Things Half in Shadow (7 page)

That same accomplice, I figured, had made Mrs. Rowland's gloves float in the air after she unclasped hands with her husband and both of them attached very thin wires to the gloves. The wires were affixed to two wooden sticks, which the accomplice used to manipulate the gloves like a puppeteer.

“As for the table's movements,” I said, “I have a feeling that if I examine the base of the table, I'll see a mechanical device that allows you to raise and lower it using only your feet.”

Mrs. Collins had started to look queasy by then, yet she refused to admit defeat.

“Are you quite finished?” she asked. “Because I would like you out of my house, sir. Immediately.”

“So, that's it?” I replied. “No rebuttal? No words in your defense?”

Mrs. Collins folded her arms across her chest and glared at me. “I feel no need to defend myself. In fact, it is you, sir, who should be accused of dishonesty. You came here as a skeptic and intend to leave that way, despite what you witnessed tonight.”

“My dear Mrs. Collins, the only thing I witnessed is a swindler who took a great deal of money out of the hands of unsuspecting people.”

“A swindler, am I? Allow me to share with you the many flaws in this grand accusation of yours. Take that poor, grieving mother who lost her son. If I was listening to you in the parlor—and I most certainly wasn't—how could I possibly know about Stephen, who died during the war?”

She was correct in that regard. While the rest of us were chatting in the parlor, the woman didn't speak a word. Still, it wasn't difficult for me to figure it out.

“She mentioned her son to her husband this afternoon on the corner of Chestnut and Eighth,” I said. “I heard them talking about
him and assumed, like you, that a son of parents their age was struck down in battle. I'm certain the boy you hired to hand out your leaflets heard them as well. I'm also certain that same boy is around here somewhere.”

I approached the cabinet where the spirit had manifested itself. Up close and in better lighting, it looked far less exotic—more amateurish than ornate. The symbols had been haphazardly notched into the wood, most certainly by an inexperienced hand. The carved faces were nothing more than clay figures pasted onto the cabinet's corners and painted brown.

“I will ask you for the final time to leave my house, Mr. Green,” Mrs. Collins said.

“
This
was your finest illusion, by the way,” I replied. “Quite convincing.”

Standing at the open cabinet door, I clearly saw the large pane of glass that had been placed diagonally inside it. I rapped on the glass to indicate to Mrs. Collins that I knew it was there.

“The Pepper's ghost illusion,” I said. “Works every time.”

Poking my head into the cabinet, I looked to my left, where a small nook sat just out of view from anyone in the main séance room. The nook had been draped with black cloth. In its center, sitting on a stool also painted black, was a figure cobbled together out of wood, leather, cloth, and parts of a model skeleton most likely stolen from a local hospital. All of it had been painted a silvery blue, which appeared white when reflected on the pane of glass. Behind it was a lantern, turned on when it was time for the “spirit” to appear.

A boy dressed from head to toe in black huddled beside the figure, his face darkened with charcoal. I recognized his eyes as he glared back at me. It was indeed the boy from the street corner.

“You can come out now,” I told him. “Your act has been discovered.”

“Come on out, Thomas,” Mrs. Collins called to the boy. “It's all right.”

The boy burst from the cabinet, head lowered. He rammed his skull into my stomach so hard that I stumbled backward. All the breath stored in my lungs escaped in one rough grunt. The boy, meanwhile, began to pummel me from every direction. While beating me about the head and shoulders, he yelled a torrent of profanity no child his age should even know, let alone utter.

“No-good devil! Dagnabbed whore stuffer! Goddamned cock biter!”

The boy ceased his attack only after Mrs. Collins forcibly pried him off me. Even then he still threw punches, his tiny fists slicing the air.

“I knew he was trouble!” he shouted. “Knew it as soon as I laid eyes on the son of a bitch!”

Mrs. Collins held him tight against her side. While it appeared that she was comforting him, I believed her grip was mostly to keep him from lunging at me again. “Hush, Thomas. Everything will be fine. You go on up to bed.”

Young Thomas glared at me. “I'm not leaving you alone with that filthy, rotten heap of shit. Leave him alone with me and I'll kick him clean to hell, I will!”

“I have half a mind to do that myself.” Mrs. Collins, too, shot a withering look my way. “But don't worry about a thing. I can handle Mr. Green on my own.”

She released the boy, who immediately ran toward me and kicked me in the shin.

“Ow!” I yelled as pain shot up my leg.

“Next time I'll be aiming for your balls,” the boy warned. “If you've got any, that is.”

With that, he exited the room with an impish strut, leaving me to stumble to the nearest chair and collapse into it.

“Forgive my brother,” Mrs. Collins said. “He has a bit of a temper. I told him he needs to learn how to control it.”

“He needs to be caged,” I said as I rubbed my throbbing leg. There was going to be a bruise there in the morning. I just knew it.

“He's only trying to protect me. But, as I said, I can take care of myself. So let's be quick about this. How much would you like?”

“How much would I like of what?”

“Money, of course,” Mrs. Collins said. “How much will it take for you to keep quiet about this? I can give you one hundred dollars right now if you agree to walk away and not tell a soul what happened here tonight.”

There were a great many people in this city who would have agreed to that offer in an instant. It was an astounding amount for anyone. But, as I had told Mr. Willoughby at lunch, my inheritance provided me with all the money I needed.

“I'm not looking for a bribe,” I said. “For that matter, I'm also not Mr. Green. My real name is Edward Clark, and I'm a reporter for the
Evening Bulletin
.”

