Sherlock Holmes: The American Years (10 page)

“Girl?” I echoed. “
What
girl! Are you addled?”

“Not in the least,” he said calmly. “Had you heeded me after the ball match, you would have learned that I collected interesting details from a partial imprint of the smaller child’s shoe. Three details, to be precise. First, I observed that the sole of this cheap McKay-type shoe was narrower than those made for most boys. Second, a perceptible arc in a pattern of nail holes suggested a girl’s tapered rather than squared toe. Third, slightly greater depth at the rear suggested the possibility of a raised heel—again characteristic of manufacture for females.”

Holmes paused to let these revelations sink in.

“Then, too, there was the manner in which she grasped the umbrella. You didn’t note it, of course.” His tone said that I was the
beau ideal
of dunces. “Yet it was instantly evident to me that, although frightened, she wanted something even more than she wanted to flee—she wanted
that umbrella
. That is why her brother—yes, he was the other one—tried to sway her with more money. But she was adamant. Your silk umbrella, as it happens, was the most wondrous
prize ever to grace her vision—it might have come from
The Arabian Nights
—and once she held it, she naturally wanted it for herself. In the end, her brother—and later her father—indulged her.”

Holmes favored me with his reptilian smile.

“By the time your notice appeared, I knew that I needed to enter the world of those rapscallion children. Who could provide the necessary information? The horse-handlers, of course, and so they did—as the result of hours and dollars I spent in the public houses where they congregate. Pursuing their instructions, I managed to ingratiate myself, again for a price, with a gang of young swells, who, once they believed that I would not bring the police, let me know that I was correct: the umbrella had been pinched by a brother-sister pair. Yet more cash outlays led me to their grimy domicile.”

“If it’s your squandered money you want,” I told him, “nobody asked you—”

“I do not seek recompense,” he interjected. “I was about to say that I arrived at that place barely in time to dissuade the outraged father—he’d been told of your notice—from his threats to give you a thrashing.”

I didn’t like the sound of
that
and so I ignored it. “If not for money,” I demanded, “why’d you keep mixing into this?”

“The true reason?” He showed a hint of the snaky smile, but his eyes held some other expression I couldn’t decipher. “To escape the humdrum of everyday life, I suppose,” he said slowly. “These little problems help me to do so.”

My umbrella a
little
problem! The soaring arrogance of the
man! “Once you knew the thieves’ whereabouts,” I said with a defiant stare, “why didn’t you go to the police?”

“And do their work for them?” he said. “The chief reason is that I gave my word as a gentleman that I would not. Then, too, there was the matter of your challenge.” He nodded at the paper in my hand. “Fortunately for your sake, I was able to recite
ex tempore
from Smith & Son’s list of umbrella models—and render several sketches. The girl was fascinated, but loath to surrender the one in her possession, naturally enough. At length we negotiated the result you hold—I must say, the toucan-headed model
is
quite elegant—and the girl was able to prevail upon her father to accept the arrangement. And so here we are. Mystery solved. Umbrella within your reach.”

I stared at the consent note. “It’ll take a month to get the new one here from London,” I said sourly. “That price is unadulterated banditry!”

“It’s only half what you offered to pay for the thieves’ remains.”

“That was in fun! Nobody’d think I meant it!”

“Some did,” he replied. “And were quite serious in their resentment. Thieves’ honor, you might call it.” He gave the paper a significant glance.

“Suffering Moses,” I muttered in my misery, and called for a pen to sign his wretched note.

“If it happens that you prefer the new umbrella,” he said, “you could renege on your promise and not make the exchange.”

I’d thought of it myself. The urchin would still have her ill-gotten prize and I’d have a grander model. But Holmes’s tone said that no
gentleman
would stoop so low. Besides that, I wanted my old model back. And I’d never particularly fancied toucans.

Well, it all happened twenty-two years ago, and this day, May 18, is the anniversary of that cursed ball match. Worn out from the rigors of our recent travels, I am back with my family in comfortable London for a while. This morning, after penning the final words of
Following the Equator
, I set out from our rooms near Tedford Square to celebrate its completion with a walk along the Chelsea Embankment. Gazing at the fog-streaked Thames put me in a reflective mood. I recalled how the umbrella episode played out just as Holmes had arranged it. When I left the new model under the Pavilion, I worried that I’d come back to find no replacement, and I’d be out both umbrellas. But my old one was waiting for me in prime condition, and with relief I hugged it to my breast. Once my indignation finally smoldered out, I was able to dine out on the story in handsome style—still do, to tell the truth.

All these years later, that old bumbershoot remains a practical and sentimental friend. It reminds me of my first conquering visits here and also of those tender years in Hartford, when my family was yet young. Here in its home climate it receives regular exercise, and nobody comments except to praise its mature vintage.

