The Seventh Bullet

by Daniel D Victor

  Holmes and I both replied in the negative.

  Buchanan shrugged. “Just as well. Three on a match always brings bad luck.” Then beginning to rise, he said, “But now you’ll have to excuse me, gentlemen; I’ve kept my wife waiting long enough. As far as I’m concerned, this interview is concluded.” With that, he turned and strode from the room.

  “What now, Holmes?” I asked. “He totally ignored the newspaper cutting.” My companion, however, was still looking at the lengthy corridor through which Buchanan had left. Holmes’s steely eyes narrowed, and he put his fingers together like steeples as he so often did when he was engaged in thought.

  When he finally did speak again, it was not to answer my question, but rather to ask one of his own. “Did you note his decided emphasis on the culpability of other senators, Watson?”

  “Now that you mention it, Holmes, he did suggest that Altamont might have been working for others. Why, to hear Buchanan state the case, a great number of senators would have enjoyed some sort of revenge against Phillips. But what about his failure to react to the story in the Post?”

  “Not important, old fellow. What is significant is that he seemed to be laying the groundwork for a collective guilt of some sort.” Holmes reached for the brandy and soda that Buchanan had originally offered.

  “You don’t suppose,” I asked, “that we’re talking about more than one culprit, do you?”

  Sherlock Holmes sampled the drink. Observing the light in the room as it danced through the facets of the crystal he was holding, he said slowly, “Murder is a strange act, my friend. Sometimes it is a very private affair, and other times it is a deed that can be sparked only by the inducement of others. But come,” he concluded, setting the glass on the table, “let us return to your home and ponder this matter further.”

  We walked quickly back to Queen Anne Street. Holmes may well indeed have pondered the case further that night; I, on the other hand, was too heavily burdened with the necessity of sleep to ponder anything deeper than the softness of my pillow.

  I slept late the following day only to be greeted by a wet April morning whose darkness had no doubt aided the powers of Morpheus. Holmes had already gone about his adventures by the time I entered the morning room. A note upon the table announced that he planned to return before tea after a day in the haberdasheries of Oxford and Regent Streets—to what end I could not begin to imagine.

  I spent the ensuing afternoon writing a letter to my wife in which, veiling the unfinished business upon which Holmes and I were embarking, I described my adventures in New York City. I did my best, as in fact I have attempted throughout this narrative, to minimise the lighthearted aspects of my stay there. After all, in spite of her aversion to sea travel, Mrs. Watson had always been curious about the States, so there was no point in attaching a sense of holiday to a trip that under the circumstances certainly did not warrant such an appellation.

  A few ticks past four, Polly showed Holmes into the sitting room. I was about to ask him what he had been doing all afternoon when he raised a finger to his lips.

  “In good time, Watson,” he cautioned me, and then announced to Polly, “Show them in!”

  Whatever I was expecting, it certainly was not a procession of some ten young lads little older than twelve or thirteen each dressed in the velveteen livery of the establishments that employed them. With their brass buttons shining, they marched into the room like an occupying army except that, in carrying the assorted parcels Holmes had obviously purchased on his outing, they looked no more menacing than a junior chorus line from some modern-dress production of The Yeoman of the Guard. One half expected them to break into song!

  Pointing to a nearby table, Holmes instructed the boys to set down their burden, and then with the snap of his fingers he ordered the brigade to follow him out the door. Awaiting Holmes’s return, I could easily see that the packages bore the names of various shops from Bond Street, the Strand, and St. James’s Street as well as those thoroughfares he’d named in his earlier note to me. Of their contents and purpose, however, I had not a clue.

  “Holmes!” I cried when he re-entered the sitting room, “I know that members of the fairer sex often rely on shopping excursions to relieve a troubled mind, but I never expected you to fall victim to such a passion.”

  “Steady, old fellow,” Holmes said with a wink. “Let us have our tea, and afterwards I shall make all clear.”

  I rang for Polly to bring us the tray, while Holmes removed the parcels to the bedroom I had made available for him. He partook of the tea and cucumber sandwiches with great enthusiasm; I, on the other hand, was distracted, trying unsuccessfully to fathom just how he intended to ensnare Buchanan.

