by David Marcum
“It is tragic, Watson, that my investigative team of children so rarely get to act like children,” Holmes lamented.
The irregulars always left me a bit unsettled. The unsupervised children had a wild edge about them, but I conceded that Holmes was correct. It was nice to see all of them excited about a spectacle, not about a morsel of food to alleviate their growling stomachs.
“As to your question, Watson, I asked Mr. Cody to add an act to tonight’s performance that I had the pleasure of viewing during rehearsals this afternoon. I believe you will find it both entertaining and of the most interest.”
I was taken aback by Holmes’s coyness, but I could see he wanted me to show patience. I simply nodded in understanding and left the detective to gaze upon the happiness he brought to our loyal street urchins. Before long, the Wild West show began. It was just as marvelous as the news reported, perhaps even more so.
Cody came charging out in the center of the stage, riding Old Charlie, the famous twenty-one-year-old horse noted as Cody’s favorite, who seemed to enjoy the attention as much as his human companion. “Ladies and Gentlemen,” Mr. Cody grandly called with a wave of his hat and a bow, “this evening you are in for a feast of the eyes, as you journey thousands of miles across the sea and over the lands, past the Florida swamps and the Adirondack Mountains, to land in the true heart of America, that of the Wild West. Tonight, my friends, you will marvel at the sharp shooting of Annie Oakley, spy an Indian attack on a pioneer stage coach, gasp at the acrobatic feats of Buck Taylor, and witness man conquer nature as a recreated wildfire appears before your very eyes. But enough talking from me - On with the show!”
A huge roar of approval and applause thundered from the audience as a herd of Buffalo rumbled onto the fairgrounds. Both cowboys and Indians worked together to corral the beasts and show a simulated hunt of the now almost extinct symbol of America. This act was followed by the great Annie Oakley. The sharpshooter known as “Little Sure Shot,” threw two clay pigeons into the air. She then hurled herself toward a table where two rifles lay in wait. I expected the dame to pick up the nearest Winchester and shatter one of the fake birds. To my astonishment, the lady leaped over the table, grabbing both rifles and let off two shots even before her feet hit the ground. The pigeons shattered in the air, and the crowd went wild. Holmes was applauding and laughing, but I could see his eyes were on the raucous Irregulars.
After the great Annie Oakley came the stagecoach robbery. The wild Indians, adorned with war paint, whooping and hollering, riding horses bareback, launched a full attack on the circled wagons. The coachmen tried their best but were no match from the overwhelming onslaught of Indian arrows. The actors did a magnificent job falling over, pretending to be dead, and, for added effect, with an arrow emerging from their backs. Just as all seemed lost, a trumpet call came from off stage and the cavalry, led by Buffalo Bill himself, came charging out and drove the Red Men away.
Again the audience seemed to lose their sense of decorum as they called, hollered, and cheered in a way to rival the whoops of the defeated Sioux. Next up came the cowboys. Buck Taylor and his compatriots held races, rode bucking broncos, reenacted daily voyages of the Pony Express, leaped over fallen coaches, and picked up sombreros from the ground while their horses continued at full gallop. Mr. Cody joined the group, riding his faithful companion. He had audience members toss baseballs into the air which he shot from the sky with his Colt army revolver, never slowing Old Charlie who continuously raced around the grounds at a furious pace.
Next came the astounding acrobats of John “The Ranger” Billings. “Ladies and Gentlemen,” Cody dramatically started, “you will now witness mankind fighting that most monstrous beast of nature, that terrifying creature which consumes whole towns in its jaws, that horror known as the wildfire.” The stage was set at a logging camp in the Rocky Mountains. A ranger station was on one side of the stage and on the other was a tower adorned with a bell to ring at any sign of danger. Two show hands set a pile of brush in the center of the stage and set it ablaze. Suddenly, Mr. Billings, in full ranger gear, burst out of the ranger station. He attempted to get to the bell tower, but the flames blocked his path. He showed concern with his flailing arms and tried several different pathways around the flames but to no avail.
