Wild Boy (9 page)

She looked at Wild Boy and for a moment her eyes softened. He thought he saw something like sadness under that white powder. It was almost as if she didn’t want to do this, didn’t want to be the person she was being. But a second later that person was back, and the ringmaster’s eyes hardened.

“This is murder,” she said. “Only one sentence for that. Jack, get the rope. Sam and Isaac, grab the freak.”

One of the porters threw a rope around a rafter and tied the end in a noose. The others circled the cage, fire torches blazing.

Wild Boy gripped the nail, but his hands shook so hard that it slipped from his fingers. He scrambled back, feeling for the weapon. “Get away!” he warned. “Get away or you’ll all be sorry!”

The porters stepped closer. And then —
whoosh
— a rush of wind extinguished their torches. The stable fell into darkness.

“Who opened the doors?” Mary Everett roared. “Joe? I said no one else comes in!”

“I am sorry,” a voice replied from the dark. “It seems that Joe was remiss in his duties.”

A lantern flickered to life and bobbed closer.

Wild Boy’s heart surged. Had someone come to rescue him? All he could see over the porters’ heads was the gleaming crown of a top hat. He dropped low and glimpsed polished black shoes and the silver tip of a cane prodding the ground. Beyond them, the porter that had guarded the stable door lay unconscious over a bale of straw.

“Who the hell are you?” Mary Everett demanded.

Finally Wild Boy saw the figure — a tall, immaculately dressed man, who leaned on his cane in a way that suggested the stick was more than an accessory to his finely cut coat. As he came closer, a flash of gold shone from under the shadow of his top hat.

Slowly, calmly, the man removed the hat. The lantern light caught his face, and Wild Boy glimpsed a streak of silver and another gleam of gold. The silver was the man’s hair, slicked back and perfectly parted at the side. But the gold . . . It was the man’s eye. He had a golden eyeball.

The metal globe bulged in his thin, angular face as he looked down at the corpse of Professor Wollstonecraft. Wild Boy noticed a ring glint on the man’s finger — it was just like the one the Professor had once worn, inscribed with the letter
G.

The man spoke. His voice was calm and measured. “Gentlemen. You will all leave this place.”

Mary Everett scoffed. “You all stay right where you are,” she ordered.

Wild Boy saw her hand shake, just a little, as she lit another cigar. Very few people made Mary Everett nervous.

“You’re a copper,” the ringmaster said. “You ain’t wanted here. Ain’t that so, fellas? Coppers don’t know nothing about our world.”

Wild Boy could barely believe what happened next. The golden-eyed man laughed — a great booming roar that filled the stable. Still without as much as a glance at Mary Everett, he turned and addressed one of the porters.

“You,” he said, his voice now deadly serious. “Your name is Richard Carson. You are currently on parole from Newgate, where you served three years for burglary.” He turned to the rest of the crew and addressed them in turn. “You are Isaac Solomon, a deserter from the French Foreign Legion. Theodore Lent, you are a part-time fence. Samuel Swales, leader of a notorious gang of grave robbers. And who could forget Mr. Silas Cullen, escaped convict from the prison ship
Defiance.
”

The men were speechless.

The golden-eyed man turned to the ringmaster and plucked the cigar from her mouth. “And you, Mrs. Mary Louise Everett, are the holder of a circus licence that would certainly be revoked were someone to report your employees’ various indiscretions.”

He shoved the cigar back into her mouth. “Now, I wish to speak with the boy.”

Wild Boy was as stunned as the porters. These were rough fairgrounders, but this man spoke to them like they were children.

Several of the men rushed from the stable. The others hesitated, glancing anxiously at Mary Everett.

After a long moment, the ringmaster nodded. “You got five minutes,” she said as she led the remaining porters outside.

The golden-eyed man closed the stable door behind them and slid the bolt. The moment the door sealed, he slammed a hand against the wooden wall. He gripped his cane and grimaced, fighting some terrible agony in his head.

