Ten Fascinating Locations in Old New York, Part Four.

In this series of posts, I have been presenting the real life locations where I set my novel, A Predator's Game. The action took place in 1896. My characters, Nikola Tesla and Arthur Conan Doyle, battle with the multi-murderer Dr. Henry H. Holmes.

Part One. The American Tract Society Building, The Suicide Curves of the Ninth Avenue El, and The American Museum of Natural History.
Part Two. Bellevue Morgue, Hart Island, and The Manhattan State Hospital for the Insane.
Part Three. Tesla's Laboratory on East Houston, and the Eden Musée.

This post: Niagara Falls. The Adams Powerhouse. Goat Island and Terrapin Point.

The novel ends at Niagara Falls. This was inevitable. The conceit of my novel is that Nikola Tesla, tall, cerebral, other-worldly, acts in the role of Sherlock Holmes. The visiting author, Arthur Conan Doyle serves in the role of Dr. Watson. The multi-murderer Dr. Henry H. Holmes (the evil Holmes) functions as Moriarty.

In late 1893, Arthur Conan Doyle killed off Sherlock Holmes at Reichenbach Falls. During his real-life tour of America in the 1890s, he visited Niagara Falls and declared it should have been where Sherlock Holmes had died.

At the same time, in the mid-1890s, Niagara Falls was the site of Nikola Tesla's supreme triumph. The massive hydroelectric plant assembled there foretold the future. Electricity would define the progress of the coming century.

Two anecdotes.

In his youth, Nikola Tesla constructed paddle-wheels out of twigs and leaves and sent them spinning in a local creek. When he saw a postcard of Niagara Falls, he wondered how large a paddle-wheel would be necessary to harness its power.

A second relevant story is about Tesla and his cat, Macak, goes back to when the inventor was three.

". . .as I stroked Macak's back, I saw a miracle that made me speechless with amazement. Macak's back was a sheet of light and my hand produced a shower of sparks loud enough to be heard all over the house.

My father was a very learned man; he had an answer for every question. But this phenomenon was new even to him. "Well," he finally remarked, "this is nothing but electricity, the same thing you see through the trees in a storm."

Is nature a gigantic cat? If so, who strokes its back? It can only be God, I concluded." From: A Story of Youth Told by Age, Nikola Tesla.

 And so it was foreordained that Tesla would go on to discover the method of generating large amounts of electricity and would achieve this feat at Niagara Falls. In 1896, the electricity generated by the Niagara Falls complex doubled the electrical output for the entire United States. Some were skeptical that so much electricity would be used. They were wrong. Having electricity available created new industries. As an example, before having the electricity necessary for its refinement, aluminum was a precious and rarely used metal; an aluminum cap was placed atop the Washington Monument as a crown. The generators at Niagara helped create Alcoa as a major business and aluminum as a commonplace material.

The Adams Powerhouse at Niagara Falls (right)

The Adams Powerhouse was designed with cathedral-like grandeur by Tesla's friend, Stanford White and funded in part by Jacob Astor. In one of the tragedies that followed Tesla at the margins of his life, White would be murdered in one of the most spectacular and sordid crimes of the early 20th century (deemed "The Crime of the Century" by the press). Jacob Astor would die aboard the Titanic.
 

Armature being prepared for the Adams Powerhouse

Adams Powerhouse, 1902 (extended to add more generators)

Goat Island and Terrapin Point.

Niagara Falls is not the most ostentatious waterfall in the world, but among great waterfalls, it is the most accessible. At the time of the 1890s, the Victoria Falls and Iguazu Falls were known to the world at large, but few could venture to see them.

Goat Island divides Niagara Falls into two, into what are commonly called the American Falls and the Canadian Falls (also called the Horseshoe Falls). Goat Island is a primary tourist location with excellent views of both falls. In the 1890s, the more daring tourists had further options.

The Biddle Staircase and later the Biddle Elevator descended from the cliffside of Goat Island and allowed tourists to see the falls from below. That area below was a hostile landscape of boulders and scrub trees, but the views were spectacular.

The Biddle Stairs, in operation from 1829 to 1927. (minus the spectacular view)

The rickety bridge to Terrapin Rock at the time of the tower.

Just off of Goat Island, on the Canadian side and at the brink of the falls, was Terrapin Point. A dodgy bridge brought the braver tourists here, essentially just a rock at the brink of the cliff. From the 1820s until 1889, a tower was set at this site. It was blown up, with the promise of a new one soon being built to replace it. This new tower was never built.

Another view.

The bridge and Terrapin Point after the tower was blown up.

-----

Nikola Tesla, Arthur Conan Doyle and Dr. Henry H. Holmes are all characters in my thriller, A Predator's Game.

A Predator's Game is available in soft-cover and ebook through Amazon and other online retailers.

A Predator's Game, now available, Rook's Page Publishing.

 -----------------------

Back page blurb.

Manhattan, 1896.

