The Angel Of Darkness

CHAPTER 38

I followed the order. The aborigine didn’t move, just stood there smiling until we were about twenty feet from him. Then, very deliberately, he put his hands into the air. I drew the Morgan to a halt, and we waited. Lowering one arm, the aborigine pointed to the ground.

“I don’t hurt you,” he said, his smile getting wider. Following his finger, we could see that there was a small bow, a couple more of the plain little arrows, and another wave-bladed kris on the road. “And you don’t shoot me,” he went on, putting his arm back up. “Yes?”

Miss Howard nodded; but she kept the gun right where it was. “All right,” she said. “What is it you want?”

“I to help you!” the aborigine answered. “Sure help you, yes! Sometimes, I help you already.”

“But you’re Señor Linares’s man,” Miss Howard answered. “Why do you help us?”

The aborigine moved to pick up his weapons, prompting Miss Howard to pull back the hammer of her Colt. The little man’s eyes went very wide, and then he threw up his hands again. “Is okay-I no hurt you, lady, and you no shoot me! I help you!”

“Suppose you just tell me why you help us, before you pick those things up,” Miss Howard ordered.

El Niño’s appealing smile returned and then his round features began to display what you might call theatrical disgust. “Oh, is not for me, to work for the señor-no more! He beat me-beat his wife-beat everybody, with fists like-like-” Looking around quickly, the aborigine grabbed a big stone from the side of the road, then held it up to Miss Howard.

“Like rocks,” she said.

“Yes, is true, like rocks!” El Niño answered. “Give me one suit of clothes-” He held his arms up, displaying the rolled-up cuffs of his jacket, and then pointed down at his trousers, what were cut off roughly at the ankles. “Too big! Is not for me. First, one time, I work for father-old señor-”

“For Señor Linares’s father?” Miss Howard asked.

“Yes, lady. He different man. Good man. This son-not the same. Beat everybody with fists, think he great man-because his mama love him too much!”

I burst out laughing at that, and got myself a sharp elbow from Miss Howard for it; but she, too, was having trouble containing her amusement at the little fellow. “And so what do you want from us?” she asked, lowering the Colt.

El Niño shrugged. “I to work for you, I think. Yes, I think so. I watch you-see you try to find baby Ana. Is good. The señor, he not want you to find her. But she a baby! I think you find her, because you good people. I work for you, I think-sure.”

Miss Howard and I exchanged shocked looks. What were we supposed to say? The idea seemed so strange as to be out of the question, but neither of us particularly wanted to tell him that. Not with that arsenal lying in the road, and knowing that he’d been keeping track of every move we’d made for weeks now. There was also the fact that we’d both identified something likable in the little fellow-likable and decent. So maybe it wasn’t so peculiar a notion after all.

“But,” Miss Howard said, “what do you mean, ‘work’ for us? What would you do?”

The aborigine was about to answer, but first he eyed his possessions on the road. “I can pick up?” he said to Miss Howard carefully.

She nodded, looking at him like he was a naughty kid. “Slowly,”she said.

He followed the instruction, and tucked all the pieces of his arsenal into big pockets what’d been sewn special inside his jacket. Then he started to approach us, swaggering like a man twice his size. “Many things I do!” he declared. “Protect you from enemies-kill them, or make them sleep! Cook, too!” He pointed at the landscape around us. “Snake, dog-sometimes rat, if you very hungry!” Both Miss Howard and I let moans of disgust out through the smiles that had settled in on our faces. “See things-find things out! If you have El Niño to work for you, you have eyes everywhere!” He passed an arm out across the horizon again.

“And what,” Miss Howard asked, “would be your salary for all this?”

“My sa-?” the aborigine noised, puzzled.

“What would we have to pay you?”

“Oh, pay, yes!” he answered, filling his chest with air proudly. “El Niño Manilaman-Manilamen work only for pay! The señor pay me with nothing-with shit!” I let out another loud laugh, and Miss Howard didn’t even try to stop me; in fact, she joined in, and so did El Niño, who was pleased with our reaction. “With shit he pay me!” he went on. “Bad clothes-food after others have eaten it-and the señora make me to sleep outside, even in winter-time! You can give me good food-bed to sleep in, yes? House has many beds. And you-” He pointed at me and then he did the little dance around his neck with one hand again, causing my grin to shrink suddenly.

