by Alex Grecian
Hammersmith glanced toward the other end of the room. The two older prostitutes had disappeared, presumably into a back room or up the stairs. The card players had left their table and were ranged out across the wall, their features still hidden in the shadows, waiting either to resume their game or to head Hammersmith off if he ran for the door.
Hammersmith raised his hands, showing the barkeep his pitiful nightstick. The barkeep blinked and punched Hammersmith in the nose. Blood poured out across the front of Hammersmith’s shirt and spattered the floor.
He swung his club. It hit the barkeep on the shoulder and bounced off. The barkeep grinned. His teeth were uneven and brown, crumbled nuggets of bone. The young prostitute grabbed Hammersmith from behind and he shrugged her off, but he was distracted long enough that he almost missed seeing the barkeep’s club as it whistled toward him. He ducked and the club sailed over his head, thunking into the stool behind him. One of the spikes on the big man’s club stuck in the wooden seat, and the barkeep braced the stool with his foot to try to pry it out.
Hammersmith seized the moment and turned to run, but the girl hung on to his jacket and blocked his retreat. He swatted her hands away, but by now the barkeep had freed his club from the bar stool and was taking aim again.
Hammersmith turned to the side, hoping the club would hit him in the arm rather than the head, but he tripped over the girl’s leg and fell back. The girl fell the other way and the club clipped her shoulder. She screamed and Hammersmith hit the floor rolling. He jumped up, but the barkeep had already dropped the club and was hovering over the girl, who had pulled herself into a ball under the seats, her legs drawn up to her chest and her back against the counter. Blood flowed freely down her left arm, and she was trying to stop it by batting at it with her right hand.
The barkeep squatted down in front of her and grabbed her flailing hand, trying to get a look at the damage. Hammersmith was frozen in place. He knew he should run, but he was riveted to the spot, unable to look away.
“Hush now, little one,” the barkeep said. “Let me have a look at it.”
“Daddy, make it stop.”
Hammersmith felt sick. The barkeep had put his own daughter to work hustling the customers.
The barkeep looked up from the girl and snarled, “Don’t you move, mister. You give me one minute here and I’m ’a kill you good.”
Hammersmith felt a hand on his arm and jumped. He turned, his club raised. The only other people in the pub were the card players, and they had him outnumbered. He was ready to do his worst, but the man behind him was familiar, now that his features weren’t hidden in shadows.
“Best we get out of here now,” Blackleg said, “afore Big Pete gets his hands on you.”
Hammersmith nodded. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you,” he said.
25
Fennimore Hubbard sat on the curb and examined the soles of his feet. They hurt badly, and his pace had slowed in the last hour. Blisters had already formed and burst, and blood mixed with rainwater beneath him to create pale pink tributaries that crossed the divides of his toes and trickled away into the gutter. He wished now that he had taken the time to put on a pair of shoes before dropping from the bald man’s window, but what was done was done.
He shucked his sopping pajama shirt and twisted it in his tiny fists, trying to rip it in half. The fabric was too strong, so he used his teeth. It was a well-made shirt, probably fashioned by the bald man himself. Once he got it started, it ripped easily enough up the back, but he had trouble with the collar and had to remove it completely, tossing it into the street.
He wrapped the shirt halves around each of his feet and knotted them at the top. He stood. The fabric bunched under the balls of his feet and threw off his balance, but his feet felt a little better.
Now, of course, he was bare-chested and cold. He was seven years old and not large for his age. His ribs sat on his flesh like umbrella tines. The best way to keep warm, he thought, was to keep running.
Fenn had a good sense of direction, and he was certain he was headed toward home, his real home, the house he’d been born in and the house where his parents, he hoped, still lived and waited for him. The bald man had told him that his parents and three sisters had moved away, that they had sold Fenn to the bald man, and that there was no birth home to return to. But Fenn didn’t believe anything the bald man said. The bald man had also claimed to love Fenn as his own son, but Fenn’s father, his real father, had never tied him to a bed or shut him up in a dark closet or screamed at him. Fenn wasn’t a baby, he could figure things out for himself, and it hadn’t been hard to figure out that the bald man was dangerous. The bald man was something that Fenn had heard his father refer to as “touched in the head.” Which meant that he did things that made no sense.
Fenn was also certain that the bald man had killed other children. He had heard the man say several times that Fenn was “another chance” for him, that Fenn would be better than “the others.” And so Fenn had tried to be better than he imagined the others had been. He was smart—his real mother always said so—and he had understood that fighting the bald man, or disobeying him, was futile. He had known to bide his time.
His one big mistake had been in not talking to the policeman who had come round the bald man’s shop. The policeman, who had not worn a blue uniform like the other policemen Fenn had seen, said his name was Little, but he was big and fat, which was funny. The bald man told Fenn to be quiet when the policeman came, but Mr Little had looked right at Fenn and said that his parents were looking for him.
And right then Fenn should have told Mr Little that the bald man was touched in the head. He should have shouted it as soon as he saw the scissors in the bald man’s hand. But he didn’t. The nice fat policeman was dead now, and Fenn believed it was his fault.