The audience was absolutely silent, and I began to worry that perhaps the act had gotten out of hand, that the fire had shown a life of its own, and perhaps we would be evacuating the building. I looked at the faces of the children in front of me and even scanned the audience to find most faces showing at the very least concern, if not absolute fright.
Just as I was about to suggest to Holmes we move towards the exits to help disperse the crowd, I witnessed the most staggering gymnastic skills my eyes had ever seen. The Ranger grabbed a long, thin yet sturdy, piece of lumber. A cry came up from the audience as Mr. Billings then sprinted straight for the flames in the center of the stage. I felt my heart pounding, What, I wondered, was this fool doing? Would he commit suicide before thousands?
Then, the miracle occurred. Just as Mr. Billings was about to reach the flames, he jabbed the pole into the ground and used the stick to vault himself over the wildfire and land at the top of the bell tower. The sound of the bell ringing was drowned out by the raucous roars from the audience. We were all on our feet, hooting and screaming for more, and we did not stop our applause even as the fire brigade entered the stage and extinguished the flames.
Our cheers must have sounded for a good ten minutes when, suddenly, what I witnessed, truly witnessed, dawned upon me. “Holmes!” I shouted. “The killer!”
It was about two in the afternoon that following day when an elegant landau arrived in front of 221 Baker Street and both Mr. Cody and Mr. Billings arrived at our doorstep. We warmly greeted the entertainers who made a contrasting pair. Cody with his long hair and whiskers, Billings with his shaved face and closely cropped hair.
“Do you really think you’ve got the varmint behind this fiasco?” Cody asked. Before Holmes could respond, a wagon pulled to the curb behind where Mr. Cody’s landau had just departed, and out stepped Lestrade, and three of his constables. There was a fourth man the group, assisted in removing from the carriage, who had a lame foot and a crutch. The men helped their crippled companion through the front door, and we heard them struggling up the stairs.
“We should help that young man,” said Billings.
“Actually, I have a rather unusual request for you,” said Holmes and he opened the door to his bedroom. “Please stay here, gentlemen, and await my call to come out. You will hear the conversation I am about to have with the officers of the law, but I ask that you remain silent and do not reveal the fact that you are here until told to do so. As you know, Mr. Cody, I can be trusted.”
“If that’s what you’d like Mr. Holmes, well, okay then.” Cody assented, and the two men entered the bedroom after which Holmes closed the door behind them.
Shortly thereafter, the constables finally reached the door to our sitting room. Holmes warmly welcomed them in and offered a couch for the lame officer to lay upon. After they entered, I noted that Holmes closed and locked the door behind them.
Rousseau was one of the men present. The other two affable men were introduced as Constables Holly and Tiller, both young officers whose forms didn’t quite fill out their uniforms, giving them an unintended comic charm. The lame officer on the couch was introduced as Constable Fowler, a man closer to my own age with coal black hair and a crooked nose.
“Really, Holmes,” Lestrade complained, “I don’t know why you couldn’t have gone to Constable Fowler’s residence. Forcing him to climb those stairs is beyond my reasoning.”
“As I find is almost always the case,” Holmes muttered, but Lestrade did not respond, either because he ignored my friend or did not hear him.
“Constable Fowler, like Rousseau, was an officer at the
scene of the crime Friday evening. Watson, if you recall, he is the officer that Rousseau informed us had sprained his foot that night. I believe that Fowler witnessed the murderer as he fled from Old Montague Street.”
Fowler shook his head. “Mr. Holmes,” he replied, “if I can help in any way, I will. It was the dead of night, and I did not see anyone flee from the crime scene. I only arrived quickly because I reside on Old Montague myself. There were quite a few people running about, but I can’t say I saw someone fleeing from the area.”
“Fowler, please look over these photographs of members of Mr. Cody’s troop. I believe there is someone you will recognize,” Holmes insisted and handed a pile of promotional photographs from Cody’s show to the officer.
The constable took the photographs from Holmes and began looking them over. The collection was a menagerie of men, both Red and White. With each turn of the pictures came a shake of the head from Fowler. Finally, he reached the end of the pile and held aloft one picture of a bald strongman. “Possibly him, although he would have had a wig on, but there’s something familiar about him.”
