Dr. Jane Tewes, one of Chicago’s first female surgeons.
“You are old, aren’t you? I mean 1893—wow!”
“Come now, not that old. I am here, aren’t I? Climbing around in the rubble, breathing in this rotten corpse. God help us, son. If indeed this is the Black Plague come back to haunt mankind—figures it would start in Ireland.”
They fell silent with the thought. All around them the mechanical sound of the winch and the groaning boards of the lift below their feet filled their senses: the smell of earth, the dry, subtle stench of the corpse and its change of color as they rose toward the surface where Walter shined a light down to reveal others who’d taken an interest, peering down the shaft as well.
Wyland secretly worried who this might be alongside Walter topside. He gritted his teeth and tightened his grip on his cane. He feared now that his little missing-persons case involved a corpse, he’d exposed himself far too much. The authorities could well focus on him, a thing he had so far avoided here in Belfast. He felt like kicking himself for having gotten involved. He feared the men with Walter were the local police.
They were soon topside, feet planted on terra firma, breathing easier, and Walter was gasping over the body and saying that it looked like Superintendent McAffey, yet not at all like the man. “It just doesn’t look like the man.”
Private Detective Alastair Wyland slapped Walter on the shoulder, a reassuring gesture without effect. “Quite… quite understandable, my friend.”
Still, Bartholomew corroborated that it was indeed McAffey just as Alastair pulled his pockets inside out, finding a tobacco tin with the initials TM engraved on it. At about this time, Bartholomew turned to vomit his last meal, and between retching he muttered, “It’s McAffey but like Walter says, it’s not McAffey.”
“And what in God’s name is this monster you had me haul up?” asked Walter whose eyes had gone wide with anger. “Scared me to prayer, it did, this animal carcass!”
Alastair apologized. “We need to have the thing examined, Walter.”
Even though night had fallen, with the body in the better light, both Declan and Alastair felt as if they were seeing the destruction to McAffey for the first time. The horrible impact to their senses was compounded.
“Can we get a tarp to place over the remains?” asked Wyland.
“It’s gruesome what happened to this man,” said Declan, “and not even explained by the Black Plague, Mr. Wyland. Think about it; he was seen alive twenty-four hours ago, and now look at him. There’s something unnatural about this whole affair.”
“We needn’t invoke supernatural means here,” replied Wyland. “Has to be some sort of disease, a parasite perhaps, an organism invisible to us.” Wyland stepped away, lit his pipe, and hoped the tobacco would staunch the awful odor that had set up residence in his nostrils. He weighed up his choices—remain or go now. If he disappeared, the authorities might more readily be curious about him and his past. If he remained, played out his part in this sordid matter and acquitted himself well, the same authorities might leave his past his alone to focus instead on the obvious crime before them.
“You know,” muttered Walter, “these mines here, they’ve always had a curse on ’em. But I’ve never seen the like of this.”
Ransom noticed that even in death, McAffey had coal dust raining down on his mummified remains, as it shook loose from Walter’s clothing and shaggy head of hair as Walter worked the tarp over the corpse.
“Where’s Thomas?” asked Declan, looking around.
“After he com’up ahead of you,” replied Walter, “said he’s going for the authorities,” replied Walter.
“I’d thought the coppers already here, Walter. Saw a couple of other men as we were returning.”
“Not cops. They were miners. Rushed off to spread the word about McAffey. He wasn’t always popular.”
“Could sure use a stiff drink,” Alastair said to no one in particular while studying the finger-nail moon and the stars; he worried about facing the authorities should they begin to place too much attention on him—should they learn his true identity, that he was in fact the one and only former Chicago Inspector Alastair Ransom.
Just as stealthily as the onset of night had come on while they were in the mine, a single suspicion about Private Investigator Alastair Wyland could send Inspector Alastair Ransom back to the US and Chicago as a fugitive from a murder indictment in the death of that damned priest. But I’m innocent of the charge, he told himself for the thousandth time, innocent—at least for the most part.
April 13, 2012, aboard
Against all reason and his better judgment, once Will Bowman had begun to snore, David Ingles slipped from their shared cabin to make his way to compartment number seven. The enticement had proven too powerful for several reasons, not the least being Kelly’s kiss.
Once he got to Kelly’s room, he noticed Jacob Mendenhall far back of him down the narrow corridor; he could not make out what Mendenhall was up to, but he feared the other diver was shadowing him.
Had Swigart already heard rumors about his and Kelly’s rendezvous on deck? Had Swigart put Mendenhall on him to keep him honest?
He instantly began a mock jogging, pretending to be getting his exercise by running the corridor, doing stretches, and he jogged back to his own room only to find Mendenhall gone, nowhere to be seen. He then jogged back to Kelly’s room, glanced about, saw no one in any shadows, and rapped at the hatchway to her quarters.
Kelly snatched open the door as if she’d been ready to do so the moment he knocked, and she snatched David by the arm and urged him inside. “We have to be discreet,” she said as she closed the door. They filled the small compartment made for one. “I’ve got something I must share with you.”
He thought of a snappy reply but thought better of it. “What is so important that we’re risking losing everything we’ve worked for, Doctor?”
“I need someone I can trust, Dave, when we’re down there tomorrow or day two—whenever we go into the interior.”
“What do you mean? We’ve trained for months to watch one another’s backs—to trust one another.”
“But they made that unusual request of us—to train separately and to remain aloof from one another—why? Don’t you want to know why? Don’t you think that’s an odd way to train?”
“Sounds like someone’s a bit paranoid.”
“This is not paranoia; this is fear, David—and for all I know, you could be the one who will want to kill me once I reveal why I’m really on board
“My God, Kelly, your every sentence is a riddle.”
She put her hands up in a gesture that asked for patience. Then she reached into the otherwise empty duffel bag and came up with what looked to David at first to be his father’s scrimshaw pipe, but it was in fact no pipe.
“Is that a piece of ivory tusk?”
She held it up to his eyes, the smooth, tapered fang. “It’s the tooth of some kind of saber-toothed animal found in a mine shaft where the ore to make the steel plates and bulkheads for
“I really don’t follow you, Kelly.” Still he wrapped his hand around the large tooth as if drawn to do so.
“It will become clear,” she said, reaching into the duffle again, this time coming up with an aged, leather- bound book with tattered edges and a metal clasp in the form of a lion’s head holding it together. “The journal I told you about—belonging to my great-great grandfather. A great man who died on
He put the huge tooth aside, stared at the book, and then up at her and shrugged. “You said nothing about any journal.”
“I didn’t?”
“No, you did not.”
“I could’ve sworn… well, at any rate, I meant to; it’s crucial to your understanding of what really happened that night on board
