“I see. Dr. Tewes tips well.”
“True, but this coachman knows you as well.”
“Really now, and who might that high-pitched voice and those beady eyes belong to?”
“Waldo, of course.”
“Denton?”
“Says he hardly makes a scrapping apprenticed to your friend Keane. Says he makes more money on tips. Afraid he calls your friend a skinflint.”
“Skinflint? Philo?” He laughed.
“Waldo says Keane thinks him his indentured servant!”
“OK, he’s a skinflint. But at heart, a good man.”
“So we haul Denton into the courtroom as a character witness?”
“Perhaps not. The village idiots might draw a straight line between a skinflint and a murderer, as they’ve drawn a line from Philo’s art to murder.”
“Art some are calling pornography.”
“I’ve seen it and I tell you it is art.”
“Have you . . . ever purchased from him?”
“Yes, photos of Merielle when I only knew her as Polly.
Later, I bought up his entire inventory.”
“And you still have these, ahhh . . . artistic renderings?”
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“I do.”
“I’m sure of their artistic merit,” she teased. “Look, if you want my advice, you will burn them.”
“For you, I will do it.”
“No for me.”
“For myself then.”
“Damn it, man, if Nathan can orchestrate Keane’s arrest, and if he turns him over to the right interrogators, men like yourself . . . your friend Philo can be persuaded to point you out as having an obsession with one or more of the victims, and then you give Nathan the kindling to amass this fire under you in the form of these . . . artistic renderings?” “Yes, I take your point.”
“I’m sure you would’ve concluded the same, but even had you . . . well, I imagine you’d hold on to one or two of the photos.”
“I’ll destroy them all.”
“Else turn them over to the care of someone you trust.”
“That is a rare bird indeed.”
“Someone who’d never betray you.”
“I am at a loss for a name.”
“You thick-headed fool.”
“Dr. Fenger perhaps.”
“As he works for the police department—which is a trav-esty, as his office ought to be a separate entity so as to remain completely objective and above criticism and complaint—you’d be placing him in an awkward position, Alastair.” “I can think of no one else.”
She gritted her teeth. “What of Dr. Tewes?”
“What of Dr. Tewes?”
“For a detective, you can be demonstratively thick at times.”
He reached out and leaned into her, about to kiss her regardless of the mustache, but he was stopped by a whoosh-slap sound.
The flap to the coachman had slapped open again.
“Tewes’s residence!”
She got out without responding to his last remark, instead CITY FOR RANSOM
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whispering so as Waldo could not hear, “Any prints of the girl you can’t bring yourself to burn, get to me.”
“I’m not so sure there is any reason to fret over—”
“Remember who you’re dealing with. Kohler is your worst enemy. If you’ve shots of Merielle you simply can’t destroy, trust them to me.”
“One day . . . Nathan knows that one day . . . I’ll find the tie that places his hand on the bomb at Haymarket.”
“His greatest fear. You are two men with reason to fear one another.”
“I guess I have not looked at it in quite those terms.”
“Fear is a great motivator, and when a man sucks fear up his nose, it fills his brain. Nathan Kohler will do anything to frame you, and arresting Philo is just his opening salvo.”
“You know a lot about the uncharted territories of the human mind, don’t you, Doctor?”
“I have laid hands on a few.”
“Like mine? Did I tell you . . .”
“I know you like my touch, Ransom.”
“I can ask Waldo to hold if you’ll call out Jane . . . two for the Palmer House.”
“Perhaps another night. I promised Gabby a special dinner. It’s her birthday.”
“Ahhh, of course . . . of course. Then bring her along and we’ll celebrate together.”
She realized just how deep-seated was his loneliness. Like an oak in a clearing . . . a lone oak. She couldn’t be certain of her feelings for him; she’d not sorted out all of her own fears. He could be so good for her, and she for him, but on the other hand, he could destroy her so easily if he were one of these sorts who preferred the stalking to the catching and the mating. He could leave her as had Tewes in France, again devastating her emotions. “Perhaps if you call round late, you can have coffee and cake on the porch with us.” God, she silently cursed herself for being so cowardly and tentative in such matters—neither adjective something anyone anywhere would ever apply to her.
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She quickly rushed onto her front porch, turning in time to see him raise his cane in a little wave. He then tapped his cane against the cab and chortled out “Muldoons!”
Jane was soon watching through a window sash from the safety of her home as the cab carrying Ransom trundled off east for Halsted Street.
CHAPTER 24
It was an awkward passing thought Ransom had as he rode alone in the cab. If someone were garroted and set aflame tonight, this would prove Kohler’s having arrested Philo as sheer folly. But at what price must folly be proved? Someone would pay dearly—with her life—to see Philo freed, and this vendetta of a chess move that Kohler had made would prove a fool’s undertaking indeed. It must go nowhere.
Ransom felt certain that Philo wouldn’t last a week in a Chicago cell before going stark raving mad, and that Jane was right: This move against Philo was Nathan’s direct assault across his bow. Damn charges’ll go the way of the gutter. But it might take time.
Still, the thought of mopping up after this murdering fiend wandering the Chicago fair, had no appeal. He tried to imagine the next victim, likely another young innocent—the monster’s delicacy now. He didn’t want to inhale the odor of burnt flesh or take in the sight of yet another decapitated body.
“Lay a trap for the bastard, you should, Inspector Ransom,” came a voice reading his mind it seemed.
He looked up through the peep window into the unblinking, glassy eyes of Waldo Denton. “A trap?”
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“Yes, a trap, sir, is what we’d use on the farm back home.
And who knows, if I was Johnny on the spot with that Night Hawk and was to get pictures, I could make my reputation, I could. Not to mention . . . well, a photo of the killer! Now that’d sell to all the papers in the city at a handsome price, not to mention it’d make us heroes, it would, you and me, coming in with a likeness of the bastard.” The boy had soaked up more from Philo than Ransom had realized. “You’d need a damn wheelbarrowful of luck to be on hand when this monster slips out his garrote and slices someone’s throat.”
“I read your remarks in the Herald and you’re going to put
’im in a foul mood with words like that—calling ’im a coward and a weakling, fearful of his own shadow. Words like that, why, you might think he’d come straight for you, and if you were to sort of set yourself up as, say, bait . . .” “Bait him, heh?” Ransom recalled giving the exclusive to Thom Carmichael.
Waldo kept talking. “Well, sir, I’m no policeman, but I read Mr. Pinkerton’s spy book.”