Outrage at the Diogenes Club , livre ebook

Andrews UK - D Victor Daniel

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56 pages

English

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In 1910, American author and social critic Jack London began writing The Assassination Bureau, Ltd., a work that he never completed. Now, thanks to the recently discovered manuscript of Dr. John Watson, we know why. The early part of London's book describes a secret organization - scoffed at or ignored by police officials - that conspires to murder influential political and social leaders. Not until Sherlock Holmes is provoked into action by threats close to home does anyone appear able to stop the Assassination Bureau. As Holmes and Watson proceed, they uncover devilish plots involving the deaths of some of the most prominent figures in history-from American Presidents to European heads of state, from murderous gangsters to muckraking writers like Jack London himself. With a deadly timing-device ticking, Sherlock Holmes hopes to prevent any further murders from threatening world peace. But by 1912, is he already too late?

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Publié par	Andrews UK
Date de parution	26 septembre 2016
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781780926797
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0300€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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The Outrage at the Diogenes Club
[Being another manuscript found in the tin dispatch box of Dr John H. Watson in the vault of Cox & Co., Charing Cross, London]
Book Four in the Series,
Sherlock Holmes and the American Literati
As Edited By Daniel D. Victor, Ph.D.

2016 digital version converted and published by
Andrews UK Limited
www.andrewsuk.com
First edition published in 2016
© Copyright 2016 Daniel D. Victor
The right of Daniel D. Victor to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998.
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without express prior written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted except with express prior written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended). Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damage.
All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Any opinions expressed herein are those of the authors and not necessarily those of MX Publishing.
MX Publishing
335 Princess Park Manor, Royal Drive,
London, N11 3GX
www.mxpublishing.co.uk
Cover design by www.staunch.com

Here’s another for Norma, Seth, and Ethan

Acknowledgements
Thanks and appreciation to Norma Silverman, Judy Grabiner, Sandy Cohen, Mark Holzband, and Barry Smolin for all their help and inspiration. Thank you to Rory Lalwan, Senior Archives & Local Studies Assistant, City of Westminster Archives Centre, for clarifying some issues about London’s libraries. And a special thanks to David Marcum for not only making suggestions about the text, but also for supplying the proverbial “kick in the pants” to get me started in the first place.

An easy but erroneous assumption would be that there were no loose ends, no unanswered questions. Yet, as with any conspiracy, more than a few still linger.
- Thomas A. Bogar, Backstage at the Lincoln Assassination
Murder is a tawdry little crime; it’s born of greed, or lust, or liquor. Adulterers and shopkeepers get murdered. But when a president gets killed, when Julius Caesar got killed - he was assassinated.
- John Weidman, Spoken by the character, John Wilkes Booth, in Assassins
The best government is a benevolent tyranny tempered by an occasional assassination.
- Voltaire (attributed)

As previously, while the following manuscript appears as Dr Watson wrote it, I have taken the liberty to give his narrative a title, separate it into sections, and introduce his chapters with what I hope are relevant headnotes from the works of Jack London.
D.D.V.
November 2016

