The Difference Engine (8 page)

Still, she did have: some things she was ‘specially fond of, and these went, along with the undergarments, into her brocade portmanteau with the split seam she’d meant to mend. There was a lovely bottle of rose-scented Portland water, half-full, a green paste brooch from Mr. Kingsley, a set of hairbrushes with imitation ebony backs, a miniature flower-press with a souvenir view of Kensington Palace, and a patent German curling-iron she’d nicked from a hair-dresser’s. She added a bone-handled tooth-brush and a tin of camphorated dentifrice.

Now she took a tiny silver propelling-pencil and settled herself on the edge of her bed to write a note to Hetty. The pencil was a gift from Mr. Chadwick, with
THE
METROPOLITAN
RAILWAY
CORPORATION
engraved along its shaft; the plate was starting to flake away from the brass beneath. For paper, she found she had only the back of a handbill advertising instantaneous chocolate.

‘My dear Harriet’, she began, ‘I am Off to Paris’, but then she paused, removed the pencil’s cap, and used the rubber to erase those last three words, substituting ‘run Away with a Gentleman. Do not be alarmed. I am Well. You are welcome to any Cloathes I leave behind, and please do take Care of dear Toby and give him Herring. Yrs. sincerely, Sybil.’

It made her feel queer, to write it, and when she looked down at Toby she felt sad, and false, to leave him.

With this thought came thoughts of Radley. She was struck by a sudden and utter conviction of his falsehood.

“He will come,” she whispered fiercely. She put the lamp and the folded note on the narrow mantel.

On the mantel lay a flat tin, brightly lithographed with the name of a Strand tobacconist. She knew that it contained Turkish cigarettes. One of Hetty’s younger gentlemen, a medical student, had once urged her to take up the habit. Sybil generally avoided medical students. They prided themselves on studied beastliness. But now, in the grip of a powerful nervous impulse, she opened the tin, drew out one of the crisp paper cylinders, and inhaled its fierce perfume.

A Mr. Stanley, a barrister, well-known among the flash mob, had smoked cigarettes incessantly. Stanley, during his acquaintanceship with Sybil, had frequently remarked that a cigarette was the thing to steel a gambler’s nerve.

Fetching the lucifers, Sybil placed the cigarette between her lips, as she’d seen Stanley do, struck a lucifer, and remembered to let the bulk of the sulphur burn away before applying the flame to the cigarette’s tip. She drew hesitantly on the lit cigarette and was rewarded with an acrid portion of vile smoke that set her wracking like a consumptive. Eyes watering, she nearly flung the thing away.

She stood before the grate and forced herself to continue, drawing periodically on the cigarette and flicking pale delicate ash onto the coals with the gesture Stanley had used. It was barely tolerable, she decided, and where was the desired effect? She felt abruptly ill, her stomach churning with nausea, her hands gone cold as ice. Coughing explosively, she dropped the cigarette into the coals, where it burst into flame and was swiftly consumed.

She became painfully aware of the ticking of the clock.

Big Ben began to sound midnight.

Where was Mick?

She woke in darkness, filled with a fear she couldn’t name. Then she remembered Mick. The lamp had gone out. The coals were dead. Scrambling to her feet, she fetched the box of lucifers, then felt her way into her room, where the tinny ticking of the clock guided her to the commode.

When she struck a match, the face of the clock seemed to swim in the sulphur glare.

It was half past one.

Had he come when she was sleeping, knocked, had no answer, and gone away without her? No, not Mick. He’d have found a way in, if he wanted her. Had he gulled her, then, for the cakey girl she surely was, to trust his promises?

A queer sort of calm swept over her, a cruel clarity. She remembered the departure date on the steamship ticket. He wouldn’t sail from Dover till late tomorrow, and it seemed unlikely that he and General Houston would be departing London, after an important lecture, in the dead of night. She’d go to Grand’s, then, and find Mick, confront him, and plead, threaten blackmail, exposure, whatever proved necessary.

What tin she had was in her muff. There was a cab-stand in Minories, by Goodman’s Yard. She would go there now, and rouse a cabman to take her to Piccadilly.

Toby cried once, piteously, as she closed the door behind her. She scraped her shin cruelly in the dark, on Cairns’ chained bicycle.

She was half the way down Minories to Goodman’s Yard when she remembered her portmanteau, but there was no turning back.

Grand’s night doorman was heavy-set, cold-eyed, chin-whiskered, stiff in one leg, and very certainly wouldn’t allow Sybil into his hotel, not if he could help it. She’d twigged him from a block away, climbing down from her cabriolet — a big gold-braided bugaboo, lurking on the hotel’s marble steps under great dolphin-wreathed lamps. She knew her doormen well enough; they played a major role in her life.