“Whoa, now, don’t start that!” I said. “I don’t want any trouble with you-”

“No, no!” he answered. “Not trouble! Clothes! Your clothes-three nights past from here-you do not like your clothes, yes?”

Counting the nights on my fingers and trying to get some idea of what he was talking about, I remembered the trip to Saratoga; and then, in a rush, I recalled my encounter with what I’d taken for a kid in the gardens of the Casino. “So that was you!”I said. “You saw me in the monkey suit!”

“Monkey suit?” El Niño asked, puzzled. “Not for monkeys-fine clothes for fine man-fit me! You do not like them,” he said, putting the finger to his neck again. Then I got it: he’d seen me straining at the white tie, and figured out that I hated wearing the thing.

“Stevie,” Miss Howard said, “what does he mean?”

“He saw me at the Casino-saw that I don’t like wearing them clothes. I think he wants them.” I spoke louder to our new friend: “You want those clothes, is that the deal?”

“Fine clothes for fine man!” he answered, slapping his chest. “You give them to El Niño, he work for you!”

I shook my head. “But you can’t wear them all the time-”

“Why not?” Miss Howard asked, turning to me. “Frankly, Stevie, I think this fellow can do just about as he pleases.”

I gave that a second’s thought, then nodded. “Yeah, you’ve got a point there, all right. But what the hell’s the Doctor going to say?”

“When we tell him that we’ve brought one of our main opponents over to our side?” Miss Howard countered with a smile. “What do you think he’s going to say?”

I kept nodding, and then thought about our host in Ballston Spa. “And Mr. Picton?” I didn’t even have to wait for the words; Miss Howard just gave me a look, and I smiled. “Yeah, you’re right. He’ll laugh himself sick-and this guy’ll give him a run for his money in the gab department, that’s a fact. Well, then…”

Miss Howard turned to the aborigine. “All right,” she said, indicating the bed of the buckboard. “Climb aboard-and tell us what we should call you.”

“Call me El Niño!” he said, slapping his chest again. Then his face grew more cautious. “I work for you?” he asked, as if he didn’t quite believe it.

“You work for us,” Miss Howard answered. “Now get in.”

“No, no! It is not right so-El Niño can walk, while the lady rides.”

Miss Howard sighed. “No, El Niño, that is not right. If you work for us, you’re one of us. And that means you ride with us.”

Looking about ready to bust, the aborigine did a little piece of a dance in the roadway, then sprang onto the bed of the buckboard with the speed of a jungle cat. He stood up on the bed behind us, grinning from ear to ear. “With El Niño to work for you,” he declared, “you find baby Ana! Sure!”

Not quite believing or understanding what we’d gotten ourselves into, I gave the Morgan the reins and we headed for home.

We got the full story of El Niño’s life on that trip, one what we relayed to the others once we’d reached Mr. Picton’s house. It seemed that as a boy in the jungles of the Philippines’ Luzon Island, the aborigine had been out hunting with the men of his tribe one day when they’d been set upon by a party of Spaniards. The older Aëtas had been killed for sport; the younger ones had been taken to Manila and sold into a lifetime of bondage. El Niño had escaped his first master after several years, then spent his early manhood haunting the waterfront and becoming a roving mercenary. He’d done time as a pirate, fought in small wars all over the South China Sea, and finally found his way back to Manila, where he’d been arrested for petty thievery. Brought before a Spanish magistrate, he’d been sentenced to life at hard labor-which was when the older Señor Linares, a diplomatic official, had stepped in and given him a chance to work off his “debt” to the Spanish Empire as a household servant. I couldn’t help, when I heard all this, but think of my own experiences with Dr. Kreizler; and this common background quickly formed a bond between me and our new partner.

He was a character, there was no denying that much: everybody in Mr. Picton’s house found his strange mixture of manly posturing and gentle, almost childlike kindness to be both amusing and touching. When he met Cyrus in particular, he behaved in a way what was very affecting yet still kind of comical. He bowed in a deep, respectful manner, and was amazed when the bigger man-who he seemed to think was some kind of oracle-actually offered him his hand. The fact that “Mr. Mont-rose” (as El Niño would always pronounce it) lived among whites as a trusted equal-wearing the same clothes they did, eating the same food, and sleeping in the same quality of accommodations-seemed to the aborigine to mean that he had attained a high level of secret knowledge; and El Niño set out to model his behavior on that of my big, quiet friend. Such, of course, was no easy task, for such a chatty, active little fellow.