When the author Arthur Conan Doyle meets Nikola Tesla he finds a tall, thin genius with a photographic memory and a keen eye, and recognizes in the eccentric inventor the embodiment of his creation, Sherlock. Together, they team up to take on an "evil Holmes." Multi-murderer Dr. Henry H. Holmes has escaped execution and is unleashing a reign of terror upon the metropolis. Set in the late nineteenth century in a world of modern marvels, danger and invention, Conan Doyle and Tesla engage the madman in a deadly game of wits.

Martin Hill Ortiz, also writing under the name, Martin Hill, is the author of A Predatory Mind. Its sequel, set in 1890s Manhattan and titled A Predator's Game, features Nikola Tesla as detective.

Continue reading →

Ten Fascinating Locations in Old New York, Part Three.

Tesla in his East Houston Laboratory

In this series of posts, I have been presenting the real life locations where I set my novel, A Predator's Game. The action took place in 1896. My characters, Nikola Tesla and Arthur Conan Doyle, battle with the multi-murderer Dr. Henry H. Holmes.

In my first post, I presented The American Tract Society Building, The Suicide Curves of the Ninth Avenue El, and The American Museum of Natural History. In the second post, I looked at how old New York handled its dead and undesirables, looking at the Bellevue Morgue, Hart Island, and The Manhattan State Hospital for the Insane. In this post I will look at Tesla's laboratory on the north side of Houston and at the king of the dime store museums, The Eden Musée.

Location #4. Tesla's Laboratory on East Houston.
Location #3. The Eden Musée.



To be continued with:
Location #2. The Adams Power Station.
Location #1. Goat Island and Terrapin Point, Niagara Falls.

Tesla's Laboratory on East Houston.

I've undertaken some novel research regarding Tesla's laboratories, including uncovering photographs of the building on East Houston. Although Tesla created some of his most seminal inventions at previous laboratories, the East Houston address housed his work for the longest period.

Tesla situated his laboratory on the fifth and sixth floors of 46 to 48 East Houston in Manhattan. The building was torn down in 1929. In a 1901 article, the first floor entrance was described as "barn-like" and a freight elevator took the visitors to the upper floors. (Tesla--the original hipster?)

From my novel:

  Long, sturdy tables ran aside the walls of the laboratory, topped by a variety of instruments: turbines and rotors, along with the tools to make machines, to score, slice, and twist metal. A forest of devices crowded the center of the floor: squat spools, towering columns and a six-foot disk inlaid with a hypnotic spiral of copper.
  Holmes imagined some as giant chess pieces. A Tesla coil rising from the floor had elegant, sensuous lines and was topped with a sphere. It was the bishop. Another, taller coil wore a jagged copper crown: the queen. The waist-high spools of wire were the rooks.

From The Omaha Illustrated Bee, December 18, 1904, p. 5

As I point out at length in a previous post, the photo presented below was mislabeled and this was Tesla's laboratory at 46 to 48 East Houston shortly before it was torn down to make room for the expansion of East Houston.

Tesla's E. Houston laboratory (correctly 46 to 48 E. Houston), shortly before demolition.

The Eden Musée.

Dime museums sprung up in the late 1800s, as a quieter and more permanent alternative for audiences to view the curiosities one might otherwise find at freak shows or circuses. They often mixed morals and the morbid. A waxwork display might depict the perils of alcohol alongside the murders of Jack the Ripper. They might include jars with medical specimens or special musical events.

The Eden Musée which opened on 23rd Street near 6th Avenue in 1884, was the high-brow establishment among these museums. It included such features as the Leaders of the World in wax, where curious visitors could walk up to figurines of royalties. It included the amazing automaton, Ajeeb, an expert at chess (inside the robot was an actual chess champion). And it included a Chamber of Horrors with wax figurines of murderers and victims as entertainment.

From my book:

  Built with continental pretensions, the three-story dime museum presented a French Gothic façade with statues of plump ladies serving as columns. A decorative arch displayed a carving of sea nymphs. Its steep roof sloped over its third floor, plunging down to meet an ornamental railing. Garish streamers were slung from window to window. A banner screamed in three-foot-tall letters: Open To All! Come Visit Our Chamber of Horrors!

Eden Musee, 1899. Not as decorated as on other occasions.

Roman Diorama with Wax Figures for highbrow edification.

An Invitation to Come See the Famous Chess-Playing Automaton and Seances

Closed in 1915, the museum has had an enduring legacy. An exhibit in Coney Island purchased some of the material at a bankruptcy sale to outfit a new Eden Musée dedicated to the waxworks. This was destroyed by fire in 1928 only to be rebuilt with new figurines. The name was franchised to Boston for a short-lived museum whose waxworks were then sent to Cedar Point, Ohio where it operated until 1966. More recently, the name has been revived at Cedar Point for a haunted house exhibit. In 2010, a television series titled Musée Eden was set in Montreal. It was a thriller/period piece centering around a wax museum.

Continued in Part Four.

-----

Nikola Tesla, Arthur Conan Doyle and Dr. Henry H. Holmes are all characters in my thriller, A Predator's Game.

A Predator's Game is available in soft-cover and ebook through Amazon and other online retailers.

A Predator's Game, now available, Rook's Page Publishing.