Wild Boy watched, astonished, as the man reached to his false eye and plucked it from his face. He gave the golden globe a shake, and then tipped some sort of liquid from inside onto his coat sleeve. He pressed the sleeve to his nose and inhaled deeply.

His one good eye rolled upward. The other eye’s empty socket glistened in the light from his lantern as he turned and finally looked at Wild Boy. “At last,” he said, “we are alone.”

T
he golden-eyed man came closer, drowning Wild Boy in his shadow. Calmly he slotted his false eyeball back into its socket and shook his head to settle it in place. He smoothed back his silver hair.

“It is very important,” he said, “that you remain calm.”

The last thing Wild Boy felt was calm. Lashing out a leg, he kicked the cage bars. “I dunno who you are but don’t you come no closer!” he warned. “I’m a monster! Ain’t you heard? It was me what done the Professor, and I’ll do you too if you come any closer!”

A slight smile flashed across the man’s tight face. “No,” he said. “You will not. Because you are lying.”

“I . . . Eh?”

“I heard what you told the ringmaster about these marks in the mud, and the noise of the horses. It was . . .
unexpected.
You have quite the gift of observation. I wonder whether you could actually have convinced those men of your innocence had you not been so busy being angry.”

Wild Boy’s shoulders pressed against the cold cage bars. “Who the hell are you?”

“A man has been killed. I rode here as soon as I heard.”

“Rode? You came by steamboat.”

Again that flicker of a smile. “Interesting,” the man said. “Did you observe the patch of soot on my sleeve from the ship’s funnel? Or the ticket stub there in my pocket?”

Wild Boy had seen both, as well as several other clues about the man. He could tell that he had recently become a bachelor after several years of marriage, and that he had lived in India but currently resided in London, somewhere near the river. He knew he had a pistol inside his coat, a knife in his shoe, and he was fairly sure there was a sword concealed inside his walking cane. But none of that told him who this person was.

He said nothing.

“Very well,” the man said. “Then I shall tell you what
I
know.” He brought out a slim black notebook from his coat and withdrew from it a crumpled sheet of paper. “You recognize this letter?” he asked.

Wild Boy shook his head, but he
did
recognize it. It was the warning letter he’d left in the Professor’s van.

“This letter was composed by a colleague of mine,” the man said. “He was relieved of it at this fair last night by a pair of thieves. When he informed me of this, he made a reference to a hand covered in hair, which seemed strange at the time.”

“I ain’t no thief. And I ain’t never seen that letter.”

“Look closer,” the man said, and he tossed the letter into the cage.

Wild Boy snatched it up and stuffed it in his pocket. If he somehow got out of here, that letter could help prove his innocence.

He looked up, spotting something move along one of the stable rafters. At first he thought it was a cat. Then he saw a flash of red hair.

Clarissa crouched high on the narrow rafter, silhouetted against the glare of the man’s lantern. She was watching.

“You are lying to me,” the man said. “Let me tell you the truth. You stole that letter and you established to whom it was addressed. The burn marks, perhaps, provided the telling clue. You decided to deliver the message to Professor Wollstonecraft. It does, after all, warn of a threat upon his life. But you were too late.”

He turned so that light from his lantern fell over the Professor’s body. “You saw poor Henry die.”

Wild Boy felt cold at the memory. He looked up, but Clarissa was gone. “I . . . I dunno what you’re talking about,” he said.

“Then let me enlighten you.”

The man turned a page of his notebook and held it open. “Look at this.”

There was a drawing in the book, similar to the sketch that Wild Boy had seen in the Professor’s caravan. He edged fractionally forward, scared but curious. It was a diagram of the same scientific device — wheels and pipes and interconnecting cogs, all sickeningly connected to human heads.

“What is that?” he said.

The stable door shuddered as the porters pounded against it outside. “Your five minutes is up,” Mary Everett called. “Open this door!”

