The Seventh Bullet (10 page)

“You’re not a cigarette smoker, are you, Doctor?” Buchanan asked between deep draws of the tobacco.

“No,” I replied, “it’s just a bit early in the morning for me.”

He nodded, apparently approving of my answer. “Phillips smoked cigarettes, you know. Never could get him to smoke like a man.”

“Now, Millard,” Hearst said, “times are changing. You can’t keep holding on to your old-fashioned ideas. Phillips may have had some peculiar habits, but there’s nothing unmanly about smoking cigarettes.”

“Which raises an interesting question, gentlemen,” I interjected, having found an opportunity to ask one of the queries that troubled me. “If you feel so strongly about Phillips, Senator Buchanan, why work for Mr. Hearst? In fact, shouldn’t your quarrel really be with him and not with Phillips, who was just carrying out Mr. Hearst’s
request in attacking the Senate?”

Buchanan coughed, a loose, ropey cough which warned me, as a physician, that cigars were probably not his best medicine. “Why, I don’t hold the chief responsible,” he said. “Bill was just doin’ what was necessary to try to get elected governor. I know that. Why, you might accuse somebody of wantin’ to kill Bill Hearst here instead of just stoppin’ with Phillips.”

It was obvious that the nearer the senator came to talking about Phillips’s death, the more his language lapsed into its familiar roots. Dropping his
g
’s was emblematic of how Buchanan’s formal speech began to revert to the drawl of the impoverished background that Phillips had highlighted in illuminating the senator’s rise from rural poverty to political power. According to Phillips, it was not a noble climb, and it included an expedient marriage.

“I beg your pardon,” I said. “I didn’t intend to accuse anyone of anything.”

A silence ensued during which I watched the smoke of Buchanan’s cigar hang in the thick air. Suddenly, the long ash at the end fell on to his desk, landing on a piece of paper. A moment later, a lick of yellow flame shot upward.

“Quick, Doctor!” the senator barked, as he tried to pat out the fire with his naked palm. “Water! On the shelf behind you.”

I turned to see a jug of drinking water on a shelf just beyond the ladder to my left. I sprang to get it, leaning under the ladder to do so.

“Stop!” Buchanan bellowed. “Are you mad? Walking under a ladder?”

I sidestepped the ladder in question, fetched the water, and
poured enough on the offending flame to extinguish it. Only then did I notice that Hearst had been sitting calmly during the entire episode. Indeed, he had not even unclasped his hands.

Buchanan was extinguishing the cigar as Hearst explained, “Mill may know his politics, Doctor, but like Phillips he has his oddities. The man is a superstitious rube.”

“The horseshoe above the door?” I recalled.

“Exactly,” Buchanan said, “open end up to prevent the luck from pouring out.”

“Would you believe,” Hearst said, “that he made me cancel a political speech two weeks ago just because it was scheduled to be given on Friday the thirteenth?”

Buchanan laid several sheets of blank paper over the puddle of water forming on his desk. Hearst chuckled, despite the smell of burnt paper lingering in the room. Then, becoming more serious, he returned to the subject at hand. “Phillips didn’t want the
Treason
assignment to begin with. That’s what’s so funny about all this. He wanted someone else for the job. Said he was a novelist, not a journalist any more, when I asked him to take it on. If you want my opinion, it was his sister talking. Phillips said he couldn’t be bothered. ‘Get William Allen White to do it,’ he said. I said, ‘Name your price.’ Phillips was that good. He said, ‘You couldn’t afford to pay me what I want.’ ‘Try me,’ I said. And he did—although I think he was bluffing just to avoid the assignment. Still, I met his offer, and the rest is history. But, you know, I think that for the remainder of his life, he couldn’t rid himself of the idea that he had written those articles to make a small fortune.”

“Wrote lies, you mean,” added Buchanan.

“Oh, he exaggerated a bit,” Hearst agreed, “but name me one
good newspaperman who doesn’t.”

I was well aware of Mr. Hearst’s views on what constituted responsible journalism. The sensationalist “yellow” press, which many people have come to regard as the true cause of America’s war in Cuba with Spain, was generally believed to have been sired by the man sitting next to me. Indeed, by some he was known as “The Yellow Kid.”

