general opinion now, Mr. Holmes, is that the five hanged men were martyrs to the workers’ movement—martyrs for the eight-hour workday.

Sherlock Holmes:If what you say is true, Mr. Brock, then the general opinion in the United States is an ass.

Metropolitan Police Major and Superintendent Moore:It seems certain, Mr. Holmes, that Illinois’s new governor, Mr. Altgeld, is going to pardon the three convicted Haymarket men who were given a fifteen-year sentence rather than death . . . Schwab, Fielden, and Neebe. A pardon with full amnesty. As Mr. Brock said, people are now of the opinion that the entire Haymarket Trial was a farce—unfair—and that Fischer, Lingg, Parsons, Spies, and Engel were unfairly executed.

Sherlock Holmes:Only four of the guilty men were hanged, sir . . . Engel, Spies, Parsons, and Fischer. Lingg, the bomb-maker, took his own life by biting into a blasting cap that he’d hidden in his cell. It blew his face off. Yet it still took him some hours to die.

Former Metropolitan Police Major and Superintendent Brock:Yet Governor Altgeld and many, many other people are saying now, seven years later, that these men were heroes of the working class.

Sherlock Holmes:These eight men were murderers and conspirators to murder. I proved this to the satisfaction of the Chicago police and to the courts. Not the least by breaking their code in the anarchist paper the Arbeiter-Zeitung . . . a code which coordinated the making of the bombs, the arming of the anarchists, and their ambush of the police that May Day at Haymarket Square.

Secret Service Chief Drummond:But no one ever caught the man who was said to have actually thrown the bomb . . . Schnaubelt.

Sherlock Holmes:Rudolph Schnaubelt.

Secret Service Chief Drummond:Yes. Schnaubelt just disappeared. Vanished. Probably forever.

Sherlock Holmes:Not forever, Chief Drummond. I found Rudolph Schnaubelt in France five years ago this May.

(The room again fills with gabble until Vice-President Stevenson raises his hand. When silence descends, the vice-president opens his palm to the Major and Superintendent of the Metropolitan Police Force.)

Metropolitan Police Major and Superintendent Moore:I heard nothing about Schnaubelt’s apprehension.

Sherlock Holmes:I am afraid that Mr. Schnaubelt died before he could be taken into proper custody. He threw himself through a glass window and drowned in the fast-running Swiss river below. But not before he admitted to—boasted of, I should say—his part in the conspiracy and his act of throwing the bomb at the police from the Chicago alley opening onto Haymarket Square on May fourth, eighteen eighty-six.

Former Metropolitan Police Major and Superintendent Brock:So, Mr. Holmes, we have only your word of Rudolph Schnaubelt’s . . . confession.

Sherlock Holmes:My word and the word of two rather extraordinary law-enforcement officers who were with me when Schnaubelt made his boasts and then tried to escape.

Secret Service Chief Drummond:Can you tell us the names of these men, Mr. Holmes?

Sherlock Holmes:Certainly. The first fellow detective present was Inspector Lépine of whom I spoke earlier, and the second police officer there to hear Schnaubelt’s confession—and to help us pull his dead body from the river—was a young and very promising new member of the Brussels police force, an inspector junior-grade by the name of Hercule Poirot. But enough of old cases. What are you gentlemen going to do in the next four weeks—or less—to save the life of President Grover Cleveland?

Holmes stepped out of the circle and set his back against a bookcase filled with steamboat boiler regulations and specifications.

Vice-President Stevenson stepped forward and faced the other men in the room. “The president,” said Stevenson, “has directed that this group—and anyone else we might find it necessary to invite—meet biweekly on this problem of executive protection. I believe Sunday mornings, ten until noon, shall suffice.”

“Sundays!” cried Brock. “Now I am to give up my Sundays and attending divine services with my family because of this . . . shadow of a phantasm of a threat? Besides, I no longer have any official capacity in law enforcement. There is no reason for me to be here.”

“The president wished you to be part of this first assembly,” Vice-President Stevenson said softly.

“For what possible reason?” demanded the haggard former major and superintendent of police.

“Your Bureau of Detectives was deeply corrupt when you resigned,” said Sherlock Holmes. “You left, many of them remained and are in positions of higher authority today. Detectives on the payroll of the gangs or anarchists could be fatal to our plans. Your expertise in that area is required. In other words, sir, the President of the United States has commanded you to be what I believe American criminals call . . . a rat.”