Prologue With a click, the wheels of the tape cassette began to turn. The old man in the window-seat smiled sardonically at the machine on the table before him, then sent a friendlier look at the young man who’d turned it on. He returned the smile diffidently, blinking at the morning light through the windows behind the old man. Outside, a meadow sloped down from a slate terrace to woods two hundred yards away. Stone walls enclosing the meadow ran down to the woods. The grass was brown now, the maple trees bare. In the distance, a long mountain formed an abrupt horizon, its cross-cutting ridges picked out by evergreens amongst other bare maples. Weather from the west was bringing heavy clouds over the mountain, its appearance changing constantly as shadows played across it. “Does it have a name?” the young man asked. “Delectable Mountain. Do you know Pilgrim’s Progress? Someone did who passed through here 200 years ago – longer, the name predates this house, and it was built in 1779. Vermont was up in arms then, but life went on never-theless.” “Ethan Allen?” “Yes. A restless fellow in a turbulent era. First he fought the British, then New Hampshire and New York. But in time even Vermont forgot about him.” “I appreciate your talking to me,” the young man said. “I’m surprised to be remembered. It’s a long time since I was a Baker Street Irregular. A very long time.” The young man paused, weighing what to say next. The old man smiled again. “Are you wondering where I’ve been? And why?” “Well, yes. In the BSI histories, you show up from the beginning, and then vanish. No one else is left from those years now. I have a thousand questions.” “I don’t know what I can add to the record. The histories have it right enough. Yes, I have them here. I reread them to get together with old friends. Except for them I’m alone now.” “Do you have correspondence from those years I can see?” “I’m afraid not. I knew them all, of course, Christopher Morley, Elmer Davis, and the others in New York – Edgar Smith and Rex Stout and so on. But they ran the BSI, not me.” “The early dinners, then: you can tell me about them?” “Are you sure you wish me to? None of us were exactly sober at the time.” “I’ve gathered that,” the young man said with a smile. “Yes. The BSI, you see – the original BSI, Chris Morley’s BSI – was a reaction to Prohibition. But what was important to me wasn’t the dinners, as much fun as they were. What was important were the people, and the times.” “Let’s start at the beginning,” the young man said. “And I really appreciate this. I know my predecessor would’ve given anything to talk to you.” The old man gazed dreamily at that, and chuckled. “He did. He came here once, and sat right where you’re sitting. In that very chair.” “He did? But there’s no trace in his books—” “No.” “But he must have had the same questions I have?” “Yes. But when I was done, he said it was a story for which the world was not prepared.” “What? . . . . I don’t understand.” This time the old man smiled sardonically. “Young people,” he said, “think it was an age of innocence back then. It wasn’t. It was hard, desperate times, at the end of which the world went to war after a decade of illusions, lies and betrayal. Not that the war ended that. I see I’m shocking you.” “Well—” “You see, that’s part of the BSI’s story too – if you’re sure you want it. We weren’t simply Holmes fans wishing we lived in the Victorian era. Sentimentalists like Chris Morley may have wished to, but even he couldn’t duck destiny staring us in the face.” “I’m sorry – I’m at a loss to understand.” “I know. You want to hear about the BSI.” The old man folded his hands upon his knees. “Well, when I first met them near the end of 1933, it wasn’t the BSI yet, just Chris and his friends eating and drinking in a speakeasy. I was a young lawyer at the time, down from Harvard Law School a few years before. “I was awfully green, though I did have something on the others where Sherlock Holmes was concerned,” he continued, a twinkle in his eye now. “I never told them, but I had Moriarty for a client.” “Moriarty!” The old man chuckled. “The Prohibition equivalent. New York’s Napoleon of Crime.” “You mean you – you were a mob lawyer?” The old man smiled again. “To all appearances, I was a respectable member of the bar, a young pillar of Wall Street. But I won’t argue with you. Someone else once called me a mob lawyer, and perhaps she was right. I might never have gotten my chance in life if it hadn’t been for my Moriarty. Without him, and the BSI, I might never have made partner, or gotten to work at the White House, or put what I learned to use in the war, let alone known how to get away with murder in the Army. ‘Everything comes in circles,’ said Sherlock Holmes.” “I’m still confused.” “Of course. Your world is a far cry from ours before the war. Well, it all began one afternoon in 1933. The Depression was grinding everybody down, and I was sitting in my office waiting to be fired.” from ch. three, “Christ Cella’s Speakeasy” Walbridge set off faster than you’d think a stout man could go, heading for 45th and Lexington. All he said was that he was having lunch with Christopher Morley and some others who liked Sherlock Holmes, and I could tag along. I hurried after him with no notion of what I was getting myself into – least of all misadventures far removed from humdrum legal life. At the time it seemed utterly innocent, and a lot like playing hooky. Manhattan had been changing in the 1920s, new money putting up a new generation of skyscrapers, but the Depression had halted most of it and Midtown was still full of brownstones. An Italian immigrant named Christ Cella had turned the half-basement of his on East 45th Street into a speakeasy, its entrance a few steps down from the sidewalk. It wasn’t a speak where you whispered “Swordfish” through a peephole. You just opened the door and walked in. The place was under the protection of a childhood friend of Cella’s who was one of the toughest cops in town, and Cella was a sort of human oak tree himself. We hung up our hats and coats next to a small room where a sole waiter was telling customers the day’s menu, but Walbridge led me past it, down a hall to a kitchen where Cella and his wife and others were working at the stove and grill and