I swiftly interposed myself between the two of them, raising an arm so that Roxton’s gauntlet clamped onto my wrist rather than around Holmes’s throat. The pressure Roxton brought to bear on me was immense, and inflicted considerable pain—but not, of course, any harm.
I grinned at the man, and he in return frowned in dismay.
“Dash it all,” he cried. “Your bones should be powder by now, your wrist as narrow as a pipe cleaner.”
“Luck of the draw,” I said, and punched him unconscious.
BENEATH THE WORKSHOP, accessible via a trapdoor, lay another workshop, a secondary lair where Roxton stored contraptions he had developed which lent him the abilities of any physical Category you might care to name. There was a submersible kit, a kind of diving apparatus which allowed him to remain underwater for a significant span of time, breathing through a tube connected to a canister of compressed oxygen. There was a flying pack which used rocket propulsion to suspend him in the air and flit through the skies guided by rudimentary batlike wings. There was a mate to the gauntlet, which gave him a grip strength equivalent to that of the mightiest Hercules. There was even a prototype of what appeared to be a pair of steampowered, wheeled boots with which he would be able to propel himself along, somewhat like an ice skater, but as fast as a Mercury.
Roxton, when he came round, was reluctant to talk at first. Holmes, however, menaced him with my revolver, and soon enough his tongue loosened.
Not only had Roxton been crippled by polio when he was a small boy, he had also been born Typical. Throughout his formative years, his lack of Category had eaten at him. He was jealous of his schoolmates as they discovered their various abilities, especially those who were fleet of foot or who could lift great weights. He was taunted for his sickliness and his Typicality. The jibes sank in deep and fuelled a lifelong misanthropy.
Finding that he had an aptitude for engineering, Roxton turned it into a vocation. He was highly proficient at it, something of a genius. Yet still resentment of others simmered away inside. The establishment, although it paid him well for the work he did building bridges and steam engines and factory machinery, never respected him the way it had the likes of Brunel and Telford. He did not move in the right circles, alienated from society by his normality, his freakish ordinariness. He should have been lauded and laureled; instead, he was kept at arm’s length and treated with a grudging toleration at best.
So he decided to put his one skill —his “only God-given talent,” in his words—to use in a different field. He would make himself indispensable to the great and good by volunteering to do their dirty work for them, at a fee. He would become a freelance assassin, tailoring his methods of execution so as to direct suspicion away from whoever hired him and onto other parties, incriminating them by the very gifts he resented.
As Holmes pressed him further, Roxton admitted that he was behind Sir Hugh Lanchester’s death and that his paymaster was none other than Amos Pilkington, Sir Hugh’s erstwhile business associate. “Since I’m likely to be feeling the hangman’s noose,” he said, “I may as well tell all. Besides, I bet it was Pilkington who gave me up, wasn’t it? Drunkard like that. Just the sort to turn on you when the chips are down.”
“As a matter of fact, it was the Earl of Bracewell,” said Holmes.
“The posh devil.” Roxton snorted in disgust. “Got that girl pregnant. Couldn’t handle the potential disgrace to his family name.”
“I ingratiated myself with him at his club last night,” Holmes said. “Challenged him to a few frames of snooker. Beat him soundly, even though he kept trying to force the cue ball to swerve whenever I struck it. There’s only so much top spin that a feeble nudge from a Mover’s mind can counteract, however.
Before long, he lost his temper and started yelling at me, calling me all sorts of names. A very sore loser. He became so enraged, just as I wanted, that the moment I mentioned the actress you killed for him, he blurted out that she was a whore and better off dead and he was glad she had died before she could give birth to his illegitimate offspring—although that is a politer phrase than the actual one he used to describe the child. This was in full view of his fellow club members, and I must say the effect was electric. Consternation. Pandemonium. His Grace had, with a few rash, poorly chosen words, all but admitted culpability for a capital offence, and before an audience of his peers, what’s more, none of whom had a particular affection for him, given that he was a known cheat and cozener. After that, he turned on you pretty quickly, Mr. Roxton.”
