Onyx City (The Lazarus Longman Chronicles Book 3) (5 page)

Chapter Five

In which the journal is obtained

The daily grind of working life in the big city was taking its toll on Lazarus. He was a man who had spent most of his life either in exotic places or in a library reading about them. The past was what fascinated him, with all its colors and infinite lives entwined along paths of mysticism and strange faiths. The grey, gloomy drudgery of the industrial age and its modern rationalism was a terrible drag on his soul. He felt hopelessly out of his depth in his mission, not least because there seemed so very few leads open to him.

Then, by a twist of fortune, Lazarus was brought into contact with a man who might just have the connections he desired. It was on Tuesday that Lazarus and Mr. Clumps were told by Tappy that they would be better suited—owing to Mr. Clumps’s massive strength—to loading the carts that left the warehouse. It was harder work than unloading the derricks, as it involved heaving large crates and sacks up onto the back of the carts while their drivers stood idly by smoking their pipes.

Lazarus found himself despairing even more at this new burden on his already waning strength, and was cursing his companion for his efficiency when he discovered that the majority of the men who did the tougher jobs in the warehouse were Jews of Polish or Russian extraction.

There was a distinct anti-Semitic streak in most of the workers, and so it stood to reason that the real back-breaking labor fell upon the shoulders of the Jews whose very existence caused their colleagues to despise them for taking jobs that might have otherwise gone to Englishmen.

Lazarus did his best to strike up friendly conversation with them and found himself rebuffed on a number of occasions. Distrust, it seemed, came from both sides. But there was one fellow who did not seem as reluctant to converse with him.

His name was Kovalev. He was an elderly Russian with rough hands and a stooped back that suggested many years of backbreaking labor. His English was good and he possessed a vocabulary far beyond those of Lazarus’s fellow countrymen in the rest of the warehouse. This made Lazarus think of him as one of the many educated Jews who, pushed out of their homeland by pogroms and the hate of their countrymen, found themselves diminished to physical labor in London’s East End.

Their conversations never drifted into the realm of politics. Lazarus was reluctant to push them in that direction, lest Kovalev grow suspicious as to his reasons. He decided that he would have to bait him and see if the old Russian, or anybody else for that matter, might be drawn into a discussion that would reveal their political standings. He had the bait in the form of a copy of the Commonweal; the official journal of the Socialist League that he carried around in his jacket pocket. All he needed was the opportunity to reveal his taste in literature to his colleagues. He developed a plan to do just.

That Sunday Lazarus spent the afternoon awaiting the appearance of his street urchin on Pennyfields. He sniffed down the scent of opium that drifted from a nearby open window and remembered his days in New York with Mansfield, wallowing in dens very much like these ones. One Chinatown was very much like another the world over, he concluded.

Eventually the boy he sought rounded the corner, his hands shoved deep into his pockets. He saw Lazarus and beamed as if relieved that his patron had actually showed up.

“Well, lad?” he asked him. “Good news?”

“Oh, yes, sir! Your man turned up all right and I followed him all over.” He then proceeded to give Lazarus a long list of the gambling dens and cafes the fellow had visited, along with multiple visits to a lodging house two streets over. Lazarus wrote it all down on a small notepad. It seemed fairly run-of-the-mill stuff; the expected routine of many denizens of Limehouse and Shadwell. Then the lad reeled off an address of a none-too-shabby town house in Bloomsbury.

“Bloomsbury?” Lazarus asked, raising his eyebrow at the boy. “Bit out of the way for our fellow, isn’t it?”

“Ain’t ‘alf! He took an hansom and I had to switch growler three times to keep a mince on him! I thought he was going all the way to Westminster!”

“This house, what is it like?”

“A right toff’s gaff. High windows and ivy and all.”

“Was he admitted through the front door?”

“You must be joking! He snuck around the back to the tradesmen’s entrance.”

“See anybody else about? A butler or something?”

“Nah, he slipped in too quick for me to catch a butchers.”

