The Lady of Bolton Hill (20 page)

She glanced around the warehouse. “Is he here?”

“No.”

“Then you have no excuse for your behavior. Don’t defend yourself by telling me about a tragic childhood; you are old enough to be making your own decisions. There is nothing in the world to prevent you from walking out that warehouse door and starting a brand-new life today, Alex.”

“Bane.”

“What?”

“I prefer to be called Bane.”

“Let’s see how brave you really are, Alex. Wouldn’t your life be a little more interesting if you started challenging this belief that you are intended for more than to unleash evil on the world? Wouldn’t you respect yourself more if you had the nerve to stand up to this devil you claim to believe in?”

Bane twirled his knife even faster as he smiled at her. “I have never lacked for self-respect. I am pretty much my favorite person, come to think of it.”

“That does not speak well for the company you keep.”

If possible, the amusement in the boy’s eyes grew even stonger. “At last, you have made a statement I whole-heartedly agree with.”

“Then why don’t you
do
something about that?” Clara looked pointedly at the crates of opium that surrounded them. “If you destroyed the opium in these crates rather than shipping it out to exploit the weakness of men’s souls, it would be a fine start in a new direction. You can begin your life again and carve out a new path for yourself.”

At mention of destroying the opium, the amusement fled Bane’s face. “If I destroyed this opium, the price on my head would have every criminal in America out for my blood. I suppose that would certainly be a new path for me, just not one I want to be on.”

“It scares you, then? To stand up to this man you say is the wickedest man in the world?”

Bane just shrugged. “Someday I will be a match for him. Not yet, though.”

She reached across the table and grabbed his hand, surprised at her own daring. “The Lord will protect you, Alex. I don’t know what sort of appalling circumstances put you into that man’s path when you were just a child, but you are strong enough to walk away. Do it today, Alex.”

He snatched his hand back as though he had been burned. “You can be really annoying; do you know that?”

“I’m not going to give up on you, Alex. I am not going to calmly sit here while you destroy the lives of thousands of people with those drugs and drag your own soul through the muck while you do it. God has given you the freedom to simply walk away.
He will forgive you
.”

She could not pinpoint when it happened, but there was a shift in the atmosphere. The knife Bane had been twirling dug a gouge into the surface of the table, and his fingers were clenched tight around the handle. “All your pathetic God stories make me sick,” he said. “You brainwash children into believing goodness and sunlight and mercy swirl around them like fairy dust. In the real world, children can be snatched from their mothers’ arms and plunged into a pit of corruption where no trace of sunlight can ever penetrate. Where is God in a scenario like that?” Contempt dripped from his voice, but Clara would not let it dissuade her.

“I’m not blind to the evil in the world,” she said. After all, it was sitting not five feet away from her. “And I am not blind to the fact that I have been given gifts you never had. Living a godly life was expected of me, and it was an easy path for me to follow. No one ever had such expectations for you. For you to embrace the Lord at this point in your life would be nothing short of heroic, Alex. It would take an act of such strength and courage that it would be humbling for all who have ever known you. You can begin building a life of valor
today
.”

Bane stood up and walked to the makeshift counter where food and supplies were kept. “You ought to listen to what I say. Cut out the God-talk.”

For the first time since he had revealed himself as the mastermind behind this criminal enterprise, the coolly remote look on Bane’s face was gone, replaced by anger glittering in his eyes. Bane had been drenched in evil and vice from the time he was a child. Of course he was going to struggle against leaving that life behind, but the fact that he hadn’t killed her yet meant that on some level she may have broken through to him. “God made you for a purpose, Alex,” she whispered. “I have no idea why you were steeped in such violence for most of your life, but it is not too late to turn this around. It would take the courage of a gladiator to turn your back on all this. Just how brave are you willing to be?”

Bane turned to face her. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” The cool, blank look was back on his face again, as though no earthly cares could ever bother him. He pulled out a chair and sat beside her at the table. Before she could gather her thoughts, Bane yanked her arm down on the table and locked it into place with his forearm. With his other hand he shoved a needle into her arm, and pain shot up her nerves like a bolt of lightning.

“Time to say good night,” Bane said as her world grew dim.

I
t was a full thirty-six hours before a credible lead emerged, and in that time Daniel had not known a moment of rest. He remained stationed in his office, keeping a central command post where anyone could bring information.

Exhaustion poured from him in waves, but each time he felt himself slipping, memories of Clara blazed to the surface, searing him with anxiety and forcing him to keep turning over leads in a desperate attempt to find her. Was there ever a more delicate, dainty woman than Clara? She was afraid of everything from horses to speaking in public and everything in between, and yet for years she had been facing down those fears to do what she believed was right. What she believed God wanted of her. Now she was suffering for Daniel’s sins. He didn’t know who had taken her, but Daniel was certain it was his fault.

