The Shaman's Secret (5 page)

“It's better we walk the rest of the way,” Mr. Baker said, his hand straying to his gingery wig. “It'll make it harder for him.”

“Make it harder for whom?” Aunt Hilda demanded. “What is all this cloak-and-dagger stuff for?”

Baker didn't reply. Instead he turned into a door that said
COME IN AND STRIKE LUCKY GOLD
. We passed through a Fan Tan gambling saloon crowded with Chinamen smoking and dealing cards. There were one or two women, in tight, high-necked Chinese dresses, serving drinks. Before I had the time to see more, Baker had gone through the gambling den and ducked out of a side entrance. We followed him down an alley till we came to an even smaller alley. Baker stopped in front of a small door with no sign but plenty of peeling blue paint. He selected a key from a bunch and opened the lock. Stepping aside, he invited us in.

“Hardly discreet,” he muttered to himself, “charging through Chinatown with a pack of foreigners. Still, can't be helped.”

We tramped up a dingy, unlit staircase which smelt of damp. A tenement—the kind of boarding house where
you would find several, indeed, dozens of families huddled together. Cyril stopped at a landing and opened another door.

What a shock! I had expected a dingy room, a parlor maybe, for a cheap Chinese lodging house. But it was nothing of the sort. We had entered a world of taste and comfort. Deep leather armchairs, a glossy mahogany table, telegraph equipment, glass-fronted bookcases lined with leather-bound tomes. A shelf of pea-green vases shimmered near the window.

Careful not to upset the vase nearby, I took a seat next to Mr. Baker, who had slumped in an armchair and covered his head with his hands.

“Who are you running from, Cyril?” I asked.

“Isn't that obvious?”

“Not to me,” Aunt Hilda muttered.

“It's Cecil. My brother.”

Our silence hung in the air, thick with distrust.

“Cecil? Your twin?” Aunt Hilda said finally. “I thought you were inseparable.”

Cyril raised his hand to his head and took off the ginger wig. With a sigh, he tossed it onto the table.

“It used to be that way,” he replied. “We were Tweedledum and Tweedledee. I was Cecil's shadow. We thought as one, acted as one, got rich—fantastically rich—as one. But all that has changed.”

“How so?”

Cyril hung his head. I could see the pinkish line of his scalp where the black dye had not penetrated.

“He has gone too far—even for me.”

“What has he done? It must have been truly awful to offend
your
morals,” Aunt Hilda said. “Has he tried to kill Queen Victoria?”

Cecil did not reply.

“So now we're meant to believe he is after you?” she went on.

“He is trying to kill me,” Cyril said. Nervous, he bent down and picked up his wig. “My brother does nothing by halves. When the overseer disappeared from the warehouse, I feared he had gone to my brother. As you can imagine, he doesn't want me to set our coolies free—that is why—” His hand flew to his wig again. “All this, the mustache, the wig. I'm having a set of false teeth made.”

It was an odd coincidence, but the six of us—me, my friends and my aunt and father—were sitting ranged against Cyril Baker. For a moment it struck me that it was like a trial. He was the defendant, in the dock, and we the jury who might hold the gift of life. We might convict, or pardon.

I stood up and went over to Cyril and knelt before his chair, while the others looked at me in shock. I could understand their bewilderment. This man was a criminal, an outlaw from human feeling, and here I was kneeling
before him. I believed I was doing the right thing. An inner voice told me to give him a chance.

“This is much too confusing,” I said. “You're giving us snippets of your story. Tell us everything. Tell us where it all began.”

“Very well—this is my confession. The confession of a very sick man. Yes …” for Baker had seen the look on Waldo's face, “I am dying. You probably think good riddance. But if I am dying before my time, so too is your friend Kit. We are both dying of the same disease.”

Waldo's face flushed furiously. “Quiet!” he said. “Kit is better. We won't listen to your filthy lies.”

