“Your friends at the museum-”
“Ain’t my friends. Besides, I know where to get my hands on that lot. It is the lady what interests me now.” Jonathan has to be near her, he has to be. Her husband was about to find the Throne of Solomon.
Titus Bootham slowly maneuvered his horse-drawn carriage through the growing tangle of wagons, horses, people.
An impatient Figg said, “Do not lose sight of her.”
“I suspect she might be returning home.”
“And where might that be?”
“Fifth Avenue. It is the correct place for the wealthy to reside these days. Ironic, since not too long ago that area was a swamp fit only for poor Irish and herds of wild pigs. Do you know Mrs. Coltman?”
“We have things to touch upon.”
Figg looked at the traffic hemming them in left, right, back and front. The noise attacked his ears and he didn’t see how a man could live with it without going balmy. He felt the thrill of the hunt, the excitement of a satisfaction soon to be his. Rachel Coltman would lead him to Jonathan and Figg would kill him, then leave this bedlam of a city, with its mud, foul smells and children who had to collect dead animals in order to get a crust of bread.
Let little Mr. Poe keep New York. The city was as mad as he was.
Figg snatched the whip from Titus Bootham’s hand, stood up in the carriage and began to flay the horse. Jonathan.
“Mr. Figg, Mr. Figg, please I beg of you don’t-”
Figg stopped.
Bootham had tears in his eyes. “She is not a young horse, sir and she has served me well. I beg you.”
Burning with shame, Figg sat down, unable to look Titus Bootham in the face and tell him that he hadn’t been whipping the horse; he’d been whipping the man who’d killed his wife and son.
The two men followed Rachel Coltman’s carriage in silence.
TEN
“Believe,” said Paracelsus.
“I do.”
“Believe!” The word was a command.
“I do believe, sir. Oh I do, with all my heart.”
“Then I can bring your wife to you once again, but only for an instant. It is not easy to control the spirits of those who have gone on ahead. They are now free, you must understand this. Free from all worlds, all restraints-”
Lorenzo Ballou leaped from his chair, voice breaking with pain. “Dear God, anything! I will do anything you ask, pay any amount. Only bring her to me once more, I beg you!”
Paracelsus gently lifted a white-gloved hand from the table, pointed it at Ballou then lowered the hand to the table once more. As if by magic, Ballou sat down.
“Mr. Ballou, I do not seek your money. I require only that you place your faith in me without reservation, for without your complete commitment there is little I can achieve.”
Ballou, 250 pounds and 5’4”, wiped his perspiring forehead with one of his dead wife’s lace handkerchiefs. He was jowly, with pink flesh from his face and neck dripping over an expensive collar and silk cravat. His puffy and gray mutton chop whiskers smelled of his wife’s perfume, which he watered in order not to run out of it. Ballou, fifty-five, was rich from crooked real estate dealings; two months ago his nineteen-year-old wife had died in a fall from a new horse he’d purchased for her.
“Dr. Paracelsus, you have given me more than any man ever has. Twice you have united my dearest Martha and me and I cannot convey how much this has meant to me.”
“I understand.”
“You tell me things about Martha and I, things no mortal man could possibly know and oh, how reassuring it is to hear them once more.”
Paracelsus nodded. Lorenzo Ballou was a toy, something to mold into a believer who would open his wallet willingly. Paracelsus, a large man with shoulder-length white hair that appeared to glow in the dark candlelit room, touched a white beard that reached his chest and knew that today, Mr. Ballou would be most generous. The spiritualist, himself a ghostly looking figure in a floor-length white robe, could sense when a survivor’s gratitude was about to overflow. Mr. Ballou’s certainly would, especially after the little tableau Paracelsus was about to unfold for the widower’s private viewing. This would be a most successful and lucrative seance.
The two men were alone in a totally dark room lit only by five black candles on a table of black marble. Paracelsus had made Martha Ballou appear on two occasions. And now once again it was time for the grieving Mr. Ballou to view the dearly departed.
“Extend your hands, Mr. Ballou. Both hands. Yes. Keep them flat on the table and extend your fingers until they touch mine. Yes, yes.”
The fat man did as ordered, his eyes on Paracelsus’ face. The spiritualist had a majestic nose, large but far from comical. It belonged on a king, thought Ballou, on a man used to ruling others. And his eyes. A burning green. You that was it. A burning green, eyes of green fire. And behind those eyes was a power to bring dear Martha back to this world again. Ballou’s heart was about to burst with joy, fear, anticipation.
And then he felt something brush his face. The fat man looked up at the ceiling to see rose petals falling down on him.
“Her favorite flower!” Ballou’s shout filled the small room. “How did you know?”
Paracelsus, eyes closed, placed his hands on top of Ballou’s and pressed down hard. “You must not move. You must not disturb the spirits or they will retreat.”
“Yes, yes. Oh please don’t let her go away. I-”
Ballou listened.
Then-“That song. It’s one she used to sing on the stage.” He turned around in his chair and saw a trumpet floating in the air. The trumpet glowed in the dark, a shade of green almost as bright as Paracelsus’ eyes.
“Who is there? Who is playing-” Ballou tried to leave his chair, but the spiritualist, using surprising strength, pressed down harder on his hands, keeping the fat man in place.
When Ballou turned to face Paracelsus again, he looked down at the table and suddenly inhaled. Jerking both hands free, he picked up the pearl necklace. “But, but this is at home in my safe! It belonged to Martha and no one has the combination to the safe but me. Where-”
“Lorenzo. Lorenzo.”
The fat man snapped his head towards the woman’s voice and when he saw her, his eyes widened and he whimpered like a puppy, exactly like a puppy, thought Paracelsus.
“Martha, oh Martha dearest!” Ballou wept, his corpulent body shaking, his jowls shiny with his tears. He is mine, thought Paracelsus. I have him now.
The ghost was in a doorway behind a curtain of yellow gauze. A slim woman, dark haired and pretty in a pale blue robe with a hood that hid half of her face. She stood with her right profile to Lorenzo Ballou and had both hands folded in prayer.
“I come to you, dear Lorenzo, for only a moment. Only a moment.”
He stood up. “M-Martha.”
Paracelsus spoke swiftly. “If you go towards her, she will disappear. Obey me or she-”
He didn’t have to finish. Ballou sat down, his tear-stained face still on the ghost behind the yellow gauze curtain. A wet whale, thought Paracelsus, but a rich one and that is what concerns me.
“M-Martha. M-M-Martha.” All Ballou could do was sit and weep. They had so little time together before her death. Three months married, then-
“Lorenzo, dearest, you should not have killed Zachary and Beau. You should not have done that.”
The color left the fat man’s face and his breathing stopped. Zachary was the name of the horse Ballou had given her and Beau was the Negro groom who had saddled it for her. The day after his wife’s death, Lorenzo Ballou had taken both horse and groom deep into a wood and killed them both. The fat man, crazed with grief, had been alone when he’d done the killings.