Downtime

by James Allen

  "These gentlemen are from Northampton, I believe." Ezra addressed Botting, who inclined his head even as his gaze narrowed on Ez. "Of course. Only the best madhouse will do. And I suppose you have the signatures you need?"

  Botting patted his coat pocket, indicating he did. "You are Ezra Glacenbie, then?"

  "I'm surprised Father didn't provide you a likeness. If we are to go straightaway, will you leave off the restraints? I don't wish to cause alarm among the Neilans' neighbors."

  I heard it then, the fear he'd kept a lid on, barely breaching the surface of his calm. I plucked at Derry's sleeve and meeting anguished brown eyes, whispered, "Take him out through the kitchen and tell him to meet me at Verrey's." It was the only restaurant I could recall off-hand. Derry didn't even hesitate, but jerked his head in vehement agreement.

  Botting was rambling on about St. Andrews' nonrestraint policy in what he probably thought was a reassuring way. I stepped casually in between him and Ezra and gave him a friendly smile. "I do have a question for you, Mr. Botting, if you don't mind," I said in the mildest way. "What sort of place are you running, where the doctors agree to commit a man without having met him, let alone having performed any examination of him?"

  Botting probably had a snappy answer for that, but I wasn't waiting to hear it. Derry had grabbed Ezra and they were on the fast track to the back door. The startled cops scrambled to stop them and I lunged into their path, braced to be knocked off my feet. What I wasn't braced for was the billy club that slammed against my skull and sent me down flat on my face. Whether Ezra called my name or I imagined it, I couldn't say for sure. The darkness hit too fast and hard.

  Chapter Twenty

  When I woke, I was lying face up with my head in a vise. At least, that's what it felt like. I knew I hadn't been out long, unless Kathleen had been crying for a while. I looked at the hovering faces and tried to sit up, only to be immediately pushed back down by Dr. Gilbride. "I saw the policeman strike you, Mr. Nash. You must have one very hard head, to be conscious so quickly. Nevertheless, I would suggest you lie still."

  A nap was the last thing I was interested in. "Derry?"

  As he leaned toward me, I could see the answer to my unasked question in his eyes. "He feared they'd killed you." Derry's breath hitched. "They had to drag him out, him begging for a minute to make sure you weren't--" He turned away and Kathleen put an arm around him, her head close to his.

  Henry looked stricken himself, for Henry. "I didn't know. You must believe I didn't know. I would never have given him away, no matter what has gone between us."

  I wasn’t up for dealing with Henry's guilty conscience. Ignoring Dr. Gilbride's protests, I sat up and tried to pull myself together to think clearly. "They'd take him straight to St. Andrews?"

  "If the admission papers were in order, yes." Dr. Gilbride said.

  I cradled my aching head in one hand. "So how the hell do we get him out, then?"

  "You will have to go to the court tomorrow," Kathleen said quietly. "I do not know that they will hear you or any of us. We haven't the influence Sir William has."

  I snorted, then winced as pain flared in my head. Sitting back, I switched to rubbing my neck instead. Maybe a little chat with Glacenbie, Sr. was in order. "We may have something even better than influence." I looked up at Kathleen. "Where does Sir William live, do you know?"

  She shook her head, looking to her brother. But Derry appeared as clueless. "Ezra mentioned Mayfair, but truth be told, I've no real notion. Even so, how we could convince him that St. Andrews is no place for Ezra?"

  "The Carlton," Henry interrupted. "Sir William's club. I've been there in the company of Mr. Brooke. He may still be at supper."

  "You can get me in?"

  His eyebrows lifted. "Get you in? I'm not a member, Mr. Nash."

  "Fine. Give me the address. I'll get in on my own."

  Henry's brows rose another quarter of an inch. "Do you intend to storm the place?"

  Derry took the opportunity to stop an argument in the making. "I'll go with him, Henry. The worst they can do is throw us out."

  "The worst they can do is throw Mr. Brooke out," Henry corrected, eyes on me, "and both Ezra and I will be out of a job."

