“There—the shadows! Quickly!” whispered Ransom.
“Hold on,” said Thomas. “Tell me why’re we running from the constable again?”
“They’ll haul us back to the dormitory for being past curfew, for one,” Declan assured him. “So shhh.”
“Don’t be naïve, Declan. Mr. Wyland here’s not hiding beneath this stairwell in a dark alley because we are in trouble. Reahall was asking me all sorts of questions about our hired detective here. He’s come to arrest you, hasn’t he?”
Declan said, “He hasn’t, has he Mr. Wyland. Go on, tell Tommie to push off.”
“Yeah, Mr. Wyland, tell us, if that’s your real name,” said Thomas.
“Thomas, Declan… you help me, lads.” began Ransom, “and I’ll get you boys into that morgue. Deal?”
Declan shook his hand. “Deal.”
“A bargain for sure,” added Thomas.
“Now quiet,” Ransom ordered them where they crouched in a black corner behind trash bins.
Some time had past when from the darkest shadows in the alleyway, Ransom, Declan, and Thomas continued to watch the uniformed officers at rear of the billet come charging round; the Belfast police now surrounded the small house and its street-level apartment—guns drawn. They then listened to the sounds of Constable Reahall’s men break down the front door in dramatic fashion. Reahall then rummaged through the room until he opened the back door and looked down the barrels of six guns trained on him. He uselessly asked, “No one’s come out this way?”
“No one, sir!”
“’Cept that is… you, sir.”
“Find the basement, search the walls! I want that man!”
It was half an hour before Ransom felt it safe enough to slip from the shadows and for the trio to make their way down the alleyway and out onto North Queen Street, heading toward the bottom of Antrim Road, passing a ancient cemetery, the Clifton Street Graveyard with its entry facing them. A sudden noise behind them, a lorry pulled by a horse startled them and made Ransom slip into the cemetery for cover, but it became a moment of mirth for the university boys.
They soon passed Henry Place, continuing onward down Clifton, making their way toward the hospital. In doing so, they must pass the Crumlin Road Gaol, Constable Raehall’s old stone fortress of a prison. There they saw the hub-bub of frustrated men who’d worked late into the night, first at the shipyards and inside Titanic, and then at Detective Wyland’s residence.
The better part of valor may well have been to back away and go around the cemetery or through it, but Ransom instead led them to the rear of the courthouse instead. “You know the streets well,” said Declan.
“I make it my business to know the lay of the land.”
They quickly closed in on the impressive red-brick hospital which had the aspect of a cathedral among the densely packed, terraced residential houses surrounding the medical facility.
Once again the young interns had walked ahead of Ransom to guide him to the separate facilities turned over to the university for dissection and surgery, this separate morgue for university use only. Ransom strained to hear what the boys were whispering about.
“He’s going to make a wonderful witness, Declan—a wanted man, Declan. Are you listening to me, Declan?” complained Thomas in his friend’s ear. The boys walked quickly now, slowing occasionally to look back over their shoulders to check on Alastair’s progress.
Ransom habitually looked over his shoulder as well but he did so for possible attacks on him. An old habit cultivated as a cop in Chicago, a habit that he’d thought himself ready to give up, but apparently not. He’d been fooling himself to think he had finally run far enough. Now all he could think of was hanging for a crime he hadn’t committed, and how much that would please all his enemies in Chicago—like his boss at the time, Kohler, the Chief of Police—and the man who’d set him up for a hanging.
As they found the hospital grounds, the street lamps became fewer and farther between, and soon they were approaching the darkened, locked up basement that the boys pointed to, guiding Ransom to the lock. “How will you get us in?” asked Declan.
“Watch me.”
Ransom worked a sliver of metal he always kept on him into the lock, and in an instant, he had the lock turning but the door would not budge. He fumbled about, a blush of embarrassment coloring his jowls and making him thankful for the deep shadow here so the boys could not see his shame as he knew he didn’t have the necessary torsion wrench to get past this door. “There’s good security here, boys. No way I can get through this door. Sorry. Best we all go home.”
“But there must be a way in.” Declan held up one of Ransom’s picks.
“There’s no way to work this lock with the tools I have, son. Sorry.”
“Surely you have other means of breaking and entering—a man of experience?”
“All right and yes, Declan, I do have other means.”
“Then what’re we waiting for?” asked Thomas. “Someone’s going to spot us here.”
Ransom stared momentarily at Thomas. “Come along. Follow me closely, fellas.”
The interns shadowed the detective to the grassy area beside the door and stone steps leading to this back entryway. “What’re you doing?” asked Thomas at the same time that Ransom, using an elbow with his coat wrapped about it, suddenly broke a window, making the boys leap.
“You’ve broken the window,” said Declan.
Ransom snorted and said, “You are a bright one. All right, one of you climb through and open the door.”
“That’s it? This is your clever way to get us inside?”
“Declan is elected,” said Thomas.
“Me? Why me?”
“You’re smaller, more compact. Careful climbing over those test tubes, by the way. Try not to break anything.”
Ransom looked at Declan, the boy’s face having dropped. “You do want to learn what the victims can tell us, right?”
“Thomas encouraged his friend. “If we don’t go in and have a hard look, Declan, we are merely flailing around in the dark.”
Ransom added, “May’s well be back inside that detestable mine shaft without a lantern—and Thomas, I wish to apologize to you, young man.”
“For what?”
“Well… what with so much going on, I’ve been remiss in failing to offer my condolences on the loss of your uncle.”
Thomas stood stunned for a moment, unsure how to respond. “Thank you, Mr. Wyland, but at the moment, I just want to know precisely what killed him. I want to know what to tell my aunt.”
“Understood.” Ransom and Thomas watched Declan climb though the window and into the darkness where the three bodies lay in waiting.
“No sign of the missing Pinkerton man, Tuttle eh, Thomas?”
“None whatsoever, but it’s a big ship.”
“And it leaves for sea trials tomorrow, and following that, it’s off to Southampton, and from there to America.” They had walked back to the door, and it swung open under Declan’s power. He held up a lit oil lamp and waved them inside.
They rushed in and closed the door behind themselves. Declan led Ransom and Thomas through this closet-sized back anteroom and into an interior where they felt safe to turn on the electric lights, filling the room with brightness. In fact, the electricity lit up a huge operating theater. Along a large back wall refrigerator units stared back at them.
“I’ll never get over electric light, fellows,” Ransom said as he gazed about the well-lit room.
“Bodies are in there,” said Declan, pointing at the wall of doors.
Ransom covered his nose with a handkerchief. “From the smell of things here, I’d say your coolers need a good repairman.”