“When summer approaches, the number of animals given away or homeless increases greatly. It is a rather cruel habit of people to turn out their cats, or leave them inside to suffer and starve, while they leave Boston for the summer. Horses standing out in the heat become weak with thirst and hunger because of brutal owners who can pay less for another horse than to feed their own. They collapse in the street, or are taken by horse thieves and traded to be slaughtered. That is the end for the most faithful servant that mankind has. Does it not seem time to expect more of a Christian country?”
“There surely must be some recourse in the law, Mrs. Smith,” I suggested.
“Not presently. This summer, we have kept a score of men constantly employed in the streets following the more wretched horses and listening for alarms of theft. Here. The ribbon on her neck said her name was ‘Mollie.’”
The kitten had a flowing coat of orange and white, and she looked out and blinked at us with one blue eye and one granite gray.
“A beautiful puss,” Holmes said after the briefest look. “Now that I see your labors, I am certain my colleague Dr. Watson would agree that we have taken entirely too much of your day.”
On the way to the stairs, we passed by a room that held approximately a dozen boys and girls. They were playing very gently with some snoozing fat cat on a sofa and a sprightly kitten, while each youth stood up and told of a good deed performed toward an animal.
“That is our Kindness Club,” said Mrs. Smith to us proudly. “The children come nearly every day through the summer vacation. Many of these children would spend their evenings on the streets if not for our club, boredom leading to abuse of each other and any helpless beings. If we can teach humanity to the generation growing up, there will be no cruelty to grapple with in generations to come.”
One chubby boy was speaking about how he gave water to an emaciated horse on the street that was in weak, uncared for condition from pulling a heavy wagon. The other children applauded with sincere appreciation. After finding myself rather moved in observing, I turned back to see Holmes was speaking quietly to our guide. The only words I heard Holmes speak were “a good bargain.” The strength in that woman’s bright eye could only remind me of my very first glimpse at Holmes himself.
As we climbed into our waiting carriage again on Carver Street, an agent from the Animal Rescue League appeared at the window holding a small green bag with perforations along the side. He handed this into the carriage to Holmes. I presumed this package was connected to Holmes’s hushed talk with Mrs. Smith. The agent said that yarn was the preferred plaything, but never to be ingested.
“I believe I saw a piece of yarn at the bottom of my wardrobe. Watson, did you notice it?” asked Holmes as we drove on our way.
“What is this about, Holmes?”
Holmes opened the top of the bag. Mollie peered over the side, then fell on her back as she tried to climb onto the carriage seat. For the next several days, Holmes hardly ever left the side of the mischievous kitten in the humble confines of our rooms.
I was often left with no occupation more pressing than to watch my companion dote on Mollie as she attacked a roll of yarn. Yet, it was my forehead she would pounce on in the still hours of the night and bat her claws into my nostrils. Mollie had grown attached to Holmes and after dinners would curl up in his lap as he read a Blue Book guide to cats he had secured inexpensively.
“My dear Holmes,” I said at one point, “how long must she stay here while we attempt to concentrate on Dr. Lavey’s case?”
“Watson, I am a little surprised at your impatience with the speechless creature. She has come very close to absolving your old friend of the grave charge of murder already.”
Later that day, I sat with Sherlock Holmes at a fine restaurant he had pointed out in our guidebook among the elegant, tree-lined rows of aristocratic Boston. This outing took me quite by surprise, given my friend’s thrifty tastes. Only once we were on our way there, did I realize he had carried Mollie with us in the green bag. I suggested that the restaurant would not permit her, and, even if we were to smuggle her inside, were she to begin meowing incessantly (as was her custom), we would be thrown out.
“I suppose you are correct, as this is not Paris, where they are permissive of animal companions,” Holmes said. He tied a long ribbon he had in his pocket from her neck to a lamppost that could be seen from the restaurant’s window. It was a rather strange sight, I suppose, to the American pedestrians. Shortly into our meal, two young women in expensive silk dresses stopped and reached down for Mollie, who backed away and looked coolly at them. After some unsuccessful inducements to prove their friendship, the women yielded. Later, as Holmes uncharacteristically ordered dessert, a more dramatic trial came for the poor creature. Two well-dressed boys began to throw rocks at her. Mollie cried out and tried to run toward the restaurant.
I rose from my chair and readied my walking stick as a weapon. To my surprise, Holmes did not stir.
“Holmes, would you allow such torment by those little devils?”
The imps now crossed to Mollie’s side of the street, as their aim had been fortunately bad. Just as I was about to step into the fray, a hail of rocks flew at the perpetrators instead of the kitten. I craned my neck out the window and recognized three boys from Mrs. Smith’s Kindness Club. Though they were smaller than Mollie’s tormentors, they outnumbered the evildoers, successfully chasing them away and likely warning them never to harm helpless animals again without fearing their little club’s vengeance.
“Do you not think it somewhat strange,” I remarked when we exited, “those Kindness boys from Mrs. Smith’s club would be in this part of the city!”
“I do not think it strange at all,” replied Holmes, untying our little pet, and taking her up with one hand, “as I directed them to come. You must know I should want nothing to happen to our little colleague, Watson.”
Leaving my companion afterwards, I visited my old friend Lavey, who was weeping with news that the prosecuting attorney brought the most severe counts against him in his indictment. He begged me to convince his jailers to allow me to administer medicine to him. By this, I knew, he meant his opium, as I watched him trembling, perspiring, and yawning uncontrollably.
Holmes, meanwhile, had spent the day in leisurely visits to scientific correspondents at the laboratories at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and to the site near Harvard of the famous Parkman case. Knowing the remarkable character of Sherlock Holmes’s mind, I had eliminated any doubt as to his commitment to Lavey’s case. I was therefore not surprised upon returning to our lodging house when Holmes met me at the door and requested that I repair immediately to the police station and inform Detective Dugan that we wished to visit their prison in Charlestown in the morning. He also provided some particular requests for Dugan to fulfill for our arrival.
“Shall I tell him the purpose of all this, Holmes?” I asked.
“I see you wonder about my methods in this case, Watson. Were you to have considered the data and my actions at each step, you would cease to. Yet, your friendship with the suspected murderer has prevented that, I fancy, for you think about the welfare of the man, not about the logic of the crime, a fatal mistake that has reduced many a detective into a charitable worker. In this case the man was a simple clue, nothing more. As for Dugan, you may tell him that if he grants my peculiar wishes, I shall point out for him a brutal fugitive sought by the law across New England.”
The next morning, we had no sooner arrived at the Charlestown prison than it was apparent to me that Dugan had carried out Holmes’s requests with strict deference. Crowded into a small courtyard were no less than fifteen criminals guarded on all sides. Holmes, striding in, removed a lens from his pocket and examined their hands and arms as he walked. Without looking up at their faces, he stopped in front of a particular prisoner and waved for Dugan.