The Great Game (24 page)

  His hand quested, coated in slime. It was quite possible there was nothing there. But he searched, blindly, until his fingers found a rectangular, soggy form. He withdrew it carefully, brought it close to his eyes. Paper, he thought. Thick, and good quality, to have withstood its tribulations. It smelled rank. He peered at it, but could see little in the dark.

  Some sort of visiting card, he thought, and felt excitement rise in him. A lead. He hoped – he prayed – it was a lead. Or otherwise, he – the other he – had died in vain.

  And now he was alarmed into movement. He would be found, identified – he couldn't let it happen. He picked up a stone and smashed his own dead face in, over and over, until nothing remained but a bloodied pulp. He threw up then, but the deed was done. The corpse, when it will be found, would be that of an anonymous man, not of Harry Houdini.

  He still had the sense of being watched. And now the tavern's door re-opened, and a head stuck out and said, loudly, "Is anybody there?"

  Harry straightened up. The voice said, "Hey, you, what do you think you're–"

  Harry ran. Behind him, an indignant shout, then footsteps and then a much louder scream, as the speaker discovered the bloodied mess that had been left there. Harry ran through the narrow streets, not sure where he was going. At last he found the river and followed it, the Thames snaking deeper into London, taking Harry with it, and as he ran the vast dark shapes of whales rose beside him in the water of the river and keened, as if they, too, mourned the passing of Harry Houdini.

 
 

 
 
 

He found shelter at a hotel in Seven Dials, a run-down dismal place worthy of its name, which was Bleak House. The proprietress, a Mrs Bleak, with a gummy, toothless mouth, wrinkled her nose at Harry's smell, then at his accent, but accepted his money grudgingly and asked no questions. Harry washed, then sat on the hard bed and stared at the piece of paper he had picked up from his other self.

  It was, indeed, a visiting card. It was made of good-quality, expensive stock, with a gold border around it, and said, simply:

 

 

  Who was this Harker, then? And who were Dombey and Son?

  Harry had a solid lead. He turned the card over and over in his hands. The library, he thought. He would begin at the public library.

• • • •

There was, indeed, a lending library nearby, on the Charing Cross Road. Harry went inside, glad of the warmth. He found the business directory, a large, leather-bound volume chained to its shelf, and leafed through it until he found the company's address.

  There were no further details about the company. There was no mention, for instance, of exactly what they were wholesalers and retailers
of
. Or what they were exporting…

  He'd have to tread carefully, he knew. The other him had been murdered for what he had found out. Harry was only surprised they had not made an attempt on him, too. Perhaps they wanted to see how he would run. He had a feeling that, even now, he was being watched. Perhaps the fact there had been two of him had thrown the opposition off-balance. If you kill me, he thought grimly, another me would just take my place.

  Which was an unsettling thought, for Harry. And he decided he did not wish to die again any time soon.

  Dombey and Son's offices were in the City, though according to the directory they had warehouses at the Greenwich docks. Harry decided he would have to proceed cautiously. Had the other him got too close, and was killed for his troubles?

  He left the library. He was tired and hungry, but filled with a nervous energy. And the city was only now truly coming alive around him, a great mass of humanity, bound within ancient stone – so different to the wide open spaces, the mountains and the plains and the endless skies of Vespuccia. This city was like a bubbling cauldron, chock-full of a seething humanity, like a brain made of streets and lanes where humans played the role of thoughts and pathways. Perhaps the Lizardine Empire was like that, he thought: a single entity composed of solitary atoms, a great mass which was, nevertheless, a new, complete entity without regard to its component parts. People, even royals, could die, but the machine that was the empire would go on, powered not by engines of steam but by its people, the coal that burned and fed it.

  Harry wandered the streets, passing along Shaftesbury Avenue and its glittering theatres, then into Soho where the streets became darker and the cut of clothes cheaper. He found an eatery and went inside and ordered. The food was bland.

  "Hey, mister."

