The Seventh Bullet (7 page)

He had begun with a clarion call to arms: “Treason is a strong word, but not too strong, rather too weak, to characterise the situation in which the Senate is the eager, resourceful, indefatigable agent of interests as hostile to the American people as any invading army could be, and vastly more dangerous.” In
general terms, he referred to “the utter rottenness of the leaders of the Senate and the House” and to their “thievish legislation, preventing decent legislation, devising ways and means of making rottenest dishonesty look like patriotism.”

Although such language appeared most vehement, even I was a sophisticated enough observer of the political stage to know that politicians allow their critics a voice as long as that voice does not become too personal. For their part, members of the press generally honour such a relationship in order to keep on a safe footing with representatives of the government who can furnish them with interesting stories and pregnant titbits of information. Phillips, therefore, must have surprised many a prominent figure with his complaints that the moneyed trusts had purchased control of the United States Senate and that the easily bought state legislatures should be replaced by the voting public as determiners of who should represent the people in that august body.

Since accusations of such a general nature are always being made by the discontented, I was greatly shocked at Phillips’s personal attacks on specific members of the government. He called Senator Chauncey Depew of New York “the sly courtier-agent, with the greasy conscience and the greasy tongue and the greasy backbone and the greasy hinges of the knees.” He described Millard Pankhurst Buchanan, the other New York senator, as an “in-law of the upper class whose marriage licence seemed instead a hunting permit that offered up the American people for sport.” He said that Maryland’s Arthur Pue Gorman had “absorbed and assimilated all the mysteries of the Senate—all its crafty, treacherous ways of smothering, of emasculating, of perverting legislation,” while to Philander Chase Knox of Pennsylvania, Phillips wrote,
“America has meant, not the American people, but the men who exploit the labour and the capital of the American people of all classes, even of their own small class of the colossally rich.” More than twenty senators received such treatment from Phillips. It was heady stuff, I thought, but was it grounds for murder?

As Phillips’s writings had made eventful an otherwise uneventful voyage (if one’s maiden journey to America can ever truly be regarded as uneventful), it seemed appropriate that I had imbued myself with Phillips’s honest yet almost naive American voice; for when at last on that sunny afternoon I first saw the Statue of Liberty holding high her torch, I viewed that lamp as symbolising not only political freedom, but also the artistic freedom that had enabled this literary
provocateur
to criticise his own government. Indeed, that last day at sea, it was as if I were reading
The Treason of the Senate
not by sunlight at all but rather by the illuminating flame of that monument to freedom.

Soon, amid a great clatter of bells and sirens, the
Majesty
entered the Port of New York, released her families of immigrants to the customs authorities of Ellis Island, and with the help of a fleet of tugboats was pushed, cajoled, prodded, and coaxed up the Hudson River to berth just opposite, as my map revealed, the centre of Manhattan.

All large seaports, I should imagine, have much in common: the bustle of individuals on their own specific missions that, when taken in the aggregate, seem but a baffling hurly-burly: stevedores unloading cargoes of wooden crates and oversized tins and drums; porters pushing their precious loads of baggage to awaiting carriages and motor cars; passengers debarking into the arms of long-lost family. A babble of voices in diverse
languages, a cacophony of whining engines and creaking steel—I could have been standing in Southampton or in Naples or in Marseilles—any great port city; but, in fact, I was in New York, and somehow I knew it felt different from being in those other places. There was an invigorating mixture of traffic, electricity, and excitement all presided over by those modern-day Babels of progress, architectural wonders that I could recognise myself from magazine illustrations I had seen in England: the sparkling Metropolitan Tower, the tallest building on earth (having just recently outclimbed the rival Singer), and the as-yet unfinished Woolworth, in the process of claiming the title for itself. Awed, bewildered, exhilarated—where else could I have been but in New York City, gateway to the New World?

Suddenly my eyes refocused. From the skyscrapers in the distance I turned my gaze to the throng before me and a hand-lettered sign about the size of a standard piece of writing paper. On it appeared my name. It was held by a well-dressed man in dark overcoat with astrakhan collar and cuffs and a black trilby. A few wrinkles suggested he must have been middle-aged, but his trim physique and rugged good looks belied his years. He was tall, had a sharp, angular jaw, and was sporting one of those high collars that Phillips himself had fancied so much. Indeed, he could have passed for the writer’s brother.