He came to a wide intersection and stopped. The sky was growing brighter and the fog was burning off. It would be harder to run and hide in the daylight. People would see him, shirtless and dripping, tattered fabric wrapped around his feet, and they would stop him. And if they didn’t listen to him, they might take him back to the bald man. They might think that the bald man was really Fenn’s father like he said he was.
But he recognized a building across the street. It was a warehouse department store, specializing in tartan weaves. A big restaurant jutted from the side of the store, the street-facing wall a single huge piece of bowed glass. Fenn’s mother had taken him and his sisters there for tea one day more than a year ago. It had been a treat, a rare day out, and Fenn remembered the window, remembered the wonder of it: a single pane of glass so big and yet somehow curved. Food had been served on fine china, the platters pearly and nearly translucent, nothing like the dishes used at home. The tiny cakes they ate were fresh and moist and sweeter than anything Fenn had tasted in his life. That day they had walked to the store and walked home after tea, burdened with heavy shopping bags filled with sundries for the house.
Fenn was in his own neighborhood. Close to his real house.
The store was closed this early in the morning, but Fenn could see a shopkeeper moving around behind that magical window, readying the place for today’s business. A donkey carrying sacks of brick dust trotted past Fenn. The dust would sell for a penny a quart and be used to clean knives and ironwork. A peddler trudged beside the donkey, leading it to the first stop on his daily rounds, and he didn’t even glance in Fenn’s direction.
Down at the other end of the street, a newsie was shouting out the morning’s scandal while waving the latest tabloid over his head. “Cop killer at large!” the boy said, his voice much deeper and louder than seemed possible for his size. He couldn’t be very much older than Fenn. “Is the Ripper back?” the boy shouted at nobody in particular.
Fenn took a moment to orient himself and then crossed the street, away from the other boy and his frightening speculation. Fenn picked up his pace as he passed more little shops and houses that he recognized. Ahead, he knew,
was his own house, maybe three or four blocks away.
“Here now, what’s this, then?”
Fenn stopped, his heart in his throat. He turned just as a meaty hand grasped his shoulder. A constable with a bushy orange mustache glared down at him from under his high blue hat.
“This’s a respectable neighborhood, little man.”
“Sir.”
Fenn could barely breathe.
“Where’s yer master?”
“I don’t have a master. My parents are waiting for me.”
“Ye look like a sweep’s boy to me.”
“No, sir.”
“Don’t talk back, boy.”
“No, sir. Sir, I need help. Somebody’s after me. He’s gonna hurt me.”
The policeman drew back and released Fenn’s shoulder.
“Don’t be playin’ games with me now, son.”
“No games, sir.”
“What’re you sayin’?”
“There’s a man and he took me to his house and he tied me up and I think he’s gonna hurt me if he finds me again.”
The policeman stared down at Fenn for a long moment. Then he reared back his head and laughed. It was a deep booming roar of a laugh that made Fenn’s chest bone vibrate. Finally, the policeman wiped his eyes and settled his hat low on his forehead.
“Aw, get along home with ye, then,” he said.
“But, sir, I need help. Please.”
“I’m bein’ patient with ye, boy, but don’t test me. Ye’ll be gettin’ somewhere fast, either yer home or the workhouse, ye make up your mind right quick about it.”
The policeman raised his hand as if to hit Fenn, and the boy backed away a step. He ducked, but the blow didn’t come.
“If I see ye about when I come round this way next, it’s the workhouse fer ye, and that’s a promise, boy,” the constable said. He turned and ambled away, returning to his neighborhood patrol.
Fenn blinked back tears and sighed. Behind him was a high wooden fence, painted green long ago, faded and peeling and nearly grey in the half-light. He clambered up it and dropped to the other side, out of sight of the street, and of the policeman, should he turn back around. Fenn hunched his shoulders and trotted alongside the fence, headed again in the direction of his parents’ home. It didn’t matter whether the policeman believed him, Fenn’s father would believe and would protect him from the bald man. And when the bald man was caught and put in prison, the unhelpful policeman would be sorry and maybe even apologize to Fenn.
Birds began to chirp in the treetops that lined the street and a dark hansom chugged past Fenn, unseen on the other side of the fence. Rainwater slished off the wheels and heavy beads ran like dew off a monstrous black beetle’s back. The cab rolled past and turned the corner.
Fenn cut through an opening in the fence and sprinted to the end of the block. He was on his own street. The solid block of brownstones lined the street ahead, queued up in a row that led right to Fenn’s front door. He could see the windows on the ground floor, twinkling with gaslight. His mother was awake and no doubt cooking breakfast for Fenn’s father and sisters. A door opened at the far end of the block and Harriet Smith stepped out on her stoop. She was far away, but he could see her yellow pigtails. Another door opened and another child, young Robert Harrison, emerged onto the street. Fenn hated Robert Harrison, but he had never been so glad to see anyone in his life. Robert and Harriet waved to each other and ran into the street, already picking up a game they’d clearly left off the previous evening. It was still too dark out. They didn’t see Fenn and he was afraid to call out, afraid the policeman might still be nearby.
He untied the bits of pajama shirt on his feet and left them in the road. He could run faster barefoot and he didn’t care about the pain anymore.
