by Alex Simmons
“Looks as if the idea is to keep some people in,” Owens said in a dry voice.
“Just yesterday, you were carrying on about the way Indians scalped people,” Wiggins growled. “Is it any wonder the coppers would be suspicious?”
“Buffalo Bill took some scalps too,” Owens replied. “I wonder if the coppers are keeping him in?”
There was no way to answer that, just as there was nothing they could do here. As the boys turned away, however, Wiggins caught a hint of movement from the corner of the lot where the performers’ tents stood. He spotted a human figure drop from the top of the wall that enclosed the Wild West show area. The man slid down the steep embankment to the railway tracks, where he disappeared from the boys’ sight. Seconds later, he swung himself over the top of the fence on their side of the tracks, dropping lightly to the pavement.
The boys looked toward the nearest group of policemen. Obviously, they’d noticed nothing. Wiggins and Owens stared as the escaping man paused to tuck long, black hair under a scruffy hat. He ran off, but there was no mistaking the hawk-like face they’d seen—it was Silent Eagle.
The question was, what was he up to?
Evening was coming on by the time the boys got back to the East End. Wiggins could feel a strange kind of energy in the neighborhood even before he spotted teams of men slapping large handbills on every space they could find.
It took both boys working together to figure out the words on the top line of the handbill. “ ‘Monster rally,’ ” Wiggins said finally. But there was a lot more to decipher.
“I think we may need to show this to Jennie,” Owens said.
After glancing to see that the handbill crew had moved along, Wiggins yanked down the still-damp paper.
“So . . . let’s find her,” he said.
They checked several places before finding Jennie at the Raven Pub. She sat grim-faced in the back room, Dooley at her side, an evening newspaper spread before them.
“Da ended up working late after all.” Dooley tried to hide his disappointment with a smile. “Then on the way home, I heard the newsboys—”
“And I bought another paper.” Jennie thumped a hand down on the newsprint. “Somehow, our friend Mr. Pryke must have gotten a look at Inspector Desmond’s report from the hospital. According to this newspaper, he’s accusing Buffalo Bill of smuggling, bringing savages into Britain, attacking people . . . just about everything but trying to overthrow the Crown.”
“Give him time,” Owens said.
Wiggins produced the handbill they’d taken down. “I suppose that’s what this is all about.”
Jennie looked it over. “It’s not as long-winded as the things he told the newspaper reporters, but otherwise it’s about the same. Smuggling. No respect for law. Savage behavior. And he’s inviting everyone to a mass meeting to discuss it tonight.”
Wiggins picked up the handbill. “Then that’s where we should be.”
Just after nightfall, crowds of men appeared, whooping it up and waving burning torches as they marched through the East End. They congregated for the meeting in Stepney, at an open area called Arbour Square. Wiggins and the other members of the Raven League followed their friends and neighbors. Most of the people around them seemed to treat the proceedings as a sort of holiday, laughing and larking about.
“I don’t see any of our folks here,” Wiggins observed.
“You won’t catch my ma at one of these,” Owens replied. “Pryke doesn’t spend much time in the West Indian and Hindu neighborhoods. Guess he’s not ‘one of us ’ ”
Wiggins caught sight of a familiar figure standing at the edge of the growing crowd. He nudged Owens. “Isn’t that your friend Mr. Shears?”
Shears was a local barber who’d served in the army with Owens’s father. After the older Owens had died in battle, Shears had befriended the whole Owens family. Right now, he stood with his hands on his hips, looking as if he’d just tasted a particularly sour persimmon.
“Mr. Shears!” Owens said as they came closer. “What brings you out here?”
His smile of greeting dimmed a bit. “I came to hear what that fellow has to say.” From the look on the barber’s face, Wiggins knew Mr. Shears had wanted to call Pryke some other name.
“I knew Jemmy Pryke when he had a rathole of an office, earning a dubious living by trying to keep burglars from going to prison,” Shears said. “Then all of a sudden he was standing for Parliament as ‘J. Montague Pryke, friend of the working man.’ ”
Shears shook his head. “His whole life, he was just a mouth working for whoever crossed his palm with silver. That’s what he’s still doing, though I don’t know where the money comes from.”