“Why am I surprised? Anything to save his own skin.”
“And here we are,” Holmes concluded. “Watson and I will be escorting you to the nearest police station, where you will be free to confess your role in the three murders I have ascribed to you and any others I may have missed out. I shall be especially keen for you to absolve Charlie Gartside of blame for Sir Hugh’s death. Although the man has yet to be arrested, I reckon it’s only a matter of time before Scotland Yard put two and two together and bring him in. With luck, we can forestall that unfortunate occurrence.”
As we dragged the defeated, crestfallen Roxton out of his workshop, he said, “I understand that you, Mr. Holmes, are a Typical, like me. That’s what Dr. Watson writes in the stories he publishes about you.”
“And it’s the truth.”
“How do you bear it? How can you stand being a weakling compared with everyone else? Doesn’t it fill you with hatred?”
“If it ever did,” said Holmes, “I am long past caring. I may not be a Hercules, an Achilles, a Cassandra, even an Olfactory, but I have compensated in my own way. I have not been consumed with bitterness about what I am not, but rather been consumed with desire to be the best I can be, given my limitations. Mother Nature bestows her several gifts upon us. Some are glorious and enviable and come without effort. Others, like mine, need work but are no less potent once fully realised.”
“You make it sound so... so straightforward.”
“That’s because it is,” said Holmes. “I like to think I now inhabit a unique Category, my very own, a denomination in which the developed powers of ratiocination and analytical reasoning are the sole qualifying criteria.”
“And does it have a name, this special, one-man Category of yours?” said Roxton with mockery and just a touch of condescension.
“It does,” said my friend phlegmatically. “Because there is nothing difficult about it, other than the application of intellect and observation, which are available to all, I have dubbed it with an appropriately simple and universal title.”
“Which is?”
“Elementary, Roxton. Elementary.”
Half There/All There
Glen Mehn
I met Glen through mutual friends at various London publishing events, and have had the good fortune to appear alongside him in two anthologies; Glen’s a thrilling new talent, and you’ll be seeing more from him. ‘Half There/All There’ a beautiful story set in the bohemian world of Andy Warhol’s ‘Factory,’ and perfectly grounded, not just in the mood of that crowd, but in the events of the time. It also imbues Holmes with a sort of fierce sadness and regret that took me by surprise, and which will follow you long after the story’s done.
THE WORLD KNOWS Sherlock Holmes through these pages as a calculating machine, seeking justice with cold logic, but I know another side of him. A soft side, a less serious side. Playful. Actually funny, even, if you can believe it, and one of the best friends a man could ever have, if you could get past his weirdness.
I first met Sherlock Holmes at the closing party of the first Factory, that silver box filled with pills and people, covered in tin foil, mylar, and plexiglass. He walked in, this tall, rail-thin man, white skin and black hair slicked back, cut short, like a banker or lawyer or something. Not my type, but I couldn’t stop watching. He was the opposite of hip, but people noticed when he walked in and stood in the corner, smoking cigarette after cigarette, rolling each one himself. He watched everyon
e watching him, and, after an hour, came over to me, offering me a roll-up.
“It’s only tobacco. That’s all you smoke. You had enough of marihuana and opium In Country after you hurt your shoulder. You’re more involved with things that are a bit more imaginative, something that might spur you to get up and do something, aren’t you?”
His voice was low, with an accent that was hard to place, his flat vowels and clipped consonants emanating effortless cool. A strange way of talking, too. Educated. Erudite, rejecting the language of the street, but also avoiding the affected language of the Factory pretenders, claiming European authenticity as a tiny bit of recognition. Style was the thing, convincing others that you were brilliant. Andy had a shotgun approach to catch whatever outstanding people happened to fall into the orbit of his ragtag collection of sexual deviants and junkies.