  I stood up, gently waving away the three pairs of hands reaching out to help me, and fixed Henry with all the patience in my possession, which wasn't much. "Apart from your bullshit, Henry, I want you to think about what Ezra puts up with every day. All the requests and demands for help from spirits of people he's never known and maybe a few he has. All shapes and sizes and conditions of ghosts, depressed, angry, terrified. Ezra deals with them all, day and night. Now I want you to think about the sort of spirit that's going to be hanging around an insane asylum and multiply it by the number of people who've lived and died there and just try to imagine what Ezra's going to be facing from the minute they drag him through the door."

  I paused to take a breath and close my eyes against the throbbing in my head. I damned well didn't want to picture Ezra in that place, myself, but I'd make Henry see it if it was the last thing I did. "Just think about it. And then ask yourself how much of a good goddamn Ezra's going to care about losing a job, any job, when he's facing the very real prospect of losing his mind."

  Maybe he'd only seen one ghost in his entire life, but Henry had enough imagination to understand what I was saying. "I'll call a cab."

  The Carlton Club was everything I expected: burnished wood gleaming in the gaslight, leather sofas and card tables, and enough tobacco smoke to bring down a herd of elephants. It didn't improve my headache or my mood in the slightest. Pushing his luck was a humorless steward who refused to let us past the foyer. He finally agreed to take a calling card in to Sir William. Since Derry had no cards and Henry refused to give me one of his, I wrote up one of my own designed to convince Glacenbie, Sr. that an audience with me was in his best interest.

  Henry decided he'd gone as far as he dared and left me and Derry to "bully a respectable member of parliament" on our own. Derry, for his part, didn't look particularly eager at the prospect. But I had a feeling he'd promised Ezra he would look after me. And even if he hadn't promised, he'd do it anyway.

  "Let me talk to him, Derry. You don't have to say a word. Just stand there and look intimidating."

  His grimace didn't mask the humor in his eyes. "Aye, when the police come, I cannot expect they'll distinguish which of us was giving the man a dressing down and which was only glowering from the back of the room."

  I grinned. "You can take a swing at him, if it'll make you feel better."

  "That it might. But it will do Ezra little good."

  "We're going to get him out. And Sir William's going to help us do it." Maybe Ezra hadn't given me all the juicy details of his dad's less than above board business practices, but I could make do. All I needed was five minutes with the guy. And it looked like I was going to get it.

  "This way, if you please." The steward, having gotten our attention from the doorway, went back inside and we followed. He took us into a cavernous library that was cozy despite its size, thanks to sofas ranged strategically around the room and the crackling fire in the fireplace. A door off the library led into a small, smoky room looking out onto a garden lushly green and shadowed in the glow of stone lanterns. The remains of a card game lay on a table and I wondered if the room had been cleared expressly for us.

  We were left again to wait and I paced the room, unable to sit. The headache powder Kathleen had insisted I take hadn't had much effect, but at least I was no longer flinching at every sound above a whisper. But it wasn't the headache that made me restless. Derry had explained that St. Andrews was a little distance outside of London, but Ezra would be facing that hellhole soon enough. The thought made me want to put a fist through something--or someone. Sir William was going to be that someone if he kept us waiting one minute longer.

  Just after our arrival, the door opened and a cool blue gaze sharpened with recognition as it settled o
n the two of us. William Glacenbie tossed my calling card on the table. "You're the one who came uninvited to Ezra's engagement party. I had the most revolting feeling I would be seeing you again."

  "Did you? I guess it must run in the family."

  "If you are referring to Ezra's assertion that he can speak to the dead, that is a madness restricted to his mother's side. His other perversions, I assume, originate from a mind already diseased."

  "Ezra's as sane as you or I," Derry protested and I wondered if in a minute I'd be holding him back instead of the other way around. Sir William's pinched features took on an even greater disdain as his stare shifted to Derry.

  "Are you a doctor, sir?"

  "No--"

  "Then what entitles you to make that determination?"

  "Your doctors made that determination without even meeting Ezra," I countered. "Or maybe you made that determination after hearing all the stories of your son communicating with the dead--and you began to have visions yourself, of front page stories mixing your name up with the Ripper case. Not the most dignified turn of events for a man who's working his way to the top of the pile in parliament, I'd guess. But really, when you think about it, would it be any worse than the Times blowing up your accounting practices into a nasty business scandal?"

