SHERLOCK HOLMES IN NEW YORK (4 page)

"There will be drama enough in this in a moment or
so, Watson," he whispered.

And so it proved. As the sharp-faced man drew in
his winnings from the second hand played, the young
American, at that point the major loser, sprang to his
feet.

"See here!" he complained. "That jack wasn't in
your hand when it was dealt—for here's the same one
in mine!"

"Do you accuse me of cheating, sir?" said the
winner in a blustering tone.

"Make of it what you will!" the American said, his
face flushed. "I see what I see, and I'll not back
down!"

The saturnine man's eyes shifted uneasily to the
other two players, who returned his gaze sternly.

"You are mistaken, sir," he announced with a
marked lack of conviction. "But be that as it may, I
do not care to play further with you. Good evening to
you!"

He pushed back his chair, rose and strode off.

"It seems as though you have saved us from an expensive lesson at the hands of a card sharp," ventured one of the businessmen. "He seemed unusually lucky,
but I doubt if I or my friend would have spotted what
was taking place."

"Where I come from, you have to keep an eye out
for crooked play," said the American. "I've no use for
such fellows, hate 'em like poison. In some of the
places I've been, a man like that would be shot like a
dog. Honest cards, honest dealing, honest play—that's
my motto, and Uncle Sam's, too."

The game resumed, with the young man and his two companions now on the friendliest of terms.

Holmes watched keenly for a moment, then said
loudly, though appearing not to address anyone in particular, "Wot price the briny, eh, Napper? Sweeter
nor a cell in Wormwood Scrubs, cor strike me if it
ain't."

His voice was a precise imitation of the hoarse
croak of a seasoned convict, used to speaking from the corner of his mouth to elude the warders' notice.

The young American sprang from his seat, his
ruddy face suddenly ashen. Without a word to his
astonished companions, he left the table and made as
if to dash for the outer door. As he passed our table,
Holmes reached out an arm and drew him to a halt.

"On your way to a swim, Napper, like the one
you tried to give me not an hour ago? I doubt you'd
like it. Now, I don't propose to take steps about that
trifling matter; a man's likely enough to see red when
he runs into the man who got him four years' hard
labor—was it four or five, Napper?—and give way
to a touch of pique. But you've got that out of your
system now, and have also exhausted your passion for
card-playing and traveling-company melodrama for
the remainder of this voyage, I trust. In any case, I
don't wish or expect to hear further from you. Do you
take my meaning?"

The stocky young man, in whom I could now per
ceive a resemblance to the shadowy form I had observed in near-mortal struggle with my friend, let fall
a stream of foulness from his twisted lips, in accents more redolent of an East End slum than of the Amer
ican plains.

"I see you do. Be off with you, then—and I suggest
that you and Nice Ned keep to your cabin for the remainder of your voyage, or my patience may not
prove to be all-enduring."

The "American" stumbled off, as unsteady in his
steps as a blind man. The two businessmen, alarmed
and confused, made their way to another part of the
saloon.

"What on earth was all that, Holmes?" said I. "I
was sure that that frank-faced young chap had ex
posed a card cheat, whom I supposed to be the man
you were observing. But that seems not to be the
case."

"That, Watson, was the Nottingham Napper, who
used to make quite a good thing out of appearing a
bumpkin among the flasher London crowds; and his
associate, Nice Ned, whose sinister appearance made
him one of the less successful of confidence-men in
town. It was the Napper's genius that suggested
this be turned to their advantage, and that they play
a drama in which Ned would be cast as the villain,
and the Napper as the honest hero. He has now
worked up an atrocious stage-American manner,
which I am surprised to think would fool a child" (I
bridled at this, but then subsided; after all, I had not
committed myself to Holmes on the matter) "and
uses it to great advantage. Had the game continued,
those two mercantile gentlemen would certainly have
found themselves a great deal poorer by morning, and
yet completely unsuspicious of the honest-dealing
young fellow they had enriched. For had he not, after
all, detected the blatant cheat in their midst? Well,
well, they have shot their bolt now, and I do not ex
pect to be troubled with them again."

Two days at sea is enough to give one the feeling that he has lived that kind of life for a very long time, and
will continue to do so for an indefinite period. Hour
by hour, one becomes more attuned to the ways of the
sea and more removed from those of the land. Relaxation is one important element of this feeling, and
so is, I must confess, boredom. It was with a certain
amount of pleasurable excitement, then, that both
Holmes and I became aware of the smoking-concert
being organized by the purser for the third night out.
A Cunard purser must be qualified to fill most of the
diplomatic or intelligence posts any government of
fers, for the
Pavonia
's seemed to be aware of the
interests and capabilities of every First Class passen
ger. On that afternoon, he approached Sherlock
Holmes and invited him to participate.

