Steadfast (34 page)

So she knew how to answer Dick’s question. “Lots,” she said. “They don’t come to
our
hall often, but I know they’re here. You can see them in carriages everywhere, they
do like to go to the really big halls, and there’s some other posh places they like.
I’ve never been down on the Pier late at night; they might go there as well.”

Since the Pier was where the racy kootch shows were, it was very likely some of the
same people Dick was looking for were there.

That was what Dick wanted to hear, clearly. “Mebbe Oi’ll do some scoutin’ about,”
he said briefly. But his eyes were narrowed in speculation and she knew he was thinking
hard. Or . . . perhaps scheming. Thinking things through was not something he did
well; he had relied on Andy Ball for that. Scheming, however, came naturally to him.

“I need to go or I will be late,” she told him, and got her eight pence, snatched
up her bag, and left. She had to run to catch the bus, but she was pretty satisfied
with the seeds she had planted.

Jack just wished her a common good-morning as she hurried past him. Lionel was nowhere
to be seen, but it was early for him. Last night’s dismal, overheated attempts at
sleep in the loft made her glad to lock the dressing room door and start with a cool
sponging down before she got into her rehearsal clothing. Whether it was Charlie who
had arranged the water and the basin, or Lionel, she was deeply grateful.

The rehearsal went as yesterday’s had gone; only when she was in the basket did Lionel
whisper to her.

“I don’t want you giving up, Kate,” he said, fiercely. “We aren’t. We’re going to
find a way to get you free of this blackguard.”

“Be careful,”
she hissed back. “He looks slow and stupid, but he’s awfully cunning. And somehow
he makes friends that help him all the time. I don’t know how, but he does. Women
fall for him, and men want to be his friend, at least for as long as it takes them
to buy him drinks. It’s like some kind of magic—what do they say? Magnetism? Mesmerism?”

“Both, and it might actually be a kind of magic,” Lionel replied, sounding a little
startled. “I’ll look into that. If it
is,
there could be something Jack and I can do to keep him from making any more ‘friends’
to help him here in Brighton.”

That was all they had time for, but the exchange of words left her feeling encouraged.

After rehearsal, she didn’t pause to change out of her rehearsal clothing; instead
she snatched up two boxes of chocolates that had arrived last night that she hadn’t
had the heart to open, and ran down to the chorus girls’ dressing room with them before
they all scattered off for luncheon. They met her bounty with happy cries.

“Well, these are better than the
notes
someone’s been leaving on me mirror,” she said, making a disgusted little face. “It
has to be someone who works here, ’cause whoever it is ain’t leaving a name. I’d like
t’know who it is so I can at least tell Charlie.”

Three of the girls exchanged a look that gladdened her heart. “Don’t get ’im in trouble
with Charlie, and we’ll tell,” said Bessie Taylor, looking at her plaintively. “’E’s
new. ’E’s a bit greasy, an’ a bit uv a suck-up, but ’e’s the only one willin’ t’let
us sneak a fag backstage, an’ ’e’s got a son. ’E keeps askin’ ’bout you, I think ’e’s
got a pash on you.”

Aha.
“Well, I won’t tell Charlie then,” she said crossly. “I’ll just give ’im his notes
back and a piece of me mind. Who is it?”

“Oscar Nathan,” said Bessie. “Don’t get ’im sacked, Katie!”

She didn’t know the name, but she knew the description; a short, balding, greasy-haired
fellow that groveled and sniveled a great deal, who’d been hired more to clean up
the front of the house than as a stagehand. He really had no business being back-of-house
at all, really, but Charlie never made much fuss about where someone was as long as
the job he was supposed to be doing got done. He was
just
the sort that would idolize Dick and be tremendously flattered that Dick confided
in him. He’d also be just the sneaky, ratty sort that would think himself tremendously
important because Dick asked him to spy on Katie. “I won’t get ’im sacked,” she replied,
with a sniff. “But when I tell ’im I’m gonna hand the next lot of notes over to his
missus, I bet he’ll reckon that’d be worse than bein’ sacked!”

