Birds began to chirp in the treetops that lined the street and a dark hansom chugged past Fenn, unseen on the other side of the fence. Rainwater slished off the wheels and heavy beads ran like dew off a monstrous black beetle’s back. The cab rolled past and turned the corner.
Fenn cut through an opening in the fence and sprinted to the end of the block. He was on his own street. The solid block of brownstones lined the street ahead, queued up in a row that led right to Fenn’s front door. He could see the windows on the ground floor, twinkling with gaslight. His mother was awake and no doubt cooking breakfast for Fenn’s father and sisters. A door opened at the far end of the block and Harriet Smith stepped out on her stoop. She was far away, but he could see her yellow pigtails. Another door opened and another child, young Robert Harrison, emerged onto the street. Fenn hated Robert Harrison, but he had never been so glad to see anyone in his life. Robert and Harriet waved to each other and ran into the street, already picking up a game they’d clearly left off the previous evening. It was still too dark out. They didn’t see Fenn and he was afraid to call out, afraid the policeman might still be nearby.
He untied the bits of pajama shirt on his feet and left them in the road. He could run faster barefoot and he didn’t care about the pain anymore.
He ran past the first house on the corner, joined to the next but more squat, a dwarf beside a stone giant. To his right, the black hansom cab sat idle, the horse sniffing the morning air, the coachman hidden in a blanket of shadow. The cab looked familiar and Fenn slowed as he drew near. The hansom’s windows were covered by dark curtains and Fenn saw one of them move.
Realization dawned and Fenn swallowed hard. He had to pass that cab to get to his door. He decided to put everything he had left into one mad dash down the street. He was too close now to do anything else.
26
The bald man sat in a hansom cab on Cheyne Walk watching the passive expanse of brick and iron, an entire block’s worth of one building divided up into multiple homes. The patter of rain eased and the sky began to turn a pale shade of pink. Children emerged from their townhouses and resumed the previous evening’s play without benefit of grass or trees. They raced here and there, shrieking and whooping, making ingenious use of hoops, balls, and sticks.
The bald man had sat in this same spot many times before, watching the children. He liked to single out the most beautiful or charming of them and concentrate on him. Or her. Today a pretty blond girl, thin and graceful and calm, directed a playmate in his effort to keep a metal barrel hoop rolling along. Ordinarily, the bald man wouldn’t have been able to tear his eyes away from her and her fetching pigtails, but this morning he was there for a different reason. He had already selected his ward and had lost him. Now he was waiting for Fenn, certain that he would return here to his first home, the home he’d had before the bald man had rescued him from this perfect ordinariness.
The coachman was well paid and had proven trustworthy on past expeditions. The bald man didn’t worry about him, but didn’t care to engage him in conversation. They had a long silent wait ahead of them. The boy had surely been walking half the night, but the bald man had traveled faster and was certain he’d got there first.
He thought about his shop and he wondered whether he had remembered to lock the front door after putting up the BE BACK SOON sign in the window. It would gnaw at him, he knew, if he didn’t return to check on it. But this was not the time. Once he’d found the boy, it would be a quick stop on their way home.
He needed to find the boy before he could do anything else.
There was always the possibility that Fenn had gone to the police, but the bald man doubted it. He felt sure that the boy was already beginning to love him, to think of him as his new father, and what son would dare to sic the police on his own father?
The bald man smiled to himself. When he caught Fenn again, he would be well within his rights to be angry. No one would think less of him for beating the boy. After all, he’d caused his father a long night of worry. But their little family of two was going through a difficult time, and so he would show mercy. Oh, there would be changes at home, that was certain, but the bald man could turn the other cheek this time and the boy would see how much his new father truly loved him.
He was snapped out of his reverie by the sight of Fenn himself, bedraggled and dirty and bare-chested, still in his pajama trousers, staggering up the hill at the far end of the street. There was no mistaking him. The bald man was so filled with relief and fatherly love that, for only a moment, he was unable to move.
The bald man was sure the boy saw the cab, and he must have suspected who was inside, but he kept coming anyway, tried to run right past. The bald man smiled. Fenn wasn’t making much of an effort to get away. The poor boy was clearly exhausted and running to his new father.
The bald man stepped out of the cab just long enough to scoop his son up, all in one motion, and lay him on the empty seat; then he clambered back in, sat across from the weeping child, and pounded twice on the cab’s ceiling.
He looked back as the cab moved down the street and saw that the children were still playing their pointless games. No one had noticed anything.
He smiled, thrilled by his own cleverness and courage. And by his extraordinary good luck.
He passed a note up to the coachman. They would need to stop at his shop so the bald man could check the locks. And then he would take the entire rest of the day off work.
Clearly he needed to spend more time with his son.
27
I promised you another penny, didn’t I?” Day said.
He held the coin up so that it caught the light. The dancing man reached out for it, but then drew his hand back.
“I know you,” he said. “You were in my dream last night.”
“It wasn’t a dream,” Day said.
“I’ll dance for you.”
“No need. Take the penny. Get yourself a loaf of bread.”
Day tossed the penny in the dancing man’s direction and walked quickly away, past the upturned milk crate and in through the back door of the Yard. Behind him, he heard the coin clink against the stone sidewalk.
Inside, Michael Blacker was already hard at work, along with two other detectives, Tiffany and Wiggins, who were at their own desks across the room. Neither of them looked up as Day entered. The piles of paper on Day’s desk had grown. Day could barely see Blacker on the other side of it, his legs crossed, a foot-high sheaf of notes in his lap.
“I thought I might beat you here this morning,” Day said.
Blacker grinned at him. He put down the notes he was reading and wiped his eyes.
“No chance of that, old man,” he said. “I never left.”
“You’ve been here all night?”
“Hasn’t been so long since you went home. Anyway, I’ve nothing to go home to. Not like you.”