“Dr. Watson?” he asked when I reached him. “Dr. John Watson?”

“Yes,” I said, “I’m John Watson. But I’m afraid—”

“I’m Albert Beveridge, Doctor.
Senator
Albert Beveridge.
Former
senator, to be more accurate. But you can call me ‘Bev.’ I was Graham’s closest friend, and Carolyn—that is, Mrs. Frevert—asked
me to meet the
Majesty
personally and see that your were properly welcomed to New York. I travelled all the way from Indiana for the occasion. Mrs. Frevert decided to remain at home to oversee tonight’s dinner. You
are
coming, of course. After all, I reckon you’re the guest of honour.”

Holmes, I knew, had sent a telegram to Mrs. Frevert with details of our change in plans and his decision to remain awhile longer in England, but that was no reason for the lady herself to be absent. Was I to interpret her failure to meet me as a lack of faith in Holmes’s representative? And who was this former Senator Beveridge to take her place?

“I hope your trip was okay, Doctor,” Beveridge went on. “I have a car waiting just down the walkway.” Turning abruptly, he located a Negro porter in blue velveteen and issued him instructions. Despite the latter’s greying hair and stooped shoulders, the man tipped his cap and proceeded to secure my baggage on a small wagon.

Followed by the porter who was steering my trunk, we elbowed our way through the crowds until we reached a great yellow motor car with a short, sombre young man in grey livery standing before it.

“This is my driver, Rollins,” Beveridge said, “and this little machine,” he added with obvious pride, “is a 1910 Packard ‘Thirty.’“

Rollins nodded slightly, but his deep-set dark eyes and square jaw prevented any warmth from emanating. The great yellow motor car did not appeal to me. I make no apologies even now, many years after the advent of the automobile, of my preference for the horse and carriage. Perhaps less self-sufficient and more limited in range than contemporary self-propelled public transport, a hansom cab under the reins of the right driver could
surpass any of today’s horseless wonders. Besides, the drumbeat of hooves echoing down Baker Street on a dark, foggy night is for me the essence of London in the ‘90s, the scene of so many adventures I shared with Sherlock Holmes. Each of us, I think, adopts a comfortable and familiar era or place in which to plant ourselves; and from then on, that which disagrees with our memories—a new building here, a change in paint there—is forever jarring and anachronistic.

Breaking into my musings, Rollins barked at the porter, “George, put the trunk up top!”

As the older man struggled to tie the large box to the roof of the Packard, I said to Beveridge, “I’ve worked with Sherlock Holmes for more than twenty years, and yet I haven’t the foggiest notion of how your man there deduced the name of the porter.”

“Ah,”—Beveridge smiled—”You call all porters ‘George’—after the ones who work in railroad stations. They’re named for George Pullman, the man who invented the sleeping car.”

I observed the old porter labouring under the gaze of the younger man. The former had seemed to wince when Rollins spoke. I thought it was owing to the chauffeur’s tone, but now I realised it was the pejorative name. Not counting the ferocious pygmy who met his death that dark night on the Thames, the only Negro with whom I had any dealings was Steve Dixie, the bellicose boxer known as “Black Steve” of the old Spencer-John gang; no more threatening a ruffian would anyone care to meet. I had never before concerned myself with why a man of the coloured race might be so contentious; but after mere minutes on American soil, I seemed to be confronting the questions a mixed society raises.

“Get to know Rollins and the Packard, Doctor,” Beveridge was saying, oblivious to my thoughts, “because I am going to make them available to you and Mr. Holmes. I’ll be staying at my club on Vanderbilt Row, but Rollins will be waiting in front of your hotel whenever you need him; his aid should make your investigations run a lot smoother than if you have to depend on New York hacks.”

Watching Rollins oversee the porter who was still bundling my trunk atop the automobile, I didn’t need to be a detective of even an amateur variety to wonder for whom the chauffeur would be performing the greater service: for me and the start of our investigation or for Beveridge who now had in place a pair of eyes and ears that could record for his employer much that I, and later Holmes, might uncover. But such suspicions were easily eclipsed by more threatening concerns. After finally seating ourselves in the Packard, we rolled into the mainstream of motor traffic in that amazing cosmopolis—on the wrong side of the carriageway!

