The Shadow in the North (2 page)

The three of them—Sally and Fred and Jim—shared a great deal. Frederick would have been willing to share more. He was quite frank: he was in love with Sally, he always had been, and he wanted to marry her. Her feelings were more complicated. There were times when she felt she adored him, that no one could be more fascinating and brilliant and brave and fiinny; and there were times when she felt fiirious at him for wasting his talents fiddling with bits of machinery, or disguising himself and prowling about London with Jim, or generally behaving like a little boy who didn't know how to

occupy himself. As far as love was concerned, if she loved anyone it was Fred s uncle Webster Garland, officially her partner in the photographic business: a gentle, untidy genius who could create extraordinary poetry out of light and shade and human expression. Webster Garland and Chaka: y^^ she loved them. And she loved her work.

But Fred—^well, she'd never marry anyone else, but she wouldn't marry him. Not until the Married Women's Property Act was passed.

It wasn't that she didn't trust him, she'd said a hundred times; it was a matter of principle. That one moment she could be independent, a partner in a business, with money and property that was her own; and that the next, after a clergyman had pronounced them married, every single thing that was hers would become (in the eyes of the law) her husband's instead—that was intolerable. Frederick protested in vain, offered to draw up legal agreements swearing that he'd never touch her property, begged and pleaded and got angry and threw things, and then laughed at himself and at her. She wouldn't budge.

As a matter of fact, it wasn't as simple as she claimed. There had been a Married Women's Property Act passed in 1870, which had removed some of the injustices, though not the worst ones; but Frederick knew nothing of the law and didn't know that Sally's property could legally remain hers under certain conditions. But because Sally was uncertain of her feelings, she stuck to

this principle—and rather dreaded the passing of a new act, since it would force her to decide one way or the other.

Recently this had led to a quarrel and a coolness between them, and they hadn't spoken or seen each other for weeks. She'd been surprised to find how much she missed him. He'd be just the person to talk to about this Anglo-Baltic business. . . .

She cleared away the coffee cups, ratding them crossly as she thought of his flippancy, his facetiousness, his straw-colored hair. Let him come to her first; she had real work to do.

And with that, she settled down at the desk with her book of clippings and began to read about Axel Bell-mann.

C/ne ^M/izard oj ike rlorlh

Sally's friend Jim Taylor spent a good deal of his time (when he wasn't cultivating his criminal acquaintances, or betting money on horses, or flirting with chorus girls and barmaids) writing melodramas. He had a passion for the stage. Frederick's sister Rosa (now married to a most respectable clergyman) had been an actress when they first met, and she'd fired an interest already stoked by his long and devoted reading of such penny magazines as Stirring Tales for British Lads and Spring-Heeled ]ack, the Terror of London. He'd written several bloodcurdling plays since then and, not wanting to waste his genius on second-best companies, he'd sent them to the Lyceum Theatre, for the consideration of the great Henry Irving. So far, though, he'd received nothing back but polite acknowledgments.

He spent his evenings in the music hall—not in the audience, but where it was far more interesting: backstage, among the carpenters and the stagehands and the lighting crew, not to mention the artists and the chorus girls. He'd worked in several theaters, learning all the time, and on the evening of the day Miss Walsh called

on Sally he was doing various jobs behind the scenes in die Britannia Music Hall in Pentonville.

And it was there that he came across a mystery of his own.

One of the artists on the bill was a conjurer by the name of Alistair Mackinnon—a young man who'd sprung to extraordinary fame in the short time he'd been appearing on the London stage. It was one of Jim's jobs to call the artists from their dressing rooms shortly before they were due to come onstage, and when he knocked on the door of Mackinnon's room and called out "Five minutes, Mr. Mackinnon," he was surprised to hear no answer.

He knocked again, louder. Still there was no reply, and Jim, knowing that no performer would miss a call if he could humanly help it, opened the door to see if Mackinnon was actually there.

He was: in evening dress and chalk-white makeup, his eyes like black stones. He was gripping the arms of a wooden chair in front of the mirror. Beside him stood two other men, also in evening dress: one a small, mild-looking man with spectacles, the other a heavily built character who tried, as Jim looked in, to conceal a life preserver—a short stick loaded with lead—behind his back. He'd forgotten the mirror; Jim could see the weapon perfecdy.