I wanted to tell Waldo to calm down, for I knew Baker was telling the truth. I
was
sick, dying. We had caught the same disease in the Himalayas. All three of us. Me, Kit Salter, and the twins Cecil and Cyril Baker. The brothers had drunk greedily from the sacred fountain in the mountain paradise of Shambala and it had turned to poison in their bodies. The water was a blessing for those who were ready for it, conferring immortality and eternal youth. For those who were not ready, it was a curse. Though I hadn't drunk from the fountain, I too had become infected by the waters. I had breathed in tiny particles of moisture; I had ingested droplets of dew through my skin. Inside me there was a worm of disease. I was not as sick as the Bakers. But, make no mistake, I too was slowly decaying from the inside.

The rot buried inside me had come to the surface in the temple in China when I had encountered the holy bones of the long-dead sage. The sacred Chinese bones and the Himalayan disease had fought for supremacy, each one claiming mastery of me, Kit Salter. They had clashed mightily inside my frail human body. I was not strong enough for this battle; the result of so much power churning inside me was that I had fallen into a deep coma—I slept unaware, for many months.

Thankfully, the electricity had woken me from the coma. But the Himalayan bug still festered in me. I was living under a suspended sentence of death. I knew the truth of this. But, despite the fact they had seen me in a coma, my friends refused to accept it.

“I ought to take you by the collar and throw you into the street,” Waldo said, jumping up and moving menacingly toward Cyril.

“Bravo, Waldo,” Aunt Hilda said. “We aren't afraid of you, Baker, or your thugs.”

Cyril Baker cast a curious look at me, as if waiting for me to speak on his behalf. But I kept quiet.

“Very well, I will not talk about your niece again,” he said to Aunt Hilda. “All I will say is that I see death plain and clear. It stalks me as I sleep. As I sit here. I know I will not live much longer. Weeks. Perhaps days. This knowledge has cleared my head.

“I am a condemned man. I am going to hell where I—”

“I'm not a vengeful person,” Rachel interrupted, “but for what you have done, hell seems pretty fair.”

He looked her straight in the eye for a moment. “I don't deny it. But—I am trying. I want to say sorry.”

“Sorry!” Aunt Hilda said. “Easiest word in the language.”

Baker rose from his armchair and stood before us. He was very thin, I could see. Such was his pallor that he looked closer to death than life. He had been ghastly-looking the very first time I had glimpsed him in London. But now he was for the grave, a walking ghost, despite his dyed black hair.

“I come as you know from ordinary working stock. My father was a laborer, a simple country boy. He obtained a job in a great house as a footman. My brother, Cecil, and I sometimes used to sneak into the house. We weren't let beyond the kitchen, but once, just once, we gave our father the slip and roamed about.

“The Persian carpets, the crystal chandeliers, the shining mahogany tables, the oil paintings gleaming from the walls … Envy bloomed inside us, as well as determination. We made a vow. We would be rich.

“We were clever boys, and moreover we dared to dream of a life beyond ‘our station.' I don't think we were bad when we began. But we were ruthless. And soon, yes, evil set into our hearts. I won't bore you with how we made
our fortune. There were crimes. We invested our profits in a little scheme to ship slaves from the Congo in Africa to the West Indies. That was very profitable, and soon we branched out—human flesh, opium, vice of all kinds. We were open-minded about our business opportunities. By the time we were forty Cecil and I were rich—fabulously, stinking rich.

“But that was not enough for Cecil. He had to have more. We became great collectors. Financed expeditions around the whole empire searching for treasure. Ming vases, jade Buddhas, Tintoretto paintings. We might have been the greatest collectors in the history of the world. We weren't bound by a single continent or style, you see. We became experts, seeking out the lovely and the rare from across the globe.”

“This is making my stomach turn,” Aunt Hilda said. “What has all this to do with my niece Kit?”

Baker held up a trembling hand. “It's obvious, isn't it? My brother is pursuing her. He wants her dead—no … worse.”

Aunt Hilda ignored this threat to me. “Your boasting—”

“I am not boasting, just explaining. If you don't understand my brother—well, how can you hope to resist him? I said we were the greatest collectors the world had ever seen. That's gone, at least for me. I've given it all away!”

“What?”

“It's gone. All gone. My half, at least. Pearls, paintings, gold, bonds.”

“All your money?” Aunt Hilda asked.

“Pretty much.”

“Where? Where's it gone?”