“Well, my lad you’ve earned your half crown.” Lazarus dug into his pocket.

“Half?” the boy exclaimed. “You said an ‘ole crown!”

“I said half. And that was in addition to the sixpence I gave you last week, but nice try. Now hoppit before I give you a toe in the arse.”

“Much obliged, sir,” the lad replied, making the half a crown vanish into his clothes and then himself vanish into the crowded street.

Lazarus returned to Shadwell and whiled away the afternoon with Mr. Clumps. The big fellow had taken to reading newspapers. Lazarus was not only surprised by the mechanical’s ability to read but by his interest and understanding of the articles within. The pubs being shut, Lazarus fished out a bottle of gin he had purchased and sat on the bed drinking from a chipped tumbler. He offered his companion some.

“No, thank you,” Mr. Clumps replied.

“Can you process alcohol?” Lazarus asked him. He had seen him eat and drink when the need required it. It was not essential, for his furnace was the only energy source the mechanical required. Clumps had been discreet about how he deposited any bodily waste, a discretion Lazarus was rather grateful for.

“I can drink just about anybody under the table,” Mr. Clumps replied. “I believe that’s the expression.”

“Very good,” Lazarus said. Conversations with the mechanical were not exactly stimulating and mostly consisted of Lazarus either correcting or congratulating the big fellow on his command of English expressions. He decided that perhaps, head for drink or no, his only bottle of Madam Geneva would be wasted on a mechanical. Not for the first time since beginning this assignment, he found himself missing human companionship.

When dusk approached, Lazarus walked to Commercial Road and took a hansom to Bloomsbury. Being a Sunday evening the house’s occupants—whoever they may be—would most likely be in. But the cover of night was essential to what he had in mind and occupied or not, he wanted to see the abode of whomever it was that wanted him dead and see what he could find out about them.

The red brick three-storied houses facing parks and tree-lined squares were the peaceful seclusions of London’s authors and poets. Behind lace curtains and velvet drapes they enjoyed candle-lit suppers and literary circles. Lazarus knew that behind at least one of these serene, well-kept houses, dwelled a would-be murderer.

The driver pulled up at the address. Lazarus paid him and walked around to the back, where the tradesman’s entrance was screened by a brick wall. The tops of bushes poked up from the other side, and Lazarus smiled at the easy opportunity for a housebreaker. Not that he was really a housebreaker, but it amounted to the same thing in the eyes of the law. After checking that nobody was taking an evening stroll down the back lanes, he scrambled up and over the wall and into the neat garden beyond.

Lights were on in all the ground floor rooms, none of the top floor rooms and in only one of the first floor rooms. There was no drainpipe near the unlit room (and had there been any he would have only used it as a last resort, owing to his recent misadventure with one). No other form of entry to the upper floors presented itself. There was, however, a cellar-flap with a padlock. Lazarus had expected as much, and had brought a set of skeleton keys for such a job.

It took a good deal of fiddling to spring the lock, but at last it came away and he silently lifted the flap and descended into the cellar. Rows of jars on shelves glinted in the light from the hatch. Pickles, jams, compots and other relishes twinkled between boxes of tea, tins of tongue and potted meats. He fumbled around and found a door—bolted.

He drew his penknife and slid it in the jam, lifting the latch with the barest of ‘clinks’. The kitchen beyond was deserted, apart from a fat old cook snoring softly in an armchair, her mob cap over her eyes and half a glass of sherry resting on the arm. Lazarus snuck out and ducked into the shadows of a passageway, narrowly avoiding detection by the scullery maid who came downstairs bearing a tray of empty glasses.

Upon reaching the hallway at the top of the stairs, he could hear voices—foreign voices. The door to the drawing room was ajar. Although he could see nobody, he could hear a man speaking what he recognized as Siamese from the familiar throat of a fellow Englishman.

The language that had once been his only form of communication came more than a little slowly to him these days. It had been many years since he had mouthed the many tones and monosyllables of Siam and he struggled to follow the conversation.

