Chapter 5
The slush of the streets had frozen after sundown, and the thin crust of ice crunched beneath my shoes as I made my way to my appointment. I huddled into my thick, woolen overcoat, wishing my hat did more to protect my ears from the cold.
The great clock above the courthouse chimed ten just as I reached my destination. As I approached the corner, Griffin stepped beneath the nearest streetlight, a carpetbag in one hand.
“Punctual, just as I expected,” he said with a smile.
“Skulking in the shadows, just as I expected.”
As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I wished to take them back. Griffin only laughed, however. “I am wounded, sir! Wounded to the quick.”
“Somehow I doubt it,” I muttered.
“Hmm. And you took my advice on dressing, I see?” He reached out and tugged lightly on the thick, purple scarf wrapped around my neck. “Although I must say, you have unexpected depths to you. I assumed all your clothing was some shade of brown or gray.”
“It was a Christmas gift, from one of the servants in my parents’ house.”
Griffin arched a brow. “Oh? A blushing maid, taken with the youngest son?”
“Of course not! Miss Emily served in the household long before I was even born!”
“Not in contact with your father, but exchanging Christmas gifts with the servants. You are quite the enigma, my dear Whyborne.”
“I exchange cards with my family,” I protested weakly
“But no gifts, unless I mistake your meaning. Surely not one you would select to wear tonight. Was it for the dark color, or for luck, I wonder?”
I bridled at his determination to dissect me. “Wonder all you wish. I am not one of your cases.”
“Is it wrong of me to want to know more about a friend? If so, I fear I’ll be begging your forgiveness rather often.”
Friends? Us? I did not have friends. I had colleagues. Well, Christine might be considered a friend, although we didn’t associate outside the museum. I didn’t dislike people, exactly, but I’d never quite got the hang of the casual interactions which seemed to come naturally to everyone else.
Perhaps it wouldn’t be such a bad thing, to have Griffin as a friend. Especially since he seemed willing to put up with my eccentricities. His good looks and charm had nothing to do with it.
“I, er, yes,” I said. “That is, no. I mean, no it isn’t wrong of you.”
His smile could make a man imagine he stood on a tropical beach, rather than a freezing street. “Good to hear. Now,” he hefted the bag in his hand, causing several things to shift and clank within, “shall we go forward with our excursion?”
This was my last chance to back out. To decide, no, I really didn’t want to risk ending up in jail tonight. To go back to my apartment, lock the door, and bury myself in a book. To preserve my quiet existence.
But Griffin was my friend now, and he had asked for my help. Just as Leander had asked so many years ago.
No. This was no boyish fancy: Griffin was trying to bring a murderer to justice. I was not accompanying him out of selfish reasons, but because I might be the only one who could decipher any texts we found. Could I sleep at night, knowing I might have brought some measure of peace to Mr. Rice, but turned back out of pure cowardice?
“I’m ready,” I said.
Griffin flashed me a grin. “Come then, Whyborne. We have work to do.”
~ * ~
The warehouse was two blocks from the waterfront, tucked along a side street occupied by boarded-up buildings and pawnshops selling the curious objects acquired by sailors in far ports. It was not an area of town I had ever before frequented, and my steps grew more cautious as we left the known streets farther and farther behind. The air reeked of fish, and I glimpsed the stacks of the canning factory only a few streets away. The whisper of the ocean was like the deep throb of a giant’s pulse.
At this hour, we encountered few on the streets, except for a handful of wretches seeking somewhere quiet to sleep. The bawdy houses and saloons clustered around Queen Street, four blocks to the south. At least we didn’t have to pass any leering dockworkers or red-lipped whores.
Gas had never been installed along the streets nearest the warehouse. The area lay in complete darkness, without a single light to brighten the overcast night. As we reached the last of the streetlights, Griffin paused and removed a pair of police lanterns from his bag. The faint smell of burning kerosene tinged the air as he lit one and passed it to me.
“If I tell you to cover it, obey me immediately,” he said, indicating the shutter.
I swallowed hard, and hoped he didn’t notice the shaking of my hand as I accepted the lantern. “As you say.”
