Sherlock Holmes in Orbit

by Mike Resnick (ed)

  The rooming house had seen better days. At one time the furniture had been of good quality but was now knocked about and covered with grime and dust while a few of the window panes were broken and covered with cardboard. Where parts of the floor were not covered with worn carpeting, our boots occasionally stuck to dark smears on the wood.

  “I don’t know nothing about your Miss Adler,” Hattie repeated. And then, with a false show of sympathy because she thought we expected it of her: “I heard about her being found in the bay like that, poor woman.”

  “She didn’t live here?” Holmes asked.

  Hattie settled back in her kitchen rocker and folded her arms across her bony chest. “I told you that before,” she said, her thin lips covering those gaps in her jaw where teeth had once been. She picked idly at a thread on her dirty apron and glared at us from under lowered lids.

  Holmes took a letter from his pocket and handed it to her. “She gave this establishment as her return address, Mrs. Daniels. One would assume that she had been living here.” He glanced around. “As unlikely as that may seem,” he murmured.

  Hattie had been caught in a lie but refused to be embarrassed by it. She turned the letter over in her hands without really looking at the return address.

  “Miss Adler got her mail here,” she finally admitted. “I’d save it for her and she’d pick it up every month or so.” Holmes slowly strolled around the kitchen, occasionally picking up a dirty glass and setting it down, then glancing out the windows at the sloping hill in back.

  “You told us she didn’t live here.”

  “I never said she hadn’t.” Hattie watched him suspiciously. “She did at one time, but it was some years back.” She sniffed. “She was always putting on airs, always better than everybody else.”

  “She never told you where she had moved to?”

  Hattie shook her head. “She didn’t tell me. I didn’t ask her. She paid me two dollars a month to save her mail for her and I’ve done so faithfully all these years.” She leered at Holmes. “She also asked me not to talk about her to strangers.” She got up and limped over to a kitchen drawer and took out several envelopes. ‘These are her latest letters. Seeing as how she won’t be picking them up, maybe you gentlemen will know what to do with them.”

  Holmes glanced at them and put them in his pocket. “Have the police ever come here?”

  Hattie drew herself up in a mock display of dignity. “I run a decent house, there’s no reason for any police to come around!”

  “No offense intended,” Holmes murmured. He raised his voice slightly. “Could we talk to your roomers? I think I saw them watching through the upstairs window when we came up the walk.”

  There was the sound of hurried footsteps on the landing and in the front hallway. I don’t know how he got there so quickly, but Holmes was suddenly at the front door, blocking it. Facing him were the two ruffians I had talked to the previous day. One was heavyset and dressed in rough seaman’s clothes. He looked about forty, with the thick, red nose of the heavy drinker. The other was younger, in his early twenties, thin and with a weasel face. He looked oddly familiar but for the moment, I couldn’t think why.

  “Gentlemen,” Holmes said easily. He held out his hand. “I’m Sherlock Holmes and this is Dr. John Watson; we were friends of the late Leona Adler.”

  The older man shook his hand reluctantly. “Josiah Martin,” he grumbled. The younger one followed suit, identifying himself as one “Willy Green.”

  “We were just asking Mrs. Daniels about Miss Adler, who used to live here. Perhaps you knew her?”

  They looked at each other, then shook their heads. “Never heard of her,” the older one growled. “And who are you to be asking?”

  The younger one looked guilty and said sullenly, “I don’t know her neither, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Mrs. Daniels had followed us into the hallway. “They’re decent roomers! She was gone before they ever moved in!” Holmes stepped aside. “My error,” he said. “Please forgive me.”

  They clumped down the steps, the words “law abiding” and “minding our own business” floating after them like smoke.

  “We’re sorry to have troubled you, Mrs. Daniels,” Holmes said. He paused at the door as if the question had just occurred to him. “When Miss Adler lived here, did a William McGuire ever visit her?”