 -----------------------

Back page blurb.

Manhattan, 1896.

When the author Arthur Conan Doyle meets Nikola Tesla he finds a tall, thin genius with a photographic memory and a keen eye, and recognizes in the eccentric inventor the embodiment of his creation, Sherlock. Together, they team up to take on an "evil Holmes." Multi-murderer Dr. Henry H. Holmes has escaped execution and is unleashing a reign of terror upon the metropolis. Set in the late nineteenth century in a world of modern marvels, danger and invention, Conan Doyle and Tesla engage the madman in a deadly game of wits.

Martin Hill Ortiz, also writing under the name, Martin Hill, is the author of A Predatory Mind. Its sequel, set in 1890s Manhattan and titled A Predator's Game, features Nikola Tesla as detective.

Continue reading →

Ten Fascinating Locations in Old New York, Part Two

In my novel, A Predator's Game, set in 1896, my characters, Nikola Tesla and Arthur Conan Doyle, visit several noteworthy sites in New York and the surrounding areas. These locations range from the exotic to the macabre. In my previous post, I presented The American Tract Society Building, The Suicide Curves of the Ninth Avenue El, and The American Museum of Natural History. Today, I will deal with the fringes of Old New York and how the city handled its dead and mentally ill.


The Locations.

In today's post.
Location #7. The Bellevue Morgue.
Location #6. Hart Island.
Location #5. The Manhattan State Hospital for the Insane.


In a future post:
Location #4. Tesla's Laboratory on East Houston.
Location #3. The Eden Musée.
Location #2. The Adams Power Station.
Location #1. Goat Island and Terrapin Point, Niagara Falls.

7. The Bellevue Morgue.

The Bellevue Hospital complex resided along the border of the East River. This included the hospital and psychiatric institution to the north and the city morgue on the southern end. Here is its description from the book:

The Bellevue morgue served the entire city of Manhattan, handling eight thousand corpses a year. Situated by the East River, it lay south of its namesake hospital and mental ward, and was housed in an imposing building. Long, broad, and a single story, it stood as a virtual bunker.

Here are the totals of the traffic of bodies as detailed in the 1896 Annual Report.

From the State Charities Aid Association's Report on the Department of Public Charities of New York City, 1896

For the bodies that landed in the morgue, 48 hours were given for relatives to claim them or else they were shipped out to be buried in mass graves on Hart Island. With no system for notification, less than half of the bodies were claimed. Conveniently, the ferry to Hart Island docked just outside the back door.

Selling the dead to medical schools was a profitable venture and the high demand ensured that most corpses were obtained illegally. From time to time, the morgue had scandals regarding trafficking cadavers and skeletons. In 1896, scandals at Bellevue Hospital and the morgue came to a head, resulting in the dismissal of the long time keeper of the morgue, Captain Albert N. White.

Identifying bodies in the Bellevue Morgue

6. Hart Island

Hart Island is one of the most fascinating and troubling pieces of New York history. It is a small, flat island set at the northeastern extreme of what, in 1898, became the city. It became the repository for every aspect for which the city wanted to turn a blind eye. Over the years portions have been used as an internment camp for war prisoners, a boy's reformatory, a woman's workhouse, a sanatorium, a penitentiary, and a silo for nuclear missiles.

In its ongoing function from the 1860s through today, it has served as New York City's pauper's graveyard. Over one million individuals have been buried on its land, their coffins deposited like refuse in long ditches. For one hundred fifty years, prisoners have been used as the burial detail. I suppose I have strong feelings about this as voiced in my novel by Captain McEvoy of the Fidelity.

We launch out on two trips a day. In the afternoon we gather up the bodies from all the islands and their institutions, everyone who was terminally reformed. We haul 'em off to the Bellevue morgue. Those corpses stay two days to fester them up a bit and in hopes someone will claim them. Only as part of a sick joke, no one gets told they are there. So each morning we cart away the ripened from a previous harvest. Packed in the cheapest of coffins, we haul them off to the cemetery at Hart's Island. Only it's not a cemetery, it's a wasteyard, where the coffins get piled one on top of the other in vast pits. Not even St. Peter with his Book of Life could sort out their bones.

People ask me if ferrying bodies don’t give me the chills. The rot of dead flesh don’t do nothing to affright me. It's better than the rot of the living—the cheap bastards who tally up the cost of every grain of rice and strip the names from the dead to save a squeezed penny. I fear those dead souls in Tammany who’s got the power to transform humans into rubbish.

Prisoners on the grave detail, Hart Island. April 1, 1900, New York Tribune.

The coffins placed in ditches. April 1, 1900, New York Tribune

Captain McEvoy aboard the good ship Fidelity docked at Hart Island. April 1, 1900, New York Tribune.

The Hart Island Project is dedicated to making the public aware of the ongoing burials on Hart Island and to provide a memorial for the more recently buried.

Location #5. The Manhattan State Hospital for the Insane.