"After all, sir," he said, "your virtuosity on the
violin is well-known, and I venture to say that you
have your instrument with you."

Holmes admitted both to his ability and to the pres
ence of his fiddle, and made only the feeblest of at
tempts to beg off performing.

"I shall be glad of the chance to give it a proper
tuning," he told me, his manner a good bit less than convincing. "Without a little exercise, it will doubtless
be woefully slack from the sea air by the time we
reach New York."

"I dare say. The plain fact is, Holmes, that you are
idle and restless, and want the chance to show off."

"And you, Watson, have your nose out of joint
because you were not asked to appear at the concert
—I confess it."

I considered this, and finally nodded my head.
"Well
. . .
I don't suppose I should have cut much of
a figure reciting 'The Charge of the Light Brigade,'
which is about my only concert turn!"

"Mr. Sherlock Holmes?" We turned and saw a tall
man in his twenties crossing the deck toward us.
"Say, could I talk to you about the concert this
evening?"

Though, to my ear, his accent was twin to that of
the fraudulent Napper's, Holmes appeared to accept
him as a genuine American, and was soon in amiable
conversation with him.

"You see, they've got me booked to sing some cow
boy songs, things the range hands sing around the
campfires, and I don't know's I'm so set on doing it
solo. I hear you're going to be playing the fiddle just
before me, and I wonder if you could kind of stay on
and give me some kind of accompaniment."

Holmes shook his head.

"I pretend to some expertise on the violin, Mr.—"

"Mix. First name, Thomas. Though nobody uses it
in full, much."

"—but having, many years ago, traveled in America and heard your country fiddlers, I know my limitations
too well to try to compete with their spirited perfor
mance. I shall look forward to hearing your songs.
Many such, I believe, contain the history of notable
crimes of the past—which touches on my professional
interest. You were, then, yourself a cowboy?"

Mix shrugged.

"Have been. Got to know horses that way. Served
in Cuba in 'ninety-eight, with the cavalry, then joined
up with your army in South Africa."

"You were with Kitchener and Roberts?" said I,
excited to meet a participant in that epic struggle,
American though he might be.

"The generals didn't trickle down to my level much,"
he observed. "But yes, I was there—at Ladysmith, for
one."

It seemed an odd thing to me that this ingenuous
youth should have been engaged in a battle which had
made history for the Empire, and I said, "Even though
a foreigner, you must have been thrilled at our vic
tory."

He gave me a squinting look.

"Well, Kruger's army's out of it now," said he,
"but the war's not over. And the way it's going on is
one reason I left. 'Mopping up' is what the dispatches
call it, but it's fighting against the farmers on their
farms, getting backshot from behind a
koppie
, burning
people out of their homes, and herding old men,
women, and children behind barbed wire so's you can
keep an eye on 'em all in one place . . . What do the
staff fellows call 'em, now— Oh, yes, 'concentration
camps.' It's a pretty-sounding name, but it don't look
so pretty when you see it."

I was not well-pleased to hear this sort of pro-Boer
sentiment from one who, though he had admittedly
been on the scene, did not have the instinctive view
point from which to understand these matters. Holmes
divined my irritation, and attempted to compose mat
ters by saying:
"Mr. Mix comes from a land which established
itself little more than a century ago by just such a
struggle. Whatever the deeper significance of the con
flict, an American is bound to have a feeling for
embattled farmers."

He turned to Mix and said, "I am always glad to
meet an American, and, in spite of the business which
brings me on this trip, happy to renew my acquaint
ance with your country. Your rebellion against the
Crown was a sad loss to us, but I believe we have
been the gainer by seeing the old English spirit of
Liberty reborn in even stronger form. It would be a grand thing, would it not, if one day our two nations,
in a time of greater understanding, might rejoin and
truly form what your Constitution calls 'a more perfect
union.'"

As always, when mounting one of his few ab
stractly philosophical hobby-horses, Holmes was close
to being feverishly animated.

"
We
have the age and experience of Empire," he
went on—almost declaiming—"
you
, the generosity and vigor of youth. Should Britain and America have been
united two years ago, for instance, I doubt that this
unhappiness in South Africa would ever have taken
place—for who can imagine America exerting its might
to force its will on a distant, poor nation of peasants, whatever the cause?"

Mix bent on him the same quizzical look he had at
first given me. "When you get to the States," said he
quietly, "you might look up old Geronimo. He and you
could have a right interesting talk on that point. See
you at the concert tonight, gentlemen."

