The Stalwart Companions E-Book

H. Paul Jeffers

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2010

Seitenzahl: 249

Beschreibung

Before Sherlock Holmes formed his longstanding alliance with the imitable Dr Watson, one of his earliest investigations was alongside the future President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt. These "stalwart companions" must together solve a most complicated case that could herald the death of the American Dream.

Leseprobe

AVAILABLE NOW FROM TITAN BOOKS

THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES THE ECTOPLASMIC MAN Daniel Stashower ISBN: 9781848564923

THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES THE MAN FROM HELL Barrie Roberts ISBN: 9781848565081

THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES THE SCROLL OF THE DEAD David Stuart Davies ISBN: 9781848564930

THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES THE VEILED DETECTIVE David Stuart Davies ISBN: 9781848564909

THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES THE WAR OF THE WORLDS Manly W. Wellman & Wade Wellman ISBN: 9781848564916

THE STALWART COMPANIONS

H. PAUL JEFFERS

TITAN BOOKS

THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES THE STALWART COMPANIONS

ISBN: 9781845869164 (eBook)

ISBN: 9781848565098 (print)

Published by

Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark St

London

SE1 0UP

First edition: February 2010

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Names, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.

© 1978, 2010 H. Paul Jeffers

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No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

Printed in the USA.

This book is dedicated to three stalwart companions:

Gary, Rose Ann and Sid.

CONTENTS

Foreword

Introduction

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Notes

Also Available

Foreword

By no definition had I ever considered myself a serious student of the life, times, cases and adventures of Mr Sherlock Holmes of 221B Baker Street. Although I had read the Holmes stories, I considered him nothing more than the fictional creation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, dismissing with alacrity the various propositions that Holmes and his biographer, Dr John H. Watson, had been historical personalities and that Doyle was, at best, Watson’s literary agent.

As a journalist, I found these theories of a real Holmes amusing while admiring the inventiveness of the authors.

Lately, however, manuscripts purporting to be ‘lost’ Watson writings have been turning up with great regularity and finding their way into print, each of them pretending to fill in certain gaps in the literature of the sleuth of Baker Street.

Whether or not these surfacing Watsonian latter-day publications are genuine Watson, I could not say, though a special friend of mine who is regarded as an expert on Holmes has expressed grave doubts about their authenticity. I leave the disposition of that problem to the experts. What I no longer leave to speculation is the question of whether Holmes walked this earth with other men. I know he did.

It is ironic that I, the sceptic, stumbled onto the proof that Holmes was not only a real person but had engaged in a collaboration with a young man who was destined to become the Twenty-sixth President of the United States. This singular companionship resulted in the unearthing of one of the most dastardly conspiracies in the annals of American history, the details of which are revealed for the first time in this publication.

In editing this historic material, I have been mindful of the doubts that will plague the reader on every page, so I have included notes and other material which I believe demonstrate, through independent research, the veracity of the text. In keeping with this purpose of providing independent data to support the text, I have included an introduction, giving the details of the unearthing of the startling collaboration between the world’s first consulting detective and the young Theodore Roosevelt. In Notes and an afterword, I offer explanations that are possible as to why this amazing information has not been revealed before now. I have tried to verify the facts as stated in the text where that data is verifiable – such as dates, places, and descriptions of places, events, and personalities – to see if it could have been possible for Holmes and Roosevelt to have known each other in New York City in the summer of 1880, and to collaborate on an important criminal investigation of such a sensitive nature that it could not be published during their lifetimes.

Unfortunately, had the case been publicised at the time, one of the tragedies of American history might have been averted.

H. Paul Jeffers

New York City, 1978

Introduction

Fifteen years before Theodore Roosevelt took on the job of President of the Board of Police Commissioners of the New York Police Department, he learned a lesson in the fine art of criminology from the greatest detective of all time, though each man was, at the time, still in his twenties. One need only look into the exceptional job which Roosevelt did as Police Commissioner to realise that he had acquired very progressive views on how a police department should function and that he had developed a very keen sense of the value of the methods of crime detection pioneered by Sherlock Holmes. This Roosevelt record as head of a metropolitan police force bears the unmistakable imprint of his great teacher. In a memoir of his days as head of the NYPD, Roosevelt wrote, “The first duty of the true democrat, of the man really loyal to the principles of popular government, is to see that law is enforced and order upheld.” It would be hard to find any sentiment more Sherlockian.