None of this, though, gave us any better idea of what we were going to do with our new ally. We didn’t particularly need anybody followed or rendered unconscious, at the moment, and he was bound to cause comment wherever he went in Ballston Spa-especially after I gave him the evening clothes I’d promised, which he put on right away. Strutting around like a peacock (he’d been right in supposing that the clothes would fit him), he looked ready to take on the world; but we all wondered if the world would be similarly prepared for him. Thinking for the moment of practicalities, a confused Mrs. Hastings put El Niño to work washing up the dinner dishes, a job what he took to with great good spirits.

As for the information Miss Howard and I brought back from Stillwater, it was duly posted on the chalkboard in Mr. Picton’s living room. Then we moved out onto the back porch to talk over the importance of the tale. It was no surprise to anybody that Mrs. Muhlenberg hadn’t known the full details of the Hatch case, being as she lived in a different township, which meant a different sheriff’s department-and small-town sheriffs were generally even less cooperative and communicative with each other than New York City police precincts. As for the poor woman’s refusal to testify, Mr. Picton informed us that such was no great loss, being as Saratoga County’s resident Solomon, Judge Charles H. Brown, was a stickler for trying every case on its own merits, and almost certainly wouldn’t have allowed any unproven allegations about something what’d happened ten years ago to reach a jury’s ear. The same held true for all the work we’d done in New York, which, our host firmly reminded us, hadn’t even resulted in an official police investigation. The case of Libby Hatch’s murdered children would have to be confined to just that; the only purpose Mrs. Muhlenberg’s story could serve would be to help us better understand the character of the woman we were dealing with.

What it offered us along these lines was further proof (not that we needed any) of just how clever our opponent was. The Doctor told us that Mrs. Muhlenberg’s little theory of how Libby’d killed her son, Michael, a tale what some might’ve written off as the ramblings of a woman driven half mad by grief, was very likely the truth: such substances as poison, taken by a nursing woman, can in fact pass on through her milk into whatever baby she’s feeding. As for the packet of black powder Mrs. Muhlenberg had found in Libby’s room along with the arsenic, the Doctor suspected that it’d been, to use his term, carbo animalis purificatus, Latin for “purified animal charcoal.” The rest of the world knows the stuff as “bone black,” and it’s commonly used as an antidote for many poisons-including arsenic. Libby’d probably kept it handy just in case she got impatient with her plan and took too high a dose of the arsenic herself. As for why she’d done what she’d done, we all knew the answer to that one by now: little Michael Muhlenberg had committed the lethal mistake of making it obvious that Libby didn’t have much in the way of maternal talents, and instead of just admitting as much and trying to find something else to do with her life, the murderess had concocted a situation in which she came off looking like a hero for her efforts to save a kid she was actually killing. It was the same pattern we’d identified in the cases of Libby’s “adopted” children, along with the babies at the Lying-in Hospital: the woman had been at her grim work far longer than any of us-except, of course, the Doctor-had suspected, or likely would’ve believed.

There was one bit of information what passed for a helpful clue contained in Mrs. Muhlenberg’s sorry tale: if Libby Hatch had been hiring herself out as a wet nurse, it meant that she had to’ve given birth to a child of her own, at some point. If Libby hadn’t been lying on the hospital forms we’d seen, and was now thirty-nine, then in 1886 she would’ve been twenty-eight, and said kid could’ve been anywhere from an infant to my age-although the fact that she’d shown up at the Muhlenbergs’ alone indicated that the child was probably dead (which came as no big surprise to any of us). But dead or alive, there had to be some evidence of his or her existence somewhere.

So Miss Howard and I would now be looking for more than just Libby’s parents, over on the east side of the Hudson: most probably, another child’s grave awaited us, too. The interview with Mrs. Muhlenberg had given us only a general idea of where to start our search-there was a whole string of small towns on the opposite bank of the river-and because of that we needed to get started as soon as possible. I think Miss Howard would’ve been just as happy to leave that night, but there was no way I was going anywhere in the dark again; besides, we owed El Niño his first night in the bed we’d promised him. Mr. Picton showed him to a room up on the top floor of the house, the two of them chatting like old chums as they went up the stairs: we’d been right in thinking that their vocal natures would make them friends from the start. As for what in the world would become of El Niño once the case was over, Mr. Picton said he wouldn’t at all mind keeping him on as a servant; it’d certainly give the citizens of Ballston Spa something to talk about. His fate happily decided in this manner, the aborigine dove into the moderately sized bed in his room like it was an ocean, pausing in his wild celebration only when Mr. Picton told him that Mrs. Hastings wouldn’t appreciate his rolling around in the bedding with my dress shoes on.

