“So?”
“Oh, memory must be such a blight. Think, Thomas! Think!”
I blinked, staring at the icy cliff before me, the vertical fissures in it, the possibility for a crack to open and let us climb. “You’re singing to find the resonance frequency of the ice?”
Instead of answering, Silence began to sing again. His voice echoed down the throat of the chasm and back up, and the ice before us began to hum.
“That’s it! That pitch there!” I said.
“Well, help me out, then.”
I joined my voice to his, trying to match his pitch, trying to find that singular note. The striated sheet of ice before us began to crackle and groan. We centered in on one high tone. The ice between us shivered. We sang louder, holding the note, and soon little crystals shook free of the wall.
Suddenly, a whole chute of ice shattered and plummeted away like a chandelier dropping from a ceiling. It sluiced down between us and plunged into the icy rift, opening up a crevice that we both lunged for.
In the next moments, we were climbing, frozen hands and feet scrabbling on ice, bent backs bashing against each other. Inch by inch, we shimmied higher until at last we clawed our way to the top of the glacier and lay on our backs, panting.
“You know, Silence,” I said hoarsely, “ever since I met you, it’s been one insane predicament after another.”
“I could say the same,” he responded.
“Yes, but my life was different before this. Your life—who knows?”
We breathed a while more and then sat up, staring soberly over the cliff.
“Well, for the time being, we’re safe,” Silence said. “Safe from the gunman. Safe from Anna.”
I glared at him. “You’re a cold one.”
“They can’t get at us in a straight line. They’ll have to go twenty miles in either direction, or straight back—”
“That’s not what I’m talking about. She saved you. She saved me.”
“She’s plotting with the gunman.”
I was incredulous. “She stayed behind to stall him!”
“Or to join him.”
I shook my head angrily. “You’re too old to understand.”
“I understand perfectly. You’ve fallen for her.”
“She’s fallen for me.”
Silence stood and slapped snow off his backside. “You see, that’s where you and I differ. You think love explains everything about Miss Anna Schmidt. I think loyalty does—her loyalty to the gunman. That key unlocks all she has done—and all she will do.”
“None of it matters. It’s all over now. Past and future. Done,” I said bitterly, getting up and stepping away from the precipice. One step turned into two and four and a dozen, and Silence fell in stride beside me.
“It’s not over, Thomas,” Silence said. “We’ve bought ourselves time. That’s all. The gunman and Anna will be back.”
“They’re after you, not me.”
“Anna’s been after you from the beginning.”
“You don’t know. You weren’t there. I went after her. She had a picnic for one, and I practically invited myself along.”
“When did she buy the cheese?”
“What?”
“There was a bottle of wine in the carriage and the remains of a baguette—fair enough. You can’t buy half a bottle of wine or half a baguette. But there were also the wrapping papers of two hunks of cheese.”
“Maybe she likes cheese!”
“A girl with a twenty-four-inch waist does not eat two hunks of cheese. Did she buy the cheese before you approached her or after?”
“You twist everything around.”
“It’s a simple question. Before or after?”
“Before, all right?”
Silence nodded. “She was planning to reel you in.”
“She was walking away! All I saw was her backside.”
“Proves my point.”
“Oh, you’re insufferable,” I said. “I wish you’d get your memory back so you could give up your little guessing games.”
“Guessing games!” Silence spat.
“You’re just a palm reader.”
Silence planted his feet in the snow and grabbed my right hand. “I do read palms, my boy, but none of that mumbo jumbo about lifelines and heart lines. It’s not the future that’s written on your palm, but the past. Look here.” He pointed to my fingertips. “See how these are blunt on the ends—and yet your nails are quite long. You’ve been a nail-biter from childhood, which gives your fingers this shape—and it tells that your life has been a fretful one until lately. The fine condition of your nails now shows a year of relative bliss, but look here—look at these fresh tooth marks. You’ve begun biting again—in the last two days!”
“Mumbo jumbo.”
