The Ruby in the Smoke (14 page)

He seemed to be on the point of saying something else,

too. Two or three times he began, and then broke off, shaking his head and saying it would keep. Finally she said, '']\n\^ what is it.^ Have you found something out? For heaven's sake, tell me!"

But he wouldn't. "It'll keep," he said. "No harm in waiting."

And that was all he'd say.

That weekend, the first artistic and dramatic stereographs were taken. Taking a stereograph was much easier than Sally had imagined. A stereo camera was just like an ordinary one, except that it had two lenses as far apart as a person's eyes, each taking a separate image. When the two images were printed side by side and viewed through a stereoscope, which was only a device with two lenses set at a certain angle to blend the images into one, the viewer saw a picture in three dimensions. The effect was almost magical.

Frederick set up some comic pictures first, to sell separately. One was called "A Horrid Discovery in the Kitchen," and featured Rosa as a fainting wife, with Trembler as her shocked husband. They were reacting to what Sally, as a kitchenmaid, was showing them: a cupboard from which were crawling a dozen black beetles, each the size of a goose. Adelaide had cut the beetles from brown paper and inked them black. Trembler wanted a photograph of Adelaide, too, so they dressed him up, sat her on his knee, and took a picture to illustrate a sentimental song. "Very fetching," said Frederick.

And so their weekend passed.

Elsewhere in London, things were not so peaceful. Mr. Berry, for instance, was having a rough time. Mrs.

Holland made him clear up the mess that had been made of the hall, and repair the broken banisters, and when he ventured to complain, she let him know what she thought of him.

"A big strong man like you," she said, "to let yourself be knocked about by a little whippersnapper like him? And him half-sodden with opium too! My word, I'd hate to see you tackle anything fierce, like a cockroach."

"Oh, give over, Mrs. Holland," moaned the big man nervously, nailing a batten across a broken door. "He must have bin a perfessional. It's no disgrace to be beat scientific. He's fought with the best, that one."

"Well, now he's fought with the worst. Even little Adelaide would've put up more of a scrap. Ooh, Mr. Berry, you got a lot to make up for, you have. Get on and finish that door. There's a pile o' potatoes to peel out the back."

Mr. Berry muttered to himself, but quietly. He had not dared tell her about what he had allowed to happen in the kitchen. As far as she knew, Adelaide had just vanished; but the sudden appearance of the photographer from Swaleness had reminded her of Sally again. So she had an interest in Bed well, too, had she? And then there was what Mrs. Holland took to be Sally's cunning in substituting a piece of nonsense for the plain instructions to where the ruby was hidden. Sally had the ruby now—she must have. Well, Mrs. Holland would find her. And where she was, there would be the photographer, and Bedwell, and a fortune.

Her discontent mounted, and so did the tasks she piled on Mr. Berry. His weekend became distinctly uncomfortable.

But perhaps the most uneasy man in London that weekend was Samuel Selby. Having parted with fifty pounds, and having received in exchange Mrs. Holland's promise that she would be back soon to do further business, he was mortified too.

Accordingly, he growled at his wife and daughter, snapped at the servants, kicked the cat, and retired early on Saturday evening to the billiard room at Laburnum Lodge, his house in Dalston. There he donned a crimson velvet smoking jacket, poured himself a large glass of brandy, and potted a few balls while he tried to work out how to thwart his blackmailer.

But try as he would, he couldn't work out how she had come by her knowledge.

Nor could he guess how much she knew. The loss of the Lavinia, and the fraudulent insurance claim, were bad enough; but the other business, the center of it all, the business Lockhart had been on the point of discovering— she hadn't mentioned that.

Could it be that she didn't know?

Fifty pounds was a paltry sum, after all, compared to the amounts that were involved . . .

Or was she saving it up for another visit?

Or was her informant keeping it back for some purpose of his own?

Devil take it!

He plunged the cue at a white ball, missed, ripped the cloth, and broke the cue savagely over his knee before flinging himself into an armchair.

The girl—Lockhart's daughter—did she have anything to do with it?

Impossible to say.