Several times in recent weeks, while strolling near Regent’s Park, I’ve caught sight of Holmes through the side-windows of passing broughams. We’re considerably older in appearance, but we recognize each other. I tilt the umbrella in his direction, and he smiles that thin smile, pounding it home that he hasn’t forgotten.

The ironic capper is that just this month Smith & Sons introduced a new deluxe model at the top of their line of men’s umbrellas. Its teak handle features an elegantly carved bust of Sherlock Holmes. While I’m not a likely candidate for purchase, I have to
confess that the notion of crimping Holmes’s head in my fist has a powerful pull. As for the likeness itself—I’ve studied it with some care through the show window at Smith & Sons—it rouses one like military music on parade! So grand and noble is it in conception that it puts to shame the general class of carved profiles! Why, in its royalty it rivals Caesar! Only the most ill-natured of ninnies would fail to agree that it’s a thrilling wonder—and even more dizzying in its wonderment when compared to the original thing.

And once in Hartford, who knows in what further adventures Sherlock Holmes might find himself embroiled? Steve Hockensmith has a good idea.

by

STEVE HOCKENSMITH

M
y dear Brother:

First off, let me quickly allay your fears. This missive does not convey the news you’ve no doubt been expecting and dreading. The Old Senator still lives. Feebly, painfully, at times bitterly and one could almost say begrudgingly, yet he lives.

I also do not write to ask you to leave Washington. Father insists that his infirmity should not impinge upon your preparations for assuming office. Much as you might like to be at his side, know this: The Old Senator takes great comfort in knowing that the Young Congressman is, even now, following in his footsteps.

He takes comfort, too, in constant company and the good wishes of his many admirers. Mr. Hayes and Mr. Grant have sent their regards,
as have a host of old friends from the Party, and the Hookers and the Beechers (among others) are regular visitors. And, of course, one of us—Mother or Eliza or I—is ever at the Old Senator’s side.

But alas, so to, I must tell you, is pain. Father struggles to breathe. He cannot take more than two steps unaided. He has no appetite, and what food he does eat only brings on new agonies and indignities. He is always tired yet cannot sleep deeply.

It is not enough to say that our father is dying. Much of him, I think, is already dead. It just remains for the last of the body to give way and for the spirit to depart.

Yet while that spirit remains—and fervently it does so, undiminished even as its vessel decays—the Old Senator is with us. And in that I have found a blessing, much as I wish to see his misery brought to an end. Even in the grip of his final sufferings, you see, our father has put an older hurt behind him.

It is that I wish to tell you about—as well as (to descend into the realm of the petty) a shocking bit of gossip that will no doubt filter out to you through the Hartwells or the Gilberts or some other old Hartford stalwarts. Take their whisperings with a grain of salt, Brother, and take my account as gold, for the Old Senator and I were
there
.

Naturally, you might expect Father not to be anywhere other than his bed, of late. But last week he was feeling well enough to take the air around the grounds twice a day, and Dr. Dahlinger came to think that an outing might actually do the Old Senator some good.

“Nothing taxing, mind,” the doctor told us after finishing his near-daily call on Father. “A picnic. A speech. A recital. Something that will get him out of the house for a few hours without
wearying him too much. It’s not exercise the man needs. It’s engagement.”

“I know just the thing,” Eliza announced, and she scurried out of the room.

She returned shortly with a creased copy of the
Courant
folded open to an article I recognized . . . because I’d read it with great interest almost four weeks before. The headline:
EMINENT THESPIAN TO TAKE HARTFORD STAGE
.

After conquering New York City with his powerful Orsino, it seemed, the Russian/English actor Michael Sasanoff was taking his production of
Twelfth Night
on tour across the States. The second stop would be Hartford’s own National Theater. The performance was now mere days away.

“Father should go,” Eliza said. “Willy can take him.”

As you’ve said so often, our sly sister would surely have made the best politician of us all, so cunning and tenacious can she be in pursuit of an objective—such as, for instance, total reconciliation between the Old Senator and his Prodigal Son.

Mother read the notice with the air of barely concealed disdain that has ever characterized our parents’ attitude toward “the boards.”

“Eliza,” she said gravely when she was done, and she looked up at
me
, “I think it’s a splendid idea.”

And so it was decided that I should squire the Old Senator, of all people, to an evening of theater. (How quickly Father acquiesced to this plan I do not know, for Mother took it to him in the privacy of their chambers. Needless to say, it was a
fait accompli
before it was even broached, as the only member of the family who can match Eliza’s powers of persuasion is the woman who birthed her.)

More than once, in the days that followed, I thanked God that it was
Twelfth Night
and not
Lear
the venerable Mr. Sasanoff would be gracing us with. A comedy the Old Senator and I could endure together. A tragedy about ungrateful, intractable children, on the other hand, would be sheer torture.