The Boss let out a roar of laughter. Morey let out a groan, and then glared at me from the floor. “It’s just you and me now, Jim McKenna,” he said evilly, skulking off.
The Boss brushed his threat aside. “This is war. Ireland needs all her sons, even gorillas like Morey, no matter their land of birth or their personal indispositions toward one another. If a man like your own good self has had his conscience pricked by the indignities heaped upon our most distressful nation, and you wish to join us in our struggle, then… this is where it begins.”
“Then let it begin,” I replied.
In the days, weeks, and months that followed, the Boss and his men did nothing less than to rob me of my Britishness and turn me into an Irishman-or, rather, an Irish-American. I was schooled in the lore of that island, and in its resentful, aggrieved history. I was taught the finer points of counterfeiting, of bomb-making and pistolshooting, loosening my British inhibitions against the straightforward use of violence. At one point, my mind flashed back to that moment in what Watson had called The Adventure of the Three Garridebs, and I realized that never again would I strike a ruthless criminal such as “Killer” Evans with my pistol when I could more easily shoot him in lawful response to his attempted murder of Watson and myself.
As the Boss said, this was war.
I learnt of the Irish underground railroad, which moved fleeing Fenians through Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Buffalo, New Orleans, Chicago, St. Paul, and San Francisco. I realized for the first time the immense amount of money being collected in the States to be remitted to Ireland, apparently to finance a very big operation to be forthcoming. I heard names bruited, names not unfamiliar to me, but never in this context: Casement and Childers and a man they called “Dev.” The thought that men such as these could possibly be traitors to the Crown stunned me.
There was more, even darker. Cut off from civilization as I was, I had little recourse to newspapers. But the ominous wind blowing from east had not gone unnoticed, even in here Buffalo. The possibility of war with the Kaiser’s Germany was now openly being contemplated across the Atlantic and, to judge from the tenor of my companions’ remarks, it was something devoutly to be wished-and they made no secret where their loyalties lay.
As a “cover,” I was sent to work with a motor-car mechanic. Americans were mad for motor cars, and with my natural aptitude for gadgetry, I was soon on a first-name basis with starters, sparking plugs, oil pumps, and the like. To enhance my Americanness, I even began to sport a small, although hideous, goatee beard, which lent me an uncanny resemblance to “Uncle Sam.”
That was by day. In the evenings I often visited with Miss McParland. Why she had betrayed me in Chicago, I still had no idea. She would not respond to any questions on the subject, but instead fixed me with that penetrating gaze I had come to know so well. Once, I dared ask her what was in the letter I had delivered, but her expression was that of a kindly teacher toward an especially dim pupil, and so I dropped the subject for the nonce. Instead, she handed me a “dime novel” about Custer’s Last Stand and asked me to read it aloud.
I had not got ten words into it when she stopped me. “No, no,” she said. “Listen to me, then imitate.” Treating me as an especially dim pupil, forcing me to repeat words, then phrases, then sentences, correcting my pronunciation at every step, as if she were my Svengali and I her Trilby. The object was to change my manner of speaking, to expunge all traces of Britishness in my speech, and to adopt the harsh and unlovely tunes of the American. I made rapid progress.
One evening, exhausted by my labors at the motor-car shop, as I lay smoking, she entered, but this time without a book. Directly, I made to rise, but she held up her hand in that forward way American girls have, and bid me to lie still. She took the bedside chair, and without preamble, she began to sing. It was a curious, melancholy waltz, but with a kind of serenity about it that I found utterly captivating. And her voice… it was of such perfection that the angels themselves must have been sitting at her feet, listening. “Just a song at twilight / when the lights are low / and the flick’ring shadows / softly come and go… ”
“What is it?” I asked when she had concluded.
“‘Love’s Old Sweet Song,’” she whispered. “Come on, James-sing it with me now.”
It was the first time she had called me by my Christian name, and even though it was not really mine, I felt a thrill run through me.
And so we sang. The song ended. She searched my face for what seemed like hours, questions unposed flitting across hers. “You know, Jim,” she said at last, “you’re really something.”
And so time passed…
In the portrait that Watson has so generously drawn of me, you may perhaps have noticed that disguise comes as second nature with me; indeed, I think I do not flatter myself by acknowledging that the stage in fact lost a great talent when I chose instead to become the world’s first private consulting detective. Still, no role I had played, neither stable boy, nor wizened bookseller, nor even Sigerson-when the world, including Watson, thought me dead after Professor Moriarty’s unfortunate accident at the Reichenbach Falls-could rival my new persona as Jim McKenna. With every passing day, he was becoming more and more real to me, and there were days when I hardly thought of Mr. Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street.
The irony was unmistakable: in search of the solution to the greatest mystery of my life, I had become my own client.
Therefore, I could not help but reexamine many of the tenets of my previous faith. Of course, it was impossible that I could descend to the level of the common Irish among whom I found myself. And yet, perhaps my forcible indoctrination was offering me another perspective on a people I had long dismissed as either congenital drunkards or habitual criminals-if often, like Moriarty and Moran, criminals of genius-whom I had now come to see, mostly thanks to Miss McParland, as human beings.
It was in the midst of this brown study that I took my place at our evening table, Mrs. Murphy’s boardinghouse writ large, but with as dangerous a band of cutthroats as I had ever associated with. As a series of names was called out, it was clear to me at once that the die had finally been cast: Lefty Louie, One-Eye, Happy Jim, and Paddy the Priest; the Americans were on a first-name basis with the world. And then…
“Jim,” said the Boss. “And Maddie. That’s the team. You leave two days hence for New York.”
Morey rose in anger. “But Boss-,” he sputtered. “What about me?”
“Shut yer gob, Charlie,” retorted the Boss. A parcel bound up with twine landed with a plop in front of me. New clothes, to complete my transformation from British gentleman to Irish-American ruffian. Among the accessories, I noticed, was a revolver. “Wear it in good health, Jimbo,” he said. “And use it if you have to.”
Once again, all eyes were upon me, Morey’s most especially. Only this time, it was not a rain of brickbats and chamber pots, but rather the hushed breath of expectancy that accompanied their attention. Though her gaze was modestly diverted, I could sense Maddie’s blushes from across the room. “Terrific, Boss,” I said, then turned my glance to her. “Let’s blow this dump, Maddie. I’m goin’ bughouse here.”
The plan was that she and I were to pose as father and daughter. But Maddie demurred, arguing that despite our difference in age, it was far more common among our class that an older man take a younger wife than be seen traveling with a marriageable daughter. And so it was agreed. Over one objection, as you might well imagine. Indeed, Morey had been quietly but steadily seething in a corner of the room, and I did not like his look.