The Rise of Ransom City (44 page)

I do not want you to think that I did not stand on my rights. I am a free man of the West and I have my pride and I know my rights under the common law, or at least I thought I did. With the last of my money I attempted to hire a lawyer. I was not permitted to do so. The terms of the Injunction forbade me to discuss the terms of the Injunction with anyone, and what’s more the thing itself was sealed so that neither I nor anyone else could know its contents. The whole matter was cloaked in secrecy. Anyhow no respectable lawyer in Jasper City would ever cross the Baxter Trust, as one such respectable gentleman was honest enough to inform me, in a whisper, before having me ejected from his office.

My life became a maze of rules that I did not understand. If they could have reached into my head and forbidden me to think or dream they would have done that too. I confess that I began to drink. Drink was permitted to me under the terms of the Injunction, and despair was encouraged. I began to recognize the faces of particular detectives, and because they would never give me their names, even when I confronted them in public places, I began to invent nick-names for them, like
Plug-ears
and
the Pig
and
the Mosquito.
All I had to do was come work for Mr. Baxter, Plug-ears said, and I would be free of them. But that was not true. If I succumbed they would be on my back forever. I daydreamed about revenging myself on them. I am strong and fit but they were numerous and bull-necked and hard and well-armed. All I had to do was to give the sign and Scarlet Jen and her comrades would come swooping down on them. She had promised to help me, and she was not afraid of any Injunction. But that would be even worse.

There was no one to help me and no one would give me a fair deal. I had no choice but to cheat.

The day after I was ejected from the law offices of Hines & Wilks I woke before dawn and performed the Ransom Exercises. At that time I was living in a tiny room above a disreputable tavern not far south of the Yards, and within the penumbra of the Yards’ stink and smoke. The Injunction did not forbid the practice of physical exercise, although my landlord disapproved. When I felt sound enough in both body and mind I dressed and set off into the streets. My friends Plug-ears and the Pig were watching from across the street. Plug-ears leaned against a fence and smoked a cigarette, while the Pig paced in circles like a penned animal. I wished them both a very good morning and walked briskly up the street. The detectives made no particular effort to conceal themselves as they followed. I led them toward Swing Street and then in a little circle around some streets I do not recall the names of and then as crowds emerged I led them west along the river. We arrived as the sun was rising at the premises of the Jasper City Mail Company, which was by the way the property of Mr. Baxter, I have since learned though I did not know it at the time. Anyhow the Mail Company had a big building on the outskirts of the city with stalwart postmen carved on its pediment, leaning forward into hail and snow and staring down wolves and wild Folk, armed only with sticks and mail-sacks and good old Jasper City grit. In the shadow beneath those carvings a lot of somewhat less square-jawed postmen were hefting sacks back and forth across the yard and loading them onto mail coaches, which one by one rattled out of the yard and onto the road to parts west. As the fourth and last coach of the day moved out I produced a piece of paper from my pocket and waving it in the air I raced after the coach, calling out over the clattering of wheels and hooves “Hold up, hold up, I’ll double your pay if you just hold up.”

It is a good thing that I have always kept up my Exercises because mail coaches are faster than they look. The motto of the Jasper City Mail Company that is carved onto their big building is we stop for nothing and it is no joke. As I ran alongside the coach the coachman did not stop, but he did graciously permit me to throw up the letter and a dollar into his cab.

I stood there with my hands on my knees, panting in a cloud of red road-dust, and I watched the coach go. I also watched with great pleasure Plug-ears and the Pig racing past me after the coach and the letter, both of them red in the face and shouting “Stop! Stop in the name of the law! Stop! That letter contains the property of Mr. Alfred Baxter!” Plug-ears held his hat to his head and looked panicked and the Pig glared at me like he would have liked to stop and beat me dead, and maybe he would have if only he had time.

The coach did not stop. I do not know whether the coachman could hear them or not. All three of them receded into the red dust and distance like the rising sun was swallowing them up— I lost sight of Plug-ears and the Pig first, then the coach.

If and when they ever caught up with the letter they would have found that it said:

A great man seizes the reins of History— he does not let the world move on past him.
No problem in business or in life is without a solution to a man of daring and ingenuity.
I learned that from you, Mr. Baxter, or whoever wrote your
Autobiography
. I guess a lot of it was lies but not that. By the time you read this we will both know better where we stand.

I had no time to gloat or enjoy my freedom. It would not last long. I reckoned I had no more than a few hours of privacy at most. Soon Plug-ears and the Pig would give up the chase, or stop somewhere to wire back news of my trick to their employers, and when that happened their colleagues would find me again quick enough.

I ran just about all the way back to Swing Street. It was morning and the street was silent. I ran past Dally’s Theater and the Ormolu and the Nightshade and the Golden Dawn Dancing Society and the Gate and then down a side-street corner to where Adela’s apartment’s window opened high over an alley that so far as I know never had any name. She’d become a late riser since falling in with theater-people and I was betting she was still at home— but when she did not respond to my shouting and throwing of stones I got impatient pretty quick. By bracing myself against both walls of the alley I was able to climb to her window. I banged on the glass. I caught her half-dressed.