  A small hand tugged at his arm. He looked down, surprised.

  "Mr Houdini!"

  It was a small bedraggled boy. "How do you know my name?"

  The boy looked surprised. "Don't you recognise me, mister? I'm Oliver."

  Harry stopped. Froze, almost, as the realisation hit him.

  The boy thought he was the other Houdini.

  The one who had died.

  "Of course," he said, and the moment passed. "Oliver. Yes, what can you tell me?"

  The boy was still looking at him dubiously. "It
is
you, isn't it, Mr Houdini?"

  "Of course it's me," Harry said, trying to laugh it off. It felt very odd, to pretend to be… well, himself. And yet not himself. He wished devoutly then that he knew just what the other him had been up to in this city.

  "My master wishes to parley with you," the boy, Oliver, said.

  "Your master."

  "You know." The boy lowered his voice. "Master Fagin," he said.

  "Oh," Harry said. "Of course."

  There was a short silence.

  "Now, please, sir," Oliver said, abandoning the
mister
for the moment.

  "Will you take me to him?" Harry said.

  "Yes, sir," Oliver said. His eyes, Harry saw, were on the unappetising remains of Harry's late supper: a thick stew of indeterminate meat, dipped with a white, crumbly, flowery bread.

  Harry said, "You hungry?"

  "Hungry," the boy confirmed.

  "Go on, then."

  The boy didn't need to be told twice. With startling, rapid movement he was over the bowl, tearing up chunks of bread, dunking into the remains of the mystery stew, and shoving them into his mouth until his cheeks bulged.

  Was this the ultimate produce of the empire? Harry thought, discomfited. Could the jewel of the world, the seat of that worldwide empire on which, as they said, "the sun never set", still contain within it such poverty, that a boy would have to beg and steal for his bread?

  For he recognised in the boy the signs of a fine-wirer and a flimp, those miniature experts of the crowd, who made their trade – and their art – in picking pockets and making valuables disappear. Harry had the expert eye of a man in a similar line of work. He smiled, then smacked the boy on the side of the head, causing him to spit out soggy bread.

  "What you go and do that for!"

  "Let's go," Harry said, still smiling. "Now, my wallet, if you please, young Oliver."

  The boy grinned sheepishly and handed it back to him. "Just checking, guv," he said. "Making sure you was you, if you know what I mean."

  Harry, unfortunately, did.

 

He made his way outside, following the boy. There were several pubs, a chemist's selling cocaine and soap, a man handing out leaflets of what must have been a political nature and, nearby, one of Harry's own people: that is, a three-card monte man, hunched over a folding card table, a wad of money in his waving hand.

  Three-card monte: it was one of the classic scams, resting in the domain that lay between magician and card sharp: the operator, the dealer that is, offering to double the punter's money. The bet: an easy one. Find the lady. The card sharp shuffling the cards, a simple sleight-of-hand making it impossible to detect where the Queen of Hearts had gone. Harry knew it well, had operated it before. He went closer and watched with professional interest. There was the Throw, the Drop, and the Aztec Turnover, but the real secret of the game was simple, and Harry, enjoying himself for the first time, found himself checking to see who the dealer's accomplice was, the shill.

  The shill was there to lure the mark into the game. He bet against the dealer, and lost, allowing the mark to feel a superiority – since to them it was always so easy to see where the Queen went. When they finally put their money down, though…

  The shill was an undistinguished young man. The dealer, however…

  Harry knew a thing or two about pretence, and makeup. At the World's Vespuccian Exposition he himself had donned the apparel and dark skin of a Hindu sorcerer, along with his younger brother, Theo.

  So he could recognise a fake, and the dealer – a hook-nosed, bearded personage with the reek of the streets upon it – made him smile happily, recognising here one of his own. The nose was an expert job, the dirty skin artfully applied just so, the beard removable. A respectable Anglo-Saxon gentleman hid behind the façade of a gutter man, if Harry was any judge.