The girls all giggled, and agreed. She went back to her dressing room for another
sponge-off and the luncheon Charlie’d had left for her. The sort of heavy, greasy
food that Dick thought grand fare was enough to make her ill in this heat. Mrs. Charlie
must have ingrained in Charlie’s head that “ladies” subsisted on cucumber sandwiches,
which at the moment suited Katie right down to the bone. Well, at least she knew there
was a way she could pay Charlie back—by giving such good performances that the house
would be packed every day.

Now that she knew exactly who to watch for, her anxiety was considerably relieved.
She didn’t feel as if she had to have eyes in the back of her head anymore, and when
she came off her statue dance at the matinee, she had no fears about popping into
Lionel’s dressing room instead of her own. The greasy little spy would be far too
busy cleaning the stalls and sweeping up all the rubbish left on the floor right now
to have any time to try and see what Katie was up to. Music halls, unlike theaters,
were places you came to eat and drink along with getting your entertainment, and as
a consequence there was a lot of mess after each show. People lingered, too, wanting
to finish their last drinks in a leisurely fashion, which made cleaning even more
difficult. It amused her, thinking of the little sneak getting evil looks and curses
as he tried to clean around patrons who didn’t particularly wish to leave.

“Oscar Nathan,” she said as soon as she was inside. “Hired to sweep and clean the
front. I don’t know much about him, but once I knew who it was, it was easy to spot
him keeping an eye on me when he could sneak backstage. Wish I knew what Dick has
told him, because I didn’t much like the way he was glaring at me—like it’s me that’s
the bad person.”

“It might be nothing,” Lionel pointed out. “It might be he was told that you’re a
wayward wife and Dick wants a sharp eye kept on you, and he thinks he’s helping out.
It might be almost anything, if Dick is as good at persuading people as you say. It
doesn’t matter; now we know who it is, we know who to avoid. That’s the important
part.”

That was all they really had time to say. She slipped back into her dressing room,
wishing she dared call her Elementals to spy on the man herself. If she dared call
them, they could keep her apprised of where he was every moment she was here at the
hall. She’d never need to worry that he was spying on her. She could even control
exactly what he saw.

But she didn’t dare. She could
feel
them, even if she couldn’t see them, and she knew that the moment they knew what
Dick was doing to her . . . they would react badly. She was having so much trouble
controlling herself, as last night’s breakdown showed, that she knew she would never
be able to exert any sort of control over them. If they had experienced her despair . . .
well, she didn’t want to inflict that on any other living creature, human or otherwise.
And if they had reacted to it by trying to reduce Dick to a pile of ashes, she wasn’t
sure she’d have had the will to stop them. And that was where everything would go
horribly wrong for everyone, not just for her.

•   •   •

Lionel waited until Jack was ready to lock up, rather than going off to his own place
as soon as he was changed and the stage makeup removed. He came up behind Jack in
the alley, and steered him toward the street. “Until we get Katie free,” Lionel said
firmly as he took Jack by the elbow with one hand and hailed a taxi with the other.
“You are staying with me.”

“What?” Jack gaped at him, but as the cab stopped for them, he shut his mouth and
nodded. “Of course. I know what you are thinking, and it’s a good idea. If that bastard
bully doesn’t know about me, and it appears that he doesn’t, I can act as a sort of
bodyguard for you. And if he finds out about me, having both of us in the same place
is safer for both of us.”

Actually that wasn’t what Lionel had been thinking at all, but if that was enough
to keep Jack there at Lionel’s house, then it was a good enough reason for him.

What he was thinking was a great deal simpler. The two of them could take a single
cab to and from the hall, saving Jack a lot of pain and effort. Jack would not have
to walk to his little flat from Lionel’s after a late night session of trying to plan
a way to free Katie—when he was already exhausted. Not that Jack wasn’t strong—he
was probably physically stronger than Lionel—but Lionel and Katie needed him to save
that strength, not waste it on overtaxing himself.

They didn’t make much conversation in the cab, but the drive wasn’t that long, either.
The cabbie set them right down at Lionel’s door; the lamp was already lit, and the
door unlatched. “Give Mrs. Buckthorn your key; she’ll send the girl over for your
things,” Lionel said as he opened the door, making it something of an order.

“I’d rather not have the child running about the dark streets with a heavy portmanteau,”
Jack objected. And before Lionel could say anything, he turned and detained the cabbie
before he could drive off again.

