Loew’s robbery, Trudeau’s beating, or a shooting fracas on the Plateau. To nourish my frame I ordered a Horse’s Neck and followed it with another ale. The chatter in the bar quelled slowly and I looked in a mirror. I was pale and interesting from exhaustion. Jack’s powdered pep would perk me up. He was getting it from Smiler, I remembered, and my humour leached of blood. Smiler and I had trained in leechcraft at the Royal Victoria Hospital. There was a Leachtown off the River Jordan on Vancouver Island; failed panners swirled for stray grains of gold there. Great rigs with thick cables were strung up to hew the forests down with a tearing and a rending, saws biting through wood as huge firs crashed down. There came a sharp cracking and the bar’s windowpane showed a long white line. Someone had thrown a rock. The ’tender went outside to investigate and returned, shaking his head.
A seedy egg in the back began blethering about the mayor so I killed the ale and left a little silver. While hiking away with my lousy bag I passed a pair of bobbies in leather Ulsters on the sidewalk and did not blench. Was any of this even happening? Was I being watched, an unwitting actor in a complicated conspiracy involving Jack and the Senator, an unknowing tool of some secret group manipulating my activities for occult reasons? Yes. It seemed clear to me I was being used to satisfy certain prophecies of the British Israelites and the Round Table to raise the Red Hand in Holy Ireland. I would rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem with an archangel’s name and the caduceus of Mercury, then claim my crown. It was either that or sire the Moonchild and assist Bolsheviks in the service of Marx and worldwide revolution. My random crimes undermined capitalism and the bourgeoisie’s complacency. I was fated to destroy the Commonwealth and the League of Nations. Do it, Michael. Be stern and cold, wield sword and cross.
I needed sleep. For a very few confused minutes I was at St. Pancras Station in London, then a Christmas panto in the West End with a chum from Victoria. My head spun as I dropped my Gladstone off at Windsor Station, under the angel guiding a dead serviceman to heaven, same as the one in Winnipeg, same as the one in Vancouver. With that reminiscence I completed a wide circuit to Morgan’s department store. What I needed was hot tea and rest to rid associative thought of its power. One face in the crowd held the shadow of the ghost of the smile of a girl I’d seen on a tram outside Covent Garden years ago, another stranger could have been the long-lost brother of my old headmaster at the Normal School. This series of interplayed mental connections, this bastard combination of paramnesia and nostalgia, would lead me up the primrose path to the crack-up ward.
Passersby on the pavement buffeted me as I crossed in front of Christ Church. Most of the snow had vanished but the Morgan’s door openers had availed themselves of the occasion to swaddle in fur greatcoats and hats. To begin with I disdained the entranceway and walked around an entire city block clockwise in order to clear my brain and check dark reflections in store windows for any pursuers. A mangled veteran begged for alms. When I flipped a half-dollar into his cap the wretch raised a metal hook to his eye and wheezed: “Anybody want a duck?”
As an officer and gentleman, second lieutenant in the Seventy-second Highlanders, I gave the victim another dollar to thank my lucky stars. But for the grace of God go you, Mick me lad, or Jack himself, a Duke of Connaught’s Own. The entire population was diseased or deformed in some way, within or without, including myself. My ailment needed a name related to its outward symptomology: the futile attempt of placing oneself within a comprehensive whole of variegated, pointless, randomized memory to find significance. I diagnosed myself with a terminal case of Mick’s Syndrome. Turning a precise ninety-degree angle onto City Councillors brought no greater clarity. Man had tried to impose a petty order by surveying straight lines, encoding secret equations in dead foundations. Below this system there reigned pure chaos, a blind worm chewing through space. By turning another corner I was satisfied and pushed through a revolving door into the great volume of the store.
Inside I was washed in the soft sea of the female. Perfume poured over me, a rich mixture: attar of rose and lavender, citron and orange and sweet talc powder. I closed my eyes and inspired and for a blessed moment was not cruel and cold and alone. I saw the temporary dream of crystal and chrome glittering as scent bottles and precious things sat ranged before fluttering women. Shopgirls wore smart navy frocks and waited on furred and feathered doyennes, the whole scene clean and bright, almost alien. Here was a high altar for that sisterhood of wealth, each movement part of a choreographed ritual conducted in discreet undertones. For a moment I smelled myself— sweat and tobacco and fear—and then my heart leapt as I saw Laura select something silver from a shelf. As a clerk passed the woman turned into another rich redhead and I breathed out. By God, this was civilization, why the mills ground fine and forges smelted hot. It was for them, to keep womanhood safe and soft and free from harm. I became covetous and wanted it, this world. I wanted it now.
As I took the staircase to the basement a large clock on the wall read one pip-emma on the dot, time for tiffin. In the toy department painted wooden imps hung smiling on hooks. To one side were train sets and baseball bats, on the other kewpie dolls and tea sets. Beyond a neatly stacked pile of Erector Sets and cowboy rifles Jack chatted up a pretty floorwalker. He touched her face and she flushed, embarrassed. I sent a loose hoop his way, my revolver in my pocket to play its own game in due time. The wooden circle hit Jack and fell spinning on the tiles. Jack turned to me.
Jack took the shopgirl’s hand, twisted it ’round and bowed to kiss her wrist.
“Valentino taught me that.”
He winked at her and she peered over to roll her eyes at me. That was a fine sight and I was secretly delighted. Jack’s charm could curdle. It appeared that he’d taken more cocaine as he violently chewed spearmint gum while at the same time smoking a cigaret.
“We’re set,” he said.
“For what?”
“A little light entertainment.”
We went back upstairs and outside and crossed the street to the Princess Theatre. It was closed.
“What’s this?” I asked.
“A matinee,” Jack said, and smiled.
He turned to the grille of the box office wicket and rapped on the smoked glass. It was impossible to see anyone behind it. A dry voice asked: “Who’s calling?”
“Jack London,
Jack slid a five into the gap. I heard a thumping and a click as a door unlocked. Jack carefully took the gum from his mouth and did a disgusting thing with it. We went into the lobby and found it empty. It was eerie. I fingered my gun and felt anxiety.
“Nice couvert charge,” I said.
The dry voice came from a speakerphone above: “Door to the left, dressing rooms backstage.”
We followed the directions. The theatre house was silent, empty seats before a half-closed curtain across the stage, a dusty smell of stale tobacco smoke and damp velvet. Reigning backstage we found a confusion of ropes and wires. Enormous padlocked boxes stencilled with Houdini’s name sat in the wings. These presumably held the secrets of the Chinese Water Torture Cell and the Milk Can Escape. Until the other night I’d only seen Houdini in a serial at the picture house:
“He got free from a Russian prison cell stark bollocky naked,” Jack said.
Echoing my thoughts again. I turned back on the empty house of crimson chairs. It was haunted. We were spectres. A phantom audience watched me, Ulysses by the pool of blood at World’s End as the sightless dead of Hades streamed past. Shakespeare played the ghost in
“Pepper’s Ghost,” he said. “You see how it works.”
“I don’t and what’re we doing here?”
Jack held up a finger and cocked his ear, then very quietly whistled the first bars of “Annie Laurie.”
“Bad luck in a theatre,” I said.
“Not for me.”
We moved ’round the stage machinery and found a corridor leading to the dressing rooms. From behind a closed door came murmuring voices. I made out: “...as the miracle at Cana or walking on the water. Think, lads, what I might have accomplished in those times.”
Jack opened the door to a room opposite and motioned me into it. It was a place for showgirls by the scent
