City for Ransom

CHAPTER 24

It was an awkward passing thought Ransom had as he rode alone in the cab. If someone were garroted and set aflame tonight, this would prove Kohler’s having arrested Philo as sheer folly. But at what price must folly be proved? Someone would pay dearly—with her life—to see Philo freed, and this vendetta of a chess move that Kohler had made would prove a fool’s undertaking indeed. It must go nowhere.

Ransom felt certain that Philo wouldn’t last a week in a Chicago cell before going stark raving mad, and that Jane was right: This move against Philo was Nathan’s direct assault across his bow. Damn charges’ll go the way of the gutter. But it might take time.

Still, the thought of mopping up after this murdering fiend wandering the Chicago fair, had no appeal. He tried to imagine the next victim, likely another young innocent—the monster’s delicacy now. He didn’t want to inhale the odor of burnt flesh or take in the sight of yet another decapitated body.

“Lay a trap for the bastard, you should, Inspector Ransom,” came a voice reading his mind it seemed.

He looked up through the peep window into the unblinking, glassy eyes of Waldo Denton. “A trap?”

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“Yes, a trap, sir, is what we’d use on the farm back home.

And who knows, if I was Johnny on the spot with that Night Hawk and was to get pictures, I could make my reputation, I could. Not to mention . . . well, a photo of the killer! Now that’d sell to all the papers in the city at a handsome price, not to mention it’d make us heroes, it would, you and me, coming in with a likeness of the bastard.” The boy had soaked up more from Philo than Ransom had realized. “You’d need a damn wheelbarrowful of luck to be on hand when this monster slips out his garrote and slices someone’s throat.”

“I read your remarks in the Herald and you’re going to put

’im in a foul mood with words like that—calling ’im a coward and a weakling, fearful of his own shadow. Words like that, why, you might think he’d come straight for you, and if you were to sort of set yourself up as, say, bait . . .” “Bait him, heh?” Ransom recalled giving the exclusive to Thom Carmichael.

Waldo kept talking. “Well, sir, I’m no policeman, but I read Mr. Pinkerton’s spy book.”

“Hasn’t everyone?”

“Pinkerton did a lotta what I’m saying, and you’ve already laid all the groundwork.”

“Thanks, Waldo. If it comes to a showdown, and I have time, I’ll send for you,” Ransom promised, allowing the kid his fantasy. “You bring the Night Hawk. Make your name and fortune on the case.”

Denton cleared his throat at this point. “We’ve arrived at your destination, sir, Muldoon’s.”

“Thanks.” He exited the cab and paid Waldo. “How long’ve you been driving a hack?”

“Too long and a half. Before apprenticing with Mr. Keane.

The day job pays bills.”

“I see.”

“Good way to get to know our city. Learn it fast having a different fare every ten minutes.”

“You keep a close watch on your fares!”

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“Personal touch insures they come to me before taking another hack.”

“Clever Waldo, quite.”

“I try to be. It’s not easy.”

“Being clever?”

“I mean . . . it don’t come easy is what I mean to say, sir.”

“Never had an opportunity for college, heh?”

“No, sir . . . not like them born with that silver spoon, what?”

“Ahhh . . . no chance at college myself either.”

“Oh, I could’ve gone to college . . . could’ve been smart and maybe train for some profession. But . . . circumstances held out against it.”

“Know what you mean . . . I do. Guess it was fortunate you took to photography.”

“A godsend really. . . . A golden opportunity to work with Mr. Keane, I say. And as for the meagerness what comes from Mr. Keane’s hand, it did go a long way to help me in burying Mother.”

“I’ll give your idea more thought. To lay a trap.” Ransom so wanted his hands on the monster who’d turned his city into a daily nightmare. Wanted five minutes alone with the fiend. Wanted to avenge Merielle and all the victims.

“Be sure to get word to me if you do it, sir,” Waldo kept on nonstop. “I mean . . . think of it. Even if the Phantom were to give you the slip, which ain’t likely to happen to a detective of your stature, sir, but if your trap ’twere foiled, but we still got a shot—e’en of his back as he’s running from you, why we’d have him!” “Dead to rights in the frame.”

“Like Mr. Keane says, if it ain’t in the frame, it ain’t in the frame, and—”

“—and if it ain’t in the frame, it doesn’t exist.”

“Ironic . . . now Mr. Keane is in the frame . . . so to speak . . .”

“Yes, indeed.”

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put the arm on Mr. Keane, I asked what can the authorities be thinking?” He began a low, curdling laugh rumbling from the diaphragm and escaping nostrils and mouth all at once, a kind of vomiting laugh that Philo had complained about on occasion. Ransom did his best to overlook the torturous sound, but not until Waldo was half a block off, did he feel he could get it out of his head along with the idea of a trap.

“I hope others agree with you about Keane, Waldo,” Alastair said to himself where he stood outside Muldoon’s. “All you bloody armchair detectives are alike—spoiling for a fight. If young Waldo were not careful, he would indeed attract the attention of the Phantom. An old saying came to mind: Be careful of what you wish.

