“Jacob Samuel Ignatius Conroy,” he said. “Better known as Reefer Jake. Joined the merchant navy at thirteen. Discharged at twenty-five for bodily harm against an officer of the line. Sailed on various ships that we know of—and plenty that we don’t, I’ve no doubt. Served sentences in Macau, Alabama, Philadelphia, Buenos Aires…”
He dropped the sheet and smiled at Jake. “I could go on, but what would be the point? You’re wanted right across the world, Jake. Your jaunt is over.”
Jake stared at the table as if he could read the stone.
“What have you to say?” Paterson asked. “Nothing? I’ve got you down for grievous bodily harm and attempted murder. Remember old Silas Ashton? Pierrot Tony? That little business over in Rock Ferry? Bad enough, all of them. But last night’s little escapade…well, you’re looking at the noose, Jake. That was murder.”
Still nothing. Jake gave no sign of even hearing the inspector’s words.
Langton said, “Your accomplice is dead, Jake. Dead under the wheels of a train at Edge Hill.”
At that, Jake looked at the stains on Langton’s suit, the blood and oil. The words rumbled out like stones from a deep quarry. “That’s his lookout.”
“It means that you’ll take all the blame,” Paterson said. “You’ll swing for the girl’s death.”
“Nothing to do with me,” Jake said. “He stuck her with the needle. I just carried his bags.”
Langton glanced at Forbes Paterson. Jake had a point; if he stuck to that defense, he might escape with a year or two in Walton Jail.
Paterson said, “What about all your other efforts, Jake? I reckon I’ve got enough to keep you inside for the rest of your natural life. Maybe enough to put a rope around your neck even if the poor girl’s murder doesn’t.”
The enormous man shrugged, making his chains clink. “I’ll take me chances.”
“What are you afraid of?” Langton asked. “Why don’t you tell us about the men who put you up to this?”
“Nothing to say.”
“What about the name Redfers? Doctor Redfers?”
No reply.
“Cooperate and we’ll think about a lesser charge,” Paterson said. “Don’t be a fool.”
Langton and Forbes Paterson hammered the man with questions until dawn started to show through the barred window set high above the prisoner’s stone shelf bed. Jake would not budge. He would not tell them who had sent him and the dead man to Wavertree.
Exhausted, Langton slumped in his chair. He could see that Paterson felt the same way. Even the two constables wilted. Only Jake seemed unchanged. Like a statue, or one of the Professor’s Egyptian carved figures, he simply sat there as if waiting.
Paterson stretched his back and asked, for the fiftieth or hundredth time, “Who do you work for, Jake? Come on, man: Who are you protecting?”
Nothing.
Langton said, “Is Doktor Glass really that powerful?”
A quick glance from under Jake’s thick brow, but no answer.
“We could protect you,” Paterson said. “Tell us all about Doktor Glass and we’ll put you somewhere safe.”
No reply.
Langton looked at Paterson, who shook his head and stood up, saying, “We’re wasting our time, Langton. Let him swing. God knows he deserves it.”
Langton tried one last name. “How about Professor Caldwell Chivers, Jake? Do you know him?”
A shake of the massive head. “I’m not talking. Doktor Glass will look after me.”
“Doktor Glass will kill you, if he has the chance. You’re a liability, Jake. You know too much.”
Jake rested his head on his manacled arms and said no more.
“Chain him to the bunk until later,” Forbes Paterson told the constables as he hammered on the inside of the thick door. Then, outside
the cell, he said, “I nearly lost my patience in there, Langton. It’s difficult to hold back sometimes.”
“I don’t think it would have helped,” Langton said. “Jake won’t talk. I watched his accomplice die on the rails rather than betray Glass.”
“What hold does Glass have over these men? What can be worse than death?”
Langton had the beginnings of an idea, but he didn’t want to share it with Paterson, not yet.
At the barred gate, the sergeant gave Forbes Paterson a brown paper bag. “That’s all we found in his pockets, sir, along with his bootlaces and belt.”
“Good. Nobody’s to see him, Sergeant. Not without my permission.”
As the barred door slammed shut behind them, Langton followed Paterson upstairs. Headquarters had come alive by now: Inspectors headed for their offices, constables accompanied shackled prisoners, yawning office boys scurried along with messages and telegrams clutched in their hands.
