by Kat Ross
The neighborhood was decrepit, perched at the edge of the waterfront and a stone’s throw from the dangerous slum of Five Points. Our destination, number 253 Pearl Street at the corner of Fulton, looked like a ramshackle tenement — from the outside.
We were greeted by the antediluvian butler Joseph, who informed us that Mr. Kaylock was occupied but that we could wait outside his office.
“Thank you, Joseph, we know the way,” John said quickly. “There’s no need—”
Joseph executed a stiff turn and tacked for the staircase. “I’ll escort you, Mister Weston, Miss Pell.”
John sighed. “Certainly.”
Joseph always insisted on accompanying us to Kaylock’s study, as if we might pocket the silver if left to our own devices. Now he led us up to the second floor, pausing on each step to emit a rattling death wheeze, then down the hall to a parlor with rich furnishings and a toasty fire in the hearth.
“Do you require anything further?” he asked at the door with a touch of irritation, as if he had much better things to do than ferry us around.
I shook my head and Joseph retreated down the hall, his footsteps swallowed by the thick Persian carpet.
John removed his Homburg and threw himself into an armchair, stretching out his long legs. The walls were adorned with unsmiling portraits of the Society’s founders and one or two bland landscapes. A stack of journals rested on the table. I listened to the clock tick on the mantel as I composed my thoughts, while John started thumbing through one of the journals.
Technically speaking, neither of us were actual employees of the S.P.R. We were paid a fee upon the successful completion of assignments, but John and I had both signed contracts absolving the S.P.R. of any liability for injury or death in the line of work. I still wasn’t sure how I was supposed to cobble together a decent living from it, but for the moment I didn’t have to worry. I lived at home and my expenses were modest. Once John finished school and became a respectable doctor, I supposed he’d quit, a prospect I tried not to dwell on.
After thirty minutes, the door to Mr. Kaylock’s study opened and three people emerged. I knew two of them fairly well. Kate Prince and Wayne Copperthwaite were fellow agents. Kate had coffee-colored skin and kept her hair in French braids. She was tall and strong and pretty, with an oval face and intelligent brown eyes. Her particular talent was sniffing out fakers and frauds. She had been hired by Mr. Kaylock.
Her partner had auburn hair and the kind of complexion that turned beet red at the drop of a hat. Wayne had been hired by Orpha Winter, Kaylock’s co-vice president and a rabid devotee of spiritualism. From what John said, he could smell ghosts or something. In any event, I knew they’d been given the Cherney case.
The third man was a few years older, mid-twenties, I reckoned, with dark blond hair that curled around his ears. He barely glanced at us. I’d seen that same look on the faces of Myrtle’s clients countless times. Stunned disbelief mingled with desperation.
“G . . . G . . . .” He swallowed painfully, his face contorting as he struggled to get the syllable out. “Good d . . . day.”
We murmured polite greetings in return. I was dying to ask Kate if there had been a break in the case, but she only gave us a distracted nod and swept past.
John and I entered the inner sanctum and found Harland Kaylock behind his desk, perusing a stack of papers. He gestured to the chairs arrayed before his desk without looking up and we obediently sat.
Mr. Kaylock had a sharp nose and thick, rather wild dark hair swept back from his high forehead. He wore a perpetually displeased expression and I always found myself sitting up a little straighter at these meetings.
“Report?” he muttered.
I took a deep breath. “We’ve made tremendous progress, sir. First off, we actually saw the thing last night. Turns out it’s a creature from Jewish folklore called a golem. That was John’s work, he deserves all the credit.”
Keen eyes flicked up from the paper. “Golem?”
“Yes, sir,” John said. “A man made of clay and brought to life with a talisman called a shem. It’s a scrap of paper that one puts in the—”
“Very good,” Mr. Kaylock interrupted acidly. “Does one know how to stop it?”
John nodded. “We consulted with a rabbi this morning. He told us that if the shem is removed, the creature will return to dust.” He scratched his head. “Unless it has to be done by the person who made it. We forgot to ask him that, Harry.”
