Sherlock Holmes: The American Years

by Michael Kurland

  That office was, not surprisingly, located in the center of the bustling town, not far from the river’s edge, which was a short cab ride away. Dashing inside, Holmes began to jot down the message he wanted sent and handed it to the telegrapher.

  “London, England, huh?” the man said, appearing to have trouble reading it. “What’s that word there?”

  “Diogenes,” Holmes replied. “Please make certain the recipient knows that we need a reply as soon as is possible.”

  As we left, I asked: “Holmes, what was so important about that telegram?”

  “I am contacting my brother, Mycroft, in London, seeking information that may be of great import in this matter,” he said. “Now then, since Mr. Barnum is generously paying for our stay here in Bridgeport, what do you say to a bite of lunch?”

  That was the best idea I had heard that morning, though we passed by several suitable-looking establishments before Holmes arrived at the one that met his approval—the same Parisian café where I had purchased the baguette only hours before! “Why here?” I asked.

  “The man we are tracking is a transplanted Frenchman,” Holmes replied, as we entered. “This is precisely the sort of place that would attract such a man.”

  Over slices of quite excellent Quiche Alsacienne, Holmes peppered the waiter, an elderly man who spoke with a slight Continental accent, with questions as to whether a French national had frequented the place in recent weeks.

  “No, monsieur,” the man replied, “nor have many others.”

  I found that surprising, since the food was quite excellent, and said so, but the waiter merely shrugged and muttered something derogatory about the American palette.

  The reply to Holmes’s cable was awaiting us upon our return to the telegraph office. “I suspected as much,” he said, reading the telegram with a knowing smile. After asking the telegrapher if he had received or sent any recent messages from or to Paris, and receiving a negative reply, we left.

  “Don’t leave me in suspense, Holmes,” I said. “What did the message say?”

  “Mycroft confirmed that our Monsieur Carraveaux is not who he purports to be. My brother is employed by Whitehall and as such has access to diplomatic information. Not only has he never heard of a French government official named Pierre Carraveaux, but he says there is no such agency as the Office of Oriental Affairs.”

  “Who is Mr. Barnum dealing with, then?”

  “There is only one man who can shed light on that question. We must return to Waldemere.”

  Taking a cab wherever I wished to go was a luxury I could not afford back in London, but here I was becoming quite accustomed to it. As we sped up the carriage drive toward Waldemere, we had to maneuver past a supply wagon bringing still more construction materials. Seeing its masked driver, I vowed that whatever it was I decided to do with my life, it would not involve paint fumes, plaster, or sawdust.

  Mr. Barnum was still in his library—though how he managed to get any work done, or even any reading, given the din of the construction work, was a mystery.

  As we entered, Barnum looked up anxiously. “Have you learned anything?”

  “Only that your Monsieur Carraveaux is a humbug,” Holmes said, explaining that the French government was not involved.

  “I suppose that’s a relief, since I have no desire to be the cause of an international incident,” Barnum said. “But then what is this man’s game?”

  “That is what we must discover,” Holmes said. “Let us assume for the moment that the man’s nationality is not part of a ruse, but that he is indeed French. Have you come into the acquaintance of another Frenchman in recent years who might bear you ill will?”

  He furrowed his brows in thought, and then said: “Well, one perhaps, but it cannot be he. His name was Étienne Artaud. A number of years ago he showed up at my American Museum in Manhattan, presenting himself as a member of the French aristocracy. In truth he was nothing more than a confidence man. He claimed to have the remains of a genuine water horse, which he wanted to sell to me for the museum.”

  “A sea serpent?” I asked.

  Barnum nodded. “I have issued a bounty for such a creature, but have yet to pay out, and frankly do not expect to. This one was a fake, of course, but more pertinently, it was so slipshod that the even dullest schoolboy would not have paid a penny to see it. But it turned out that Artaud cared little whether or not I bought the thing. He was only using the fabricated wonder as a means of gaining entrance to my museum to that he could burgle it, which he attempted to do, before he was caught. He was sent back to his homeland for trial and the last I heard he was in prison. Are you suggesting that he is free, and has come here to exact revenge?”

