Sixteen

LANGTON STRODE THROUGH the falling snow with Forbes Paterson at his side and McBride and three of Paterson’s own detectives behind. All bundled against the cold in heavy coats and gloves, neck scarves reaching almost to their hat brims, just like the few pedestrians that hurried along Huskisson Street in the failing light. None of the policemen spoke. Ahead lay Falkner Square.

Forbes Paterson had told the cabdrivers to halt at Catharine Street, a good half mile from their destination. Langton thought it overcautious but then remembered how the Jar Boys had slipped away so many times before. Now, glancing at Paterson, he saw the set of the inspector’s shoulders, the eyes gleaming hard.

At the junction with Bedford Street, two other plainclothesmen left the shadows of doorways and joined the advancing party without comment. Langton wondered if Doktor Glass had lookouts posted in the area, lookouts that would notice eight stocky men marching toward the square. But the snow helped them here; its gusts and swirls shielded them and made passing pedestrians bow their heads and concentrate on getting home.

Now, through the snow, a sign on a brick wall: Back Sandon Street. Almost there.

Forbes Paterson raised his hand to halt the men. Ahead lay Sandon Street, then the square with its fine, four-story houses. On the opposite bank of Sandon Street, a handful of ragged loafers held out their bare hands to a glowing brazier. Red embers and black smoke against white snow. One of the men left the group, dodged the few hansoms and carts on Sandon Street, and ambled toward the policemen. He’d almost passed them by when he darted into a doorway, followed by Forbes Paterson.

“No one has been in or out of there for the past hour, sir,” the man said. He blew on his chapped hands and shuffled from foot to foot, shivering in his thin jacket. “They had a cart drive up maybe half an hour ago; small fella in a hooded cloak went inside but hasn’t come out again.”

“No other visitors?”

The plainclothesman shook his head. “There’s plenty of life in there, sir. Most of the lights are on, and there’s music from the parlor.”

“Then we have them.” Forbes Paterson smiled at Langton, then told the shivering observer, “You go home and thaw out, Jenkins.”

“Begging your pardon, sir, but I’d like to stick around for the end.”

“Good man.” Paterson looked at each man in his team, then led the way across Sandon Street toward Falkner Square.

Langton wondered how many favors Paterson had called in. “You’ve had men watching the house?”

“For the past two hours. Jenkins out front, Simpson around the back.” Forbes hesitated to allow a coal merchant’s wagon past, then hurried on. “By now, we should have another five men waiting at the back doors and yard. We’ve got Doktor Glass like a rat down a drain. There’s nowhere for him to go.”

“How do you know he’ll be there?”

“The small man in the hooded cloak,” Forbes said. “I think that’s our man. This time we have him.”

Langton hoped he was right.

Falkner Square opened out before them. Indistinct in the gusts of snow, the black exclamation marks of iron railings, skeletal trees. Windows glowed yellow and white in the tall houses. Langton hurried after Paterson, who stopped at the bottom step of a looming redbrick town house. Every window glowed. Subdued piano music drifted from a downstairs room. The black front door looked heavy and solid.

Forbes Paterson stood aside to let through two detectives. The first man took an enormous chisel from his pocket and placed it over the door’s lock. Langton, amazed, saw the second detective produce a sledgehammer from his capacious greatcoat. The men waited, poised.

Paterson checked his watch, put a police whistle to his lips, and gave three short blasts that pierced the cold air.

The first sledgehammer blow sent the chisel through the lock. The second took the door from its hinges. The detectives poured into the hall, pistols in their hands. “Police!”

Langton rushed to the stairs, looking for a way to the basement. All around him, doors slammed open, boots pounded on parquet floors. His heart raced. The Webley in his hand seemed weightless.

Down a few steps, a white door. The handle turned. Langton sensed someone behind him; he turned and nodded to McBride. Then he led the way along a passageway. A bare electric bulb burned overhead. More open doors revealed scullery, kitchen, washroom, larders. Not a living soul.

Down another three steps into a cold brick corridor. The smell of damp earth. At the end, a massive door of oak bound with wide bands of steel. But the padlocks hung open in their hasps. With his Webley raised, Langton inched forward and gripped the iron handle. It took all his strength to haul the door back on its complaining hinges. Its momentum slammed it into the passage’s brick wall.

