Sherlock Holmes: The American Years (21 page)

A thought suddenly occurred to me. “No, sir, not anywhere,” I said. “If the goal is to cause you personal harm, whatever physical proof or evidence is to be offered has to reflect a place that is allied with you. If they plan to take a photograph of the elephant in some stage of danger or distress, it would have to be exposed against a backdrop that is both recognizably yours and a logical place for an elephant to be, or else the evidence would have little effect. Therefore Xanthippe must have been taken to your compound.”

“Bravo, Stamford!” Holmes cried.

“Then we must get there as quickly as possible!” Barnum cried. “Come on!”

In turn, we dashed through the hole and back into the drawing room, and Holmes, Weymouth, and I followed P. T. Barnum—carpet slippers and all—out of the house and onto the estate’s sprawling lawn. Even though the great showman was thrice my
age, I found myself lagging behind him as we sprinted to the carriage house. The phaeton that he had used to speed to his office in town was still liveried and ready to go, though I barely had both feet inside of it when Barnum whipped the steed into action and we took off. Even though I had every confidence that he knew the streets of the city and how to navigate them, I was forced to close my eyes as we took some of the turns on the way to Went Field. After careening around one at a dangerously high speed, we passed a police wagon. The officer shouted at Barnum to slow down, but he did not.

As we approached the field that housed Barnum’s menagerie building, Holmes shouted: “Look!” The supply wagon we had seen earlier that day, its cargo platform now tented with canvas, was parked at a back building, behind the one that had housed the faux white elephant’s exhibition. Barnum headed straight for it, making a sharp turn at the last moment and reining in his horse forcefully, so that the phaeton itself blocked the path of the wagon team. Leaping down, he charged inside the building as the rest of us followed.

There was faint illumination inside, but one area seemed brighter than the others, and that was the one to which we ran. Soon we made out the forms of two men: one was clearly Davy, while the other was dressed in a workman’s smock and a straw hat, and still wore that mysterious kerchief over his face, as well as heavy gloves.

In between them, standing majestically, was Xanthippe.

“Cease at once!” Barnum shouted, startling both men.

“Aw, God, it’s himself!” Davy cried. Rushing toward the showman as fast as his limping gait could take him, he threw himself
onto his knees and wailed, “Honest, Mr. Barnum, this wasn’t my idea. He made me do it, I didn’t want to.”

“Silence,” Barnum ordered, pushing the man aside, and striding toward the masked figure, pointed at him dramatically. “The game is over, Artaud,” he announced. “Yes, I know who you are, so you can remove that foolish disguise.”

“Disguise?” the man said from behind the cloth. “You think this a disguise,
mon ami
?” The last two words were spoken with vicious bitterness. “You think you recognize Artaud, eh? We shall see.” With gloved hands he removed his hat and pulled off the mask and revealed his face. I could not help but gasp.

The man’s entire face was horribly disfigured; his nose, cheeks, mouth, and chin were runneled and covered with welts, and of a ghastly grayish-yellow pallor. Removing his gloves evinced that his hands had not spared by his affliction, either. “ ‘Ere is a freak for your museum, Barnum, a living, talking monster!”

“Lordamighty,” Barnum uttered. “What has happened to you?”

“
You
, that is what happened to me!”

“I . . . I did nothing to you that was not deserved.” He strode toward the ghastly figure. “Explain yourself!”

“Mr. Barnum, do not move any closer!” Holmes commanded. “Do not touch that man. He is leprous.”

“Dear God,” Barnum said, stepping back.

“It was on your testimony, Barnum, that I was convicted and sentenced to a prison camp in French Guiana, where I endured the tortures of the damned,” Artaud said. “And for what? What did I take from you? Baubles . . . nothing! Compare that to what I received!” He put his hands on his ravaged face. “Every day I spent
on that stinking island I plotted to avenge myself for what you did to me. I planned my escape. What ‘ad I to lose? I did escape. I stowed away on board a ship to New York. I came ‘ere. I entered your employ. I even lived in your mansion.”