To investigate the conditions at the Blackwell Island Insane Asylum, the intrepid reporter Nellie Bly had herself locked up as a patient. The scandalous conditions and the resulting sensational stories prompted the shutting down of the facility and in early 1896 the State Lunacy Commission opened the Manhattan State Hospital for the Insane on Wards Island. With 4,400 patients it became the most-populated psychiatric hospital in the world. Among its famous occupants, Scott Joplin would die there in 1917.

Ward's Island. The Manhattan State Hospital for the Insane is on the right.

1897 Photo of the East Building

Continued in Part Three.

-----

Nikola Tesla, Arthur Conan Doyle and Dr. Henry H. Holmes are all characters in my thriller, A Predator's Game.

A Predator's Game is available in soft-cover and ebook through Amazon and other online retailers.

A Predator's Game, now available, Rook's Page Publishing.

 -----------------------

Back page blurb.

Manhattan, 1896.

When the author Arthur Conan Doyle meets Nikola Tesla he finds a tall, thin genius with a photographic memory and a keen eye, and recognizes in the eccentric inventor the embodiment of his creation, Sherlock. Together, they team up to take on an "evil Holmes." Multi-murderer Dr. Henry H. Holmes has escaped execution and is unleashing a reign of terror upon the metropolis. Set in the late nineteenth century in a world of modern marvels, danger and invention, Conan Doyle and Tesla engage the madman in a deadly game of wits.

Martin Hill Ortiz, also writing under the name, Martin Hill, is the author of A Predatory Mind. Its sequel, set in 1890s Manhattan and titled A Predator's Game, features Nikola Tesla as detective.

Continue reading →

Ten Fascinating Locations in Old New York, Part One.

One of the joys of writing my novel, A Predator's Game, involved immersing myself in the Manhattan of 1896. With so many exotic locations, I was able to pick the best to set the scenes of my story.

Background.

In 1896, Manhattan and New York City were one and the same. The consolidation that would include the five boroughs took place in 1898. This was also several years before construction of the subway system had begun. Although no underground trains existed, there was an extensive system of overhead trains. Most trolleys were pulled by horses, with a single cable car traveling up and down Broadway and one on the Brooklyn Bridge. The latter converted to electric-power that year.

With the invention of the elevator and improvements in construction techniques, a new sort of building, the skyscraper, started going up all over the place and the tallest building one month would soon be overtaken the next.

The Ten Locations.

Location #10: The American Tract Society Building.
Location #9:  The Suicide Curves of the Ninth Avenue El.
Location #8: The American Museum of Natural History.
(to be continued with:)
Location #7. The Bellevue Morgue.
Location #6. Hart Island.
Location #5. The Manhattan State Hospital for the Insane.
Location #4. Tesla's Laboratory on East Houston.
Location #3. The Eden Musée.
Location #2. The Adams Power Station.
Location #1. Goat Island and Terrapin Point, Niagara Falls.

Location #10. The American Tract Society Building.

A background theme of my story is the perils of technology. The appearance of tall buildings were a source of wonderment in the 1890s: evidence of unrelenting progress while at the same time changing the public's concept of the city, suddenly there was such a thing as a vertical landscape. I searched for a building that would describe both the awe and the shock of the new, firmly planted in the 19th century but calling out to the future.

From the book:

  As inventors of the religious pamphlet, the American Tract Society delivered the Good News to the masses. . . . The Society decided to construct their own Tower of Babel nearby City Hall and Newspaper Row and not far from the launching point of the Brooklyn Bridge, perfectly positioned as a prestigious address and guaranteeing them a regular income as landlords. ...

  When completed in August of 1895, the American Tract Society building stood twenty-three floors, its roof higher than any building in the city save those with steeples. Its elevators gave a jolt when they shot the passengers up to the heavens at an alarming speed and made a terrifying drop when they returned them to earth. Or else they simply crashed.

Deaths in elevators and deaths in falling from man-made heights were new and exotic fears and the Tract Society received bad publicity from both with articles published in the local papers, The Engineering News and The Scientific American. The builders had installed the wrong type of elevator hydraulics for so tall a building. Thus the owners had trouble renting the upper floors and eventually had to sell the building at foreclosure. It still stands today, albeit with better elevator brakes.

The American Tract Building (in back), 1890s.

Location #9. Suicide Curve.

Nothing better defined the progress of the 1890s with its wonder, its convenience, and its hell, than the elevated trains. Not needing to stop for pedestrian nor horse, these trains invented commuting and expanded  the city, so that houses and buildings crowded out the cornfields and open lands of northern Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Bronx. They also blotted out the sky for those who worked and lived below. Their coal engines belched sulfurous clouds as they passed.

One of the Spidery Monsters that Made Up the Elevated Train System.

Along the Ninth Avenue El, at 110th Street, the train tracks rose to perilous heights and took a pair of sharp turns. These were called the Suicide Curves. In my novel, a runaway train approaches the turn.

  Tesla stared up the line. “Changing direction while maintaining velocity is a form of acceleration with the additional force directed outwards from the curve.”

  “What does the hell does that mean?” Conan Doyle asked.

  “When we hit the curve that velocity will be directed toward tossing the train from its tracks and over the edge of the railway. To execute the turn with a margin of safety, we need to cut our speed in half.”

