SHERLOCK HOLMES IN NEW YORK (5 page)

———«»——————«»——————«»———

It seemed both an age and no time at all until we
were standing past the statue of Liberty Enlightening
the World in New York Harbor and making our way
up the North River. On our left, a jumble of docks and
warehouses marked our landing place; on our right,
the awe-inspiring towers of Manhattan rose from
their rocky base and strained into the morning sky.
The water was alive with craft of every kind, from
ungainly ferries plying between New York and every shore facing it, through rusty steamers, square-rigged
grain and cargo ships, pleasure ketches and yawls,
to mighty ocean liners like the one which carried us
steadily upriver.

"I fancy not London itself offers such a show,
Watson," said Sherlock Holmes as he surveyed the
scene. "Yet it is changing. Ten years ago, or twenty,
sail would have dominated it. Now, that is giving way
to steam, and soon the tall masts that reach to the
clouds will be gone, all gone. It is strange to think
that in fifty or seventy-five years' time the inhabitants
of New York will never see a sailing vessel from one
year's end to the next . . . Where have we got to now,
I wonder?"

With audible cries of command from the bridge and
the clangor of the engine-room telegraph, the
Pavonia
,
abetted by nudging tugboats, was slowly turning
toward the western shore of the river.

"If we're docking, this must be Hoboken," said I.

Holmes looked at me sharply.
"Your logic is both rigorous and unassailable,
Watson, but you have an uncanny way of making it seem that logic is not always the answer. However,
we'd best get to our packing."

———«»——————«»——————«»———

As we stood on the dock, surrounded by our trunks,
waiting for the ferry which would convey us to the
New York side of the river, I was pleased to see
that the old lady in the invalid-chair did not seem to
have taken any harm from her sea voyage. As she
was borne down the gangplank, she looked no worse
than when I had first seen her in Liverpool. And she
was clearly getting special treatment, I saw.

"My word, Holmes, Miss Jacobs has a private
boat to take her to Manhattan. See there, they're lowering her into that steam launch!"

"Ah, the chair-bound old lady. How do you come to
know her name, my dear fellow?"

I recounted my bizarre experiences with the ship's doctor and the old woman's uncommunicative attend
ant.

"You are sure of all that, Watson?" Holmes said
in great excitement. "Word for word—what the doctor
said and what the
. . .
nephew . . . said?"

"I believe I am?"

"
Fool!
"

Standing among our piled trunks and luggage on the pavement outside the ferry landing on the Manhattan
side, I had a curious sense of double vision. From the very color of the sky to the pitch of the roof of the
warehouses and dwellings and the costumes of the in
habitants, it was clear that I was in a foreign country.
Yet the language about me, though couched in a va
riety of strange accents, was English, and the bustle of the debarking crowd, the huddle of hansoms and car
riages awaiting passengers, and the general air of
busyness were not so different from what might have
been encountered in London. I suppose I had been
expecting something as completely strange as the first
sight of India and the Red Sea ports I had seen during
my Army service had been to me, and said as much
to Holmes.

"The railways, the telegraph, the telephone, and the fast steamer have knit the world ever tighter, Watson,"
said he. "If something is thought of on Tuesday in Paris, it is known in Berlin, London and New York
on Wednesday, and a uniquely tailored suit which
sees the light of day in Old Bond Street may well be
observed in little more than a week adorning half a dozen saunterers on Broadway. In a few years' time,
any large city will be in all important respects indistinguishable from any other, I fear."

"Well, I suppose it is to our advantage that the cabs
are much the same," I remarked. "I'd best get our
selves and our trunks and bags into one."

I raised a hand and gestured. A hansom driver
whipped up his steed and brought his vehicle up to
us, one wheel on the sidewalk causing it to tilt alarm
ingly.

"No, man, not you!" I called up to where he
perched atop his cab. "Look at these trunks. There's
no room for them and two men in a hansom!"

A well-dressed woman wearing an extravagantly
wide-brimmed hat, and standing next to me on the
pavement, said, "Handsome is as handsome does."