I frowned. “John’s right. In both of the examples he cited, it was the golem’s creator who stepped in when it grew uncontrollable.”
Mr. Kaylock’s fountain pen drummed against his pile of papers. “You’ll simply have to test the theory yourselves.”
“About that . . . .” I cleared my throat. “Might I suggest that the Night Squad make arrangements to conduct a broad manhunt in the sewers? They’ll need to muster at least two dozen officers, but it would be the most effective strategy. The sewers are too extensive for me and Mr. Weston to search all alone.”
This was a poke at the negligent Sergeant Mallory, but Kaylock didn’t seem to notice.
“You can suggest it,” he replied with a mirthless chuckle, “but don’t expect results. The Night Squad is otherwise occupied at the moment and an army of police officers descending into the sewers of midtown Manhattan would attract precisely the sort of attention we don’t need right now.”
“With all due respect, sir,” John interjected. “The golem is growing more violent. And the creature is strong. It cracked the brickwork of the tunnel with a single blow! We were lucky to escape unscathed.”
“I sympathize,” Mr. Kaylock said in a tone that conveyed very little sympathy at all. “But we have limited resources. This creature must be stopped before the press starts taking it seriously. We’ve managed to keep it quiet so far — God knows how, with all the paid informants in the police department — but there’s pressure from City Hall. Mayor Grant wants this case to go away and he’s close friends with Orpha Winter. Do you understand?” The tone brooked no dissent.
“Perfectly,” I muttered.
“What else have you learned?”
“Golems carry out the will of a single master, usually a person with profound knowledge of religious scripture,” John said. “So someone is controlling it.”
For the first time, I saw a flicker of genuine interest in Kaylock’s predatory eyes. “To what purpose?”
“We don’t know,” John admitted.
“Then the information is irrelevant.” Kaylock’s clever, apelike fingers gripped the edge of the desk. “The point is that these attacks have become an acute embarrassment to the City of New York. If they continue, tourists will shun the Tenderloin and the economy will suffer. A critical aspect of our role is to prevent the public from ever learning what walks among them. So here’s what I suggest.”
His gaze speared us both to our chairs. “The next time this golem is sighted, you will drop whatever it is you’re doing and rush into the sewers to destroy the talisman that animates it. Are these instructions clear? Is there any part you don’t comprehend? If so, please do tell me now.”
John and I exchanged a sour look. “No, sir,” we said in unison.
“Excellent. You’d best get cracking then.” His attention returned to the papers.
I rose but lingered before his desk. “Mr. Kaylock?”
“What is it, Miss Pell?”
“I was wondering who that was with Miss Prince and Mr. Copperthwaite a moment ago.”
He sighed and laid down the pen. “I don’t suppose I need to keep it secret, you’ll read in the papers soon enough. There’s been another death of a student. His name was Francis Bates. The gentleman you saw is the unfortunate young man’s friend.” A shadow crossed Kaylock’s face. “He claims that he saw Bates across town just before he died.”
“Just like Daniel Cherney,” I said, glancing at John.
Kaylock nodded without a trace of his usual sa
rcasm. He looked troubled. “Just like Cherney.”
Here were the bare facts as I knew them:
At one thirty-five in the afternoon of August 13th, a graduate student named Daniel Cherney was struck and killed by a horse-drawn omnibus at the busy intersection of Thirty-Fourth Street and Sixth Avenue. Several witnesses reported that an errant gust of wind blew a newspaper into his face at the precise instant he stepped off the curb. The time was fixed since there was a large, handsome clock above the entrance to the Madison Park Hotel and bystanders noted the hour.
A tragic but run-of-the-mill accident — if it weren’t for the fact that Cherney was seen at the exact same time sitting in a lecture hall several miles away, also by dozens of witnesses.