  “The thought is worth considering,” Holmes said.

  “Lordamighty. I will not truly feel secure until I know that Xanthippe has safely set foot in Mandalay. I am hoping that within the week the special rail car that will take her to San Francisco will be fully prepared.”

  “And from there, she will take sea portage to Burma?” Holmes asked.

  “Precisely. Until Xanthippe is on her way she must remain under constant guard. Whoever this blackguard turns out to be, if he emerges from hiding, he will not be able to get to her.”

  Mrs. Barnum then entered the library. “I am sorry to disturb you, Phineas, but you know it is your rest time.”

  “Nancy, really, I have far too much to do,” the showman protested.

  “I’ll hear none of it,” she replied, going to him and lifting him out of his chair. “You know what Dr. Shanks says.”

  “Very well,” Barnum sighed. “Gentlemen, I must leave you for my medically imposed hour of rest. I would like you to stand guard in front of the drawing room door and see that no one goes in there. With Davy inside and you outside the room, I will feel better about leaving. I’ll stop and let Davy know that you will be there on the way out.”

  I wanted to protest the assignment, but he was already out of the library. With a sinking feeling I watched Barnum trot across the entryway while his wife waited impatiently. From the doorway of the library I could see him pounding on the drawing room door and waiting for Davy to answer it. He then went inside and moments later reemerged and went up the staircase with his wife beside him. Casting a look across the way at me, Davy nodded and then slammed the door shut again.

  “Holmes, I fear this is getting out of hand,” I said, turning to him. “We are not guards!”

  “Mr. Barnum has faith in you, and so do I,” he said. “Now, if you would be so good as to take your post, I have work to do.”

  “What do you mean? We are both supposed to be standing watch.”

  “Yes, but now that our host is preoccupied I shall be able to investigate Waldemere a bit more thoroughly.”

  “Are you mad?” I cried, but to no avail. He was already beginning to search the papers on Mr. Barnum’s desk. Since standing guard seemed a more desirable option to abetting someone while he upturned a private office, I made my way to the front of the drawing room and took my place, occupying myself by watching the various workmen bustle back and forth and listening to the sounds of sanding and sawing.

  After three-quarters of an hour, during which time Holmes emerged from the library only to disappear again into another room of the house, the tedium was finally relieved by the reappearance of Mrs. Barnum.

  “My husband is working tirelessly to build a hospital in this community,” she said to me, “but I fear that he will become its inaugural patient. You are Mr. Stamford, I believe? I presume Phineas has told you what you are guarding?”

  “Yes ma’am. We saw her earlier.”

  “I don’t mind telling you that I will celebrate when that beast is gone and I can have my drawing room back. However, her presence here is important to Mr. Barnum, so there’s an end. Just like all of this renovation of the house. It is important to him, so we endure. Frankly, Mr. Stamford, I would like to move to a smaller house. We are the only two people here, except
for some servants, and it is simply too big for our needs. There are rooms here I have not entered in months.”

  As she continued to talk on all manner of subjects, it occurred to me that Mrs. Barnum must not have had many people her own age with whom to converse. I was rather enjoying chatting with the charming lady, which made it something of a pity that Holmes chose that moment to reappear, marching toward us holding up what looked to be a broadsheet. “Stamford, I have found something of interest,” he said from behind it.

  “What has that man got?” Mrs. Barnum asked.

  Lowering the paper, Holmes regarded the wife of our host and employer with what I felt was a dismissive expression. “Oh, Mrs. Barnum, I did not realize you were here. I found this in the room at the end of the hall.”

  “I know you are a guest of my husband’s, but that doesn’t give you leave to loot the premises.”