sinks. The brightly lit kitchen smelled wonderfully of broiling meat and steaming vegetables, spices and herbs, with a continuous clatter of pots and pans and a hubbub of voices in English and Italian.Off to the side at an oval table sat several men beneath a cloud of tobacco smoke. On the far side, back to the wall, was a burly man with a broad hearty face, thick brown hair, and lively eyes full of mischief. He looked up as we entered, and waved us into empty seats. “This is K. W. Hazelbaker Esq. from the Harvard Club,” Walbridge said grandly: “Woody, meet Christopher Morley, pater familias of the Three Hours for Lunch Club.” “Very pleased to meet you, Mr. Morley— Hey, wait: three hours?” “At the very least,” said Morley in a clear musical treble. “Civilized rules for our little club. Not as well-known as the Harvard Club, and no clubhouse at all except Christ Cella’s kitchen, but our own, and welcome. You’ll have a drink?” “Scotch highball?” I asked the looming presence at my elbow. Cella was wiping his big hands on his apron, his face red from the heat of his grill. He had a chest like a barrel, but his jovial expression put me at ease. “Have a martini,” said Walbridge. “Best drink in the house. This is Bill Hall,” he said, nodding at a sharp-eyed, primly dressed man with a trim mustache, “that’s Bob Leavitt next to Chris, and Peter Greig on the other side. Woody’s just read Starrett’s book, Chris.” “Wonderful, isn’t it!” beamed Morley across the table. “I only wish I’d written it myself, but then I wouldn’t have had the delight of reading it, all in a swoon, like a child on Christmas morning. Are you a Holmesian, Woody?” “Well – I love the stories, but never dreamt anyone could do what Starrett did with them. I just read your Sherlock Holmes preface, by the way. I liked it a lot.” The martini arrived and I took a sip. It was the coldest I’d ever tasted, and more went down that first sip than I intended. I took another sip to warm me up again. “Kind of you to say so,” Morley was replying: “I wrote it in one fell swoop, which shows what you can do when you write about something you know down to the ground. It was a magic carpet that took me straight to London again.” “How was that, sir?” “It came about in a different speak one day. My Doubleday cronies were bringing out a complete edition, Conan Doyle’s having just croaked guar-anteeing no more frankly inconvenient returns from the dead for the great detective. They asked me to write the preface, and I agreed to if it paid me enough to visit London again.” “We’re really a Baker Street club, with Chris as major-domo,” explained Greig, a big bluff man with amiable features and dark hair beginning to silver at the temples. “No kidding? How long have you been doing this? How do you join?” I asked a bit too eagerly. From across the table, a “humph!” came from Leavitt, accompanied by a look of disdain. “Beware of tourists, Chris. I hear the bus pulling up outside already. Everyone likes Sherlock Holmes, young man,” he said to me sternly, hard bright eyes glinting behind steel-rimmed spectacles. “There are only two kinds of people in the world, those who have read Sherlock Holmes, and those who will. But how well do you actually know the Sacred Writings?” “The what?” He sighed heavily for effect. “Unbaptized, as I thought. The Canon. The Sherlock Holmes stories. How well do you really know them?” “Try me.” The first martini was down, and beginning to talk on its own. “Very well, I shall. Who was the second most dangerous man in London?” “Colonel Sebastian Moran,” I answered – with silent thanks that I’d just reread the stories. “Hmm. Correct. Where was Dr. Watson wounded?” “In Afghanistan.” Big grins from Morley and Hall. “Ha ha ha. I mean in what part of his body,” Leavitt bore in. “In his shoulder, except when it seems to have been in his leg. This is fun. Ask me another.” “All right. How about for the next round of drinks? It’s a little game we play. I give you a quotation, and you tell me which story it’s from and what it’s in reference to. If you can’t, you buy the round.” “And if you can, Leavitt pays, but watch out!” warned Hall. “He has a collection of stinker questions and obscure quotations for just this sort of occasion.” “Pipe down, Bill. Respect for superior knowledge, please. Are you game?” asked Leavitt, looking at me again. Morley sat listening and smiling, hands cupping an oldfashioned glass, nodding to himself, eyes dancing with enjoyment. “Fire away,” I said like a chump. “Here it comes: ‘under ordinary conditions he no longer craved this artificial stimulus, but I was well aware that the fiend was not dead but sleeping.’” Damn. I knew what it referred to, but couldn’t remember which story. I’d hoped for something snappy like “Mr. Holmes, they were the footprints of a gigantic hound.” Leavitt studied my expression with a smile. It was from a late story, though, I was pretty sure. “Dr. Watson on Holmes’s drug habit. The Red Circle,” I ventured, trying to sound confident. “Right on context, wrong on story. The Missing Three-Quarter. I’ll have another sidecar, thank you very much. What will the rest of you gentlemen have?” I took out my wallet, extracted a twenty-dollar bill, and laid it on the table. Morley chuckled appreciatively. “Tell me, Hazelbaker,” he asked, “what do you do?” “I’m a lawyer.” “I deduced that much when Earle tacked Esq. onto your name. Where?” “A firm downtown, Emery Bird Thayer.” Morley rubbed his hands together in delight. “Is that so! Wall Street, I believe! Well, the Street isn’t what it used to be, but what is, these days? Gentlemen, we may have here the answer to a thirsty Holmesian’s prayer – an eager young plutocrat. How many rounds of drinks are you good for today, Woody?” “Wait, don’t I get a chance to get even?” “You do indeed,” said Hall. “And don’t let Leavitt buffalo you. He always tries to pluck newcomers, but he’s far from infallible.” “Are you a newcomer, Bill?” said Leavitt smugly, as Cella placed a tray of fresh drinks on the table. “Seems I recall you buying a round or two the past week. But we need a genuine membership test, Chris, to discourage mere curiosity-seekers. Not necessarily meaning you, young man. Time will tell on that score. A toast, gentlemen: to The Second Most Dangerous Man in London!”

