Baker Street Beat: An Eclectic Collection of Sherlockian Scribblings by Dan Andriacco Read Free Book Online Page B

pasteboard.”
    â€œOnce again you disappoint me, Watson. I assure you my little profile of Mr. John Vincent Harden is written here in black and white, if only you know how to read it: The paper. The engraving. The ink. The whole tone of this tiny document – powerful, but understated. It is much in the American style. And here is our visitor to prove out our modest inferences.”
    Holmes unfolded his long, lean body and rose to meet the prospective client’s outstretched hand. John Vincent Harden was a short but powerfully built man wearing an expensive white linen suit, torn and stained from some recent altercation, and carrying a walking stick. He affected a large, graying mustache in the fashion of the American General Burnside. I put his age in the middle 50s, but when he gripped my hand it was with the strength of one decades younger.
    â€œMr. Holmes, I’ll come straight to the point,” said he, in the forthright manner of one who could do naught else. “I hear tell you’re the best.”
    â€œIndeed? Friend Watson here has spread the news of my poor powers farther than I had suspected if I am so famous in – Tennessee, perhaps?”
    â€œKentucky, sir.”
    â€œIndeed? I should have thought a trifle farther south. That explains, then, why you fought on the victorious Northern side in the American Civil War. Perhaps the late unpleasantness had something to do with your uncertain fortunes, for it is obvious that you were born into great wealth, lost it, but regained substantial means through your own labours.”
    John Vincent Harden tightened his grip on the walking stick. “You’re good, all right. Damned good. Unless somebody told you about me.”
    â€œI assure you I never heard your name until your card announced you five minutes ago, Mr. Harden. That card and you yourself told me all that I know of you. The ‘GAR’ emblem on the watch fob in your waistcoat pocket stands for ‘Grand Army of the Republic,’ does it not? Your military bearing would have ended any doubt I may have entertained. The gold watch which you consulted upon entering this room is old, but clearly valuable. An heirloom, then, of a wealthy family. Yet your hands are scarred, calloused. You have done manual labor, though not recently. And those efforts have paid off handsomely, for your dress – though tattered by whatever misadventure has brought you into these chambers – tells me you are wealthy once more.”
    â€œI’m rich enough, all right, but let’s get down to cases. I’m here because I’m damned scared.”
    The frank admission of fright, coming from this man of such obvious moral and physical strength, sent a chill through the warm sitting room. I believe that even Sherlock Holmes, the least fanciful of men, must have felt it. He leaned forward.
    â€œPray tell your story from the beginning, leaving out nothing. As you have seen, I am one who can make much of little things.”
    â€œWell, sir, as for my early life, you seem to know a good deal already. I grew up on my family’s tobacco plantation, Whitecrest, thirty miles southwest of Lexington. We owned a hundred and twenty-five slaves. When the War Between the States broke out back in ’61, the Commonwealth of Kentucky was badly split. Both Jeff Davis and Abe Lincoln were born in our state, you understand. Officially, Kentucky stayed with Lincoln and the Union, and that’s where I saw my duty. I joined the army, fought at Gettysburg, rose to the rank of Colonel. But back at home, a lot of friends – even family – were joining the Rebs. Whitecrest was fair game for Rebel looters and marauders. When I returned from the war, there wasn’t much left of it. The house was a shambles. The slaves were gone. My mother was dead. My father didn’t recognize me. My brother – he was younger than I – had run off to join Morgan’s Raiders and