  “My sincere apologies, madam,” Holmes said, “but I found something in this poster that piqued my curiosity.” He laid it down on the floor so we could see it. The banner announced Barnum’s Grand Traveling Museum, Menagerie, Caravan and Hippodrome and it was illustrated with animals and performers all down the sides. Holmes pointed to one image in particular. “This is the one that interested me. Does this fellow look familiar?”

  I knelt closer to look at the picture, which was headlined, “Davalos the Daredevil,” and immediately saw what Holmes had noticed. It was a picture of a small man with enormous ears walking a plank that was balanced between two horses galloping around a ring—without a doubt Davy, the elephant keeper. “He is a performer?” I asked.

  “Was a performer,” Holmes said, “and a star one at that, apparently. But you have seen the way the man now limps. One could surmise that he met with an accident that ended his career as a trick rider and forced him into his present line of work, caring for an elephant.” Turning to Mrs. Barnum, he asked: “What do you know about this man?

  “Nothing,” she replied. “I do not get involved in the business of the circus. You would have to ask my husband or Charles.”

  “Or the man himself,” Holmes said, rising and pounding loudly on the drawing room door and calling out to Davy. There was no reply. He pounded again, and turned the knobs. The door held fast. “I fear something is amiss,” he cried. “We must get in there! Stamford, help me.”

  Much to Mrs. Barnum’s distress, we threw our combined weight against the doors until they gave way. Racing inside, Holmes called for the keeper again, but the room appeared empty.

  “The crate!” Holmes rushed to the enormous container that held Xanthippe and peered through one of the airholes. Then he ran to the room’s huge fireplace and grabbed an iron poker, raced back to the crate, and attacked the lock with it. Within seconds, the heavy lock had snapped off. Holmes threw open the door to the crate. It was empty. The white elephant was gone.

  “But . . . how could . . . Holmes, how could this happen?” I stammered. “Not one hour ago I saw them inside this room! No one has entered this room or left it. How could they have disappeared?”

  “You actually saw Xanthippe?”

  “Well, no, but I saw Mr. Barnum enter the room, and had the beast not been there, I believe we would have heard.”

  Holmes turned to Mrs. Barnum. “Is there any other way into or out of this room?”

  “Well, I imagine a man could leave through the windows,” she answered, “but hardly an elephant.”

  At that moment a booming voice rose from outside the drawing room: “Why are these doors hanging open?” We did not need to turn and look to identify the speaker. P. T. Barnum strode into the room and marched straight to the elephant crate, and his oath, upon finding it empty, caused Mrs. Barnum to blush and raise a hand to her mouth. “You two were supposed to guard this room! What have you done with her?”

  “Please, sir, we are as shocked as you by this,” I said.

  “I doubt that! Where is Davy?”

  “It seems he has disappeared as well,” Holmes said.

  “Men and elephants don’t simply disappear!” Barnum roared. “They have been abducted! Are the two of you in cahoots against me after all?”

  “Mr. Barnum, we are innocent!” I protested, not having the faintest notion what cahoots meant.

  “Then I suppose Xanthippe and Davy just turned into smoke and went up the chimney, is that it?” the showman bellowed. “Or perhaps they shrunk to the size of General Tom Thumb and they’re hiding in the curtains! Do not try to convince me of the impossible, Holmes, for if I’ve learned anything in my three-score-and-seven on this earth it is that the impossible exists only to be dismissed. Once you’ve done that, there remain only logical explanations, no matter how improbable. So I will ask you one more time . . . how did the elephant get out of this room. Holmes? Holmes, I am talking to you!”

  But my companion was not listening, appearing instead to be completely lost in his own thoughts. “When you eliminate the impossible,” he muttered, “whatever is left, no matter how improbable, has to be the truth . . . that is brilliance!”

  “What are you babbling about now?” Barnum demanded.

  “Mr. Barnum,” Holmes said, “before you left, you came in here to speak with Davy, did you not?”

  “Yes, what of it?”

  “Did you actually see Xanthippe?”

  “No, Davy told me she was resting, finally, inside that box, and I didn’t want to disturb her.”

  “On the contrary, sir, I believe the elephant was already gone by that point,” Holmes said.