  The track sloped upward atop spindly metal legs, ascending to over one hundred feet above the streets below, seemingly suspended in midair, higher than the roofs of the nearby tenements.

Suicide Curve on the 9th Avenue El at 110th

A Satirical View of the Oppressive, Belching Elevated Trains

#8. The American Museum of Natural History.

Having opened in 1877, the American Museum of Natural History underwent a period of rapid expansion in the mid-1890s. From the novel:

  The American Museum of Natural History filled the five floors of a long main building and an eastern wing. Scaffolding surrounded the stub of a west wing. A pair of rounded towers bracketed the main entrance, where a stairhead platform spread out in front of a series of six tall arches. From here, a cement staircase divided in two and toppled down to the street level.

American Museum of Natural History, an 1898 drawing showing its West Wing complete.

  Immediately upon entering the museum, they were greeted by a monstrous elephant, its head bowed for the charge, its glass eyes gleaming. Its tusks twisted inwards and nearly touched, like a pair of filaments with a narrow spark gap.

Tip, the Killer Elephant at the Public Entrance to the Museum. After having gored and killed seven people at the zoo, Tip was given a trial and then executed and stuffed.

Continued.

-----

Nikola Tesla, Arthur Conan Doyle and Dr. Henry H. Holmes are all characters in my thriller, A Predator's Game.

A Predator's Game is available in soft-cover and ebook through Amazon and other online retailers.

A Predator's Game, now available, Rook's Page Publishing.

 -----------------------

Back page blurb.

Manhattan, 1896.

When the author Arthur Conan Doyle meets Nikola Tesla he finds a tall, thin genius with a photographic memory and a keen eye, and recognizes in the eccentric inventor the embodiment of his creation, Sherlock. Together, they team up to take on an "evil Holmes." Multi-murderer Dr. Henry H. Holmes has escaped execution and is unleashing a reign of terror upon the metropolis. Set in the late nineteenth century in a world of modern marvels, danger and invention, Conan Doyle and Tesla engage the madman in a deadly game of wits.

Martin Hill Ortiz, also writing under the name, Martin Hill, is the author of A Predatory Mind. Its sequel, set in 1890s Manhattan and titled A Predator's Game, features Nikola Tesla as detective.

Continue reading →

First Chapter of A Predator's Game.

A Predator's Game 
Martin Hill Ortiz
2016, Rook's Page Publishing 

A Predator's Game is available in soft-cover and ebook editions through Amazon and other online retailers.

The First Chapter

       The man in the bowler hat stepped off the horse-drawn trolley. Overdressed for the sultriness of June, he wore a dark gabardine topcoat, its perfect tailoring drawn snugly over the muscular block of his shoulders. His shoes beamed from a recent shining, and his polished cufflinks winked in the midday sun. He clasped the whalebone grip of his walking cane, his thick-knuckled fingers clenching and unclenching in a strangling motion. Tipping his head back, he gazed skywards, beyond the valley of buildings, drinking in the sun until his eyes teared over. He then dipped his head down and surveyed the Eden Musée.

            Built with continental pretensions, the three-story dime museum presented a French Gothic façade with statues of plump ladies serving as columns. A decorative arch displayed a carving of sea nymphs. Its steep roof sloped over its third floor, plunging down to meet an ornamental railing. Garish streamers hung slung from window to window. A banner screamed in three-foot-tall letters: Open To All! Come Visit Our Chamber of Horrors!

The Eden Musée at its most garish.

            The pompous building summed up everything Dr. Henry Holmes loved and loathed about Manhattan: hypocrisy inflated to a grand scale, with the high-minded fused to the tawdry. While crossing the street in front of Lord & Taylor's, society dames wearing feathered headdresses took dainty hops over lumps of horse manure. On Park Row and by City Hall, men in top hats bemoaned the plight of the poor while wringing every cent of change from the ragged newsies. Sulfurous clouds of coal dust drifted down from the belching steam engines of the elevated-above-it-all trains. Progress as the religion of heathens. Culture, yes, but as fake as a blush on a prostitute's cheeks.

            The doctor strolled into the lobby of the self-proclaimed “People's Museum.” The wax sculpture of a portly policeman flanked the ticket seller's booth, its glass eyes glistening. "Woe to ye pocket-pickers!" its placard read. "Our bluecoat is ever the vigilant." Holmes handed over a dime.

            A gypsy woman sat at the threshold of the entry hall, behind a narrow oak table. She wore a tent-like dress spacious enough to hide a nest of children. Her face was moon-round with large expressive eyes accentuated by bangles of sleeplessness. Her eyelids sparkled with blue glitter; her fake lashes flapped like the wings of a luna moth. Pancake make-up deadened the shine on her face. A parrot rested atop her suede shoulder patch, one of its legs was tethered by a lace to her wrist.

5¢. THE MYSTERIES OF THE FUTURE REVEALED. 5¢.

ALL FORTUNES GUARANTEED

MADAME GRENADINE KNOWS ALL!