Darkness. The smell of white flowers and damp. Pressed back against the passage wall, Langton reached into the dark basement room. His hand searched for a light switch. When he found it, pure white light seared the room.

Empty. Every shelf bare save for the round imprints of recently removed jars. White tiles, whitewashed walls, white ceiling. And a multitude of fresh muddy footprints on the tiled floor.

“They knew,” Langton said. “Someone told Doktor Glass to expect us. Just like Redfers.”

McBride said nothing. He stood aside as Forbes Paterson rushed into the room. The inspector froze, like a marionette jerked back on its wires.

Langton slid his Webley into his pocket and said, “The house is empty, isn’t it?”

Forbes Paterson nodded. “Not a soul.”

Langton followed Paterson through the house, through deserted rooms and echoing passageways. In the kitchen, a stew still bubbled on the stove; vegetables lay chopped on the pine table, knives scattered beside them. In the front parlor, an electric gramophone played the same Chopin melody over and over; the music washed over empty chairs, half-drained glasses of whiskey, cigar butts still smoking in ashtrays.

The evidence of hurried flight lay everywhere: clothes half-dragged from wardrobes; bureau drawers tugged open or even upturned on bedroom floors; lamps still burning in rooms where cigarette smoke clung to the ceiling. Every room seemed to wait for occupants who had just slipped out for a moment and would soon return.

“How?” Paterson asked. “How did they escape? My men fore and back swore nobody left the house.”

Langton glanced up. “The attic? Maybe it runs the length of the terrace?”

Paterson rushed through the door and started calling for ladders.

Listless, as if going through the motions, Langton looked around the upper floors. Doktor Glass had spent a great deal of money on the house. Furniture of mahogany and oak. Fine silks and velvets. Persian carpets, tapestries, comfortable beds. And beside each bed, low tables whose wooden surfaces bore the imprint of some heavy, round object. Imprints that the jars from the basement shelves might have made.

Langton could imagine the scene: the “client” lying back on that comfortable bed. The jar of his choice placed on the table beside him. The man’s grubby, thick fingers reaching out for the connectors…

Langton’s hands became fists. Something began to burn inside him and spread through his body until its roaring obliterated everything else. He tried to restrain it, but the house itself seemed to challenge him: every open cupboard and door a laughing mouth, every vacant room a sign of how close he’d been to Doktor Glass. Of how he’d failed.

Had he really expected to find Sarah here? Had he been so naïve? Or so desperate?

He kicked over piles of clothes, yanked drawers from their rails, and hurled the contents onto disheveled beds or floors. The acts of petty destruction felt good, but he wanted more. He wanted to rip the house apart, brick by brick, until nothing remained but its bare skeleton.

McBride watched the increasing mess. “Sir, maybe we should—”

“I’ll find him, Sergeant. There’s a clue here. Something to identify him without question.” Langton tore through handfuls of men’s clothes, searching the pockets before casting them aside.

McBride edged toward the door. “Maybe I should get Inspector Paterson…”

Langton forced open a locked bureau and hauled papers out only to strew them on the floor.

“Langton.” Forbes Paterson stood in the doorway, with McBride peering over his shoulder. “Langton, please. This isn’t the way.”

Langton turned, his mouth already open to argue. He took a deep breath and held it, eyes closed, until the pounding and roaring faded.

“They didn’t use the attic,” Forbes said. “We found no doorways, no hatches. And the snow on the roof is untouched, so they didn’t go over the top.”

Exhausted, Langton forced himself to concentrate. There could be only so many ways to escape this house. He remembered the smells from the lower floors of the house. “The basement.”

He led the way downstairs, glancing at the detectives patiently searching each deserted floor. He stopped at the entrance to the basement, where harsh light gleamed on empty shelves. “Look: muddy footprints on the floor.”

“So?”

“So Doktor Glass and his men carried the contents of the shelves to some other location, some safe house or storeroom.”

“My men saw nothing.”

“Exactly.” Langton stalked the room, trying to follow logically the direction of the prints. They led from shelf to shelf, to the zinc table in the room’s center, and to the walls. Curiously, they didn’t head for the doorway that led upstairs. “The answer lies in this room.”

