The Kingdom of Bones (24 page)

THIRTY-THREE

W
hen Sayers returned from the barber and the bathhouse, Sebastian was immediately struck by the change in his appearance. Even though the prizefighter’s hair had been cropped so close for the ring that there was little to be done to improve the look of it, a good shave and a sharpening up of the sideburns had begun the effect. As it grew out, he would no doubt begin to look even less of a crop-headed bruiser and more of a human being.

And not only that. The puffiness had left his features, and those cuts were already starting to heal. Sebastian hadn’t realized it at the time, but when they’d met back at the boxing tent, the fighter had been in a steady alcohol-sustained haze. Not drunk, but in the functioning state of the habitual drinker.

Without its influence, he’d become more alert. His eye had cleared, his hand was steady, and he didn’t shamble anymore. He’d touched no liquor since entering their house, and if he was suffering for it, he kept that to himself. All in all, it was as if some new sense of purpose had occasioned a return of the Tom Sayers of old.

Sebastian relayed everything that the bookkeeper had told him.

“She skipped without paying her bill,” he said. “Oakes made a point of mentioning the Pinkerton name, and the hotel people put him onto the house detective. From what he’d been able to establish, she sent her two servants to take her bags out of the back of the hotel while she was walking out of the front door like it was just another day. The doorman remembered asking her if she wanted a cab, but she didn’t.”

Sayers, clearly no stranger to Louise’s operating methods, said, “A hotel doorman knows all the cabmen. It would have made it too easy to track down the driver and find out what her destination was.”

“But the hotel
did
locate the carrier who picked up her baggage from around the back. He had to deliver it to the waterfront for loading onto a steamer bound for Richmond. That’s where the trail went cold. There was no Mrs. Caspar on any passenger list for that day or the next.”

Sayers strode up and down. He ran his hand across the stubble on his head.

“Richmond,” he said. “I’ve been this close and she’s evaded me before. But never with such a strong lead to follow.”

“I suppose you’ll go after her,” Sebastian said.

“I suppose I will,” Sayers said. “But not blindly. I’ll need to make a plan. Don’t worry, Sebastian. You won’t have to put up with me for very much longer.”

When they heard Elisabeth and Frances returning with the boy, Sayers waited to offer a greeting. Then he picked up the parcel with his new clothes and went to his room, leaving the family to its family business.

If Elisabeth noted the improvement in Sayers’ appearance, she gave no sign of it. She had other things on her mind. From the moment that she came in through the door, Sebastian could see that the afternoon had not gone well.

Her face was set. Frances was fussing around nervously, as if in the presence of some unstable device. In a quiet voice, Elisabeth sent Robert to the sitting room at the back of the house. He raced on up, and Frances took the opportunity to follow. Sebastian noted that the boy was carrying five new dime magazines.

“What did the doctor say?” Sebastian asked, rather dreading the answer.

“He offered Robert a place to live among the insane,” she said, and then her fury boiled over. “He is not insane!” she said. “Nor is he handicapped or retarded! Why can none of them see it? I don’t
want
him taken away. I just want him to have a normal life. All the pieces of a normal life are there. All he needs is someone to help him put them together.”

She would have said more, but the creak of a board reminded her that there was a stranger in the house. Sayers was pacing again, making his plans.

Elisabeth made a gesture of exasperation, then turned away.

In a low voice, Sebastian said, “At least Sayers will be gone by tomorrow. With the news I just gave him, he’ll need no urging.”

It was poor compensation, but it was all that he could offer.

“Mister Sayers is our guest,” Elisabeth said. “Tell him that he can stay as long as he likes. I wouldn’t wish to embarrass him.”

Supper was a subdued affair. Robert was excused early, but he stayed at the table, reading, his surroundings forgotten, away in the unknowable country of his unique imagination. For once, Elisabeth allowed it.

For his part, Sayers said very little. His mind seemed largely to be elsewhere, as well.

Later that night, when everyone had retired and the house was secured, Sebastian made his way up to bed and saw that a light was still showing under Sayers’ door.

He lay alongside Elisabeth, knowing that she wasn’t asleep.

Eventually, she said, “What are we to do for him, Sebastian?”

“Keep him happy. Keep looking.”

“What about London?”

“Perhaps. Eventually.”

It was all he could think of to say.

When Sebastian went downstairs the next morning, Frances was already in the kitchen. Robert was at the breakfast table but still in his nightshirt, bare feet swinging from his chair. He’d read all his new stories and was reading them again.

Frances said, “Has Mister Sayers left us already?”

“Has he?” said Sebastian. “I don’t think he has.”

