On the staircase in the fog, Rose slowly lifted her head.
Collins waved the bottle, and the scene went black. 'For me, the horror was still to come.' Shivering, the boys sat back down on the damp grass.
3
'Even I was surprised by Haraldson's savagery. What you boys saw was a little pig's blood and the hint of something grotesque — what I saw was a man being slowly dismembered and kept alive in absolute agony until the last possible second. I had been thinking of the Collector as a sort of toy, as it had been when I had invented it. Of course, the power was mine, not Haraldson's. He was only a tool, a doll filled with my own imagery. And because Haraldson was now a liability, I realized that he could be replaced by any number of our hangers-on — even with one of the Wandering Boys if necessary. I released Haraldson from the Collector as quickly as possible, after I was sure Withers was dead. The police found him almost immediately: the Swede was in such a daze that he was put away in a mental home and convicted but never executed for Withers' murder. There was a little stir in the papers for a bit; then it died away, and we were far out in the country, working the provinces; no one connected Withers or Haraldson to myself.
'The other thing I had realized while the Collector gathered in poor Withers was that I had no real need of the Wandering Boys anymore. The Collector was bodyguard enough. This was just a seed in my mind, understand. I thought about it while I gave the Wandering Boys their one amusement, badger-baiting. Whenever we were out in the countryside, they arranged for a couple of dogs, and we went out in the middle of the night with our shovels and tongs and put paid to a couple of badgers. The night after Withers had been dispatched, we were in the countryside west of York, and I looked at those six trolls and their ringmaster working for the moment when they could witness the slaughter of a few animals, and I thought: Are they really necessary? I filed the thought away: there was a great deal on my mind at the time.
'Rosa Forte, for one. She had become distant and sulky, and this infuriated me. I often beat her when I was drunk. I could not tell if she loved or hated me, her manner was so contradictory. Speckle John, who by 1922 was definitely my second fiddle, used to try to advise me about her, and his advice was an old woman's. Be nicer to her, treat her better, listen to her, that sort of thing. She would go to him and weep. I despised both of them. Money was also on my mind. Though we were as successful as any magicians were in those days, I constantly felt pinched for extra money. Even with what I made reading fortunes and doing prognostications for the wealthy, I wasn't satisfied. I wanted to live well, I wanted a lavish act; even then, I think I had the germ of my farewell performance in my mind. A good climax is important to any performance, and I knew that when I tired of touring — of dragging nine other people around the world with me — I would want my final show to be the most spectacular performance ever seen.
'That would be very expensive; and indeed my own tastes had become costly. We were already charging as much as we could ask. So I adopted other means, and here the Wandering Boys were useful to me.
'I went unannounced to that rich fool in Kensington, Robert Chalfont, late one night. When he opened the door to me, I saw on his big-jawed public-school face that he was both flattered and unsettled, even a little frightened. That was perfect. He knew what I had done to Crowley in his garden earlier that summer. Chalfont invited me in and offered me a drink. I took some malt whiskey and sat down in the library while he paced up and down. He had invited me for dinner several times and I had not come; now that I was there, he was nervous. 'Nice of you to drop in,' he said.
''I want money,' I said unceremoniously. 'A lot of it.'
' 'Well, look here, Collins,' he said. 'I'm afraid I can't just give you money on demand, you know — there are ways of doing things.'
''And this is my way,' I told him. 'I want three thousand pounds a year from you. And I want you to sign a paper stating that you give it voluntarily, in recognition of my work.'
''Well, dammit, man, no one respects your work more than I do,' he said, 'but what you're asking is preposterous.'
''No, you are preposterous,' I told him. 'You wish the privilege of associating with great magicians. You want intimacy with their secrets; you want to witness displays of their power. Now it is time to pay for the privilege.' And I reminded him of what I could do to him if he refused me.
'He asked me for time to think. I gave him two days — I could see on that stupid well-brought-up face that he wished he'd stuck to shooting and fishing.
'The following day I sent Mr. Peet and his trolls around to his house, and they did some damage there. Chalfont came straightaway to my hotel suite and agreed to what I'd demanded. But by then I had decided I wanted more — all of it, in fact. And he gave it to me, everything he had.'
'He just gave you all his money?' Tom asked. 'Just like that?'
'Not exactly.' The magician smiled. 'I invited Chalfont to participate in our act.'
'You collected him,' Tom said, horrified.
'Of course. Once he'd had a sample of that, he signed everything over to me. I kept the trolls with him every day while he made the arrangements. And when I had his name on the papers and his money in my account, I collected him again. As he should have had the sense to expect. He gave a new dimension to the Collector, a sort of poignance. In fact, I began to think it was a pity I'd never put Crowley in the Collector. Imagine what a Collector he would have made! But we made do with Chalfont for as long as we stayed together. And I had no other Collector until I heard the pleas of your school-friend and saw how helpful he would be to us this summer.'
Down in the trees, a faint light began to glow, teasing the fog that moved slowly across it.
'But pay attention now', boys. We are coming to the next turning point in my life — one of those great reversals, like the death of Vendouris or my first meeting with Speckle John.
'The money question had been solved, for many of my wealthy admirers had half-suspected the kind of thing that had happened to Chalfont, and gave over large sums whenever I wanted them. But I was growing tired of Europe. Europe was dead. I sensed new life in America — life that did not stink of corpses. Europe was really a graveyard, and in America my family had enough money to keep me for the rest of my life. I took a month off, sailed to the States, and looked for a suitable place to set up my compound. For that was how I thought of it: a guarded place, remote from any city, where I could extend magic as far as it could go; without the third-party trappings of an audience. I found this place and bought it and hired workmen to make the improvements I had in mind. The price was too high originally, but I persuaded the owners to let it go reasonably. And my methods ensured that no one would come prowling around in my absence.'
There was an immense, terrifying beating of wings: a huge white owl came to life in the dim light. Both boys froze. The owl looked predatory, more purely savage than the Collector; it beat its wings once more, then blew apart like smoke, becoming part of the fog.
Still the light glowed, promising visions to come.
'I landed again in France in the autumn of 1923. It had been only five years since my first landing, but imagine the difference! Now I knew who and what I was: Coleman Collins had found and developed the power which Charles Nightingale had only dared to dream existed within him. I was rich enough to do anything I wished, and I was famous enough to draw large audiences wherever we appeared. Now I owned a house and extensive grounds in New England. And beyond all else, of course, I was King of the Cats, famous throughout the occult world. This was a position I intended to hold as long as I could — at least until I sensed the arrival of a magician whose powers were as much greater than mine as mine were than Speckle John's. Then, I thought, we'd see what we would see.'