“This is the problem I hoped you’d solve for me, Matthew,” the lawyer said. “I saw Ausley scribbling in that notebook time and again, and I thought I had to get hold of it in search of a clue. I know what parts Godwin, Deverick, and Ausley acted in this, but who put the play together? Professor Fell? One of his compatriots? It wasn’t Ausley, he wasn’t smart enough. But it had to be someone here, on this side of the pond. A headmaster, if you will.”
“Headmaster,” Matthew repeated, looking up from the page. Something had clicked into place.
“I was going to say, that night, that Eben Ausley is selling his orphans to the underworld. Not all of them, but some. Maybe some who are talented in ways this headmaster can use. Can forge and shape, as he pleases. Look at that word Chapel there. Could that be a name?”
“Yes,” Matthew said, but he was thinking furiously. Headmaster. Trade school. “It is a name.” Some men would come now and again and give us tests, John Five had said. Doin’ numbers, copyin’ script, figurin’ out puzzles and such. “Simon Chapel.” Wantin’ to know all about us and our lives and so on. “I think…these might be…” What we wanted for the future.
“What?” Kirby asked, closer now.
A man even came a couple of times to see if any of the older boys knew how to use a sword or a dagger.
“I think,” Matthew said, and then he stopped himself. “I believe,” he corrected, “that these are grades. I believe Eben Ausley was assigning grades to some of the boys. Maybe…for special talents, or something as mundane as how well they could understand and carry out orders. Many of the orphans would have come from violent circumstances, like John Five. Maybe they were graded on cruelty, or the ability to fight. Maybe how well- suited they might be for a life of crime. And here…this means Rejected. Either by Ausley, who had the first choice of whom to present to Chapel, or by Chapel himself later on.” He thought of Silas. Silas with the quick hands and light touch. Silas Oakley, who was presented with high grades to the headmaster Simon Chapel on the twentieth of June, hardly more than a month ago.
I was jus’ practisin’, Silas had said.
For what future purpose? Surely not just shilling crimes; those were beneath Professor Fell. No, these would be more monumental, more grandiose in their evil. The theft of a key to a box where a diplomatic pouch lay, with the fate of kings and nations in the balance? The theft of business letters, or of guarded seals of state, or of perfume-touched messages between lovers that might lead to scandals, executions, and the overnight collapse of an empire…if the right price was not paid for the return?
This contract was underwritten by the professor, the Blind Boy had told Kirby.
Because, Matthew thought, the professor was interested in seeing the orphans in action.
A new world, Mrs. Herrald had said, calls for new names.
Not just new names, Matthew realized.
New blood.
Kirby was waiting. Matthew closed the notebook. He said with grim certainty, “Professor Fell is financing a school for criminals. North along the Hudson, about fifteen miles from here. It’s run by a man named Simon Chapel. I don’t think he’s the professor. I may be wrong. But what better place to find potential ‘students’ than an orphanage full of boys who’ve already known hardship and violence? Diamonds in the rough, wouldn’t you say?”
Kirby nodded. The light of understanding had also dawned on him, though his actions had doomed him to a prison’s darkness.
Matthew drew himself up tall. Again, he marked the distance between where he stood and the stairs. “I’m going to take this notebook to City Hall,” he said, in a voice that fortunately did not betray his gut-clenched fear. “I’m going to give it to Lillehorne, and I’m going to tell him everything.” He hesitated, while that sank into the lawyer’s blood-fevered brain. The only thing that moved about Kirby was a quick twitch of the mouth. “I’d like you to come with me.”
Forty-Four
Somewhere the ferry was crossing the river under the bright blue sky. Somewhere birds sang in the green Jersey hills. Somewhere children played, in all innocence and happiness, a game of Jack Straws.
But in the gloomy cellar of the attorneys’ office on Broad Street, the Masker wore a smile full of pain. “You know I can’t do that, Matthew.”
“I know you have to. What good is the notebook without your testimony?”
Kirby stared at the floor. “You said…this tragic story had hope in it. May I ask where it might be?”
“The hope,” Matthew said, “is that if you give yourself up today-right now-I can promise you that I and influential people will make certain you see your mother before you go to prison.”
“Oh. You and influential people.”
“That’s right. It’s my promise.”
“Well.” Kirby grinned tightly. “I should feel so much better now, shouldn’t I?”
“What did you think you were going to do, Trevor? Did you think that I was going to uncover the headmaster of this scheme and you would get a chance to murder him, too, before he went to the docket?” Matthew scowled. “You must be truly mad, to think it would end there. Don’t you want to kill all the orphans who were involved? What about Ives? Don’t you thirst to slash his throat, too?” He let that hang because Kirby had given him a hollow-eyed, dangerous glare that made him think he’d gone a slash too far. Still, he pressed on. “I think if you took up shaving again and viewed yourself in the mirror, you’d see what effect murder has had on you. You’re not a killer at heart! Far from it! Even Andrew Kippering, for all his vices, isn’t a killer. It’s time to let this go, and for the law to finish what you’ve begun.”
“Oh, now you’re going to tell me about the power of the law! The majesty of the courts! How justice, that blindfolded whore, always wins the day!”
“No, I’m not,” said Matthew. “As a lawyer, you know better than that. Mistakes can be made and wrong decisions delivered by even the most auspicious court. That’s life. But what I’m telling you is that your testimony could bring more villains to justice than your knife. You can’t kill them all. I don’t think, in your heart, you would want to. But your testimony could put them all behind bars. Yours is a compelling story, Trevor. Don’t sell the truth so short.”
“The truth. I can prove nothing.”
“This is a beginning,” Matthew told him, and held up the notebook.
Kirby wavered on his feet. He blinked heavily, stared up at the lantern, and then focused on empty air. “I… have to think.” A hand drifted to his forehead. “I’m tired. I’m so tired.”
“I know you are,” Matthew said, and then gave the man his last cannon shot. “Your mother sleeps, even with her eyes open. I think she dreams of hearing that the King’s Reply has arrived, and of seeing you walk through the door. That’s what she’s waiting for, Trevor. Her son, to come wake her up. If you walk to Lillehorne’s office with me, right now, you’ll get that chance.”
A tremor passed over Kirby’s face. Just that quickly, tears leaped to his eyes. It was like watching a shored- up house be torn apart under a bitter storm, so fast did Kirby’s face contort and the wretched sob burst from his mouth. Matthew thought it was not a sound any human should ever have to utter; it was the cry of the damned, cast out from Heaven. As the tears streamed down Kirby’s cheeks and his face truly became a mask-though this one of agony far beyond any punishment known to Man-his knees buckled, he crumpled to the dirt, and amid the boxes and papers of the profession’s underbelly he crawled like a dying animal to crush himself against the unyielding bricks.
Matthew had to steel himself, lest he too be overcome. Kirby had given up everything. His position, his bride- to-be, his life. He had fought to avenge a terrible injustice, and had lost his soul in that unwinnable fight. For it seemed now to Matthew that vengeance, in the end, always consumed the innocent as well as the guilty, and burned them both into only so much cold ash.
But, Matthew thought, there was one thing no one could ever doubt about Trevor Kirby.
He was a good son.
“I’m going to go now,” Matthew heard himself say, and the man’s sobbing quietened. “Will you follow me,