"I beg your pardon, madam?" said I. "I was refer
ring to the cab—that two-wheeler there. Are they not
called hansoms in this country?"

"Oh, yes. But I wasn't talking about the cab. You're
handsome enough yourself, you know."

I blush to admit that I was about to try to reply
sensibly to this odd comment until I saw Holmes
fairly doubled over with laughter, supporting himself
against a lamp post. In my defense, I can merely say
that it seemed to me only polite to expect to accommodate to variations in manners and modes of speech
between England and America. And certainly, the
woman did not have the look of the sordid drabs who
offer themselves in far too many quarters of our cap
ital.

"Be off with you, miss," I said sternly. "We've no
time for that."

I was conscious that what I said might have been
better phrased.

Holmes, still chuckling, helped me superintend the
loading of our effects into a four-wheeler which had
come up to replace the hansom, and instructed the
driver to take us to the Empire Theater.

"I can't imagine what she hoped for from a crowd
of arriving passengers from the ferry," said I, still
somewhat in a huff. "It stands to reason that they
would all have some sort of immediate business else
where."

"Well, well, Watson, she is in a profession older
than either of ours, and I suppose she knows her trade.
And Americans have a reputation for get-up-and-go,
of being born salesmen. I dare say many a business
man is persuaded to arrive ten minutes or so late to
an appointment with some tale of a traffic block."

The high good humor which my discomfiture had
occasioned lasted only a few moments, and a brood
ing, impatient look settled on Holmes' face as we pro
ceeded through the crowded streets. Now that I was
fully immersed in New York, I began to see it as more
truly foreign in spite of its many resemblances to Lon
don. The streets were all straight, giving a curiously disconnected and blocky appearance to the massed
buildings, which were uniformly modern—none I saw
could have been more than a century old, though
some, in their architectural detail, aped every period
of the past from Egyptian to Gothic. The trams which
coursed the major streets and avenues, some drawn
by horses and some propelled, as I later learned, by
cable snaking beneath the street, dashed along at a
pace which would have done credit to a fire engine or
an ambulance in London. The people, too, moved
along far more briskly than Londoners, in the aggre
gate flowing like a swift-moving stream past such
obstacles as organ-grinders, chestnut-vendors, and per
sons hawking strange machines, the nature of which I could not make out from our carriage.

In spite of our driver's efforts, our speed slowed as
the traffic thickened about us, with other hacks, drays,
pleasure carriages—even a few automobiles, though
far more than I would have expected to see on a Lon
don street—vying for the advantage of position.

We were now heading eastward on a wide street
lined with shop buildings, some of them many stories
in height. I looked ahead, startled, and saw a curious
construction much like an iron roadway, ahead of us,
suspended some twelve or fifteen yards above the level
of the street.

"Whatever is that, Holmes?" said I.

"Dat's de El," replied the driver, leaving me no
wiser.

"The elevated railway, Watson," said Holmes—
and, even as he spoke, his explanation became un
necessary, as I could see a train of cars hastening at
a great pace along the track, bizarrely sustained in
the air.

We inched our way to a point just short of this
aerial phenomenon, then came to what seemed to
amount to a near-final halt: no carriage, wagon, or automobile around us was moving. The reason was apparent. Where the major cross street we were on, a
north-and-south avenue running underneath the ele
vated railway, and another which ran diagonally to
both, met, there was a giant hole in the ground, a
scene of feverish activity in which pick-and-shovel-
wielding laborers and ungainly machines chuffing
steam joined.

"What's that?" I inquired of the driver.

"De subway, er it will be, when's dey finishes it."

Again, the answer, though in something close to
English, did not enlighten me.

"An underground railway," said Sherlock Holmes,
now clearly almost beside himself with impatience.

"They're only getting round to that
now?
"
I asked
in genuine surprise.

I could scarcely recall London without the Under
ground, and could in no wise imagine living there
without it. So much for American get-up-and-go!

"Well," said I with some impatience, looking
around at the congealed mass of vehicles which sur
rounded us, "if they put half the transportation up in
the air, and the other half underground, perhaps it
will be possible to get around the streets at faster than
a walking pace!"