At the door to Paterson’s office, Langton said, “Is Jake safe down there?”
“In the blockhouse? I’ll say. Even Jake couldn’t fight his way out.”
“I’m thinking more of someone getting in.”
Paterson stared at Langton. “You really believe Glass will try to silence Jake?”
“Either silence him or save him.”
“Don’t worry. Jake’s going nowhere.”
Langton shook hands and turned for his own office, but paused when Paterson said, “Why did you mention this Professor? You think he’s our man?”
Langton hesitated. “Give me some time.”
As he walked on, he realized that time was a luxury he could not afford. The Queen would soon arrive. Durham, if still living, wandered the streets of the city. And the killer of Kepler, Stoker Olsen, and
Redfers still enjoyed his freedom. And Langton himself? He’d uncovered threads and connections, a network of illicit trade in souls, a trade he didn’t want to believe.
When he saw the distorted figure through his office’s frosted glass, Langton presumed that Purcell wanted a report on the case. Langton smoothed his rumpled, soiled clothes, combed back his hair with his fingers, and opened the door.
Harry, the office boy, almost dropped the cup from his hand. “Oh, you made me jump, sir.”
“What are you doing?”
“Bringing you a pot of coffee, sir,” Harry said, already pouring from the Dewar flask on the steel tray. “Billy, Inspector Paterson’s boy, told me you’d had a night of it and were down in the cells, so I thought…”
Langton smiled and accepted a cup. “Thank you, Harry. You’re a good lad.”
He closed his eyes for a moment as he sipped coffee. Then, “Any sign of Sergeant McBride yet?”
“No, sir. Shall I send him in when he gets here?”
“Please. And bring me the newspapers.”
Harry paused at the door. “Which ones, sir?”
“All the local sheets.”
Langton sat at his desk and slid the tray to one side. He must have left out some of the papers from the Kepler case the night before; they lay spread out across his desk. He returned them to the case file and added the events of Edge Hill and Plimsoll Street. As he wrote, the image of the dying girl, Mrs. Barker’s niece, rose up again in his mind. The shadowed bedroom with its odors of medication and sickness. The lamplight flickering on the rose-patterned wallpaper.
He hesitated when it came to describing the moment of death and transfer. It seemed so unlikely, so removed from the usual sordid entries in most police reports. How could he describe the mist that
radiated from the poor girl’s body? The tiny points of light glittering within; the change in the quality of the air, as though the strange machine had charged every particle in the room?
Langton reached down into his desk drawer and took out the canvas sack containing the remains of the machine that Jake had carried into Plimsoll Street. Mrs. Barker’s heavy walking stick had shattered the thick resin sphere to shards and dented the squat cube of metal. Copper wires uncurled from the damaged cylinder. Langton laid out the individual pieces on his desk like a museum curator with a strange exhibit.
Someone had created this machine. Skilled hands had wound copper wire around that cylinder and fashioned that cube of steel. Even the wooden base seemed as highly polished as a fine cabinet. Had one workshop—perhaps even one man—built the machine? Or had Doktor Glass and his accomplices created the final mechanism?
With care, Langton sorted through the components, searching for identification marks. The dented cube contained solid resin like amber that sealed the contents inside; on one side, in Gothic Germanic script, the letters
A
and
F
, and the numbers
174
, but no maker’s mark. The remnants of the sphere gave no clue as to their origin. The base of the copper cylinder, however, was more revealing; when Langton held the heavy coil up to the light, he saw a small, oval brass label fixed to the metal.
Mssrs Irving and Long, Mfctrs.
He locked the components in his desk drawer after jotting down the name. The manufacturer might have produced hundreds or thousands of these coils and sent them across the globe, but it had to be checked.
After a brief knock, the office door opened to reveal Doctor Fry. “Am I interrupting?”
“Not at all.” Langton closed the file. “Come in.”
Fry carried two buff folders to the desk. He examined Langton’s clothes and face and said, “An eventful night?”
“Very. What do you have for me?”
“The postmortem reports on Redfers and the burglar at Hamlet Drive. I’m sorry for the delay; you’ve given us more work in these past few days than the past month.”
“It’s not out of choice, believe me.” Langton opened the first report and read down the findings. The man who had tried to attack Mrs. Grizedale, the so-called burglar from Hamlet Drive, had died from a single gunshot to the chest. Aged around fifty, with the calluses and musculature of a man used to physical labor. “No tattoos?”