It was one thing to enter Grand’s on Dandy Mick’s arm, by daylight. But to walk in boldly from the midnight streets, as an unescorted woman, was another matter. Only whores did that, and the doorman would not let whores in. But she might think of a likely story to gull him, perhaps, if she thought of a very good lie, and if he were stupid, or careless, or weary. Or she might try to bribe him, though she had little enough of tin left, after the cab. And she was dressed proper, not in the flash clothes of a dollymop. She might, at a pinch, distract him. Smash a window with a cobblestone, and run past him when he came to look. It was hard to run in a crinoline, but he was lame, and slow. Or find a street-boy to throw a stone for her . . .

Sybil stood in darkness, by the wooden hoardings of a construction site. Broadside posters loomed over her, bigger than bed-sheets, with great tattered shouting print:
DAILY
NEWS
World-Wide Circulation,
LLOYD’S
NEWS
Only One Penny,
SOUTHEASTERN
RAILWAY
Ramsgate & Margate 7/6. Sybil pulled one hand from her muff and gnawed feverishly at her fingernail, which smelled of Turkish tobacco. She was dully surprised to notice that her hand was blue-white with the cold, and trembling badly.

Pure luck, it seemed, rescued her then, or the nod of a sorrowing angel, for a shining gurney brougham came to a chugging halt in front of Grand’s, its blue-coated fireman jumping down to lower the hinged step. Out came a rollicking mob of drunken Frenchmen in scarlet-lined capes, with brocade waistcoats and tasseled evening-canes, and two of them had women with them.

Sybil grabbed up her skirt on the instant and scurried forward, head down. Crossing the street, she was hidden from the doorman by the barricade of the gurney’s gleaming coachwork. Then she simply walked around it, past the great wood-spoked wheels with their treads of rubber, and boldly joined the group. The Frenchies were parley-vousing at each other, mustache-stroking and giggling, and did not seem to notice her, nor care. She smiled piously at no one in particular, and stood very close to a tall one, who seemed drunkest. They staggered up the marble stairs, and the tall Frenchman slapped a pound-note at the doorman’s hand, with the careless ease of a man who didn’t know what real money was. The doorman blinked at it and touched his braided hat.

And Sybil was safely inside. She walked with the jabbering Frenchies across a wilderness of polished marble to the hotel-desk, where they collected their keys from the night-clerk and staggered up the curving stairway, yawning and grinning, leaving Sybil behind at the counter.

The night-clerk, who spoke French, was chuckling over something he’d overheard. He sidled down the length of linteled mahogany, with a smile for Sybil. “How may I be of service, madame?”

The words came hard, almost stammering at first. “Could you tell me please, has a Mr. Michael . . . or, rather . . . is General Sam Houston still registered here?”

“Yes, madame. I did see General Houston, earlier this evening. However, he’s in our smoking-room now . . . Perhaps you could leave a message?”

“Smoking-room?”

“Yes — over there, behind the acanthus.” The clerk nodded toward a massive door at the corner of the lobby. “Our smoking-room is not for the ladies, of course . . . Forgive me, madame, but you seem a bit distressed. If the matter’s vital, perhaps I should send a page.”

“Yes,” Sybil said, “that would be wonderful.” The night-clerk obligingly produced a sheet of cream-laid hotel stationery and proffered his gold-nibbed reservoir-pen.

She wrote hastily, folded the note, scrawled MR.
MICHAEL
RADLEY
on the back. The night-clerk crisply rang a bell, bowed in response to her thanks, and went about his business.

Shortly, a yawning and sour-faced little page appeared and placed her note on a cork-topped salver.

Sybil trailed anxiously behind as he trudged to the smoking-room. “It is for the General’s personal secretary,” she said.

” ‘Tis awright, miss, I know ‘im.” He heaved one-handed at the smoking-room door. As it opened, and the page passed through, Sybil peered in. As the door slowly closed, she had a long glimpse of Houston, bare-headed, shiny-faced, and sweaty-drunk, with one booted foot propped on the table, beside a cut-glass decanter. He had a wicked-looking jackknife in his hand, and was puffing smoke and jabbing at something — whittling, that was it, for the floor around his leather chair was littered with wood-shavings.

A tall bearded Englishman murmured something to Houston. The stranger had his left arm caught in a white silk sling, and looked sad-eyed and dignified and important. Mick stood at his side, bending at the waist to light the man’s cheroot. Sybil saw him rasping at a steel sparker, on the end of a dangling rubber gas-tube, and then the door shut.