  She nodded. “Almost every day. Even though he was a gambler I thought he was a gentleman, which only shows how wrong a body can be. After she moved, I understand he left her with a child and lit out for the goldfields and nobody saw hide nor hair of him again.” She sniffed once more. “Broke her heart, I imagine. I always say if you want to keep a man, grab ahold of the purse strings so you can tie him to you.”

  Holmes took a five-dollar gold piece from his pocket and gave it to her. “If you remember anything else, we’re staying at the Palace Hotel. Sherlock Holmes,” he pronounced it very carefully to make sure she would remember, “and Dr. John Watson.”

  We left. I very glad to be away from the odors of yesterday’s stew and the sticky floors. Holmes, as usual, was quiet and thoughtful. There were no carriages in sight so we walked a block over to a cable car.

  “It probably was a decent rooming house at one time,” Holmes said once we were seated. “It isn’t now. And I would wager those are not roomers but her husband and son. You noticed the likeness of the latter?”

  That would explain the familiarity of his features, I thought.

  “What happened to them?” I asked.

  “I suspect the marriage was common law. Back when the neighborhood was better than it is now, she probably passed them off as a roomer and his son for appearances’ sake. Eventually, she and her husband took to (kink and let the property deteriorate.” He sniffed the fingers of his gloves. “Both the glasses and the floor were sticky with cheap rum.” He handed me the letters Mrs. Daniels had given him. “What do you make of them?”

  I turned them over in my hands. The postmark was New Jersey. They had been handled with dirty fingers and the flaps tom open.

  “I would have bet the woman could not read.”

  “I doubt that any of them could,” Holmes said. “I saw no books or newspapers anyplace. As for the letters, after they heard of Leona Adler’s death, the husband probably opened them to see if there was money inside.”

  “Why did the Adler woman use them as a letter drop, Holmes? She could have had the postal department forward her mail.”

  “Because she didn’t want to be traced, Watson! She desperately didn’t want anybody to know where she was living or what she was doing. To protect herself, she chose a couple who could not read; her former landlady and family were a natural choice. Granted they could have had somebody read the letters for them, but then they would have lost their monthly stipend once Leona saw the letters had been opened.”

  “That’s quite logical, Holmes.”

  “And what else might be quite logical?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You saw both the husband and the son there yesterday and they were there again today. If I am not mistaken, when they ran down the stairs, they were still rubbing the sleep from their eyes. Obviously, if they work at all, it must be at night.”

  “But why did you ask if the police had ever been there? Do you suspect them of some crime?”

  Holmes shrugged. “It would not surprise me if they were minor criminals. More importantly, if I remember Mycroft correctly, he said the Adler family had made inquiries, meaning inquiries of the police. Lieutenant Van Dyke said Leona Adler had probably killed herself. But you cannot have it both ways, Watson. If the police were not sure their drowning victim was Miss Adler, then they should certainly have investigated the rooming house, her last known address. And if they were sure, it would have been only common decency to inform the Adlers.”

  I shrugged. “I’m certain Lieutenant Van Dyke has an explanation.”

  “We may find out this evening, Watson. We ar
e to meet him for his ‘grand tour.’ It may be a trip for tourists but somehow I don’t think that is what he has in mind!”

  That evening Lieutenant Van Dyke guaranteed that we would “see the elephant,” as he put it. The evening started with a drink at the Bank Exchange bar and dinner at the Cliff House as the sun was setting in the Pacific Ocean. At the end of the meal, he withdrew three tickets from his coat pocket and handed us two.

  “I’m quite a fan of the theater and I hope you are as well. These are for tonight’s performance of the Gilbert & Sullivan opera, Patience, at the Tivoli.” He grinned broadly. “I never did meet an Englishman who didn’t enjoy them. Care to join me?”

  I was entranced by the work of my countrymen, even if it was a pirated American production, and I believe Sherlock was as well. Lieutenant Van Dyke applauded as often as did I, but I noticed him occasionally glancing thoughtfully at Holmes and myself, as if weighing some unknown potential/ The rest of the night soon degenerated, beginning with a tour of an opium den in Chinatown, where my heart went out to the poor souls clustered together on dirty mattresses in the crowded, vermin-infested basement, their eyes closed in dreams that only they could fathom. This was genuine, I realized, appalled. The “tours” I had taken when living in San Francisco before had obviously been staged with actors playing the role of addicts.

