The Phantom of Manhattan (11 page)

He soon replaced the disc the way it had been, and started on the second. Same result. After ten his mother signalled at him to stop. Malta began to replace the wares as they had been before. Clearly not even he knew there were two tunes inside the monkey. The vicomtesse was very pale. ‘He has been here,’ she said to no-one in particular. Then to me, ‘Who designed and made these monkeys?’

I shrugged in ignorance. Then Malta said, ‘They are made by a small factory in New Jersey, all of them. But under licence and from patented designs. As for who designed them, I do not know.’

Then the lady asked, ‘Have either of you ever seen a strange man here? A man in a wide hat, with most of his face covered by a mask?’

At this last question I felt Mr Malta, who was standing beside me, stiffen like a ramrod. I glanced at him but his face was set as stone. So I shook my head and explained to her that in a funfair there are many masks: clown masks, monster masks, Hallowe’en masks. But a man who wore a mask all the time, just to cover his face? No, never. At this point she sighed and shrugged, then wandered off down the aisles between the shelves to look at the other toys on offer.

Malta beckoned to the boy and led him away in the other direction, apparently to show him a display of clockwork marching soldiers. But I was beginning to have my doubts about this icy young man so I slipped after them while keeping a rack of toys between us. To my surprise and annoyance my unexpected and mysterious helper began quietly to interrogate the child, who answered innocently enough.

‘Just why has your mama come to New York?’ he asked.

‘Why, to sing in the opera, sir.’

‘Indeed. And no other reason? Not to meet anyone special?’

‘No, sir.’

‘And why is she interested in monkeys that play tunes?’

‘Only one monkey, monsieur, and one tune. But that is the one she is holding now. No other monkey plays the tune she seeks.’

‘How sad. And your papa, is he not here?’

‘No, sir. Dear Papa was detained in France. He arrives by sea tomorrow.’

‘Excellent. And he really is your papa?’

‘Of course. He is married to Mama and I am his son.’

At this point I felt the impudence had gone far enough and was about to intervene when something strange happened. The door came open, admitting a blast of cold air off the sea, and in the frame was the stocky figure of the priest, who I had learned was called Father Kilfoyle. Feeling the chill air, the boy Pierre and Mr Malta came into sight from around the corner of one of the display racks. The priest and the white-faced one were ten yards apart and stared at each other. At once the priest raised his right hand and made the sign of the cross over his forehead and chest. As a good chapel man, I do not go along with this, but I know that for Catholics it is a sign of seeking the Lord’s protection.

Then the priest said, ‘Come now, Pierre,’ and held out his hand. But he was still staring at Mr Malta.

The clear confrontation between the two men, which was to be the first of two that day, had cast as good a chill as the wind off the sea, so in an attempt to restore the mood of merriment of just an hour before, I said:

‘Your Ladyship, our pride and joy here is the Hall of Mirrors, a true wonder of the world. Please allow me to show it to you, it will restore your spirits. And Master Pierre can amuse himself with the other toys, for as you see he is quite enchanted as are all young people who come in here.’

She seemed undecided and I recalled with some trepidation how insistent Mr Tilyou had been in his letter that she should see the mirrors, though I could not discern why. She glanced at the Irishman who nodded and said, ‘Sure, see the wonder of the world for a while. I’ll look after Pierre, and we have the time. Rehearsals are not till after lunch.’ So she nodded and came with me.

If the episode in the Toyshop was strange, the boy and his mother seeking a tune that none of the monkeys could play, what followed was truly bizarre and explains why I have been at pains to describe exactly what I saw and heard that day.

We entered the hall together through the only door and she saw the corridor left and right. I gestured that she should make her choice. She shrugged, smiled most prettily and turned to the right. I climbed to the control box and glanced into the upper mirror. I could see she had reached a point halfway down one of the side walls. I moved a lever to turn a mirror and direct her towards the centre. Nothing happened. I tried again. Still nothing. The controls did not work. I could see her still moving between the mirror walls of the outer passage. Then a mirror swung of its own accord, blocking her path and forcing her towards the centre. But I had moved nothing. Clearly the controls were malfunctioning and for her own safety it was time to let her out before she became trapped. I moved the levers to create a straight passage back to the door. Nothing happened, but inside the maze mirrors
were
moving, as if under their own control or that of someone else. I could see twenty images of the young woman as more and more mirrors spun, but now I could not work out which was the real person and which the image.