  After finishing yet a second cup of tea, Holmes finally retired to his bedroom only to pop out a moment later to survey the chamber he had just vacated. His eye came to rest on the chesterfield of blue velvet upon which I was then sitting. “Perfect!” he exclaimed, and, snatching up the flattest of the cushions leaning against the arm, returned with it into the privacy of his room.

  For well over half an hour I could hear him moving back and forth behind the door. Presumably he was dressing, but what costume he was preparing and for what reason he needed the cushion I could not guess.

  “Are you ready, Watson?” he cried at last. Only after I answered in a bewildered affirmative did he make his entrance into the sitting room.

  I knew Sherlock Holmes to be a wizard of subterfuge; indeed, I knew that at one time he had at least five retreats throughout London where he could don his various disguises; and yet I never ceased to marvel at his singular ability to conceal his own identity with a minimum of greasepaint. It was in creating the total effect that he excelled, the conception, as it were, of a completely different person from his own self—not an imitation of another personage, but another person entirely.

  Thus did David Graham Phillips stand before me. The flowery silk-faced suit, I later learned, was from Shingleton’s; the white linen shirt, from Sampson and Company; the pearl-button boots, from James Taylor and Son of nearby Paddington Street.

  “Since chrysanthemums are out of season,” he explained, “I had to settle for this carnation, which I confess to having plucked from your neighbour’s window box; I had no time to track down hothouse flowers. This extraordinarily ridiculous collar I purchased from a shop in Tottenham Court Road after a most challenging search.” His newly darkened hair was parted in the middle. He had applied a small amount of putty to broaden his nose. He had slightly increased his girth with the aid of the small cushion, and he was somehow able to replace his own angular movements with the more fluid motions of the younger Phillips.

  “Amazing, Holmes!” I said in astonishment as he walked to the cheval mirror.

  “Not so bad, really, Watson,” he concurred as he admired himself in the looking glass. “Especially when you consider I haven’t seen my subject in well over ten years. For inspiration, I had to rely on that portrait from my file—not to mention my own memory.”

  Scrutinising himself in the mirror, Holmes checked that his nose was firmly planted and then pressed both his palms against his ribs—or rather against the flat cushion—to ascertain that his foundations were equally secure.

  “In light of the reflection you cast, Holmes,” I quipped, “you’re at least one David Graham Phillips that isn’t a vampire.”

  “Right you are, Watson, but this is no time for joking. There’s game to be hunted tonight if I’m not mistaken. Mr. Buchanan may have spent much of his life amongst the high society of New York and Washington; but in his heart he is just a poor farm lad who, as you yourself have already observed, is still full of the superstitions and fears with which he grew up, weaknesses we can well hope to exploit thoroughly. Let’s be off!”

  “But where to, Holmes? You’ve yet to tell me.”

  “To the Royal Larder, man! Down the road from Buchanan’s hotel. Where else?”

  Where else indeed? I wondered.r />
  Despite Holmes’s enthusiasm, however, our pace was immediately hampered by the unseasonably thick yellow fog we confronted as soon as we walked out of my front door. Indeed, it was only because we knew the way and because the distance to be traversed was so short that we dared make the journey at all. I could scarcely see my hand before my eyes.

  Holding on to the wrought-iron railing on our left that was illuminated by the beams from the fanlight above the door, we felt our way down the four steps to the pavement, then turned left, and began our short trek eastward. The lights along the roadway spilled an eerie golden glow on the ground, and the long row of fencing kept us travelling in a straight line.

  “How can we be sure that Buchanan will even be there?” I asked. To have made such an effort only to miss our man seemed pointless indeed.

  “Because, Watson, I took the liberty of sending the senator a duplicitous telegram while I was on my travels this afternoon. I asked him to meet me in the Royal Larder at seven-fifteen.”

  Alert to the low rumble of whatever traffic braved the carriageway on such a night, we gingerly stepped off the kerb and crossed Wimpole Street.

