第 11 页

linked by favors owed or owing—racing tips, loans of half a crown, casual hints that the copper on the corner was looking this way, and so on. There wasn't much, Jim reckoned, that he couldn't find out if he wanted to.

So it was that on the evening of the day Sally visited Axel Bellmann, Jim found himself standing elbow to elbow in the four-ale bar of a Deptford pub with a shifty little man in a white muffler, who jumped as Jim tapped his shoulder.

"Wotcher, Dippy!" Jim said. "How are yer, mate?"

"Eh? Oh, it's you, Jim. How do."

Dippy Lumsden looked around furtively, but then he was professionally furtive, being a pickpocket.

"Listen, Dippy," said Jim. "I'm trying to find a bloke. A feller called Mackinnon—a magician. Scotch geezer. He's been on the halls a year or two; you might've seen him."

Dippy nodded at once. "I seen him. And I know where he is, too."

"Eh? Where?"

The pickpocket looked crafty and rubbed his thumb and forefinger together. "What's it worth?" he said.

"Worth Felspar," said Jim. "What you still owe me for, remember?"

Felspar was a horse that had won at twenty to one and had brought them both a tidy sum. Jim had tipped him, thanks to a jockey he knew.

Dippy nodded philosophically. "Fair enough," he

said. "Hes staying in Lambeth. Dirty little place called Allen's Yard. With a fat old Irish cow called Mrs. Mooney. I seen him last night—I knew who he was 'cause I seen him at Gatti s Music Hall one night. What you want him for?"

"He nicked a watch. But he aint in your class, Dippy—don't worry about competition from him."

"Oh. Ah. Righto, mate. But you never saw me tonight, remember. And I never seen him. I gotta look after meself "

"Course you have. Dippy," said Jim. "Another pint?"

But Dippy shook his head. He couldn't afford to stay too long in any one pub, he said, for professional reasons. He swallowed the rest of his drink and left; and after a mintue or so of flirtation with the barmaid, so did Jim.

Mrs. Mooney's house was a crazy, stinking, tottering ruin, kept from falling into Allen's Yard only by the fact that there was no room for it to fall into. The little light that reached the court from outside and from the dim windows of the house showed that the floor of it was litde better than a cesspool, but that didn't appear to worry the red-haired child who was playing barefoot on the doorstep, teaching her doll manners by smacking its head and toasting a bit of herring over a smoking lantern.

"Mrs. Mooney in?" said Jim.

The child looked up. She sneered at him, and Jim felt tempted to follow the example she was practicing on the doll.

"I says, is Mrs. Mooney in, rat-face?"

She looked more interested. "Lost yer barrel organ?" she inquired. "Where's yer little red jacket and yer tin?"

Jim restrained himself

"Look, carrot-face, get the murerk, else I'll fetch you a sockdolager what'll lay you out till Christmas," he said.

The brat took a piece of fish out of her mouth and shrieked "Auntie Mary!" before putting it back. She continued to watch Jim contemptuously as he shifted from spot to spot, looking for somewhere dry to stand.

"Enjoying yer little dance?" she said.

Jim snarled and was about to clout her one when a colossal woman rolled into the doorway, blocking almost all the meager light from inside. A powerful wave of gin-laden odor drifted from her.

"Oo's this?" she said.

"I'm looking for Mr. Mackinnon," said Jim.

"Never heard of him."

"Scottish geezer. Skinny bloke with dark eyes. Been here a couple of days, I was told. A conjurer."

"What d'you want with him?"

"Is he in, or ain't he?"

She thought for a fiiddled moment.

"He ain't," she said. "And no one can't see him neither."

"Well, tell him when he gets in as Jim Taylor called. Got that?"

"I tell you, he ain't here."

"No, course not. Never thought he was. Only if he turns up one day, tell him I called. Right?"

She considered again and then rolled away without a word.

"Drunken flissock," observed the child.

"You want to mind your manners," said Jim. "Speaking of your elders and betters like that."