Suddenly she stopped, trapped in a small centre room. There was another movement in one wall of that room and I caught a swirl of a cloak, replicated twenty times, just before it vanished again. But it was not her cloak, for it was black while hers was of plum velvet. I saw her eyes open wide and her hand flew to her mouth. She was staring at something or someone standing with his back to a mirror plate, but in the one blind spot that my observation glass could not cover. Then she spoke. ‘Oh, it
is
you,’ she said. I realized that somehow another person had not only entered the hall but found a way to the centre of the maze without being observed by me. This was impossible, until I saw that the angle of the tilted mirror above and ahead of me had been altered in the night so that it covered only one half of the hall. The other half was out of vision. I could see her, but not the phantom to whom she spoke. And I could hear them, so I have tried to recall and note down exactly what was said.

There was something else. This woman from France, rich, famous, talented and poised, was actually trembling. I sensed her fear but it was mixed with a dreadful fascination. As the later overheard conversation showed, she had met someone from her past, someone she had thought to be free from, someone who had once held her in a web … of what? Fear, yes, that I could feel in the air. Love? Perhaps, once, long ago. And awe. Whoever he was, whoever he had once been, she still stood in awe of his power and personality. Several times I could see her shivering and yet he offered her no threat that I could hear. But this is what they said:

At this point there was a long pause as if the suitor who had been turned down was trying to recover from his grief. When he resumed there was a tremor in the voice.

The woman, whom I could still see, indeed reflected a dozen times, went white as a sheet and threw both her hands to cover her face. She rocked for several seconds and I feared she would faint. I was about to cry out, but my call died in my throat. I was a mute and helpless witness of something I could not understand. Finally she removed her hands and spoke in a whisper.

Now at this point I saw something that almost caused me to fall out of my control booth. Somehow a second man had managed to creep into the hall. How he did it I will never know, but it was not through the only door known to me for that was right below me and had not been used. He must have slipped in by that secret entrance that only the designer of the place could ever know existed and which had never been revealed to anyone else. I thought at first I might be seeing a reflection of the speaker, but I recalled a swirl of cloak or cape, and this figure, also in black, wore no cape but a tight black frock-coat. He was in one of the inner passages and I saw that he was crouched with his ear to the hairline crack separating two mirrors beside him. Beyond the crack was the inner mirror-room where the lady and her strange former lover had been talking.

He seemed to feel my eyes upon him, for he turned suddenly, stared all around and then glanced up. The tilted observation mirror revealed him to me and me to him. The hair was as black as his coat and his face as white as his shirt. It was the wretch who called himself Malta. Two blazing eyes fixed me for a second, then he was off, speeding through the corridors that others found so baffling. I came down from the booth at once in an attempt to stop him, let myself out and hastened round the building. He was well ahead of me, having escaped through his secret exit, and haring for the gate. In my great clumsy extra-long Funmaster’s boots, running was out of the question.

So I could only watch. There was a second carriage parked near the gate, a closed calash, and it was to this that the speeding figure ran, jumping inside then slamming the door as the carriage took off. It was evidently a private rig for such are not for public hire on Coney Island.

But before he reached it, he had to run past two people. The nearest to the Hall of Mirrors was the young reporter and as the figure in the frock-coat raced past he let out a sort of shout which I could not catch, the sound being borne away on the sea wind. The reporter looked up in surprise but made no move to stop the man.

Just before the gateway was the figure of the priest, who had taken the boy Pierre back to the coach, closed him inside and was walking back to find his employer. I saw the refugee stop dead for a second and stare at the priest, who stared back at him, then run on towards his rig.

By now my nerves were in a complete jangle. The odd search among the performing monkeys for a tune that none of them was able to play, the even odder behaviour of the man who called himself Malta in his interrogation of the harmless child, the hate-filled confrontation between Malta and the Catholic priest, and then the catastrophe of the Hall of Mirrors, with all the levers out of my control, the terrible confessions I had heard from the prima donna and a man who had clearly once been her lover and the father of her child, and finally the sight of Malta eavesdropping on them both … It was all too much. In my perplexity I completely forgot that poor Mme de Chagny was still trapped inside the maze of mirrored walls.