the street. His knees gave way, his groin ached like a stab wound, and he staggered forward on the edge of collapse but he kept going against the pull of gravity itself. He had no doubt about it; the dairyhouse was going up, and so then were the last of his meager belongings.
But as he got onto Grigsby’s property from Queen Street he saw it was not his miniature mansion aflame. The smoke and a flurry of ashes were rising from well behind the dairyhouse. Matthew walked-or rather, limped- toward the conflagration, his heart pounding, and saw the printmaster and his daughter engaged in tending a bonfire, each of them armed with rakes to herd off errant flames in the grass.
“What is this?” Matthew asked as he neared Grigsby, and he noted that when Berry turned around she glanced first at his sallow face and then quickly at his crotch as if she knew where it had spent the night.
“Matthew, there you are!” Grigsby grinned, his face puffed by the heat. Ashes clung to his little tuft of hair and a black streak lay across his nose. “Where’ve you been?”
“Just away for the night,” he answered, as Berry turned her back on him and raked dead a crawling fist of fire. Ashes billowed from the flames and blew around them like gray snow.
“What are you burning?”
“Garbage,” Grigsby said, with a twitch of his eyebrows. “On your command, sir.”
“My command?”
“But of course. Anything to please the master of the house.”
“Master of the-” Matthew stopped, for he’d peered into the flames and saw in that red hotpot a melded mass of shapes that might have once been a pile of old buckets, boxes, implements, and unknown items shrouded with blazing canvas. He caught sight of a well-punctured and smouldering archery target an instant before its straw- stuffed interior ignited and then exploded into a small inferno.
His first impulse was to grab Grigsby’s rake and attack the fire; his second was to pick up the bucket of water he saw on the ground nearby and try to save what he knew to be hidden within the target, but the burlap was nothing but blaze now and it was too late, much too late. “What have you done?” he heard his own voice cry out, with such anguish that both Grigsbys looked at him as if he’d caught flame himself.
The printmaster’s spectacles had slid down to the end of his sweating nose. He pushed them back up, the better to see Matthew’s horror-struck face. “I’ve done what you asked!” he said. “I’ve cleaned the dairyhouse out for you!”
“And set everything on fire?” He’d almost screamed the last word. “Are you mad?”
“Well, what else was I to do with all that junk? I mean, the press parts and tins of ink I kept, of course, but everything else had to go. My lord, Matthew, you look ill!”
Matthew had staggered back from the heat and almost gone down on his rear, but if he busted another nut he’d have to be put in a wheelbarrow and carted to the public hospital on King Street.
“Matthew!” Berry was coming toward him, her red curls in wild disarray and black smears of ash on her chin and forehead. The deep blue eyes saw much. “What is it?”
“Gone,” was all he could say.
“Gone? What’s gone?”
“It was in there. The target. Inside there, where I hid it.” He realized he was babbling like a brook, but he was unable to make sense. “I hid it, right in there.”
“I think he’s drunk!” Grigsby said, raking away a piece of blazing burlap that had escaped the furies.
“Very important,” Matthew rambled on. He felt as if he were again under the effects of Chapel’s drug, his vision blurring in and out of focus. “Very important I keep it, and now it’s gone.”
“Keep what?” Grigsby asked. “Aren’t you pleased I did this for you?”
Berry put aside her rake and took Matthew’s hand. “Settle down,” she said, in a voice like a firm slap to the jaw. He blinked and stared at her, his mouth half-open and the taste of ashes on his tongue. Berry said, “Come with me,” and pulled him gently toward the printmaster’s house.
“Everything’s cleaned up for you!” Grigsby called after them. “I got a rug for you and a new desk! Oh, and the locksmith came this morning! Your old lock was sprung!”
In the kitchen, Berry guided Matthew into a chair at the table and poured him a cup of water. He looked at it for a few seconds, uncomprehending, until she put the cup into his hand and waited for him to press his fingers around it. “Drink it,” she said, and he obeyed like a pole-axed dullard.
“What’s this about?” she asked, when he’d put the cup down.
He shook his head, unable to speak it. What might have been a vital part of this puzzle, now turned to ashes and smoke. Not knowing what secret the Masker meant him to discover was too much to bear. He realized Berry was no longer in the room with him. He sat stupidly looking at the watercup as he heard her footsteps approaching across the boards.
She stopped just behind him. Suddenly, with a small sharp smack, was laid on the table before him an object risen from death by fire.
“I helped Grandda move the junk yesterday,” she said. “I needed some more straw for my mattress. That was in the second handful.”
Matthew reached out to touch the gold-ornamented notebook, to make sure it was real. He swallowed, his mind still reeling, and said the first thing that came to him: “Lucky for me.”
“Yes,” Berry agreed, in a quiet voice. “Lucky for you.” Then: “I looked through it, but I didn’t show it to Grandda. I found your name in it.”
Matthew nodded.
“You hid it in there?”
Again a nod.
“Would you care to tell me why?”
He was still all pins and nerves. He picked up the notebook and opened it to the cryptic page. One glance at the list of names and he saw:
This, he presumed, very well might be the Silas with the little habit-and huge talent-of picking pockets. The date might have been when the transaction was made with Ausley, but what was the meaning of the other four numbers?
“Well?” Berry prompted.
“It’s an involved story.” Matthew closed the notebook and put it down, but kept his hand on it. He recalled as if from a dream Grigsby saying Your old lock was sprung. Had someone come in the night to search his house? “You took the items out of there yesterday?”
“Yes, a few hours after you’d left.”
“And you found the notebook then?”
“That’s right. Then we just left the stuff out behind the house until Grandda could get a city permit for an open fire.”
“I see.”
“I don’t see.” Berry came around the table and sat down facing him. Her no-nonsense stare promised him no mercy. “What’s it about and why’d you hide it?” A light of realization glinted. “Oh. Does that ladybird have something to do with it?”
After a moment’s deliberation he said, “Yes.” It was best to continue, for he had the feeling that once Berry had seized upon a subject it was a subject under siege. “Has Marmaduke told you about the Masker?”
“He has. I’ve read the broadsheets, too.” Her freckled cheeks suddenly flushed and she leaned forward with urgent excitement. “It has something to do with the murders?”
“It does.” He scowled at her. “Now listen to me, and I mean it: not one word to your grandfather. Do you hear me?”
“I hear. But what does the lady have to do with it? And where did you go last night?”
“I have no idea, is the answer to the first question. To the second, it’s probably best that you don’t know.”
“And the notebook, then? All that scribbling about gambling and food and all the rest of it?” Berry made an unpleasant face. “Why’s it so important?”
“Again, I have no idea.” Matthew decided against all wisdom to give her something, as she had saved this chestnut from the fire. “I’ll tell you that there are other people who want this book, and it’s vital they don’t find it.”