All three detectives searched the walls for hidden doors. They looked for seams, the narrow border between door and jamb. They found nothing.

“I don’t understand,” Langton said. “It has to be here. There’s no other way.”

With his anger returning, he thought about ripping the shelves from the walls; he even stepped forward and gripped the nearest section. His boots echoed on the tiled floor. He looked down. “Sergeant, bring me the sledgehammer.”

Langton dropped to his knees and rapped the tiles with the butt of his Webley. He fanned out across the floor, listening, with Forbes Paterson silent behind him. The echoes did sound different. There. And there. At the foot of the wall farthest from the door, the tiles gave back a deeper, longer echo.

Langton looked up at Paterson and grabbed the sledgehammer from McBride. As Langton went to raise it, Paterson said, “Wait. If they used some kind of trapdoor, there must be a switch or mechanism.”

“Can you see one in here? We’ve searched every crevice.”

“What about the passageway, sir?” McBride said. “Or the kitchen?”

Langton hesitated. He knew he wanted to use the sledgehammer on the house; he wanted to see those tiles chip and fly. He wanted to destroy. But Paterson and McBride had a point. He set the sledgehammer aside.

They found the recessed lever in the brick-lined passageway. While Langton and McBride stood ready with revolvers drawn, Forbes Paterson reached into the slot beside the massive door. On silent hinges a section of tiled floor rose to reveal a square, dark pit. Dank air rushed out from the shaft and carried the odor of wet earth, brick, and decay. No sounds save the rush of distant water.

Langton looked over the edge of the shaft and saw the head of a ladder. Before Paterson could stop him, he swung over the side and grasped the rusting metal rungs. His right hand still held the Webley, but the darkness gave no target.

Almost by accident, he brushed against the resin switch set next to the ladder. Electric bulbs encased in caged globes flickered to life and showed a circular brick tunnel stretching left and right. The sudden illumination sent fat rats scurrying along the wet floor.

“What do you see?” Paterson called down, his head framed by the square trapdoor above.

“An escape route,” said Langton. “It must stretch right under the square.”

To his left, the tunnel dwindled with distance; the lights, strung up every ten yards or so, showed crumbling brickwork and slimy walls. The sound of distant rushing water came from that direction. To his right, the tunnel curved slightly until it bent out of sight.

“I should have known,” Paterson said, splashing down beside Langton. “Doktor Glass wouldn’t leave himself without a back door.”

“We couldn’t foresee everything,” Langton said. But he wondered if Sapper George knew about these tunnels. If only Langton had realized.

He blamed himself. Doktor Glass was always one step ahead. At least.

“Which way does it lead, sir?” asked McBride.

Paterson looked up and along the tunnel, trying to orientate himself. “Southwest, as far as I can gauge. Toward Toxteth.”

“Come on.” Langton led Paterson and McBride along the cold tunnel, heading right. No sound came from ahead; no draft carried rank odors. Upon turning the bend, Langton saw why: The crumbling brick roof had collapsed, blocking the path.

No, not collapsed. Langton saw thick wooden staves—like coal mine pit-props—among the rubble. Ropes showed where Doktor Glass and his men had pulled the staves from ahead, bringing down the tunnel roof already weakened by age or by their deliberate erosion.

Either way, the tunnel lay blocked.

“I’ll get my men down here with picks and shovels,” Forbes Paterson said. “We’ll soon get this out of the way.”

Langton didn’t comment. He pocketed his revolver and returned to the rusting ladder. His muddied feet made fresh outlines on the basement room’s white tiles. Head bowed, shoulders slumped, he pushed through the busy detectives and sank into a leather chair in the front parlor. He stared ahead.

Doktor Glass had won. Again. He’d outmaneuvered the police as usual, probably with help from informants within the force. How else could he know what to expect?

Langton let his head sink back against the chair. His body’s adrenaline rush had faded, leaving only exhaustion and futility. What was the point? Why not simply admit that they were up against an opponent too intelligent, too cunning, too adept. They might as well try to catch fog in a net.