“What of these little pinch points between your index and middle finger—little burn scars that healed up perhaps a year ago. A cigarette would be too thin to admit this many sparks this far down. It was cigars, then, that you’d taken up smoking. Eh? A year of cigar smoking—in a kind of ferocious way—starting two years ago. Why, then? Why does a young man take up cigar smoking? Because he wants to be an old man, a big man. Because he’s nervous—or full of sudden grief. Answer me this, Thomas. Was it two years ago that your father died?”
“Hey!” I yelped, pulling my hand back.
“Don’t be so surprised. I knew of that already from the rings.” He lifted my left hand and pointed to the thick callus under my father’s ring and the thin callus under my own ring. “You’ve had two years to build this callus, two years back to your father’s death, but only one year since you graduated from Christ College, Cambridge.”
I pulled my left hand away and began walking, a tingle of dread moving up my spine. “I know who I am. Who are you, Silence? Read your own palm.”
Silence matched me stride for stride. “I have been. Of course I have. There are many scars there for so thin a hand. The palm has tobacco burns, the sort that would come from embers falling from a pipe, and acid burns as from mixing caustic chemicals. The back of the hand has black powder scars from firing a gun, and here—do you see these?” He rolled back his sleeve and showed me the purple depressions of veins leading from his inner elbow.
“Opium.”
“More likely, cocaine. These are recent scars. If I were an opium addict, I would not be able to think clearly now that I have been without the stuff for two days. No, I must be addicted to a less-invasive poison.”
“But a poison, all the same.”
“True enough.”
“So, then, who is Harold Silence?” I pressed. “A cocaine addict—perhaps a drug dealer, whose hands are burned with whatever caustic chemicals he uses to prepare his wares, whose hands are burned from the guns he has shot to defend his criminal empire?”
“Perhaps,” Silence said quietly.
“Perhaps? What other explanation could there be for these scars?”
Silence took a while to respond. “The evidence tells what I have done, but not why I have done it. I’ve shot cocaine in my veins—but why? An addict? A drug lord? I’ve shot guns—but why? To oppose the law, or to uphold it?”
I laughed grimly. “The cocaine-addicted crime fighter—yes. A very plausible explanation. And I suppose this madman trying to kill you is a criminal you have brought to justice rather than a rival drug lord—or even a police officer trying to bring you in.”
“He’s not that. No police officer would shoot an innocent man and steal his horse.”
“Right,” I said. “Still, we know more about the gunman than we do about you.”
“That fact will soon be remedied,” Silence said, gesturing out ahead of us. We had reached the base of the glacier and gazed out past the tailings, across a broad valley, to a green land. At the other side of the green land lay a large city, gleaming in the sun. “There will be a sanatorium there. There will be food—”
“Yes, food …”
“And bandages, and nurses, and p
erhaps a doctor—who can help me regain my mind.”
12
ADMISSIONS
The receiving nurse sat in the arched foyer of the Prefargier Sanatorium and made jagged little notations in tiny columns and rows. Number by number, abbreviation by abbreviation, she itemized the insanities and treatments of her inmates. For the old man with whooping cough, a dram of heroin. For the young man with sexual perversions, thirty minutes in the electric bath. For the young woman with violent episodes, an ice-pick leukotomy. The nurse etched notations like a mason chiseling gravestones.
Few folk sick enough to walk through the doors of Prefargier Sanatorium ever became well enough to walk out again.
The great walnut door swung wide, and in stepped a man leaning on a spike-tipped cane. He gripped the brass handle of his walking stick in a slender but strong hand. The man and his cane crept toward the nurse’s desk, and her eyes traveled up his long arm to his shoulder, his neck, his face.
She winced. The man’s flesh was lank, a mere veil over the skeleton beneath. His lips snarled perpetually, and above them hooked a great nose that must have been broken at least once. On either side of the nose were two dark eyes that gave back no light whatever, like the eyes of a shark.
“Dr. Gottlieb Burckhardt.”