The memory of Clara’s face illuminated by the light of the fire that had destroyed his home haunted him. He had all but accused her of inciting the fire, even as she had vowed she would never give up on him.

And by all that was holy, he would never turn his back on her again, either. As the sun darkened on the day Daniel had made his impassioned plea in the Camden stockyard, his hope for a quick solution to Clara’s disappearance dwindled. A handful of people had come forward with flimsy tips. All of them were being investigated by men Daniel had hired, but it was apparent the people who had given them the leads were more interested in the financial reward and had nothing of substance to offer.

He clasped his hands together and prayed.
Please, God
, he thought.
Please keep Clara safe. I’ve never been able to pray to you before, because I don’t even know if you exist . . . but Clara believes, and that’s good enough for me.

He had a mild feeling of guilt, knowing that he had only turned toward God when he was out of options and his back was to the wall. But it was for Clara—he asked nothing for himself, only that a woman of Clara’s startling goodness should not be punished.

The next day passed in the same endless torment. Lead after lead filtered in, and each time a man walked through the door, Daniel’s heart surged in his chest, hoping that
this
time the lead would prove solid. It wasn’t until the sun was low in the sky on the third day of Clara’s disappearance that the first credible lead came in the form of a nervous Eddie Maguire.

It seemed odd to see a man of Maguire’s size and reputation appear to be intimidated, but the sheen of perspiration on the man’s skin as he twisted a rumpled bandanna in his hands made his anxiety evident.

“This is an anonymous tip; is that clear?” Eddie stated as he sat in a chair opposite Daniel’s desk. Clyde came around the room to scrutinize Eddie as the grim-faced leader of the cannery union cleared his throat several times before proceeding.

“I’m bringing this news from one of my men,” he said. “He is sick to his guts over being pinned as the man who squealed. He doesn’t want any reward for this, because he is afraid it might give him away. All he wants is to help the lady, since she seems like someone who doesn’t deserve to be mixed up in whatever foul deed Bane has up his sleeve.”

Daniel pierced Eddie with an intense gray stare. “Who is Bane?” he asked quietly.

Eddie shifted in his chair. “I’m not really sure. Nobody I know has ever seen him, but he runs a tight operation, and anyone who crosses him doesn’t live long enough to brag about it. I heard that he comes from somewhere out west . . . California maybe. He controls the opium shipments in and out of New England.” Eddie swiped his brow with the bandanna and Daniel could detect a tremor in his hand.

“Go on,” he prompted.

“Anyway . . . this man I know said he heard that Bane is using a warehouse down near the Locust Point harbor. He heard they were stocking it with supplies because they were going to be keeping a couple of hostages there for a while.”

Daniel leaned forward. “Which warehouse?”

“I don’t know.”

“There must be hundreds of warehouses down near that end of the harbor,” Clyde ground out in frustration. “Tell me the name of this guy and I’ll pin it down more.”

“You just don’t get it, do you?” Maguire broke out. “This man has a family. He took enough of a risk to tell me what he knew, and I’m not going to roll over on him so Bane’s jackals can peel the flesh from his body.” Eddie Maguire stood up to his full height and glared at Daniel.

“I only came here for the lady, not for you. For today, I hope you get her back, but tomorrow you and I are at war again. I want you to forget who told this to you. And if you are going to take on Bane, you’d better have an army when you do it.”

T
his time when she came out of the opium-induced stupor, Clara had a better idea of what to expect. Her head was filled with pressure, and the raging thirst made it hard to move her tongue in her mouth. Lifting her eyelids was even a struggle, but there wasn’t much point anyway. She could still smell the sawdust and knew from the grainy texture of the concrete floor beneath her exactly where she was. The worst was the awful, repetitive sounds of banging that made the pain in her head reverberate with each
whack
.

When she finally managed to open her eyes she could see the source of the noise. Bane and that awful person named McGahee were nailing crates shut. She scanned the area and saw Mr. Manzetti, still drugged and motionless on the cot, but something was different. She turned her head and noticed the dozens of crates that had been stacked around them were gone. The warehouse was almost empty.

She pushed herself into a sitting position and leaned against the brick wall behind her. “Where is the opium?” she managed to ask in a ragged voice.

Both Bane and McGahee glanced her way. “It’s out there in the world now,” Bane said, a couple of nails clenched between his teeth. There were still plenty of crates scattered across the floor, but McGahee was filling them with bottles of whiskey, and Bane was nailing them shut. Propped up on the far wall were bolts of fabric, dozens of bolts of silk and calico and muslin. She must have been deeply drugged to have remained insensible while so much cargo moved in and out of the warehouse.