"Hey! How do I get t'rough here?" the driver bawled
to a workman in the excavation.

"You don't," came the reply. "Go back an' cut over
to Seventh."

"Ah, dat'll take half an hour," the driver said in
disgust.
Holmes consulted his watch.

"Half past three already, Watson! No, it won't do!
Driver! Where are we now?"

"T'irty-fourt' Street, just about at Sixt' Avenue."

"And the Empire's at Thirty-ninth and Broadway.
Come along, Watson, the walk will do us good." So
saying, he pulled out some bills from his note-case and
handed them up to the driver. "Get our things to the
Hotel Algonquin as fast as you're able. I'm sure this
will take care of your time and trouble." As I knew,
from my hasty researches at the steamship office, that
New York cab fares were an American dollar a mile
for four-wheelers, and the same amount by the hour,
it seemed to me that the sum Holmes tendered would
have taken care of the hackman for the rest of the
day.

"Come on, Watson," said Sherlock Holmes, step
ping briskly from the carriage. "We've walked that
distance tenfold in a single afternoon in London!"

"But not," said I, falling in with his stride, "picking
our way among trenchworks worthy of a battlefield!"

For the subway excavation continued along the
street on which we were walking, and we were
obliged to skirt banks of upturned earth and rubble
and sometimes make our way across a ditch on a kind
of plank walk.

"Heads up!" cried a workman toiling away in the
pit, and flung a shovelful of dirt into the air.

Only by skipping nimbly aside was I able to avoid
receiving it full on my person. I allowed myself the
peevish reflection that George the Third, had he un
dergone the experience of a New York traffic block and then been showered with earth, might not have
made so much of a fuss about relinquishing his col
onies. Part of my discomfort was due to the tempera
ture, which seemed inordinately warm for the end of March, but then I recalled that New York lies at a considerably more southerly latitude than London, and
is therefore by comparison nearly in the Tropics.

As we walked on, my spirits lifted. The shops, res
taurants, theaters, and hotels which lined the street
presented a scene of colorful activity, and the air,
though warm, had in it a bracing tang new to me.

By keeping an eye on the street signs and noticing
that the numbers became higher as we made our way
northward, I was able at last to deduce that the next
street we would come to was Thirty-ninth, our destina
tion. On its corner I saw a massive building in elab
orately carved brownstone, stretching from one street
to the next.

"Good heavens, Holmes," said I. "Is that the Empire Theater? It dwarfs practically anything in Lon
don except the Albert Hall."

"No, Watson, it's the Metropolitan Opera House.
The Empire's just around this corner."

We turned it, and I perceived the theater's identify
ing sign projecting into the street. Though not as grand
as the opera house, it was still on a larger scale than
most of our theaters, and evidently newly constructed.

I followed Sherlock Holmes into the lobby, grateful for its musty coolness after the heat of the streets.

Holmes pointed toward the brass-grilled ticket win
dow and said, "Watson, just try to get us two tickets
for tonight, will you? I'm going to try to find out what
I can inside."

"Oh, yes, of course, Holmes," I responded. "I'll
join you as soon as I'm done."

He pushed open the door leading to the theater
auditorium and disappeared. I made my purchase
without having to try to decipher the seating plan of
the Empire, as the clerk offered me no choice.

"These are the last seats for tonight's performance,
mister. They're good ones. I wouldn't have 'em except
somebody returned 'em just an hour ago. Take 'em or
leave 'em."

I took them, pleased at the fortunate happenstance
that had enabled me to execute my commission,
though the two and a half dollars—ten shillings—
each seat cost seemed to me excessive. I turned to
follow Holmes.

A glance at the tickets, however, made me stop,
staring, for an instant, and returned to the ticket win
dow. After a brief exchange of questions and answers with the clerk, I left the lobby.

As I entered the rear of the theater, I saw Holmes
down front, just commencing a conversation with a
man in a rumpled jacket, evidently the stage door
man, who was emerging from behind the scenes.