For now a talk with Muldoon was in order.

When he walked into the dark little tavern, Muldoon was waiting for him, a baseball bat extended over his head. “I swear, Ransom, if you’ve come for trouble—”

“Nothing could be further from my thoughts, Muldoon!

What trouble?”

Every rummy and street life in the place mentally braced for a confrontation. Hunched shoulders over the bar stiffened. Men began to move off into shadow, some who owed Ransom in either money or information, scurrying out the back. He had put word on the street that he wanted to know the identity of the infamous Phantom of the Fair, the expert garroter. To date, nothing had come of this effort, and this troubled him immensely, because if the people on the street like Dot’n’Carry could not locate an inchworm’s worth of news, then this meant the fellow was not local, not known among the homeless and derelict and deviant street rats.

Such a state made the killer invisible.

But for the moment, Moose Muldoon and the Chicago Bear faced off.

Tension filled the space between Muldoon and Ransom, and everyone could taste the bad blood in the air.

“Muldoon, you stupid cock-sucking motherless swine, CITY FOR RANSOM

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do you know Jim Beckensaw? Your own alderman for this district?”

“ ’Course I do!”

“The man got the Sunday dry laws rescinded!”

“Again? already again!”

“He’s a political genius, but you yourself know that this is what, the twentieth goddamn time? Ya blockheaded excrement brain! They rescind Sunday laws on a yo-yo pork string, and if you bothered ever to read a paper, you’d’ve some passing knowledge to get by on!” “Look here, now! Are you here to drink or to fight?”

“German Tavern and Brewery Owners Association laid out a fortune at the doorstep of City Hall, and this ward you are smack in the middle of lies within boundaries of the chosen triangle!”

“Chosen triangle?”

“The bloody city blocks that can serve alcoholic bever-ages on any given Sunday!”

Muldoon looked stricken. “Nobody told me. I missed the last meet—” He almost finished his sentence before Ransom’s cane sent Muldoon flat. From behind the bar, lying on the boards, everyone could hear the moose’s moaning.

The bear calmly righted his cane and stepped regally to the door and back out onto the streets where he’d grown up.

He knew that Muldoon could appreciate the balance of it all, blow for blow.

As day turned to night, Alastair decided he must do something— anything—to take action against the killer. To this end, he began planting seeds all over the city. Even before leaving Muldoon’s entirely, having stepped back into the black interior, he announced, “Take heed, all of you! This blasted Phantom’s a fairy is what he is! If he wishes to prove himself anything other than a pussy, then, by God, stand up to a man! No more boys, no girls, no women, but a man!”

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After a stunned moment of silence, a cheer went up for Ransom. Men wanted to buy him a drink, others slapped his back. He slammed the cane against the bar to silence the crowd even as Muldoon found his feet. “Buy me drinks and cheer me, lads, after I’ve cut off this bastard’s head and handed it to him!” Cheers went up.

“Let’s see ’im take that pussy weapon of his to my neck!”

More cheers followed, and more drinks were pushed at Ransom. Laughter and jokes ensued, most of the jokes leveled at his characterization of the Phantom as a fairy and a coward. But one man in the room watched Ransom’s massive neck from a dark corner and thought what a bloody easy ham it’d be to slice through and silence.

“Come on, you baby killer! You little-girl killer. Try your hand with a man!” Ransom shouted over the noise, succumbing to a toast proposed by Carmichael. Ransom had selected Muldoon’s as the newsmen’s hangout he knew it to be. He imagined the screaming headlines across every late edition. He meant to repeat the performance again—in every tavern he could manage between here and the great fair. “I’ll be wandering the darkest, loneliest pathways of the lagoon at Lake Park, where you murdered those two children the other night. So come for me, you little dickless thing! Try to place your murderous guillotine on me!” So here he was in the lagoon fairgrounds where Trelaine had failed to save Miss Mandor or himself. Ransom strolled one end to the other, daring the bastard to leap out from any blackness to slip his bloody wire about Ransom’s beefy neck. They had surmised the killer a small man, if a man at all. Ransom was often taken with the fact that many hardened murderers and rapists, once nabbed, turned out to be slight of build and wretched little creatures indeed.

He believed the Phantom would have difficulty just loop

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ing the garrote over his head and around his neck, much less slicing through his carotid artery, as he stood six-foot-four, and he had several layers of protective fat that the garroter would likely not figure on. To further complicate any attack on his person, as he paced here, was his cane, his blue steel revolver, and he’d borrowed a pair of specially made horse-hide gloves from a friend working the bovine slaughterhouse at the stockyards. These gloves would slow the cutting power of a garrote if he, like young Purvis, should get his hands between throat and wire. The gloves could slow the expected attack long enough to give him time to wrestle the killer to the ground—if only the bastard would strike!