The office boy? The porter? No, absurd. The only man in the office who knew about it was Higgs, and Higgs—

Higgs had died. While the Lockhart girl was speaking to him. Died of fright, according to the chief clerk, who'd overheard the doctor. She must have said something to startle Higgs, something her father had passed on to her; and Higgs, instead of bluffing it out, had chosen to die.

Mr. Selby snorted with contempt. But it was an interesting speculation; and maybe, after all, Mrs. Holland was not his main enemy.

Maybe he would do better to enlist her than to fight her. Repellent as she was, she had a certain style, and Mr. Selby knew a tough chicken when he saw one.

Yes! The more he thought about it, the more he liked it. He rubbed his hands together and bit off the end of a Cuban cigar, and then donned a tasseled smoking cap to keep the smell of the tobacco from his hair, before lighting the cigar and settling back to compose another letter to Mrs. Holland.

There was one person whose weekend went according to plan—according to the plans of the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company, no less. This was a certain passenger on board the Drummond Castle^ from Hankow—a physically striking man, big, blond, and sunburned, but with Chinese eyes. It had been rough in the Bay of Biscay, but he had not suffered. Oblivious to every discomfort, he'd made his way with a sailor's tread all over the ship, casting expert glances at the sails and the rigging; and when there was no new nautical activity to look at, he'd sat wrapped up on the boat deck, in the place he'd made his own since Singapore, reading Thomas

De Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium-Eater.

The cold wind and the drizzle concerned him not a bit. In fact, as the air became chillier and the sky grayer, the passenger's spirits seemed to rise. He ate and drank the more heartily as the ship plunged the more sickeningly in the Channel swell, and puffed constantly at a series of pungent black cheroots. On Sunday evening the vessel rounded the North Foreland and began the final stretch of her journey into the Thames estuary. She moved slowly in these congested waters, and as the day faded, the passenger moved to the rail and gazed with close attention at the lights of the Kent coast to the left, steady and soft and warm; at the ghostly, creaming foam thrown up by the bows of the ship; and at the myriad of winking lights from buoys and lighthouses that guided innocent travelers like himself through the shoals and hazards of the sea.

And as this thought struck him, the passenger suddenly laughed.

Lights Below the Water

The office in cheapside had the decorators in. Buckets of whitewash and distemper stood in the hall, and brushes and ladders obstructed the corridors. The place was on the point of closing on Monday evening when the porter rang for Jim.

"What d'yer want?" Jim demanded, and noticed a messenger boy standing by the porter's fire. Jim eyed him disfavorably, paying particular attention to his pillbox hat.

"Letter for Mr. Selby," said the porter. "Take it up, and look smart."

"What's he waiting for?" said Jim, indicating the messenger boy. "Waiting for his master, with the barrel organ, is he?"

"None o' your business," said the messenger boy.

"That's right," said the porter. "This is a smart lad, this one. He'll go a long way."

"Well, why don't he start now?"

" 'Cause he's waiting for an answer, that's why."

The messenger boy smirked, and Jim left, scowling.

"He wants an answer, Mr. Selby," he said in the front office. "He's waiting down there now."

137

"Is he," said Mr. Selby, ripping open the envelope. His cheeks were highly colored today, and his eyes were bloodshot; Jim observed this with interest, wondering whether Mr. Selby was likely to expire from apoplexy. Then, as he watched, the phenomenon altered, and Mr. Selby's countenance suffered a sea change: the high tide of his color went out all at once, leaving a gray-white expanse fringed with ginger whiskers. Their owner sat down suddenly.

"Here," he said in a hoarse voice. "Who's downstairs? The man himself?"

"A messenger boy, Mr. Selby."

"Oh. Here—nip over to that window smartish and have a look outside."

Jim did so. The street was dark, and the lights in the office windows and on the front of the carriages and omnibuses shone warmly in the gloom.

"Can you see a feller—cleanshaven—fair hair—sunburned complexion—stoutish? A Chinese kind of look about him?"

"There's hundreds of people about, Mr. Selby. What might he be wearing?"

"I don't know what he'd be bloody wearing, boy! Is there anyone standing about, waiting?"

"No one like that."

"Hmm. Well, I better write an answer, I suppose."

He hastily scribbled something and thrust it into an envelope.

"Give this to him," he said.

"Ain't you going to write the address, Mr. Selby?"