Lionel just shrugged, and went into the house. He could see Jack’s point. While it
wasn’t far to Jack’s flat, and their neighborhood was relatively safe, a girl with
a big bag could be seen as easy prey for theft if nothing else. Mrs. Buckthorn was
waiting just inside the front door, as she always did when she heard him coming home.
“Jack will be staying here for the next little while,” he told the housekeeper. “Have
we a room ready?”

Mrs. Buckthorn looked at him over the top of her reading glasses and
tsk’d.
“I always have a room ready, Master Lionel,” she said, in a voice ever so slightly
chiding. “That’s why ye keep me as your housekeeper. I’d be a poor manager if I could
not take care of a guest for you at no notice at all.”

Properly rebuked, he retired to the sitting room that faced the garden to wait for
Jack. Mrs. Buckthorn brought him a gin and tonic, but clearly she was also waiting
for Jack; when she heard the sound of cab wheels and the clop of the horse’s hooves,
she bustled out. Lionel could hear her scolding Jack for trying to take his own bag
into the house. He knew that Mrs. Buckthorn would emerge triumphant from that struggle.

They had abandoned the dining room for planning purposes; it was too hot, and the
sitting room was far more comfortable to work in. Mrs. Buckthorn did not quite approve
of this dining almost-alfresco, but she did acknowledge that at least while it was
so warm, perhaps it would be all right to bend enough to be casual. Lionel had pointed
out to her that it was perfectly all right and quite the done thing to have tea in
the sitting room, so why not supper? She had not had an answer for that, but when
he promised that once the summer had cooled off, they would return to eating “properly,”
she was mollified.

Once Jack had settled in, Mrs. Buckthorn brought them their dinner there instead,
making up plates in the kitchen and bringing them in on a tray.

While they ate, Lionel told Jack everything that Katie had managed to get to him that
day, including the name of the strongman’s confederate, and the bit of information
that Dick was looking for prizefights to compete in.

Jack looked a little sour at that news. “Oh . . . the temptation. It is very hard
to be a good man, Lionel.”

Lionel nodded. “If ever there was an easy way to be rid of someone you don’t want,
it’s to get him into a rigged prizefight. All it would take would be to find a man
who’ll cheat for money, and a fight that’s being held away from the eyes of the law.
Just make sure the trap is sweetened with a sufficiently good prize, and one more
fight will end in a terrible ‘accident’ happening to a man no one will ever miss.
But it’s wrong, Jack. It’d be murder, just as if we’d turned our Elementals loose,
or arranged for him to be coshed in an alley. We don’t go down that road.”

“No,” Jack agreed immediately, and his sour face turned sad. “I—it’d occurred to me
that the reason all this has happened to Katie is because she’s tangled up with me.”

Lionel leapt on that immediately. A few months after they had become friends, Jack
had laid out what he
hadn’t
done in Africa, and had voiced his feelings of terrible guilt because he had not
exposed what was going on. “I’ve said this before, Jack, don’t go down that road either.
You’re not a murderer.”

Jack’s face was a mask of uncertainty in the bright gaslight. “No but I let—”

It was more than time to put an end to that particular song. “You know, the last time
you brought that up, I decided I’d take a chance that there was someone in the War
Office that was a Master or a magician, and do you know, there was?” Lionel interrupted.
“I started a correspondence with him. He and I wrote back and forth for a bit, and
I finally brought up your matter of conscience to him. Do you know what he said?”

Jack shook his head.

“He said if you’d done
anything,
or even voiced an objection, you’d’ve been court-martialed and you’d still be in
prison now at the least. And if you’d managed to leak the news to the papers?” Lionel
shook his head. “You’d have been shot. Then he said, ‘I’d rather a man of magic and
conscience was walking free in England now, than sitting in a military prison. Tell
him from me there was nothing he could have done then, but much he can do now.’ So.
I don’t want to hear anything more about that nonsense of—” He searched for the proper
word.

“The Hindoos call it
karma,”
Jack offered helpfully. “Or maybe it’s the Chinese. It means paying for things you’ve
done. Or in this case, left undone. Sins of omission as well as commission.”