The Fifth Heart

by Dan Simmons

  Everyone—wearing their darker suits and dresses for almost the last time before light summer linen clothing became appropriate on Monday—got onto the waiting power boats and went ashore. Sherlock Holmes left the others when he reached the pier; he had scheduled meetings with Colonel Rice, Agent Drummond, and the Chicago Chief of Police Robert McClaughry.

  Henry James decided to stay aboard the Albatross—Lake Michigan was so calm at their anchorage that there was almost no discernible movement of the large yacht—and to take a nap in his mahogany lined, silk-and-velvet-cushioned stateroom.

  He awoke sometime after dark to find the yacht empty save for crew members. Everyone must be partying somewhere ashore.

  They’d left a power launch and boatman for him and, as James came to the boat ladder, the man at the helm said, “Take you into the White City dock, sir?”

  “No,” said James, his heart beating so quickly that he found it hard to take in a breath. “Take me to the main Chicago pier.”

  6

  He had decided that he—Henry James—would track down the elusive Professor Moriarty. During the hours of his sleepless “nap” that afternoon aboard Don Cameron’s yacht, James had convinced himself that Moriarty and his accomplices at the train station had not been searching for him. Searching for Holmes or someone else, perhaps, but not for him. What was he to Moriarty or Moriarty to him?

  No, he’d assured himself, it had just been coincidence that he’d spotted the evil professor at the train station. James trusted again in his own anonymity—at least in terms of being a target for either the Adler boy or his dark master, Moriarty.

  Telling the boatman to wait for him there at City Pier, no matter how late it might be, James took a trolley into the dark heart of Chicago and boarded one of the elevated trains there.

  He had no real search plans and, of course, had not brought any weapon—the idea of searching night-time Chicago for Moriarty felt strangely thrilling. What reassured James was that the chance of him crossing Moriarty’s path again by sheer accident was so small as to be something that could only occur in a poorly written popular novel.

  Chicago’s transit system of elevated trains—called the “L” even then—had only come into service the year before, in 1892. The first cars were wooden coaches open to the elements on either side, but now—as James rode through the night on the Lake Street Elevated Railroad—the carriages were enclosed. James had picked up a transit-system map at the first station he’d found and it clearly showed that, except for the Chicago and South Side Rapid Transit Railroad, which now extended south all the way to 63rd Street and Stony Island Avenue, the Transportation Building entrance to the Columbian Exposition, all the other terminals were, most inconveniently, James thought, at the periphery of Chicago’s actual downtown.

  On their first day in the city, Holmes had told him that this quirk was due to a state law requiring approval from the businesses and building owners along any downtown street before tracks could be built over that avenue.

  James knew that he was headed south on this spur, but he had no intention of going all the way back to the Jackson Park stops at the World’s Fair. Holmes and all of Cameron’s other guests might still be there. Of course, so might Moriarty. But James chose to stay in Chicago proper—the Black City as he now thought of it—for his late-night search for the professor.

  He stepped off the “L” train some blocks before the 63rd Street Station that would have brought him back to the Fair and began walking almost at random.

  He’d gone several blocks in the poorly lighted section of the city before he realized three things: first, that there were no street lights in this part of town but many people on the sidewalks; second, that there seemed to be an ungodly number of bars and dance halls pounding the night with raucous music; and third, that his was the only white face present in the five- or six-block distance he’d walked from the “L” station.

  Realizing (with some small flutter of alarm) that he’d mistakenly got off the elevated train in the south side Negro section of town—he’d heard Holmes refer to it once as “Ebonyville”—James whirled to walk briskly back to the elevated’s platform and realized he’d taken several turns and not paid attention to which way he’d walked. No elevated tracks were visible down any of the cross-streets he was now coming to in a stride so urgent that it almost qualified as running.

  Suddenly a Negro man in a rather showy pinstripe suit, amazingly bright tie, and quality straw hat came up to him and blocked his flight.

  “Are you lost, sir?” asked the Negro. “Can I be of some help?”

  James took three steps back but managed to say, “Would you be so kind as to tell me how to reach the ‘L’ platform that would put me back on the Lake Side train?”

  The Negro smiled—perfectly white teeth against the darkest skin James had ever seen—and said, “Certainly, sir.” He pointed the way from which James had just come. “Back three blocks along this street, then left at 48th Street, and it’s just a block and a half to the ‘L’ station there.”

  “Thank you,” said James, almost bowing in his relief. But as he headed back the way he had just come—the sidewalks and streets full of colored people who appeared to be celebrating something—he could not resist glancing back over his shoulder to see if his benefactor was following him for some dark reason.

  The man in the straw hat was standing exactly where he’d spoken to James, half a block away now, and at James’s glance, the tall Negro again showed that white grin and raised his hat in a friendly wave.

  Had that wave been an act of insolence? wondered James. Immediately he was ashamed of himself.