"What for? The boy knows where to take it."

"In case he drops down dead in the street. He's a

sickly-looking blighter. I shouldn't be surprised if he was to sling his hook before the week's out—"

"Oh, get out of it!"

Thus prevented from discovering the name of the man who was making Mr. Selby so anxious, Jim tried another tack with the messenger boy.

"Here," he said ingratiatingly. "I wonder as if you'd have any use for this? You're welcome to it if you'd like it."

He held out a tattered copy of The Skeleton Crew, or Wildfire Ned. The messenger boy cast a cold eye on it and took it without a word, tucking it into his inside pocket.

"Where's the answer what I was waiting for?" he said.

"Oh, yes, how silly of me," said Jim. "Here it is. Only Mr. Selby's forgot to write the gentleman's name on the envelope. I'll do it for yer, if yer just tell me what it is," he offered, dipping a pen in the porter's inkwell.

"Get stuffed," said the messenger boy. "Give it here. I knows where to take it."

"Well, o' course you do," said Jim, handing it over. "I only thought as it'd be more businesslike."

"Bollocks to that," said the messenger boy, and left the fireside. Jim was opening the door for him; there seemed to be some obstruction in the way, and he bent to clear it. The porter was complimenting the messenger boy on his smart uniform.

"Yes, well, there's an art in wearing clothes, I always say," said the visitor. "You keep yerself smart, and you'll get on."

"Yus, there's a lot in that," said the porter. "You lis-tenin', Jim? Here's a young lad with an 'ead on his shoulders."

"Yes, Mr. Buxton," said Jim respectfully. "I shall remember that. Here—I'll show you out."

With a friendly hand on the boy's back, Jim opened the door and showed him into the street. The messenger boy stalked off without a word, but before he had gone five yards, Jim called out:

*'Here! Ain't you forgotten something?"

"What?" said the boy, turning.

"This," said Jim, and released a pellet heavily charged with ink from his India rubber band. It hit the messenger boy right between the eyes, splashing its load all over his nose and cheeks and forehead and making him howl with rage. Jim stood on the step shaking his head.

The messenger boy ground his teeth and clenched his fists, but the sight of Jim's bright eyes and tense form, balanced and waiting for him, made him consider that dignity was the better part of vengeance; and he turned and walked away without a word. Jim watched with great satisfaction as the smart maroon jacket, with its newly imprinted handprint in sticky whitewash, disappeared into the crowd.

"The Warwick Hotel," said Jim to Sally two hours later. "He had it on his hat, silly bugger. And on all his buttons. I wouldn't half like to see what happens when he goes in the hotel with ink and whitewash all over him. Here, Adelaide," he went on. "I been down Wapping."

"Did yer see Mrs. Holland?" said the child.

"Just once. She's got that big bloke with her, and he's doing all your chores. Here! This is a good un!"

They were in the kitchen at Burton Street, and he was looking at the freshly printed stereographs.

"Which one's that?" said Sally, interested to see which one found most favor.

"These bloody great beetles. That's a laugh, that is. You oughter do murders. You oughter do Sweeney Todd—or the Red Barn."

"We will," said Sally.

"Or Spring-Heeled Jack flying through the air."

"Who.^" said Frederick.

"Here," said Jim, offering a copy of Boys of England. Frederick put his feet on the coal scuttle and settled back comfortably to read it.

"But what about your bloke upstairs?" Jim went on. "How's he doing?"

"He's hardly spoken," said Sally.

"What's the matter with him? Is he frightened o' something? You'd think he was safe enough here."

"Perhaps he just needs to recover from the opium. Or perhaps we ought to give him some more," said Sally, who was very conscious of the little brown ball of resin in the kitchen cupboard. For her Nightmare was imprisoned in it like a genie in a lamp, and needed only the application of a match for its release. "What do you think the man in the Warwick Hotel wants?" she said, to change the subject.

"Old Selby's dead jumpy these days. I thought he was going to keel over when he read the letter this afternoon. He's double-crossing 'em, and they've twigged it; that's all it is."

"What can they be doing, though? Frederick, what can a firm of shipping agents do that breaks the law? What crimes can they commit?"

"Smuggling," he said. "How's that?"