The Doctor decided that our new partner would continue to work with Miss Howard and me for the immediate future: it was impossible to predict what kind of new trouble our search for Libby Hatch’s origins would stir up, but it was safe to say that if we did run into more danger, El Niño’s talents would come in handy. This was an easy enough consideration to see and accept; what wasn’t so obvious, but would prove pleasantly true over the next two days, was just how amusing our companion would continue to be. As we scrounged around those villages on the east bank of the Hudson, with Miss Howard asking anybody and everybody she could find about the Fraser family, El Niño and I became better and better friends, clowning, laughing, and telling any troublesome or resentful locals we ran into just where they could take their small-town hostility. The aborigine’s fierce loyalty-now enthusiastically transferred to us, after years of being reluctantly given to the mean-spirited son of his original benefactor-caused Miss Howard to develop her own attachment to him, in a way what wouldn’t have been possible with your average American white male: there was no condescension or attempt at chivalry in El Niño’s approach to her, just simple respect for someone who’d done him a good turn.

We needed all the bright spirits we could muster during that first day of our search, for it produced nothing but negative answers to Miss Howard’s questions, and more moody, distrustful stares from the local population. The fact that we were pursuing a murderer didn’t seem to cut much ice with those people: we were, first and foremost, strangers, and no constructive goal of ours could remove that barrier. Wednesday night found us back at Mr. Picton’s with nothing to show for our efforts, but we got up before dawn on Thursday and headed out again, trying not to let frustration get to us. When sunrise did come, we were crossing the river on a small ferry, heading directly into the bright, harsh morning glare. It was a state of affairs what would’ve been sickening if it hadn’t been for El Niño, who lay in the back of the buckboard sharpening his kris and happily singing some song in his native tongue what he informed me was about morning in the tropical jungles that’d once been his home.

The rest of our morning was filled with more disappointment, as was our afternoon. Town after town, tavern after tavern, postal office after postal office went by, with Miss Howard diligently dragging herself into every establishment and asking the same set of questions about a family named Fraser. By the time the light started to turn golden, I for one was more than willing to acknowledge the hopelessness of our finding anything out before the grand jury convened: we didn’t even know, after all, if Fraser had been Libby Hatch’s original name, an alias, or the handle what the father of her first child had gone by. All we felt sure of was that somewhere-maybe in a completely different state-there was a grave with that first kid’s name on it; and as late afternoon wound on into early evening Miss Howard, too, began to think that maybe such was all we really needed to know, at least for the time being. If Mr. Picton found that he required more specifics concerning that portion of the woman’s life for the actual trial (assuming we got that far), we could keep trying to find them-and he could grill Libby about such matters on the stand, too. But more and more Miss Howard was starting to feel that Libby’s violence was as much a result of having been born a girl in an oppressive, hypocritical society as it was of any possible irregularities in her family life; and our fruitless, pressured search was starting to seem like a waste of time as a result. Needless to say, Miss Howard wasn’t one to put up with such a feeling for very long.

And so, when the court house clock in Ballston Spa tolled out seven o’clock that evening, we found ourselves in a position to hear it, having made our way back into town along the Malta road. We wound through Ballston’s closed shops and quiet houses, then around the train depot and up Bath Street, passing beneath Mr. Picton’s window. El Niño was sleeping in the bed of the wagon, Miss Howard was deep in her own thoughts as she rode next to me, and I was having a tough time keeping my eyes open, as my mind was lulled into relaxation by the slow, steady clatter of our faithful Morgan’s hooves.

Which, of course, was exactly the sort of moment when all hell was bound to break loose.

“Stevie!” I half thought the voice was in my head, part of some dream I was slipping into. “Stevie! Sara! Dammit, can’t you hear me?”

Miss Howard roused me, and together we turned to look at the quiet blocks around us, failing to see a single soul; but when the voice called out to us again, I marked it as Mr. Picton’s, and realized it was coming from his office window.