Jennie frowned. “You think someone is paying for all this?”
“Could be.” Mr. Shears shrugged. “Sometimes he does this to make himself look important. East Enders are Pryke’s favorite audience. Folk round here are poor enough—ignorant enough—angry enough—to swallow his kind of ‘oratory.’ ”
J. Montague Pryke began his speech. He started off sounding reasonable. But his voice began to rise as he called up every argument the British had had with their American cousins since the colonies broke away in 1776. Americans, it seemed, were just naturally greedy, crude, and treacherous in general. And when it came to Buffalo Bill and his performers in particular, Pryke painted an even worse picture. Colonel Cody and the cowboys represented some sort of nasty subhumans not fit to live in decent society. The Indians were even worse.
“They’re a degenerate race that refuses to be civilized and that treats civilized folk with the utmost savagery,” Pryke shouted. “But when this Yankee brings his freak show to London—to the center of world civilization—what happens? Thirty to forty thousand people pack each performance. He dines with the finest in the land and sends millions back to America. Is this right?”
Faces red, eyes bulging, torches shaking, the crowd shouted, “NO!”
“But is Cody content? No! He unleashes his pet savages on the very symbol of decent, civilized London life—one of the honest bobbies who work to protect us all. Will we stand for this?”
For Wiggins, like most East Enders, the less he had to do with the coppers, the better. But now, his neighbors were ready to die for this injured constable. And I’d be yelling right beside them, he realized with some embarrassment, except I met Buffalo Bill and saw what sort of man he is. I saw Silent Eagle risk his life calming that buffalo to save a crowd of people he didn’t even know —people who would mock him as an ignorant savage.
He looked to see his friends’ reactions. Jennie’s lips were tight. “My friend Jacob told me stories about meetings like this in Russia,” she said. “Afterward, the people took their torches to burn down the Jewish part of town.”
“Happens here too,” Owens added grimly.
Wiggins didn’t know what to say to that, so he turned away. Then he froze, staring.
Owens noticed. “What is it?”
Wiggins jerked his head off to the left. “I recognize someone over there. Natty Blount.” Natty had been a pickpocket when Wiggins brought him into the Baker Street Irregulars, the boys who did odd jobs for Sherlock Holmes. But he became another kind of thief, stealing control of the Irregulars from Wiggins. Owens’s hand tightened on Wiggins’s shoulder as he spotted Blount not twenty feet from them, waving a torch and yelling his head off.
Seeing the petty thief who had wrecked the Baker Street Irregulars filled Wiggins with familiar anger —and sudden suspicion. He began searching the crowd for other faces he knew.
They were easy enough to spot—shorter figures, all of them waving torches. Once they had been Sherlock Holmes’s eyes and ears all over London. Now they were just another gang of street toughs. They cared nothing for politics or patriotism, just cold, hard cash. If they were here, they were here for money and no other reason.
“Pryke ain’t alone in whipping up the crowd,” Wiggins told the others. “He’s got a mob for hire helping hi
m.”
Jennie’s eyebrows drew together. “I wonder what that means?”
Wiggins and Owens exchanged worried looks. “It means,” Wiggins said slowly, “that someone is out to cause trouble for Colonel Cody and the Americans.”
Chapter 6
“ARCHIBALD WIGGINS! WHERE ARE YOU GOING?” Wiggins’s mother stood in the doorway of their rooms, her hands on her hips and a grim expression on her face. “I’ve been baking all night. The least you could do is deliver these orders for me this morning.”
“I know, Mam,” Wiggins replied sheepishly. “But I have to meet the lads—uh, Jennie and the others. Something important has—”
“Not so important that you can slack off on your chores around here.”
“But—”
His mother raised a disapproving eyebrow, and the corners of her lips curled down. It was a look that Wiggins knew too well. His mother would tolerate no more debate. Selling her baked goods was their only source of income since Wiggins’s father had died. Wiggins knew that the little money he made running errands for other people did not amount to much. Not even his work for Mr. Sherlock Holmes excluded him from helping her when she needed him.