“Hospitals, orphanages, ragged schools. I'm a regular do-gooder now. I've set up a fund right here in Chinatown. I am trying to say sorry. I know I can never make it right, not with the wrong I've done. But, hell, I'm
trying
.”

“You expect us to
believe
you?” Waldo asked.

“I can take you to the orphanage right here in Chinatown—”

“Your brother,” Rachel interrupted. “You said he hates the idea of giving your money away.”

Baker sighed. “Cecil has always been the leader. From the time we were boys, he led and I followed. He's a stubborn soul. And now, well … he knows we're damned. The elixir of life didn't save us, nor the Book of Bones. Nothing has saved us. But he won't give it all away. He won't say sorry. He won't
beg for forgiveness
. Cecil Baker would ride up to the gates of hell and try to make a deal with the devil.”

There was silence after this as we all thought of Cecil Baker and his twin, Cyril, the supposedly reformed man who sat in front of us. Had he really shaken off evil? Could a soul so steeped in wickedness really change? But it was something Cyril had said earlier that was bothering me.

“Why does your brother want me?” I asked him.

Rachel let out a gasp. Cyril looked at me for a moment then his eyes moved uneasily away. He couldn't look at me. Couldn't answer my question straight.

“I know what you're thinking,” he said into the silence. “You're thinking this is some kind of trick. Believe me, my brother hasn't spoken to me since the day I announced I was giving all my money away. We've been inseparable since we were in breeches. Now he will not see me, or read my letters. He considers me a traitor.

“This morning someone tried to knife me. If Rumbelow hadn't fought him off, I would be dead.”

“I'm mighty sorry for your family problems, but I don't see how it is any of our concern,” Waldo said.

“Don't you see? My problems matter more than anything to you. Specially to Kit,” Cyril replied.

I didn't say a word as my name came out of his mouth like a bullet. Again he was claiming that I was in danger, but again he was being purposely vague about
exactly
what the danger was.

Waldo flinched. “I thought we'd agreed to keep Kit out of it.”

“This concerns Kit. It is life and death to her. You see, I know what my brother is planning.”

“I don't buy this threat-to-Kit business … You have always been fascinated with Kit. Don't know why,” Waldo
said, with a quick glance at me. “This feels like one more ruse.” He got up and took a step toward the door. “Sir, it is time for us to leave.”

“Stop!” Cyril yelled. “You must believe me. You must come with me to Arizona.”

“Arizona?”

“The Grand Canyon. It is where my brother plans the ceremony. I don't know exactly what, but—”

“You've lost your mind,” Waldo said, moving closer to the door. “We're going.”

“Kit, look at your left arm.” Cyril stood up to bar his way. “The soft spot above your elbow.”

I looked down and gasped. A mark had appeared on my arm. A pattern of blotches, like birth marks or beauty spots bleeding together. But this was no pretty thing. It was a snake. A black snake speckled with brown blotches was curling toward my forearm.

As I looked at the cursed thing in horror, Mr. Baker lifted his arm. White gloves covered his hands up to his wrists. He rolled up his left shirtsleeve to the elbow and we all saw the vile thing.

A black snake, the mirror image of the one on my own arm.

I looked from my snake brand to Cecil's markings and my head exploded with pain. Flaring lights burst before my eyes. I screamed. Everyone turned to look at me. Through a white glare I saw my father stuttering and Aunt Hilda goggling at me, her jaw hanging open.

“Pull yourself together, Kit,” she snapped finally.

I could hardly speak, the pain in my head was so intense. My tongue felt bloated and stuck to the back of my throat.

“Not feeling well. Going back … hotel. Lie down,” I managed.

“I'll go with you,” Rachel said.

“No.”

“I'll go,” Waldo said. “She needs a man with her.”

“I will accompany Kit home, no arguments,” my father said. “In fact, I think we should all leave right away.”

“Please, don't be alarmed. I felt it too when I saw the mark for the first time. Please, I can explain.” Cyril Baker bobbed up in front of the door, trying to hold us back. “I
need to tell you about my brother's plans. I need to tell you about the tablet.”

My father's face was unusually stern. He was desperate to be out of this luxurious little prison, desperate to have me back in safety. But Mr. Baker was equally desperate. Maniacally, he babbled on about conspiracy and treasure, while my father and friends tried to leave.