"Five minutes, Mr. Mackinnon," Jim said again, his mind racing. "I thought you might not have heard."

"All right, Jim," said the magician. "Leave us, please."

With a casual glance at the other two men, Jim nodded and went out.

What do I do now? he thought.

In the wings a number of stagehands stood silently, waiting for the act onstage to finish so that they could change the scenery. Above them in the flies the gasmen waited for their cue; it was their job to change the colored gelatin in front of the flaring gas jets or to turn the jets up and down according to how much light was wanted onstage. Some of the other artists on the bill were waiting too, for Mackinnon was a phenomenal performer and they wanted to watch his act. Jim picked his way through the darkness and the half-light as the soprano onstage came to the final chorus of her song, and took his place by a great iron wheel beside the curtain.

He stood there, light and tense, his fair hair slicked back from his forehead and an anxious look in his green eyes, and tapped his fingers on the wheel; then he heard a whisper beside him.

"Jim," came Mackinnons whisper out of the darkness. "Can you help me?"

Jim turned around and saw the magician hanging back in the shadows, his dark tyts the only features visible in the pale blur of his face.

"Those men ..." Mackinnon went on, and pointed up through the proscenium to a box, where Jim saw two figures settling themselves and caught the gleam of

the little mans spectacles. "They're trying to kill me. For God s sake, help me get away as soon as the curtains down. I don't know what to do. ..."

"Shhh!" said Jim. "And keep back. They're looking."

The song came to an end, the flute in the band trilled in sympathy, and the audience clapped and whis-ded. Jim's hands tightened on the wheel.

"All right," he said. "I'll get you out. Watch out the way—

He started to swing the great wheel over, and the curtain descended.

"Come off this side," he said over the noise of applause and the rumbling of the pulleys, "not the other. Anything you want out of the dressing room?"

Mackinnon shook his head.

The instant the curtain touched the stage, off came the colored gelatins above, flooding the stage with white light; up rolled the painted backdrop of a fashionable drawing room; and the crew in the wings leaped into activity, unfolding a large velvet screen and bracing it behind, lifting onstage a slender table that seemed oddly heavy for its size, and unrolling a wide Turkish carpet. Jim darted forward to straighten the edge of the carpet and held the screen while another hand adjusted the weight behind it. The whole process took no longer than fifteen seconds.

The stage manager gave a signal to the gasmen, and they slotted new gelatins into the metal frames, lowering the pressure in the jets simultaneously to dim the

light to a mysterious rose. Jim sprang back to his wheel; Mackinnon took his place in the wings as the master of ceremonies came to the end of his introduction, and the conductor raised his baton in the orchestra pit.

A chord, a burst of clapping from the audience, and Jim hauled on the wheel to raise the curtain. Mackinnon entered, transformed. The audience fell silent as he began his act.

Jim watched for a moment or two, amazed as always by the way this figure, so fiirtive and unhealthy in real life, could become so powerful onstage. His voice, his eyes, his every movement embodied authority and mystery; it was easy to believe that he commanded hosts of invisible spirits, that the tricks and transformations he performed were the work of demons. . . . Jim had seen him a dozen times and had never been less than awestruck. He tore himself away reluctantly and slipped under the stage.

This was the quickest way from one side to the other. Jim moved between beams, ropes, a demon-trap, and all kinds of pipe work without a sound and emerged on the other side as a burst of clapping rose from the audience.

He dusted himself off and went through a little door into the auditorium, and then through another to the stairs. He reached the top—and shrank back into the shadow, because standing outside the door of the box where Mackinnon's pursuers had gone was a third man, a rough-looking bruiser, obviously put there to keep watch.

Jim thought for a moment, then stepped forward into the gaslit, gilt, and shabby-plush corridor and motioned the man to bend forward. Frowning, he did so, and cocked his head as Jim whispered.

"We've had word as Mackinnons got some mates in," Jim told him. "They're going to try and spring him out the front. Any minute now he'll do a disappearing trick and get away under the stage and come out the back of the audience, and then his mates'll whip him away in a cab. You go on down to the front of the house, and I'll nip in and tell the boss."