“There is water on the counter if you want it,” Bane said. “It is not drugged.” Somehow she believed him. Of all the horrific things Bane had done in the few hours since she had known him, he had not lied to her. Not that she put it past him, but the bruise on her arm was proof that Bane could easily drug her without resorting to tricks. She carefully walked to the counter and drank. Just getting on her feet and quenching her thirst helped ease the pounding in her head. She studied Bane as he unpacked new crates of contraband, and for the first time noticed a diamond winking in his ear. The fruits of his ill-gotten gains, no doubt.

Her gaze strayed to Mr. Manzetti, still unconscious on that cot. She did not know what the reaction would be if she attempted to tend to him, but decided to find out rather than ask permission. Bane ignored her as she kneeled beside the cot and put a gentle hand on Manzetti’s shoulder.

“Mr. Manzetti? Can you hear me?” She nudged him harder. His face remained slack, his mouth hanging open as gentle snores continued.

“It’s pointless, girl,” McGahee growled. “Bane shot him up with enough dope to keep him dreaming for days.” She looked to Bane for confirmation, but he didn’t stop filling the crates with bottles.

She sent a glare at Bane. “I’m no expert on opium, but I’ve experienced enough of it to know that abusing Mr. Manzetti with an endless stream of the stuff can’t be healthy. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”

Bane continued to nail the lid on a crate without breaking rhythm, but he snickered at her. “You sound just like a schoolmarm. Why are you so worried about him in any case? You are the one who is about to meet your maker.”

The thought had not left the forefront of her mind since the moment she’d been kidnapped. “So I ought to be measured for a casket; is that what you’re saying?”

“Sit down,” Bane ordered. She sobered at the pair of handcuffs dangling from his fingers. Her gaze flew to his. “I’m not going to kill you, but I’ve got to help McGahee get these bolts of cloth out of here. Give me your hand.” And with that she found herself manacled to a pipe that ran along the side of the wall. The warehouse doors were slid open and a horse pulling a wagon was led in by some of the men she’d seen the previous day. “Don’t get any bright ideas about screaming while those doors are open, or I’ll break your neck before you can utter a sound,” Bane said.

For the next few minutes she watched while more crates of whiskey were unloaded from the wagon and bolts of cloth were put in their place. When the fabric was loaded, Bane ordered the men to take it to the Camden train station. He closed the warehouse doors behind the wagon, and she was once again alone with Bane. The boy used a crowbar to pry the lid from the new crates and began removing bottles of whiskey, which he loaded onto the table.

“Why are you unpacking all those bottles? Aren’t you just going to crate them up in different boxes?” That seemed to be what he had been doing all morning.

Bane shrugged. “This shipment is headed out west, and I don’t want anyone to know where it originally came from.”

“Why should that be a secret?”

Bane looked at her like she was a simpleton. “Taxes, Clara. I’m not a big fan of paying taxes.”

“Oh,” she said, feeling rather foolish. Someone who stooped to arson and selling opium surely wouldn’t shy away from a little smuggling. There seemed to be no end to the criminal endeavors Bane indulged in, but she knew she had to keep him talking. The more they talked, the more likely it was that he would regard her as a human being who should not have her neck snapped. Yesterday she thought she saw a tiny glimmer of humanity lurking deep within him, and her only hope of survival was finding that spark and nurturing it forth.

Clara leaned her face against the side of the pipe she was chained to. Her body still felt as if sludge was moving through her veins, and the support of the cool pipe against her overheated face was welcome. “I’m sorry you sent the opium out,” Clara said. “A lot of people are going to suffer because of that.”

Bane pried a lid from a crate. “Don’t tell me you lose sleep over what a bunch of dope fiends choose to do with their bodies.”

Clara needed to talk to Bane, and he kept turning away from her to mess with those crates. She was trapped against this pipe and needed to get to where she could look him in the eye. “If you unlock these handcuffs, I’ll tell you why you should care about all those dope fiends.”

He snickered again. “That ought to be some fairy tale.”

“Unlock me and I’ll prove it to you. I swear I won’t try to escape.”

Her vow must have been good enough, because Bane strolled over and unlocked her handcuffs.

“It isn’t just dope fiends who get hurt,” Clara said as she rubbed the circulation back into her aching wrist. “When I was in London there was a terrible story of what a mother did to her own daughter.” Clara remembered clearly because the story was so horrible, some of the people at
The
Times
thought it was too gruesome to print.

