The Seventh Bullet (2 page)

N: NATIONAL ARTS CLUB

P: PRINCETON CLUB

R: RAND SCHOOL

S: SAMUEL J. TILDEN’S FORMER HOME

T: THEODORE ROOSEVELT’S BIRTHPLACE

X: ASSASSINATION SITE OF DAVID GRAHAM PHILLIPS

–: ROUTE OF D.G.P. ON 23 JANUARY 1911

“As between knaves and fools, I incline towards knaves. At least, they are teachers of wisdom in the school of experience, while fools avail nothing, are simply provokers and purveyors of knavery.”

–David Graham Phillips,
Light-Fingered Gentry

E
ven now, some thirty years later, it seems difficult to imagine that one of the worst disasters in British naval history, a tragedy occurring more than two thousand miles from our native England, could have so greatly affected the lives of my good friend Sherlock Holmes and me; but that is exactly the case.

In June of 1893, during manoeuvres forty miles off the coast of Syria in the Levant, Vice Admiral Sir George Tryon, commanding the fleet of eleven warships from the oaken bridge of H.M.S.
Victoria,
issued his fateful order to turn about. Despite the protests of Rear Admiral Markham aboard the nearby H.M.S.
Camperdown
that there was not sufficient room for the double file of ships to execute a turn, the
Camperdown
was commanded to proceed.
Giving truth to the appropriateness of Admiral Markham’s fears, the
Camperdown
rammed into the
Victoria
, which, owing to a gaping wound in her side, plummeted downward. There was created, as the pressman David Graham Phillips reported, “a vortex, at the bottom of which whirled the great blades of the screws. Into this maelstrom, down upon those frightful, swift revolving knives, were drawn several hundred British sailors, marines, and officers. They were torn into pieces, the sea was reddened all around, and strewn with arms, legs, heads, trunks. Then the boilers, far down beneath the surface, burst, and scores of those alive were scalded to death—and the sea smoothed out again and began to laugh in the superb tropical sunlight of the summer afternoon.”

In addition to the enormity of the disaster—386 brave seamen lost their lives—a significant aspect to the story was the profound silence of Fleet Street on the matter. Sceptics even went so far as to suggest collusion between the Admiralty and the government in keeping the details secret. In fact, when the full account of the tragedy was finally published, the world learned—much to the dismay of the British press—that it was an American, the aforementioned Phillips, who, with timely telegrams and fortuitous connections, had secured the story for the newspapers in the United States.

An American member of my own profession, Dr. Ira Harris, happened to be in the telegraph office in Tripoli when Phillips’s daring request to anyone at all for information on the naval collision arrived.
^*
Ascertaining the facts from an unidentified seaman who
had witnessed the event, Dr. Harris relayed the account in detail through a Turkish clerk back to Phillips in London.

Needless to say, the journalistic community was amazed. How a mysterious sailor, a medical practitioner, and a non-English-speaking telegrapher could combine to report a story of such importance with such accuracy seemed nothing short of a miracle.

It was not until three years later, when Phillips himself visited us at Baker Street, that I learned the solution to the puzzle. Following his presumed death at the hands of Professor Moriarty at the Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland in April 1891, my friend Sherlock Holmes spent three years touring distant localities. The summer of 1893 brought him not only to the Holy Land, as Holmes explained in the case my readers know as “The Adventure of the Empty House,” but also to the environs of the ill-fated naval manoeuvres. The nameless sailor who had relayed in such fine detail to Dr. Harris the narrative of the collision at sea had, of course, been Sherlock Holmes; but it was only the photographs accompanying the newspaper stories of Holmes’s reappearance in 1894 that enabled Dr. Harris to learn the true identity of the anonymous witness who had furnished him with the account. Upon making this discovery, Dr. Harris informed Phillips, who, during his next trip to London, came to Baker Street to thank personally the man responsible for providing him the means to establish his international reputation. Ironically, it was this celebratory encounter between Holmes and Phillips that resulted in our personal enquiry into the writer’s brutal and bizarre assassination more than ten years later, an atrocity so strange that it actually sent echoes of vampirism reverberating through the corridors of the American Capitol in Washington, D.C.