I didn’t like him coming up and telling me things about myself.
“How’d you know I was In Country? And just what do you think I’ve got for you? I don’t have anything to do with grass, or mushrooms, or any of that hippy shit.”
I watched his thin face while he spoke, his jawbone etched out of granite there, though long and delicate, not like the ad men. I couldn’t stop looking at him, listening to his talk. “You’ve got a shoulder wound, that’s apparent from the hitch you had leaning against the wall, but you didn’t grimace, so it’s something you’re used to. New Yorkers don’t get much sun, but you’re brown, with malaria scars. The way you move and stand shows a streetwise city upbringing. You watch other people around you, keeping an eye out for customers and the police, yet you’ve rolled your eyes at two deals, grass and heroin. So: you were in Vietnam, bored with common drugs. You’re looking to sell something. I need something to occupy my mind and time. Something beyond even the delights manufactured in this Factory.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I took the cigarette he offered and lit it. It was a strong blend, thick, pungent smoke pouring out of the end, but nice. I looked up at him.
“It’s called Drum. It comes to me from the Netherlands—from someone who owes me a favour.”
He smiled at me, a crooked smile that turned my guts to water. I’d have a talk with him, and find out more about this observant, smoking man who’d just walked in to my life; for more than just a conversation, as it turned out.
We talked for a while, about what he liked. Up, but with a twist. Some psychedelic effect was useful, but nothing debilitating. I had just the thing, but back at the Chelsea Hotel. Blue beauties, I called them, stealing the name from the common black beauties, but they were as different as night and day. The chemical was amphedoxamine, but they wouldn’t just take you up, they’d make you feel good, too. I made my rounds and sold a little to those I knew would be talking to me later, and came back to this Sherlock Holmes.
“I think I may have something right up your alley. It’s in my more... private stash. There’s just one thing, though. I need you to distract the landlady. We have a disagreement about the rent.”
“You don’t have it, yet she insists you pay it anyway?”
“Exactly.”
“WHICH WAY DO you live, John?”
I don’t know why I let him call me John. Everyone else calls me Doc, and I was qualified, though I hadn’t lifted a scalpel, a stethoscope or so much as a band-aid since the year before, since I came home with shrapnel in my shoulder. My extensive experience in treating syphilis, jungle rot, and sucking chest wounds was of no use even at Bellevue. My hands weren’t steady enough to practise any more. My license and my knowledge of pharmacology kept me in high demand, however.
Grass was everywhere. Cannabis, mushrooms, and chemicals cooked up by burned out long hairs, as likely to contain strychnine as not.
The people who came to me weren’t looking to turn on or tune in; they had more specialised tastes. They craved knowledge, the power to be creators, to be active participants in life, rejecting every custom, from money to their own sexuality and even gender. They who could only fit in here in New York.
I was a doctor, but it was good that the American Medical Society never saw my shaking hands, or the patients for whom I prescribed an increasingly esoteric variety of chemicals. Chemicals used for creativity, to give an edge, to support the frenzied, creative mind. Make something. Do something. Start something.
The news showed college kids burning their draft cards, dropping LSD, eating mushrooms, smoking marihuana, growing their hair long and burning bras on farms, trying to get away from everything, like that was going to change anything. Not so much in our little corner of New York. Downtown, making a living in empty warehouses. Staying up all night. Creating art out of anything, from cardboard to bodies, inventing superstars out of nothing. This was our buzz, our vibe. Sex. Drugs. Experiment and creation. Create something. Anything. Lots of things. Some of it would stick. We’d change the world, or at least our little corner of it.
“Which way, John?” Sherlock’s voice shocked me out of my reverie.
“I live at the Chelsea, like everyone else,” I sighed.
THE CHELSEA HOTEL. Heiresses desperately seeking disgrace with artistes. Writers and artists praying for a muse. Even in New York in 1968, you would be hard-pressed to find a more miserable hive of the desperate and demented.
