The Kingdom of Bones

TWENTY-FIVE

Two nights later, at an hour when most people were thinking of retiring to their beds, Louise descended to the street outside the apartments where a four-wheeler waited. The Silent Man had gone on ahead of them, and his wife accompanied her now. They were to pick up Edmund Whitlock from the stage door at Gatti’s and then proceed to the evening’s destination.

The Egyptian Hall stood in Piccadilly, and had been England’s Home of Mystery for the past sixteen years. It had the frontage of an antique temple, four stories high and with the look of something hewn from the rock of the Nile Valley. Two mighty columns braced the lintel above its entranceway. Two monumental statues stood upon the lintel. All illusion, in plaster and cement. To either side of this slab of the ancient desert continued a row of sober Georgian town houses.

Within the building there were two theaters. One had been taken by Maskelyne and Cooke for a three-month run of magic and deception that still showed no signs of ending, more than a decade and a half after it had begun. The other was used for exhibitions and the occasional show.

A few minutes before midnight, their four-wheeler drew up outside. Edmund Whitlock stepped down to the pavement, where he turned and offered his arm to Louise.

To an observer’s eye, the halls were closed and dark, but a watchman waited to let them in. Louise moved with her eyes downcast, looking neither to left nor right. They went directly backstage, where the Silent Man waited to lead them to the auditorium.

It was an intimate house, with a small stage and a runway out from the footlights across the orchestra pit. The houselights were on and the curtains were up; Maskelyne was between shows, so his sets were half struck and the theater’s back wall was visible. About a dozen figures were out there in the stalls, all male, no two of them sitting together although some were conversing across the rows in raised voices. They fell silent as Whitlock led Louise to the center of the stage, where a chair waited. He left her there and moved to the footlights.

“Gentlemen,” he said, his voice ringing all the way up to the hall’s domed ceiling. “Welcome. I have spoken to each of you in turn before this evening.”

Louise sat on her chair and continued to look down at the stage. Whitlock had taken her to Bond Street the day before, to be fitted for a new dress that the milliners had run up overnight. Her hair had been artfully pinned by the Mute Woman, who had a talent for such. Her face was powdered and her natural pallor relieved by the merest hint of rouge.

Over by the wings, she was aware of the Silent Man easing out of the shadows and into a spot from where he could observe the auditorium.

“I know you are intrigued,” Whitlock said. “I know you will be discreet. And I know the fascination that Miss Porter holds for each of you. Tonight, I offer the chance for one man to pursue that fascination to the full.”

Hearing mention of her name, Louise raised her head to look at him. Slowly. She saw him outlined against the footlights with the pasty gloom of the auditorium beyond. The men out there were but shadows in shadow. The white fronts of their dress shirts outshone their faces.

“Know that I am hiding nothing,” Whitlock was saying to them. “I am damned. I have lived a life beyond the sight of God and it has been…wonderful. To be free of conscience is the greatest freedom of all. Christ hung upon the cross, and I feel nothing for his pain. Guilt does not chain me down. God is not my master. I have no master.”

A voice from the stalls called out, “What of his final retribution?”

“Avoidable,” Whitlock said. “By handing on the gift to another as I offer it to you now.”

From a man somewhere close to the footlights she heard, “There’s always a reckoning in the end,” but Whitlock had a ready reply.

“True, sir,” he said, “but I chose your company tonight because every single one of you is skilled at passing a reckoning on to someone else.”

This caused some nervous laughter, and Whitlock took the moment as an opportunity to turn his back on them and move to Louise.

She looked up at him. “Are we done here, Edmund?” she said.

“Just a little longer,” he said. “Stand up.” He offered her a hand that she did not need, and she rose to her feet. He smiled, and she saw a muscle in his cheek quiver uncontrollably for a second or so. Far from being in full command of the situation, he seemed to be in a state of quiet terror. When he turned again to face the auditorium with her, the telltale sign was gone, masked by the actor’s show of confidence.

He said, “Here is your way in, gentlemen. You can do anything to her or with her. She does not care. There is nothing in her heart.”

Unexpectedly, he raised his hand and slapped her across the face, hard. Her head snapped around. She did not fall.

