The Shadow in the North, Page 2

  As a matter of fact, it wasn't as simple as she claimed. There had been a Married Women's Property Act passed in 1870, which had removed some of the injustices, though not the worst ones; but Frederick knew nothing of the law, and didn't know that Sally's property could legally remain hers, under certain conditions. But because Sally was uncertain of her feelings, she stuck to this principle - and rather dreaded the passing of a new Act, since it would force her to decide one way or the other.

  Recently this had led to a quarrel and a coolness between them, and they hadn't spoken to or seen each other for weeks. She'd been surprised to find how much she missed him. He'd be just the person to talk to about this Anglo-Baltic business. . .

  She cleared away the coffee-cups, rattling them crossly as she thought of his flippancy, his facetiousness, his straw-coloured hair. Let him come to her first; she had real work to do.

  And with that, she settled down at the desk with her clippings book and began to read about Axel Bellmann.

  Chapter Two

  THE WIZARD OF THE NORTH

  Sally's friend Jim Taylor spent a good deal of his time (when he wasn't cultivating his criminal acquaintances, or betting money on horses, or flirting with chorus-girls and barmaids) in writing melodramas. He had a passion for the stage. Frederick's sister Rosa (now married to a most respectable clergyman) had been an actress when they first met, and she'd fired in him an interest already stoked up by his long and devoted reading of such penny magazines as Stirring Tales for British Lads and Spring-Heeled Jack, the Terror of London. He'd written several blood-curdling plays since then, and not wanting to waste his genius on second-best companies, he'd sent them to the Lyceum Theatre, for the consideration of the great Henry Irving. So far, though, he'd got nothing back but polite acknowledgements.

  He spent his evenings in the music-hall, not in the audience, but where it was far more interesting - backstage, among the carpenters and the scene-shifters and the lighting men, not to mention the artistes and the chorus-girls. He'd worked in several theatres, learning all the time, and on the evening of the day Miss Walsh called on Sally he was doing various jobs behind the scenes in the Britannia Music-Hall in Pentonville.

  And it was there that he came across a mystery of his own.

  One of the artistes on the bill was a conjuror by the name of Alistair Mackinnon - a young man who'd sprung to an extraordinary fame in the short time he'd been appearing on the London stage. It was one of Jim's jobs to call the artistes from their dressing-rooms shortly before they were due to come up to the stage, and when he knocked on the door of Mackinnon's room and called out, "Five minutes, Mr Mackinnon," he was surprised to hear no answer.

  He knocked again, more loudly. Still there was no reply, and Jim, knowing that no performer would miss a call if he could humanly help it, opened the door to see whether Mackinnon was actually there.

  He was: in evening dress and chalk-white make-up, his eyes like black stones. He was gripping the arms of a wooden chair in front of the mirror. Beside him stood two other men, also in evening dress; one a small, mild-looking man with spectacles, the other a heavily built character who tried, as Jim looked in, to conceal a life-preserver - a short stick loaded with lead - behind his back. He'd forgotten the mirror: Jim could see it perfectly.

  "Five minutes, MrMackinnon," Jim said again, his mind racing. "I thought you might not have heard."

  "All right, Jim," said the magician. "Leave us, please."

  With a casual glance at the other two, Jim nodded and went out.

  What do I do now? he thought.

  In the wings a number of stage-hands stood silently, waiting for the act on stage to finish so that they could change the scenery. Above them in the flies the gas-men waited for their cue; it was their job to change the coloured gelatine in front of the flaring gas-jets, or to turn the jets up and down according to how much light was wanted on stage. Some of the other artistes on the bill were waiting too, for Mackinnon was a phenomenal performer and they wanted to watch his act. Jim picked his way through the darkness and the half-light as the soprano on-stage came to the final chorus of her song, and took his place by a great iron wheel beside the curtain.

  He stood there, light and tense, his fair hair slicked back from his forehead and a frown in his green eyes. He tapped his fingers on the wheel; and then he heard a whisper beside him.

  "Jim," came Mackinnon's whisper out of the darkness, "can you help me?"