Chapter One
No other book of mine [ The People of the Abyss ] took so much of my young heart and tears as that study of the economic degradation of the poor.
- Jack London, Letter to George Sterling
In looking backward, I have come to recognise the irresponsible nature of my reporting. I could not possibly have been more naïve. However prescient a writer I may have regarded myself, I never anticipated that some purveyor of evil might take advantage of the information I had so innocently provided in public print. I refer, of course, to my primary narratives involving Mr Mycroft Holmes: “The Greek Interpreter” and “The Bruce-Partington Plans”.
Critics as well as supporters of those sketches should rightly denounce my self-deception. I never stopped to consider the ramifications. I never imagined miscreants so vile as to convert the details from my accounts into a devious scheme to dispatch the invaluable Mycroft - though “assassinate” seems the more relevant verb.
How unassuming of me! Not only did I reveal to enemies the nature of his indispensable link to the British government, but I even went so far as to announce his daily schedule. I readily confess my culpability. The blame for the outrage that occurred at the Diogenes Club should fall entirely upon me. I was the one who set the machinery in motion.
It was upon a cool and dark summer’s day in 1902 that Sherlock Holmes and I first became acquainted with the sinister force that would eventually target his brother. And yet, it must be said, that at the time Holmes himself first heard of the threat, he failed to take it seriously. Quite the contrary. He joined me in laughing at the proposition.
* * *
By August of ‘02, I had vacated our old rooms in Baker Street and moved into my own digs. Separated as Holmes and I now were, we had to co-ordinate our professional engagements in advance. Readers familiar with the narrative I called “The Illustrious Client” may remember a discussion we had in the drying room of Nevill’s Turkish Bath during the morning of Wednesday, the third of September in ’02. It was at Nevill’s that Holmes invited me to a meeting later that day in Baker Street.
To be more precise, the well-connected Sir James Damery was coming round at half-four, and my friend reckoned that a case was in the offing. At the time, of course, Holmes had no inkling that Damery’s words would trigger our inquiry into the dealings of the ruthless Baron Adelbert Gruner. On the contrary, given Sir James’ list of high-ranking acquaintances, Holmes believed the matter would concern some delicate social issue that wanted cleaning up.
Now any such invitation from Sherlock Holmes was enough to motivate me; but include a whiff of scandal, and the appeal became irresistible. I immediately agreed to stop in at 221B later that day.
In the aforementioned “The Illustrious Client”, I detailed Sir James’ concerns, and I need not repeat them here. Suffice it to say, the matter was anything but trivial. Miss Violet de Merville, a young lady in distress, required immediate aid. So upset was Sir James, in fact, that Holmes himself, after bidding farewell to his distinguished guest, quickly exited the flat. He was off to find the underworld agent called Shinwell Johnson who he believed could provide necessary informants.
“Dinner at 8.00!” Holmes did manage to shout up to me as he dashed down the stairs. “At Simpson’s!”
* * *
With no reason to return to my own residence before joining Holmes, I decided to remain in Baker Street to take up the “professional business” to which I referred in “The Illustrious Client”. In point of fact, I wanted to evaluate the remaining medical files I had left in my room. Fortunately, the review took but half an hour, and I decided to spend the time I had left relaxing in the sitting room with a copy of the Telegraph .
Settling into my familiar velvet-lined armchair in front of a warming fire, I fully intended to read the newspaper. I must have dozed off, however; for all I can remember was starting dramatically at a crisp knock at the door.
“Yes?” I managed to say.
The door opened; and in the few moments it took to brush aside the cobwebs, I realised that, with no Sherlock Holmes present to receive any callers, it was to me that the boy in buttons was announcing the arrival of a man come to see the consulting detective.
“Jack London,” muttered Billy the page, darting a suspicious glance behind him at the caller so named. Not only had Billy’s voice harboured an unusual note of disdain, but also the omission of the title, “Mister”.
Jack London ? I remember thinking. Means nothing to me - curious, though, in a metropolis of the same name. I wonder if it might not be some sort of mercurial pseudonym based on whatever city the man finds himself in. Perhaps, he’s Jack Manchester in the north.
Billy’s lacklustre introduction was immediately followed by a prolonged look of disgust as the lad backed away to make room for the visitor. Billy actually pressed himself flat against the open door to avoid being so much as accidentally brushed by the stranger. What’s more, once the man had entered, the boy wasted no time in beating a hasty retreat.
It took but a moment to comprehend Billy’s odd behaviour. A darting look at the man’s tattered clothing served well enough to brand him a vagrant. No need for me to recall Holmes’ admonition about checking someone’s cuffs or knees to intuit his background.
The man’s entire ensemble trumpeted poverty. A dark jacket, perhaps originally navy-blue, revealed frayed cuffs and worn elbows; a hole in the tan trousers exposed the right knee; and a pair of brown brogues, scuffed almost white, looked to be coming apart at an inner seam. His left hand, its knuckles marred by scars and discolouration, held a well-worn flat cap of indistinguishable tweed. And if his sorry state was not apparent enough, an unsavoury aroma of stale tobacco and old garbage, the stink of the street, underscored the point. In short, the man reeked; and the heat from the fireplace made the stench all the worse.
This embodiment of penury belonged to a pale-faced young man in his early twenties. A nest of dishevelled dark hair sat atop his crown, and his narrow blue eyes glanced furtively about the room. With his lips tightly closed, he could offer only the faintest hint of a smile.
On the street, one might not take a second look at such a figure. And yet due to my criminal investigations with Holmes, I had grown used to all sorts of strange people who appeared at Baker Street, and there was something irregular about this caller that raised my suspicions. For instance, his dress looked threadbare though he himself did not appear to be starving; and in spite of his nervous fidgeting and self-conscious shifting from one