  His mouth curved into the hint of a smile. "You picked up this tale from Ezra, I take it."

  "Yeah, you know. Pillow talk," I said, getting a perverse satisfaction out of rubbing his nose in it.

  The hint of smile vanished, along with every particle of expression beyond that cold hard stare. "One of the more savvy blackmailers, are you, Mr. Nash." He moved to the window and taking a cigarette from a silver case, lit it. "Ezra has made this mess and it appears I am obliged to clean it up." He let an annoyed sigh escape along with the cloud of smoke. "How much will keep you quiet?"

  Beside me, Derry moaned softly. I knew he was hating this, but he'd let me play it all the way to the end, for Ezra's sake. I'd suspected there was more to Sir William's business dealings than a few questionable audits; whatever it was, it had to be enough to rescue Ez. "There's only one thing I want from you. Ezra's freedom. You didn't lock him up for his own good. You locked him up for yours. Give me whatever paperwork I'll need to spring him out of St. Andrew's and I won't have to talk to the newspapers myself."

  Through a veil of smoke, his gaze narrowed. "You realize, I hope, that he will never receive another penny from me, not even upon my death?"

  I'd seen some fucking mercenaries in my time, but this guy took the cake. "All we need from you is train fare to Northampton and back. I figure since this is your doing, you should cover the out of pocket expenses."

  "Third class," Derry added, clearly afraid he wouldn't even give us that. But I was getting too much satisfaction out of playing hardball with this guy.

  "First class," I said. "And the funds to cover cab fare from the station to the asylum and back."

  Sir William didn't bat an eye. "Did you know, Mr. Nash, that Ezra's mother died in St. Andrews? She quite doted on him. She was, in fact, the one who named him. A biblical name. Perhaps not the most suitable one." He crushed his cigarette in a brass bowl on the card table and moved past me to the door. "The steward will bring the papers down to you, along with your train fare." He glanced back at me from the doorway, no emotion betraying the indifference of his smile. He must have been one hell of a politician. "I shall expect to hear no more from you after this. Nor from Ezra."

  The retort on my lips wasn't worth the effort. If Sir William was that intent on cutting Ezra out of his life completely, Ezra was better off without him. I let him walk out without another word. The moment the door closed, Derry dropped into a chair with a gasp. "Blessed Mary. How did we come through without coming to blows? Let us hope he can be quick with the papers."

  Sir William had no reason to be quick on our account and he wasn't. Hours crept past while we waited at first in the foyer and then when the smoke got too much, outside in the cool evening. It was another hour when, papers in hand, we reached Euston Square and caught a train to Northampton. I knew Ezra had probably been admitted by now and no matter how I tried to reassure myself that he was holding his own, dread twisted my insides into one god-awful knot. Even if all the ugly tales of nineteenth century asylums weren't true, the horrors I'd detailed to elicit Henry's cooperation might be. Not even the thought that we'd be there in a couple of hours to pull him out made me feel any better.

  Derry, sitting across from me in the secluded compartment, seemed just as worried, his attention fixed on the passing night and encroaching fog. Sensing my glance, he looked at me and tried the same reassurance I'd been trying on myself for the past thirty minutes. "He'll be safe with us in nary more than an hour."

  "I just wish he knew that."

  Derry's smile softened. "He knows you'd chase down the very devil himself to try to save him."

  "It amazes me that he doesn't think I'm the devil."

  Derry saw through my flippancy. "You'll not be blaming yourself. You took such a knocking, it's in bed you should be, instead of breathing fumes and fog, with only me for company."

  "You're good company, Derry."

  "I'll do, in a pinch," he said cheerfully, leaning across to pat my knee. "I couldn't let you go on your own, even if I hadn't taken the notion you'd storm the gates, should they not be of a mind to admit us at this hour. And you can't deny it's a way of thinking that comes as natural to you as breathing."

  I marveled as much at the way he saw things. "It doesn't bother you at all, what's going on between me and Ezra?"

  "And why should I mind that you love him?"