Holmes and I had been involved in portentous cases before, but none besides his role in bringing Von Bork to justice at the start of the Great War held such worldwide implications as Phillips’s shocking murder. Nonetheless, because in 1906 Phillips had so successfully attacked the evildoers in his government that he brought down upon himself the wrath of many who to this very day still command power at its highest echelons, it is with great trepidation even now—more than a full decade after Phillips’s death in 1911—that I dare set my pen to paper. In the name of propriety as well as prudence, therefore, I have taken the necessary care to obfuscate not only those incriminating details that might yet give rise to embarrassment, but also the specific identities of those less-easily recognised dignitaries who could still have cause to be distressed by certain particulars being made public for the first time in the narrative that follows.

It was early in the spring of 1912 when I first met that most inimitable of American ladies, Mrs. Carolyn Frevert. As I have chronicled elsewhere, Sherlock Holmes and I had by this time been going our separate ways for many a year. After retiring as a consulting detective, Holmes had taken up the tending of bees in a quaint cottage in Sussex. I, happily settled into my most recent marriage, was receiving patients in my Queen Anne Street surgery. In point of fact, we scarcely saw each other. Although he might come up to London to hear some celebrated violinist at the Albert Hall, or I might journey to Sussex for what he termed the “occasional weekend visit,” these were social engagements; inevitably, the continuous occupation of ridding England of her miscreants and rogues had passed to younger men. Sherlock Holmes, after all, was now fifty-eight; I, his frequent partner in combating lawlessness
and crime, fifty-nine. We no longer had the physical stamina or the energetic enthusiasm to pursue the denizens of the underworld. Indeed, the sole substantive link to our days at what my generous readers assure me will become a world-famous address was the person of Mrs. Hudson, our ever-faithful housekeeper, who, despite the opportunity to rid herself of her most untidy boarder, had given up her Baker Street lodgings to look after Holmes and his bees in the Downs. Her only real fear, she constantly repeated, was that her friendly former rooms would be razed and supplanted by some blocks of dour office buildings.

On a clear, blustery mid-March afternoon—Friday the thirteenth, to be exact, if not ironically macabre—the specific events that would carry us halfway round the world actually began. Since I had no patients scheduled after the gouty Mr. Wigmore, I entertained high hopes of beginning my weekend early. As no-one else was seated in my waiting room when I ushered the limping patient in for his examination, I was looking forward, on such a beautiful day, to a constitutional and then tea with my dear wife. It was to my great surprise, therefore, that when I escorted Wigmore out of my consulting-room door, I saw perched rigidly in one of the bowbacked chairs a raven-haired woman who despite her middle age was still quite handsome. Dressed entirely in black, she sat perfectly motionless except for the constant flutter of the black lace fan she was holding. Since it was not hot enough to warrant such an action, I took it to be the outward show of some inner agitation.

“Are you ill, madam?” I asked.

“No, Dr. Watson,” she replied, looking up at me. Even in those few words, I was able to detect her American accent. “In fact, I really did not come to consult you as a doctor at all. I’m rather
afraid that I’m here under false pretences since it’s not even you whom I really wish to speak with.”

“I don’t understand,” I said, feeling a little chagrined.

“I’ve come all this way, Dr. Watson, to see your friend, Mr. Sherlock Holmes.”

I must confess that, as I had not seen Holmes for quite some time myself and since his person did not figure in my every waking thought, I was completely taken aback by the reference. After all, only moments before, my deepest thoughts were of the cakes and biscuits my wife would be serving at tea.

As we were alone, however, I sat down in the chair beside her. About to inform her of my friend’s retirement, I began, “Sherlock Holmes, madam—”

“Mrs. Frevert,” she informed me. “Mrs. Carolyn Frevert. In fact, Dr. Watson, I believe you knew my brother Graham.”

