I groped down the alley, cane in hand, slipping in the running sewage, holding my handkerchief firmly to my face. Even so, the stench was stomach-churning. I came to an opening in the dingy wall and a solitary gas lamp flickered over the sign. SOLOMON’S COURT.
Excitement made my heart thump. I fingered the half coin in my pocket, and the loaded revolver next to it. Then I edged into the courtyard.
It was black as pitch. The houses—or warehouses—reared high into the fog. My footsteps seemed to shuffle and multiply in the enclosed space, as if there were others here, behind me.
The pentangle was scratched on the wall beside a very small door down a few steps running with noisome liquids. I descended carefully, and rapped on the wood with my cane.
I was breathless with excitement and avid for danger. These moments were what I lived for.
The door opened.
A sickly smell enfolded me, which I recognized immediately as opium. It was a vice I had sampled, but I loathed the way it robbed men of their intelligence, and had long abandoned it. I ducked inside. A stout woman in a red dress held out her hand. She no doubt expected money, but I handed her the broken coin. She brought it close to her eyes, and then, seeing what it was, thrust it back at me with almost a hiss of fear.
“Follow me,” she croaked.
The den was crowded, heaps of rags that were men and women lying sprawled, the pipes through which they took the drug spilling from their fingers. Some moaned. I wondered in what nightmare of horrors their souls wandered. The woman brought me to a dismal corner at the back; she pulled a heavy curtain aside and stepped back, gesturing me to go on. I groped my way along a stinking corridor, and at the end, found an open door. Beyond that, a room.
A small fire burned in a dark grate. Next to it a man rose to meet me.
He was the strangest of creatures. A handsome dark-haired man, until he turned, and the flamelight revealed a jagged scar down the left side of his face, a terrible curve, as if some sword had slashed it. His eyes were dark as a rat’s, his hair long, his hands delicate and slender. He lifted one, and held it out; I gave him the half coin and he spared it one glance, slipping it into his pocket.
“Mr. John Harcourt Symmes,” he said. His voice was curiously husky.
I bowed. “You know of me, sir?”
His calm stare unnerved me. He said…
“Sarah! Are you in here?”
A banging on the door. Sarah jumped. The sun had gone and the window seat was icy. She shoved the journal into her pocket and hustled the box back quickly in the cupboard.
“Sarah!”
“Yes…wait…coming,” she yelled, then hurtled out through the door. Straight into Wharton.
He gasped. The girl had run out without warning. There was a crash and a flutter. He looked down and saw the newspaper with a small fat leather journal lying splayed on top of it on the wooden floorboards.
“I’m so sorry,” he began, and she said, “No it’s me…”
They both dived for the papers, but Wharton was quicker; politely he picked up the notebook and arranged its scattered and damaged pages to smooth order. Words and phrases caught his eye. He stopped, turned back. Surely he had seen…Chronoptika…
He looked up. Sarah had the newspaper and her face was flushed. She handed it back to him, quickly. “Yours.”
“Piers’s really.” He took it. Then he said, “Sarah, listen. I’ve just read an article in here and your photo is—”
“Please.” She looked up at him with blue, urgent eyes. “Don’t tell anyone. I mean outside the house.”
“Venn knows?”
She nodded. “I ran away because I’m not mad. I’m not violent. I just need some time to sort myself out. Where they can’t find me.”
Wharton felt deeply uneasy. What was Venn doing, harboring a girl so disturbed? He shrugged. “Well, it’s none of my business. I’m just en route to Shepton Mallet.” He realized he was still holding the journal, and she was looking at it with an anxious, hungry look. He held it out. “Yours.”
She took it, just too quickly. He said, “Have you seen Jake?”
“Not since earlier. We managed to break a mirror.” She moved to go past him, then paused. As if she’d made up her mind, she said, “Mr. Wharton, do you think his father is really dead?”
Wharton folded the paper absently. “I have no idea. But if he is, I don’t think Venn murdered him.”
She looked at him calmly. “Neither do I.”
“That makes three of us,” Piers said, behind them.
They turned and saw he was standing at the end of the corridor watching them, a black cat tucked under his arm. He grinned his sidelong grin.
“Lunch is served.”
9
What is a reflection? Where doth it exist…in the eye, or in the glasse? What properties in the light return us to our selves? Is it divine revelation, or doth the devyl taunt us with our imperfections?
Above all, this. How can any man be certayn that what he sees in the mirror is true?
From The Scrutiny of Secrets by Mortimer Dee
“THAT WAS DELICIOUS,” Wharton said.
“So glad you enjoyed it.” Piers piled the dishes on a tray.
“I’ll take those,” Sarah said quickly. She took the tray and went out with it. She hadn’t eaten much, Wharton thought, and she had seemed tense, on edge. Once, when something had howled far off in the Wood, she had almost jumped, and gone over to the window and stared out at the bleak day for a long time. People must be looking for her. Really, he ought just to phone the police.
He said, “I’m sorry Jake is so late. He’s a bit…preoccupied.”
Piers nodded. “Secretive?”
“Most certainly.”
“Hell to teach?”
“Believe me, you have no idea.” Wharton stirred his coffee. “So, Mr. Piers. It must be pleasant having your niece here working with you.”
Piers’s smile never flickered. Today he was wearing a butler’s outfit, smoothly black over a red waistcoat, the tailcoat ridiculously long. He had already tripped over it once. “Most pleasant, yes.”
Now he leaned against the table.
They gazed at each other; it was Wharton who broke first. He tapped the newspaper, suddenly impatient. “It’s odd then that there’s a picture of a girl in here who looks just like Sarah. A young woman who’s absconded from—”
“I saw that.” Piers swept up the crumbs. “An amazing resemblance. They say everyone in the world has a double, you know. A sort of reflection of oneself.”
“Do they?”
“Of course, this other poor girl who’s run away…we don’t know what she’s running from. Those places must be hell. Not that His Excellency would care. He’s not the sort to hide fugitives.”
“Unless she could be of some use to him.”
Piers smiled, but it was a brittle effort. “Yes. Unless that.” His gaze fixed on the window. “Ah. Here they are.”
Wharton stood and saw Venn stride swiftly out of the Wood, and to his surprise, Jake stalk behind him, obviously freezing, and even more obviously, furious.
Piers turned hastily. “Whoops. I fear lunch might not be wanted. I’ll just take the rest of the dishes down.” Wharton held the door open for him and he stepped out with a tray, vanishing discreetly as Venn barged into the entrance hall in an icy draft that gusted right up the corridor. Jake hurtled after him, mid-shout.
“I’ll make you talk to me! First off, you lied. All right, maybe you didn’t kill him. But you know what happened to him. This machine she was talking about…”