  "An awful lot of people in your time don't approve of that kind of love. Nor in my time, either. It means a lot to me--and Ezra, too--that you're always on our side."

  He looked surprised. "If a fellow's not on the side of love, I'd like to know just which side he'll be on?"

  Suddenly the train lurched, throwing Derry back against his seat and nearly sending me to the floor. I clutched at the cushion and held on as the train screeched to a stop. Once the racket had died down, I could hear anxious voices in the distance. I looked Derry over as he sat up. "You all right?"

  "In body, aye. But none too well in mind until I know the reason we've come a cropper." He went out and was gone long enough to make me consider going out to look for him. When he at last came back, he looked dazed. "An engine's derailed ahead. It's all of a miracle our lad saw their lanterns in the fog or we'd have smashed up for certain."

  "Anyone hurt?"

  "They say not, thank the Lord."

  I peered out into the night and saw lanterns swinging in the distance but nothing else. "Do you have any idea where we are?"

  "Forty miles out from Northampton."

  "Damn."

  He nodded. "T'would be no jaunt to town. And like as not, we'd be turned around in this soup and end up heaven knows where." He let out a long breath and sat back, rubbing both hands over his face.

  "You all right?"

  "It was too close to suit me." He managed a wobbly grin. "But the wrecking train will be along soon enough. 'Til then, a nip of something might soothe our nerves."

  Trust Derry to come prepared. I had a feeling he'd brought the little silver flask because he thought Ezra might need that sort of soothing. I accepted a sip of it myself and though it burned a numbing path through my anxiety-twisted guts, it didn't do anything for my mental state. I hoped against hope they'd get us moving in the next hour. But what followed was a near interminable stretch of waiting. I didn't sleep but kept drifting off into a twilight state, only to be jerked to wakefulness by the slightest noise that might signal we were about to start up again. It was a miserable way to spend the night, but no worse than Ezra had to be going through.

  When the engine had been hauled off the line and our own had built up steam to move forward, I was ready to get out and push the train myself. I looked across at Derry who'd fallen into an uneasy
and uncomfortable sleep and, reassuring myself he wasn't going to hear, I called quietly to Sully beneath the rumble of the moving car and asked him to watch out for Ez until we got there. Maybe he wasn't around, but if there was even a small chance, I had to take it.

  Northampton in the light of day was probably a charming little town of handsome buildings decked all around with flowers and greenery. But in the gray before dawn, it seemed a quiet, lonely outpost and the asylum itself, which we reached by carriage from the station, even more isolated. The fog partially lifted by the time we reached the asylum gates, giving us brief, dreamlike impressions of garden and trees and the dull distant gleam of a river. The asylum stood in grim, stolid grandeur on the hillside, three stories with the smokestacks rising even higher.

  The dull glow of gaslight from a first floor window led us into a gloomy foyer and a small office crammed with wooden file cabinets. A thin, bespectacled guy snoozed on top of an open ledger at the desk. I brought him back to life with a hand on his shoulder and he sat up hurriedly, sputtering excuses until he realized it wasn't his boss about to can his ass, but visitors who had the gall to show up at the ungodly hour of five in the morning. Alarm began to segue into irritation; then he got a good look at our faces and decided to proceed with caution. "What is it I may do for you, gentlemen? You realize the time--"

  "We realize." I handed over the papers Sir William had provided. "Ezra Glacenbie. Where is he?"

  "Glacenbie?" He frowned as if the name were vaguely familiar. "He's a patient here?"

  "He was brought in last night," Derry said.

  "By mistake," I added. "We're here to get him out."

  "Ah. Get him out. Yes." The man adjusted his glasses on his nose and looked at the papers. "Let me check his admission status."

  Fighting down a nearly insurmountable need to storm the halls looking for Ezra, myself, I planted my butt in a chair to wait. This process would have required a whole lot of bureaucratic red tape in my own time; even so, I had less confidence I'd be successful here, dealing with murkier regulations and doctors who might decide to go against even William Glacenbie's request to release Ezra if they decided Ezra had no business being released. I hoped that wouldn't be the case, because I didn't intend to leave St. Andrews without him.