“Where the devil is the little hellion who obviously has a hard on for me, killing poor Mere in my place?”

Ransom made the return walk from the end of the lagoon, around the water, passing strolling lovers, the occasional homeless who’d be tossed from the park as soon as the first patrolman crossed paths with ragmen, or bums as they were called. How long, he wondered, must he pace in the darkness in this pretense of leisure and calm here in the most poorly lit section of the lagoon, the Ferris wheel high over his shoulder.

In his ears, he heard the faint last death rattle of Miss Mandor out on the water, her boat so near he could leap into it from where he stood. His cop’s imagination, his in-sight, intuition and instinct— all challenged by this so-called Phantom—brought the full picture of how the killer had enticed his victims to help out some “poor chap” in a second boat that was listing. Trelaine, in the throes of infatuation with Miss Mandor, perhaps thought he’d impress her with his show of humanity in the form of a dark figure who knew, somehow, enough about the couple to know that she could not scream out. He’d demonstrated on Trelaine what he intended for her. And it had all come to pass so quickly, and seeing Trelaine’s head fall forward and into 296

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the second boat, his body floating off and away, she most assuredly screamed her silent screams and fulfilled the killer’s sick need to see her eyes bulge with fear and her skin prickle, and her extremities fight for life along with her last gasping breath. He’d leapt agilely from the rocking boat he’d himself scuttled, and into the boat transporting her, even as she attempted to leap out over the side to make the shore where Ransom now stood looking out over the black lagoon.

Silent now, the lagoon reflected back a sliver of moonlight and some nearby gaslight lamps, but this small show of light only made the surface look the more like black oil. Is this Miss Mandor’s last pleasant sight? Had she been mesmerized? Hesitated one second too late to make landfall? Had she got into the water, would she’ve stood a chance of escape? Alerting someone ashore.

Sometimes his uncanny ability to recreate the scene of the crime frightened Alastair. Just good police work, he told himself, nothing special . . . not like the gift of a wonderful stage voice, an ability at acting, a gift of intelligence for science, or a talent for a musical instrument.

He wished to be home playing badly at that piano he kept as a constant challenge to learn. As a child, he’d dreamed once of being a concert pianist. The memory now made him feel foolish. No, he was born to this . . . to the hunt.

He’d had time to rethink the scene when Philo dropped that camera in utter sorrow over Miss Mandor’s unnatural death. He mentally paced to the images of that night, moving on to each murder scene, each impression swelling his mind with a growing hatred of two monsters—one the faceless Phantom, the other himself.

“Where did Griffin get the notion to go after Philo’s studio? To uncover evidence there?” he asked himself aloud.

“Griffin, you disappointment.”

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from the photo that Denton had taken, and it’d been compared to the one Philo had taken at the train station, and according to Christian, the prints had indeed come from the same man. But neither matched Philo’s hand. But what of Griffin’s hand?

Again the evidence pointed to a man small in stature . . . a man hardly larger than Dr. Tewes. Griffin was hardly larger than Jane Francis.

“I thought I’d find you here,” said Griffin Drimmer who seemed to’ve stepped from out of Ransom’s thought!

“Word’s all over the city.”

“Word?”

“That you’ve challenged the Phantom to some sort of duel.”

“Reckless, I know.”

“Foolish . . . to roam about here alone, without me at your back?”

“I assumed your back’s still up over my ranting and my ring.”

Griff held a seething anger just below boiling. “You ought to’ve come to me first with this plan. We ought to’ve coordi-nated on it.”

“By the book, is it, Griff?”

“By the book, hell, by the notion we are a team!”

“As when you put Philo behind bars?”

“At the very least, he knows something.”

“Were we a team on that solo act?”

Over Alastair’s shoulder in the sky, the massive Ferris wheel sent colored lights flitting across Griffin’s features, which took on a separate life—as if another man altogether resided within. Possibly a man who felt a deep-seated hatred not only for his mentor, Alastair, and not only for authority and society and rules and regulations, but all the comforts and familiarity of normalcy. A kind of Beowulf in sheep’s clothing, loose on the world. Even his name, Griffin, spoke of a changeling.

What if Griffin, stymied at every turn, felt that Ransom’s 298

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confusion represented some sort of prize? What if the killer felt weak, ineffectual, and in fact invisible in the company of other men, especially bulls like Ransom?

While not invisible, suppose Griffin felt invisible? Suppose he had pent-up notions, mad goals, secret anger that’d gone unchecked for so long that it’d all suddenly burst in pure venom in a kill spree? Suppose he’d had a sudden loss of faith, of charity, of humanity, of relations . . . a loss of a loved one, a mainstay . . . someone who’d kept him stable and sane all this time? Hadn’t he lost his mother recently?