“I’ll apologize later,” I said.

“What in the world do you want— what’s happening?”

“I gave the detectives the slip.”

“They’re watching me too, Harry—”

“I bet they are. No time to talk. Do you still have the leaf?”

“What are you talking about? I’ll get my clothes and—?”

“No time. From the basement— from when the Apparatus blew up— you took I guess you’d call it a souvenir, or maybe you meant to study it— not that that matters now —anyhow it was a little brass leaf, about—?” She did not wait for me to finish. She unearthed the brass leaf from her drawer and threw it to me— it twisted in the air and cast a multiplicity of shadows all over the walls— and just as I caught it somebody started banging on her door. I let go of her windowsill and let myself slide down the walls into the alley, where trash saved me from injury.

I ran back into town and across the bridge into Fenimore, where I had a vague notion that the offices of the
Jasper City Evening Post
might be found. Well, that may be, but not by the likes of your humble correspondent, no matter how long I searched or who I stopped to ask. Did I despair? Truth is I did, but not for long. Ingenuity, I said to myself, and resourcefulness, and never-say-die. That was how we did things out on the Rim, before I got softened by city living. That was what Mr. Carver would do, and Liv and John Creedmoor. I muttered a whole lot of such things to myself as I walked through the streets and the truth is those words did me a power of good. I realized that I did not need the offices of the
Evening Post,
but only Mr. Elmer Merrial Carson himself.

I found him in his usual haunt, Strick’s Tavern down by the river, where we had spoken back on my first day in Jasper. I was not dressed anywhere close to right for that fashionable establishment and to gain entrance I had to first trick and then plead and then when both of those failed shove my way past the doorman. He threatened to call the police. I told him that the police were the last thing I feared. He pulled himself up off the floor and pursued me into the dining-room and laid hands on me as I got to Mr. Carson’s usual table, where the famous journalist was taking lunch with someone who had the look of a Senator. Up went Mr. Carson’s eyebrows. The doorman tried to twist my arm but I was not in any mood to be trifled with and I showed him how things were handled out on the Rim.

“Hello, Mr. Carson,” I said. “I don’t know what story this fellow’s got to tell you but I know it’s got nothing on mine. Get rid of him and call off this doorman and I’ll make it worth your while.”

The silver-haired Senator-looking fellow snatched up his napkin like it was a weapon and stood to protest my insolence. I will not record what he said because I did not listen to it. Instead I sat down across from Mr. Carson and fixed him with my frankest and most persuasive expression.

He did not move.

“I remember you— Rollins, right? Or was it Rawley? You said you went down with the
Damaris
— you said you’d invented a what was it now?”

“Rawlins,” I said. “That was the name I gave. It was a lie. I hope you’ll forgive the necessity. At the time I was in hiding and in fear for my life but now my enemies have found me out anyhow so the way I figure it I have nothing to lose. Truth is I’m Harry Ransom, as in Professor Harry Ransom, inventor of the Ransom Process, perpetrator of the White Rock Miracle, confidant of John Creedmoor and the good doctor Alverhuysen, et cetera and et cetera.”

He raised an eyebrow, and said nothing.

“That’s the truth,” I said.

“Last I heard you worked for the theater— I think I recall you saying that. You know— you’re not the first fellow I’ve met who claims that name. You’d be surprised how many foolish young men are desperate for that dubious notoriety, and how many of them find their way to me.”

“Nothing surprises me anymore.”

“These are difficult times, Mr. Whoever-you-are, and people in this city are desperate— if I publish your story and you turn out to be just another madman, I’ll be a laughingstock— that’s if I’m lucky— there are people in this city in a shooting mood.”

“I can prove it.”

“You can? Well for the love of all that’s holy don’t blow up this restaurant, Professor Ransom, it’s precious to me.”

“Don’t worry about that. I lost the Apparatus.”

“Did you now! Ain’t that a surprise.”

“Stick with me for an hour or two, Mr. Carson, while I tell you my story— and I’ll bet you the thirty-two dollars that is all I have in the world that before I’m done we’ll be interrupted by Mr. Baxter’s detectives— I guess I should warn you that I’m violating Baxter’s Injunction just talking to you. They sure as hell think I am who I say I am and they are not people who play games.”

“Lunch with a madman and assault by detectives! I’ve rarely had such a tempting offer.”

“You want proof? Well . . .”

I took the brass leaf out of my pocket and held it in front of his face. When I let go of it it hung there, turning slowly.

Mr. Carson did not take his eyes off it for more than a minute, but after a little while he reached out with his finger and thumb to snuff the table’s candle, thereby reducing the number of shadows the leaf cast hardly at all.

The Senator, who had returned with waiters, I guess to have me removed, stood by the table and watched the leaf levitate.

“You could have found this,” Mr. Carson said. “You could have scavenged it from White Rock.”

“Well, take it or leave it, Mr. Carson, we’re all busy men here.”*

*I seem to recall I had a great deal more to say about all this, and that Mr. Ransom gave me a great many more promises and assurances in return for my aid. But just as Mr. Ransom observed, we were both busy men. I expect he forgot. The brass leaf was as he describes it, though I cannot vouch for its provenance. —EMC