Wonderfiil what you could do with a bit of cheek, thought Jim as the bruiser nodded and lumbered away. Jim turned to the door. This was risky; someone might come along at any moment. But it was all he could do. He took a bundle of stiff wire from his pocket, crouched by the keyhole, and twisted the wire inside it till he felt something move; then he withdrew the wire, bent it more accurately, inserted it again and, under cover of the applause, locked the door of the box.

He straightened up just in time, as the front-of-house manager came along the corridor.

"What are you doing here, Taylor?" he said.

"Message for the gentlemen in this box," said Jim. " 'S all right, I'm off backstage now."

"It ain't your job to take messages."

"It is if Mr. Mackinnon asks me, ain't it?"

Jim turned and left. Back down the stairs, through the baize door—how far was Mackinnon through his

act? Another five minutes, Jim reckoned; time to have a look outside.

Ignoring the curses and instructioos to waich his bloody feet, he sho\'ed through the pfcss of sta^ebuids and artists and made his way to the stage dooc It opened into an alley behind the theato; the wall oo the other side ^^'as the back oi a fumitaic dcposimiy; aid there ^^^as only one way out-There woe xwo men leaning against the wall. As the door opened, they looked up and stepped out ^rther onto the pavement.

"Wotcher," said Jim a&Uy. *Blecdin hoc in there. Waitin' for Miss Hopkitk, gents?* Miss Hopkiik _ the soprano; her admirers often waited at the stage c with flowers or proposals, or both.

"What's it to you?* said one of the men. *Just being helpful," said Jim easily. *Whcn's the show finish.^* said the other ibml *Any minute now, I better be getting back. Evcnm,* he said, and went back inside.

He rubbed his chin; if the back was bk^kexL and : t front was risky, there only remained one way out— is. i that ^^^as risk)" too. Still, it mig;ht be fim- He can through the area backsc^ until he fband fear workmen seated in a link pool of light, playing cank oc ^. upturned tea diest.

"Here, Harold," he said. *MiiKl if I bonovr y?_: stq)ladder?*

"What for?" said the oldest man, not looking up from his hand.

"Bird's-nesting."

"Eh?" The workman looked up. "Mind you bring it back."

"Ah, well, that's the problem. How much did you win on that tip I gave you last week?"

Muttering, the older man laid down his cards and got up. "Where are you going to take it? I need it in ten minutes, soon as the show's over."

"Up in the flies," said Jim, drawing him away and explaining what he wanted. He peered over the workman's shoulder; Mackinnon's act was coming to an end. Scratching his head, the other man slung the stepladder over his shoulder and climbed up into the darkness as Jim hurried back to the wheel, just in time.

A chord from the orchestra, a storm of applause, a bow, and the curtain came down. Leaving the chaos of objects that had appeared onstage—a sphinx, a bowl of goldfish, dozens of bunches of flowers—Mackinnon sprang into the wings, where Jim seized his arm and thrust him toward the ladder.

"Climb! Go on!" Jim said. "There're blokes out front and back, but they won't catch us this way. Go onV

Mackinnon had changed again: in the shadows of the wings, he looked furtive once more and, in his white makeup, bizarre and sickly.

"I can't," he whispered.

"Can't what?"

"I can't go up there. Heights ..." He looked around, trembling.

Jim shoved him toward the ladder impatiently. "Get up and stop fussing, for Gawd's sake. Blokes go up and down here hundreds o' times a day. Or d'you want to go out and take your chance with that pair of cutthroats I saw in the alley?"

Mackinnon shook his head feebly and started to climb. Jim twitched a corner of the side curtain across to conceal what they were doing—he didn't want Mackinnon's exit revealed by a stagehand who didn't know what they were up to. Jim scrambled up after him, and they came out on a narrow, railed platform stretching right across the stage, where the gasmen were busy dousing their jets and recovering the gelatins. The smell of hot metal was nearly as powerful as the heat itself, and together with the sweat of the gasmen and the size from the canvas backdrops, it prickled the nose and made the eyes water.

But they didn't Hnger: another short ladder led to a swaying iron walkway, hung with pulleys and ropes. The floor was an open iron grille, and through it they could see all the way down to the stage, where the carpenters were busy moving sidepieces and flats into position for the melodrama that was due to start playing the following day. It was dark up here, all the light being directed downward, but it was just as hot, and the ropes—^some taut, some loose and hanging—and the