Wiggins trotted back up the stairs and into their room. “Sorry, Mam,” he said with an apologetic grin. “Where did you want me to deliver those goodies?”
The two errands didn’t really take too long. As he jogged along the cobblestone streets toward the last shopkeeper, Wiggins realized that the small detour was actually useful to him.
Everywhere he looked, Wiggins saw handbills posted up by Pryke’s supporters. Here and there, small groups of agitated people stood reading the handbills and discussing the message.
Though Wiggins couldn’t read them himself, he gathered from the others that the bills spoke angrily against what they called an American “infestation. ” They even suggested that the London constabulary was coddling people of prestige and influence.
Wiggins shook his head with disgust. Like Mr. Holmes, he had never cared much about politics. All the titles and speeches were just so much noise to him. But after the Raven League’s first adventure, Wiggins had begun to put faces to the names in government. After all, he’d met the queen of England. He’d also met assassins and learned that there were spies—even in the British government.
Winding his way toward the Raven Pub, Wiggins continued to think about the case at hand. If someone was out to hurt Buffalo Bill and his show, or any Americans, they might be planning to use East Enders to do their dirty work. And later, when the law demanded justice, it would be the East Enders who would pay.
If that was the case, what could he and the League do to stop them? The last time they’d had Sherlock Holmes on their side. Should they go to the detective?
Wiggins reached a decision when he finally met up with Jennie and the others in the back room of the Raven Pub.
“You’re late,” Jennie scolded. “What kept you?”
“I’ll explain along the way,” Wiggins replied. “Right now, we’re paying a call on Buffalo Bill. I got his address, but we have a ways to go.”
In a few minutes, the four were hurrying westward along Mile End Road. Wiggins quickly told them about the handbills and what he had heard.
“Yeah,” Dooley said, nodding in agreement. “I was out early shining shoes of folks going to work. I heard them talking about this all morning long.”
“I heard the same from the roughs hanging about the streets,” Wiggins added. “They’re saying Cody and the other savages should leave London.” He glanced over at Owens, who hadn’t cracked a joke or made a comment. “Have you heard anything?”
Owens nodded but didn’t look at Wiggins. “Even some of my people are calling the Americans all sorts of names.”
“That bothers you?” Dooley asked.
Owens shrugged. “Seems funny. We don’t want no one treatin’ us like dirt, but we’re quick to do it to others.”
Wiggins pointed toward the back of a large furniture wagon rattling along the street. “There’s our ride.”
The others caught on and one by one ran behind the vehicle to jump onto the tailgate of the wagon.
“I still think that mob at Pryke’s speech last night was bought,” Wiggins proclaimed after they were all aboard. “Nat Blount was there, and he doesn’t care anything about people—except the ones he plans to nick something from. Same for some of those blokes he was standing with.”
“Maybe he was trying to pick a few pockets in the crowd,” Owens offered.
“If he went after one of those blokes he was standing with,” Wiggins shot back, “they’d have hacked off his fingers and fed them to him one by one.”
“What would be the purpose of hiring a phony crowd of angry citizens?” Jennie asked.
“Maybe to make Pryke look important,” Wiggins replied.
“But he’s already important,” Jennie said.
“This is getting too mixed up for me.” Dooley shook his head. “Are we after thugs, smugglers, or what?”
“I have no idea,” Wiggins admitted, then he went quiet. The wagon rattled along westward to Piccadilly, where Wiggins signaled for them to get ready to hop off.
“Well, once we figure out who took Buffalo Bill’s gun, we’ll have the answer.” Wiggins dropped from the wagon, and the others followed.
He took a quick glance around to get his bearings. This neighborhood was expensive, near the fine gentlemen’s clubs and the theaters. Coming up to Regent Street, he led the way to number 59.