“You did
what
?” Barnum shouted.

“So many empty rooms, no one discovered me,” Artaud said. “I was in a position to learn everything that was ‘appening. I wanted to ruin your life the way you ruined mine. When the elephant appeared, the chance to use one of your own beasts as the means of your destruction, the irony of it seemed too savory to ignore.” He pointed toward the cringing Davy. “The
peu crapaud
there told me ‘ow much you stood to lose if anything ‘appened to the white elephant.”

“He forced me to help him,” Davy whined. “He made me put those letters in your mail and stay quiet while he tore out the fireplace. He said if I didn’t play along, he’d give me his disease! It was bad enough losing my career, but I didn’t want to end up like him.”

Holmes spoke up: “I cannot make sense of why you attempted to implicate your own government in this scheme.”

“Simply to repay a
kindness
,” the villain said bitterly. “My government sent me to ‘ell to die, all on the word of a
great man
.”

No one said anything for at least a minute; we all stood in silent stillness. Even Xanthippe seemed reluctant to move. Then Holmes shattered the quiet. “You realize, Monsieur Artaud, that you have failed,” he said. “There is no other recourse for you except to surrender.”

“No other recourse, eh?” the man said. Then, almost as though
by sorcery, a small pistol appeared in his hand, causing the rest of us to tense. “Anyone care to come and wrench this from my grasp?” he taunted. “No? Very well . . .” He slowly raised the gun and pointed it at Xanthippe’s right eye.

“No!” Barnum cried. “Artaud, please do not harm her. I beg of you.”

“I cannot ‘ear you.”

“I beg of you, Artaud, I beseech you!” The showman sank to the floor. “I am on my knees.”

“The great P. T. Barnum beseeches me, eh? ‘E ‘umbles ‘imself to me. I am touched, monsieur. Very well, Artaud will not ‘arm the elephant.” He lowered the gun. “For years I ‘ave been dying. Now I shall die satisfied.” Étienne Artaud smiled horribly, and before anyone could do anything, or even think to do anything, he placed the pistol to his temple and pulled the trigger.

Xanthippe trumpeted at the sudden noise, while her duplicitous keeper fell down in a dead faint.

“Charles,” Barnum said, rising slowly, “please forgive me for doubting you.”

“I do, Phineas,” Weymouth replied in a cracked voice. “What do we do about the body?”

“I shall consult with Dr. Shanks as to how to deal with him. Lordamighty.”

Once the unconscious Davy was brought to, Weymouth instructed him to help prepare a cage in the menagerie for Xanthippe, whose safety in the compound was now assured until she could be transported.

Holmes and I followed P. T. Barnum out of the building and
back into the phaeton. None of us uttered a word on the way back to Waldemere, and even when we reassembled inside Barnum’s library, it was in silence. Finally the showman spoke. “Mr. Holmes, Mr. Stamford, I do not know what to say. What can I offer you. Name it.”

“Dinner would be most acceptable,” Holmes replied. “I am quite certain that my friend would agree.”

That evening we dined in the finest restaurant in Bridgeport, overlooking the harbor, which was forested with masts and shadowed by the encroaching night. “As delighted as I am that Xanthippe is unhurt, I cannot help but feel like a fool,” Barnum said, sipping a cup of steaming coffee (we had already learned that he never touched alcohol, more’s the pity). “The Great Hoaxer, they call me . . . look at the hoax I fell for.”

“Some might say, sir,” I said, “that it was simply your minute to be born.”

The sidelong glance he gave me did not communicate amusement. “You are somewhat less than comforting, young man. Besides, I never uttered that line about born suckers. It was attributed to me by another, but since it seemed good publicity, I never went out of my way to deny it.”

“What is going to happen now to little Davy?” Holmes asked, effectively changing the subject.

