The Seventh Bullet (15 page)

I expected Ryan to leave at that point; instead, however, he opened his brown coat and produced from it a folded, yellowing envelope. “Still,” he said, “we were told to co-operate with you from very high sources—which is the only reason I would ever consent to letting you see our file on the murder of David Graham Phillips.”

He handed the envelope to Holmes, who motioned for me to join him in perusing its contents.

“Use my brother’s desk, gentlemen,” Mrs. Frevert suggested, indicating the writing desk. Its gently sloping top currently
occupied by the Sphinx-like Ruffle whose front paws were tucked under his chest, the desk looked much like a draughtsman’s table.

“
I
could never write at such a contraption,” I observed.

“Actually, Doctor,” Mrs. Frevert explained, “you might be interested to know that Graham used it for reasons of health. He feared an appendicitis from stooping over, and he thought the ‘old black pulpit’—as he called it—could prevent that from happening. In fact, that desk over there travelled with him around the world.”

“Remarkable” was all I could bring myself to respond.

In the meantime, after sending Ruffle on his way, Holmes had splayed across the desktop in question the contents of the envelope Ryan had given him and bade me join in their scrutiny. Upon examination, the pages proved to be the official police report including the testimony of the witnesses who had observed the sad affair. In brief, the file added nothing more than a few new names to what we’d already learned. Newton James and Frank Davis were the two members of the Princeton Club who had witnessed the shooting. The former was a broker; the latter, a mining engineer. They were some hundred feet away, and both agreed that they had heard six reports when Phillips was shot. They said nothing of another gunman (although, of course, their attention was directed at giving immediate aid to Phillips), not to mention the ghastly coda of Goldsborough’s own self-immolation. Jacob Jacoby, a florist in the neighbourhood, who happened to be walking past, joined James and Davis in helping Phillips into the Princeton Club where they all waited until the ambulance arrived. The coroner reported six wounds including those in the chest and bowels. The police report identified a ten-chamber revolver and a dead assassin, killed by a single bullet
from the same pistol. There was no mention of Algernon Lee. He was the witness Mrs. Frevert had told us about who had called the gun a “six-shooter,” the vernacular appelation that, if accurate, rendered impossible the total of seven wounds, including the fatal blast to Goldsborough’s head.

“And how do you explain the omission of any reference to a six-chambered revolver?” Holmes asked the detective.

Ryan removed the bowler from his head and began fingering the hat’s inner band. “It don’t bother me, Mr. Holmes. Six bullets. Seven bullets. Maybe the doctors counted where a bullet entered and exited as two entrances. Who knows? We got the killer—that’s all that matters.”

“Perhaps,” said Holmes as he returned the report to the detective who was now preparing to leave.

No sooner had the door closed on the three police officers than Holmes said to me, “The police may not have any use for Mr. Algernon Lee, Watson, but you and I are going to pay him a visit. His address is, after all, just across the road. And once we speak to him, I think a visit to Bellevue Hospital might be in order.”

We paid our respects to Mrs. Frevert, who snatched up Ruffle to prevent him from bolting through the open door. Then, after making final plans with Beveridge for our meeting in the nation’s capital early the following day, we left the National Arts Club and traversed the simple roadway separating so much more than mere brick buildings.

If the late Karl Marx had wanted to illustrate what he regarded as the basis for class struggle, he could not have found a better study in contrasts than these two residences: 119 East Nineteenth Street, the opulent home of Phillips on one side of the street; 112
East Nineteenth Street, the modest brownstone of his assassin on the other. The latter was not rundown by any means, but it certainly lacked the plush fittings and fixtures of the building across the way. To those myopic experts on wrongdoing who, in seeking to blame the origins of crime on the influence of evil neighbourhoods, can seemingly ignore the differences that exist directly opposite each other, I might easily say “Let them come to East Nineteenth Street!”

Algernon Lee was the secretary of the Rand Club, a society of New York Socialists. Although I offer no sympathy to any of that ilk who preach the downfall of an economic system that has brought justice and civilisation to most of the world, I must confess to having found Mr. Lee a most affable gentleman. Balding and bespectacled, he looked like a public school headmaster. What’s more, he seemed most pleased to help us shed light on a mystery that, as he put it, had never been satisfactorily resolved.