  After that, it was a round of melodeons and cheap groggeries and deadfalls, the most interesting one of which was the Cobweb Palace whose interior was a mass of cobwebs with a row of cages against the far wall that contained monkeys and parakeets. Nobody, I was told, was allowed to interfere with any spider spinning its web.

  The waiter girls in the establishments seemed quite taken with both the Lieutenant and myself, though instinctively they stayed away from a cold and unsmiling Holmes. The Lieutenant occasionally whispered to one of the women and at one time nudged me in the ribs and raised his eyebrows. I shook my head “no” and he shrugged and went back to whispering, no doubt making an assignation for later.

  It was a good three in the morning when he said, “Well, gentlemen, I think it’s time.”

  We followed him out to a waiting carriage and clattered noisily through the Barbary Coast to Pacific Street. It was late, but little clumps of revelers still wandered down the walks. The Lieutenant motioned for the carriage driver to stop and we got quietly out and followed him up the sidewalk, then at his signal lost ourselves in the shadows of a storefront.

  “The alley across the way,” he whispered. “Watch it.”

  It was a chill night and my skin broke out in small bumps, but not because of the temperature. The minutes crept by and suddenly I caught my breath. In the mouth of the alley, I saw a sudden flash of white and then a pale, young woman appeared, dressed in a flowing white gown from neck to ankle. She was carrying a guitar. She leaned against a nearby wall and accompanied herself as she began to sing a sea chantey in a soft, low voice. I could feel the hair at the back of my neck prickle.

  “Interesting,” Holmes murmured.

  A group of seamen now reeled up the street, attracted by the sound. A moment later, the woman in white seemed to grow dim and vanished. The sailors hesitated, arguing among themselves over whether they should follow her, and then continued up the street, intent on more solid company.

  After they had gone, the woman reappeared and once again began to sing a doleful tune. The next man to become fascinated by the sight was a sailor who was by himself. He stopped and watched for a long moment, then lurched over and reached out for her. She shrank back and I thought she would disappear once again but she had merely retreated a few feet into the alley. He hesitated, then followed her and they both disappeared into the fog.

  Much to my surprise, Lieutenant Van Dyke shouted, “After them!” and dashed across the street. Holmes and I followed, running quickly through the alley mud. Then the alley suddenly turned to the left and we found ourselves in a small cul-de-sac, the walls of warehouses all around us.

  The woman in white and the sailor had vanished.

  Van Dyke loped around the tiny square, searching for any doors or exits into which they could have disappeared, running back and forth in his eager dedication to duty. Holmes inspected the muddy ground, then quietly circled the enclosure also checking, I presumed, for hidden doorways.

  After ten minutes or so, Lieutenant Van Dyke came over and shrugged. His face seemed whiter than usual, his eyes wide. When he spoke, his words came out in little puffs of vapor. “I can find nothing; they seem to have vanished into thin air.” He shivered. “Maybe she isn’t a phantom, but at least for the moment she’s convinced me.”

  “So it would seem,” Holmes said. “If your carriage is still waiting, we might as well return to the hotel.”

  “Anything,” I chattered, “to get out of this cold.” Holmes glanced at me strangely, and I knew he doubted my teeth were chattering because of the cold.

  In the carriage, the Lieutenant offered us cigars, bit the end off of his and said, “I imagine you’ll be returning to London soon.”

  “In a few days,” Holmes agreed.

  “I’m sorry about Miss Adler,” Van Dyke sighed. “We would have notified the family, but we had nothing to send back as proof of her death and it seemed cruel to tell them she had died when we couldn’t be absolutely certain.”

  “Of course not,” Holmes reassured him. “You did the right thing.” But he was looking back at the alleyway when he said it.

  Once in our rooms I dressed for bed, then came into the living room for a nightcap before retiring. Holmes was sitting in the easy chair in his dressing gown, sipping a glass of sherry and staring into the flames.

