The Affair of the Porcelain Dog (16 page)

Like the vase and wallpaper, the sketches reflected an Oriental style and predictably depicted various sex acts between men. Were I to have encountered the arrangement in someone's home--straight rows of evenly spaced pictures, two across and three down--I'd have taken it as lack of imagination on the part of the owner. In this context, it was clearly a map. If the rest of the house resembled ours, there would be three rooms on each of the top two floors. One could assume from this that if one were seeking a particular service, he could find it in the room corresponding to the picture.

Nate's specialty was unique. I found it quickly. Though he hadn't been offering his favors for several months, they probably hadn't bothered to move him to a different room. Composing a mental picture of the second floor, I crept up the stairs. The layout was exactly as I had imagined. A heavy cloud of fatigue and inebriation sat over the house. Not a creature would be stirring for at least an hour. Nonetheless, there was no reason to tempt fate. With a glance in either direction, I darted down the corridor to the room at the end, shutting the door behind me.

I wasn't sure what I was expecting. Perhaps a bed built for three and billowing velvet canopies? Persian rugs, silk sheets, and fat pillows arranged carelessly around a hookah. But Nate's room was clean and spare, containing a single bed, wardrobe, and a tidy desk before the window. A Persian rug lay under the bed, and it had seen better days. There were no signs of struggle, no indications anything untoward had happened there. Everything was neatly put together, as if the owner had stepped out with every intention of returning. Or, I thought, considering the uncharacteristic precision with which everything had been arranged, as if he suspected he might not be.

I tried to imagine the last few moments Nate had spent in the room. Daring rescue attempts weren't normally his style. His blackmail plan would accomplish both punishmment and restitution from a distance. Some sound, some event, some exchange of words must have revealed the true nature of the brothel owner's basement trade. And that knowledge had caused Nate to abandon his carefully laid plans and go downstairs.

Which meant the ledgers were still in this room
.

The desk was the natural place to start. It stood to reason he'd keep the doctored books somewhere obvious so they'd be close at hand when either Sinclair or the owner demanded to inspect them. Reason didn't fail me. When I jimmied open the top drawer, two identical fabric-bound ledgers stared back at me. I flipped through them. Nate had used the same system to encode both the opium book and the client book. Between this and his workhouse scrawl, he was probably the only one who could make heads or tails of either set of records. I glanced around the tidy room once more. The second set of books, reflecting the owner's special transactions and Sinclair's embezzlement, would be hidden somewhere--as would Nate's documentation of it all.

I set the ledgers on top of the desk and lifted out the drawer. The bottom and sides were solid, and nothing was secreted beneath it. I carefully replaced the contents and put it back as it had been. There was nothing underneath or behind the desk, or under the chair. The wardrobe was unlocked, and though it too was free of secret panels, I did find a pair of trousers and a silk shirt that would fit me. I folded them and set them on the ground next to the wardrobe.

As I rose, something about the lay of the rug beneath the bed caught my eye. Crossing to the bed, I knelt down beside it and lifted the fringe. A little more than an arm's length away, a floorboard had warped. A corner was sticking up...or had it been purposely left up, perhaps for someone to find in the event of Nate's sudden departure? Glancing over my shoulder, I slid beneath the bed and pried the board loose. It came up easily enough, and I reached inside.

Two books--the true ledgers--were there, along with a stack of papers tied with string. I stuffed the ledgers into the pocket of the brown coat. There would be plenty of time to examine them later. I was more interested in the papers. I slid out from under the bed and sat on the rug. Holding the letters in one hand, I picked the knot apart. A flurry of handmade envelopes fell into my lap. About a dozen letters, penned on ordinary white stationery and addressed in Nate's sloppy hand, in a most extraordinary lavender ink.

Bugger me.

The letters were addressed to
The Times
,
The Morning Mammoth
,
The Daily Telegraph
, Scotland Yard, and a few individuals whose names I recognized from the gossip pages. None were destined for either Goddard or St. Andrews. Had Nate been our blackmailer all along? It didn't make sense. Back at the Criterion, he had said he was going after the clients purchasing the services of the children from the basement--or purchasing the children themselves. While Goddard was a criminal, there was a limit to the sordidness in which he would personally involve himself--at least I'd thought so. I couldn't speak for St. Andrews. I slipped a trembling finger beneath the corner of the one addressed to a prominent MP, unfolded the paper and read:

∗ ∗ ∗

Yer gon rot in hell for what you done but first im gon make yer life hell. im gon tell em all startin wiv the times dont fink i wont you filthy bastard. bring 100 quid to the old east india warehouse on friday july 5 at 8 oclock. come alone an dont tell noone.

I let the paper fall into my lap with the others. The coincidence was uncanny--blackmail letters written on plain white stationery in lavender ink. But it was all wrong. Goddard's letters had been written by an educated man with excellent penmanship. What's more--though Goddard seemed to know what his blackmailer wanted, the letters coming to York Street had never stated a demand. Could Nate have been working with Goddard's blackmailer? Or perhaps Goddard's blackmailer was someone Nate knew, someone from whom Nate had borrowed the idea--if not the very ink and paper. I thought again about his Mr. Sinclair. Sinclair and Goddard both ran brothels. They were both in the opium trade. It was very likely that at least they were aware of each other. Nate had described Sinclair as older, and Goddard kept talking about the "mistakes of youth."

Could they have known one another in the past?

Sunlight was trying to stream through the bare window, hindered by the thick clouds and the proximity of the brick wall comprising Nate's view. Morning had arrived, and Goddard would soon be sitting down for breakfast, wondering where I was. I bundled the letters back together, shoved them in my pocket, and was about to make my escape when a voice behind me said,

"'O the devil are you?"