Nearly a century has passed since Roosevelt and Holmes joined hands to investigate a crime which the young Roosevelt, a habitual diarist, recorded in great detail and at length. It is this record by Roosevelt which makes up the bulk of this publication. The importance of this document cannot be underestimated, for it is the only known account of a Sherlock Holmes case not recorded by either Watson or Holmes and, therefore, is evidence of a historical Holmes.

In the course of the investigation which uncovered the existence of the long, affectionate, and productive friendship between Sherlock Holmes and Theodore Roosevelt, I had the benefit of the expertise and counsel of one of the authorities on Sherlockiana, my dear friend and personal adviser B. Alexander Wiggins. Member of the Baker Street Irregulars since his adolescence; author of innumerable articles, essays, and monographs on Holmes; and technical adviser to publishers, film producers, and authors, “Wiggy” was one of the most ardent proponents of the proposition that Holmes had been a real person. Further, he claimed to be the grandson of the same Wiggins who was the leader of that pack of street urchins, the original Baker Street Irregulars, who proved useful to Holmes in several cases. A giant of a man, Wiggy resided in Greenwich Village while teaching at New York University. His lodgings were evocative of the rooms shared by Holmes and Watson, those legendary digs on the second floor of 221B Baker Street. Cluttered with books, newspapers, magazines, and artefacts of every description having to do with Holmes, the flat had become world famous as an address where a researcher on any aspect of the world’s first consulting detective could find answers, either directly from a vast library on the subject or from the expert’s memory trove. Seated in a spacious armchair at the center of his Holmesian archives, Wiggy resembled a Buddha, an immense dressing gown over his scarlet pajamas, his feet in a pair of ornate Persian slippers, a collection of pipes at hand on the table beside the chair. From this spot, Wiggy rarely stirred, conducting his business by phone, letter, or telegram and, when it was necessary to do business in person, holding ‘court’ as the world came to him. The persons who came for his advice or assistance paid handsomely. A small number of persons had the good fortune to have engaged him as a literary agent.

It was not necessary to be a devotee of Holmes to come under the literary wing of B. Alexander Wiggins, but it was nearly impossible to have any kind of conversation with him without hearing quotations, maxims, anecdotes, and instructive examples from ‘the canon’ in the course of it. As in the case of the man he had devoted his life to studying, Wiggy was a brilliant reasoner, a persuasive debater. More, he was a tenacious evangelist on the subject of a historical Holmes. (This was what brought me into the life of B. Alexander Wiggins in my role as a journalist assigned by a magazine editor to interview the man reputed to know as much about Holmes as Conan Doyle himself, possibly more.) My incredulity regarding a real-life Holmes fired Wiggins’ proselytising spirit. “Holmes not only lived,” he informed me emphatically, “but he lived to the ripe old age of one hundred and three years!”

“Then why have I not been able to read historical accounts of his life and adventures?”

“But you can! Watson!”

“You mean Conan Doyle.”

With a wave of his huge hand, he dismissed my impertinence. “Conan Doyle was never more than a peddler of other people’s writings!”

“I know of no instance in which a newspaper provided independent evidence of the existence of one Sherlock Holmes.”

“Holmes avoided publicity sedulously. As Watson wrote, Holmes’ nature ‘was always averse to anything in the shape of public applause.’ So, it is no wonder that the London papers have no accounts of him. Holmes was careful to let the credit for the resolution of problems go to the officers from Scotland Yard. Nor did Holmes’ adventures in the United States ever make it into the American press. But it is a fact that he was here and that he solved at least two mysteries. In January 1880 he solved a problem for the Vanderbilt family. Later, in July, there was the awful affair in Baltimore concerning the Abernetty family.”

