The Seventh Bullet (20 page)

Holmes and I stood back to back perusing the roadway, both of us attempting to distinguish any movement in the darkness beyond.

“The police should be here momentarily,” I whispered.

“Our friend must suspect that too, Watson,” he whispered in return, “so we may assume he will act quickly—if he has a pistol besides the one that is still lying on Van den Acker’s desk.”

Just then the whine of motor cars echoed up the road, their headlamps sweeping the neighbouring houses and trees as the police came round a turning; but though the flashes of light scarcely illuminated the blackness for more than an instant, I thought I could distinguish atop one of the brick columns the towering frame of the bearded stranger who had been so determinedly following us.

Whatever the villain’s nefarious intentions, the arrival of the police had obviously prevented him from carrying them out, for as we were wondering what his next move was to be, his vaguely familiar and distinctly defiant voice rent the darkness: “I have no weapon now, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, but I will the next time when the law won’t be around to save you ...”

I heard the scrape of his boots as he must have been turning to flee. Suddenly leaves rustled, we heard cloth tearing, the fence shook, and an agonising howl arose that prickled the very hairs on the back of my neck. In a moment, all was still again.

Striking a Vesta, Holmes revealed a most ghastly tableau. It was
indeed the grizzled man who had been so doggedly pursuing us. With strips of his black cape still fluttering from the gnarled tree branch in which the cloth had so obviously become entangled, the wretched man lay where his misdirected leap had propelled him, facedown, arms extended earthward as if trying to embrace what fate would never let him reach, his mangled and bloody body impaled on a phalanx of miniature spears, the deadly
fleurs-de-lis
atop the wrought-iron fence.

There was no way to save the unfortunate devil, but—horrible as it is to describe even now years later—he seemed to make a final attempt at extricating himself, writhing in awful agony, his scarlet hands grasping at the rails just below his chest. My effort would be futile, I knew, but the medical man that I am forced me to his aid. Even as I took a step forward, however, all movement ceased.

“There’s nothing to be done for him,” Holmes said, holding me back.

I stared in disbelief at the contorted face of the dead man just a yard from my own. “But who is he, Holmes?”

“Who indeed, Watson?” Holmes echoed, as he slowly peeled away the false beard.

“Altamont!” I gasped as the countenance I now fully recognised appeared before me.

“Yes, Watson,” Holmes said, “the personal secretary of former Senator Millard Pankhurst Buchanan.” Suddenly he bent over. “Hullo,” he murmured more to himself than to me, “what have we here?”

On the ground below the body, apparently having fallen from Altamont’s hand, lay a crumpled envelope. Looking over Holmes’s shoulder as he smoothed the cover flat, I could easily
see before the flame of his match extinguished that my friend’s name was written across the front.

“Open it, Holmes. It is addressed to you,” I said. As I spoke, I could see lights going on in the darkened windows at Van den Acker’s. “Hurry!” I cautioned. “The police have already entered the house.”

“Yes, Watson, I see.” Holding the envelope, he said quickly, “This is no doubt the message that Van den Acker had intended to give to me. And as such, I have no compunction about claiming it.”

Holmes unsealed the flap, lit a second match, and discovered yet another smaller envelope inside. This one, which had been sent through the post to Van den Acker’s address, bore the imprimatur of the United States Senate. Holmes opened this envelope as well and, seeing no letter inside, shook it so that, like a white moth, out fluttered a small, square piece of faded paper obviously cut from a newspaper.

Holmes struck another match, and as it flared, the two of us read what turned out to be a brief entry from the society column of the
Washington Post.

“Eyebrows were raised last night at the reception following a benefit concert of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony at Continental Hall. Lame-duck Senator Millard P. Buchanan left his party, including his elegantly gowned wife, in order to engage in an animated and heated discussion in the foyer of the hall with musician Fitzhugh Coyle Goldsborough of the distinguished Maryland family. That Senator Buchanan was dressed in formal attire and Mr. Goldsborough was accoutered less suitably made their conversation all the more noticeable.”

“But what does it mean, Holmes?” I asked. “Why is this article
so important?”