  “I’m surprised, Watson. I never thought you believed in ghosts.”

  “Do you have any other explanation?” I protested. “Perhaps I didn’t see a ghost, but it would take very little more to convince me.”

  “Then remember that you didn’t see just one ghost, Watson, you saw two. Or had you forgotten the sailor?”

  I decided not to discuss it. I had been through enough for one evening.

  “Mycroft will be disappointed,” I said.

  Holmes looked surprised. “I hardly think so. The case of Leona Adler, as tragic as it is, is solved—though bringing the villains to justice may be a little more difficult. And there is the matter of motivations, though I imagine they will sort themselves out at the end.” He yawned. “Which reminds me, Watson. Tomorrow pick up some clothing such as a sailor might wear. I think we shall return to that alleyway off Pacific Street tomorrow night and find out just how our ghost and her admirer disappeared, though I believe I already know.”

  “Only this time it is I who shall follow her, is that it, Holmes?” I said, outraged.

  Holmes laughed. “There is nothing to worry about,

  Watson—I shall be right behind you. But it might be advisable to bring along a revolver.”

  I glumly finished my sherry and then went off to my bedroom. I hesitated at the door. “It really has been quite an exciting evening, hasn’t it, Holmes?”

  “I would hardly deny that,” he agreed.

  I was suddenly curious. “What did you find the most interesting? The melodeon with all the cobwebs?”

  “Not at all, Watson. By far the most interesting thing was the large quantity of mud on Lieutenant Van Dyke’s boots when we left the alley!”

  Early the following evening it started to drizzle, but by midnight it was clear. At two, we caught a carriage in the Great Court of the Palace and set out for the Barbary Coast and the foot of Pacific Street. Holmes had brought along a small chest, but I was too depressed to be curious about its contents. A block from the alleyway he stopped the carriage and we got out. I was dressed in a sailor’s rough woolen pants and coat with an old knit sweater high around my throat and a woolen cap pulled low over my ears. It was cold and windy and tendrils of fog had already started to finger their way through the city.

  Pacific Street seemed to have more t
han its share of drunks and roustabouts, but the alleyway itself was empty.

  “Hide in the shadows a few doors down and wait for the usual revelers to wander by,” Holmes said in a low voice. “She will disappear whenever confronted by a group but will try to entice any man who is alone into the alley. Make sure you are he—don’t let anybody precede you.”

  “And if the phantom fails to show at all?” I asked.

  “She is as solid as you or I, Watson. But if she fails to appear, we shall merely try again tomorrow tonight.”

  “And where will you be?” I asked bitterly.

  “Don’t worry, I shall be close by.”

  I shrugged and crossed the muddy street to stand in a doorway a few feet from the alleyway, my head protruding just enough so I could see her if and when she appeared.

  A half hour had gone by before I saw a flash of white and heard the first few notes of her sea chantey. A few minutes later there were the sounds of roistering down the street and a group of carousers wandered by, clutching bottles and singing off-key. One of them noticed me and called drunkenly, “What’s going on, Mac?”

  I didn’t answer but made as if I were relieving myself in a comer of the doorway. He laughed and they stumbled on, one of them suddenly crying: “D’ye hear a woman singing?” Another said, “It’s the phantom!” and there was sudden silence. Then a querulous voice: “Where? I don’t see anything.”

  She had, as I suspected, retreated up the alleyway. I waited a minute or two more, then suddenly heard the quavering notes of a violin. I glanced, startled, down the street to see a lone violinist leaning against a gaslight. His cap was by his feet and it was obvious he was playing for any coins that passing revelers might drop into it. But street musicians were hardly unknown in the city, even at this time of night, and I ignored him. Then I heard the phantom’s plaintive song once again and left the safety of the doorway to stagger down the street as if I had spent half the night drinking in some deadfall.

  She was beautiful at a distance and even more so as I got closer. A thin, pale face with long, brown hair clustered around her neck and shoulders. Her dress looked almost like a white wedding gown gathered about her waist and covering her feet.