“There was a woman who was living in India because her husband was a sergeant with the Royal Brigade. Mrs. Stockton was her name, and she had a six-year old daughter named Hannah. When her husband died of a fever, Mrs. Stockton decided to return to England, but there wasn’t a lot of money. The Crown would provide passage for her and the girl on a navy ship, so there should have been no problem. But Mrs. Stockton had developed a terrible dependency on opium while living in India. She bought as much as she could before her journey to the port at Mangalore, but by the time she arrived in the port city, she was already running low on the drug, and she feared running out during the passage at sea. It takes over a month to arrive home, you see.”

Bane had stopped his hammering and was watching Clara. The sudden silence felt odd in the cavernous warehouse. “Mrs. Stockton sold Hannah to an Indian brothel in exchange for two pounds of opium,” she said quietly.

The hammer slipped from Bane’s hands and clattered to the floor, but he remained motionless as he stared at her, his face stamped with revulsion.

“It took a while for her crime to be discovered,” she continued. “When Mrs. Stockton returned to England she took up work as a prostitute to feed her habit, but eventually her husband’s family sought her out and inquired what had happened to the girl. When she could provide no explanation, they turned to the police, who launched an inquest and discovered that Hannah had not been aboard the ship when it sailed for England. Mrs. Stockton was arrested and placed in prison, where the depth of her fascination with opium became apparent. She confessed to what she had done, and then hanged herself with a bedsheet.” Clara rubbed the raw spot on her wrist where the handcuff had marked her, feeling foolish for complaining about this minor irritant when that precious child had endured unspeakable depravities. She looked back at Bane. “I always wondered if she hanged herself because of what she had done to her child, or because she knew prison would deprive her of opium. I suppose we will never know.”

“What happened to the girl?” Bane’s voice was tense, and his knuckles were white as he clenched his hands into fists.

“No one ever found her,” she said softly. “By the time Mrs. Stockton’s crime had been discovered, almost a year had passed. A search was launched in Mangalore, but the child was long gone, leaving no trace whatsoever.”

A transformation had come over Bane. A muscle throbbed in his jaw and his eyes were narrowed in anger and a hint of . . . remorse? It was hard to tell because he turned away from her and began pacing the warehouse, his spine rigid with tension.

“So you see it is not merely the dope fiends who suffer from the sale of narcotics,” Clara said. “For each dope fiend there is a child, or a parent, or a spouse.” She glanced around the near empty room. “How many pounds of opium were in the crates you just shipped out?”

She did not expect him to answer, but he did. “Nine hundred pounds.”

Close to
half a ton
of opium. But perhaps it was not too late; perhaps Bane had the power to stop the avalanche of human misery he had set in motion. His face was still tense and shuttered. For some reason the story of little Hannah Stockton had knocked him off-kilter, and she would never have a better time of reaching him than right now.

“Where is it headed, Bane?”

“Some to Cuba. Some to New Orleans.”

She was surprised he answered, and kept pressing for more. “How is it going to get there?”

“Forget it, Clara. It’s out of my hands now.”

“But you know where it is. How is it going to get out of Baltimore?”

“There is a ship in the harbor called
The Albatross
. It sails in eighteen hours on the morning tide.”

Clara straightened her spine. “Then we have eighteen hours to get it off that ship. You can’t let this sort of stain pollute your soul. You can begin turning your life around right now, and I will help you do it. I think the Lord would be very proud of you for taking such a fearless step.”

Bane picked up the crowbar and went back to unpacking his newly delivered contraband. “Don’t get started on the God-talk again.” He had turned his back on her, but Clara walked over to kneel in front of him.

“Look, Clara, I’m in way too deep to just walk away from all this,” Bane said. “I’m sorry about what happened to that girl. It is true that I never thought about the effect the opium business has on innocent kids.”

This time when he looked at her, the regret in his eyes was plain. “Clara, if I thought scuttling this deal would help that girl in India, I would do it in a heartbeat, but it is too late for her and it would probably get me killed.”

“You know too much?”

“I know
everything
. If I tried to cut loose, there isn’t a rock in this entire country he would not turn over and smash open in order to search me out. So drop the God-talk, okay? I’m in too deep and it is not an option for me. If that opium disappears on my watch, I’ll be dead before the next full moon.”

She handed him another nail. “I thought you said the people you respected most were those who could face up to their fears. I should think stopping
The Albatross
might fit into that category.”

“It would fit into the category of sheer insanity,” Bane said. He finished pounding a row of nails into the crate and shoved it into the corner, but Clara did not miss the introspective look that lingered on Bane’s face long after she stopped talking.

Bane spent the better part of an hour repackaging the whiskey. With each crate that was repackaged, Bane made precise notations on a document he was keeping. “Even criminals use bills of lading,” he had told her.