I scrambled to my feet. A barefoot, robe-clad man stood in the doorway. He was pale of hair and eye, wan of complexion, and just a little younger than I. His eyes were red, hair tousled, and he was blinking more than one might expect in muted light.

"I might ask you the same question," I said.

"This is me room."

"This is Nate's room."

"Nate's gone."

I straightened my coat with as much dignity as one could while barefoot and half-naked in a strange place. Nate couldn't have been gone more than a day, and someone was already moving in to take his place. I wondered whether Sinclair had fled with Nate, or whether Nate's replacement had been his choice.

"Since when?" I asked.

He shrugged a thin shoulder.

"Where did he go?"

"Ain't me business to know where. And ain't nuffin' in this room wot's your business, neither. Now ge' out."

I was taller than him. I also had two years of solid nutrition behind me, and the muscle earned from a year with the London Society for the Oriental Fighting Arts. I took a step forward. He took a step back, but to his credit didn't look away while I held his eyes. His fingers twitched as he picked at the frayed edge of his robe.

"I'm a friend of Nate's," I said, breaking the gaze to pick up the shirt and trousers from the floor.

"If you're 'is friend, why you stealing 'is togs?"

"If this is your room, why are Nate's clothes in the wardrobe? And why did you sleep in a different room last night?"

He frowned. I watched his eyes dart from me to the desk, the wardrobe, to the rug where I'd been sitting. His nervousness crackled in the air. Given the probable circumstances of Nate's disappearance, I'd have been anxious, too, were I in his position. But I suspected there was more to it.

"Where's Sinclair?" I asked, moving closer.

The young man hugged his elbows to him, his expression remaining defiant.

"Takin' out the trash. Which is my job now, too, come to fink of it."

"Is that so?"

I took another step toward him. I noticed red welts in the crease of his arm. Sinclair had made Nate get off opium before working with the books. Injecting cocaine was a quick way of ridding oneself of the habit. But these injection sites had been there long enough to become infected.

How long had someone been grooming this little shit to take Nate's place?

I tried stepping around him. He'd spent the last ten minutes trying to throw me out, but now he seemed determined to block the door with his skinny frame.

"On second thought, the doctor'll be 'ere soon. Quite a fevver in me cap to catch a burglar in the act."

"Oh, for crying--"

"Tell me why I shouldn't."

One good uppercut would have answered the question. Yet something in his dogged defiance touched me. Perhaps it was just a reluctance to deface what would have been a countenance of angelic beauty.

Or at least it would have been, after a long bath and a week of good meals.

"First," I said, planting a hand on his sternum and giving him a gentle push back through the doorway. "You couldn't detain a mouse in your condition. Second, you don't know who you're dealing with. And third..."

He really was pitiful. Malnourished, scared shitless, and caught between one nasty drug habit and the next. He might not have known the circumstances of Nate's disappearance but he was clever enough to recognize he'd signed a deal with the devil when he'd accepted Nate's mantle. He was in over his head and knew it. But what else could he have done?

"Third," I said gently. "Cocaine is no better a mistress than opium in the long run. They both lead to the same place."

He knew this place. I saw it in his eyes. Years from now, his face prematurely creased, poisons having coarsened what was once supple and delicate, he would find himself back on the street with nothing to show for it but a pox and a costly drug habit.

"I have friends in powerful places," I said. "One day, you might be grateful for their assistance."

When he met my eyes, his were full of a fear so deep and familiar it made me shiver. If fate had twisted a different way two years ago, it might have been me standing in his place. It might still be if I didn't rid myself of the little problem between my legs before Collins went skipping off to Goddard with tales of syphilis and indiscretion.

"The name's Adler," I said, reaching out my hand.

"'Arrington. Marcus 'Arring--"

A great crash cut off the rest of his words. The building shook with the sound of breaking glass and splintering wood.

"Police!" someone shouted.

"It's a raid," 'Arrington whispered.

He looked terrified. I'm certain my own expression was similar. I was half-naked in a brothel with another man, covered in love bites, with Goddard's ring still snug around my finger. I didn't fancy explaining myself to either a judge or Goddard.

Footsteps thundered up the stairs. Grasping young Mr. 'Arrington by the wrist, I tried to lunge back into the room--but a heavy hand caught my shoulder.

"Well," said a voice with the smug ring of a Whitechapel bobby, "Look what we've got 'ere."

The constables apprehended eight men at the brothel that Friday morning--five gorgeous young things whose profession would have been written on their sleeves had they been wearing clothing, 'Arrington, myself, and a very embarrassed second son of a marquis. The earl's son negotiated his immediate release through that easy application of cash and implied threats that must be taught in boarding school. A few of the constables had stayed behind to close up the brothel, while the rest loaded us into the back of a Black Maria headed for Bow Street Station.

My bowels began to clench before they had even locked the door. As the prison van rolled away, I closed my eyes, pretending I was somewhere else. The dispensary at Lazarus's clinic, perhaps. Or somewhere roomy like a kitchen cupboard. At least they hadn't chained us. My imagination wasn't good enough to ignore that.

All around me, my fellow prisoners chatted amiably. The easy life they had enjoyed was disappearing behind us, but these young men had seen too much milk spilt in their few years to cry over it. It was fortunate the raid had occurred in the morning. Only one client had been present, and he'd been asleep. Without actual proof of penetration, the worst any of us faced was two years--and two years of a guaranteed bed and three meals a day was better than what most of these young men would get on the street. As we trundled along, the carriage fairly hummed with jokes and speculations about being locked away with labor-hardened men, and what was really meant by "turning the crank."

I tried not to think of the dark, windowless room where I'd live out my sentence. I tried not to wonder how small it would be.