“Occasionally,” Hearst added, “even I had to step in and tone down some of Phillips’s charges. But in the main, they were accurate; our lawyers were always looking over his shoulder. And if the body politic forced Mr. Buchanan here to step down, why then, who am I to disagree? At the same time, I recognise his talents and political acumen. ‘One man’s meat is another man’s poison,’ I believe the saying goes. He might be through in the Senate, but that doesn’t mean if I want to be president I still can’t profit from the services of a good Democrat. Hell, I pay him enough. Every man has his price. In that way, I guess Millard here is just like Phillips.” The explosion was the clamour of Buchanan’s large chair falling over as he jumped to his feet.

“You’ve gone too far, Bill!” he shouted. “Don’t go comparin’ me to that good-for-nothin’ nance!”

“Offer Dr. Watson a drink, Mill,” Hearst said calmly. “And have one yourself.” Buchanan righted his chair and then, opening a drawer on his side of the desk, produced a silver flask and three small cut-crystal glasses. Without saying a word, he poured an inch of the brown-coloured spirits into each glass; nodded at both Hearst and me; and then, tossing his head back, drank the entire contents of his glass in a single gulp.

Hearst imitated his example although I must confess that I was
considerably more restrained.

When we had finished our potation, Buchanan said, “Bill, with your permission, although I’d like to continue this discussion, I do have to go. That ship won’t wait.”

“I know,” Hearst said. “You’ve got to go to England to buy some more books.”

“First editions,” Buchanan corrected. “In Charing Cross Road,” he explained to me as if his employer were beyond such knowledge.

Hearst chuckled. “I go to Europe and buy roomfuls of antiques; I guess
you
have more self-control.”

“Pay me your income and see how much self-control I have,” Buchanan replied, and both men broke into laughter.

As the interview had obviously reached its conclusion, I stood up and shook hands with both of them. Mr. Altamont directed me out of the building, and I soon emerged in the city’s traffic to see where Rollins had moored the Packard. As I ambled, I thought again of Hearst’s offer of employment. I looked at the mammoth edifices surrounding me, listened to the roar of afternoon motor cars that were so much noisier than their horse-drawn relatives. Would I really want to live here, I wondered, a stranger in a foreign land? Americans might think we shared a common language, but those of us who enjoy the precision of accurate expression can quite justifiably disagree. Besides, although I was indeed closing down my surgery, I was still a doctor. Could I find a home in American medicine? Could I enjoy my retirement in a place of so much bustle? And most importantly, could my ever-tolerant wife adjust to the fast pace of living that was so different from the domestic tranquillity of our red-brick home in Queen Anne
Street? To all of my questions, I found myself happily responding in the negative.

As it was never too soon to begin preparing the notes I would give to Holmes upon his arrival, I asked Rollins to recommend a quiet locale where I might review the information I had so far acquired. His choice, a small white bench not far from a reflecting pond in Central Park, was ideal. Just the opposite of the busy thoroughfares, the vast sprawl of lawn offered a serenity I would not have thought possible to find but a few minutes before. Like Londoners, New Yorkers seem to enjoy their parks, and it was refreshing to view children of all ages playing gaily in the distance.

I told Rollins to return for me in two hours’ time and, after taking out notebook and pencil, sat down to begin my contemplations. The chauffeur, however, hadn’t moved.

“In two hours’ time,” I repeated, but his surly expression indicated he was not about to leave.

“Senator Beveridge wants me to watch out for you,” he said. “To be sure nothing happens to you.”

“My man,” I said, “what can possibly happen in the middle of these delightful grounds?”

Still he remained stoic.

Finally, we compromised. Rollins agreed to stand off in the distance to my right, close enough to keep watch, but far enough away not to disturb my thoughts or—for that matter—to oversee my notations. In fact, I was interrupted only once. A curious Alsatian lumbered up to sniff my bench, but I quickly sent him on his way.

Although I had detected nothing of a criminal nature after a day in New York, I had certainly found it evident that there was an abundance of persons who didn’t much care for Mr. David
Graham Phillips; but did distaste lead to murder, I wondered, and if so, how did such a plan involve the now-deceased assassin, Fitzhugh Coyle Goldsborough?

I wrote in my notebook the first name to be considered. Frevert, it seemed to me, offered the greatest case for revenge in that Phillips had supplanted him as his wife’s companion; but that triangular affair had been an issue years ago, and nothing lately appeared to have arisen that would have exacerbated Frevert’s rage.

Buchanan, whose name I copied down next, was also a prime suspect. He obviously felt that Phillips had libelled him directly and had indirectly cost him his Senate seat; but the
Treason
articles were some five years old when Phillips was killed, and it hardly seemed plausible that Buchanan would plan a murder taking half a decade to perpetrate.