The golden-eyed man tapped the drawing in his book. For the first time, a note of urgency crept into his voice. “There was a similar drawing hidden in the Professor’s caravan. Now there is not. It is imperative that I find out who stole it.”

Wild Boy’s mind raced. The hooded man must have taken the drawing. That was why he’d dumped the body here in the stables, so he could search the Professor’s van without being seen.

The porters banged harder on the stable door. Wild Boy had to take a chance.

“All right, listen,” he said. “I did see the drawing. It was in the Professor’s van. I was only there to leave that letter, not to steal nothing. That was when I saw the killer, the hooded man.”

The man’s jaw tightened. A silver hair fell in front of his false eye and he slicked it back. “The hooded man?”

“That’s who killed the Professor. He must’ve taken that drawing an’ all.”

“Who was he?”

“You think I’d be here if I knew that? I didn’t see his face, nor nothing else of the bloke. He walked funny, like he was hurt. And he wore a mask, like them ones what —”

“Did he speak?”

“I . . . Yeah, yeah, he spoke.”

“What did he say?”

“I dunno. . . . Something about some machine.”

The hair slipped again over the man’s eyes but this time he let it hang. He looked back to Professor Wollstonecraft’s corpse. “Then it is true,” he said.

“What’s true?” Wild Boy said. “Only thing that’s true is I’m about to get hung. I told you what I know, so get me out of here.”

The man tucked his notebook away and brought out a slim leather pouch that was folded shut like an envelope. “It is imperative,” he said, “that I identify this hooded man.”

“I told you everything I know.”

“No. You told me everything you
think
you know.”

The man opened the pouch. Something glinted inside. A syringe.

“What’s that?” Wild Boy said. “What the hell’s that for?”

“You are afraid,” the man said. “You are not thinking clearly. I suspect you saw more than you remember.”

The syringe’s bronze tip reflected in his golden eye, and pale liquid dripped from the needle point. “This drug will
make
you remember.”

If Wild Boy hadn’t been so scared he might have laughed. There was no way he was letting anyone stick him with a needle. He scrambled back, kicking again at the bars. “Get back! Don’t you touch me with that thing!”

“It will be less painful if it enters your arm,” the man said. “But it does not have to.”

Another thump shook the stable doors. “Give us the boy!” one of the porters yelled. “Showman’s Law for him!”

Wild Boy turned in the cage, searching desperately for the floorboard nail he’d dropped. He saw it on the straw outside the cage, but it was too far to reach. Only one other plan came to mind.

Shifting around, he slid his coat down to offer the man a hairy, trembling shoulder. “All right,” he said. “Use your needle. But stick it in my arm like you said.”

The golden-eyed man hesitated, suspicious. But he wasn’t missing his chance. Holding the syringe steady, he leaned closer. “I am afraid,” he said, “that this will hurt.”

Wild Boy braced, waiting. He had to time this just right. . . .

Now!

He slammed his palm into the loose end of the floorboard. The other end shot up through the bars and caught the man hard on the chin. The man’s golden eyeball fell from his face as he toppled back and collapsed to the floor.

Again the porters banged the doors. The rafters shook. The horses stamped and reared in their stalls.

Wild Boy lay flat in the cage and reached for the nail. If he could grab it, maybe he could pick the lock to the cage. His fingers were tantalizingly close, but it was just beyond his grasp. “Come on,” he begged. “Please . . .”

And then —
thump
— two feet landed on the straw beside the nail.

Clarissa!

Beneath a long, dark coat, the red and gold sequins of her circus costume shimmered in the lamplight. She looked at Wild Boy, and her tongue flicked nervously across her broken tooth. “I heard what you said about the hooded man,” she said. “You didn’t snitch on me to my mother. You could’ve, but you didn’t.”

Wild Boy gripped the bars, his heart surging with fresh hope. “Yeah, so now you’re gonna get me out of here.”

Clarissa looked at the stable door, heard her mother order the porters to smash it down. She touched the bruise on her face, scared, unsure.