  Jim turned round and saw the magician hanging back in the shadows, his dark eyes the only features visible in the pale blur of his face.

  "Those men. . ." Mackinnon went on, and pointed up through the proscenium to a box, where Jim could see two figures settling themselves, and caught the gleam of the little man's spectacles. "They're trying to kill me. For God's sake, help me get away as soon as the curtain's down. I don't know what to do. . ."

  "Sssh!" said Jim. "And keep back. They're looking."

  The song came to an end, the flute in the band trilled in sympathy, and the audience clapped and whistled. Jim's hands tightened on the wheel.

  "All right," he said. "I'll get you out. Watch out the way -"

  He started to swing the great wheel over, and the curtain descended.

  "Come off this side," he said over the noise of the applause and the rumbling of the pulleys, "not the other. Anything you want out the dressing-room?"

  Mackinnon shook his head.

  The instant the curtain touched the stage, off came the coloured gelatines above, flooding the stage with white light; up rolled the painted backcloth of a fashionable drawing-room; and the men in the wings leapt into activity, unfolding a large velvet screen and bracing it behind, lifting on-stage a slender table that seemed oddly heavy for its size, and unrolling a wide Turkey carpet. Jim darted forward to straighten the edge of the carpet, and held the screen while another hand adjusted the weight behind it. The whole process took no longer than fifteen seconds.

  The stage-manager gave a signal to the gas-men, and they slotted new gelatines into the metal frames, lowering the pressure in the jets simultaneously so as to dim the light to a mysterious rose. Jim sprang back to his wheel; Mackinnon took his place in the wings as the Chairman came to the end of his introduction, and the conductor raised his baton in the orchestra pit.

  A chord, a burst of clapping from the audience, and Jim hauled on the wheel to raise the curtain. Mackinnon entered, transformed. The audience fell silent as he began his act.

  Jim watched for a moment or two, amazed as always by the way this figure, so furtive and unhealthy in real life, could become so powerful on-stage. His voice, his eyes, his every movement embodied authority and mystery; it was easy to believe that he commanded hosts of invisible spirits, that the tricks and transformations he performed were the work of demons. . . Jim had seen him a dozen times, and had never been less than awe-struck. He tore himself away reluctantly, and slipped under the stage.

  This was the quickest way from one side to the other. Jim moved between beams, ropes, a demon-trap and all kinds of pipework, without a sound, and emerged on the other side as a burst of clapping rose from the audience.

  He dusted himself down and went through a little door into the auditorium, and then through another to the stairs. He reached the top - and shrank back into the shadow, because standing outside the door of the box where Mackinnon's pursuers had gone was a third man, a rough-looking bruiser, obviously put there to keep watch.

  Jim thought for a moment, and then stepped forward into the gas-lit, gilt and shabby-plush corridor and motioned the man to bend forward. Frowning, he did so, and cocked his head as Jim whispered.

  "We've had word as Mackinnon's got some mates in," Jim told him. "They're going to try and spring him out the front. Any minute now he'll do a disappearing trick and get away under the stage and come out the back of the audience; then his mates'll whip him away in a cab. You go on down to the front of the house and I'll nip in and tell the boss."

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p; Wonderful what you could do with a bit of cheek, thought Jim, as the bruiser nodded and lumbered away. Jim turned to the door. This was risky; someone might come along at any moment. But it was all he could do. He took a bundle of stiff wires from his pocket, crouched by the keyhole and twisted the wire inside it till he felt something move; then he withdrew the wire, bent it more accurately, inserted it again and, under cover of the applause, locked the door of the box.

  He straightened just in time, as the front-of-house manager came along the corridor.

  "What are you doing here, Taylor?" he said.

  "Message for the gentlemen in this box," said Jim. "'S all right, I'm off backstage now."

  "It ain't your job to take messages."

  "It is if Mr Mackinnon asks me, ain't it?"

  And Jim turned and left. Back down the stairs, through the baize door - how far was Mackinnon through his act? Another five minutes, Jim reckoned; time to have a look outside.