“Only a simple anchor on the forearm,” Fry said, “probably from the merchant service. Certainly nothing like the intricate patterns on Kepler’s body.”
“Nothing in the pockets?”
“A few coins, a pencil, a watch chain but no watch. Nothing of interest.”
“And nothing to identify him?”
“I’m afraid not, Langton.”
Disappointed, Langton set the burglar’s report down and opened the one for Redfers. A single stab wound through the trachea and spine. The weapon a surgical steel blade similar to that carried by Mrs. Grizedale’s attacker. Mild burn marks either side of Redfers’s neck. “What’s this?
Rigor extremis.
”
“Contraction of the muscles,” Fry said. “Something like rigor mortis but occurring before death rather than after. Almost every muscle in the man’s body had seized.”
Langton remembered the contorted rictus grin on Redfers. “What would cause that?”
Fry hesitated. “I’m not sure, to be honest. I imagined it was drugs; that’s why the report was delayed, to give me time to analyze the blood and tissue. But I found nothing. No arsenicals. No strychnine.”
“And you’re quite sure it happened before death?”
“Either just before or at the very moment of death.”
Langton wondered what had happened to Redfers in his final few moments. That look of absolute terror. The electrical leads connected to his neck. The machine waiting to capture the dying man’s soul, just as with Mrs. Barker’s niece Edith in Wavertree. And who held that soul, that captured essence, now? It had to be Doktor Glass.
The office door behind Fry opened. Harry deposited an armful of newspapers on the desk and held out a sealed telegram for Langton. “Just came in for you, sir.”
“Thank you, Harry. Oh, one more thing…” Langton retrieved the card with the name of the machine coil’s manufacturers. “Find me the address of this company.”
As Harry limped out, Fry leafed through the newspapers and said, “These journalists have very good sources.”
“Too good.” Langton reached for his letter opener.
“You suspect someone is indiscreet? Someone here?”
Before Langton could reply, the door opened again and McBride leaned inside. “Busy, sir?”
Langton waved the sergeant in and slit open the GPO envelope. Inside, block capitals were printed on the yellow telegram sheet. He read the message and then passed it to McBride.
Fry edged to the door. “If you don’t need me…”
“Thank you for the reports,” Langton said. “I’m afraid I have two more subjects for you.”
“The young girl and the train victim? I know; I’ve seen them downstairs.” Fry paused at the door and asked, “What’s going on, Langton? Are all these deaths connected?”
“They are, but we’ve some way to go yet. Still some way.” Langton waited for the door to close, then turned to McBride. “What do you make of that?”
McBride returned the telegram. “Rum, sir. Very rum.”
Peter Doran, Langton’s ex-colleague who now worked for the Home Office, stated in the telegram that no Major Fallows worked at the Queen Anne’s Gate headquarters. Through friends of friends,
however, Doran had discovered that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office had a senior-ranking official of that name. He could not discover the man’s duties.
“Why would Fallows lie about his department?” Langton said, leaning back in his chair and sipping coffee. “Why hide the fact that he works for the Foreign Office?”
McBride said, “Maybe it’s security, sir. Since he’s looking after the Queen’s visit and all. Maybe he doesn’t want anybody to know.”
“Not even us? Or the Chief Inspector?” Langton fought a yawn and said, “Any luck at the reception last night?”
McBride pulled a notebook from his pocket. “Nothing much to report, sir. Most of the drivers and footmen had heard of Redfers and Kepler through the newspapers. But five thought they remembered Redfers from previous visits by their employers.”
Langton read down McBride’s list but didn’t recognize any of the names. They could simply be patients of Redfers. Or they could have a more disturbing motive. As he copied the names into the case file, he said, “Compare these names with the list of patients on Redfers’s books. Ask his receptionist—what was her name?”
“Mrs. Dunne, sir.”
“Ask her if these families consulted Redfers as patients, and ask his maid, Agnes, if they visited as friends. Either are possibilities.”
“And if they’re neither, sir?”
“Then there’s a chance they visited the good doctor for a less innocent reason. Which means we might have to pay them a visit.”
McBride pocketed his notebook and glanced at Langton’s disheveled suit. “Would you like me to call by your house on the way back, sir? I could bring in some fresh clothes…”