“Up here!” he said, at which point we glanced up to see him hanging almost half out of the court house, waving his pipe in one hand and a piece of paper in the other, trying desperately to get our attention. “Listen, Stevie,” he went on, “you’ve got to get out to the Westons’ and bring the Doctor back here! They don’t have a blasted telephone, and we need to talk! He was going to be back by nine, but I’ve just had a wire from John-we’ve got to go over it now!”

“But the hearing’s in the morning,” Miss Howard tried to answer, “and he’s still got to-”

“That doesn’t matter-all taken care of!” Mr. Picton shouted, confusing the hell out of both Miss Howard and me. “Sara, you’d better take my surrey and go fetch Lucius and Cyrus-but Stevie, you’ve got to get the Doctor, as fast as you can!”

In one quick move Miss Howard jumped to the ground, starting toward High Street and the court house steps at a run. She turned around when she was about halfway there to tell me, “Wake El Niño up, Stevie-he can keep you from drifting off again!”

“Like that’s gonna happen!” I said, full of new energy. “I wanna know what the hell’s going on!”

Miss Howard smiled, gathered her skirt together, and turned to keep running. Thinking the matter over, I figured I could in fact use some company to break the monotony of a drive back along the road we’d just come in on, so I gave my companion on the bed of the wagon a good shake, causing him to bolt upright, produce his kris, and ready himself to throw it, all in one lightning move.

“Take it easy, son,” I said, patting the driver’s bench where Miss Howard had been sitting. “Come on up here and grab ahold of something-the ride’s about to get a little rough!” With a gleeful laugh at the idea of being graduated to the bench, El Niño jumped up beside me and got ready to roll as I turned the wagon around and slapped the reins against the Morgan’s backside. We wouldn’t be able to travel full speed until we got outside town again, but once we did the little stallion showed he was no worse for the day’s work, and as we barreled along we raised such a cloud of dust-not to mention such an unholy racket-that El Niño couldn’t resist breaking into another song, what he told me he’d picked up during his pirating days in the South China Sea.

It was still fully light out when we reached the Westons’ farm, a testament as much to the durability of our horse as to my driving talents. Josiah Weston, though taken off guard by the sight of the aborigine in my evening clothes, told me that the Doctor and Clara Hatch were somewhere down by the stream behind the house, once again drawing. This didn’t surprise me; the Doctor had amazing patience when it came to these things, and if a given kid responded to a certain form of treatment or communication, he could stay with it for days on end. Telling El Niño to get some feed and water for our horse, I took off down toward the stream at a run.

Shooting around the big vegetable garden, then through a cornfield and down along the banks of the loud, clear brook, I found myself getting more and more excited, about just what I had no idea. I jumped and bolted over the rocks and muddy grass of the streambank, searching for the Doctor and Clara but not finding them right off; and, even though I knew that they wouldn’t be able to hear me over the noise of the rushing water, I called out their names a couple of times, never pausing to listen for an answer. Finally, after some five minutes of dashing and leaping, I caught sight of the Doctor’s back about half a mile upstream from the house. He was sitting underneath a large maple tree, one whose roots had grown out to form a kind of platform over the streambed. Clara was sitting quietly across from him, sketching away.

When I finally did get within earshot of the Doctor, I slowed down a bit. The part of the stream where the two of them were sitting was a little bend where the water spread out into an undisturbed pool, and grew quiet enough for me to hear the Doctor’s gentle voice as he spoke with Clara. He was obviously at a critical juncture in his effort to reach the girl, based on what I could hear of his words:

“… and so you see, Clara, I began to understand that what had happened was not my fault-and that if I only told others the truth about what had happened, it would help. It would help me to stay safe, and it would help my father to stop doing such things.”

This was all fairly predictable: again, I’d heard its like before, from the Doctor, and though I knew enough to approach quietly, I also calculated that a pause in the conversation-brought on by Clara’s silent attempt to wrap her troubled young mind around his last thought-would follow. I waited for it, figuring that at said point I could gracefully step in and break the news that we were urgently needed back in town.

What happened instead was that my jaw dropped at the sound of Clara answering the Doctor in a soft, slightly hoarse, but still amazingly clear voice:

“And did your papa get better?”

I could see the Doctor nod slowly. “He was a very sick man. Like your mama. But yes, he got better, eventually. So will she.”

“But only if I tell the truth…” Clara said, quietly and with real fear.

There was no doubt about it: they were having a conversation.