Out in the stalls, one or two of the young men were on their feet. Any urge to protest was stilled as their attention was drawn to the Silent Man over at the side of the stage. In the emptiness of the theater, the sound of his revolver’s hammer being cocked was impossible to miss. Once it was readied, he held it with the barrel pointing upward, all set to level and fire should it be necessary.

Whitlock said, “What do you say, Louise?”

“Thank you, Edmund,” Louise said.

He turned back to his audience.

“Well?” he challenged them. “I seek a man without fear. And I offer him the world.”

The man just beyond the footlights was on his feet.

“Not for me,” he said, and he started to make his way out. After a moment, two or three of the others started to follow him.

“As you wish, gentlemen,” Whitlock called after them, trying to make the best of this unwelcome response but failing to disguise a growing anxiety at a plan that was falling apart before his eyes. “This prize is not for all.”

“You’re afraid, sir,” one of them shot back. “You’re no advertisement for your own bargain.”

“If damnation’s such a prize,” called another, “how come Irving’s in the Lyceum while you scratch for pennies on the circuit? Who did he sell his soul to? I’ll go there!”

Some of them laughed. Another said, “Your gift is no gift, sir, it’s a burden. I’d happily take the lady. But I’ll have none of you.”

By now, the sounds of people rising and leaving were coming from all parts of the stalls. Dark shapes were moving across the rows like ghosts, heading for the aisles and the exits.

Whitlock lost his composure. He took Louise by the arm and roughly thrust her forward to the footlights where, with a savage jerk, he ripped open the front of her new dress. In that one move, he tore open her bodice, her chemise, everything. The force of it almost threw her off her balance. She grasped at the ripped material and held it together. She was embarrassed, but she did not actively resist.

“One man!” Whitlock roared at the departing group. It was a tragedian’s yell, meant to stir and inspire, but it did no more than betray his desperation. “One man with real blood in his veins!”

And from the back of the hall came a voice that said, “May one inspect the merchandise?”

With the sudden focus of a wolf spotting the weakling in the chaos of a panicking flock, Whitlock turned all of his attention to the tall figure that was moving down the center aisle. Or perhaps it was the drowning man’s interest in the one line that he might be able to reach.

Dressed like all the others, no more recognizable in the shadows than any of them, the man was raising a hand to shade his eyes against the footlights’ glare.

“An inspection?” Whitlock said. “But of course.” He pushed Louise, propelling her forward, and she took a couple of stumbling steps toward the runway. It extended out from the footlights and across the orchestra pit to end over the front row of the stalls.

Recovering her balance, holding her ripped bodice together, she walked with some recovered measure of dignity to the end of the runway. There she stood, self-conscious but straight-backed, to present herself for inspection. Alone, with the darkness of the empty orchestra pit to either side of her, she looked ahead and waited. He was interested, or he wasn’t. Whichever it was, she did not care.

From down in the stalls, the man said in a low voice, “Is this what you want, Miss Porter?”

“No, sir,” she said. “But it is what I deserve.”

“Do not believe that,” he said. “And do not dishonor yourself for his purposes. You are worth so much more.”

She looked then. He was standing down there with his face upturned, still using one hand to shade his eyes.

She saw that this gesture was meant as much to conceal his features from the others as anything else. She saw him glance in the direction of the Silent Man, still armed and ready for trouble. Then he held out his other hand toward her, as if she might crouch and take it and so be helped down from the stage.

“Tom?” she said in a small and broken voice.

“Come,” he said, low enough for only her to hear. “You have seen the man’s nature and learned his purpose now. Can’t you see that I spoke the truth?”

For those out in the auditorium and in the wings, she betrayed no sign of having recognized him. She kept her face blank, and barely spoke.

“Leave here,” she said. “Leave while you can, before it is too late. Forget me.”

“How can I?”

“You must. He has me. I am lost. Go, Tom. Save yourself.”

Sayers began to say something more. But at that moment, the shooting began.

Splinters flew. Bullets were thudding into the seats around him. The Silent Man had stepped forward and taken aim, and he was emptying his revolver in Tom Sayers’ direction. Sayers knew that he’d been recognized. He threw himself down.