Holmes looked crestfallen. “That man is Melvin Brady, a former member of Mr. Cody’s troop, who never made the voyage to London. I did not mean to include his picture in the mix. Ah,” Holmes perked up. “There is one more photograph.” He removed a small, folded paper from his pocket and handed it to the injured man.
Fowler looked at the photo and his eyes bulged from his face. With a swift motion, the invalid was on his feet and dashing towards the door. He grabbed at the handle, attempting to turn it, and finding it locked.
Realizing his situation, the fiend turned towards Holmes. Wild eyed, teeth clenched like a wounded animal, he sprang at Holmes with an inhuman growl. He made it but three steps before Rousseau, Lestrade, and the other constables had grabbed him and thrown him to the floor.
“Holmes, what on earth is going on?” asked Lestrade, after the officers had restrained Fowler with some rope.
“Cody, Billings please come out now,” Holmes called. “I believe you will recognize Mr. Wendell Finke, a former employee of the Wild West show.”
Lestrade was stunned to see the two showmen step out of Holmes’s private room, and I noted a slight reddening of his features, tightening of his jaw, and clenching of his fists. “Really Holmes!” Lestrade growled. “Did we need these theatrics?”
Holmes did not answer the Inspector’s question. He waited as both Cody and Billings looked over the still struggling form of Finke. I saw a slight recognition in Wild Bill’s face, but Billings clearly knew the man before him. “Finke,” Billings gasped. “What have you done to yourself?”
“Only what needed to be done to give what those two had coming to them!” spat Finke.
“Mr. Finke was a member of Mr. Cody’s Wild West show,” Holmes explained to Lestrade and the other officers. He handed them the last photograph he had shown to Finke which revealed the man in full cowboy regalia, but with blonde hair and a straight nose. “He was the assistant to Mr. Billings and a noted acrobat. After the troop arrived in London in the spring, Mr. Finke was part of the show until the end of April, when he abruptly quit.”
“That’s right,” Finke blurted, then held his tongue. The man was fuming, and we were not sure whether he would speak more, yell at us, or struggle against his bindings, or perhaps do all three at once.
Finally, with a heavy sigh, Finke seemed to decide that since he was caught anyway, he should tell his tale and explain his actions. “I had finally tracked down those Smith crooks. I had stumbled upon them in London. They had taken everything from me, the devils. I met them in New York, at my mother’s funeral, though they weren’t called Smith then. Then it was Roger and Mary Corbin. Roger claimed to be a stockbroker, claimed he could double my inheritance by investing in a horseless carriage company. I fell for it. I was the rube, I was. They took everything and fled. That was ten years ago almost to the day.
“Finding myself destitute, I sought out work, jobs that allowed me to move around as I tried to track down the Corbins. I almost caught up to them once in Chicago, but they disappeared again before I could find them. They always left rich men poor in their wake. Roger was a gambling man of the worst kind, the kind that does not know when to stop and always loses.
“Finally, in the fall, I joined Mr. Cody’s troop. I had given up on tracking down the Corbins. Their trail had gone stale, and I had moved on. Then, as fortune would have it, one day I was exploring London and ended up in a tavern on Old Montague. Who should I see making a wager with the barkeep? Why, Mr. Roger Corbin. I saw him, but he did not recognize me. I followed the man, found out where he lived, who he was, that he hadn’t stopped his wicked ways.”
“That’s when you decided to murder them?” Lestrade demanded.
“No. It had been years since I had seen them. I tried to put them out of my head. Tried my best, but I couldn’t stop thinking about what they’d done, how they were still swindling people. After a few weeks, I decided to seek my revenge. I quit Mr. Cody’s show and became a constable. It was easy enough. There’s quite a shortage of us.” He motioned to the other officers present. “Anyway, I took lodging in the building next to the Corbins, now Smiths. I dyed my blonde hair black, and even got my nose smashed in a proper tavern brawl. I needed to make sure the couple wouldn’t recognize me. As an officer, I occasionally entered their tenement building. I noted how tight the hallways were, how crammed the stairwells. If I were to kill the couple, I most surely would be seen fleeing, especially if I was wearing my police outfit.”