“The door was off the latch and his outdoor coat is gone.”

Sebastian went to Sayers’ room and tapped on the door. After a few moments with no reply, he looked inside.

The prizefighter’s cabin trunk was still there, but it was in the middle of the floor and all closed up. The dresser had been cleared of his personal items and the bed had been stripped, with the linen neatly folded at its end.

There was a sheet of writing paper on top of the upended cabin trunk. On it in large capitals were the words
TO BE SENT FOR
and under that
Sincere thanks for all your kindness, may God bless you all. Try not to think ill of me. That which I do is on my head alone.

He must have been gone before the dawn. And he must have been pretty quiet about it, too, because the house was small and its walls were not thick. He’d probably carried his boots to the front door in order not to make a noise on the stairs.

Well, that was that. Sebastian returned to the kitchen.

“Looks like you’ll be getting your room back, Frances,” he said. “I’ll put Mister Sayers’ trunk down in the cellar until he sends for it.”

“Oh,” Frances said. But she hardly seemed happy at the prospect of a house with no Tom Sayers in it.

Elisabeth came in then, and Sebastian gave her the news.

“Richmond?” she said. “What does he expect to find in Richmond?”

“The Madonna or the Medusa,” Sebastian said cryptically, “depending on the woman’s mood. Let’s not speak of it.”

He declined breakfast. He’d pick up something from the Automat. He needed to get to the office before everyone else; Bearce had gone to Chicago and left Sebastian in charge of the keys.

“Is this a form of promotion?”

“More of a chore,” he said. But she was right. It showed a new level of confidence from Sebastian’s employers. The night janitor was responsible for opening up the main doors of the building, but the key holder was responsible for the office suite. Store cupboards, records, stationery…even the safe where the business accounts and the more confidential records were kept.

He buttoned his waistcoat, put on his topcoat, and went to his bureau. When he rolled back the top, the keys weren’t there.

He moved a few things around. Opened one or two of the drawers. But he knew where he’d left them. No one else in the house ever used the bureau. Robert knew not to touch his father’s papers, not to mention the Bulldog revolver that he sometimes left in the locked bottom drawer.

“What are you looking for?” Elisabeth called through.

“Nothing,” he called back.

There seemed only one likely explanation, and he didn’t like to countenance it. Sayers had needed writing paper for his note. Here was where he’d look.

That which I do is on my head alone,
he’d then written.

Sebastian rolled down the top with greater force than he’d intended, and set out for the journey into town.

THIRTY-FOUR

W
hen Sebastian got to the Chestnut Street building, it was open but still largely silent.

He climbed the stairs to the Pinkerton agency suite. If the key holder was delayed, the employees had to wait out in the corridor. If he didn’t show at all, they’d have to fetch the building supervisor with his duplicates.

A key holder with no keys…well, that was something the system wasn’t set up for.

No one was waiting outside yet. The door had an etched glass panel with the agency’s name lettered on it. Sebastian stopped before it and listened, but heard nothing. Then he tried the door. It wasn’t supposed to be unlocked. But it opened.

He stepped inside. “Sayers?” he called out, but something in the way his voice echoed through the rooms told him that he wasn’t going to find anyone. No presence, no warm body anywhere. He’d hoped to catch Sayers here, but the man had already been and gone.

Sebastian went straight to the criminal department and the records room. Another door that should have been locked, but wasn’t. The cabinets with all the records in them should have been locked as well, but they weren’t.

Sure enough, there were gaps where some of the cards and some entire files were missing. The one on the man with the needles in his belly, for a start. Without a list, it was hard to say for sure what might have been taken.

At that point, Sebastian heard voices. As he emerged from the records office, two stenographers were passing through on the way to their room at the end of the hall. They were chatting animatedly, as awake and alert as a couple of sparrows. As far as they were concerned, the office had been opened up for them as normal. They broke off to bid Sebastian good morning and then carried on with scarcely a break.

“Good morning,” he belatedly called after them. Even the stenography room was open. Sayers must have been right through the place.

When Sebastian reached his desk, he found his missing keys lying there, right next to the wooden bar with his name on it. With a guilty glance around, he opened the top drawer and swept them out of sight. Only when he’d closed the drawer did his heart stop pounding and the tightness in his chest begin to ease.

The loss of a few inactive files—that wasn’t so bad. If Sayers had asked him for them, the answer would have been no—although, in truth, they were unlikely to be missed. Old files reached the end of their useful lives, just like old employees.

If that was all Sayers had taken, then the loss would be of no real significance. It was wrong, and it made Sebastian angry; he’d welcomed Sayers into his home, and now his hospitality had been abused. But the actual damage was small.