“Then cover it for now, and walk close behind me. The fewer lights we show, the less attention we’ll attract.” The strong beam of his lantern cut through the night as he spoke. “I wish we could have waited for a moonlit night and forgone them altogether, but there’s no guarantee of getting one of those until next spring.”
“If then.” Dismal rains were rather the mainstay April through June.
“Lovely.” He came to a sudden halt, putting a hand to my arm. Even through the layers of clothing separating our skin, his touch felt like a jolt of electricity. “There’s the warehouse. I’m going to dim the light—stay close to me.”
“I will.”
He released me and eased the shutter of his lantern closed, letting only a thin sliver of light escape. We remained on the side of the street opposite our goal, until we stood directly across from it, when Griffin shuttered the light completely.
Instantly, we were plunged into complete darkness. His hand clasped my arm again, and he leaned close, his lips all but pressed to my ear as he whispered: “I came by during daylight, disguised as a dock worker, and didn’t see any watchmen. But we’ll wait a few minutes just to be sure.”
I’d never realized my ears were so sensitive, but I was hyper-aware of his breath on my skin, stirring the small hairs. A shiver raced down my neck, and I began to stiffen beneath my worsted trousers.
This was madness. What had happened, that I was suddenly prey to these urges which I had kept ruthlessly suppressed my entire adult life?
At least the concealing night prevented Griffin from seeing the blood rush to my face. Or anywhere else, for that matter. I nodded my assent, and he withdrew, satisfied.
He spent the next few minutes watching the warehouse for any sign of light from within which would betray a night guard on his rounds. I spent them concentrating on the cold, the unpleasant stink of fish, and how we might possibly explain ourselves if a police officer should happen along. Any distraction was welcome, if it kept my thoughts off the man at my side.
After a wait which seemed agonizingly long, although in truth it could not have been more than ten minutes, Griffin cracked the shutter on his lantern and led the way across the street to our destination. He avoided the main door in favor of a smaller entrance on the side, no doubt meant for deliveries from the alley.
“Hold the light steady on the lock,” he instructed, passing me his lantern. He rummaged through his carpetbag again and pulled out a bundle of rolled-up cloth. When spread on the icy sidewalk beneath the door, the bundle revealed a number of thin metal slips and picks. Selecting two, he set to work on the door lock.
“Did the Pinkertons teach you this?” I asked in surprise.
He didn’t look away from his work. “Actually, yes. Why—are you imagining a sordid past for me?”
“I begin to feel as if nothing about you would shock me.”
“My dear Whyborne, I do believe you think me a rogue,” he said as the door popped open. Grinning triumphantly, he took the lantern from me.
“I’ve yet to see evidence to the contrary,” I muttered, eyeing the dark room beyond. Once I stepped in, I would well and truly be on the wrong side of the law. Griffin stopped just within and looked at me expectantly. With a sigh, I crossed the threshold.
Griffin eased the door shut behind us, although he didn’t close it all the way, no doubt in case we needed a hasty escape. At his signal, I uncovered my lantern and used it to inspect the room. Perhaps it had been intended as some kind of receiving room, but now it was completely bare and slightly dusty.
He led the way to the door on the opposite wall and cautiously cracked it open. After peering through, he opened it further and beckoned me to follow.
Griffin swept his lantern slowly from one end of the cavernous room to the other. Although the beams were powerful, the lanterns revealed only a sliver of the room at a time, leaving everything outside the small circles of light in complete darkness. Pallets of all sorts lay strewn about, many of them containing large crates. Even a quick glance revealed the marks of a dozen different ports from around the globe.
“I’ll poke around down here,” he murmured; his breath steamed in the cold, forming a cloud floating through the bright beam of his lantern. “The stairs over there lead up to the offices. If there are any relevant books, that’s where they’ll be kept.”
“You, er, want me to look upstairs?”
“Please.”
Why was I so reluctant to leave his side? I’d never been one to fear the dark, and I’d never needed another’s company to reassure me against imagined terrors. Yet there was something about this warehouse I most emphatically did not like, a sense that something watched me from the darkness.
Except there wasn’t anything lurking, any more than there had been in my apartment. It had been foolishness then and was foolishness now. Straightening my spine, I nodded and made my way to the stair Griffin indicated.