I thought for a moment, but could not recognise the name.

“David Graham Phillips,” she said slowly.

Of course, I now saw the resemblance. It was the eyes—dark, piercing, commanding—the same keen eyes that had revealed her brother to be an inquisitive, aggressive newspaperman the first time I met him when he had come round in 1896 or ‘97 to thank Holmes for the account of the naval collision. That had been a few years before Phillips had begun writing novels and well before, as the world now so sadly knows, Phillips was shot and killed in New York by one who at the time had been described as a deranged assassin ranting of vampires.

It had taken only a moment for these thoughts to course through my mind, but the look of concern exemplified in Mrs. Frevert’s dark-knitted brow made me feel guilty for my silence, however brief.

“I beg your pardon,” I said. “I was lost in memory. Do accept my apology and also my condolences on your brother’s death. Holmes and I were both deeply saddened. To think, a writer with such innate ability and promise—”

“Thank you, Dr. Watson,” she broke in. “All of us at home were terribly grieved, as you can imagine.” Mrs. Frevert paused to take a deep breath. Then she continued, “I first learned from Graham’s letters how much he had enjoyed meeting you and Mr. Holmes. And once he returned to New York, he always spoke of his encounters with you both in London as the highlights of his stay in England.” It was only now that her worried expression began to fade. Indeed, the hint of a smile crept in at the corners of her red lips, and she began to slow the wave of her fan.

“Graham never really liked leaving New York,” she explained. “I know he called it ‘the damned East’ in one of his books, but it was where so many important things were happening that he hated to be away—from them, from me. We were so very close, you see.” She closed her eyes for a moment. “In fact,” she said, as if trying to regain her earlier optimism, “to Graham, 221B Baker Street was one of the landmarks of London. He wrote about his visits there at great length.”

Desirous of keeping her mood buoyant, I ventured recounting the rather amusing narrative of her brother’s initial encounter with Holmes. Discoursing so gaily about Phillips seemed a better tonic for his sister than those therapeutic medicines for depression we physicians sometimes have to prescribe.

“When your brother first arrived at Baker Street, Mrs. Frevert, I must admit to being quite put off by his flamboyant manner of dress. Despite the politeness with which he introduced himself,
he seemed quite the popinjay to me. Still, since I had grown accustomed to all types of visitors, I simply told him that Holmes was not in and suggested he come round at teatime as I expected my friend back by then.

“Your brother called again just as Mrs. Hudson, our housekeeper, was bringing up the tea. I offered him a chair; but not wishing to eat without Holmes, we quietly sat staring at the sandwiches and cakes, both of us eagerly awaiting Holmes’s return. At last, after an uncomfortable three-quarters of an hour, your brother rose and asked for his hat. He was in fact glancing at his pocket watch one final time when Holmes entered the room. I was about to introduce the two of them, but Holmes interrupted. ‘Allow
me,
my dear Watson,’ he said. My friend remained silent for the briefest of moments observing the stranger standing before him.

‘Regard the appearance, Watson,’ Holmes instructed as if I had not noticed the eccentric figure with whom I had just spent close to an hour. ‘The great height, the boyish grin, the hair parted in the centre. Note the distinctive apparel: the boater rakishly perched on the back of the head, the pink shirt, the cutaway suit of brightly flowered silk, the pearl-button boots. But especially note the collar.’

“Holmes was referring to the tallest and stiffest celluloid collar that I had ever seen. Indeed, it was nearly smothering the staid dark-blue cravat below.”

“I know, Dr. Watson.” Mrs. Frevert laughed. “Graham prided himself on having the largest collars in New York City.”

“I can well believe it.” I chortled, and then continued my account. “Leaning forward to admire the white chrysanthemum in your brother’s lapel, Holmes glanced down at your brother’s right hand.