Never trust a drunk, or a man obsessed, he thought to himself. Plausible though he seemed, Sayers was both.

As more people arrived, Sebastian pulled out his chair, took a deep breath, and reached for the first of the papers that had begun to fill up his in-tray during his time out of the office. His initial panic aside, this was not quite the day of disaster it had threatened to be.

Awaiting his attention were some letters from potential clients that merited only standard replies. There was a cable for some information from an operative out in California. There was Oakes’ claim for reimbursement for his tram fare yesterday. That would have to wait; only Mr. Bearce could give authority for a payment from the office’s petty cash reserve.

Sebastian went very still. Then he got to his feet.

He went into Bearce’s empty office and around the manager’s desk to the safe. It was a mighty cabinet of iron and brass, older than the building it stood in. It took the largest of the keys, and when the door swung open, it did so with the mass of a Babylonian gate.

“He took it,” Sebastian said bleakly. “The cashbox was empty. The entire office cash reserve, including the money we keep to pay informers.”

Elisabeth said, “Do you know how much?”

“Twelve hundred dollars and some change. Bearce keeps the record in a separate ledger so the informers’ names won’t get out.”

Twelve hundred dollars. A dismayed silence prevailed as they considered the implications of Sayers’ theft.

They were sitting on Frances’ bed. After spending most of the day looking for some trace of Sayers at the railway terminus and asking around all the steamer offices in town, Sebastian had returned home and gone straight to his sister-in-law’s room. There he’d broken into the prizefighter’s cabin trunk and searched through it in the hope of finding some clue to the man’s plans. After managing to stay calm for several hours, he now grew steadily more frantic.

He couldn’t be sure at what point Elisabeth appeared in the doorway. He only knew that she’d been watching him for a while before she moved in beside him and interceded with a gentle hand, stopping his efforts and insisting on being told what was wrong.

“Your trust was betrayed,” Elisabeth now said.

“I doubt that he even considered that,” Sebastian said. “His obsession is his entire horizon.”

“How long before the loss is discovered?”

“Two days. Three at the most.”

“Maybe someone could have seen Sayers going in?”

“That isn’t the point,” Sebastian said. “I’ll still be held responsible.”

Twelve hundred dollars. In Tom Sayers’ mind he’d have been taking the money from the agency, with no thought of any consequence to his host. But when Bearce returned and the money was found to be missing, Sebastian would be called to account for it. Blaming Sayers would not help him.

He looked down at the books and clothing that he’d strewn all over the floor. Nothing here was of any help. “I don’t know what to do,” he said.

Elisabeth said, “We have almost eight hundred dollars saved. And we’ve the certificates in my name from before we were married—they’re worth about two hundred now. We can cash them in or I can borrow against them.”

“To do what?”

“To replace what’s missing before anyone else finds out about it.”

“That’s no solution, Elisabeth,” Sebastian said. “That money’s our future.”

“If you lose your job and reputation,” Elisabeth said, “we
have
no future. Take our savings, replace the money in the safe, and then go after Sayers and get back what he took. He’s only been gone a few hours, and you know he’s gone to Richmond. I know you can find him. He stole from the Pinkertons. How bright can he be?”

“It won’t work,” Sebastian said. “We can’t raise enough.”

“There’s Frances. I know she has some money stashed away. I’ll talk to her about it.”

“No,” Sebastian said helplessly, and put his head in his hands.

It
was
a disaster. How had it come to this, and in a matter of only hours? In his heart, he cursed Tom Sayers and he cursed the moment in which he’d turned around and gone back into the boxing booth, when he could so easily have walked away. Twelve hundred dollars was more than he’d earned in the past year. The sum was no great fortune to a business, but it was the kind of money that could make or break a family.

And now Frances was to be asked to pitch in. He knew why she put money away from the tiny allowance they were able to give her. Although she’d no beau and no immediate prospect of one, she was saving for her wedding.

Sebastian knew the worth of what he had. He’d endured a cold upbringing and a loveless youth, and he took none of his present happiness for granted. He’d once been ambitious, and sought success. Now his life was modest, ordinary, and filled with small pleasures—a less spectacular prize, but one he valued more.

Elisabeth said, “Everyone in this house depends on you. And God bless you, Sebastian, you’ve built a decent life for all of us. Let us support you now, or everything that you’ve worked so hard for will go for nothing.”

She made him look at her.

“Get it back, Sebastian,” she said. “Follow him. Tell them whatever you have to tell them and do whatever you have to do.”