He guessed that the Englishman was the master of the house and, if the master was giving instructions to his followers in the drawing room, then his study would undoubtedly be unoccupied. He made for the stairs and took them two at a time, but with gentle footsteps lest any creak beneath the oriental carpet give him away.

As he suspected, the master’s study was the room on the first floor with the light burning. He slipped inside and found himself in a veritable museum of the orient. Green glazed ceramics from the Sukhothai kingdom, bronze figures of multi-limbed Hindoo deities and statuettes of Buddha, wicked bladed weapons of the Khmer Empire and solid bronze elephant bells decorated the shelves, interspersed with leather bound tomes on the Ayutthaya Kingdom, Angkor and the Mon, Tai and Malay peoples.

Lazarus went straight to the desk where a green shaded lamp illuminated a spread of documents, notes and maps all pertaining to Siam and the surrounding kingdoms. He would have loved to have perused them at leisure and ascertain who his mysterious fellow enthusiast was and what his intentions were, but his eyes fell on a small, leather-bound journal that lay to one side.

It was a battered and weathered old thing, bulging against the string tied around it that kept its loose contents together. A simple metal clasp had once sufficed, but was now broken. He untied the string, trying to keep his hands steady, strongly suspecting that this was the very journal he chased. It fell open in his hands and he began leafing through the papers. Faded photographs of temples and natives met his eyes, as well as sketches of plants and small creatures. The journal itself was a small collection of loose papers written in a neat, cursive hand. He searched for a name, and his heart skipped a beat when he came across it.

Thomas Spencer Tyndall.

A foot fell on the stairs and Lazarus looked up. His time was up, but he wasn’t leaving without the journal. Another problem was how to escape, for the window was too high to jump and if he went out onto the landing he would be seen. He was trapped. He looked down at the papers on the desk and tried desperately to think of a solution.

The master of the house stepped into the study and his eyes widened with astonishment at the intruder, before dulling to a silent anger. He was about the same age as Lazarus, but blond with shoulder-length hair, thick and golden. His skin was very pale. If he had ever been to any of the places he was so interested in, Lazarus decided that he probably spent all of his time under the shade of a parasol.

“So you’ve got a bit of gumption eh, Longman?” said the man. “Not to mention an infuriating habit of survival.”

“You seem to have me at a disadvantage,” said Lazarus. “Perhaps you’d like to introduce yourself and explain why you tried to have me killed. And what is your interest in Tyndall’s journal?”

“The name’s Constantine Westcott. I can allow you to know that much out of courtesy, but the rest is hardly relevant as your time on this earth is short. You really are a bloody nuisance.” He called down in Siamese and there came the sound of at least two pairs of feet hurrying up the stairs.

Two oriental faces appeared on either side of Westcott’s head. Lazarus recognized one of them as the man who had left him for dead in a burning house. He looked as surprised as his employer had been at seeing Lazarus alive.

Westcott looked down at the journal in Lazarus’s hands. “I’ll be taking that back, thank you very much.”

The two thugs advanced. Lazarus seized the lamp from the desk and swung it at the head of the first man who got near. The man ducked it and swung his fist into Lazarus’s gut, making him double over. The journal fell from his hands. The second man seized it and passed it to Westcott while the first attacker—Lazarus’s friend from before—landed blow after blow on him, alternating his left and right fists.

Lazarus tried to block and dodge, but the ferocious tempo of the man indicated that he was expressing his frustrations at having failed to kill him the first time.

“All right, that’s enough,” said Westcott in Siamese.

Lazarus gasped for air. He was lying on the carpet, his left hand gripping the corner of the desk. Blood trickled from his nose and between his lips. His ears rang.

“Get him upstairs,” said Westcott. “And don’t let any of my household see him. They’re suspicious enough about what goes on here. I’ll be up in a few minutes and then we shall put an end to Mr. Lazarus Longman once and for all.”