Barnum sighed. “His life and livelihood was shattered once in my employ, and I cannot do it to him again. He will remain in the company, but I have instructed Charles to make certain that he nevermore sets foot in Waldemere.”

We, on the other hand, were guests at Waldemere that evening,
and a finer bed I had never slept in. The next morning, Mr. Barnum personally took us to the train station and saw us on our way back to New York.

“That was certainly sporting of him to allow us to keep the money he advanced us,” I said to Holmes, as we pulled away from the platform. My companion did not immediately answer, instead fixing his gaze at a spot far off. “Holmes, are you all right?” I asked. “Oh, I see. Now that our adventure is over, you are worried about your tryout with the symphony.”

“Quite the contrary, Stamford,” he replied. “Even if the symphony beckons, I have no intention of joining their ranks.”

“
What
? Why else did we brave the Atlantic?”

He looked at me with fire in his gray eyes. “Didn’t you feel it, Stamford, the excitement of puzzling out that impossible situation and tracking down the one responsible? What if I could do that sort of thing all the time? I could return to London and open an office, and then advertise myself as a consulting detective, one to whom people could bring their problems, which I would solve for a fee.”

“You would starve.”

“Then I would need someone reliable to assist me, to keep me out of debtors’ prison. You, for instance.”

“
Me?
”

“Oh, come now, Stamford, it was your speculation that Artaud would take the elephant to a property of Barnum’s and nowhere else that enabled us to find them in short order. You cannot deny that.”

I leaned back in the seat. “What I truly cannot deny is that my father may be right after all,” I said. “Perhaps it is time for me to
settle down and pursue a career. The old man has been preaching medicine to me.”

“Fine. You could still work with me while studying.”

I sighed. How was I going to put Holmes off the idea of us working together as detectors for hire? Knowing of his persistence, I would simply have to find someone else more suited for the role when we returned to London.

Miss Carole Buggé here invokes the Bard, as Holmes discovers that the earth hath bubbles as the water has, and this is one of them.

by

CAROLE BUGGÉ

I
n the year 1880 all of New York knew my name. I could hardly go into the streets without strangers murmuring to each other, “That’s Edwin Booth, the actor!” and then coming up to me to ask for an autograph, a handshake, a lock of my hair.

It was also in the spring of that same year I became quite certain someone was trying to kill me.

One Thursday night, as I emerged from the theatre after what seemed an endless rehearsal of our coming production of
Hamlet
, a shot rang out from what appeared to be an empty street. I felt a burning on my neck, and when I clapped my hand to the spot, it came away wet with fresh blood.

I had faced many situations that required keeping a cool head, so I did not panic, but stepped quickly back through the stage door. The wound on my neck was superficial, and I was soon able to stop the bleeding. I told no one what had happened; my concern for my own safety was tempered by the realization that I was a public figure, and adverse publicity could be ruinous for my theatre company. When I next emerged it was half an hour later, with two husky stagehands on either side of me. I had told them that I was feeling faint; they hustled me into a waiting carriage, the driver put the horses into a brisk trot, and I was home within minutes.

However, this time my feeling was one of dark terror—so dark, in fact, that I took a step I never would have imagined taking: I put an advertisement in the paper.

WANTED:
Professional detective for private employment. Must be discreet, trustworthy. Experience with Pinkerton Agency or similar employment preferred. Assignment possibly dangerous; monetary reward considerable. Only serious applicants need apply. Reply to Post Box 28, City.

The reference to Allan Pinkerton and his excellent agency was bitterly ironic, since he had foiled an assassination attempt on President Lincoln in 1861, only to watch helplessly with the rest of the nation as my brother John Wilkes gunned down the great man a few years later.

I took no one into my confidence save for my Negro servant, Hector, who had been with our family since my boyhood in Maryland. Since my father’s death, he had become my constant attendant and companion; a more competent and considerate man of any race could not be found this side of the Atlantic.