Sherlock Holmes In America

the colonel deserved the truth.

“Look at this, boys,” said Olcott as we approached. His voice and manner were subdued as he gestured to the twin gravestones. Both were of young men, siblings by their name, who had died in 1863. Someone had recently left purple wildflowers on each grave. Olcott gestured across the expanse of the cemetery. “Dozens of them. And yet, that is nothing. In the graveyards of Pennsylvania, of Maryland and Virginia… ” He trailed off for a moment. “I saw very little active duty, you know,” he finally continued. “I am not ashamed; I had my job to do. I’m not like so many in the North who bought their way out of service so that some poor Irishman could die in their stead. I have been shot at in my time. I’m not such a fool that I wish I had been shot at more.”

He fell quiet again, staring at the graves. We waited on his silence. “Over six hundred thousand men were killed in the war,” he said softly. “I think it is important to use the word ‘killed’ rather than ‘died’. They were shattered. Blown apart. There were battles in which twenty thousand were slain in a day. Even two days after, there would yet be… pieces of men lying in the bloody dirt. Or in mud. Dust. There were bodies no one will ever recognize. Those who loved them will never know… ”

He squinted at the sky for a moment. “If I can demonstrate the genuineness of these phenomena,” he said very quietly, “then all mankind may be assured that the sting of death and the grave’s victory have passed away. Death itself will have died. No,” he said fiercely, lowering his eyes again to the gravestones, “death itself will have been killed. And all the weeping will dissolve in joy. And all the blood will be as dew.”

He stood there, still as the stones around him, and I realized he had forgotten us. I touched Sherlock’s arm and we moved quietly away. I looked back as we reached the gates. Colonel Olcott had not moved.

All the way back to the inn, I waited for Sherlock to say something. But he never did. At last, as we mounted the steps, I could keep still no longer. “Well,” I challenged him, “what of your plan to enlighten Colonel Olcott and save him from himself?”

He neither paused nor looked at me as he stepped ahead through the doors.

“A bad machine,” he said, “may be a very good man.”

Afternote:

The story of Henry Olcott and the Eddy Brothers is true. Three days after this tale ends, he met Madame Helena Blavatsky, and they went on to found the most far-reaching of the Victorian-era occult institutions, the Theosophical Society. Olcott wrote an account of his experiences in Chittenden, People from the Other World, which I used as my main source; indeed, some of Olcott’s words in my story, including “Such a person may be a very bad man but a very good machine,” are direct quotes from that book. However, all speculation into his reason for belief in the Eddys are my own: the colonel remains a mystery.

EXCERPTS FROM AN UNPUBLISHED MEMOIR FOUND IN THE BASEMENT OF THE HOME FOR RETIRED ACTORS by Steve Hockensmith

Steve Hockensmith is the author of the popular Holmes on the Range mysteries about Sherlock Holmes- worshipping cowboy brothers “Big Red” and “Old Red” Amlingmeyer. The first book in the series was nominated for the Edgar, Shamus, Dilys, and Anthony awards in 2006, and since then, St. Martin’s Minotaur has released several sequels. Hockensmith’s first published crime story, “Erie’s Last Day,” won the Short Mystery Fiction Society’s Derringer Award and appeared in Best American Mystery Stories 2001. Today, Hockensmith is a regular contributor to mystery magazines and anthologies, and his short fiction has been nominated for almost every major award in the field. Hockensmith and “Big Red” Amlingmeyer share a blog at www.stevehockensmith.com.

S herlockian lore is replete with tales of dusty manuscripts in musty vaults that, when found, shed surprising new light on the Great Detective. I myself have enjoyed reading many such “discoveries,” even while (no offense to the discoverers) finding their provenance highly suspect. If there really were so many heretofore unknown Holmes chronicles floating around, there could hardly be a cellar, attic, or cupboard in the world that wasn’t home to at least one, if not several.

I am no longer skeptical, however. Here’s why.

In June of this year, I received in the mail a most remarkable (and rather dusty and, yes, musty) manuscript that-really and truly!-sheds surprising new light on the Great Detective. It was being sent to me, a cover letter said, because of my own small successes in the world of Sherlockiana. Perhaps I could act as literary agent for the party who’d unearthed it (who wished, for reasons I can’t go into, to remain anonymous)?

The timing was fortuitous-practically miraculous, really-as I’d just been queried about a possible submission to this very collection. And here one was! And one of incalculable value to historians, as well, for it backs up one of William S. Baring-Gould’s most interesting claims in his classic biography Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street: that Holmes once trod the boards, and in America, no less.

Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately, as you will see), space does not permit us to present the manuscript in its entirety here. Not by a long shot. The verbiage is lush, thick, and, at times, tangled, and I had to hack my way through it like Jungle Jim through darkest Africa.

I think it was worth the slog, though. I hope you agree. If you don’t, I would suggest this: Take a look in the attic. There’s a good chance you’ll find something there you like better.

– Stephen B. Hockensmith

Alameda, California

August 9, 2008

From What a Piece of Work! My Life in the Limelight

Chapter Fifty-Nine

“Some Notable Shame”

Oh, St. Louis, St. Louis-if only there were anything saintly about you. Anything heavenly, anything worthy of veneration. Anything not spackled with filth! But, no, alas. Praise for you I must limit to this: You are not Indianapolis.

And this, too, I will add upon further reflection. Your odors may have assaulted me, your citizens may have insulted me, your “theatre” may have been an insult to the theatre, yet at no time whilst walking your dung-paved paths (I cannot grace them with the appellation “streets”) did I feel myself in danger of mortal harm… excepting, of course, that which I might inflict upon myself in order to escape you the quicker.

No, for that honor-the privilege of experiencing a fright worthy of Madame Tussauds Chamber of Horrors-I have Leadville, Colorado, to thank.

Leadville, of course, wasn’t on the original itinerary for Sasanoff’s tour of America. If it had been, I never would have signed on with the man’s company. One glance at a map and I’d have seen that he was leading us deep into that infamous “Wild West” from which tales of savagery and death routinely gush like geysers of blood. At the time, the martyr Custer was but three years in his shallow prairie grave, and I certainly would have had no desire to become his neighbor. St. Louis was both as west and as wild as I ever intended to experience.

A few days before our engagement there was due to end, however, Sasanoff gathered the company to make an announcement. New Orleans would not be our next stop, as had been planned. There would be a “brief detour” to Colorado, where our Twelfth Night would help inaugurate “the grandest theatre west of the Mississippi.”

Never mind that there was no such thing as a “brief detour” to Colorado from St. Louis, the journey from one to the other being nearly one thousand miles long. As for us opening “the grandest theatre west of the Mississippi,” this was rich indeed given that we had yet to see anything approaching grand east of it, the stages of St. Louis, Chicago, Indianapolis (Oh! How my hand trembles to write that accursed word!), Cincinnati, Philadelphia, Hartford, etc., etc., being no more grand than an East End public house water closet.