Reflected in the light of the dying match flame, Holmes’s eyes looked more piercing than ever. “It is the missing link, Watson. This cutting ties Goldsborough and Buchanan together. Continental Hall is in Washington, and the ‘lame-duck’ reference places their meeting after the 1910 election. Something that we said on our trip to the capital must have prompted one of the senators into sending Van den Acker this article to give to us; they all knew we were coming to see him. Whoever posted it really isn’t important, but that Altamont was undoubtedly the culprit who intercepted Van den Acker’s message to us certainly is. Or was.”

Holmes and I had no time to ponder this revelation, however, for shouting voices and streaks of light told us that the police were beginning to search the grounds surrounding Van den Acker’s house.

“Let us be off, old friend,” Holmes said, scooping up the article and the envelopes. “I don’t fancy spending the rest of this night explaining to the local constabulary what we were doing at the site of two mysterious deaths. You and I have more important matters to discuss.”

We took our leave of the scene at a rapid gait, but I could not help noticing the head of a small nail protruding from the heel of the dead man’s left boot.

As luck would have it, we were able to hail a taxi whose tired driver was on his way home for the night. The promise of a substantial gratuity ultimately convinced him to take us all the way to the ferry.

“You were not surprised to discover Altamont, were you, Holmes?” I asked once we had settled back for the ride.

“No, Watson. What we had discovered on Van den Acker’s
desk had prepared me in advance.”

“That book, Holmes! The one about the vampire.”

“Bravo, Watson. The ‘Dear Senator’ inscription, you see—it was not addressed to Van den Acker, as we were intended to believe.”

“But surely you can’t be certain of that, Holmes.”

“There’s the matter of the blood on the book, Watson.”

“But there was no blood on the book.”

“Precisely, old fellow. Because the book was placed on Van den Acker’s desk
after
he was shot.”

Slowly I was beginning to understand.

“The police,” I said, feeling a sudden burst of sympathy for the Morristown authorities. “Shouldn’t we be telling them?”

Holmes smiled. “Let them conjure their own explanations of tonight’s events,” he said. “If they assume that Van den Acker’s death is a suicide, then Altamont’s body may also prove to be a puzzle to them. The longer it takes the authorities to connect the deaths with Senator Buchanan, the more time we will have to try to find him ourselves. I fear that if our suspicions were made known in New York, they might find their way to Buchanan in England before we do.”

“But a man of his prominence is not going to give himself away on the basis of our circumstantial evidence or unsubstantiated theories,” I said.

“Of course not,” Holmes countered. “That is why we’re going to pay a visit to the Senator’s home in New York as quickly as we can.”

The lights of the dock soon appeared before us, and it was just a matter of minutes before we began the late journey back to Manhattan and our hotel.

“Although today is April Fool’s day, Watson, the local police are not as shortsighted as we had expected,” Sherlock Holmes said to me at breakfast the next morning. “See for yourself,” he added, handing me the copy of the
New York Times
that had accompanied his coffee.

“Former Senator Found Murdered at Home,” the headline trumpeted. I continued reading aloud:

“Former Senator Peter Van den Acker was discovered murdered at his home in Morristown, New Jersey, last night. The police believe that the killer was attempting to rob the house and shot Mr. Van den Acker when the thief entered the study. The body of the man police believe to be the intruder was found a few houses away. He had been horribly killed by falling on top of a sharp rail fence while trying to make good his escape. The police speculate that in his haste to flee, the murderer lost his footing and fell to his death. The suspect carried no papers, and thus the police are at a loss as to his identity.”

“A little time gained, eh, Watson?” Holmes said. “But to take advantage of it, we must be off.”

On that damp overcast morning, Rollins (looking much less suspicious now that our enquiries were pointing in a different direction) drove us to the east side of Central Park. On Fifth Avenue near Ninetieth Street the soaring turrets of the Buchanan home took their places alongside the lofty pinnacles and minarets of the sumptuous palaces of their neighbours. Rising as they did out of that dank grey fog, however, those towers and chimney pots looked more like tombstones in a forgotten graveyard than architectural hallmarks of America’s aristocracy.

I was reminded by Holmes that, according to Phillips’s writings,
the Buchanan mansion, like so many others of the Senator’s treasures, had originally belonged to his wife, Mrs. Elise Bradford Buchanan, the only living offspring of Tyler Bradford. Her father had traced both his ancestry and his money back to the second son of a duke whose title had been created in the seventeenth century by a monarch said to have been his natural father. Despite its ostentatious air, the house did indeed convey a regal sense of power and strength in its massive design.