“Despite Holmes’ desire for anonymity, I cannot imagine the newspapers of America in that period permitting the famous Sherlock Holmes of 221B Baker Street to arrive in this country without making note of it in the news columns,” I stated.

“In the first place,” replied Wiggy, “Holmes came here when he was in the earliest period of his career. In 1879, Holmes was twenty-six years of age. He had yet to meet Watson, yet to take up residence at 221-B (he was residing on Montague Street at the time), yet to enjoy a reputation outside the smallest circles of law enforcement. Secondly, he came here incognito, using his stage name. If you wish to find references to Holmes in musty old news columns you must look for the name William Escott, which is the name he used while acting. It’s a clever derivation of his Christian names, William S. (for Sherlock) Scott.”

“My interest in old newspapers is crime news,” I stated, referring to a current project – a history of crime news in New York City, which I was researching painstakingly in microfilmed archives of New York newspapers. This work I conducted in the quiet of the fourth floor research room of the Mid-Manhattan Branch of the New York Public Library on Fortieth Street just off Fifth Avenue. For months, every spare hour in my schedule was spent before the viewing screens of the microfilm readers, studying the accounts of crimes, great and small, as recorded by The New York Times. By the end of June 1977, I had progressed in my research to the first half of 1880.

An account of a murder in the Gramercy Park area caught my attention. It seemed to be a common street crime, but one paragraph in the story lifted this piece of journalism above routine:

Detective Wilson Hargreave was summoned urgently to the scene of the horrible event from a private dinner at the Fifty-seventh Street home of Mr T. Roosevelt, recently graduated from Harvard. The police official and Mr Roosevelt had attended a performance of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night at the Union Square Theatre and were in the company of a member of the acting company, Mr William Escott. All three men were active at the scene of the murder.

Riveted to my chair, I read the article again and again, fascinated by the presence of the name “William Escott.” After making a photocopy of the item, I rushed to Wiggy’s house. “Is it possible,” I asked, “that Holmes and Roosevelt knew each other?”

“If you eliminate the impossible, what is left, no matter how improbable, is the truth,” Wiggy said. He took down from his shelves an array of reference books and pored over them until, at last, he leaned back in his chair and announced, “Yes.”

“Yes, what?”

“It is probable.”

“What is probable?”

“That Holmes and Roosevelt knew each other and that they worked together in the solving of this Gramercy Park murder.”

“Now how the hell do you know that?” I groaned.

“Through a combination of research into the facts and a little deduction based on the facts. Permit me to explain. That these men were present at the Gramercy Park murder scene is known, given the tangible evidence of this newspaper account and the paper’s reputation for accuracy. The questions which one might honestly raise are these: 1) What was Roosevelt doing in Manhattan? 2) Why was he in the company of Mr Hargreave and Mr Escott? 3) Why did Hargreave take Roosevelt and Escott to the scene of a crime? 4) Was William Escott, in fact, Sherlock Holmes?”

“And the answers?” I asked, settling back in a chair.

“Roosevelt was in Manhattan because he lived here. He had just graduated from Harvard and was stopping at his home prior to leaving for a tour of the West with his brother. I know this from the sketch in this volume of biographies of American Presidents. This sketch also notes that while at Harvard Mr Roosevelt devoted himself to a study of science, and it is from this information that we may deduce that Roosevelt knew of the work of Mr Sherlock Holmes, had arranged to meet Holmes during his run in New York with the Shakespearean troupe and had taken steps to bring Holmes and Hargreave together for dinner after the performance of Twelfth Night. Finally, Holmes took an active part in the resolution of the Gramercy Park murder case. I see a quizzical look on your face. Pray, listen. It’s very elementary. Holmes had invited Roosevelt to the performance of Twelfth Night. I state this on the basis of my deduction that the two young men already had an acquaintanceship, probably by correspondence. We know Roosevelt was interested in science. That interest surely would have impelled him to read Holmes’ monographs on tobaccos, identifying footprints, and the dating of documents. In this correspondence, Holmes, of course, would have informed young Roosevelt that he would be in America as the actor William Escott and would have expressed a desire to meet Roosevelt. This Holmes arranged by the simple device of sending Roosevelt a pair of tickets to a performance of the play that would coincide with Roosevelt’s return to Manhattan after graduation.”

