“Two witnesses have independently and confidently identified him, and the dead man himself wrote ‘GB’ in his own blood, right beside his body. Besides that, part of his laboratory coat was found at the scene—a pocket, torn off in the victim’s struggles.”
Laboratory coat? Gideon shook his head. He almost never wore a coat in the lab, only the occasional apron or belt for his tools. To call the charges trumped up was to give them more credit than they deserved.
“That’s preposterous!” Wellers said with exasperation. “You have no way of knowing whose coat, whose pocket…”
But one of the policemen snapped, “The specifics are none of your concern, unless you’re giving quarter to a known fugitive. In that case, it’s absolutely your concern, because it’s evidence against you, as well. Now, where is he?”
“I surely have no idea.”
“According to our sources, he left the Lincoln household with you. To come here. To do … what are you doing, anyway?”
“You don’t care, so what does it matter? You’re looking for Gideon, and I haven’t seen him. We parted company in town when we realized we didn’t have enough supplies to perform our task. You might stop by C. T. Helman’s shipping supplies.”
“And why would we do that?”
“Because,” Nelson said with an exaggerated note of impatience. “That’s where we got the waxed canvas over there.” He must have gestured at the cart. “And I’ll answer your other question truly and on the house: We’re trying to prevent damage to the basement level, where some very sensitive scientific equipment is presently exposed to the elements. If you take a look at the sky, you’ll see we have some elements pending. Any minute now.”
“You’ve got a point. Maybe we should take a look at all this … sensitive scientific equipment while we still can. It could be important to the case.”
“I assure you, it isn’t.”
Gideon thought fast. Getting out of the basement, that was the first priority. On the one hand, he wanted to swear at Wellers for bringing up the machine, but he couldn’t stay there anyway, so the sooner he was out, the better.
He glared at the Fiddlehead, source of and solution to so many problems. Could it survive the night without being covered? Maybe. It’d held on this long, hadn’t it? A week, plus a couple of days. But there had been no rain, no ice. Water might be the end of it. Simple moisture destroying the most complex machine a man had ever made. He was certain that said something about Mother Nature, or God, or fate, but he didn’t give a damn about any of them, so he seethed without remorse and didn’t wonder after a deeper meaning.
But he couldn’t save the machine if he was imprisoned or dead, now could he?
He seized a bit of waxed cotton canvas—the only bolt he’d brought down. He wrapped his hand in one corner and used it to snap his lantern in half, removing the simple circuitry from the bulb and examining it.
He frowned. The lantern was newfangled twenty years ago, before the electrical models hit the market; but now it felt like a Roman artifact in his hands. No matter. He’d work with what he had.
He popped off the bottom, removed the metal base, and then extracted the glass canister of fuel that rested within. There wasn’t much, but it’d have to be enough.
Ducking under a fallen plank, he scooted into the next room over, where it was almost pitch black. That made it hard to see, but even harder to be seen.
He worked fast, using his teeth to tear off the cuff of his shirtsleeve. He stuffed it down into the fuel, making a wick that he hoped was long enough. It had to be long enough, or he’d incinerate himself and the Fiddlehead alike.
There, crouched in the utmost darkness, he pulled a box of matches out of his pocket and struck one. He looked up at what used to be the ceiling, and targeted a pair of feet he could barely see, very near the edge of the basement pit. They weren’t Wellers’s feet—Gideon was pretty sure that Wellers was facing the other direction.
He listened to the voices for another moment. Yes, he was confident.
With a deep breath and a steady hand, he lit the scrap of cotton. It burned too bright, a beacon that would reveal him if he let it. The wick wouldn’t last but a few precious seconds, and Wellers couldn’t stall the men forever, so he chucked the tiny, sloshing bomb up through the floor as quickly as he could.
It shattered and the fuel ignited, spreading across the beams that remained. But it also spread out across the grass, a shallow pool of fire that chased the officers backwards while Wellers barked out something in surprise. A laugh? A cry?
Gideon wasn’t listening. He was leaving.
Out he went, up the broken stairs and over the wall while the commotion blazed behind him. He hunkered down low, trusting the coagulating shadows and his grandfather’s Revolutionary War coat to disguise him. He twisted his scarf around his neck, making it snug so it wouldn’t flap or snag. And while Nelson Wellers and the officers stomped and tamped the flames against the damp grass, Gideon ran back out through the woods.
Yet again.
He was sick of it, but what else could he do? There were two kinds of help he could offer Wellers: one, he could physically assault the officers in question, thereby negating any murder defense; or, two, he could prove Wellers a truthful man by getting as far away from the premises as possible.
The last vestiges of Wellers’s protest faded in the distance. Perhaps they’d arrest him, but it wouldn’t be for murder—and there wasn’t much Gideon could do about it either way. He had to trust the Pinkerton agent to manage the situation.
He hated trusting other people to take care of things without him. He’d much rather do everything himself.
But aside from absenting himself, the most helpful course of action he could take was to get to the Lincolns’ homestead. Old Uncle Abe would probably know what was going on—he had ears all over the District, and Gideon had a feeling that these murders were already far from secret. Murder never stayed quiet for long.
As he dashed through the trees along the main road, he glanced at the sky. Was the air on his face wet, or merely cold? Was his nose running, or just freezing?
Whoever had thought of a murder charge was brilliant, really. When the facts align against you, loudly misdirect. Wonderful strategy. You could undermine anyone by calling them a lunatic or a murderer, especially a colored man whose respectability was precarious under the best of circumstances.
Even though the sentiments expressed in his editorial sounded outlandish, they were based on rock-solid, irrefutable facts. But all the proof in the world only mattered if it were known and accepted, which was rather unlikely if the proof came from a man accused of murder, especially what sounded like gruesome murders. Vicious, appalling, cruel, sick acts, undoubtedly—with the added lurid detail of a dead man’s accusation, written in blood. How else would they call him a lunatic in the papers?
And on what other grounds might they take away his credibility? That he was colored? That he’d been a slave?
That was meaningless in the broad sense, but there were still fools who thought it mattered. Then again, such fools would dismiss him regardless of a murder accusation. No, this ploy was meant to sway the middle masses, the men and women who might otherwise be inclined to panic about this creeping leprosy that spread through the soldiers and into the cities.
This was a much easier panic, to be sure: a colored man on a murdering rampage. A bold headline! One that would push smaller, more dangerous headlines like “Evidence of Walking Plague’s Association with Warfare Weaponry Mounts” down the page.
He’d become a point of gossip among the fancy set, just like the Charleston Caper or the Macon Madmen in his father’s time. Oh, beware and behold the danger of letting negroes have their freedom! Ignore the facts, believe the manufactured story with its tidy villains and convenient foes. It’s easier that way.