The risers creaked beneath my feet. Despite the cold, the air was oddly close. I caught a whiff of putrefaction. A rat had died in the walls, no doubt. Or an army of them.
I swept my light across the landing on the second floor; something scuttled away, just beyond the beam. Most likely another rat—although it sounded terribly large for a rat. Well, we were near the docks; this was probably some king of its species from Sumatra or Shanghai, newly brought to these shores by one of the many ships crowding the port.
As Griffin predicted, there were indeed offices on the second floor. The one to my right had large interior windows and looked out onto the warehouse floor below. No doubt it was meant for an overseer of some sort. The others might belong to…well, I had no idea who else might work in a warehouse. Someone more important than an overseer?
At any rate, if there was anything of a sensitive nature, it would more likely be kept in one of the closed rooms, where no one could just glance through a window. I chose the first room to my left and tried the door.
To my surprise, it was unlocked. Inside was a simple office: a desk, a filing cabinet, and a bookcase. A quick glance at the books showed only ledgers. I started to leave, then returned to look inside the desk. As I bent over it, I heard another scuttling from the shadows in the hall.
I jerked instinctively, shining the beam of my lantern in the direction of the sound. Nothing there.
Just rats. Rats in the walls.
I opened the desk. A leather-bound book lay inside. Burned into the cover was an unfamiliar symbol. A phoenix rose from flames, clutching in its claws an ouroboros: a serpent eating its own tail.
Griffin would want to see it. I took it from the drawer and tucked it into my overcoat; once I’d finished looking around, I’d show it to my companion before returning it to the drawer.
The next room was no office, as I’d supposed. Instead, it appeared to be a storeroom of some kind. Shelves lined the walls, and on the shelves were rows of cylindrical pottery jars, similar in design to those used by the ancient Greeks to store oil, even though they were obviously of modern origin. A small card was pasted to the shelf in front of each, inscribed with a date and a location. Salem 1683 or Providence 1791 or Widdershins 1812.
My curiosity aroused, I started to take down the nearest one, when the scuttling in the hall returned, louder than ever. This time, it was accompanied by a stench I couldn’t name: the foulness of unwashed skin, clotted with pus and mixed with the dry leathery scent of reptiles.
No rat smelled like that.
I left the shelf alone and hastened into the empty hall. Only one more door; I would look inside quickly, then gather Griffin and convince him to leave this place. My every nerve pulled tight, like violin strings about to snap.
I flung open the final door and froze. After a long, breathless moment, I turned and walked unsteadily back to the landing.
“Griffin?” I called. “I think you should see this.”
He came immediately, as if he trusted me to know what was important and what not. It might have warmed me, but what I’d glimpsed in the room had left too deep a chill.
I led the way back, even though I wanted to quit the building altogether. “I…I’m not sure what this is about,” I said as we reached the door. “But it cannot be good.”
Half the room seemed to be a chemical laboratory, reeking of sulfur. Our lantern beams reflected off glass jars, beakers, telescopes, and microscopes. There were coils of copper tubing, brass burners, and a dozen other instruments of whose function I was ignorant. Neatly-labeled bottles containing various compounds filled glass-fronted cabinets and shelves.
The other half of the room was the display of a madman.
The moldering remains of a dozen coffins lay broken and discarded, filling the air with a reek slightly less nauseous than the chemical stench. Foul rags of clothing formed a second pile, all of them of them encrusted with the unnamable filth of the grave.
“Dear God,” Griffin murmured.
“I don’t know what Philip was involved in, but whoever did this must be mad.” My voice trembled shamefully, but I could not help but stare at those coffins, wrenched from the earth with such violence, and wonder what had become of their poor contents. “They must believe their brand of occultism is real.”
Griffin wet his lips. “Yes. Mad.” His Adam’s apple jumped as he swallowed convulsively. “Was there anything else?”
“Just this,” I said, drawing the book from my coat and passing it to him.
Its effect was as immediate as it was unexpected. He started violently, and even in the dim light I saw the color drain from his face.
“Run,” he said.
“I-I’m sorry?”
“Run.” He tore his gaze away from the book in his hands. “Run, damn you, before it’s too late!”
I bolted for the door. But there was something already coming in through it.