  "Find the lady!" the dealer shouted. The wads of money in his hand could be used neatly to cover any untoward movements of the cards. "Find the lady!"

  "Twenty shillings!" A fat man pushed his way in. He had been watching the shill, who was losing repeatedly.

  The dealer made the man's money disappear; shuffled the cards. An interesting pack, Harry thought. The royal cards were all lizards, and the Queen of Hearts bore a resemblance to Queen Victoria's profile which he had seen on coins and stamps.

  "This one."

  "Sorry."

  The dealer upturned the Eight of Clubs where the Queen of Hearts should have been, and grinned blackened teeth at the mark.

  "Cheat!" the man cried. "Liar!"

  The shill, meanwhile, had gone quietly around him. Harry saw the flash of a blade, and the large man blanched visibly and fell quiet.

  "On your way, now," the shill said. The man nodded and hurried away. Harry, still smiling, approached the table.

  "Mr Houdini," the three card monte man said.

  Several thoughts ran through Harry's head at once. That the previous him had already met this man; that the previous him must have made the same assumptions he had just made; and that he had charged this man, a seasoned criminal of some sort, with a task, most likely in the nature of information-gathering.

  So he took a gamble.

  "Do you have it?" he said.

  The man smiled. His teeth were in perfect health, Harry thought, amused. But the coal smeared on them made them appear rotten, mere stumps of teeth. "What if I do?" he said.

  "Master Fagin?"

  The boy, Oliver, had materialised by the card table.

  "Boy?"

  "The pigs, sir. They're coming."

  "Short is the run of a three-card monte," Harry said. So this was Fagin, the man who had wanted to see him. He had guessed right, it seemed.

  "Short in one place," the man, Fagin, said philosophically. "But who wants to stay in one spot all the time?"

  In one swift motion he folded the card table, made the money and the cards disappear, and grinned at Harry. "Shall we?" he said.

  "Do you have it?" Harry said, again.

  A whistle sounded in the distance. Policemen on their way. Fagin did not look unduly worried. He grinned again at Harry.

  "It will cost you," he said.

 
 

 
 
 

"My children have been shadowing him for you," Fagin said. Harry followed the man down the city's unfamiliar alleyways.

  Shadowing who?

  
"Where is he now?"

  "His routine hasn't varied," Fagin said. "A man of habit is our Mr Harker."

  Harry, inwardly, sighed with relief. It made sense. So the earlier him had hired this man, this Fagin, to follow Harker, the mysterious solicitor of that mysterious export company called Dombey and Son.

  "And now?" he said. Something must have changed, he thought, for Fagin to have summoned him.

  The other man smiled, revealing those falsely ruined teeth. "He's got himself a missus, he has," he said – which lowered Harry's opinion of the man's acting skills somewhat.

  "Where?"

  "Not far."

  Was Fagin leading him into a trap?

  It was possible. But it was a risk, he decided, that was worth taking. He had to find out what had happened to his double… and what had led to his death.

  Harker was the key to the puzzle…

  A part of the puzzle, at any rate.

  They were heading towards the Thames, Harry realised. The smell of the river crept up on him and with it the singing of the whales grew stronger. They were now on the Strand, a wide avenue thronged with carriages and steam-powered baruch-landaus and people. Across the road stood an imposing building. A sign said it was the Savoy Hotel.

  They crossed the road.

  "Waterloo Bridge, guv'nor," Fagin told him, cheerfully, with that same grating, false voice. Harry shrugged. Down below, the Thames was dark. Fog swirled across the bridge, which was lit by gas lamps which cast pale, yellow orbs of light around them. There were more carriages and beggars, and a couple of policemen, walking past, looked at Fagin sharply for a moment before going on their way.

  Beyond the bridge they came to an area of theatres and pubs and a huge, new construction project. A massive collection of towers was rising, uncompleted, into the sky, things of chrome and glass partially connected by as-yet-uncompleted narrow, hair-fine bridges, like spiders' silk.