“But,” Holmes interrupted, “you were an acrobat, a skilled knife thrower, and a man who knows how to walk a tight rope, or vault across a pit of fire. You will recall, Watson, that after inspecting the home of the Smiths, we wandered up to the building’s roof, and I noted a scuff mark in the in the roofing overlooking the northeast side of the building. My first thought was that someone had laid a pole or thin ladder across the two buildings and that there were even possibly two assailants, one to hold the pole while the other scurried across it. The person who scurried to the other building would have to be someone who was extremely athletic. From the bloody footprints I noted the man’s gait and knew he had to be about five feet in height, the exact height of Mr. Finke. I also deduced that the man who killed the Smiths was someone that they knew, most likely from America, as one of the photographs of the couple in front of The Statue of Liberty, was crumpled slightly and off to the side, as if the killer had stared long at the image before discarding it. I also knew that the man had to be Anglo. Otherwise, someone would have noted a man of a different race, especially a Lakota Sioux, approaching or fleeing the tenement building.
“Extraordinary, Mr. Holmes,” remarked Rousseau. “Still how did you find that Finke was our man?”
“Ahh, well after Watson and I left the Smiths, I went to the tenement on the northeast side of the building. If the assailants had escaped via the rooftop, there was a good chance they would have been seen returning down the stairs to their lodgings. I inquired with the building supervisor about the building tenants. He mentioned Officer Fowler. It dawned on me that a constable would have the means of committing the murders, return down to the street level, and cover up his tracks. I knocked on the officer’s door, pretending to be a reporter for The Times. I noted the man’s features and when I visited Mr. Cody’s grounds I stumbled upon Mr. Billings practicing his wildfire act. After seeing the pole vaulting, I realized one man could easily have committed the crime. I inquired with Mr. Billings about current and former members of the Wild West show capable of completing the pole vault. When he showed me the picture of Mr. Finke, gentlemen, the case was closed.”
“But how on earth did Finke get a vaulting pole?” Lestrade inquired.
“The missing pole!” suddenly Billings called out in shock then turned to the bound Finke, “You stole it!”<
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“That’s right,” Finke snarled. “I returned to the showground as an officer of the law. I stole the pole and returned to my building, then the next day, I went to the roof of the Smith residence and stashed the pole, ready to finally enact justice.”
“But the pole?” Lestrade puzzled. “How did you transport such a large pole?”
“I believe Mr. Billings can answer your question,” Holmes interjected.
“Yes,” answered Billings. “The pole is an invention of my own. I found bamboo bends quite easily and can achieve greater heights than hard wood; however, it is still difficult to transport an eight foot piece of wood. I created a five piece version where the pieces screw together to make the pole, quite similar to the newer cue sticks.”
“Then everything was set,” continued Holmes. “Finke entered the building in his police uniform. The Smiths, seeing a constable at their door, invited him in. Finke then dispatched the Smiths, climbed to the roof, removed his shoes, tossed them into the alley below, vaulted over to his own building, and then descended the stairs to his room where he put on new shoes. The accoster quickly went to the alley where he gathered the bloody shoes and the stick, which he disassembled, hid them in a bag or beneath his uniform, and then stashed them away in his own apartment. I would not be surprised, constables, if you were to find the materials still inside Finke’s residence.”
Lestrade looked stunned at all that had been revealed before him. “I assure you Mr. Holmes, that my men will search his room after we bring him back to the Yard.”
“Before you take Mr. Finke away, I do have one question for him. Why did you set up Mr. Cody’s Lakota-Sioux?”
“I know those men, barbarians they are,” grumbled Finke. “I figured there wasn’t nothing I did to the Smiths that those warriors hadn’t done a thousand times over to settlers. If an Indian hanged for the crime, so be it. There’s a saying in America, that the only good Injun is a dead Injun.”