Prologue

With a click, the wheels of the tape cassette began to turn. The old man in the window-seat smiled sardonically at the machine on the table before him, then sent a friendlier look at the young man who’d turned it on.

He returned the smile diffidently, blinking at the morning light through the windows behind the old man. Outside, a meadow sloped down from a slate terrace to woods two hundred yards away. Stone walls enclosing the meadow ran down to the woods. The grass was brown now, the maple trees bare. In the distance, a long mountain formed an abrupt horizon, its cross-cutting ridges picked out by evergreens amongst other bare maples. Weather from the west was bringing heavy clouds over the mountain, its appearance changing constantly as shadows played across it.

“Does it have a name?” the young man asked.

“Delectable Mountain. Do you know Pilgrim’s Progress? Someone did who passed through here 200 years ago – longer, the name predates this house, and it was built in 1779. Vermont was up in arms then, but life went on never-theless.”

“Ethan Allen?”

“Yes. A restless fellow in a turbulent era. First he fought the British, then New Hampshire and New York. But in time even Vermont forgot about him.”

“I appreciate your talking to me,” the young man said.

“I’m surprised to be remembered. It’s a long time since I was a Baker Street Irregular. A very long time.”

The young man paused, weighing what to say next. The old man smiled again. “Are you wondering where I’ve been? And why?”

“Well, yes. In the BSI histories, you show up from the beginning, and then vanish. No one else is left from those years now. I have a thousand questions.”

“I don’t know what I can add to the record. The histories have it right enough. Yes, I have them here. I reread them to get together with old friends. Except for them I’m alone now.”

“Do you have correspondence from those years I can see?”

“I’m afraid not. I knew them all, of course, Christopher Morley, Elmer Davis, and the others in New York – Edgar Smith and Rex Stout and so on. But they ran the BSI, not me.”

“The early dinners, then: you can tell me about them?”

“Are you sure you wish me to? None of us were exactly sober at the time.”

“I’ve gathered that,” the young man said with a smile.

“Yes. The BSI, you see – the original BSI, Chris Morley’s BSI – was a reaction to Prohibition. But what was important to me wasn’t the dinners, as much fun as they were. What was important were the people, and the times.”

“Let’s start at the beginning,” the young man said. “And I really appreciate this. I know my predecessor would’ve given anything to talk to you.”

The old man gazed dreamily at that, and chuckled. “He did. He came here once, and sat right where you’re sitting. In that very chair.”