“Why a pair of tickets?” I asked. “Why not one?”

“Well, it would be common courtesy to send two tickets, wouldn’t it? Besides, we know that Roosevelt attended the theatre with Hargreave.”

“Perhaps Hargreave invited Roosevelt?”

“That is possible but not probable. No, I expect that Roosevelt, having gotten the tickets and having wondered whom to take to the theatre with him, invited the detective with the intention of introducing him to Holmes and bringing the two men together for an evening of fascinating conversation. This assumes that Roosevelt already had an interest in the art of detection, although it would be some years before he would, himself, be the commissioner of police in New York City.”

“Very pat,” I smiled, “but it all hinges on whether Holmes was in fact Escott.”

“That is beyond question because it stretches the laws of coincidence to believe that an actor with the same name we know Holmes used on the stage would find himself in the company of a scion of one of New York’s best families and in company with Roosevelt and Hargreave at the scene of a major crime. That coincidence disposed of, we know from Holmes’ biographers that he was in America at this time, having arrived here aboard the White Star liner Empress Queen in the first week of December 1879 as a member of the Sasanoff Shakespearean Company as William Escott.”

“Why didn’t Holmes identify himself with his true name to the reporter?”

“Surely, you know by now that Holmes would never do that!”

“Why would Hargreave drag along these two young men to the scene of a crime?”

Wiggy chuckled, his great torso quaking with amusement. “Can you really doubt that an ambitious detective would pass up the chance to consult with a man whom he knew to be, already, one of the most brilliant criminal investigators in history?”

“Incredible!”

“Logical!” And precisely what young Mr Roosevelt would have suggested had not Hargreave first invited Holmes to visit the scene of the crime. It is interesting to know that as early as 1880, fifteen years before he became commissioner, Roosevelt was impressed with Holmes and willing to consult him. It now convinces me that the coincidence of two later dates in the lives of both men is to be considered significant.”

“I miss the point, I’m afraid.”

“In the data we have about Sherlock Holmes there is a period known as the ‘missing year.’ From late 1895 to late 1896 there is no word in the literature on the exact whereabouts of Holmes and what he was working on. I now believe that Holmes was in America, because it was in 1895 that Teddy Roosevelt took on the job as police commissioner. I am certain that Holmes would not have hesitated to come to the assistance of his old friend, if asked, and we can see from this Gramercy Park affair that Roosevelt had witnessed the effect of calling upon Holmes in criminal cases.”

“You stated unequivocally that Holmes solved the Gramercy Park murder?”

“Indubitably.”

“I will have to look up subsequent accounts of the investigation in the archives before I can grant you that.”

“You will see I am right.”

“Wild conjecture on your part.”

“More than conjecture, I assure you. First, Holmes rarely failed to solve his cases. Second, because there is no record of this case before now, I deduce, because it turned into a matter of such importance, such delicacy, that Holmes took steps to see that it was never publicised as part of the record of his career. That means your job is not going to be easy.”

“My job?”

“Surely you are going to follow up on this?”

“Well, I don’t know, I–”

“God, man, think of it! Holmes and Teddy Roosevelt engaged in the solution of what we must assume was a crime with implications far beyond simple murder! I would be astounded if you did not dig into this affair.”

“I wouldn’t know where to begin.”

“Nonsense. We begin with the Roosevelt archives.”

“You believe Roosevelt kept a record of his association with Holmes?”

“Wouldn’t you? I surely would have.”

“I see your point.”

“Precisely. Now we must confront the question of where to look for the evidence.”

“Washington. Oyster Bay. The National Archives.”

Shaking his head, Wiggy said, “I think not.”

“Then where?”

“I would be very much surprised if we have to leave New York City to find what we’re looking for. I believe it lies within the files of the New York Police Department. Logic dictates this conclusion. Would you agree that it makes sense for Roosevelt’s papers concerning Holmes to be in his files dating from his years as head of the police department? I trust your contacts in the modern-day NYPD are of such stature that you will have no trouble getting us into the places where we are most likely to find what we seek.”