            Access to a font of infinite knowledge proved impossible for Holmes to resist. He spun a five-cent piece on the tabletop.

The Liberty Nickel

            The parrot hopped from the gypsy's shoulder, landing on the rim of a glass bowl where it bobbed its head down, plucking up two strips of folded paper. After shaking one loose, it dropped the other in front of the customer.

            Holmes unfolded his future, reading it aloud. "The challenges you will face may be overcome by determination." He crumpled it, grinding it into the palm of his fist. "Guaranteed?" His voice was ice-cold.

            "Yes," said the gypsy. "If you can demonstrate this fortune did not come to pass you may return to collect a full dollar."

            Holmes rolled a second nickel her way, Liberty's disembodied head tumbling chin over crown. With the gypsy's palm splayed flat and pressing the table, the coin slipped between the spread of her fingers and bumped to a stop.

            The parrot pounced into action, dipping again into the glass bowl and snatching up a second fortune, depositing it on the tabletop in front of Holmes.

            The doctor snapped up the folded paper and split open its crease with his thumb. Without looking down, he announced, "It tells me, I will eat this fucking bird for my dinner tonight." He smacked his lips. "Guaranteed."

            When the gypsy reached out to inspect the note, as quickly as a cobra strike, Holmes seized her wrist. His hand clamped down and twisted.

            If she felt pain, she refused to show it. They locked eyes: his alive and predatory, hers defiant, declaring she was too troublesome a mouse to swallow.

            She slipped her free hand into her bag, retrieved and set a silver dollar in front of Holmes. "The fortune speaks in error," she said.

            He let her go, broke a broad smile and inspected his earnings: a Morgan dollar, freshly minted, 1896. He seemed about to turn his shoulder when instead he quickly slapped his hand on the table, startling her. Lifting it, he revealed another nickel.

            The gypsy trembled. As her parrot bobbed, preparing to leap, she pinched its leather chain. Then she inhaled slowly, deeply, tipping back her head, rolling up her eyes, leaving only the whites. A hiss leaked between her rotting teeth. In a flash, her pupils returned. "This is your fortune," she declared. "You will kill again." She covered his nickel and scooted it her way.

            Holmes backed up, his eyebrows raised. He glanced to one side and then the other to see who else might have overheard. Satisfied that the exchange remained private, he nodded, offering a tip of his hat. "Which way to the Chamber of Horrors?" he asked.

                                                                           ***

            A domed skylight illuminated the Center Hall. The Rulers of the World, a waxwork diorama of monarchs, emperors and sheiks, lined the path to the entrance to the lower floor where a wide swath of steps scrolled down into a dark cave.

The Rulers of the World, in wax, Eden Musée.

           Mounted to the wall above the entryway to the pit was an ornamental clock. Its face a glowering caricature of the man in the moon; it wore a bandit's scarf as a mask. The clock hands appeared as two pistols pointed up, frozen at one minute to midnight. A sign beneath it warned entrants:

"The Lord So Cometh as a Thief in the Night."

            Holmes ambled down the stairs. Daylight faded; gas lamps bloomed. At the bottom of the steps a noose dangled in front of a mirror, providing visitors with a vision of their execution. Holmes viewed his head and neck through its loop. He adjusted his necktie.

            He considered his disfigured face. Months ago, as part of a scheme to escape the gallows, he clubbed his face beyond recognition. Now, as it healed, why did he hate it so much? This falseness, this new identity. The wiry rasp of his beard felt like a scouring pad sprouting from beneath his skin. The crumple of his shattered nose, the asymmetry of his cheekbones and ears, the prominence of his false front teeth: he snarled at his reflection. He had once been the handsome Dr. Jekyll. Now his features were those of the savage Mr. Hyde. A proper trimming: shave the beard, clip back the feral sideburns. Wash out the hair dye and plan a visit to a facial surgeon: he swore he would do everything he could to restore his previous looks. With the tip of his cane, he slapped the inside of the noose, setting it into motion with the sway of a pendulum.

            Upon entering the first crypt of the waxworks, Holmes found himself startled and infuriated. The Whitechapel Murders. The figure of a killer squatted over a victim, excavating her abdomen. A puddle of red wax spilled out over the fake cobblestones and dripped through a phony sewer grate. The placard declared: The Leather Apron Killer! Jack The Ripper! History's Foremost Archfiend! Five Women Mercilessly Slaughtered!

            Five? Holmes thought, seething. Only five murders places this "Ripper" at the fore? Holmes tried to think back to a year when he had killed only five.

            And this so-called fiend butchered whores! Where was the sport in that? Left to their own devices they'd destroy themselves in due time with booze or needles.

            Holmes had chosen as his victims, lovers, friends, associates and their children. In the desert of his emotionless life, his one great pleasure arose at the moment when his victims realized their betrayal, seeing Holmes for his true nature. Extinguishing the trustful expressions on their faces felt as soothing as a drink from a cool spring.

            The next chamber displayed Holmes himself: The Monster in Human Form! A wax figure of the doctor arched over eight-year-old Howard Pitezel, choking the child with his hands.