What did he really know of Griff? He never spoke of his parents, only his wife and children on occasion, and Ransom had never seen them—not in the flesh. So much chicanery went on these days with photographs. Suppose . . . just suppose Griffin Drimmer had created the Phantom in order to make himself visible on two fronts? Visible as the new, young, virile detective who comes on to solve the case, and visible indeed as the Phantom, a killer on page one of the Tribune, the Times, the Herald? And suppose . . . just suppose it was all a way to strike out at Ransom for perceived wrongs?

Ransom wondered how he could live with such a development, that a detective he’d treated as his gopher—snubbed one day, ignored the next, or spoken harshly to—had some larger vendetta to act on? Jekyll and Hyde was now showing at the Lyceum Theater. Could Stevenson’s character be alive in the form of Drimmer? Had the killer stood coldly at his side—in each frame—from the beginning? Watching his every move?

The Phantom’s first two victims included a prostitute that Ransom had known and had a soft spot for, one too old to ply her trade much longer. He’d not known the Polish girl or Purvis, but the next victim was his Merielle. Suppose it was all working up to Merielle? Suppose it’d been Griffin who had blackened Merielle’s eye one day and cut her throat and fired her body the next?

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Philo, Alastair’s best friend, sending the photographer into a deep depression. It could all very well be about me, Ransom determined. All the killings designed to destroy me.

And who stood in the best position to know what Ransom held dearest? Who but Griffin? All this rain of suspicion flash-flooded through Ransom’s consciousness in a matter of seconds.

“It’s not wise, Rance, acting as bait for a madman, one who strikes sudden as a viper, no matter your size or strength or reputation!”

“I appreciate your concern after all the bad blood between us, thanks to your kowtowing, taking Kohler’s lead.”

“Like it or not, Ransom, I never worked for you. I work for Kohler. Always have, and if you’d bother to check, so do you.”

“Yeah . . . right . . .” Ransom purposefully turned his back on his only suspect. Come ahead, you weasel; make your play . . . attack me from behind and we’ll see what happens. But Griffin made no move. Still, Alastair kept his back to him.

He next laid his bone-handled cane on a park bench, bothered with his pipe, lighting it. Puffing away, his back still to Griffin. Teasing him, disregarding the rawhide gloves. Do it, you wimp! Do it now! Dare attack!

Still no supposed attack.

Ransom complained of a shoe button coming unlatched.

He cursed the bother and sat down, and he exaggeratedly leaned over his shoes like a Falstaff, complaining of being unable to reach his shoes. This tease must have Griffin’s killing urge, this cure to his invisibility, salivating. The attack will come now!

Instead, Griffin started talking about his Lucinda while pointing down the lane. “Asked her to marry me under that box elder there.”

“What the hell’re you talking about?”

“My wife, Lucinda.” He launched on a reverie of how feminine and lovely she was. He produced a photo. “An an

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niversary shot below that same tree. Ran into Denton with that camera.”

Alastair saw some elements of the fair in the backdrop.

“Denton’s taking photos at the fair?”

“Why not so long’s he has possession of—”

“Keane’s Night Hawk, while Keane is in lockup . . .”

“What’s going through your mind now?”

“A payment for services.”

“What do you mean?”

“Griffin, tell me, who first led you to believe that Philo could be our killer?”

“No one led me—”

“You needn’t answer!” Alastair grabbed his cane, began running and shouting. “We’ve got to find a phone box and a cab now!”

Griffin gave chase. He’d never seen Alastair move so fast; he hadn’t thought him capable of it. He hadn’t thought it possible that any man with a cane and a limp could out-distance him, but Ransom was doing just that.

“Where the bloody hell is a phone box? Griffin, we must find a phone box and now!” Alastair was beside himself with agitation, looking the lunatic as the first drops of rain began to fall.

“To call headquarters? Reinforcements? There’s a phone a block off the fairway!” Griffin’s words stopped Alastair from rushing farther in the wrong direction. “This way, Rance!”

Mayor Carter Harrison in 1880 appointed William McGarigle as superintendent of police, and McGarigle started the patrol telephone and signal system in Chicago—the most important police innovation of its day. The system—375

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alarm box dial awaited Alastair, who opened it with his departmental key. He knew that he could not call directly to Jane Francis to warn her, and he did not have direct access to a Bell operator. Nor could he reach Christian Fenger or any individual. The system frustrated such desires, as all he could dial was the local station. This meant, he could not even ring up the station closest to Jane and Gabby, as he believed the two of them in serious danger. However, if he got the right dispatcher, he could conceivably relay the message from station to station.

How long might that take? He could be losing valuable time without result.

He feared risking it, and he feared not risking it.

“What to do,” he said aloud.

“How should I know?” replied Griffin. “As usual, I’ve not the slightest clue what you’re doing or thinking!”

Ransom hit a single number on the phone that signaled murder to a dispatcher. “I’ve got to get this message to the home of Dr. James Phineas Tewes, immediately!”

Ransom listened intently to the dispatcher. “Please identify yourself, Officer, by name and badge number, and verify the nature of your emergency.”

He lost the connection due to his not having ground the monkey organ mechanism required to keep the connection.

