Sherlock Holmes: Before Baker Street by David Marcum (books to read to be successful TXT) 📗

to show his appreciation, Stevenson requested permission to come back-stage to congratulate the entire company. He greeted us all equally, certainly having no cause to single me out in any way. No, Watson, as you can well imagine, it required a singular crime to bring the two of us together.”

I’m afraid I knit my brows at this last proclamation. “I can understand not hearing of such an occurrence from you, Holmes,” said I, “But as I recall, Stevenson himself was a prolific chronicler of his journeys. At least two works, Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes and An Inland Voyage, report his adventures on the Continent. And yet, I have never seen in print an account of the alleged crime to which you are referring.”

“Quite so,” said Holmes with a quick smile. He then finished his sherry and, putting put down the glass, picked up the papers he had withdrawn from the tin box.

“News of our meeting,” said he, ‘”never appeared in the published accounts of Stevenson’s travels in America. In the letter he wrote me that accompanied these pages, he explained that he had sent the account home for publication. His friends and publishers, however, in order to maintain a positive image of the writer, chose to omit any stories they found objectionable or controversial. Apparently, Stevenson’s depiction of himself as a target of criminals in New York City stood no chance of being published.”

At this point, Holmes handed me the unbound pages.

“Enough of my blather,” said he. “Why not let Louis himself tell you what happened?”

Scrawled across the top sheet in Holmes’s penmanship were the words, “Excised from the chapter ‘New York’ in The Amateur Emigrant by Robert Louis Stevenson (Translations from the Latin rendered by S. Holmes)”. My friend filled his pipe in preparation for an uninterrupted smoke, I leaned back in my armchair and began to read.

II

Castle Garden, New York City. I have already mentioned my debarkation from the Devonia, a steam-ship of considerable tonnage. Maintaining my admittedly weak alias of Robert Stephenson, I clambered down the gangway in the company of Mr. Jones, the Welsh blacksmith and fellow traveller I had befriended during the course of the voyage. You would be hard-pressed to find a more uncomfortable crossing than we had experienced – the unsavoury food, the constant vomiting, the constipation, the incessant scratching, not to mention the haughty looks that the so-called “lords of the saloon” cast down upon those of us in the second cabins and steerage.

And yet our misery continued when, upon arriving in New York that 17th of August, we were greeted by a deluge that must have rivalled the downpour witnessed by Noah himself. Indeed, my entire stay, however brief, in the city nicknamed “Gotham” was accompanied by the steady drumbeat of falling water. You understand that I was in a hurry to go west, but the economical “emigrant trains” did not run on Sundays, and thus I had to spend the night in the city.

It had been raining when we docked at the edge of the Hudson River, and the rain showed no sign of abating as we sought transportation to our digs. Though we passengers had been warned about the New York City hucksters seeking to separate us from our money, we none the less paid dearly for spots on the soggy straw bottom of an open baggage wagon for the short ride from the docks to our lodgings.

At just past six o’clock Sunday evening, our conveyance deposited us at Reunion House, the small establishment at No. 10 West Street advertised as presenting “private rooms for families”. It was also just a few minutes’ walk to the steamboat landing. Upon the following evening, I would be sailing the short distance to Jersey City, where I was to find the train heading west. But most attractive about Reunion House were its charges.

You should understand that problems with money plagued both Jones and me. Jones had been married and prosperous earlier his life, but his wife had died, and his money had run out. As for me, my father – either disappointed in my failure to pursue a career in the law or disapproving of my current quest for love – had cut off my finances. Thus afflicted, Jones and I agreed to share a single room at twenty-five cents a night. With individual meals costing the same “two bits” (as the Americans call the quarter of a dollar), we exchanged nods and signed the register.

What a bargain we had struck! The bed was small enough to send me to the floor for sleeping. The remaining amenities – a solitary wooden chair and well-worn wood clothes-pegs for our wet coats – were not much better. In short, except for the not insignificant roof above our heads, we found no relief within our tiny cell from the dampness and gloom we were already attaching to the city. My skin itched, my lungs rattled, my teeth ached, my stomach growled, and now the walls appeared to be closing in.

Yet in spite of all this misery, I sensed that conditions had to improve. I took the time to remember that I had indeed reached the “promised land”. I was in America, after all. My luck would have to turn. “O brave new world!” I reassured myself, “post nubila Phoebus” [After dark clouds, the sun.] Tomorrow would be a better day.

In the meantime, however, our melancholia persisted, a condition that did not go unrecognized by Michael Mitchell, the proprietor and publican of the Reunion. How often must he have encountered travellers like Jones and me, pilgrims who had suffered a ten-day’s tumultuous voyage at sea and now faced the vagaries of life in New York City sodden with rain.

“Boys,” said he, wiping clean some glasses at the bar, “I have just the remedy for your downcast spirits.”

Expecting an offer of gin or rum or some other