They stood in front of the five-story stone building, whose ground floor was a gentleman’s outfitters. “Colonel Cody has two floors of rooms upstairs, or so this mate of mine told me,” Wiggins said. “He helped deliver some of the flowers all the ladies were sending to Buffalo Bill.”
A four-wheeled coach waited out in the street, and the front door of the house stood partially open.
While the coach driver was distracted by his horse, Wiggins walked up to the house and gingerly gave the doorknob a pull. The door swung farther open. “In we go,” he said.
Jennie sent a worried glance at the coach’s driver, but he never glanced at the children as they entered the house.
Wiggins went to peer up the stairway while the others huddled together by a large potted palm—almost as if they thought they’d blend in with the foliage.
“Come on,” Wiggins whispered over his shoulder.
He turned back to discover a stocky man in a derby hat frowning up above them. “Where did you lot come from? This is a gentleman’s establishment. No casual labor or mendicants need apply.”
“It’s the butler.” Owens took a nervous step back.
“Not fancy enough.” Wiggins smirked. “He’s probably a valet.”
“Do I need to repeat myself ?” the servant said sharply. “We don’t allow beggars in here.”
“We ain’t beggars,” Wiggins told him. “We’re here to see Buffalo—I mean, Colonel Cody.”
“Yeah, we’re friends of his,” Dooley added.
“Of course you are.” The servant pushed back his sleeves as he came down the steps toward the children. “Since you won’t leave nicely, I’ll just have to—”
“Now wait just a minute, guv.” Wiggins threw up his hands to fend off the man’s grip.
“You touch me,” Dooley warned loudly, “and I’ll take—”
“What’s going on here, Jim?”
A new figure appeared at the head of the stairs: Buffalo Bill’s partner, Nate Salsbury.
“I was just about to evict them, sir,” Jim said anxiously. He’d managed to snag both Jennie and Wiggins by their collars.
“Hello, Mr. Salsbury,” Jennie said politely. Wiggins wanted to laugh at the sight of Jennie trying to maintain her dignity as the servant gripped her collar. “It’s good to see you again.”
“Hello again, little missy,” Salsbury replied with a wry smile.
“You know these—children?” the servant asked.
“They were visiting Colonel Cody in his tent,” the show manager said as he approached the group. “Let ’em go.”
As the servant moved away with a dazed expression on his face, Dooley stuck his tongue out at the man. But when the servant glanced back at the group, Dooley appeared to be studying the design on the rug.
“If you came by to enjoy Colonel Cody’s hospitality, ” Salsbury told them, “you’ve picked a bad time.”
“Why?” Owens asked.
“Surely you’ve heard about the attack,” Salsbury replied. “I was here with Bill last night when the police came around to question us again.” He gazed back up the stairs.
“We read about it,” Wiggins said, “and we thought of something that might help.”
Salsbury turned back around to face them. “What do you know that might help us?”
“The newspapers—and other people—are making a lot of the fact that the gun found by the constable belonged to Buffalo Bill,” Wiggins said. “But we know it was lost long before the attack. Remember?”
“Lost,” Jennie echoed, “or stolen.”
“Well, look who we’ve got here!” a loud voice interrupted.
“Hi, Buffalo Bill!” Dooley almost cheered as the frontiersman walked down the stairs and joined them.
“Morning,” Cody said, ruffling Dooley’s hair and shaking hands with the others. “What brings you here?”
Jennie quickly explained the reason for their visit. “Did you ever find out how the gun got out of your tent?”
Cody shook his head. “Nate and I looked into it.”
“You may find it hard to believe, considering your visit,” Salsbury told them with a grin. “But very few people have access to the tent during the show.”
Cody shrugged. “I can’t see any of my folks stealing one of my guns. They had plenty of opportunities before, and nothing like this has ever happened. ”
“I think it was some souvenir hunter,” Salsbury said, “and I’ll say as much to Inspector Desmond the next time I see him.” He shook his head. “I doubt, though, that will be enough for the local police—or the newspapers. They’ll still suggest that Cody or someone else in the show hid the gun, pretending that he’d lost it.”