“Understand, Mr. Holmes,” he said in his office of papers and books wedged into every possible recess, “I never actually saw Goldsborough’s pistol.”

“Then what makes you so positive that it had six chambers?” I asked. “I believe you described it as a ‘six-shooter.’”

“That’s correct, Dr. Watson. I used that term because it was the one I heard the police say over and over. I am not familiar with firearms as a rule, and I couldn’t possibly be expected to make up such an expression.”

“Just when did you hear them talk about the pistol?” Holmes asked.

Lee removed his round spectacles to rub his eyes. In the process, he seemed to be remembering. “The night of the killing,” he said
after repositioning the glasses, “the police swarmed all over this place. Two assistant District Attorneys, Ruben and Strong, led the investigation, but uniformed officers were stationed throughout the building. Goldsborough lived in the back. He was merely renting the room, you see. He had no political or social ties with our organisation whatsoever. But the agents of the corporate state must be thorough in their investigations of those who threaten the status quo, and as a result they interviewed most everyone who lives here. George Kirkpatrick lived next to Goldsborough, but even George didn’t have much to say about him. Oh, Goldsborough used to complain about being followed or not being appreciated or not having enough money—although on that score he kept reminding us that he would soon be getting some. But no-one could have possibly guessed that he would kill anybody.”

“The pistol, Mr. Lee,” Holmes reminded him, “the pistol.”

“Ah, yes. Please, forgive me. I have a tendency to digress. I was sitting in my office making some notes for a lecture I was scheduled to give. Two police detectives—I don’t know their names—were talking in the hallway just beyond my door. One said that Goldsborough had used a ‘six-shooter,’ and the other laughed and said, ‘Who did he think he was, Wild Bill Hickok?’”

“If that is the case, Mr. Lee,” I asked, “then why would the press say the gun held ten bullets?”

“A good question, Dr. Watson,” Lee replied. “I’m only reporting what I heard, but one of my associates has suggested that to protect their own class, the capitalists wanted to fix the blame for Phillips’s death on a single gunman. Since a six-shooter couldn’t fire seven bullets, the police—or the people who control the police—would have to concoct a weapon that could have done all the damage
itself. Ergo, the ten-chambered revolver. Mind you, this is pure conjecture, but it is indeed a plausible theory, don’t you think?”

As he asked this question, he raised his head so that the light from the overhead lamp reflected in his glasses and concealed his eyes.

Since it was obvious that the query required no answer and since it was equally obvious that its implications would remain unspoken, Holmes thanked Algernon Lee for his time and got up to leave. I rose to join him; but just before we reached the door, Lee stopped us.

Surprisingly, it was I he addressed. “If you ever write up this story, Dr. Watson,” he said, “Please do one thing: please be so kind as to impress upon your readers that—guilty or innocent— Fitzhugh Coyle Goldsborough was never one of us. He was never a Socialist. Good Lord, he was one of the Goldsboroughs of Maryland. Need I say any more?”

A brief drive brought us to the large blocks of buildings overlooking the East River that comprise Bellevue Hospital. White sea birds circled above us in the grey sky to the accompaniment of mighty blasts from the sirens of nearby ships. Not even the confines of a hospital could deaden the sounds from life on the river. We had little time for philosophising, however; we were hoping to meet a number of doctors who had been involved with Phillips after he had been attacked.

In addition to Phillips’s personal physician, Dr. Eugene Fuller, who had been called to the scene of the shooting, we wished to speak to the team of surgeons—Drs. Donovan, Moses, Wilds, and Dugan—who had examined Phillips’s wounds at the hospital. It was Dr. Wilds, we had been told by Mrs. Frevert, who had accompanied
the stricken author in the ambulance. But most of all, we wanted to converse with Dr. John H. Walker and Dr. I.W. Hotchkiss, the two men who had actually performed the surgery on Phillips.

In fact, we spoke to none of them. Rather, an imperious nurse with heavy jowls referred us to Dr. Milton Farraday, the hospital’s director. He had apparently made it very clear to his staff that all questions concerning the Phillips assassination should be addressed to him.

