officers had become friendly, even protective. Holmes knew each man by name. A cup of coffee, a free meal in his restaurant, a fine black cigar—policemen valued these gestures of affinity and grace.
Holmes was, however, beginning to feel mounting pressure from creditors, in particular from several furniture and bicycle dealers. He could still charm them and commiserate over their inability to locate the elusive deedholder, H. S. Campbell, but Holmes knew they soon would lose patience and in fact was a bit surprised they had not pursued him more forcefully than had been the case thus far. His techniques were too new, his skills too great, the men around him too naive, as if they had never before experienced a falsehood. For every business that now refused to sell him goods, there were a dozen more that fawned over him and accepted his notes endorsed by H. S. Campbell or secured by the assets of the Warner Glass Bending Company. When pressed, sensing that a particular creditor was on the verge of legal action, even violence, Holmes paid his bills in cash using money harvested from his own ventures, such as lease income from his apartments and stores, sales from his pharmacy, and the proceeds from his newest venture, a mail-order medicine company. In a parody of Aaron Montgomery Ward’s fast-growing empire in central Chicago, Holmes had begun selling sham drugs that he guaranteed would cure alcoholism and baldness.
He was always open to new financial opportunities but was especially so now, since he knew that no matter how deftly he kept labor costs down, he still would have to pay for at least some of the transformation of his building. When Myrta’s great-uncle, Jonathan Belknap of Big Foot Prairie, Illinois, came to Wilmette for a visit, that challenge suddenly seemed likely to resolve itself. Belknap was not a rich man, but he was well off.
Holmes began appearing more frequently at the Wilmette house. He brought toys for Lucy, jewelry for Myrta and her mother. He filled the house with love.
Belknap had never met Holmes but knew all about his troubled marriage to Myrta and was prepared to dislike the young doctor. On first meeting he found Holmes far too smooth and self-assured for a man of so few years. He was struck, however, by how enthralled Myrta seemed to be whenever Holmes was around and by how even Myrta’s mother—Belknap’s niece by marriage—appeared to glow in Holmes’s presence. After several more encounters Belknap began to appreciate why Myrta had fallen so thoroughly for the man. He was handsome and clean and dressed well and spoke in fine sentences. His gaze was blue and forthright. In conversation he listened with an intensity that was almost alarming, as if Belknap were the most fascinating man in the world, not just an elderly uncle visiting from Big Foot Prairie.
Belknap still did not like Holmes, but he found his candor sufficiently disarming that when Holmes asked him to endorse a note for $2,500 to help cover the cost of a new house in Wilmette for himself and Myrta, Belknap agreed. Holmes thanked him warmly. A new house, away from Myrta’s parents, might be all the couple needed to end their growing estrangement. Holmes promised to pay the money back as soon as his business affairs allowed.
Holmes returned to Englewood and promptly forged Belknap’s signature to a second note for the same amount, intending to use the proceeds for his hotel.
On Holmes’s next visit to Wilmette, he invited Belknap to visit Englewood for a tour of his building and of the newly chosen site for the World’s Columbian Exposition.
Although Belknap had read much about the world’s fair and did want to see its future home, he did not relish the idea of spending a full day with Holmes. Holmes was charming and gracious, but something about him made Belknap uneasy. He could not have defined it. Indeed, for the next several decades alienists and their successors would find themselves hard-pressed to describe with any precision what it was about men like Holmes that could cause them to seem warm and ingratiating but also telegraph the vague sense that some important element of humanness was missing. At first alienists described this condition as “moral insanity” and those who exhibited the disorder as “moral imbeciles.” They later adopted the term “psychopath,” used in the lay press as early as 1885 in William Stead’s
When Belknap refused Holmes’s offer, Holmes seemed to crumble with hurt and disappointment. A tour was necessary, Holmes pleaded, if only to bolster his own sense of honor and to demonstrate to Belknap that he really was a man of means and that Belknap’s note was as secure an investment as any man could make. Myrta too looked crestfallen.
Belknap gave in. During the train journey to Englewood, Holmes pointed out landmarks: the skyscrapers of the city, the Chicago River, the stockyards. Belknap found the stench overpowering, but Holmes seemed not to notice it. The men exited the train at Englewood station.
The town was alive with movement. Trains rumbled past every few minutes. Horse-drawn streetcars moved east and west along Sixty-third, amid a dense traffic of carriages and drays. Everywhere Belknap looked some building was under construction. Soon the level of construction would increase even more, as entrepreneurs prepared to cash in on the expected crush of exposition visitors. Holmes described his own plans. He took Belknap on a tour of his pharmacy, with its marble countertops and glass containers filled with wildly colored solutions, then took him up to the second floor, where he introduced him to the building’s caretaker, Patrick Quinlan. Holmes walked Belknap through the building’s many corridors and described how the place would look as a hotel. Belknap found it bleak and strange, with passages that struck off in unexpected directions.
Holmes asked Belknap if he would like to see the roof and the construction already under way. Belknap declined, claiming falsely that he was too old a man to climb that many steps.
Holmes promised stirring views of Englewood, perhaps even a glimpse of Jackson Park off to the east, where the buildings of the fair soon would begin to rise. Again Belknap resisted, this time with more force.
Holmes tried a different approach. He invited Belknap to spend the night in his building. At first Belknap declined this offer as well, but feeling perhaps that he had been overly rude in avoiding the roof, he relented.
After nightfall Holmes led Belknap to a room on the second floor. Gas lamps had been installed at haphazard intervals along the corridor, leaving pockets of gloom whose borders shivered as Belknap and Holmes moved past. The room was furnished and comfortable enough and overlooked the street, which was still reassuringly busy. As far as Belknap could tell, he and Holmes were by now the only occupants of the building. “When I went to bed,” Belknap said, “I carefully locked the door.”
Soon the street sounds receded, leaving only the rumble of trains and the hollow clip-clop of an occasional horse. Belknap had difficulty sleeping. He stared at the ceiling, which was bathed in the shifting light of the streetlamps below his window. Hours passed. “Presently,” Belknap said, “I heard my door tried and then a key was slipped into the lock.”
Belknap called out, asking who was at the door. The noise stopped. He held his breath and listened and heard the sound of feet moving down the hall. He was certain that initially two men had been outside his door, but now one of them had left. He called again. This time a voice answered. Belknap recognized it as belonging to Patrick Quinlan, the caretaker.
Quinlan wanted to come in.
“I refused to open the door,” Belknap said. “He insisted for a time and then went away.”
Belknap lay awake the rest of the night.
Soon afterward he discovered Holmes’s forgery. Holmes apologized, claiming a dire need for money, and was so persuasive and abject that even Belknap felt mollified, although his distrust of Holmes persisted. Much later Belknap realized why Holmes had wanted so badly to show him the building’s roof. “If I’d gone,” Belknap said, “the forgery probably wouldn’t have been discovered, because I wouldn’t have been around to discover it.
“But I didn’t go,” he said. “I’m afraid of heights.”
As carpenters and plasterers worked on his building, Holmes turned his attention to the creation of an important accessory. He sketched a number of possible designs, relying perhaps on past observations of similar equipment, then settled on a configuration that seemed likely to work: a large rectangular box of fireproof brick about eight feet deep, three feet high, and three feet wide, encased within a second box of the same material, with