Up on the stage, Louise did not move. She barely flinched as the theater echoed with a tattoo of pistol shots. Those who’d been halfway out were diving to the floor or scrambling for the exits; those who had not yet left their seats were jumping up out of them now. There was panic, with little sense of how best to achieve safety. Sayers was aware of at least one man clambering onto the stage.

The shooting stopped as suddenly as it had begun, all chambers emptied. None had touched Sayers, but a rising cry from the other side of the stalls suggested that at least one of the bullets had found a living target. Up on the stage, Whitlock had grabbed Louise and was dragging her toward the wings.

There was a rumble from above. Sayers looked up and saw the descending safety curtain; someone backstage had tripped the counterweight release, and the five-ton sheet of asbestos and metal was coming down like a guillotine.

Sayers took a leap at the end of the runway and pulled himself up onto the stage. “Iron flying in!” he roared in warning to anyone within earshot. Once the fire curtain was down, there would be no way to move between the auditorium and the backstage area. And anyone standing in the wrong spot when it fell would be crushed, or worse.

The “iron” hit the stage within a second of his passing under it, the weight of it shaking the boards and sending a booming echo through the cellarage below. Dust rose from the wood as if from a beaten carpet.

If the stage had been boxed in for magic, as Stoker had said, then Whitlock and his cronies would now have only one way out. But where would their exit be located? Sayers had never played the Egyptian Hall or brought a company here, so he could only guess. He guessed stage left, trying to remember the layout of the building as he’d seen it on the way in.

When he reached the back of the wings, it was to find the pass door closed, with the inert body of the Silent Man sprawled before it. Another man was standing over him, looking down at the body while barring any exit from the stage with the Silent Man’s revolver in his hand. Sayers did not recognize him until he looked up and spoke.

“My God, Sayers,” Sebastian Becker said. “Tell me what I’ve walked into.”

Sebastian had entered with the ticket he’d stolen from Whitlock’s rooms, and had taken a seat to one side of the auditorium. He’d had no idea what to expect. When he’d seen Whitlock stepping forward and offering his young ward for immoral purposes like a slave at the block, he’d been dismayed. He’d never known such a thing—at least, not outside the pages of banned fiction. The lower orders might trade their women and slap them around, but these were not brutes. These were men with clean shirts, and fortunes.

He’d hesitated to act until the shooting began. Then his duty became clear. As the others panicked, he moved down the rows and when he saw his chance, he climbed onto the stage. When the safety curtain fell, he was already behind it. His first aim was to surprise and disarm the gunman. The man was looking out for his master and failed to see Sebastian, who took no chances and felled him with a blow.

Now Sayers said to him, “If you were there when Whitlock spoke, then I need tell you nothing more. Did he leave this way?”

“No one has gone by me.”

“Then they have trapped themselves, and are looking for another way out.”

“I believe that’s so.”

Sebastian crouched down, and went through the shaven-headed man’s coat. He was looking for further ammunition; finding none, he got to his feet and stuck the revolver into his waistband.

Sayers hadn’t waited. He was away already, looking for his Louise, the woman who’d once pushed him in front of a train and had since grown indifferent to her own fate. How much more dedicated to his purpose could a man be? Sebastian listened, and could hear him calling her name; he also heard something else, from under his feet…a thump, like a slamming door in some other part of the building, but coming from below.

“Sayers!” he called out. “They are under the stage!” But either Sayers could not hear him or was already on his way down there.

Behind the scenery at the back of the stage there was a lifted section of the floor. It was about four feet square, and there was a ladder going down into the darkness below it. Without any hesitation, Sebastian descended.

There was lighting down here: a few weak electric bulbs casting a dim yellow glow, enough to move around by but nothing more. The underside of the stage was a maze of wooden beams and cross bracing, as if the floor above was built to support far more weight than could ever be required of it.

“Sayers!” he called up the ladder. “Did you hear me? Whitlock is trying to reach the orchestra pit!” He heard a scuffle in response to his voice; the noise might have been made by rats, because the movement that caught his eye was from another direction altogether.

There was Whitlock, clambering through the timberwork toward the front of the stage. He was finding no way through. Those who had sealed the theater to protect the mysteries above the stage had taken similar care to protect the further secrets below it. Now Sebastian understood the reason for such a complicated understructure. The entire stage floor above them was a grid of squares, any one of which could be lifted to give secret access or escape from a piece of magical apparatus.

