White Fire

29

At five minutes to four in the morning, London time, Roger Kleefisch stepped into the large sitting room of his town house on Marylebone High Street and surveyed the dim surroundings with satisfaction. Everything was in its precise position: the velvet-lined easy chairs on each side of the fireplace; the bearskin hearth rug on the floor; the long row of reference works on the polished mantelpiece, a letter jammed into the wood directly below them by a jackknife; the scientific charts on the wall; the bench of chemicals heavily scarred with acid; the letters V.R. tattooed into the far wall with bullet holes — simulated bullet holes, of course. There was even a worn violin sitting in a corner — Kleefisch had been trying to learn how to play, but of course even discordant scrapings would have been sufficient. As he looked around, a smile formed on his face. Perfect — as close as he could possibly make it to the descriptions in the stories themselves. The only thing he’d left out had been the solution of cocaine hydrochloride and hypodermic needle.

He pressed a button beside the door, and the lights came up — gas, of course, specially installed at great expense. He walked thoughtfully over to a large mahogany bookcase and peered through the glass doors. Everything within was devoted to a single subject—the subject. The top three shelves were taken up with various copies of The Canon — of course he wasn’t able to purchase the very first editions, even on his barrister’s salary, but he nevertheless had some extremely choice copies, especially the 1917 George Bell edition of His Last Bow, with dust wrapper intact, and the 1894 George Newnes printing of The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, the spine still quite bright, with just the smallest amount of wear and foxing. The lower shelves of the bookcase were taken up by various volumes of scholarship and back issues of the Baker Street Journal. This last was a periodical issued by the Baker Street Irregulars, a group devoted to the study and perpetuation of Sherlockiana. Kleefisch had himself published several articles in the Journal, one of which — an exceedingly detailed work devoted to Holmes’s study of poisons — had prompted the Irregulars to offer him a membership in the organization and present him with an “Irregular Shilling.” One did not apply for membership in the Irregulars; one had to be asked. And becoming an Investiture was, without doubt, the proudest achievement of Kleefisch’s life.

Opening the cabinet doors, he hunted around the lower shelves for a periodical he wanted to re-read, located it, closed the doors again, then walked over to the closest armchair and sat down with a sigh of contentment. The gaslights threw a warm, mellow light over everything. Even this town house, in the Lisson Grove section, had been chosen for its proximity to Baker Street. If it had not been for the infrequent sound of traffic from beyond the bow window, Kleefisch could almost have imagined himself back in 1880s London.

The phone rang, an antique “Coffin” dating to 1879, of wood and hard rubber with a receiver shaped like an oversize drawer handle. The smile fading from his face, he glanced at his watch and picked up the receiver. “Hallo.”

“Roger Kleefisch?” The voice was American — southern, Kleefisch noticed — coming in from a long distance, it seemed. He vaguely recognized it.

“Speaking.”

“This is Pendergast. Aloysius Pendergast.”

“Pendergast.” Kleefisch repeated the name, as if tasting it.

“Do you remember me?”

“Yes. Yes, of course.” He had known Pendergast at Oxford, when he had been studying law and Pendergast had been reading philosophy at the Graduate Centre of Balliol College. Pendergast had been a rather strange fellow — reserved and exceedingly private — and yet a kind of intellectual bond had formed between them that Kleefisch still remembered with fondness. Pendergast, he recalled, had seemed to be nursing some private sorrow, but Kleefisch’s tactful attempts to draw him out on the subject had met with no success.

“I apologize for the lateness of the call. But I remembered your keeping, shall we say, unusual hours and hoped that the habit had not deserted you.”

Kleefisch laughed. “True, I rarely go to bed before five in the morning. When I’m not in court, I prefer to sleep while the rabble are out and about. To what do I owe this call?”

“I understand you are a member of the Baker Street Irregulars.”

“I have that honor, yes.”

“In that case, perhaps you can assist me.”

Kleefisch settled back in the chair. “Why? Are you working on some academic project regarding Sherlock Holmes?”

“No. I am a special agent with the FBI, and I’m investigating a series of murders.”