The landlady was used to people making disturbances to get guests up to the rooms against the house rules. Someone would fake a fight, or try to sell drugs, or tip over an ashtray, and the rest of the people would run past the barricade. At two-fifty a night or fifteen dollars a week, the Chelsea was cheap, collecting youthful hope, grey enterprise, madness and decrepitude, along with any kind of bottom-feeding scamster. It also had an infamously liberal attitude towards rent, which meant that nearly every resident was constantly in arrears, and could be extorted for any money, valuables, or drugs they had while no complaints could be lodged against the owners about leaking roofs, flickering electricity, or the constantly failing boiler.
It was an arrangement that worked for most of us, particularly considering the heiresses and young men with rich fathers who came to spend time in this bohemian palace, tasting our lifestyle, but back up to Park Avenue for Sunday brunch. They kept the place running, paying their rent for the few rooms in good shape on the second and third floors in the front. The only part of the hotel that ever saw the super’s hands.
Sherlock walked into the Chelsea Hotel and demonstrated his useful observation trick. He walked straight up to the desk.
“I’d like to enquire about a room, please. I’d prefer monthly rates over weekly, if that’s all right? I can pay in advance.”
The hotel manager looked up through bleary eyes, and turned to get a resident’s form, a cigarette dangling from his lip.
“Ah. I see that you only have rooms on the top floors available, and that it’s been over a year since you’ve had your boiler inspected, and your exterminator certificate...”
I slipped past the doorway and up the stairs, listening to his sharp, deep voice tallying everything wrong with the building. It made me smile.
I checked the hair I pasted across the lock, and it was still in place. I opened the door and went straight to the loose floorboard under the mattress and pulled out my stash box, extracting a dozen of the blue tablets from the envelope. I didn’t know how many he wanted, but ten, I thought, should do it. Plus a couple for myself, just in case. I didn’t know what he was about, but the blues had helped my lonely existence for a night or two.
The room was dingy, the sheets dirty, my few belongings in the place making it look bigger than the closet it was.
SHERLOCK BROUGHT ME downtown from the Chelsea to Washington Square Park, a pale blue tablet dissolving in each of our stomachs after he interrogated me about its effects.
“ Explain to me, John, what this is exactly, and why you think it’s my sort of trip.”
Even then, he called me John, and he was Sherlock to me, though Holmes, or even Mr. Holmes to everyone else.
“Groovy.”
The word hung off the edge of his lip and I looked at him.
“What? I wanted to see what it felt like to say it.”
“And?”
“It made me feel dirty. I suspect I may have lost some brain cells.”
I stopped and stared at him, until he looked over at me, just with his eyes, a smirk breaking out on his face. We both dissolved into laughter there in the street.
Sherlock put his arm around my shoulders and breathed in. “This is good, John. Very good. Tell me something. The Chelsea. You like it there?”
“To be honest? Not really. It’s not that cheap, but I can’t afford better. It’s good for me to be there for my clients. There are quite a few hangers-on with family money there, always interested in what I have. Prescriptions for amphetamines pay my way, and allow me to indulge in my experiments.”
He put up a finger, asking me to pause, and walked past the chess players, observing their games.
“Would you bet on one of these, John?”
“I’m not a gambling man. I feel I’ve used up all my luck coming back from Charlie and malaria.”
“It wouldn’t be gambling, though. Some of the best chess players in the world are here, and it is a game of pure skill. I haven’t the concentration for it, though I imagine I could do well if I put my mind to it. It’s a fascinating blend of wit and strategy. The rules are simple, and it is good training for the structure of the mind. Look here. This man will lose, despite current appearances. He’s playing well, but his opponent has the measure of him, playing a longer game with his lesser pieces. Ten moves, if I am correct, and I’m sure I am.”
Two Hundred and Twenty-One Baker Streets Page 20