Having instructed Rollins to remain some distance away, at exactly 10:00 Sherlock Holmes rang the bell at the absent senator’s red front door.

“Good morning,” Holmes brightly addressed Buchanan’s butler, a greying man with thick black eyebrows and small tufts of dark hair protruding from his ears. He had a forward stoop that gave him the appearance of being ready to depart when in fact he was solidly rooted to the ground. “I represent Bondy and Company,” Holmes announced, “booksellers of Charing Cross, London.” (How quickly he could assume a role never failed to amaze me. As I have stated on numerous occasions elsewhere, the stage lost a great actor when Sherlock Holmes took up the detection of crime.) “I know that your employer is abroad with his wife,” Holmes proceeded. “It is thanks to that gracious lady that we are here. Mrs. Buchanan has instructed our company to send its sales representatives—myself, Josiah Wink, and my associate, Cecil Thoroughgood—to peruse Mr. Buchanan’s library in hopes of settling on a suitable first edition as a surprise gift for, for—” (At this point Holmes withdrew the small notebook from inside his coat pocket and appeared to be searching for a misplaced occasion.)

“The Senator’s birthday, sir?”

“Yes, yes,” Holmes said, “just so.”

“Mrs. Buchanan,” the butler droned, “left no such word with me, sir.”

“Apparently it was a decision she reached in London. I myself only received the telegram from my home office to come here this very morning.”

“Really, sir.” The butler stood immobile.

“Come, my man,” Holmes said, “you may join us in our perusal. We seek to view only the library. Certainly you would not wish to thwart Mrs. Buchanan’s plans for a surprise.”

The butler remained stationary.

“C’mon, mate,” Holmes finally drawled with a winsome grin, “give a bloke the chance to earn ‘is salary.”

Ever so slowly a perceptible grin began to creep across the old man’s visage. He hesitated, finally turned, and, listing in the direction he was about to lead us, proceeded through the entry hall, and made a left turn to two highly polished doors of burled walnut both of which he quietly slid to either side. Before us stood the library, a large room with a bow window that overlooked the verdant gardens behind the Buchanan mansion.

Ignoring the vista as well as the musty smell of a book-filled room that had not been recently ventilated, Holmes began his search. That the volumes were arranged by genre made our hunt considerably easier. In the poetry section, we saw such familiar works as those by Browning, Wordsworth, and Coleridge— although from their pristine condition, I was forced to conclude that the good Senator and his wife read from those volumes infrequently, if at all.

Against the northern wall, framing the window, we found Buchanan’s fiction library. The works of Mark Twain were there along with what appeared to be a complete set of Dickens. Ironically, the political novels of David Graham Phillips also had a place on the senator’s shelves. Against the right side of the north wall we discovered a subdivision within the fiction collection, books dealing with the fantastic. Remembering Buchanan’s concern with superstition, I was not unduly surprised by the discovery, but Holmes drew closer to scan the titles.

The only sound was that of the butler’s heavy breathing behind us.

“I say, Thoroughgood,” Holmes said at last, “here is an interesting collection: Mary Shelley’s
Frankenstein,
Stevenson’s
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,
Goethe’s
Faust,
Poe’s
Tales of Terror,
Walpole’s
Castle of Otranto,
Charles Gould’s
Mythical Monsters,
Maturin’s
Melmoth the Wanderer,
Lewis’s
The Monk,
Jane Austen’s
Northanger Abbey,
H.G. Wells’s
The Invisible Man
and
The Island of Dr. Moreau.”

On the neighbouring shelf were occult books of an even more specific nature. I saw two copies of Bram Stoker’s
Dracula,
Pierre Carmouche’s
Le Vampire,
Dr. John Polidor’s
The Vampyre,
Thomas Preskett Prest’s
Varney the Vampire,
and—rather surprisingly since we had previously assumed that it was the volume we had discovered at Van den Acker’s—Viereck’s
The House of the Vampire.
If the case against Buchanan depended so greatly on that book at Van den Acker’s being his, perhaps our rush to condemn him was premature. Holmes, however, appeared unruffled by the discovery.