In a taxi going downtown to the new police headquarters building, my friend was uncharacteristically animated because of his excitement at the prospect of uncovering, at last, direct evidence that Mr Sherlock Holmes had not been a mere fictional invention but was a living human being who had played a role in the career of one of America’s giants, a fellow whom B. Alexander Wiggins had obviously come to know and respect as a result of his recent research into his career.

“A remarkable young man who has gotten short shrift in the literature of American Presidents,” he remarked as our taxi careered through the streets. “I had a devil of a time finding biographical material beyond the superficial characterisation of the man as a hardy fellow who went around shouting, “Bully!” He was a robust man, of course, due entirely to his determination to overcome childhood weaknesses which had left him puny and subject to every kind of bullying. He developed his physique and became an excellent boxer. I thrill at the thought that he and Holmes, who was an excellent boxer, might have engaged in a few bouts. A crack shot, too. And a young man at college with an interest in scientific matters that could rival Holmes’. His life was fraught with personal tragedies. Did you know that his mother and his wife died on the same day? He rebounded from that double-barrelled disaster, however, just as he recouped from a humiliating defeat when he ran for mayor of New York in 1886. Came in fourth! His public career was never easy, not even when he was head of the police department. A very curious thing, that episode! William Strong, a reform mayor, picked Roosevelt to become commissioner of the corruption-ridden force, and T. R. accepted the challenge with relish. He fired the chief of the uniformed force, a rascal who had amassed three hundred thousand dollars in graft while in uniform. While commissioner, Roosevelt used to don a black cape and go out at night looking for crooked cops. A cape! Does that have a familiar ring to it? The newspapers loved him and there was talk about a bid for the White House. But then Mr Roosevelt learned that it is one thing to root out official corruption, quite another to tamper with the trivial illegalities of private individuals. He insisted on enforcing the Sunday Blue Laws by closing the saloons. Not long, and he was under great pressure to get out of office. He did, in 1897, to become Assistant Secretary of the Navy. Throughout this career, I am sure, he kept in close contact with a fellow across the Atlantic, whose own career was on the rise, Mr Sherlock Holmes.”

“That’s for the files to prove,” I noted.

“They will, my friend,” Wiggy grinned. “They will.”

No reporter ventures into the archives of any police department without suspicion, but when it became known that I was interested in the annals and files from the last century, the New York Police Department accepted the fact that my poking around was no threat, and Wiggy and I were left undisturbed to go where the archives might lead us. “That was easier than I expected,” laughed Wiggy as we descended deep into the bowels of headquarters.

“The power of the press,” I muttered, sniffing the dry, dusty, cardboard smells of the huge storage room where the New York Police Department kept its past, its triumphs, its failures, its heroic tales and its skeletons.

Clapping his pudgy hands, Wiggy chuckled, “Ah, the game’s afoot!”

Watching my bulky friend as he knelt and bent (not without difficulty) to peer at the faded, yellowing labels on the fronts of battered and sagging storage cartons, each one leading us farther back into history, I saw B. Alexander Wiggins as the personification of all Sherlockians who, as Vincent Starrett wrote, visualised Holmes with trusty Watson at his side, alive to those who love them well in a romantic chamber of the heart, in a nostalgic country of the mind where it is always 1895.

We, however, were looking for Holmes of a still earlier year – 1880.

“What have we here?” boomed the voice of B. Alexander Wiggins, sprawled on the dusty floor, moon-round face pressed close to a storage bin. “A pair of initials. T. R. Ha! My friend, we are on the trail!” Gently, tenderly, trembling with awe and anticipation, he drew the aged box into the dim light of bare bulbs from the ceiling above and carefully lifted its lid. Pausing before reaching into the half-empty box, Wiggy looked at me with tears sparkling in his eyes. “Such a moment!” he sighed, pressing a hand to his thick chest. “I have dreamed about this since my youth. To hold in my hands the evidence that he lived. I know it is hard for you to appreciate what this means to me. It is as if I were a Crusader about to touch the Holy Grail.”

