FIVE
About a mile from the playhouse stood an arena of a different kind, the town’s cattle auction with its adjoining slaughterhouse. Local farmers drove in their herds at one end, and local butchers carried off dressed carcasses from the other. In between stood a yard like a parade ground with a drain across the middle of it, an auction hall with covered pens and a bidding ring, and an abattoir with two killing floors and a cesspool. Few houses were to be found nearby, but a soap works and a tannery took water from the same river and returned their noxious wastes to it after. The river then flowed through the town, foaming at every bend and weir.
James Caspar had walked here alone. The rain had continued to fall, quickly clearing the streets of departing theatergoers and leaving him unobserved. Now it was driving harder, and it glistened on the cobbles as he looked out across the yard. He was under cover. Behind him, several dozen animals moved uneasily in the pens. They read their own mortality in the scent of the air, but did not understand its meaning.
A high brick wall surrounded the yard and buildings. The main gates were open and a single lamp hung from the center of the archway above them. By tilting his pocket watch, Caspar could just about read the time by its light. This was later than he’d intended.
Someone was coming through the gate. Two figures, running. Crouched against the rain, coats flapping; and there, because he’d missed it at first, a smaller figure in between them. The Silent Man was holding out one side of his unbuttoned greatcoat like a bat’s wing, sheltering whoever ran by his side. A few strides back from them came the Mute Woman, his wife, hurrying to keep up.
Caspar flipped down the cover on his pocket watch and drew himself up. It would not do to let his impatience show; but nor would it do to conceal his displeasure. A tricky call.
The Silent Man arrived in front of him. His wife came no farther than she needed to get herself out of the rain. The Silent Man lifted his coat aside to reveal his sheltered companion.
“Well,” said Caspar, “let’s see what we have here.” He came around for a better look in the poor light, and the Silent Man turned with him.
“A boy,” said Caspar.
The Silent Man watched him, dark eyes staring from his skull of a face. He was both apprehensive and submissive. The boy just stood there.
It was impossible to tell his exact age, but he was young. Malnutrition probably made him seem even younger than he really was. He was thin, he was awkward, and he was ragged. His ginger hair had been recently cut as if by a novice shearer, leaving bare patches and scabs. His mouth hung open. Only his eyes seemed alive, and they were wide with terror.
“Oh, well,” Caspar said. “Time’s limited, I suppose. What’s your name?”
Not a flicker in response.
“No name,” said Caspar. “What’s this?” He touched his white-gloved hand to the back of the boy’s head and then inspected the stain on his fingertips. The light here was too poor to be certain of the shade, but it might have been purple.
“Some kind of paint,” Caspar said. “What’s it for? Ringworm?”
Still nothing. Caspar took the boy by the shoulder and started to walk him farther into the building, where candles had been lit. “Someone cares a little for you, then,” he said. The Silent Man and his wife hung back, their part in the entertainment done. Caspar’s grip on the child was firm, not enough to cause him pain, but enough to hold him fast should he try to run.
Caspar said, “How would you like to feel clean for once in your life, boy? How would you like to be cleaner than you’ve ever been before? Because that’s something I can do for you. It’s an art that I’ve practiced. Here.”
Steering with his hand, he made the boy turn. The boy swayed and staggered, going wherever he was directed but without much grace or elegance. A ramp led to the upper floor of the building. It was long and shallow and scattered with dirty straw. Trapdoors linked the two levels of the slaughterhouse and chains hung straight down through them. As they ascended, the candlelight grew brighter.
Caspar’s grip on the boy tightened as they reached the top of the ramp and the open part of the upper floor came into view. Pennies jangled in the boy’s pocket. Caspar made a mental note to have the Silent Man retrieve them afterward.
“See, boy,” he said. “Here’s what I can do for you.”
The boy looked, and for the first time gave some sign of awareness and understanding. He started to whimper. The whimper turned into a scream.
“Now, now,” said Caspar. Down below, the Silent Man and his wife started to beat with sticks on the sides of the cattle pens so that the animals started to shift and low, drowning out any sounds that might come from above.
“Shouting won’t help,” said Caspar. “But I’m sure I can show you something that will.”
SIX
It was a close-run thing but they were on the station concourse by twenty minutes to midnight, leaving just enough time to get their freight loaded into the goods van and their people into the sleeping cars. The railway’s theater man had opened up the goods-yard gates so that the carriages could draw in alongside the platform. The stage crew transferred the flats, properties, and costume hampers with maximum efficiency. The actors fussed and argued and took rather longer.
Whitlock traveled with four heavy cases, a steamer trunk, and a lapdog named Gussie. He was prepared to carry the lapdog, but Sayers had to organize the transfer of his employer’s luggage in the absence of the Silent Man. The actors hung out of the windows and watched.
As Whitlock exercised Gussie on the platform, the railway’s theater man caught up with him. He was a slight man with a mustache, a long brown overcoat, and a bowler hat. “Mister Whitlock?” he said. “Mister Edmund Whitlock?”
“Here,” Whitlock said with his usual conscious grandeur.
“Cooper, sir. Theatrical representative for the Midland Railway. I’m sorry about your missing people, sir, but I can’t hold the train any longer.”
With one hand, Whitlock scooped up Gussie from the platform; the other he held up for silence.
“Don’t say another word, Mister Cooper,” he said. “There is only so much spare capacity in any man’s head, and I reserve all of mine for the classics.”
With that, he swept himself and his dog onto the train leaving Cooper for someone else to deal with. If he thought that Sayers would step into his place, he was wrong. Sayers had already tried his best with the theater man, and at that moment was elsewhere in the station.
Sayers had spotted someone across the platforms. Could it be? It surely was. Leaving the train and the company, he dashed to the iron bridge that crossed the tracks. It took him up close to the roof beams where all the steam and the smoke drifted. “Bram!” he started calling out even before he was safely within earshot. “Bram Stoker!”
The big Irishman on Platform Five turned at the sound of his name. He’d been easy to identify, even at night and at a distance. A man in his early forties, well over six feet tall and solidly built, he was brown-haired and auburn-bearded. He waited with a look of polite uncertainty as Sayers descended to the platform and crossed toward him.
“Forgive me, Bram,” Sayers said, getting his breath under control as he reached his opposite number. In the same way that Sayers was Whitlock’s man, Stoker was Henry Irving’s. Sayers might be hooked up with a modest little touring dog-and-pony show and Stoker with the mighty Lyceum company, but they surely were brothers under the skin.
Or perhaps not. Sayers saw the searching look in the Irishman’s eyes as Stoker gave him a moment of study.
“You do not know me,” Sayers said.
Stoker took one moment longer and then said, “You’re Tom Sayers. The prizefighter. You wrote and played in…”