  Approaching Harley Street a few minutes later, I resumed my questioning. “The Royal Larder was Phillips’s favourite public house, was it not, Holmes?”

  I sensed more than saw the Phillips mask smile at me. “Yes, indeed, Watson. A bit of poetic justice, I should think. But more to the point: The room is dark; it will be difficult to see. Not much different from this blasted fog! My disguise should be most effective under such conditions. I told Buchanan he would recognise me by my black hat, and I signed the message ‘A friend of Altamont.’ That should lure him. You, of course, will have to hide yourself, for if he should lay eyes on you, we are undone.”

  The heavy mist continued to embrace us as we groped our way to the right into Chandos Street and then left into Portland Place, but the few intermittent breaks in the fog’s density allowed me to marvel at the change in Holmes’s gait. Gone was the walking stick. Normally, he would take long strides that made him sway slightly as his body’s centre of gravity shifted from his left side to his right, but in this guise of Phillips he moved more ponderously and appeared more precisely upright.

  A few minutes before the hour, we passed the Langham. I remember having the feeling we were being watched from a window above us, and when I looked up through a break in the fog I was momentarily startled by a menacing countenance of narrow eyes, flared nostrils, and pointed teeth.

  “A hotel gargoyle, Watson,” Holmes reassured me, and we continued on in our measured pace.

  We reached the Royal Larder at seven o’clock. It is a poorly lit, highly polished West End establishment full of oak furniture, brass fixtures, a cacophony of singing, and numerous persons aspiring to the upper class. We elbowed our way to opposite ends of the room, Holmes coming to rest at a small, square table in a corner; I, in a chair at the far end of the bar. As soon as he was seated, Holmes struck a match and lit a cigarette, purposely adding great clouds to the shadowy haze already hanging in layers like piles of folded, grey blankets. I then saw him dip into a large side pocket of his flowery jacket and produce what at first glance appeared to be a crumpled ball of black paper.

  As I watched him unfold his bundle, however, I realised that he had within his grasp a small, black Alpine hat not unlike that which Phillips himself had been wearing the day he had been murdered. Slowly Holmes placed it upon his head, adjusting its abbreviated brim so that it came down to the bridge of his puttied nose. He then took a pull on the cigarette, inclined his head to smell the white carnation in his lapel, and turned his eyes to the door that communicated with the outside.

  A pint of dark ale was my only companion as I gazed along with Holmes at the newcomers who entered: a raucous ginger-haired woman, two American men in formal dress, and two women with painted faces and swelling expanses of décolletage whose vocation I should prefer not to mention.

  Despite Holmes’s expectations, we could not, of course, be certain that Buchanan would keep the appointment; and by the time I had begun my second tankard, I was beginning to doubt that he would. He was already a half hour late, and though it was foggy he had only a short distance to walk from his hotel. How many glasses would I have to drink before the man arrived? I wondered. I began to think about the lengthy nights Sherlock Holmes and I had spent together in previous cases so long ago, waiting for equally mysterious events to unfold: the dramatic arrival of Colonel Sebastian Moran and his airgun in that empty house in Baker Street or the emergence of the deadly swamp adder down the bell pull from Dr. Grimesby Roylott’s dummy ventilator. Tonight, however, the wait was not as long.

  At eight o’clock Senator Buchanan appeared. As he surveyed the room, no doubt seeking a distinctive black hat, I placed my hand over my brows and turned my head away to conceal my own identity. Making his way between the two women who had arrived before him, he did not notice Holmes at first; but just as one of them giggled and asked the distinguished-looking gentleman with the thick white hair what was undoubtedly an impertinent question, he laid his eyes on the shadow wearing the Alpine hat seated at the rear of the public house—Sherlock Holmes or, rather, the replication of David Graham Phillips.

  (I could see the looks of frustration on the women’s faces as Buchanan ignored them; but since Buchanan’s back was to me, I have relied on Holmes’s subsequent account of the meeting to complete this part of the narrative.)