“He did? But there’s no trace in his books—”

“No.”

“But he must have had the same questions I have?”

“Yes. But when I was done, he said it was a story for which the world was not prepared.”

“What? . . . . I don’t understand.”

This time the old man smiled sardonically. “Young people,” he said, “think it was an age of innocence back then. It wasn’t. It was hard, desperate times, at the end of which the world went to war after a decade of illusions, lies and betrayal. Not that the war ended that. I see I’m shocking you.”

“Well—”

“You see, that’s part of the BSI’s story too – if you’re sure you want it. We weren’t simply Holmes fans wishing we lived in the Victorian era. Sentimentalists like Chris Morley may have wished to, but even he couldn’t duck destiny staring us in the face.”

“I’m sorry – I’m at a loss to understand.”

“I know. You want to hear about the BSI.” The old man folded his hands upon his knees. “Well, when I first met them near the end of 1933, it wasn’t the BSI yet, just Chris and his friends eating and drinking in a speakeasy. I was a young lawyer at the time, down from Harvard Law School a few years before.

“I was awfully green, though I did have something on the others where Sherlock Holmes was concerned,” he continued, a twinkle in his eye now. “I never told them, but I had Moriarty for a client.”

“Moriarty!”

The old man chuckled. “The Prohibition equivalent. New York’s Napoleon of Crime.”

“You mean you – you were a mob lawyer?”

The old man smiled again. “To all appearances, I was a respectable member of the bar, a young pillar of Wall Street. But I won’t argue with you. Someone else once called me a mob lawyer, and perhaps she was right. I might never have gotten my chance in life if it hadn’t been for my Moriarty. Without him, and the BSI, I might never have made partner, or gotten to work at the White House, or put what I learned to use in the war, let alone known how to get away with murder in the Army. ‘Everything comes in circles,’ said Sherlock Holmes.”

“I’m still confused.”

“Of course. Your world is a far cry from ours before the war. Well, it all began one afternoon in 1933. The Depression was grinding everybody down, and I was sitting in my office waiting to be fired.”

from ch. three, “Christ Cella’s Speakeasy”

Walbridge set off faster than you’d think a stout man could go, heading for 45th and Lexington. All he said was that he was having lunch with Christopher Morley and some others who liked Sherlock Holmes, and I could tag along. I hurried after him with no notion of what I was getting myself into – least of all misadventures far removed from humdrum legal life. At the time it seemed utterly innocent, and a lot like playing hooky.

Manhattan had been changing in the 1920s, new money putting up a new generation of skyscrapers, but the Depression had halted most of it and Midtown was still full of brownstones. An Italian immigrant named Christ Cella had turned the half-basement of his on East 45th Street into a speakeasy, its entrance a few steps down from the sidewalk. It wasn’t a speak where you whispered “Swordfish” through a peephole. You just opened the door and walked in. The place was under the protection of a childhood friend of Cella’s who was one of the toughest cops in town, and Cella was a sort of human oak tree himself.

We hung up our hats and coats next to a small room where a sole waiter was telling customers the day’s menu, but Walbridge led me past it, down a hall to a kitchen where Cella and his wife and others were working at the stove and grill and sinks. The brightly lit kitchen smelled wonderfully of broiling meat and steaming vegetables, spices and herbs, with a continuous clatter of pots and pans and a hubbub of voices in English and Italian.Off to the side at an oval table sat several men beneath a cloud of tobacco smoke. On the far side, back to the wall, was a burly man with a broad hearty face, thick brown hair, and lively eyes full of mischief. He looked up as we entered, and waved us into empty seats.

“This is K. W. Hazelbaker Esq. from the Harvard Club,” Walbridge said grandly: “Woody, meet Christopher Morley, pater familias of the Three Hours for Lunch Club.”

“Very pleased to meet you, Mr. Morley— Hey, wait: three hours?”

“At the very least,” said Morley in a clear musical treble. “Civilized rules for our little club. Not as well-known as the Harvard Club, and no clubhouse at all except Christ Cella’s kitchen, but our own, and welcome. You’ll have a drink?”

“Scotch highball?” I asked the looming presence at my elbow. Cella was wiping his big hands on his apron, his face red from the heat of his grill. He had a chest like a barrel, but his jovial expression put me at ease.

“Have a martini,” said Walbridge. “Best drink in the house. This is Bill Hall,” he said, nodding at a sharp-eyed, primly dressed man with a trim mustache, “that’s Bob Leavitt next to Chris, and Peter Greig on the other side. Woody’s just read Starrett’s book, Chris.”