“Calm yourself, Doctor.” Beveridge chuckled at my dismay. “You’re forgetting that we drive on the opposite side of the street here in America. Believe me, with Rollins at the helm you have nothing to fear.”

Before I could reply, the Packard abruptly halted with a short screech. We had barely escaped running into the vehicle in front of us.

In contrast to my own anxiety, Beveridge responded calmly, “You see, it’s just as I told you, Rollins can drive with the best of them.”

Trusting that Beveridge was correct and placing myself in the hands of Providence, I leaned back in the deep cushions
and gazed out the window at the buildings standing tall in the waning sunlight. As much as I wanted to see the sights, however, Beveridge claimed my attention.

“Even on this side of the Atlantic, Doctor,” he said, “we know of your exploits with Sherlock Holmes. Thanks to your own magnificent storytelling.”

“They’re not stories, you see—”

“Keep your shirt on, Doctor. No offence intended. I’m simply trying to make your acquaintance and explain how much I’m looking forward to meeting Sherlock Holmes.”

I expected Beveridge to recount some adventure of Holmes that he particularly admired, but he suddenly became pensive and silent. After a minute or two and a deep breath, he said with resolve, “I’m fully prepared to help you get to the bottom of Graham’s death, Doctor.” He paused for another moment and then, to my amazement, began ticking off on his fingers a number of encounters he had planned for me: “Tonight at dinner, before we deposit you at your hotel, we’ll see Carolyn and her husband. Tomorrow morning I’ve arranged a meeting for you with Senator Buchanan. On Saturday we’re going to visit the former President of the United States in his home at Sagamore Hill, and on Monday we’re travelling to Washington to meet some of my former colleagues in the Senate. I think that about covers it.”

Despite his own enthusiasm, my suspicions were once more aroused. Who was this Beveridge to direct my enquiries? He’d already supplied me with a motor car and driver. At best, it was bad detective procedure to let a friend of the victim become too involved in an investigation; at worst, he might have his own sinister reasons for pointing me in certain directions or
encumbering me with his chauffeur. Besides, I resented the idea of my interrogations being planned by an amateur like him.

“Just a moment,” I said sharply. “Although I appreciate all your efforts, what made you decide that I would want to see those particular people?”

“Why, Mr. Holmes himself.” Beveridge laughed. “In the telegram to Carolyn announcing his change in plans, he asked her to provide you with access to some of the principals in the sordid story. It was he, in fact, who proposed the trip to the Senate. I was the one who suggested Roosevelt, and Carolyn agreed. The president and Graham didn’t get along well at the start, but later each came to respect the other. The point is that T.R. has a lot of insight into the minds of Washington people. If someone in Roosevelt’s political circle wanted Graham removed, T.R. might offer us some leads.”

I nodded, hoping to conceal my vexation. Holmes had, after all, given me an outline of what he wanted me to do—interview people close to Phillips but wait for the actual criminal investigation until he himself arrived. Now I was discovering that he didn’t see fit even to allow me the privilege of choosing those I would interrogate. It was so typical of Holmes to send me across the ocean with no specific instructions only to find that behind my back he had arranged my itinerary in advance.

“If I may continue, Doctor,” Beveridge said, “former Senator Buchanan was one of Graham’s targets in
The Treason of the Senate.
He and his wife are leaving for England tomorrow afternoon, so we are fortunate to have the chance to see him at all. Most of the other senators you’ll meet in Washington.” Beveridge paused again and then, almost as an afterthought, added, “I sure hope
that someone out of all those people can shed light on who really killed Graham.”

Although the afternoon sun was fading quickly, I turned to study his face. “You doubt the official story too, then, Senator?” I asked. Somehow I could not call him “Bev.” In fact, we were a funny pair: I could not utter his sobriquet; he, for some reason, would not speak my surname.

“I may have been defeated back in 1910, Doctor,” he said, “but I’m still a politician. And, therefore, I’m always a bit sensitive about being too definitive too quickly. I’m used to keeping an open mind until all of the evidence is in.” It wasn’t so dark that I could not detect his broad smile or see his expression quickly turn serious again. “But Graham was my friend, you see, and I’d love to put my hands on the rats who had him killed. If there are any rats to catch, that is.”