Whitlock had a grip on Louise and was dragging the young woman along with him: his one prize, his last asset, his bait. But she was slowing him down. The new dress was so full that it was getting caught up almost everywhere. Sebastian moved to follow, and immediately banged his head on a low bulwark.

The blow was a glancing one and not too hard, but it was enough to disorient him for a few moments. He used his few seconds of unbalance and uncertainty to draw the empty pistol from his waistband.

“Whitlock!” he shouted, and raised the pistol. He held it level as if he would fire. A man might take a while to climb through the understage timberwork to reach a fugitive. A well-aimed bullet would make the same journey without interference.

Had he a bullet. His gun was empty. But Whitlock could not know that for sure.

He saw Whitlock turn his head and spy the firearm. With a terrified jerk, the actor-manager thrust Louise around into the line of fire so that her body shielded his. She had to catch hold of one of the wide timbers to prevent herself from falling.

“You coward, sir!” Sebastian called to him. “You cannot hide behind a woman! Surrender yourself. You have no way out!”

But the move was only meant to buy Whitlock a moment or two of time. He had an escape in mind, and now Sebastian could see what his plan was. Fixed under one of the floor squares was a movable apparatus of pulleys and counterweights. Its purpose became clear as Whitlock stepped onto the platform in the middle of the frame.

“Sayers!” Sebastian shouted, hoping that wherever he was, the fighter might be warned in time to prevent Whitlock from making his way back to the pass door. “He’s on the star trap!”

Whereupon the actor-manager threw a release. The counterweights dropped, instantly speeding the platform and its occupant up toward stage level.

Sayers had heard every call that the policeman had made, beginning with the very first, but had been unable to reply. He dared not take his attention from the Mute Woman. She was before him now, one of Maskelyne’s trick swords in her hand; whichever way he tried to feint or dodge, the blade was there before him. He knew the blade was sharp. She’d cut him once already.

She’d stepped out from a collection of wooden crates and illusionists’ properties, confronting Sayers as he was searching the scene dock beyond the wings. Sayers had never really paid her much attention before now; back in the Purple Diamond days, she’d been the sewing woman’s lowly assistant. He’d paid out her wages every week, but had very little to say to her. If asked for an impression, he’d have described a dark-complexioned woman, one who avoided all company and never met one’s eye, a menial worker bundled up in so many layers of old clothes that her shape was indeterminable.

She’d shed her coat, so that she might move with greater ease. Now her eye was fixed on his. Seeing her as if for the first time, Sayers realized that she was far from the bent harridan of his imagination. She was not a young woman, but her frame was trim and strong and she stood and moved with uncommon grace. She held the sword with a confident hand.

Her purpose was plain: She was here to buy time for her master. She would hold Sayers’ attention until Whitlock had escaped to safety, and if Sayers would not be held, then she would almost certainly cut him down. Sayers had made one attempt to disarm her, and was now bleeding freely as a result. She’d backed him out onto the stage, and he dared not turn away. One thrust would end it if he did.

He could hear Sebastian Becker shouting somewhere down below, but it was impossible to be sure of what the policeman was saying. He heard him call out Whitlock’s name, and then he heard his own—Becker was trying to warn him of something. But Sayers dared not move his gaze from the Mute Woman, and she did not take her gaze from him.

What came next was unexpected—there was a rumble of weights and pulleys almost directly under their feet. Neither meant to look down, but both of them did. Sayers knew the sound well. It was the machinery underlying a star trap.

A star trap offered the most spectacular—and potentially the most dangerous—entrance that a performer could make. Coupled with a flash of magnesium powder, it could make a player seem to appear out of thin air. A heavily counterweighted platform shot the actor up from the basement through a star-shaped trapdoor. The trap’s hinged leaves would flip upward, opening like a flower. Once the body was through, they would drop back into place to conceal the point of emergence.

A good star trap took about half a second to do its work.

Half a second was just enough time for Sayers to place his foot upon one of its sections.

The floor jumped. Sayers felt the full force of a body hitting the trap, only to fall back again. Some of the pointed sections flew up. Even the one that he was standing on bounced an inch or two.

Then nothing, until the Mute Woman started to scream.