He shouted at the dead receiver, pounding it several times into the box. He hated it that he must keep monkey-grinding the damn newly invented thing like he must his gramophone.

Why couldn’t they make one that worked without all the effort?

And then he erupted when he got the dispatcher back.

“What difference does it make who is making the request?

Only an officer of the law can call on this bloody phone, so just do what the bloody hell I’m asking!”

Whoever it might be at dispatch, this time switched Alastair off, leaving only a sickening silence on the line.

“Idiot! He didn’t even ask what the message was!”

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seen the interior of a phone box, and so he jammed in at the entryway, examining every corner. He wanted to see the technology in action.

“If it takes civility, then damn it, you make the call! I am off for a cab!”

“But what do I say?”

“Tell them to tell Dr. Tewes to get himself and his daughter out of that house and to a public place, preferably to Dr.

Christian Fenger’s!”

“But why?” he shouted as Ransom and his cane rushed off.

Griffin monkey-grinded the phone and looked at the series of buttons, each coded number standing for a category of of-fense: accident, drunkards, violation of city ordinance, fire, theft, forgery, riot, rape, and murder in that order. But he did not know which to press. Hesitating for a moment, he reasoned since they were chasing the Phantom that murder was on the bill. He hit the appropriate dial number. This supposedly instantly summoned between five and twenty uniformed officers to his location, depending on the nature of the emergency.

But when the dispatcher came on, the gruff man, still angry with Ransom’s swagger, shouted, “Stop muckity-mucking with the call line!”

This did not make sense to Griffin, who’d read statistics on the call boxes. It usually sent out a five-man team of officers in a patrol wagon that carried a stretcher, cuffs, blankets, and their obligatory clubs. Each box cost the city twenty-five dollars! And over the past two years alone some 879, 548 distress calls to the various stations had been made.

But this fellow at the other end must be reported as derelict or drunk on duty, as again he hung up!

Griffin raced from the box, forgetting to close it, as a storm began to break around him, lightning streaking the black backdrop of sky against the Ferris wheel and the mas

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sive buildings of the fair, all the White City bathed in sudden downpour. Griffin knew if he were to make the same coach before Ransom completely disappeared, he’d have to hustle as never before.

Ahead of him, Griff saw the cabstand, some of the horses reacting to the sudden thunder and lightning, raising hooves skyward and in need of gentling. He saw Ransom had stumbled and was now slowed, limping, with the cane working harder for him than ever.

Griffin sprinted now, confident he could catch Ransom.

But Alastair was not going to like the news of his failure to get a message to Dr. Tewes.

“Do you think Tewes’s life is in danger? Both he and his daughter? Or have you concluded that the phrenologist is the Phantom and may harm the child?”

“You could not be further from the truth, Griff.”

“Then who are we chasing amid the storm?”

But Ransom did not answer, instead shouting to the first cab he came to, “To Tewes’s—the dispensary and residence of Dr. James Phineas Tewes, now!”

“Address, sir?” asked the cabbie, the same thick-browed Cro-Magnon that Ransom had noticed on an earlier occasion.

“Three-forty Belmont, two doors north of the Episcopal church, and you are paid twice your rate, sir, if you lose a wheel getting me there!”

Something in Ransom feared for Jane Francis and her Gabby. Something deep within whispered a horror, and Alastair imagined a scene of carnage awaiting him at what most in the city knew as the Tewes’s residence. He imagined the worst, and at the same time as the carriage pulled away and Griffin slipped through the open door, he recalled how Waldo Denton had seen to it that Alastair would be chasing phantoms of the wrong kind while Waldo, apprentice photographer, sometime cabbie, sometime fair photographer, garroted Gabrielle and Jane Francis in their home!

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around street corners and clattered insanely over the cobblestones, the sound of the two whinnying horses mimicking the pitiable sounds that Gabby and Jane may be releasing at this same moment. To add to the thunderous assault of hooves beating wildly against stone and the bullwhip cracking, a series of thunderclaps struck as if crashing symbols to this macabre dance they found themselves in.

“What the deuce is going on, Ransom? It’s time you treated me as your equal! I demand to know what the—”

The coach lurched, sending Griffin into a corner, pinning him, while Ransom extended his cane at the crucial moment, using it like a wedge against his own tumbling.

“Slow down! You’ll get us all killed!” Griffin grabbed Ransom’s cane and rammed it against the box overhead and shouted at the driver successively. “Slow up!”

The slot through which the driver communicated shot open and again Ransom saw only the man’s eyes, filled with blood rage and ecstatic joy. Loving this, his coachman’s fantasy come true: an order to open her full-throttle, and taking two Chicago gents on a ride to terrify and delight. “Beggin’ your pardon, sirs, but did ya’ not ask that I run the horses?” “Run them! Run them!” shouted Ransom.

“Whoaaa!” shouted Griffin.

“Hold onto the handrail overhead, Griff!” Ransom said, reclaiming his cane.