“Don’t get your hopes up,” I warned. “We don’t know what’s in that box yet.”

“All the evidence points to success,” he cried, eyes closed, voice trembling.

Slowly, he reached into the box and gingerly brought into the light a brittle sheet of paper, which he studied intensely before handing it to me. “Yes. These are his files,” he sighed. The paper was a letter on the stationery of the President of the Board of Police Commissioners. The signature was that of Theodore Roosevelt. It bore an 1895 date. But it had nothing to do with anyone named Holmes.

The box of documents which we examined was the first of dozens, each scrutinised as excitedly by Wiggy as if it were the first rather than simply another among dozens. The search stretched into hours, then days, but though my expectations flagged early, Wiggy pressed on, working tirelessly to prove his conviction that at any moment we would come upon the answer to the question.

The climactic moment came late in the sixth afternoon of our search. “We have found it,” stated Wiggins softly, a scrap of paper fluttering in his trembling hands.

“What is it?” I asked, awed.

“A cablegram,” said Wiggy, carefully handing the yellowed paper to me. “Note the date. July 1894. At that time, Roosevelt was serving on the United States Civil Service Commission. Note that that is how the cable is addressed. Note the message and the signature.”

The cable was brief:

“ROOSEVELT. DO NOTHING WITH THE MATERIAL UNTIL YOU HEAR AGAIN FROM ME. ESCOTT.”

“There is no doubt that we are on to something,” cried my friend, poking into the papers at the bottom of the carton that had yielded the cable. “And what we are about to find is surely as delicate a matter as Holmes ever encountered, else why the necessity to continue the use of the stage name? Why the guarded reference to ‘material’?”

As ever, Wiggy’s deductions were telling. The cable clearly proved, he explained, that Holmes (Escott) and Roosevelt had shared an extremely sensitive experience, one so sensitive that Roosevelt had filed this cable with material from his days with the police rather than include it in his documents from his federal service. Its inclusion in these files, Wiggy reasoned, linked the cable to a police matter.

The deduction gained considerable credence with the discovery of the following letter dated in early July 1894:

Mr Sherlock Holmes

221B Baker Street

London, England

Dear Mr Holmes:

My friend Dr Watson will, I am sure, share with you my letter of this date to him complimenting him on the publication in The Strand Magazine of his excellent stories. I eagerly await the next number in this exciting series of adventures based on your famous cases. Watson will undoubtedly inquire about the suggestion which I have made in my letter to him, namely, that he might want to look at the notes and observations which I made at the time of our very thrilling association in the matter of the Gramercy Park murder. I have gone so far as to suggest a title: “The Adventure of the Stalwart Companions.” I will, of course, be guided by your wishes and look forward to receiving your views and some information on how you are and what you are up to.

Very truly yours,

T. R.

Rubbing his hands and chuckling, Wiggy remarked, “One can imagine the haste with which Holmes shot off that cable to Teddy, eh?”

“Is there no copy of Roosevelt’s letter to Watson?” I asked eagerly, kneeling on the cold floor of the basement storehouse as Wiggy picked through more bundles of papers in a deeply stuffed box.

“Nothing. I fear that one is lost. I hope there are others. And, God, I pray that Roosevelt’s ‘notes and observations’ are to be found in these endless archives!”

Presently, Wiggy exploded with excitement, shooting upright and coming very close to performing a jig. “Eureka! The find of the century! There has never been anything like this! Look! Look, my beloved friend; a letter from him in his own hand!”

The text of the letter:

My Dear Roosevelt:

Under no circumstances must the details of the singular affair of Gramercy Park be published so long as the participants live and so long as there might be the slightest chance of repercussions.

Watson, who has written to you on this matter, will explain my reasons for insisting that certain of my cases be withheld from the public, and he will tell you, I am sure, of the numerous instances in which I have insisted that certain names, dates, locations, and some significant details of my cases be deleted or masked in the adventures he has already publicised.

It is safe to say that only a handful of my numerous investigations match the Gramercy Park affair in sinister implications and tragic aftermath.