  “Rubbish!” Barnum cried. “Had she been gone, Davy would certainly have known it!”

  “I fully agree.”

  Barnum’s face paled. “Good God in heaven, man, are you trying to tell me Davy is the man we are looking for?”

  “He used to be a performer for you, did he not?”

  “He did a trick riding act in my circus until he fell and was trampled. Once he recovered, I kept him on the payroll to look after my menagerie.”

  “Did he ever demonstrate resentment over his reduced circumstances?”

  “Never! This is preposterous! Even if Davy were involved, what did he do with the elephant? You claim she was gone when I came in here earlier, then tell me how she got out!”

  “The only explanation that does not defy the realm of possibility, Mr. Barnum, is that this room contains another exit,” Holmes said.

  “Blast it, Holmes, I built this house!” Barnum roared. “I know every inch of it! I tell you there is one doorway to this room, that one.” He pointed to the double doors.

  Holmes fell silent at that. The only sounds to be heard in the room were P. T. Barnum’s slightly labored breathing and the muffled din of the construction. Then Holmes’s eyes caught fire. “Yes, of course! That explains it all!” he cried. “Mr. Barnum, there may have been only one way in or out when the house was built, but I will stake all I own that another one has been added, and very recently.”

  “What are you talking about?” the showman demanded.

  “The workmen! Under the cover of your construction work, who knows what sort of unauthorized renovations might have been made?”

  Barnum blinked at the thought. “You mean the workmen built a doorway in here without my knowledge?” He looked over every wall. “Show it to me, then. Produce the secret doorway large enough to accommodate an elephant.”

  Holmes’s face was now glowing. “It is already here,” he said. Rushing to the hearth, he kicked away the fire grate and stepped inside the cavernous fire pit. He pounded on the sooty walls of the fire pit, finally coming to the back, which echoed with a hollow thud. “Aha!” he cried, and with both hands, he pushed against it. To the utter amazement of the rest of us, the back wall of the fire pit began to move! With another mighty shove, he pushed it all the way through the wall and into the next room.

  “Dear God in heaven!” Barnum cried, running through the passageway that had been created by removing the back the drawing room fire pit and hollow
ing through the wall. Mrs. Barnum and I quickly followed him into the adjoining room, which was much smaller and filled with the rubble of destroyed brick, plaster, and stone. The fireplace in this room, which shared a chimney with the one in the drawing room, had been completely dismantled.

  The “wall” that Holmes had pushed through was not brick but rather a large wooden panel, braced in back and painted to look like brick. In the middle of the room, a wooden ramp had been constructed that led up to a picture window, from which the glass had been removed. Peering through the window, Holmes looked down at the ground. “As I suspected,” he said, “wheel tracks. They must have backed a wagon up to the opening and loaded the elephant on, then driven off.”

  The showman buried his face in his hands. “I cannot believe Davy would do this to me.”

  “He cannot have done this alone,” Holmes said. “The workmen had to be involved. Who oversees them?”

  “Charles, of course, but . . . damnation!” P. T. Barnum then spun around and stormed through the opening between the rooms. Seconds later his bellowing cry “Charles!” echoed through the entire house, and continued until the man was found. Protesting vociferously, Charles Weymouth was literally dragged through the opening in the wall by his employer, who demanded: “Charles, what do you know of this?”

  The sight of the room, the ramp, the open window, and the lack of an elephant rendered Weymouth speechless. He produced a handkerchief and used it to mop his forehead as he took in the room. “Phineas,” he finally said, “I swear to you I knew nothing about this, nothing.”

  “I want to believe you, Charles.”

  “You must!” Weymouth held the cloth up to his mouth to cover his look of horror and silently shook his head. Then a shout burst from Holmes’s lips, which caused all of us to jump.

  “Why did I not see it before!” he declared. “Mr. Weymouth is not behind the abduction, though the act of raising his handkerchief to his face just now has suggested another. There is a workman here who is never seen without a mask over his face.”