The nurse stared, uncomprehending. “Was ist?”
“Dr. Gottlieb Burckhardt.”
Blinking, the nurse said in German. “You are not Dr. Burckhardt.”
The man also spoke German, but with a strong English accent. “I want to see Dr. Burckhardt.”
“Do you have an appointment?”
The man lifted his walking stick horizontally, catching the spiked end of it in his left hand, and leaned his scarred knuckles on the desktop. “I do not need an appointment. Tell Dr. Burckhardt that Herr Schmidt has come to collect on an old, important debt.”
The nurse stared a moment longer at this gaunt apparition. “Debt collector,” she snorted, and then rose to stride to Dr. Burckhardt’s office. She tapped on the beveled-glass door and eased it open.
“Dr. Burckhardt, there’s a bill collector here.”
“Bill collector?” came the testy reply from within.
“A Herr Schmidt. An old bill. Very serious.”
At first, no answer came from the other side of the door except a deafening silence—answer enough. Then chair legs scraped on hardwood, leather-soled shoes scuffled across the floor, and a wheezing doctor trundled through the door. “Why didn’t you say so? I hope you’ve not left him waiting long.” Dr. Burckhardt’s jowls quirked in a smile. “Herr Schmidt, my friend—how good it is to see you!” He extended his hand, but the visitor did not take it.
Herr Schmidt instead lowered his cane to the floor and leaned on it, scratching the tiles. “I would like a word, in private.”
“Of course! Of course!” Dr. Burckhardt said, ushering the skeletal man through the doorway. Burckhardt pulled the door shut behind them, but not before the nurse glimpsed a fearful flash of his wide eyes.
Within the office, Burckhardt turned and spread his arms. “Make yourself at home.”
His guest already had, slouching in the chair, one boot lolling idly atop the paper-strewn desk. “I have no love of you, Burckhardt, as you know.”
“I know.”
“And so I will get right to the point. Two men will be arriving here today or tomorrow—a young man with a wispy goatee and a man a little younger than myself and about my build who will complain of amnesia.”
“Yes?” Burckhardt prompted as he circled around his desk and sat down. He templed his fingers before his face. “Go on.”
“You are to admit the older man,” Schmidt replied. “Do not fuss about money. He likely has none. Say that Switzerland provides charitable treatment for the elderly—whatever it takes to allay their suspicions and admit him.”
“Whatever it takes, I shall admit him,” Dr. Burckhardt replied dutifully.
“You are to do everything you can to heal your new patient, to return his mind to him and his health to him. But do not release him. I will call for him and dispose of him as I will.”
“What about the younger man?”
“Toss him out. Or if he insists on remaining with his friend—well, you have had accidents before, and there’s always the incinerator.”
“Herr Schmidt,” Burckhardt replied, affronted, “how could you ask me to—”
“You seem to forget our mutual friend, the one whom you killed, the one whom I have not spoken of but would, and the five others you treated and killed the same way. You seem to forget—”
“But they all were deeply psychotic. There was no other hope for them. Only the new procedure—experimental.”
“You murdered them, Doctor. Murdered them for science as other men murder for money. The courts will not see much difference. And now, if the young man insists upon staying, you will murder him, too.”
“But I … what if the police—?”
“Follow my directions to the letter, or I will expose you.” Suddenly, Herr Schmidt stood, eyes blazing. “No—worse than that. I will kill you myself.”
Lowering his gaze, the good doctor said, “I will do it, then. I will heal the old man and—if necessary—kill the young one.
13
CIVILIZATION
We don’t present a very noble picture, Thomas and I, loping into town like a pair of starving hyenas. It’s been two full days since either of us has eaten, since Thomas dragged me from the Reichenbach River. I’ve not eaten for even longer: I doubt the gunman and I were sharing cheese and baguettes at the top of the falls.