“Just tell me what is all the hurry?”

“It’s Jane . . . ahhh, Dr. Tewes’s sister, and the daughter, Gabby! I fear they may be in terrible danger.”

“How can you know?”

“Denton.”

“Denton? Waldo? What about him?”

“Damn it, man, he is our bloody Phantom!”

“That harmless fellow? He’s hardly more than a boy!”

“A warped one, I wager. Look here, he is the one set me thinking of lolling about the damnable lagoon for the Phantom, and that just after dropping Jane . . . ahhh, at the Tewes residence.”

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“Since when do you listen to civilians on matters of investigation, and one so young?”

“He set my mind on it and did it rather subtly. Cunning fellow as it happens.”

“I would not have put Denton and the word cunning in the same sentence, Alastair.”

“Behind those boyish eyes and goofy grin—designed to make him harmless seeming—there lurks a deadly mind, I tell you.”

“It just seems so out of the blue, sooo farfetched.”

“Precisely as he wants you to believe. But more than cunning and deception is at work here, something even more insidious and poisonous. I mean—”

“What do you mean?” Griff’s brow creased in consternation. He pulled forth a pipe identical to Ransom’s and lit up.

“Suppose he’s a bugger who’s never once gotten a bloody thing he’s ever wanted.”

“You mean like not the mother nor father, not the sister nor brother he wanted?”

“Not the circumstances, not the woman of his dreams, for instance.”

“Nor the money, nor the education he’s chased all his life?

Not the profession nor career.”

“Not the erection, not the joy, not the release, nor the satisfactions we take for granted as with your life with Lucinda.”

“And you think this accumulation of failures leads to deviance and murder?”

Ransom gritted his teeth and held back the immediate word he had for Griffin’s thick-headedness. “Put yourself in his shoes. Scrubbing up and about for the likes of Philo, having to push a hack about the city, cleaning up after his horse, seeing every fare he picks up with a woman on the arm. How many times he drove Merielle and me from corner to corner, God only knows!” “It’s still a stretch. Denton’s hardly more than a boy.”

“We’ve suspected small all along; a weak person, woman-ish if not a woman.”

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“But Denton . . . Waldo is . . .” Griffin seemed unable to wrap his mind around this idea. He’s so . . . so innocuous, so slight and so . . . so . . .”

For half a moment’s flash, Ransom wished for a time when he could be so naïve and trusting as Griffin Drimmer, a time before he’d become so bloody suspicious of everything on two legs. Finally, he placed a hand on Griff’s and calmly said, “Invisible . . . is what he is, Griff . . . simply invisible, and even more so in that black get-up worn for the hansom cab company, black boot, cape, top hat, down to the Carson, Pirie, Scott buttons.” Drimmer considered this. “A gentleman’s attire in any venue.”

“And him sneaking looks, eavesdropping, studying each fare in his hack up close, through there.” He pointed out the coach hatch.

“Creepy when you think of it.”

“And him sitting up on his high seat, looking all about the streets from behind that nag of his?”

The cab thundered down the street, tossing them from side to side. Griffin shouted over the thunderous noise, “No one’s going to believe Denton physically capable of killing two people out on that lagoon, unless we catch him in the act, with the tools of death!” “Press has made of him some sort of Grendel-sized ogre, haven’t they?”

“Perhaps the press has overstated the—”

“Overstated? Even Carmichael’s taken with the gall and élan of this bastard.”

“No one’s expecting a Waldo Denton!”

“As for walking on water at the lagoon, you and I know how it was done!”

“But people will equate it with the supernatural, that Satan can walk on water as well as Christ.”

“Don’t attribute satanic powers to him yourself then, Griff.”

“But then, they say the Devil doth take a pleasing form.”

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“This particular devil has chosen an invisible form.”

“He is that.”

“Don’t hold back. Tell me what you think.”

“Gut feelings, first impression?” asked Griff. “I thought him harmless, but I soon learned he had no allegiance to Keane.”

“Are you saying he’s a back-stabbing cock-sucker?”

“OK . . .”

“And why so?”

“At each scene, he laid a seed of doubt about his employer—quietly, mind you.”

“Yes, this is his way, and being a small man . . . one you are so much more likely to let your guard down around . . .”

“Yes, many a deadly viper is—”

“Indeed! A small man with a garrote, a man about your own size, Grif—”

“Can do a helluva lotta damage in a matter of seconds.”

“Precisely.”

“Hey . . . hold on. You thought . . . back there at the lagoon . . . when I came up on you, and you started fooling with your shoe buttons and bending over . . . do you mean to tell me that—”

“I had a loose lace is all.”

“You thought me the Phantom, didn’t you? Damn you!”

Alastair hesitated, mired in silence, unsure what to say.

“Out with it, big man! The truth!” Griff laughed and mut tered, “Wait till O’Malley and some of the lads hear this.”