  But the truth was that although Henry James now considered himself to be one of the most cosmopolitan of men (especially of Americans), equally at home in the streets of London, Paris, Florence, Venice, Rome, Zurich, Lucerne, or Berlin, he simply hadn’t had much contact with Negroes in anything but their occasional service capacities in American hotels.

  But then he was on the “L” platform again, an enclosed-carriage train arrived within minutes, and he was riding north again.

  * * *

  For the next ninety minutes or so, James took the elevated lines as far as he could but then had to take the late-running trolley cars to areas such as Douglas Park, Garfield Park, Humboldt Park, and Logan Square (although the small print on his “L”-system map bragged of opening the West Side Elevated line within another year or two).

  James didn’t mind the transitions. The trolleys were more comfortable at any rate.

  And in the few sections that had adequate street lighting—and white people on the sidewalks and in the carriages—James would stretch his legs for several blocks, always on the alert for Moriarty’s gleaming bald dome and terrible gaze.

  In one of these western, working-class sections of town, James realized that he’d not eaten anything since an early and light lunch that day. It was late enough now that some of the cafés were shutting down for the night, but others were open and several were crowded. Still, it was a working-man’s clientele complete with cloth caps—kept in place even while dining—corduroy or moleskin trousers, and huge boots. There were a few women in these places but judging from the excess of rouge and other make-up, combined with their calculated dishabille, James supposed them to be women of the night.

  He decided to eat when he finally returned to the yacht. For now he turned back to find the next trolley stop going west again.

  * * *

  James soon realized that there was a mystery to these trains and trolleys that had nothing to do with Sherlock Holmes or Lucan Adler or his prey for the night, Professor Moriarty. After sitting in more than two dozen mostly empty train carriages and trolleys, he had seen at least a dozen different men reading the same book.

  All the men were dressed in poorly fitted wool suits and old but well-shined shoes and a few wore straw hats (but none as clean or well-blocked as that of his Negro interlocutor hours earlier) and each man h
eld the book up close to his face as if he were near-sighted. But few of the men wore glasses. And, compounding the mystery for James, he would stay on for several stops and none of the reading men ever turned a page.

  They simply seemed to be holding the book open in front of their bored (and sometimes closed) eyes. What bothered James most was that it was the same book in each case.

  The title was MAGGIE: A Girl of the Streets, the volumes looked crude enough—to James’s professional gaze—to be self-published, and the author’s name was Johnston Smith.

  Finally, near the southwestern end of the line on the trolley James was then on, he dared to sit in the empty seat in front of the “reading man”, turned toward him, and cleared his throat loudly. The man did not lower the book.

  “I beg your pardon,” James said at last and the man started—he’d obviously been dozing—and lowered the book.

  “I’ve noticed quite a few gentlemen on public transportation this evening reading precisely the volume you are,” James said, “and I hope you don’t think me impertinent if I ask why it’s so popular in Chicago.”

  The man smiled broadly, showing nicotine-stained or missing teeth which suggested that the thick and uncomfortable-looking suit he had on was his only suit. “I’ve been waitin’ for someone to ask,” said the man. “Truth is, I haven’t read a word of this idiotic book. A fellow pays me—and some twenty or so other lads—to just ride around on the trains and trolleys from seven a.m. ’til the transits close down at one a.m. I think the fellow thinks that if other folks see us readin’ this book, they’ll rush out an’ buy one for their own selves. Problem is, the only other people I’ve seen readin’ this here book are other coves like me who’ve been paid to do so. Or to pretend we are.”

  “How long have you and the other . . . ah . . . readers been so employed?” asked James.

  “Three weeks now, with never so much as a question about the book. Until you come along, that is. I think our guy is runnin’ out of cash though. I’m afraid that by this time next week, I’ll have to find honest work.”

  “Is it the author, Mr. Johnston Smith, who is paying you for this . . . advertising effort?” asked James.

  “It’s the author all right, but his name ain’t Johnston nor Smith. He’s a young-lookin’ cove, no more’n twenty-one or twenty-two at the oldest with shoes more worn than ours is . . . and his real name is Stephen Crane.”

  “Well, it’s an interesting way to promote one’s novel,” said James, wondering if such a stunt might work for him in the more literary crowds of London. But, no . . . the literary crowds in London did not use transit designed for the masses save for railway carriages, and no British man or woman would start a conversation with a stranger in the carriage. It simply was not done.

  “You know,” said the man with the book now closed and on his lap, “I’ve read me a book or two in my day, and this MAGGIE thing ain’t even a real book.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “I mean,” said the man, “that it’s only about forty pages long, and that with wide white margins on each side and a bunch of empty white pages in front ’n’ back.”

  “A short story bound as a book,” mused James.

  The man shrugged. “All I know is I got one more lousy hour to prop this thing up before the trolleys shut down and I can go home to sleep. My arms are killing me from holdin’ this trash up to my nose all day and night, but this Crane fellow checks up on us almost every day. The lot of us’ve compared notes and, if the book ain’t raised right or your eyes ain’t open, you get canned on the spot. And there ain’t many jobs these days where a man gets paid two dollars a day for just sitting on his ass.”