  Ignoring the curses and instructions to watch his bloody feet, he shoved through the press of stage-hands and artistes and made his way to the stage door. It opened into an alley behind the theatre; the wall on the other side was the back of a furniture depository, and there was only one way out.

  There were two men leaning against the wall. As the door opened, they looked up and stepped out further on to the pavement.

  "Wotcher," said Jim affably. "Bleedin' hot in there. Waitin' for Miss Hopkirk, gents?" Miss Hopkirk was the soprano; her admirers often waited at the stage door with flowers, or proposals, or both.

  "What's it to you?" said one of the men.

  "Just being helpful," said Jim easily.

  "When's the show finish?" said the other man.

  "Any minute now. I better be getting back. Evenin'," he said, and went back inside.

  He rubbed his chin; if the back was blocked, and the front was risky, there only remained one way out - and that was risky too. Still, it might be fun. He ran through the area backstage until he found four workmen seated in a little pool of light, playing cards on an upturned tea-chest.

  "Here, Harold," he said. "Mind if I borrow your stepladder?"

  "What for?" said the oldest man, not looking up from his hand.

  "Birds'-nesting."

  "Eh?" The workman looked up. "Mind you bring it back."

  "Ah, well, that's the problem. How much did you win on that tip I gave you last week?"

  Muttering, the older man laid down his cards and got up. "Where are you going to take it? I need it in ten minutes, soon as the show's over."

  "Up in the flies," said Jim, drawing him away and explaining what he wanted. He peered over the workman's shoulder; Mackinnon's act was coming to an end. Scratching his head, the other man slung the stepladder over his shoulder and climbed up into the darkness as Jim hurried back to the wheel, just in time.

  A chord from the orchestra, a storm of applause, a bow and the curtain came down. Leaving the chaos of objects that had appeared on-stage - a Sphinx, a bowl of goldfish, dozens of bunches of flowers - Mackinnon sprang into the wings, where Jim seized his arm and thrust him towards the ladder.

  "Climb! Go on!" he said. "There's blokes out front and back, but they won't catch us this way. Go on!"

  Mackinnon had changed again; in the shadows of the wings, he looked furtive once more and, in his white makeup, bizarre and sickly.

  "I can't," he whispered.

  "Can't what?"

  "I can't go up there. Heights. . ."

  He looked around, trembling. Jim shoved him towards the ladder impatiently.

  "Get up and stop fussing, for Gawd's sake. Blokes go up and down here hundreds o' times a day. Or d'you want to go out and take your chance with that pair of cut-throats I saw in the alley?"

  Mackinnon shook his head feebly and started to climb. Jim twitched a corner of the side-curtain across to conceal what they were doing - he didn't want Mackinnon's exit revealed by a stage-hand who didn't know what they were up to. Jim scrambled up after him, and they came out on a narrow, railed platform stretching right across the stage, where the gas-men were busy dousing their jets and recovering the gelatines. The smell of hot metal was nearly as powerful as the heat itself and, together with the sweat of the gas-men and the size from the canvas backcloths, it prickled the nose and made the eyes water.

  But they didn't linger. Another short ladder led to a swaying iron walkway, hung about with pulleys and ropes. The floor was an open iron grille, and through it they could see all the way down to the stage, where the carpenters were busy moving side-pieces and flats into position for the melodrama that was due to start playing the following day. It was dark up here, all the light being directed downwards, and it was just as hot. The ropes - some taut, some loose and hanging - and the great baulks of timber that took the weight of the scenery, and the suggestion of further levels of platform, tunnel and vault in an infinite recession into the darkness, and the yawning abysses below, where sooty figures manipulated fire, all made Jim think of a picture of Hell he'd once seen in a print-shop window.

  Mackinnon was swaying, and clinging with both hands to the railing.

  "I can't!" he was moaning. "Oh, God, let me down!"

  His voice had become much more Scottish than his usual upper-class drawl.

  "Don't be soft," said Jim. "You won't fall. Just a little bit further - come on. . ."