  Buchanan’s mouth dropped open as he began to recognise the ostentatious figure before him. Oblivious to the charms of the hectoring women at either side, he stumbled rather than walked towards Holmes’s table. Stopping two or three feet in front of the spectre who continued to exhale smoke heaven-ward but now much less voluminously, Buchanan whispered, “You’re dead. Everybody knows it.” As if to reaffirm the fact, he repeated, “You’re dead.”

  Standing motionless, Buchanan continued to stare.

  Others in the room began to stare as well. They, however, were looking not at the dandified gentleman seated at the table, but at the transfixed senator, frozen in front of Holmes like Macbeth before the ghost of Banquo.

  From my own position, I could see a macabre grin begin to cross Holmes’s face.

  “Don’t smile at me!” Buchanan snarled, his voice beginning to increase in volume. “Don’t say I did it. They all wanted someone to do it. Don’t blame me if I was the only one with enough guts.”

  Suddenly Holmes jumped to his feet and pointed his index finger accusingly at Buchanan.

  “No!” the Senator screamed as more heads throughout the room turned in his direction. “Leave me alone!” he cried as he took two small steps backward. Then he turned quickly and, after knocking over a chair, ran through the doorway and out into the fog that seemed to suck him up.

  Holmes and I both sprang for the door, but before we could reach it the two women who had accosted Buchanan snaked their arms around our own.

  “’Ere, now, luv,” the one next to me said, “wot’s your ‘urry?”

  “There’s two of you, and there’s two of us,” the other said with a lascivious wink.

  Once we were able to extricate ourselves and escape into the fog, Buchanan was nowhere to be seen. A murky halo of light from the front of the Langham beckoned, but when we enquired at the desk and even interrogated people in the lobby, it became clear to us that the senator had not set foot in the hotel since his departure for the public house.

  London is a large city, and for that reason one may rightly deduce that—fog or no fog—it is easy to lose oneself. Such an axiom, of course, applies much more readily to an unknown soul than to a person of fame or notoriety.

  “He won’t get far, Watson,” Holmes assured me. “It’s difficult to travel in weather like this. Besides, too many people know the celebrated Mr. Buchanan. Tonight we can notify our old friend Stanley Hopkins at the Yard to keep an eye open for his whereabouts. Hopkins has just been made a Chief Inspecto
r and should be able to help us. But as it will be impossible to find Buchanan ourselves in this fog, let us begin early tomorrow morning making enquiries within the American community. A former United States senator should not be too hard to track down.”

  Eleven

  PURSUIT

  “What a world of twaddle it is! If men and women could only learn to build their ideals on the firm foundation—the only foundation—of the practical instead of upon the quicksand of lies and pretenses, wouldn’t the tower climb less shakily, if more slowly, toward the stars?”

  —David Graham Phillips, The Husband’s Story

  “Quick, Watson! We’ve not a moment to lose!”

  Thus was I roughly roused from a sound sleep on the morning of Friday, April 10, by Sherlock Holmes.

  “Quick, man!” he repeated. “I have only my own sluggishness to blame. Get dressed! We’re off to Waterloo!”

  Still drowsy from our escapades of the night before, I donned my clothes as rapidly as I could, for Holmes had already secured a hansom, which was waiting just beyond my front door. Not until we were securely seated inside did I dare ask him what had transpired.

  Impatiently drumming his long fingers on the arm of the seat, he explained the events of the morning. Holmes had returned to the Langham to ask about Buchanan. Although the senator had still not come back and his distraught wife had no knowledge of his whereabouts, Holmes encountered the Buchanan’s companions of two nights previous, Colonel and Mrs. Astor, who were in the process of leaving the hotel. The Astors, it turned out, were departing for America on that very day; and, after impatiently enduring great praise from them once my friend had made known his identity, Holmes learned that Buchanan had in fact enquired the night before as to when the Astors were leaving England. It seems that Buchanan, aware in advance of his friends’ theatre plans, had been able to make his way through the fog to the playhouse in Drury Lane where they were in attendance. During the interval in a most agitated state—indeed, to Astor, looking as if he’d seen a ghost—the senator expressed his intent to leave the country as soon as possible.