            I killed him with poison. Strangulation seems so... vulgar. Skin under the nails, the victim spitting, spindly arms and legs flailing like wildly flung rolling pins... and then all over so soon, no time to feast on the torment. And yet...

            Mimicking the pose, adding his hands to those around the child's neck, he felt a sensual satisfaction. Yes. He could imagine the joy of so intimate and quick a kill.

            A pair of onlookers scurried past his bent figure.

            The sculptor had given him brown eyes. Such shoddy attention to detail. His eyes had the blue-gray tremble of a mirage, the deception of an oasis. He stepped into the display and pressed his thumbs against the figure's glass eyes, driving them back into the hollow of its head. Holmes stepped back to admire the gouged sockets.

            Much improved.

            The final chamber of the cellar was devoted to a display of the novel device, the electric chair, showing the execution of William Kemmler.

            Electronic execution, electro-cution, that's what Edison named it.

The Execution of William Kemmler, correctly with two m's 

            Edison promoted the electric chair to aggravate his main rivals Westinghouse and Tesla—and to sell Edison's direct current as the only safe form of electricity. To expose the danger of alternating current, Edison undertook demonstrations executing animals, great and small, shocking them to death. Edison and his group followed up these presentations by championing the electric chair as a means of painless execution.

            The inaugural victim of this device was William Kemmler, the first human to be intentionally killed by electricity. Strapped down, soaked with salt water sponges to improve conduction, he was shocked and fried again and again in failed attempts to end his life. Westinghouse remarked that the execution would have gone more smoothly if they'd used an axe. And what had Tesla called the electric chair? A desecration of invention. A blasphemy.

            Tesla. Holmes ruminated on his memories of the man. Gangly-tall, smug, a genius who understands nothing. Tesla, who worships at the temple of progress. Tesla, who maintains a faith in the innocence of science.

            Nothing is innocent. Holmes had used one of Tesla's devices to aid in his escape and now Tesla alone knew he was still alive. Holmes had further use of that invention. He vowed to steal it and destroy its inventor.

            He gave me this life. The time has come to pay my creator a visit.

A Predator's Game will be available in paperback and electronic versions on March 30, 2016 from major retailers. Pre-order at Amazon.

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The Inventor, the Author, and the Killer.

A Predator's Game

In my novel, A Predator's Game, the inventor Nikola Tesla serves in the role of Sherlock Holmes.

Manhattan, 1896.

When the author Arthur Conan Doyle meets Nikola Tesla he finds a tall, thin genius with a photographic memory and a keen eye, and recognizes in the eccentric inventor the embodiment of his creation, Sherlock. Together, they team up to take on an "evil Holmes." Multi-murderer Dr. Henry H. Holmes has escaped execution and is unleashing a reign of terror upon the metropolis. Set in the late nineteenth century in a world of modern marvels, danger and invention, Conan Doyle and Tesla engage the madman in a deadly game of wits.

In my first novel, A Predatory Mind, I included a backstory about an interaction between the famed inventor Nikola Tesla and the multi-murderer, Dr. Henry H. Holmes. After completing the book, I realized that Tesla and Holmes were the most interesting aspect of the novel and I decided to write a sequel* devoted entirely to a deadly battle of wits between the two with the conceit being that Holmes had escaped his May, 1896 hanging.

Manhattan in its gilded age became the backdrop.

I decided Tesla needed an ally. After playing with the idea of Mark Twain, a friend of the inventor, I happened upon another direction. Arthur Conan Doyle had visited New York in the mid-1890s (although not in 1896). Wouldn't it be perfect to have Conan Doyle battle an evil Holmes? As I explored the possibilities I had a revelation: Tesla was Sherlock Holmes. Physically, they are virtual twins. Mentally, they were geniuses of the highest order. In personality, both were imperious and cerebral and had little interest in worldly distractions such as money or women or the matters which we mere mortals call life.

The first chapter can be read here. 

A Predator's Game is available in soft-cover and ebook editions through Amazon and other online retailers.

A Predator's Game, now available, Rook's Page Publishing.

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Martin Hill Ortiz, also writing under the name, Martin Hill, is the author of A Predatory Mind. Its sequel, set in 1890s Manhattan and titled A Predator's Game, is available from Rook's Page Publishing.

His recent mystery, Never Kill A Friend, is available from Ransom Note Press. His epic poem, Two Mistakes, won second place in the 2015 Margaret Reid/Tom Howard Poetry Competition. He can be contacted at mdhillortiz@gmail.com.

Martin Hill Ortiz

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Nikola Tesla Versus Sherlock Holmes

In my first novel, A Predatory Mind, I included a backstory about an interaction between the famed inventor Nikola Tesla and the multi-murderer, Dr. Henry H. Holmes. After completing the book, I realized that Tesla and Holmes were the most interesting aspect of the novel and I decided to write a sequel* devoted entirely to a deadly battle of wits between the two with the conceit being that Holmes had escaped his May, 1896 hanging.

Manhattan in its gilded age became the backdrop.