Even less plausible to me was Frevert’s suggestion that his wife might be driven to jealousy by anyone or anything that could deprive her of her position of closeness with her brother—unless, of course, her brother was involved with persons unknown or activities unnamed that aroused in Mrs. Frevert some level of passion resulting in murder; but then it was Mrs. Frevert who had come to Holmes and me in the first place. Why would she have wanted to open an investigation that already had been closed by the police if the results of that new investigation might implicate her?

I could also not forget Beveridge, Phillips’s old friend. Despite the suspicious behaviour of his chauffeur, who was still observing me from his post beneath a great tree some hundred feet away, I saw no reason whatsoever for suspecting the former senator. And yet there was such a jarring inconsistency between his outward insouciance and the nefarious secrecy he seemed so eager to
attribute to his colleagues. When Beveridge described that ugly world just below the surface of reality, was he in fact describing his own divided self?

It was an interesting question to ponder, and so I glanced up—as people are wont to do when undertaking contemplative activities— and noted a quick movement at the bench about seventy-five feet down the footpath to my left. A bearded man in a dark suit appeared to be reading a book. I say “appeared” because in point of fact I believe he had been staring at me while I was engaged in writing, and only my abrupt change of position caused him to regard his own text so closely; but as he was holding the book in front of his face as well as sitting too far away, I could not get a really good look at him. Besides, I wasn’t completely convinced of my suspicions in the first place.

Putting him out of my mind, therefore, I returned to my previous thoughts. In my notebook I completed the list of the four names I had been considering earlier and placed pluses after Frevert’s and Buchanan’s to represent my suspicions—however meagre. After Mrs. Frevert’s and Beveridge’s I marked minuses. Then I went back to each name and scrawled a question mark next to it. That symbol, I believed, best conveyed my thoughts about guilt. Hearst, I might add, seemed so far removed from the incident that I didn’t think his name warranted noting at all. Why would a man of his prominence have any reason in the world to want Phillips out of the way? And yet, he did hire Buchanan, who felt just the opposite.

I also had to remember that Holmes was not only interested in criminal motivation. He wanted the sense of what a victim was like, of how a victim affected people around him; and that
information, Holmes used to say, was what I was so valuable in collecting. On the few occasions that he complimented me, it was my selective powers he generally chose to praise, my sense of what was important. That he also accused me of seeing but failing to observe was why he had insisted on delaying any investigation of the murder scene or of actual witnesses until he could interrogate them himself. That I always seemed to acquiesce did not denote that I necessarily agreed; but because it was our way, I would continue to perform what I believe the American constabulary calls “legwork.”

Once I signalled Rollins that I was ready to return to the hotel, I pocketed my notebook with care. Indeed, I looked twice at the ground beneath the seat upon which I had been resting to be certain nothing had fallen from my jacket. I had almost forgotten the mysterious stranger down the road. When I looked to see if he was still there, I saw only an empty bench.

Throughout my writings about the exploits of Sherlock Holmes—indeed, in these very pages—I have frequently resorted to the benefits of metaphor to emphasise the similarities between the detective’s search for wrongdoers and the predator’s quest for game. Implied in these parallel views of sleuth and hunter is a similarity of nerve, skill, perseverance, and intelligence. I had always regarded myself and Holmes as hunters. After all, had we not rid the world of that ferocious hound in the Grimpen Mire in Devonshire or that savage Andaman Islander and his poisoned darts or the deadly swamp adder trained by a mad doctor? Such temptations of fate were part of our job, however—professional responsibilities, not dramatic confrontations we actively sought out. In fact, I came to realise on that Saturday afternoon at
Sagamore Hill that, until I met Theodore Roosevelt, I had never truly been exposed to what hunting really involves. Holmes and I had our memories, a few small souvenirs, and a number of stories in print that recorded our safaris into the under-world; but we had no tangible trophies. Sitting in the North Room of the president’s home and confronted by antlers that looked like trees or by the heads of silently screaming bison or by the pelts of big game cats, jaws frozen in the act of roaring, and then realising that the man with the surprisingly high-pitched voice before me had stalked and killed all of these creatures just because he wanted to, I must confess to being awestruck. A chronicler like myself who has always done his best to avoid encounters with danger could not compare with this rugged tracker who lived for such adventure. From behind the walrus moustaches, the golden
pince-nez
and the smiling yet clenched teeth, he greeted us in that reedy voice that detracted not at all from the
Übermensch
he was. Beveridge had warned me of the president’s gruff demeanour, but he had also said that Roosevelt enjoyed perpetuating that portrait of himself.