There was a brief silence while Kleefisch digested this. “In that case, I can’t imagine what possible service I could be to you.”

“Let me summarize as briefly as I can. An arsonist has burned down a house and its inhabitants at the ski resort of Roaring Fork, Colorado. Do you know of Roaring Fork?”

Naturally, Kleefisch had heard of Roaring Fork.

“In the late nineteenth century, Roaring Fork was a mining community. Interestingly, it is one of the places where Oscar Wilde stopped on his lecture tour of America. While he was there, he was told a rather colorful tale by one of the miners. The tale centered on a man-eating grizzly bear.”

“Please continue,” Kleefisch said, wondering just where this strange story was going.

“Wilde told this story, in turn, to Conan Doyle during their 1889 dinner at the Langham Hotel. It seemed to have had a powerful effect on Conan Doyle — powerful, unpleasant, and lasting.”

Kleefisch said nothing. He knew, of course, about the legendary dinner. He would have to take another look at the Conan Doyle diary entry about that.

“I believe that what Conan Doyle heard so affected him that he wove it — suitably fictionalized, of course — into his work, as an attempt at catharsis. I’m speaking in particular about The Hound of the Baskervilles.”

“Interesting,” Kleefisch said. To the best of his knowledge, this was a new line of critical thinking. If it proved promising, it might even lead to a scholarly monograph for the Irregulars. To be written by himself, of course: of late he had been searching for a new subject on which to focus. “But I confess I still don’t see how I can be of help. And I certainly don’t understand what all this has to do with the arson case you’re investigating.”

“On the latter point, I’d prefer to keep my own counsel. On the former point, I am becoming increasingly convinced that Conan Doyle knew more than he let on.”

“You mean, more than he alluded to in The Hound of the Baskervilles?”

“Precisely.”

Kleefisch sat up. This was more than interesting — this was downright exciting. His mind began to race. “How do you mean?”

“Just that Conan Doyle might have written more about this man-eating bear, somewhere else — perhaps in his letters or unpublished works. Which is why I’m consulting you.”

“You know, Pendergast, there might actually be something in your speculations.”

“Pray explain.”

“Late in life, Conan Doyle supposedly wrote one last Holmes story. Nothing about it is known — not its subject, not even its name. The story goes that Conan Doyle submitted it for publication, but it was returned to him because its subject was too strong for the general public. What happened to it then is unknown. Most suspect it was destroyed. Ever since, this lost Holmes story has been the stuff of legends, endlessly speculated upon by members of the Irregulars.”

There was silence on the other end of the line.

“To tell you the truth, Pendergast, I’d rather suspected it of being just another Holmesian tall tale. They are legion, you know. Or, perhaps, a shaggy dog story perpetuated by Ellery Queen. But given what you’ve said, I find myself wondering if the story might actually exist, after all. And if it does, that it might…” His voice trailed off.

“That it might tell the rest of the story that always haunted Conan Doyle,” Pendergast finished for him.

“Exactly.”

“Do you have any idea how one might go about searching for such a story?”

“Not off the top of my head. But as an Irregular, and a Holmes scholar, there are various resources at my disposal. This could be an extraordinary new avenue of research.” Kleefisch’s brain was working even faster now. To uncover a lost Sherlock Holmes story, after all these years…

“What’s your address in London?” Pendergast asked.

“Five-Seventy-Two, Marylebone High Street.”

“I hope you don’t mind if I call on you in the near future?”

“How near?”

“Two days, perhaps. As soon as I can break away from this arson investigation. I’ll be staying at the Connaught Hotel.”

“Excellent. It will be a pleasure to see you again. In the meantime, I’ll make some initial inquiries, and we’ll be able to—”

“Yes,” Pendergast interrupted. His voice had changed abruptly; a sudden urgency had come into it. “Yes, thank you, I’ll do my best to see you then. But now, Kleefisch, I have to go; you’ll excuse me, please.”

“Is something wrong?”

“There appears to be another house on fire.” And with that, Pendergast abruptly hung up and the line went dead.