No one spoke to the Daniel Cherney who attended the lecture on structural engineering. By all accounts, he sat quietly taking notes. When it ended, he vanished among the crowd of students hurrying to their next class.
It seemed impossible, but there was no doubt that the mangled body in front of the Madison Hotel was also Daniel Cherney. His parents positively identified him by a scar on his left shoulder from a childhood sledding accident.
So who was the man who attended the lecture?
The newspapers were having a field day with this mystery. And now it seemed there was another dead student seen in two places at once.
“What happened to Francis Bates?” I asked.
“A grisly accident in a theater where he worked as an actor. There was a leak in the roof and water dripped through to the scaffolding he was standing on. Bates slipped and fell into the ropes.” Kaylock’s lips tightened. “He strangled slowly. There’s no indication it was murder. Several cast members saw it happen, but they couldn’t reach him in time.”
“How awful,” I said. “Why was he up on a scaffold?”
“They were trying out a new harness that would allow the actors to descend from the ceiling above the stage. Some silly melodrama with angels. Bates had a bit part.”
“So what’s the connection to Cherney?” John wondered.
“Cashel O’Sullivan – that’s who you just saw leaving my office – well, he came to us insisting that he saw Bates across the street from his house at the same time the accident occurred. Bates was allegedly standing on the sidewalk, staring up at the window as if debating whether to come in. O’Sullivan called out to him but got no response. He hurried down to the street, but Francis Bates – or whoever it was – was gone. If not for the Cherney case, I wouldn’t give his story much weight. But it makes one wonder.”
“Mistaken identity?” I ventured.
“Perhaps, but he’s quite insistent. He recognized the coat and bright red scarf. Bates was a bit of a dandy.” Kaylock sighed. “It’s all most bizarre. O’Sullivan worked at the same theater as a stagehand. He did the lighting.”
“So he would have been familiar with the scaffolding,” John said thoughtfully.
“Yes, but he wasn’t there when it happened. Witnesses confirmed that. And why would he claim to have seen Bates across town?”
“He could be an attention seeker,” I suggested. “The Cherney case might have given him the idea.”
“He could be,” Kaylock agreed gravely. “But I just spoke with him. Unless he is an extremely practiced actor, I don’t think he could have faked such distress. He seemed deeply shaken by the experience.”
“And O’Sullivan wasn’t the actor, was he?” John muttered. “His friend was.”
I opened my mouth to ask another question and Mr. Kaylock rode over me. “It’s not your case, Miss Pell. Nor yours, Weston. I’ve already told you more than I ought to have.” He looked down at the papers. “Off with you both.”
“But—”
“Miss Prince and Mr. Copperthwaite have the matter well in hand.” Kaylock made a show of examining his pocket watch. “The Night Squad will send a man to fetch you when the golem is seen again. Don’t forget, Mayor Grant wants a speedy resolution.”
“So do we,” I muttered.
We left the office and wandered downstairs to the stuffy room where Kaylock sometimes held mock séances. Our boss disliked his fellow man on general principle, but he reserved a special contempt for those who took advantage of the lonely, desperate and grief-stricken. And his experience as a former professional magician made Kaylock well-suited to expose the various tricks used by mediums to dupe their clients.
The room had a round table covered by a black cloth. Hidden pulleys could make the table jump up and down, while a magic lantern projected howling ghosts on the walls. It all looked ordinary enough now, save for the talking board and planchette that spiritualists used to communicate with the dead. Cashel O’Sullivan was gone, but Kate and Wayne conferred at the table. They fell silent when they saw us.
“Are we interrupting?” I asked, hovering in the doorway.
“Hello, Harry,” Kate said, hastily gathering a stack of photographs spread across the table and turning them facedown. “No, it’s fine. Come in.”
“We met the mud man last night,” John said, sinking into a chair. “Turns out it’s a golem. Nasty business, but we have the full blessing of a rabbi, should be a piece of cake to put it down.”
I didn’t bother to contradict the numerous inaccuracies in that sentence. “Daniel Cherney was Jewish, wasn’t he?” I asked, taking a seat next to Kate.