He ran past the first house on the corner, joined to the next but more squat, a dwarf beside a stone giant. To his right, the black hansom cab sat idle, the horse sniffing the morning air, the coachman hidden in a blanket of shadow. The cab looked familiar and Fenn slowed as he drew near. The hansom’s windows were covered by dark curtains and Fenn saw one of them move.
Realization dawned and Fenn swallowed hard. He had to pass that cab to get to his door. He decided to put everything he had left into one mad dash down the street. He was too close now to do anything else.
26
The bald man sat in a hansom cab on Cheyne Walk watching the passive expanse of brick and iron, an entire block’s worth of one building divided up into multiple homes. The patter of rain eased and the sky began to turn a pale shade of pink. Children emerged from their townhouses and resumed the previous evening’s play without benefit of grass or trees. They raced here and there, shrieking and whooping, making ingenious use of hoops, balls, and sticks.
The bald man had sat in this same spot many times before, watching the children. He liked to single out the most beautiful or charming of them and concentrate on him. Or her. Today a pretty blond girl, thin and graceful and calm, directed a playmate in his effort to keep a metal barrel hoop rolling along. Ordinarily, the bald man wouldn’t have been able to tear his eyes away from her and her fetching pigtails, but this morning he was there for a different reason. He had already selected his ward and had lost him. Now he was waiting for Fenn, certain that he would return here to his first home, the home he’d had before the bald man had rescued him from this perfect ordinariness.
The coachman was well paid and had proven trustworthy on past expeditions. The bald man didn’t worry about him, but didn’t care to engage him in conversation. They had a long silent wait ahead of them. The boy had surely been walking half the night, but the bald man had traveled faster and was certain he’d got there first.
He thought about his shop and he wondered whether he had remembered to lock the front door after putting up the BE BACK SOON sign in the window. It would gnaw at him, he knew, if he didn’t return to check on it. But this was not the time. Once he’d found the boy, it would be a quick stop on their way home.
He needed to find the boy before he could do anything else.
There was always the possibility that Fenn had gone to the police, but the bald man doubted it. He felt sure that the boy was already beginning to love him, to think of him as his new father, and what son would dare to sic the police on his own father?
The bald man smiled to himself. When he caught Fenn again, he would be well within his rights to be angry. No one would think less of him for beating the boy. After all, he’d caused his father a long night of worry. But their little family of two was going through a difficult time, and so he would show mercy. Oh, there would be changes at home, that was certain, but the bald man could turn the other cheek this time and the boy would see how much his new father truly loved him.
He was snapped out of his reverie by the sight of Fenn himself, bedraggled and dirty and bare-chested, still in his pajama trousers, staggering up the hill at the far end of the street. There was no mistaking him. The bald man was so filled with relief and fatherly love that, for only a moment, he was unable to move.
The bald man was sure the boy saw the cab, and he must have suspected who was inside, but he kept coming anyway, tried to run right past. The bald man smiled. Fenn wasn’t making much of an effort to get away. The poor boy was clearly exhausted and running to his new father.
The bald man stepped out of the cab just long enough to scoop his son up, all in one motion, and lay him on the empty seat; then he clambered back in, sat across from the weeping child, and pounded twice on the cab’s ceiling.
He looked back as the cab moved down the street and saw that the children were still playing their pointless games. No one had noticed anything.
He smiled, thrilled by his own cleverness and courage. And by his extraordinary good luck.
He passed a note up to the coachman. They would need to stop at his shop so the bald man could check the locks. And then he would take the entire rest of the day off work.
Clearly he needed to sp
end more time with his son.
27
I promised you another penny, didn’t I?” Day said.
He held the coin up so that it caught the light. The dancing man reached out for it, but then drew his hand back.
“I know you,” he said. “You were in my dream last night.”
“It wasn’t a dream,” Day said.
“I’ll dance for you.”
“No need. Take the penny. Get yourself a loaf of bread.”
Day tossed the penny in the dancing man’s direction and walked quickly away, past the upturned milk crate and in through the back door of the Yard. Behind him, he heard the coin clink against the stone sidewalk.
Inside, Michael Blacker was already hard at work, along with two other detectives, Tiffany and Wiggins, who were at their own desks across the room. Neither of them looked up as Day entered. The piles of paper on Day’s desk had grown. Day could barely see Blacker on the other side of it, his legs crossed, a foot-high sheaf of notes in his lap.
“I thought I might beat you here this morning,” Day said.
Blacker grinned at him. He put down the notes he was reading and wiped his eyes.
“No chance of that, old man,” he said. “I never left.”
“You’ve been here all night?”
“Hasn’t been so long since you went home. Anyway, I’ve nothing to go home to. Not like you.”
“Well, I should have stayed. Had I known—”
“Better one of us should be fresh. There’s a joke in here somewhere about it being a bright new day or some such. Too tired to find it myself, so if you could work it out on your own, I’d be grateful.”
Day stared at the piles of paper that covered every inch of the workspace. Yesterday morning his desk had been pristine.
“Where did all this come from?” he said.
“I’ve been rounding up our colleagues as they arrive and commandeering their notes.”