She took the fish out of her mouth again, looked at him steadily for a moment, and then released a flood of the filthiest, richest, ripest, fruitiest, foulest language Jim had ever heard. It went on for an uninterrupted two minutes and a half, without repetition. He, his face, his manners, his ancestry, his clothes, and his mind were compared unfavorably to parts of his body, to parts of other peoples bodies, to parts of animals' bodies, to the stink arising from dead fish, to boils, to intestinal wind, and to several dozen other unpleasantnesses. Jim was completely taken aback, and that didn't happen very often.

He put his hand in his pocket.

"Here," he said, holding out a sixpence. "You're a virtuoso, you are. I never heard such a talent."

She took the sixpence—^whereupon he swiped her around the head and sent her sprawling.

"But you want to be quicker on your pins than that," he added. "Cheerio."

She told him what to do and where to go, then called, "y4w^you've missed yer mate. He's just gorn. She told him you was here. Oo's the slow one now?"—and, with a cackle of witchlike glee, fled dripping around the corner of the yard.

Jim cursed and ran into the house. The only light came from a candle on a rickety table; he seized it and, shielding the flame, tore up the narrow stairs. The smells that met him were indescribable, even by the little girl; how did the fastidious Mackinnon stand it? And the place was a labyrinth. Faces peered at him from the gloom—^wizened ones like elderly rats, dirty ones, brutal ones; doors hung crazily open or weren't there at all; lengths of sacking fell aside to show whole families, six, seven, eight or more people sleeping or eating or slumped in apathy or maybe dead.

But no Mackinnon. The monstrous woman, with a bottle of gin clutched to her like the child's doll, sat on the landing, incapable of movement. He shoved past her into the last room—and found it empty.

She laughed wheezily.

"Where'd he go?" Jim demanded.

"Out," she said, wheezing harder.

He was tempted to take a kick at her. Without a word, he pushed his way past and left the house.

He stood in the darkness of the court—darker now, for he'd snuffed out the candle. The house was quiet behind him, and the little girl had vanished, but his skin crept.

There was someone else in the court.

He was sure of it, though he could see and hear no one. All his senses prickled. He stood still, cursing his stupidity, and reached silently into his pocket for the brass knuckle-duster he always carried.

Then a light hand was laid on his arm, and a woman's voice said, "Wait..."

He stood rigid. His heart was thumping wildly. He could see only the dull, wet gleam of a sodden brick wall outside the court; there was nothing but darkness within.

"You're a friend," said the voice. "He's spoken your name. Come with me."

It was like a dream. A shawled, cloaked figure glided past him and beckoned him to follow. And helplessly, as in a dream, he did so.

In a neat, little room not far away, the woman struck a match and lit a candle. The shawl fell forward over her face as she bent low to do it, and then she murmured, "Please ..."

Jim stood, puzzled, as she lowered the shawl. Then he understood. A huge, liver-colored birthmark spread across half her face. Her eyes were warm and fine, but their expression told him what his expression was, and he felt ashamed.

"Sorry," he said. "Who are you?"

"Please—sit down. I heard you speak of him to Mrs. Mooney; I couldn't help ..."

He sat down at the table, which was spread with a delicately embroidered linen cloth. Everything he could see was pretty in a light, old-fashioned way, and there was a faint smell of lavender in the air. She was delicate too; her voice wasn't Cockney but had a touch of the Geordie in it, he thought—Newcastle? Durham?—and it was gentle and musical. She sat across the table from him, looking down.

"I love him, Mr. Taylor," she said.

"Oh! That's it. I understand now."

"My name is Isabel Meredith," she went on. "When he came . . . when he left the engagement at Lady Har-borough's the other night, he hardly knew what he was doing. He came to me because once we . . . I've helped him in the past. I've given him a little money. I have very little, as you see. I'm a needlewoman. That he should have to hide like this, a man of his talent. . . But he's in great danger, Mr. Taylor, terrible danger. He . . . What else can he do?"

"He can tell the blooming truth, that's what. He can come to Burton Street—he knows where—and talk to me and my mate Fred Garland. If he's in danger, that's the best thing he can do. But he's got to be straight about it."

She traced a pattern with her fingernail on the cloth. "You see, he's very nervous, very imaginative," she said after a moment. "As an artist, he naturally feels things more than most of us. More acutely."

Jim said nothing. The only artist he knew well was

Webster Garland, and he was as tough as a buzzard; what marked him out was his single-mindedness and his marvelous eye, not a susceptibility to the vapors.