“You think there’s a connection?” she asked with a frown.
“Not really. Just considering all the possibilities.”
“Yes, he was Jewish. But Clifford Bates was Catholic. And we’ve found no evidence that either had any interest in the occult.”
“Was Cherney very religious?”
“I don’t think so. His family attended synagogue on the Sabbath and High Holidays, but the kid wanted to build bridges. That was his dream. He was quiet, a good student. No one we’ve interviewed outside the family admits to knowing him well.”
“What about Bates?” John asked. “The name doesn’t ring a bell, though if he’s not at the medical school, I doubt I’d know him.”
Wayne pushed the planchette aimlessly across the talking board. “Bates wasn’t a student anymore. He’d dropped out in his third year and gone on to take a few small roles at the Union Square Theater. Sometimes he’d help out with the lighting and other technical aspects of the production. The accident itself seems like rotten luck.”
Kate saw my gaze fix on the face-down photographs. “They’re gruesome, Harry,” she said quietly. “Sergeant Mallory ordered pictures taken before they cut Bates down.” She glanced at John. “If you’re willing to have a look, maybe you’ll notice something we’ve missed. Like those burned fingerprints you caught on that victim in the Hyde case.”
John nodded and rose to stand at her shoulder. Kate flipped the photos over. There were nine, taken from various angles. I forced myself not to look away, though she was right, the images were deeply disturbing. One rope circled the young man’s neck, while another had caught his ankle so he dangled like a worm on a hook. I made out a thatch of dark hair, but his features were too discolored and bloated to tell what he’d looked like. In truth, he did remind me of the murdered actress Anne Marlowe, who had been strangled with a chain.
John studied the photographs and sighed. “It looks consistent with accidental suffocation, but you’ll need a full autopsy. Better check his stomach for poisons as well, just to be sure.”
“His body is with the coroner now,” Kate said, turning the pictures over again. “Not that I want it to be murder, but I hope they find something we can use.”
“Did your witness know Daniel Cherney, too?” I wondered.
“You mean Cashel O’Sullivan? He claims not,” Kate said.
“But you don’t believe him.”
She sighed. “I’m honestly not sure. His grief seems genuine, but I get the sense he’s holding something back.”
I turned to her flame-haired partner. “What do you think is going on?”
“Deat
h specter,” Wayne said at the same instant as John.
They grinned at each other.
“It’s been reported before,” Wayne said. “Kansas 1843. A woman saw her sister clear as day, standing by the foot of her bed at the very same instant of the woman’s death a thousand miles away in Salt Lake City.”
“And one in Boston,” John added. “I can’t remember the year, but the phenomenon is well-documented. Ghostly apparitions that haunt the living within minutes of someone’s passing.”
“Or a well-crafted illusion to distract attention from a murder,” Kate put in darkly.
“There are no signs of foul play,” Wayne admonished. “Just two terrible accidents. Dozens of witnesses corroborated the circumstances.”
“It just seems like a mighty coincidence,” Kate said. “Both of them being students at Columbia and all.”
“Francis Bates—”
“Dropped out, I know. But it was only a year ago.”
“Are death specters the same as ghouls?” I asked.
John gave me a patronizing smile. “No, Harry. They’re just echoes. They can’t do any harm.”
“Why do they appear?”
“No one seems to know.”
Kate shook her head. “It’s all slippery. There doesn’t seem to be any crime in it, and if it is a hoax, whoever’s pulling the strings has us flummoxed.”
“I’d be happy to trade cases,” I said with a smile.
Kate grinned back. “Not on your life. But if I discover anything related to your golem, I’ll let you know, Harry. Do the same for us, eh?” She stood. “We’re meeting Mallory down at the Union Square Theater to finish the interviews.”
I nodded. “We’ll walk you out.”
John and I parted ways with our fellow investigators at the corner of Fulton and headed across town towards Wall Street.