apparent that he did not intend to travel back with them. He stayed out on the platform and spoke through the open window.
“I can’t explain it now,” he said to Elisabeth. “I’ll tell you everything when I get home.”
“Sebastian?” she said. “Is this something to do with…”
“No,” he said quickly, “it’s not the Irish brothers. It’s a very old and a very long story.”
Her sister said, “I don’t understand.”
“I saw someone I know, Frances,” Sebastian told her, looking over Elisabeth’s shoulder. “I have to go back and find him.”
“Who was it?” said Elisabeth. “Where?”
“It was someone I knew back in England. Please, just…” He made a helpless gesture, stepping back as the conductor signaled for the trolley’s departure. “I’ll see you at home.”
When he got back to the boxing booth, it was to find that the tent had been emptied and the attraction closed down. A pole across a couple of chairs made a temporary barrier for the entranceway. Sebastian stepped over it and went inside, leaving the life of the midway behind him.
Nobody was within. The bleachers were empty and the ring was down, its ropes lying on the floor. He’d hoped to find someone who might direct him. But instead he spied an exit on the far side of the tent, and made his way over to it.
Beyond the exit was a canvas passageway, a square tunnel linking the big tent to a smaller. Rush matting had been laid down to walk on. At the end of the tunnel, the entrance flap had been tied back. From outside the canvas, Sebastian could hear the sounds of dogs and people in the little private Carnytown behind the midway.
The smaller tent had been set up as some kind of a dressing area or green room. A table had been made out of a plank and two barrels, and a mirror with a frame of faded gilt had been set up on it. Once, perhaps, the mirror had been magnificent. Now it was rescued junk, rubbish with half of its silver gone and pieces of its frame broken away.
Fitting enough for the man who sat before it.
He was on a bentwood chair that, like the mirror, looked as if it had been rescued from a bonfire after a long life in some better place. He sat there in his dirty robe leaning forward over an enamel bowl, folding a damp cloth that he then placed against the swelling and pressed on hard. He’d thrown off the gloves, but his hands were still bandaged for combat.
The woolen mask hung on a corner of the mirror. It, too, looked as if it had been rescued after being thrown around and trampled underfoot. Sebastian could see that his approach had gone unheard.
He cleared his throat and said, “Mister Sayers.”
For a moment he thought that his attempt at self-introduction had passed unheard, as well. But then the figure at the mirror laid down the compress and slowly turned in his chair.
It took a moment for recognition to take hold, and even then there was little change in the man’s expression. Certainly nothing as expressive as surprise. Good God. The last time he’d seen Tom Sayers, the man had been straight-backed and as handsome as they came. This man looked like any beaten old drunk.
“Inspector Becker,” he said, in the same boozed-out voice that had challenged him from the platform.
“Not an inspector anymore,” Sebastian said. “I’m an American now. A Pinkerton man.”
Tom Sayers responded with a polite nod of deference and respect. On such a bruiser, it looked strange. He said, “Congratulations on finding success in your new career.” His tone was still that of an educated man, which seemed strange coming out of the fairground fighter.
Sebastian moved around him, and picked the mask from its corner of the mirror. He’d retained that policeman’s confidence that could give him an air of ownership over any other man’s territory. He held the material delicately between thumb and forefinger, as if it might have the power to infect.
He said, “Speaking of careers. Does this defeat mark the end of yet another of yours?”
The man named Sayers did not exactly shrug, but it was clear that he was not to be provoked. I’ve come too far to be taunted by anything, that face seemed to be saying. I have seen too much.
He said, “Tonight we’ll move on. Tomorrow brings another crowd. I’ll put on the mask and go back in the ring. Who’ll know? No one will care.”
Sebastian threw the rag down before him. “You’re past it, man,” he said. “Have the sense to see it. Keep on like this, and one day you’ll go down and they’ll pick you up dead.”
Sayers reached for the mask. “I expect that, Mister Becker,” he said. “I expect it and I pray for it with all my heart.” He smoothed out the mask, and folded it with care. Then he looked up.
“Why are you here?” he said. “I’ve committed no crime in this country. And whatever you may think that I did back in England, I can assure you that you know far less than half of the story.”
“I’m here for the rest of it,” Sebastian Becker said.
Sayers continued to look at him. Sebastian noted a slight tremor in the fighter’s hands, probably something that Sayers wasn’t even aware of.
Sebastian said, “I’ve waited fifteen years, Sayers. I came to believe you may not have been guilty. Unless you are now going to tell me that I am wrong.”
Sayers looked away. He looked down. He rubbed his bandaged hand through his short cropped hair. Then he breathed out heavily, as if even the thought of the challenge was enough to defeat him.
Sebastian looked around the tent and saw another chair, over by a steamer trunk. It did not match the other. He went to it, picked it up, and brought it over.
Placing it squarely before Sayers, he sat down.
“Well?” he said.
FOUR
It was on an August night in the year of eighteen hundred and eighty-eight that the curtain fell on the week’s final presentation of
The Lyric was a small provincial house, and a packed one. The play, which could stand alone or serve as the second half of a variety bill, was a sentimental barnstormer with a leading role full of old-style rant, cant, and claptrap. Actor-manager Edmund Whitlock had honed his delivery over more than eight hundred performances, all of them in theaters and music halls just like this.
If anything, he’d honed it a little too well. The others in the company could see that he was becoming bored in the role. When “the boss” got bored, his performance might carry on at full volume but his mind would start to wander. He’d bought the play from its author and put money into the set, so he was bound to keep it in repertoire as long as there was a venue somewhere in the British Isles that remained unvisited. But tonight he’d missed a piece of business in the second scene, and the Low Comedian had been forced to cover with a lengthy ad lib. Had any other member of the company made such a mistake, there would have been hell to pay. But Whitlock was the boss, so no one would ever hear it mentioned.
The five supporting actors came in from the wings and took their calls, then moved to the sides ready for Whitlock to take center stage.
He sprang through the curtain and then froze there, as if astonished at this unexpected level of attention; a man of sixty in a tight corset, hair blacked and cheeks rouged, fresh—if fresh can be the word—from playing a hero half his age. But so forgiving was the limelight, and so powerful the spell of theater, that nobody ever seemed to find this remarkable.
He came forward to the footlights, hands clasped together, beaming out at the audience with humility and delight. Their whistling and cheering seemed set to go on forever.
And not without reason. Backstage, Tom Sayers leaned out to get a view from the wings. One hand was raised and ready to give a signal to an assembled choir that included the company’s carpenter, both stagehands, the teenage Call Boy, and the sewing woman. With slapsticks, rattles, and whistles, they were lined up behind the curtain to give the boss’ reception the extra lift that he sometimes felt it needed.