"Well, look," he said finally. "If it was any other geezer, I wouldn't be bothered. But we're trying to find something out, not about Mackinnon, something else—and he's mixed up at the edge of it. There's fraud, there's financial jiggery-pokery, there's spiritualistic humbug, there's all kinds of wickedness—maybe worse. So what's he done? And how'd you get mixed up with him, anyway?"

"I met him in Newcastle," she said. "He was friendly to me. He was only starting then. He told me he couldn't use his real name on the stage—^he's not really called Mackinnon—because his father would find out and have him put away."

"Eh?"

"That's what he said."

"Well, who's his father then?"

"He would never tell me. Someone important. There was a matter of inheritance—a family treasure, or something—and he gave it all up for his art. But his father was afraid it would bring disgrace on the family, you see."

"Hmm," said Jim, profoundly skeptical. "And what about this Bellmann bloke, then? How's he mixed up in it?"

Isabel Meredith looked away. "I think," she whispered, "it might be murder."

T22 The Shadow in the North

"Go on."

"He's never said it directly. But. . . hes given hints and signs. Its something to do with this."

She opened a drawer and took out a pocketbook. From it she withdrew a yellowed newspaper clipping. It was undated.

SENSATIONAL MURDER PRESERVED IN THE ICE A sensational discovery was made last month in the forests of Siberia. The body of a man, perfectly preserved in the ice of a frozen river, was found by a hunter. At first it was thought that the victim had fallen into the water and drowned, but upon examination it was seen that he had been stabbed several times in the throat and chest.

There was no clue to his identity, and but for its chance discovery by the hunter, the body would undoubtedly have been carried northward by the spring floods, to be lost forever in the Arctic Ocean.

The case has aroused great interest in Russia, where the disappearance

There the clipping ended. Jim looked up in frustration. "Was there a date on this?" he said.

"I don't know. I found it when ... it fell out of his coat pocket. When he saw me with it, he went pale. He said it had set off some strange vision in his mind. Why, Mr. Taylor? Does it hold any meaning for you?"

Jim remembered Nellie Budd s voice coming out of die darkness in Streatham: He's still there, all in a glass coffin ... It is all connected, he thought. The body in the ice, the fight in Mackinnons vision, blood on the snow. . .

"D'you know a woman called Nellie Budd?" he said.

"No," she said, bewildered. "Who is she?"

"She's a whatsit, a medium. Nothing to do with Mackinnon, except that this cutting links up with something she said once. Can I keep it?"

She hesitated. He could tell she didn't want to let anything of Mackinnons out of her control.

"Well, all right," he went on. "I'll just copy it down. Didn't he say anything more about it?"

She shook her head. Then as he started writing in his notebook she said, "I just don't know what to do, Mr. Taylor. I do love him so much. I'd give anything to help him—anything in the world. . . . Everything about him is so precious to me. I wish I could earn enough to provide for him! To think of him in that horrible place of Mrs. Mooney's, unable to show himself—an artist, a great artist like him! Oh, I'm sorry. I expect this sounds ridiculous, a woman with ... I could never expect him to want ... I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said all that. But I speak to no one, and I am so lonely."

Jim finished copying the clipping, glad not to have to face her. He didn't know what to say; her emotion was so naked and helpless. He ran his finger over the embroidery, his mind racing.

"D'you make this?" he said.

She nodded.

"I can get you a good price for stufF like this. You don't have to live in a poky little room like this, earning pennies. I know what you're thinking—^you do it to hide away, don't you? I bet you only come out at night."

"It's true. But—"

"Listen, Miss Meredith. What you've shown me tonight is a big help. I don't know if he's ever going to come back here. I reckon he's done a bunk, meself, out of that stink-hole, and you'll be lucky to see him again. No," he said as she started to protest, "I ain't finished. I'll give you one of our cards, and I'll put another address on the back—it's a young lady. Miss Lockhart. She's one of the firm—she's a good 'un. If you need anyone to go to, you call on her. And if you do see Mackinnon again, make him come and see us. All right? Or let me know yourself It's for his sake, afi:er all, silly bugg—bloke. If we can clear up this business, he can go back on the stage and do his tricks again, and we can all breathe easy."