The Devil in the White City

Claustrophobia

HOLMES KNEW THAT MOST if not all of his hotel guests would be at the fair. He showed Anna the drugstore, restaurant, and barbershop and took her up to the roof to give her a broader view of Englewood and the pretty, tree-shaded neighborhood that surrounded his corner. He ended the tour at his office, where he offered Anna a seat and excused himself. He picked up a sheaf of papers and began reading.

Distractedly, he asked Anna if she would mind going into the adjacent room, the walk-in vault, to retrieve for him a document he had left inside.

Cheerfully, she complied.

Holmes followed quietly.

At first it seemed as though the door had closed by accident. The room was utterly without light. Anna pounded on the door and called for Harry. She listened, then pounded again. She was not frightened, just embarrassed. She did not like the darkness, which was more complete than anything she had ever experienced—far darker, certainly, than any moonless night in Texas. She rapped the door with her knuckles and listened again.

The air grew stale.

Holmes listened. He sat peacefully in a chair by the wall that separated his office and the vault. Time passed. It was really very peaceful. A soft breeze drifted through the room, cross-ventilation being one of the benefits of a corner office. The breeze, still cool, carried the morning scent of prairie grasses and moist soil.

Anna removed her shoe and beat the heel against the door. The room was growing warmer. Sweat filmed her face and arms. She guessed that Harry, unaware of her plight, had gone elsewhere in the building. That would explain why he still had not come despite her pounding. Perhaps he had gone to check on something in the shops below. As she considered this, she became a bit frightened. The room had grown substantially warmer. Catching a clean breath was difficult. And she needed a bathroom.

He would be so apologetic. She could not show him how afraid she was. She tried shifting her thoughts to the journey they would begin that afternoon. That she, a Texas schoolmarm, soon would be walking the streets of London and Paris still seemed an impossibility, yet Harry had promised it and made all the arrangements. In just a few hours she would board a train for the short trip to Milwaukee, and soon afterward she, Minnie, and Harry would be on their way to the lovely, cool valley of the St. Lawrence River, between New York and Canada. She saw herself sitting on the spacious porch of some fine riverside hotel, sipping tea and watching the sun descend.

She hammered the door again and now also the wall between the vault and Harry’s breeze-filled office.

The panic came, as it always did. Holmes imagined Anna crumpled in a corner. If he chose, he could rush to the door, throw it open, hold her in his arms, and weep with her at the tragedy just barely averted. He could do it at the last minute, in the last few seconds. He could do that.

Or he could open the door and look in on Anna and give her a big smile—just to let her know that this was no accident—then close the door again, slam it, and return to his chair to see what might happen next. Or he could flood the vault, right now, with gas. The hiss and repulsive odor would tell her just as clearly as a smile that something extraordinary was under way.

He could do any of these things.

He had to concentrate to hear the sobs from within. The airtight fittings, the iron walls, and the mineral-wool insulation deadened most of the sound, but he had found with experience that if he listened at the gas pipe, he heard everything much more clearly.

This was the time he most craved. It brought him a period of sexual release that seemed to last for hours, even though in fact the screams and pleading faded rather quickly.

He filled the vault with gas, just to be sure.

Holmes returned to the Wrightwood apartment and told Minnie to get ready—Anna was waiting for them at the castle. He held Minnie and kissed her and told her how lucky he was and how much he liked her sister.

During the train ride to Englewood, he seemed well rested and at peace, as if he had just ridden his bicycle for miles and miles.

Two days later, on July 7, the Oker family received a letter from Henry Gordon stating that he no longer needed the apartment. The letter came as a surprise. The Okers believed Gordon and the two sisters still occupied the flat. Lora Oker went upstairs to check. She knocked, heard nothing, then entered.

“I do not know how they got out of the house,” she said, “but there were evidences of hasty packing, a few books and odds and ends being left lying about. If there had been any writing in the books all traces were removed, for the fly leaves had been torn out.”

Also on July 7 the Wells-Fargo agent in Midlothian, Texas, loaded a large trunk into the baggage car of a northbound train. The trunk—Anna’s trunk—was addressed to “Miss Nannie Williams, c/o H. Gordon, 1220 Wrightwood Ave., Chicago.”

The trunk reached the city several days later. A Wells-Fargo drayman tried to deliver it to the Wrightwood address but could not locate anyone named Williams or Gordon. He returned the trunk to the Wells-Fargo office. No one came to claim it.

Holmes called upon an Englewood resident named Cephas Humphrey, who owned his own team and dray and made a living transporting furniture, crates, and other large objects from place to place. Holmes asked him to pick up a box and a trunk. “I want you to come after the stuff about dark,” Holmes said, “as I do not care to have the neighbors see it go away.”

Humphrey showed up as requested. Holmes led him into the castle and upstairs to a windowless room with a heavy door.

“It was an awful looking place,” Humphrey said. “There were no windows in it at all and only a heavy door opening into it. It made my flesh creep to go in there. I felt as if something was wrong, but Mr. Holmes did not give me much time to think about that.”

The box was a long rectangle made of wood, roughly the dimensions of a coffin. Humphrey carried it down first. Out on the sidewalk, he stood it on end. Holmes, watching from above, rapped hard on the window and called down, “Don’t do that. Lay it down flat.”

Humphrey did so, then walked back upstairs to retrieve the trunk. It was heavy, but its weight gave him no trouble.

Holmes instructed him to take the long box to the Union Depot and told him where on the platform to place it. Apparently Holmes had made prior arrangements with an express agent to pick up the box and load it on a train. He did not disclose its destination.

As for the trunk, Humphrey could not recall where he took it, but later evidence suggests he drove it to the home of Charles Chappell, near Cook County Hospital.

Soon afterward Holmes brought an unexpected but welcome gift to the family of his assistant, Benjamin Pitezel. He gave Pitezel’s wife, Carrie, a collection of dresses, several pairs of shoes, and some hats that had belonged to his cousin, a Miss Minnie Williams, who had gotten married and moved east and no longer needed her old things. He recommended that Carrie cut up the dresses and use the material to make clothing for her three daughters. Carrie was very grateful.

Holmes also surprised his caretaker, Pat Quinlan, with a gift: two sturdy trunks, each bearing the initials MRW.