Needless to say, as we stagger into Bern, everything looks appetizing—the roasted almonds at a street vendor’s stall, the great sausages hanging trophylike in the butcher’s window, the Swiss chocolates that rise in a pyramid in the candy store, the little hunks of Edam in the fromagerie—even the red apples and orange carrots and shaggy cabbages at the greengrocer’s.
I pluck an apple from a bin and lift it to my nose. It smells luscious, but I feign distaste and lower the fruit again. Instead of returning it to the bin, I slide the thing into my shirtsleeve. The greengrocer is none the wiser.
When at last Thomas and I step beyond the marketplace, I guide him to a dark alley and produce the apple from my sleeve. I take a bite and offer him some.
“Astonishing!” He snatches up the fruit and bites. Around chunks of half-chewed apple, he says, “Where’d you get the money?”
I swallow before replying. “Money is a crutch for crippled fingers.” To demonstrate, I lift a carrot from my vest pocket.
Thomas has munched halfway through the apple, but now he hands the sloppy thing back in favor of the carrot. We eat. It’s a quiet moment, a small feast in a dark alley in a foreign town. Still, it cheers us both.
“Maybe we don’t need the sanatorium,” Thomas says.
“Huh?”
“Your arm’s splinted; my wounds are dressed. We’ve got as much produce as you can shove up your shirt. Maybe we’re fine, then … . Fresh slate. New beginning. All that. You don’t know how many times I’ve landed just this way in a new city. Start again.”
There’s something hopeful and infectious in his voice, but I can’t give in to it. “I have a past whether I want one or not. The man with the gun is my past. Until I know who I am, I can’t be safe.”
Thomas’s young face clouds. “Then, my friend,” he says, dropping the carrot nub to the cobbles and flicking the apple core from my grip, “it’s off to hospital.”
14
SANATORIUM
By the time we marched up the steps of the sanatorium, I’d hatched a plan. “I know what our story should be.”
“Better fill me in,” Silence replied.
“It’s simple enough,” I said. “We’re obviously British—”
“The moment we open our mouths.”
“So, let’s be father and son—tourists who were beaten, shot, and robbed.”
; “You? My son?” Silence said, studying my goatee and the greatcoat on my shoulders.
“I’m the black sheep.”
“I don’t know, Thomas. It’s not the best plan.” Silence opened the door before me, gesturing me in.
“Maybe not, but it’s the only one we’ve got.” I walked through the huge oak double doors into a high-vaulted space with walls of sterile white. A few patients sat slumped in a semicircle of chairs around the outer walls, and in the center of the room stood a great walnut desk with papers spread out across it. An elderly nurse sat there.
“Mademoiselle?” I began.
The woman looked up, her wrinkled face unfolded, and she coughed. “Frau.”
“Do you speak English, Frau?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Oh, thank goodness. You must help us. My father and I are on tour from Britain, and we have been beaten, shot, and robbed.”
“Robbed?”
“Beaten, shot, and robbed,” I repeated. Silence nodded gravely as I went on. “We’d been hiking the Alps above the Reichenbach Falls and a man with a rifle held us up. Father surrendered his pocketbook, but I tried to be the hero and lunged for the man, which earned me this bullet in the shoulder.”
The nurse peered dubiously at my bandage. “The blood’s all in back. How did he shoot you in the back when you were lunging at him?”
I felt my face flush. “Well, all right, you caught me.” I approached the desk, leaning confidentially toward her. “I was running when he shot me. Shoulder and neck. That’s when Father jumped the man and got shoved off a cliff and broke his arm and hit his head. You see? Amnesia.”
The word amnesia made the nurse’s eyes jump to Silence, who was affecting a very convincing idiot stare. “All right. I’ll need your names.”
“My name is Thomas—” I broke off, amazed that I had almost blurted out my true name. “Er, James Thomas.”
“All right, and your father?”
“Harold Thomas.”
She noted both names. “And how do you plan to pay?”
“Pay?” I said, suddenly recognizing the limits of my plan. “Well, our pocketbooks have been stolen, and—”
The Shadow of Reichenbach Falls Page 6