  Mackinnon stumbled blindly along where Jim directed him. At the end of the walkway, Harold the workman was waiting with his stepladder and put out his hand to guide him. Mackinnon seized it with both his and clung tight.

  "It's all right," said Harold. "I got yer, sir. Take hold o' this. . ."

  He guided Mackinnon's hands on to the stepladder.

  "No! Not more climbing! I can't - I can't do it -"

  "Shut up," said Jim, who'd heard a disturbance below. He peered over the railing, but saw only the swaying curtains and the ropes. "Listen -"

  Voices were raised, though they could not make out the words.

  "We got about two minutes before they find their way up here. Hold on to him, Harold."

  Jim swarmed up the stepladder and unfastened a small window high in the darkness of the dusty brickwork. After propping it open he slipped down again and pushed Mackinnon towards the stepladder. This, to be truthful, was rather risky; the ladder spanned the gap between the end of the platform and the wall, and to get through the window you had to let go and reach up into the darkness with both hands. If you fell. . . But there was a clatter from below. Someone was climbing the first ladder.

  "Get up," said Jim. "Don't stand there wetting yerself. Get up and get through that window. Move!"

  Mackinnon had heard the noise, and set his feet on the stepladder.

  "Thanks, Harold," said Jim. "You want another tip? Belle Carnival for the Prince of Wales Handicap."

  "Belle Carnival, eh? I hope I get better odds than the last one," grumbled Harold, holding the ladder steady.

  Jim put his hands on the ladder on either side of Mackinnon's trembling body.

  "Go on! Get up, for God's sake!"

  Mackinnon moved upwards step by step. Jim stayed close behind, urging him on. When they reached the top he felt the other man sag downwards, unable to go any further, and hissed up at him:

  "They're coming! They're on their way! Five great big blokes with knives and coshes! Now reach up till you find a window and pull yerself through. There's a three-foot drop the other side on to the roof next door. Both hands - go on - that's the way - now pull -"

  Mackinnon's feet left the ladder and kicked wildly at the air, nearly sending Jim to his death; but after a second or two of frantic scrabbling Mackinnon's legs disappeared upwards, and Jim knew he was through.

  "All right, Harold?" he called down softly. "I'm going up now."

  "Hurry up then," came the hoarse whisper.

  Steadying himself against the wall, Jim felt for the window, and then found the sill and pulled. Another second or two and he was halfw
ay through, and then he tumbled out on to the cold wet lead under the open sky.

  Mackinnon was being sick beside him.

  Jim got up carefully and took a step or two away. They were in a little gully between the wall of the theatre, which reached up another seven feet or so to the edge of the roof, and the triangular, pitched roof of the pickle factory next door. A series of these triangular sections, like waves in a child's drawing of the sea, led away for sixty feet or so, glinting wetly in the light from the low sky.

  "Better now?" said Jim.

  "Aye. Heights, you know. . ."

  "What's it all about? Who are those blokes?"

  "The wee man's called Windlesham. It's a complicated matter. . . There's murder involved."

  He looked uncanny: chalk-white face with black eyes and lips, black cloak, white shirt-front; he looked bleached and inhuman. Jim studied him closely.

  "Murder?" he said. "Whose murder?"

  "Can we get down from here?" said Mackinnon, looking around.

  Jim rubbed his chin and then said, "There's a fire escape the other end of this roof. Don't make too much noise - there's an old feller on watch inside, guarding the pickles."

  He ran up the sloping side of the first section and dropped silently down on the other. Each slope was about six feet in height, and slippery with the recent rain; Mackinnon slipped and fell twice before they reached the fire escape. What am I doing this for? thought Jim, helping him up, and marvelling at Mackinnon's frailness. He was as light as a child.

  But he'd meant it about the murder. He was terrified, and not only of heights.

  The fire escape was a slender, iron staircase bolted to the side of the factory. The yard it led down to was dark, fortunately, and this side of the building was quiet. Trembling, sweating, ghastly with fear, Mackinnon inched himself over the edge of the roof, found the first step, and then went down on his backside, eyes tight shut. Jim reached the ground ahead of him and took his arm.