Read Online Sherlock Holmes: The American Years by Michael Kurland - Free Book Online Page B

yet!” I reached to him above the bench.
    “You’re taking the wrong approach,” he said, but handed over a silver coin.
    I lowered myself again as loudest-yet boos crescendoed from the crowd. The smaller boy saw his chance and this time succeeded in carrying off the umbrella toward the front of the Pavilion, where between spectators’ rumps I caught a glimpse of crimson socks flashing across home plate.
    “Come back!” I yelled, arms flailing.
    “Do you
mind
?” Ashcroft’s knee jabbed painfully into my ribs.
    “We’d
all
like to
enjoy
the proceedings,” Mrs. Ashcroft chimed in, her acid tones eating into my brain.
    I reared up in protest, knocked my cranium in the same spot, and shouted, “Enjoy ‘em over the part of me you see best!” Thisprovoked sounds of outrage and what felt like the point of a bayonet jabbing my rear. I pivoted, thumping my poor head yet head again, and saw them glaring down at me, Mrs. Ashcroft’s parasol held aloft in a two-handed grip.
I’ll take their measure
, I vowed grimly, and looked down again to find that the bigger boy had recovered the umbrella.
    “Here,” I told him, and tossed the other dollar.
    He scarcely looked at it, but peered around anxiously for his companion. “I want five.”
    “
WHAT IN THUNDER FOR?
” As I felt the parasol’s retaliatory probe, a red haze clouded my wits. My feet kicked backward and met solid resistance, simultaneously barking my shins and bringing a rain of blows.
    “That’s
enough
from you!” said Ashcroft, and took hold of my ankles.
    “Hands off!” I struggled furiously to free myself. “I’ll flay you both!” Then, seeing the boy turn and flee: “NOT YOU!” He headed for the Pavilion’s opposite side, umbrella in hand. “WAIT!” Clutching the bench, I saw him disappear outside into the crowd. “COME BACK!
STOP!
” I broke away from Ashcroft, thrust myself upright, and plunged down the Pavilion stand, angry spectators boiling in my wake. “Vile ruffian!” yelped a woman whose picture hat I’d knocked askew.
    By the time I thumped to the ground, there remained no trace of the boys. The constabulary, of course, had witnessed nothing. While the game careened through its late innings I lingered dumbly at the foot of the Pavilion, bitter lamentations—
Carry me home to die
, and the like—coursing though my head. I vaguely knew that Boston was winning, but my fancy was caught by the rhubarbsthat continued to erupt, the nines swarming on the diamond in shifting formations of reds and blues. Hadn’t old-time jousting tournaments provoked such contentious pageantry? In my daybooks I’d jotted notes for a tale of medieval England wherein a modern-day Yankee introduces lethal firearms and other nineteenth-century delights, provoking a cataclysmic conflict. Should I have him bring base ball to the Round Table? Divide the knights into rival nines? The notion of wiping them out at a single stroke captivated me, and I pulled out pencil and scorecard again. When I ceased jotting and looked up again, the teams had departed the field and the Pavilion was nearly empty. I stood amid a litter of spoiled food and oilpaper wrappers and cigar stumps and rumpled scorecards and newspapers, my heart low. But then, gradually, a miracle of restorative vision began to emerge. Soon I was busy hatching a scheme to regain my pilfered prize.
    Its design had rounded into satisfying shape when movement behind the benches caught my eye. Somebody was there. The thieving brats? With pounding heart I circled around to peer beneath the structure, and caught out Holmes crouched beside a murky puddle, studying the ground through a magnifying lens. “Scouting for catfish?” I inquired with some sharpness.
    He took a final look, straightened slowly, and regarded me with granite eyes; I reckoned he knew I’d lost tolerance for him. Fact was, by then I resented most
everything
about him: his cultured syllables, his youth, his height, his uniformly black