Alastair realized that rather than taking it badly, somehow Griffin found a strange mix of humor and pride in it, somehow still impressed by the notoriety given the Phantom by the newsies. “Imagine . . . thinking me the Phantom of the Fair.” “Will you quit bloody calling him that, please? He deserves no title, no crown, no ink in the damned press; he deserves no ‘sir’ or ‘gentleman’ before his name. He deserves none of our respect or misguided ballads written about him, and he certainly merits no admiration.”

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“Waldo Denton . . . my God, Alastair, how did you figure it out?”

“The ring.”

“The one in your bowels?”

“This ring!” he produced his pinky with the ring upon it.

“How do you suppose it went from Merielle’s hand to Philo’s pocket and the killer counting on it’s still being there?”

“Philo admitted to taking it in trade.”

“How better to implicate his mentor than to lead you and Kohler to Philo’s coat pocket or the frock in which you found the ring?”

Griff gave this a moment to sink in as if revisiting the moment. “ ’Twas Denton who first identified the disembodied ring as having belonged to—”

“Precisely, yes . . . led you to suspect wrongdoing at the studio. Was he also helpful in uncovering Philo’s collection of nudes?” asked Ransom as the cab walls and wheels whined and strained under the whip, the speed, and the angles.

“Yes, and now, tonight,” began Griff, “he leads you off on a wild goose chase to stand bait at the park.”

“To rid himself of my being on hand tonight at Gabby’s birthday celebration. I just know he heard Jane—Tewes and I—speaking of it.”

“He’s cunning enough to know it’d take an elephant gun or Moose Muldoon to bring you down.”

“Well . . . Muldoon’s been set straight.”

For a moment, they thought the carriage would go over on its side.

“Do you think he’d really dare strike the ladies in their home with Tewes present?”

“He’s likely planning to kill them in their beds.”

“Why do you think so?”

“Sensationalism, to strike a deeper fear in us.”

“To say we’re unsafe when snug in our own beds?”

“And he’s reaching higher along the scale of respectability, money, and social standing.”

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“He really is a hatter, isn’t he?”

“A mad hatter.”

“But why? Just because he can?”

“He alone holds the answer to that.”

“Faster!” Griff now shouted even as he tumbled about the cab, banging into every wall and door.

“Get what you can from the whip!” shouted Ransom.

The wheels spun madly beneath them, screaming, and on sharp turns now left the ground.

Stumpf did it . . . he did it all. All the killing, that is.

Waldo didn’t even feel he was inside his body when Stumpf, at that moment of taking life—willed the essence of the dying into him. It was why Stumpf liked mirrors, liked killing them before mirrors.

He’d done it both ways of course, but the thrill and satisfaction became so much more heightened if he could stare into both their eyes and those of Stumpf at the moment of knowing. The moment of crossing over. From behind the garrote, before a mirror, he could watch all the eyes!

Stumpf could more readily act at the instant of death to net and catch the soul within his web of wanton lust if he knew the very instant of the soul’s leap toward the next dimension. Wanton lust—part and parcel of it—as Stumpf so enjoyed what Waldo Denton’s body felt at the death leap.

Stumpf got Waldo an erection—that true insignia, emblem of corporeal lust.

“All of life becomes more pronounced and clear and worth the discovery if a man is in his right spirit,” Waldo Denton was telling Jane Francis Ayers and Gabby—as he’d come to know their names. He’d first been attracted to them and their home that night he’d killed Purvis at the train station. The same night he’d seen Gabby and Cliffton kissing below the lights near the lagoon. He’d been kicking around the fair, wandering, exploring, one side of him determining good locations for murder as he scouted for Stumpf, while 310

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another side looked and hungered for precisely what that college boy had—a future, yes, but also a future with a beautiful young thing. A promise at a fulfilling life of happiness, warmth, camaraderie, mutual respect, admiration . . . mutual pleasure. All things denied him.

How was it Shakespeare put it in the performance he’d seen at the theater? “If I cannot prove a hero, I shall prove a villain. . . .” Words to take heart in. Words that indicated to Waldo that he might be considered important by everyone he came into contact with, that he could affect their lives.

But even more, the play was the thing that informed Waldo that deviant thoughts belonged to others as well—even to the most famous author on the planet, William Shakespeare.

Giving hope that he perhaps was not so absolutely alone and craven as he’d felt since childhood.

Stumpf and Waldo had wormed past the Tewes threshold to allow Stumpf his chance. That was what Waldo had become—a pimp to the base Stumpf inside, who didn’t even want to spare Gabrielle, the most beautiful and innocent and pleasant and most kind person ever to address Waldo. She, and the idea of a future relationship with Gabby, remained the only thought in his head that held Stumpf back now.

So far as the older woman was concerned, Waldo had no compunction about turning Stumpf loose. When he did let Sleepeck Stumpf have his way, however, it would destroy any hairsbreadth of a chance to make Gabby see him . . . really see him and eventually see into him and eventually somehow understand the so-called Phantom of the Fair.