Mrs. Collins seemed to crumple at the mention of the newspaper. She staggered backward a moment, fumbling for a chair. Upon finding one, she plopped into it, arms dangling, the once-voluminous skirt of her dress stretched flat across her lap.

“A reporter,” she said. “I suppose you intend to write about this? An exposé detailing the tricks employed by the city's mediums?”

“That's exactly my plan.”

“Then I'll make it two hundred dollars.”

“Keep your money.”

“Three hundred,” Mrs. Collins quickly added. “That's the highest I can go.”

I'm sure I looked as bug-eyed as a housefly on an apple dumpling. “Do you really have three hundred dollars that you can part with at the snap of a finger?”

“What I do pays very well, Mr. Clark.”

“Clearly,” I said. “But don't you feel the least bit guilty? You're taking money from people—huge sums of it, I might add—and offering them nothing but illusions in return.”

“I offer them comfort, Mr. Clark. These
illusions
that you seem to know so much about are only a means to that end.”

“But you're using tricks to make people believe things that aren't real.”

“I'm doing no such thing,” Mrs. Collins said. “They believe these things because they
want
to believe them. People come to me out of desperation. They're grieving and lonely and have lost someone very dear to them. Take Mr. Spencer, for example. Or that poor woman who lost her son. All they wanted was the comfort of knowing their loved ones are in a better place. I could have been honest and told them I haven't a clue what happened to his wife or her son.”

“That would have been the decent thing to do,” I said bitterly.

“Then they would have gone to another medium and paid more or less the same amount for similar results.”

“So you decide to exploit their grief yourself and make a tidy profit in the process.”

“Yes,” Mrs. Collins replied. “If that's what I must do to support my brother and myself, then yes, I'll do it.”

“And what of Mr. Collins?”

“He's long dead,” she said. “The sole thing he left me is that wretched portrait hanging in the parlor. Trust me, I was all too happy to drill that spy hole through his heart.”

“Surely there's a better way to make a living.”

“By all means, Mr. Clark, educate me,” Mrs. Collins shot back, fire in her eyes. “Tell me how a woman with no husband and no means is supposed to support herself. Servitude? Begging on the streets? Or perhaps you would prefer that I whore myself?”

“A whore, at the very least, has some honesty about what she does.”

I stood, unable to spend another minute in her company. My blood was practically boiling as I stormed out of the séance room and into the parlor. Mrs. Collins followed, not content to let me have the last word.

“Wait just a minute, Mr. Clark!” she called out.

But I refused to stop, grabbing my coat and top hat from the rack in the parlor without even slowing. I was unwilling to hear what she had to say, and afraid of what my response might be. Mrs. Collins seemed to bring out the worst in me.

“I will not discuss this any further,” I snapped. “You can expect my report of this evening's activities to appear in the
Bulletin
within the week. Hopefully, that will give you enough time to pack your things and move on to another, more gullible location.”

I was outside now, standing on the stoop just beyond the front door. Behind me, Mrs. Collins rushed through the parlor to stop me.

“Five hundred dollars,” she said breathlessly. “That's my final offer. Please take it, Mr. Clark, and we can end this nonsense right now.”

I turned slowly, smiling at her as I placed my hat atop my head. “Mrs. Collins, all the spirits in the world couldn't convince me to take your filthy money. Besides, you'll be needing it. I hear being chased out of town by a horde of angry customers can get quite expensive.”

Mrs. Collins gave me a look of pure hatred as she slammed the door in my face. The resulting breeze was so strong that my hat flew off my head, tumbled down the walk, and plopped into the muddy street.

T
hat night, I dreamt of ghosts.

Not the random, faceless ghosts of your average nightmare, but men I once knew. Close friends who perished in battle, looking the way I had last seen them. There was Davies, one arm missing, his shoulder nothing more than shards of bone and shreds of sinew. And Cole, shriveled to a walking skeleton by hunger and disease. And Duncan, the gunshot wound to his throat gaping like a second mouth. They and dozens more spent the night stomping through my bedroom like some endless phantasmagoria. Some were oblivious to my presence, merely shuffling out of one wall and disappearing into another. But others stared as they passed, contemplating me with dead eyes, jealous that I, through some whim of fate, managed to survive when they did not.

I was grateful when dawn arrived, for the sunlight streaming through the windows prevented me from having to close my eyes again and risk seeing more disturbing visions. Even though it was early, I crawled from my bed and prepared my own bath. This was usually a task for Lionel, who woke before I did. But, since it was Saturday, he slept an hour later, for that was my habit as well. On that morning, I didn't mind doing it myself. The work, coupled with the early morning chill, woke me further and helped chase away the memories of my horrible dreams.

After bathing and dressing, I headed downstairs, not exactly an easy task. Sometimes, usually early in the morning or after a late night out, it seemed like my house consisted of nothing but stairs. I understood why Violet wouldn't even consider living there when we got married. It was not a home for the faint of heart or those leery of heights.

The house was a tall and narrow affair planted in the center of
Locust Street, directly opposite the southern edge of Rittenhouse Square. Four stories high and only slightly wider than a pair of railroad cars, it had a wobbliness to it that brought to mind a too-high stack of books that could topple at any moment.

Still, I loved it like no other place. The dining room and parlor on the first floor were cramped and cozy. The same could be said of the second level, which housed my study, a guest bedroom, and a sitting room used only by intimate acquaintances. The fourth floor was the butler's quarters and attic space—places I rarely ventured. But the third story was mine alone. My bedroom and bath were there, as was another sitting room that contained a single chair reserved for yours truly. The windows of my bedroom overlooked the square, and during the summer, the trees there seemed to stretch across the street, making it feel like I was sleeping among their branches.