Without focusing on any one object, Langton let his gaze travel around the parlor. An eclectic mix of furniture and ornaments: on the walls, oil paintings and etchings of Italy, France, the Mediterranean. Indian figurines raised their multiple arms to heaven. The electric gramophone, now silent, stood on a table next to cigar boxes and decanters. In the corner, an upright automatic piano with its scrolled music spewing from the front like a drunk’s shirt bib. And, standing next to the piano, a slender statue in chipped wood. No more than four feet tall, with patches of blue and gold still as bright as the day the Egyptian artisans painted her. Kohl-rimmed eyes and an enigmatic smile.

Langton remembered where he had seen the twin of that statue. The house of Professor Caldwell Chivers.

The Professor: the man who had shown such a keen interest in Langton’s home when he’d visited it, and who had been surprised at Langton having only one servant in “such a large, sheltered house.”

His lethargy gone, Langton jumped from the chair and ran into the hall, almost knocking over McBride.

“Sir? Where are you—”

“Protect Elsie,” Langton said. “She’s in danger.”

“Sir, what do you…”

McBride’s voice faded as Langton ran down the steps and skidded on the pavement outside. He sprinted across Falkner Square, down Sandon Street, and onto busy Upper Parliament Street. Swirling snow clogged his mouth, nose, eyes. He slipped and dodged between huddled pedestrians. As he ran across the main road, his feet went from under him; his hip slammed into the compacted ice and shot jagged pain up his spine. He rolled aside, ignored the cart drivers’ yells, and stumbled toward the mansion.

He could imagine the tunnel beneath his feet, beneath the roadway. A direct link between the Professor and his clients. So convenient. Langton thought of all those jars removed from the Falkner Square address and now standing in the Professor’s rooms. Enough evidence to link him to the trade.

On one level, Langton knew he couldn’t barge into the Professor’s mansion without a magistrate’s warrant. But rage obliterated logic. And rage made him hammer at the front door with the butt of his gun. Even as the door began to open, he pushed past the butler. “Where is he?”

“Sir, you cannot just—” Then the butler saw the gun. “I’ll call the police.”

“I am the police.” Langton didn’t know if he’d shouted the words at the butler; a roaring filled his head like a waterfall pounding rocks.

He ran through the hall, through the drawing room, trying to remember how to get down to the Egyptian room. Frightened maids stumbled out of his way. A footman ran to him, then saw the gun and pulled back. The pounding in Langton’s head grew louder.

There. He remembered that passage. He ran down the descending floor and kicked open the door. Light glinted off trophies of gold and ebony, jet and silver. Impassive sarcophagi stared back at him. The shelved jars waited.

“Caldwell Chivers.”

Langton found another door and a spiral staircase leading down. Then, between two upright coffin slabs, a narrow panel left open an inch or two.

Not stopping to wonder why the panel stood open, Langton thrust it back and smelled that familiar odor of dank earth. Caged lights glowed white. Stone steps led down; Langton followed them with the Webley pointing the way. He knew he was close. Soon it would be over.

Then, at the bottom of the stairs, he sensed a movement behind him. A hand slid from the darkness and closed over his mouth. Another gripped the Webley. Immense hands like shovels, pale white against the black.

Instead of struggling, Langton stepped back and drove his weight into the attacker. He rebounded as if from a brick wall. He jabbed his free left arm into the man’s ribs, pounding the chest with his elbow over and over. No response. Nothing.

The hand over his mouth moved to his throat. Fingers like clammy steel dug into his flesh. Langton struggled to breathe, to force air past the constriction. Panic made him fire the Webley. Two shots ricocheted from the basement walls. Then the attacker threw the gun into the shadows, releasing his second hand to join his first around Langton’s neck.

As the man’s grip tightened, Langton managed to turn. He kicked and punched and butted and scratched. But his attacker, invisible beyond the edge of light, didn’t react. His hands closed around Langton’s throat like a snare around a fox.

Langton’s eyes bulged. His bloated tongue jutted from his mouth. An obscene, wet gurgle erupted from his throat. He heard it as if from very far away.

As the pounding in his head obliterated all sensation and his body slumped in the man’s grip, Langton accepted his own death. He pictured Sarah and tried to fix the image of her face as his last thought. Then, just as Langton’s vision faded, his attacker leaned forward into the light.

Langton’s scream began and ended in his own head. He carried the final image of Reefer Jake’s cold, blank face into unconsciousness.