Sybil sat on a chaise-longue in the echoing marble lobby, warmth stealing through her damp, grimy shoes; her toes began to ache. Then the page emerged with Mick on his heels, Mick smiling back into the smoking-room and sketching out a cheery half-salute. Sybil rose from her seat. Seeing her there, his narrow face went bleak.

He came to her quickly, took her elbow. “Bloody Christ,” he muttered, “what kind of silly note was that? Can’t you make sense, girl?”

“What is it?” she pleaded. “Why didn’t you come for me?”

“Bit of a contretemps. I’m afraid. Case of the fox biting his own arse. Might be funny if it weren’t so bleeding difficult. But having you here now may change matters . . . ”

“What’s gone wrong? Who’s that gentry cove with the gammy arm?”

“Bloody British diplomat as doesn’t care for the General’s plan to raise an army in Mexico. Never you mind him. Tomorrow we’ll be in France, and he’ll be here in London, annoyin’ someone else. At least I hope so . . . The General’s queered things for us, though. Drunk as a lord and he’s pulled one of his funny little tricks . . . He’s a nasty bastard when he drinks, truth to tell. Starts to forget his friends.”

“He’s gulled you somehow,” Sybil realized. “He wants to cut you loose, is that it?”

“He’s nicked my kino-cards,” Mick said.

“But I mailed them to Paris, poste restante” Sybil said. “Just as you told me to do.”

“Not those, you goose — the kino-cards from the speech!”

“Your theatre cards? He stole ‘em?”

“He knew I had to pack my cards, take ‘em along with me, don’t you see? So he kept a watch on me somehow, and now he’s nicked ‘em from my baggage. Says he won’t need me in France after all, so long as he’s got my information. He’ll hire some onion-eater can run a kino on the cheap. Or so he says.”

“But that’s theft!”

” ‘Borrowing,’ according to him. Says he’ll give me back my cards, as soon as he’s had ‘em copied. That way I don’t lose nothin’, you see?”

Sybil felt dazed. Was he teasing her? “But isn’t that stealing, somehow?”

“Try arguing that with Samuel bloody Houston! He stole a whole damn country once, stole it clean and picked it to the bone!”

“But you’re his man! You can’t let him steal from you.”

Mick cut her off. “When it comes to that — you might well ask how I had that fancy French program made. You might say I borrowed the General’s money for it, so to speak.” He showed his teeth in a grin. “Not the first time we’ve tried such a stunt on one another. It’s a bit of a test, don’t you see? Fellow has to be a right out-and-outer, to travel with General Houston . . . ”

“Oh Lord,” Sybil said, collapsing into her crinoline on the chaise. “Mick, if you but knew what I’ve been thinking . . .”

“Brace up, then!” He hauled her to her feet. “I need those cards and they’re in his room. You’re going to find them for me, and nick ‘em back. And I’m going back in there and brass it out, cool as ice.” He laughed. “The old bastard mightn’t have tried this, if not for my tricks at his lecture. You an’ Corny Simms made him feel he was right and fly, pulling strings! But we’ll make a pigeon of him yet, you and I, together . . . ”

“I’m afraid, Mick,” Sybil said. “I don’t know how to steal things!”

“You little goose, of course you do,” Mick said.

“Well, will you come with me and help, then?”

“Of course not! He’d know then, wouldn’t he? I told him you were a newspaper friend of mine. If I stay too long talking, he’ll smell a rat sure.” He glared at her.

“All right,” Sybil said, defeated. “Give me the key to his room.”

Mick grunted. “Key? I haven’t any bloody key.”

A wash of relief went through her. “Well, then. I’m not a cracksman, you know!”

“Keep your voice down, else you’ll tell everyone in Grand’s . . .” His eyes glinted furiously. He was drunk, Sybil realized. She’d never seen Mick really drunk before, and now he was lushed, lightning-struck. It didn’t show in his voice or his walk, but he was crazy and bold with it. “I’ll get you a key. Go to that counter-man, blarney him. Keep him busy. And don’t look at me.” He gave her half a shove. “Go!”

Terrified, she returned to the counter. The Grand’s telegraph stood at the far end, a ticking brass machine on a low marble pedestal decorated with leafy gilt vines. Within a sort of bell-glass, a gilded needle swung to and fro, pointing out letters in a concentric alphabet. With every twitch of the needle, something in the marble base clunked methodically, causing another quarter-inch of neatly perforated yellow paper tape to emerge from the marble base. The night-clerk, who was punching binder-holes in a bundle of fan-fold paper, set his work aside, clipped on a pince-nez, and came toward her.