Enough to eventually accept his past ill behavior and forgive his transgressions as only unconditional love could free the beast within to slink off elsewhere, back to its den to hiber-nate and hopefully die of its own loneliness and suffering, which, in the end, Waldo Denton had no part of and had never had any part of—and so his mind raced at the moment of sipping tea and chewing birthday cake.

She had invited Waldo in—dear, sweet angelic Gabrielle, CITY FOR RANSOM

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with the smiling assent of the woman Gabrielle called Aunt Jane.

Earlier . . . it seemed moments earlier, he’d watched Gabby as her aunt called out to her, something about being out alone after dark, that a girl of her social position, being the daughter of Dr. Tewes, she must not give the gossip columnists a scrap to chew on, not even an appearance of impropriety. It had made him, sitting atop the coach, impulsively call back, “Oh, no ma’am, no one could think ill of Miss Gabrielle, never!” That’s when Gabby smiled at him, her attention like a balm. Each time he drove her home from the university, where he intentionally waited, turning away other fares, Gabby gave him all her attentiveness while he spoke of one day owning his own farm and farm animals. No one had ever given him what she offered—attentiveness.

At that moment when she’d smiled up at him, what he saw in her was so amazing. She’d alighted from the cab like a floating princess with hidden wand and invisible wings.

She’d forgotten her umbrella in his cab, a memory lapse or an invitation? Of course, she wanted him to return. She liked men like him. Cliffton hadn’t been so different from him, not really? Save his prospects . . . save his dreams. But even in their dreams, especially their secret desires, to have this angel of earth caress their bodies and touch their trapped souls . . . even in this, he was no different from Purvis. The two of them clinging on Gabrielle, wanting the honor of being possessed by her, and wanting the honor of being able to address her as an enduring love, as her closest intimate on earth, to call Gabby his. And if he could not have her, surely . . . surely Stumpf would.

Waldo wanted more for her . . . more for himself . . .

more for them. He hated the thought of the empty, lost, acrid feeling in his soul whenever Stumpf finished with him.

Whenever Stumpf was sated and fulfilled, the bastard thing just went away with his good feelings and left Waldo empty and lonelier than ever, a depression like a dull blunt knife 312

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cutting directly into his brain and soul. If the word lie had a face, it was Stumpf.

She had left the umbrella, rushing off after pushing the few coins through the slot to his fingertips, touching him as she did so. He’d savored the touch and lingered there, noticing the umbrella, but then he’d been distracted by the aunt’s calling out from the porch.

He’d momentarily forgotten about Gabby’s umbrella, thinking he must get in somewhere, while another part of him gave an evil thought to how he’d manipulated Chicago’s so-called premiere detective away from the Tewes home and the Tewes women he’d been watching now for some time, sending Ransom to stand about in the rain at the lagoon on the say-so of Waldo Denton!

He wondered how it’d play in the press to people if it were known that while Stumpf killed someone tonight, the great detective and “last survivor” of Haymarket spent his night in the park!

Stumpf hated Ransom but Waldo Denton had even more reason to hate him. According to all accounts, Ransom had bound and beaten and eventually burned to death Waldo’s father. Waldo felt justified in unleashing Stumpf—who had always been in the shadow of his soul, awaiting release. Felt justified in allowing Stumpf to terrorize a city that had allowed Alastair Ransom to operate above the law, and in fact crown him in a sense with promotion and career advancement, and why? Haymarket and his bloody injury? As if being injured carried with it some badge of heroism and honor!

Had there been no bomb thrown into a crowd—lobbed from they say twenty or twenty-five feet from some unknown assailant—perhaps authorities would have done a thorough investigation into one Alastair Ransom by now. Would they’ve concluded him a coward and a murderer instead or a hero? Those men who were hung as anarchist of Haymarket long before Waldo knew their names or their connection with his father—these were the real heroes of Haymarket!

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contemplating all this when he recalled the umbrella, his invitation to return to Gabby tonight. What must Waldo do then? He must prove himself to her, prove his case, lay it all out in black and white. The war in which he meant to harm everyone Ransom cared for—Polly, Philo, and now Gabrielle if he could not have her. He’d seen them that night up late, Ransom leaving the house, and Gabby saying goodbye at the door.

“Appearances,” the aunt had said on a number of occasions from doorway and window. Hell, it was no appearance the way they’d looked at one another, and the aunt in slum-ber somewhere deep in the house, and the father nowhere to be seen.

And so here he stood in the foyer, Gabby offering him tea, the aunt concerned his wet clothes from the storm might cause him to catch his death.

To catch his death? She oughta concern herself with her own death, he thought from behind the smile as Aunt Jane helped him remove the heavy frock, part of his hansom cab-man’s uniform.

Jane failed to notice the buttons on the hansom uniform overcoat. Each button read CPS. She merely shook off the rain and hung the heavy coat on the rack beside her telephone.