  James shook his head as if in sympathy.

  The trolley came to a stop in a dark part of town and the driver and conductor got out to swing it around. The end of the line evidently.

  James decided to stretch his legs for a moment.

  “You’re not getting out here, are you?” asked the paid book man.

  “Just for a second,” said James.

  But as soon as he was out in the muggy air, he saw, half a block away, under the only street lamp working on that block, the flash of baldness, the glimpse of a frock coat and old-fashioned high collar, and the white-worm movement of the long strangler’s fingers before the darkness swallowed the man up again.

  Forgetting about the trolley, James began walking quickly after the apparition.

  * * *

  Beyond that last, weak street lamp, there was not only deep darkness but a sudden end to the tenements and shacks that had lined each side of the street. It was as if James had followed Professor Moriarty all the way out of Chicago and they were on the dark prairie together.

  But then the smell struck James. The smell and the sense of hundreds if not thousands of massive but unseen animal hooves, the stench and the atavistic certainty that one is being stared at in the darkness by countless unseen eyes. The street ended in a T and straight ahead through the staggering stench James could make out a great, dark, occasionally moving mass of living, breathing, staring, and excreting organisms. Cattle.

  He’d reached the Chicago stockyards. Not a single street light or building’s lighted window pierced the darkness to either side. Far out in the filled corrals there was a gas lamp or two, but they were too far away to shed any light on his immediate surroundings. James saw the strangely dark glistening of horns far out there.

  James chose to turn left and walked boldly into the breathing darkness in that direction.

  * * *

  It took a minute or two for him to realize that there was no sidewalk, no paved street under his shoes. Just gravel and dirt. At least it was not mud of the sort he was sure filled the cattle pens to his right. He could hear the squelching as sleeping cattle moved fitfully or others shoved their way through the mass to a feeding trough.

  James also realized that he felt . . . different. The apathy and anger of the day had drained away with his bold searching out of Moriarty in the dangerous Chicago neighborhoods. He’d caught no more glimpse of the bald head and long, white fingers since he’d come to this black collision of crumbling city warehouses and the huge stockyards, but he hadn’t really expected to find—much less confront—the mastermind of crime.

  Henry James realized it was as if he was outside himself, above himself, watching himself (here where it was too dark even to read the hands of his watch without striking a match). Before this night, he’d been struggling to be a playwright; now he was both actor and audience, watching himself as he acted. Not “performed”, but acted, as in carrying out a physical and purposeful (and somewhat daring) action. If this is how a character in some lesser writer’s novel feels . . . I like it, thought James.

  It was hard for him to believe at this moment that a little more than a month and a half ago, he’d been ready to drown himself in the Seine. For what? Sagging book sales?

  James almost laughed aloud as he strode along in the night. As much as he still disliked Sherlock Holmes for a myriad of valid reasons, he now realized that the detective—whether real or fictional—had been Henry James, Jr.’s, savior. This strange night in this strange city, James felt younger, stronger—more alive—than any time he could remember, at least since his childhood. And he deeply suspected that the life and energy he’d felt as a boy was merely his lunar reflection of the sunlight of older brother William’s wild energy and spirit.

  Drastic engagement. These were the words that now echoed through James’s mind. Not merely a reinvigorated engagement with the stuff of daily life, but an engagement with the dangers and dramas outside any life he’d ever allowed himself to imagine, much less live. For the first time he understood how his brother Wilkie could have suffered such terrible wounds, seen such horrible things—one of the two men carrying Wilkie along the dunes on a stretcher the day after the night battle at Fort Wagner had his head blown to pieces, the spatterings of brains and white bits of skull falling all over Wilkie as
the stretcher fell to the ground—yet Wilkie, only partially recovered, had eventually gone back to the war. As had James’s brother Bob after losing half his regiment in a different battle.

  Drastic engagement. James suddenly understood why such moments were life to Sherlock Holmes and why the detective had to resort to injections of cocaine or morphine or heroin to get through the dull, backwater days of the quotidian between dangerous cases.

  It might have been Moriarty he’d glimpsed from the trolley a half hour earlier, but probably not. It didn’t matter that much to James at that moment.

  And then he saw motion. Dark shapes moving toward him. Vertical forms outside the wooden fences of the corrals. Men.

  James’s eyes had adapted well enough to the dark—the backs of the warehouses to his left had no lit windows or outside lamps—that he could see that the forms were of four men and that all of them carried clubs, truncheons.

  He stopped.

  Lifting his gentleman’s stick into both soft hands, James wished that it was Holmes’s sword-cane.

  Should he run? James realized that he had more dread of being dragged down from behind on the run, like one of these cattle at a rodeo, than of facing whoever or whatever was striding toward him so quickly in the darkness.

  The four assailants—James had no delusions that they could be anything else and whether they worked for Moriarty or not was academic and irrelevant to everything now (he’d never know)—had fanned out and were less than ten feet from him when a voice boomed from a dark alley to his left.