“Wonderful, isn’t it!” beamed Morley across the table. “I only wish I’d written it myself, but then I wouldn’t have had the delight of reading it, all in a swoon, like a child on Christmas morning. Are you a Holmesian, Woody?”

“Well – I love the stories, but never dreamt anyone could do what Starrett did with them. I just read your Sherlock Holmes preface, by the way. I liked it a lot.” The martini arrived and I took a sip. It was the coldest I’d ever tasted, and more went down that first sip than I intended. I took another sip to warm me up again.

“Kind of you to say so,” Morley was replying: “I wrote it in one fell swoop, which shows what you can do when you write about something you know down to the ground. It was a magic carpet that took me straight to London again.”

“How was that, sir?”

“It came about in a different speak one day. My Doubleday cronies were bringing out a complete edition, Conan Doyle’s having just croaked guar-anteeing no more frankly inconvenient returns from the dead for the great detective. They asked me to write the preface, and I agreed to if it paid me enough to visit London again.”

“We’re really a Baker Street club, with Chris as major-domo,” explained Greig, a big bluff man with amiable features and dark hair beginning to silver at the temples.

“No kidding? How long have you been doing this? How do you join?” I asked a bit too eagerly. From across the table, a “humph!” came from Leavitt, accompanied by a look of disdain.

“Beware of tourists, Chris. I hear the bus pulling up outside already. Everyone likes Sherlock Holmes, young man,” he said to me sternly, hard bright eyes glinting behind steel-rimmed spectacles. “There are only two kinds of people in the world, those who have read Sherlock Holmes, and those who will. But how well do you actually know the Sacred Writings?”

“The what?”

He sighed heavily for effect. “Unbaptized, as I thought. The Canon. The Sherlock Holmes stories. How well do you really know them?”

“Try me.” The first martini was down, and beginning to talk on its own.

“Very well, I shall. Who was the second most dangerous man in London?”

“Colonel Sebastian Moran,” I answered – with silent thanks that I’d just reread the stories.

“Hmm. Correct. Where was Dr. Watson wounded?”

“In Afghanistan.” Big grins from Morley and Hall.

“Ha ha ha. I mean in what part of his body,” Leavitt bore in.

“In his shoulder, except when it seems to have been in his leg. This is fun. Ask me another.”

“All right. How about for the next round of drinks? It’s a little game we play. I give you a quotation, and you tell me which story it’s from and what it’s in reference to. If you can’t, you buy the round.”

“And if you can, Leavitt pays, but watch out!” warned Hall. “He has a collection of stinker questions and obscure quotations for just this sort of occasion.”

“Pipe down, Bill. Respect for superior knowledge, please. Are you game?” asked Leavitt, looking at me again. Morley sat listening and smiling, hands cupping an oldfashioned glass, nodding to himself, eyes dancing with enjoyment.

“Fire away,” I said like a chump.

“Here it comes: ‘under ordinary conditions he no longer craved this artificial stimulus, but I was well aware that the fiend was not dead but sleeping.’”

Damn. I knew what it referred to, but couldn’t remember which story. I’d hoped for something snappy like “Mr. Holmes, they were the footprints of a gigantic hound.” Leavitt studied my expression with a smile. It was from a late story, though, I was pretty sure.

“Dr. Watson on Holmes’s drug habit. The Red Circle,” I ventured, trying to sound confident.

“Right on context, wrong on story. The Missing Three-Quarter. I’ll have another sidecar, thank you very much. What will the rest of you gentlemen have?”

I took out my wallet, extracted a twenty-dollar bill, and laid it on the table.

Morley chuckled appreciatively. “Tell me, Hazelbaker,” he asked, “what do you do?”

“I’m a lawyer.”

“I deduced that much when Earle tacked Esq. onto your name. Where?”

“A firm downtown, Emery Bird Thayer.”

Morley rubbed his hands together in delight. “Is that so! Wall Street, I believe! Well, the Street isn’t what it used to be, but what is, these days? Gentlemen, we may have here the answer to a thirsty Holmesian’s prayer – an eager young plutocrat. How many rounds of drinks are you good for today, Woody?”

“Wait, don’t I get a chance to get even?”

“You do indeed,” said Hall. “And don’t let Leavitt buffalo you. He always tries to pluck newcomers, but he’s far from infallible.”

“Are you a newcomer, Bill?” said Leavitt smugly, as Cella placed a tray of fresh drinks on the table. “Seems I recall you buying a round or two the past week. But we need a genuine membership test, Chris, to discourage mere curiosity-seekers. Not necessarily meaning you, young man. Time will tell on that score. A toast, gentlemen: to The Second Most Dangerous Man in London!”