Tyro Vogel - The Girl with the Scarab Necklace

In the year 1903 I was honorably discharged from the army, and Uncle Sam sent me back home to rub shoulders with all the other out-of-work boys roaming the streets. I got lucky: a buddy of mine got me a job at the port. Night shifts. Mine was a sad lot: night after night of back-breaking work, only to give half of my $1.50 a week pay for a room uglier than the rats I’d shared it with. The rest of the money I’d wisely spent on whiskey.

One particularly cold November morning I was keeping myself warm with a glass of Jack Daniels when I’d decided my job could burn in hell. I put the glass down and reached out across the self-made table for yesterday’s copy of the Chicago Daily News. It made sense to start with the job ads section. The first ad to catch my eye was printed in the corner of the page. It read,

Needed: Personal Assistant

Must have basic military training, good manners, know how to read and write. Interviews held between 14:00 and 16:00 on Wednesdays and Thursdays at 60620 Dresden Drive 7. Floor 2, Apartment 9. Only apply if your last name is “Smith”. No exceptions.

That last bit was a bit weird, but I’ve had worse reasons for concern in my twenty years of age. My spirits lifted, I celebrated with another swing from the glass. Today was a Wednesday; I wound up my alarm clock to wake me at noon, slid down from the chair, and passed out on the mattress.

60620 Dresden Drive turned out to be less of a drive and more of a grey urban well. House block seven looked even greyer than its destitute neighbors. I let myself in through the scrawny-looking front door and carefully counted each of the forty two steps as I’d made my way up to the second floor, just in case they’d ask. Feeling deservedly proud of myself, I knocked on door number nine.

“Yes?” a woman’s voice asked.

“My name’s Adam Smith, I’m here about the PA job?”

Shuffling, and then the door opened as far as the chain lock allowed. A redhead woman, a head shorter than me, was looking at me with eyes of emerald green. She was wearing man’s pants and a vest over a crisp white shirt that screamed business first, looks later . A silver scarab amulet hung from a string tied around her neck.

She slid the chain off. The entrance opened to a spacious office. A giant oak desk dominated the room like a locomotive in a horse stable; light shone into the room from two windows on each side of the desk. My host sat down behind it and invited me to sit in the chair opposite. I put my hat on the coat hanger and accepted the invitation.

“Thank you for making the time to come, Mr. Smith,” she said. “My name is Jane Wesson. Would you allow me to ask you a few questions to see if this job is for you? If you have any questions of your own, I’ll be happy to hear them afterwards.”

“Sure thing.”

“Thank you. These are not trick questions. Please answer as honestly as you can. My first question is, have you ever been incarcerated?”

“No ma’am.”

“What rank were you when you left active duty?”

“Specialist, ma’am.”

“Have you ever done any acting?”

“Eh, no ma’am, I can’t say I have.”

“Please stop calling me ma’am, Mr. Smith. One last question, if I may. Where are you currently employed?”

“Mordino’s Shipping Company, ma’am.”

“Mordino’s Shipping? Which port?”

“The South-Eastern one, ma’am. Working night shifts at the moment.”

“You really don’t have to call me ma’am, Jane would be fine. Failing that, Ms. Smith would do as well. You’re hired.”

“Excuse me?”

“You are hired, Mr. Smith. Congratulations. You start tomorrow.”

“And what is it that I’m hired for, exactly?”

“Why, my Personal Assistant, of course.”

“Is this the time I can ask questions?”

“Please go ahead.”

I decided to get the elephant out of the room. “What’s the pay?”

“Five dollars a week plus accommodation.” She nodded towards the Western wall. Two doors closed off the adjoining rooms. “I’ve got space to spare. Just don’t get any ideas. Take it or leave it.”

Five dollars a week! I’ll be rich!

“And what… what exactly is it that I have to do?”

You’ll have to help out, Mr. Smith.”

“Help out with what, Ms. Wesson?”

She opened a drawer and pulled out a small wooden plaque. “You can start with nailing this to the door. The tools are in your room. That’d be the door to the left, by the way.”

I took the plaque and turned it over. The carved letters read, Smith & Wesson: A Detective Agency , as if it explained everything there was to know. Think of the money, I thought, got up, and headed for the room under my new boss’s watchful eye. A hammer and four nails lay by the door. The room itself was at least as big as the rat-infested cellar I’d called home until now, and it apparently came at the very affordable price of free.

Having learnt how to hammer a nail in the army the hard way (my rough estimate was that I’d made half the bunk beds for the entire U.S. Infantry), the job was done in a couple of minutes. I returned to the chair.

“I’m sure you’re wondering why from all the Mr. Smiths who came through my door I’d decided to hire you. A military man with your last name is not hard to find. However, it is only by pure luck that you happen to be the Mr. Smith employed at the Chicago South-Eastern port. What do you know of the Victoria ?”

Nobody paid a man five dollars a month without expecting to make a profit. What kind of trouble was I getting myself into?

“That’s a ship,” I said. “They docked at South Eastern the night before yesterday, but the rumor’s that there’s some sort of a quarantine going on. Nobody got off, and the police closed off the entire dock. A plague or somesuch, they say, real nasty business.”

“I want you to get me on that ship. I need to be on it yesterday. Time is of the essence.”

“What? Why?”

She leaned back in her chair and put her metal-tipped cowboy boots on the desk. I raised an eyebrow but had the good sense to remain silent. “There’s someone very special onboard. Someone I have to see.”

“Who?”

“Mr. Sherlock Holmes, straight out of England. He’s here to receive the Congressional Gold Medal, to be awarded to him in secret by President Roosevelt himself. He and his assistant are on that ship.”

Excuse me if I was too busy unloading crates to follow British celebrities, I thought. I’d never seen the name in the Chicago Daily, either, so this Mr. Holmes couldn’t have been too famous. Still, the Congressional Gold Medal was the highest honor United States could bestow on a civilian… and it was awarded by the Congress, not the President. To have the President award it to an Englishman was strange, to say the least.

“Who is Mr. Sherlock Holmes?” I asked.

She gave me a disapproving look.

“Mr. Sherlock Holmes is possibly the greatest detective who ever lived, Mr. Smith. His assistant, Dr. John H. Watson, wrote a number of accounts about the man’s cases. They’re all a bit over-dramatized, of course, but true nonetheless. He is a genius. Though perhaps it’s to be expected that he’s famous in certain circles only… I don’t know which of his many accomplishments granted him this award from our country’s powers that be, but I’m quite positive that they weren’t trivial.”

I gave my new employer a critical look, thinking whether Ms. Wesson really knew things us everyday men didn’t, or if she was just pulling my leg. She returned my stare without flinching and I smiled a little bit inside. Somehow I’d felt a connection, as if she’d seen the things I’d seen, felt the things I’d felt… it made me wonder if she might have been an orphan too.