“I’m a very busy man, Mr. Holmes,” Dr. Farraday said. He had agreed to speak with us on the run, as it were, pausing in the corridor amidst the clang of metal or glass containers jarred by the nurses who were carrying them from room to room. Robed in a floor-length white coat, he was a tall, hirsute man with a single eyebrow line giving intensity to a demeanour undermined by what is commonly referred to as a wandering eye, an orb not synchronised with its fellow.

“I must concern myself with the health of those still living,” Dr. Farraday said, fixing an eye on Holmes, “not waste my time— or allow any members of my staff to waste theirs—by dredging up some year-old murder case that no-one cares about.” Then he turned that eye on me. “Certainly, Dr. Watson, as a medical man, you can understand my position.”

I muttered something in response that, I trust, sounded sympathetic without denigrating the importance of conferring with the examining doctors. Nonetheless, he refused our request, agreeing only to consult his files on Phillips to answer whatever questions we would put to him as long as they were brief. So brief did he intend his remarks to be, in fact, that he obdurately refused to return to his office, requiring instead an officious nurse to bring
him the appropriate hospital records right there in the corridor.

“Please, keep it short,” he reminded us, glancing at his watch and then nervously scanning the passageway. He seemed to be searching for eavesdroppers.

“A single question, Dr. Farraday,” Holmes said. “How do you explain seven bullet wounds in Mr. Phillips and Mr. Goldsborough caused by a revolver with only six chambers?”

“Oh, that is your line of enquiry, is it?” Farraday said. Exhaling deeply, he seemed to relax a bit. “See the police then. Don’t talk to me. The nature of the weapon is not the hospital’s concern.”

“We’ve already done so, Doctor. They’ve told us nothing new.”

“Look, Mr. Holmes, that shooting was over a year ago. My memory is hazy. Phillips was brought in here, as I recall, one afternoon and died late the following night. We spent all that time trying to revive him. All kinds of people wandered in and out of his room, important people.”

“Of course, Doctor, but after he died—when you had the time to do a thorough examination of his body—did you find the tracks of five or of six bullets?”

Dr. Farraday consulted his notes. Then he looked up and began to recite, “One bullet entered the right side of Phillips’s chest between the first and second ribs, perforating the right lung and exiting the back under the left shoulder. The examining team considered this wound to be the most serious. The second bullet passed through the right side of the abdomen, exiting from the left side, barely missing the intestine. The third bullet passed through his left thigh; the fourth and fifth bullets passed through his upper right thigh, the fifth lodging itself in his hip from where it was later extracted, the only bullet that had actually remained in his
body. The sixth bullet passed through his left forearm between the elbow and his wrist. Six bullets, twelve perforations.”

“But there should have been only eleven,” Holmes reminded him, “if one bullet remained in his body.”

“Hmmm,” Farraday intoned. He stared for a moment at the sheet before him. “You’re right, of course. I never noticed that discrepancy before. But what’s the point? It does nothing to shed light on the nature of the gun.”

“True,” Holmes said, “but it certainly serves to raise questions about the credibility of the medical report.”

“What’s the difference, Mr. Holmes?” a more humble Dr. Farraday asked. “Six bullets. Seven bullets. Eleven or twelve perforations. The man can’t be brought back to life. Nor can his assassin be further punished. Now, if you’ll excuse me?” And with that he walked briskly down the hall, making an immediate right turn into the nearest corridor that would remove him from our line of vision.

“Curious, Watson,” Holmes said as we remained standing in the middle of the hospital hallway. “Six bullets. Seven bullets.”

“Exactly what Detective Ryan said, eh, Holmes?”

“Precisely, old fellow,” he mused with a dry laugh. “Quite a coincidence. But come. We must return to the hotel and ready ourselves for the night-train to Washington.”

By the time we left Bellevue, the already grey afternoon had begun to darken. Rollins deposited us at the Waldorf, where Holmes and I filled two small valises with the accoutrements we would need for our brief journey to the nation’s capital and then rejoined the chauffeur who motored us to the Pennsylvania Station.