I decided Tesla needed an ally. After playing with the idea of Mark Twain, a friend of the inventor, I happened upon another direction. Arthur Conan Doyle had visited New York in the mid-1890s (although not in 1896). Wouldn't it be perfect to have Conan Doyle battle an evil Holmes? As I explored the possibilities I had a revelation: Tesla was Sherlock Holmes. Physically, they are virtual twins. Mentally, they were geniuses of the highest order. In personality, both were imperious and cerebral and had little interest in worldly distractions such as money or women or the matters which we mere mortals call life.

For those not familiar with the life and life-work of Tesla, I have provided a basic introduction here.

*A Predator's Game. Rook's Page Publishing.

A composite photo/illustration of Sherlock Holmes and Nikola Tesla. Sherlock Holmes from The Adventure of the Man with the Twisted Lip, Illustrator, Sidney Paget. 1891, Strand Magazine. Nikola Tesla photo: Napoleon Sarony, 1890s.

Let's look at their descriptions.

"Birth" Year.
Sherlock Holmes. 1854 (age 60 in 1914, from His Last Bow).
Nikola Tesla: 1856.

Year Coming to Prominence.
Sherlock Holmes. 1887, publication of his first adventure.
Nikola Tesla: 1886, first patent. 1888, electric motor.

Color of Eyes.
Sherlock Holmes. ". . .he emerged that morning with a long foolscap document in his hand and a twinkle of amusement in his austere gray eyes." The Adventure of the Three Garridebs, 1924.
Nikola Tesla. "Although many of his ancestors were dark eyed, his eyes were a gray-blue." Prodigal Genius: The Life of Nikola Tesla by John J. O'Neill, page 15, 1943.

Height and Weight.
Sherlock Holmes. "In height he was rather over six feet, and so excessively lean that he seemed to be considerably taller." A Study in Scarlet, 1887.
Nikola Tesla. "He is very thin, is more than six feet tall and weighs less than a hundred and forty pounds."
Arthur Brisbane, New York World, Tesla interview, July 22, 1894.

Tesla's Height, Controversy.
You will find sources that state Tesla was six-foot-six and others that place him at six-foot-two. Perhaps the confusion came from the first major biography written after his death.

"When he attained full growth he was exactly two meters, or six-feet-two and one-quarter inches tall." Prodigal Genius: The Life of Nikola Tesla by John J. O'Neill, page 16, 1943.

Two meters is six-foot-six and one-half inches. 140 pounds is more compatible with six-foot-two and those photos of Tesla with others present suggest that he is taller, but not exceptionally so.

Face.
Here it is hard to find quotes that emphasize the parallels. As can be seen in Sidney Paget's illustrations and Tesla's photos, their faces are similar in that they have thin noses with a bit of a crook, tall foreheads, and triangular faces. The descriptions of Sherlock and Tesla both take poetic license.

Sherlock Holmes. ", . . his thin, hawk-like nose gave his whole expression an air of alertness and decision. His chin, too, had the prominence and squareness which mark the man of determination." A Study in Scarlet.

Nikola Tesla. "His face oval, broad at the temples, and strong at the lips and chin." Julian Hawthorne as quoted in Tesla: Man Out of Time by Margaret Cheney, page 17, Simon & Schuster, 2011.

Hands.
Sherlock Holmes. ". . .a nervous clasping and unclasping of his long thin hands." The Five Orange Pips, 1891.

Nikola Tesla. "His hands however, and particularly his thumbs, seemed unusually long." Prodigal Genius: The Life of Nikola Tesla by John J. O'Neill, page 16, 1943.

Composite photo/illustration. Sherlock Holmes from the The Adventure of Silver Blaze, Illustrator, Sidney Paget, 1892, Strand Magazine. Nikola Tesla, unknown photographer. Originally published in "Tesla's Important Advances" in Electrical Review, May 20, 1896, p. 263.
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Nikola Tesla, Arthur Conan Doyle and Henry H. Holmes are all characters in my thriller, A Predator's Game.


A Predator's Game is available in soft-cover and ebook editions through Amazon and other online retailers.

Back page blurb .

Manhattan, 1896.

When the author Arthur Conan Doyle meets Nikola Tesla he finds a tall, thin genius with a photographic memory and a keen eye, and recognizes in the eccentric inventor the embodiment of his creation, Sherlock. Together, they team up to take on an "evil Holmes." Multi-murderer Dr. Henry H. Holmes has escaped execution and is unleashing a reign of terror upon the metropolis. Set in the late nineteenth century in a world of modern marvels, danger and invention, Conan Doyle and Tesla engage the madman in a deadly game of wits.

Martin Hill Ortiz, also writing under the name, Martin Hill, is the author of A Predatory Mind. Its sequel, set in 1890s Manhattan and titled A Predator's Game, will be available from Rook's Page Publishing, March 30, 2016. It features Nikola Tesla as detective.
His recent mystery, Never Kill A Friend, is available from Ransom Note Press. His epic poem, Two Mistakes, recently won second place in the Margaret Reid/Tom Howard Poetry Competition. He can be contacted at mdhillortiz@gmail.com.

 Cover material, A Predator's Game.

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