———«»——————«»——————«»———

I had to admit, as I sat in the lounge that night,
that Mix's songs, delivered in a pleasant, slightly nasal
baritone, were simple and affecting, dealing with
star-crossed lovers, the work of cattle ranching, and
duels on fine points of honor, set to tunes that mostly
seemed English or Irish. My neighbor, a red-faced
man in a rumpled dinner jacket, seemed much moved,
and tears rolled down his cheeks.

Because of a change in the original order, Holmes
was next to appear; and, though I had become inured
to his abstracted scraping on his instrument during
those times when he was brooding on some case—or the lack of any case—I responded to the richer tones
and more assured performance that he now gave with
enthusiasm. He eschewed the severely classical, and
played several warmly haunting tunes reminiscent of
Austria (lilting waltzes and pyrotechnic Gypsy mel
odies), though finishing, for reasons which escaped
me, with "Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes."

As the last strains of Holmes' violin died away,
the man next to me muttered, "Beau'f'l song. Swee'st
song ever . . ."

I looked at him sharply. His eyes were glassy and
through his open mouth his breath came raspingly.
He was clearly quite drunk or under the influence of
some opiate, and I felt a professional obligation to
see him in surroundings where he could avoid further
injury to his system.

"Why don't I see you to your cabin, old fellow?" I
said as heartily as I could.

"Goo' idea. Hot
. . .
here."

The man looked up at me as if through a pond-deep
layer of water.

"And where's your cabin, eh? B Deck, or what?"
It seemed to me that he muttered "flummery."

"What?"

He made a greater effort for clarity.
"'Nn . . . frm'ry. Infirm'ry. 'M doctor. Ship's doc
tor."

I flushed with rage and shame for my profession.
The one physician available for hundreds of souls on
this ship, and the man was dead drunk! Brusquely,
I helped him to his feet and ushered him from the
lounge—aware, with little regret, that I was missing a
large lady beginning an impassioned reading from her
favorite poems of Ella Wheeler Wilcox.

Once we were out of earshot of the crowd and I was
hustling him down the corridors and stairways that led to the infirmary, where he was quartered, I could not
refrain from remonstrating with him.

"This is disgraceful, man! Think of those dependent
on you—scores and scores of people who might at any
moment suffer injury or sickness, and have only you
to turn to! Why, there's an old lady aboard practically
on the point of death! Do you propose to minister to her, should she require it, fuddled with drink? Or
are you even aware of her presence among your . . .
practice?
"

"Rum ol' lady," he mumbled, his rubber-legged
walk making him twist in my grasp. "Of course saw
'r. She's sick. Tha's what I do, see sick people. Ship's
doctor, y'know. Looked in on 'r jus' before concert,
dam' fellow there wouldn't let m' see 'r. Gave me a
cup of tea, chat 'bout how she's restin' com'f'bly,
sent me off with flea in ear. I know that kin'. Next
thing, 'll want death stifk't. No queshions 'n' a nice sea
burial. Won't get it, not f'm me . . ."

During this drunken maundering, I managed to get
the doctor to his quarters, place him on his bunk, and
loosen his tie. Praying that there would be no calls
until at least morning—preferably not until the end of
the voyage—on his skills, I left him.

Outside the infirmary, I stood uncertainly for a mo
ment.

The old lady I had seen carried on board was
surely gravely ill, and the doctor who should have been
responsible for her care was incapable of seeing to it.
Ought I not make some effort to satisfy myself of
her condition? If so, how? I had no idea of her name
or her cabin, and I shrank from making inquiries of
the ship's staff, which would inevitably expose the
doctor to a ruinous investigation; after all, this might
be only a momentary aberration, and, in spite of my
indignation, I had no wish to destroy the man's career.

My problem was partially solved by the sudden
appearance of a man whom I recognized as he who
had followed the old lady's invalid-chair up the gang
plank at Liverpool. He was emerging from a door
down the corridor. He carried a book in one hand, and
I surmised that he was going to the ship's library to
exchange it for another, doubtless his means for
whiling away the hours of his vigil.

"Sir!" I called after him.

He stopped, and I explained that I was a physi
cian and—stretching the truth somewhat—had been asked to give a consultant's opinion on the old lady,
about whom the ship's doctor was concerned.

"My aunt is well enough," the man observed. "She
is sturdier than she looks, Doctor, and may well
bury many who are younger than she." He seemed to
find the thought amusing. "In any case; she has a passion for privacy, and flatly refuses to see any
physician or other person whatever. You may tell
your colleague that Miss Jacobs is as well as her age allows her, and that she does not stand in need of his
services—or yours, sir. Good night."

I was affronted at the man's curtness, but, I con
fess, relieved that there seemed to be no further action
which duty required of me. I made my way to the
lounge for the remainder of the concert.