“What’s happened?” he said. He was already on one knee in front of the young man, his black bag open. He rummaged through it, setting one thing after another on the floor between them.
“Mad bloke stabbed me with a scissors and ran off. The policeman gave chase after helpin’ me a bit. After a while, everybody sort of wandered off and left me here to bleed. Don’t blame ’em. Not too interestin’ to watch a man bleed after the first few minutes.”
“That policeman is my friend. Was he all right? Was he stabbed, too?”
“Don’t think so. I was tryin’ to help him out, what got me stabbed.”
Kingsley washed out the puncture wound and dressed it.
“The wound is deep,” he said, “but you haven’t lost too much blood.”
“You a doctor?”
“You’d better hope I am.”
“How bad is it?”
“You’re lucky inasmuch as the instrument used, the shears used to stab you, seem to have been reasonably clean of dirt or rust, so that may help with your recovery. And it was sharp enough that you may avoid getting lockjaw.”
“Lockjaw?”
“Yes. A dull weapon may sometimes bruise a nerve and cause excruciating death. We call this lockjaw.”
“But I ain’t gonna get that?”
“We’ll know soon enough. It’s imperative that we get you back to my hospital so I can dress that wound properly. It needs a poultice. For now, the detective did a good job of stanching the blood and this wrap will keep it from bleeding too badly.”
“You gonna leave me here?”
“Certainly not. Let’s get you to your feet.”
“I don’t know if I can.”
“The injury wasn’t to your legs. You can stand and walk.”
“Mister doctor?” Henry said. “I can carry him.”
Henry bent and lifted the injured man as if he were an empty suit. The man yelped and sucked in a quick lungful of air.
“Careful with him, Henry. I’d like to keep this one alive.”
Henry nodded and stood waiting. The man put his uninjured arm around Henry’s thick neck while Kingsley repacked his bag. He lifted the bag and the lantern and, with a nod to Henry, turned and led the way down the hall, this time with renewed purpose. There was an injured man relying on him to find a way out of the workhouse.
In moments they came to a low door. The door was bolted and the bolt had been padlocked. It was the first true door Kingsley had seen since they’d entered Hobgate, since the entrances to the men’s rooms were nothing but open holes in the walls.
“If this isn’t an exit, we’ve reached a dead end,” he said. “So I’m going to assume for the sake of sanity that it’s an exit. But I’m afraid we’ll have to turn back anyway.”
Without a word, Henry set the injured man down and grabbed the bolt with both hands. He braced his feet against the jamb on either side of the door and pulled. There was a low groaning noise that reverberated through the walls and down the hallway behind them.
“I think it’s too strong for you,” Kingsley said.
Henry looked at him and grinned. He tensed his shoulders, set his feet again, and heaved backward, his entire upper body pitched out into the hall so that he was nearly horizontal with the floor. The bolt wrenched away from the door with a terrific rasp and a crack and a shower of splinters.
Henry stumbled, but didn’t fall. He tossed the fractured bolt into the darkness behind them and stopped to pick the injured man back up. Kingsley threw the door open and smiled at the grey-filtered sunlight and the spattering rain outside.
“Look what you did,” he said. He turned, blocking the exit. He wanted to say the thing he’d come here to say before he lost his nerve. “Henry, I’d like to put you to work.”
“I’m at the workhouse already and I don’t like it.”
“No, I don’t see how anyone could like it here. But I don’t mean the workhouse. I mean that I’d like you to come to my laboratory. There are things I could have you do there.”
“Would I dance?”
“If you wanted to. But there are more substantial things you could do, too. You showed respect for the dead on that day I visited you. That kind of respect isn’t something I see in most people.”
“Can they sleep at your laboratory? The dead, I mean. Can they sleep? There wasn’t enough room for them at the morgue place and they couldn’t rest.”
Kingsley remembered the short tables and the breeze moving through the open shed where the bodies were stored. He remembered the cold, pale legs hanging down in the central aisle, moving in the wind, running in place.
“Yes, there’s room for them to rest now.”
“I’ll look at it.”
“Good. I can’t pay you much. My current assistant is my daughter and she takes no salary, but I’d like to find something else for her to do. I’m not sure it’s a good place for her to be anymore.”
He realized he was speaking to someone who didn’t understand and wouldn’t care. He chuckled.
“Anyway,” he said, “I’ll bring you round the place and you can decide for yourself. I think having you there might be good for us both.”
“You should do it,” the injured man said. “Can’t be any worse ’n this place.”
Henry nodded and smiled.
“It’s settled, then,” Kingsley said. “Now let’s get out of this place.”
He stepped aside and waved Henry through into the fresh air. Before he followed, he blew out the flame and set his lantern on the floor.
94
What’s all this, then?”
Inspector Day turned and held his lantern up. The guard from the entrance of the workhouse was approaching with his gun drawn.
“I’m a detective with the Yard,” Day said. “Do you remember me?”
“Aye, that I do, sir. What’s happening in here?”
“There’s a homicidal madman somewhere in the building. He’s extremely dangerous and armed with scissors.”
“Did you say he has scissors, sir?”
“Yes. He’s a killer and he’s already injured at least one person here.”
“What can I do to help?”
“The injured man is somewhere back there, behind me. Do you have any medical knowledge? Or is there a doctor here somewhere?”
The guard shook his head. “Only the one doctor what come in with you, sir. I’ve got this pistol, though, if that can be of service to you.”
“Perhaps it can at that. The man we’re looking for has escaped down this hall. I don’t know in which direction he’s gone. He’s tall, dressed expensively in a dark suit and cloak. He has a tall hat, if it hasn’t been jostled off by now. His appearance is quite different from that of anyone else you’ll find in this place. You go that way and I’ll go this. Fire your pistol if you encounter him and I’ll come running.”
“Yes, sir. Good luck, sir.”
“And to you.”
Day watched the guard hustle away in the other direction and he shook his head wonderingly. At least there was one person in all of London who respected the bloody Yard.
He drew his Colt Navy from his pocket and moved down the hall. The lantern light didn’t penetrate far into the warren of cubbyholes. His whistle and the screaming of the injured man had turned the rest of the inmates shy. There weren’t many men showing themselves in the narrow tunnel. At every opening where there wasn’t evidence of a tenant, Day thrust the lantern inside and surveyed the room. It was slow going.
He was finishing his search of the fifth room on the westernmost side of the tunnel when he heard a gunshot somewhere behind him. He listened, waiting for the echoes to subside, and heard another, followed immediately by a third. He dashed out of the room and retraced his steps.
He found the young guard facedown in the hall near the entrance. He knelt and turned the guard over, but the man was dead. Blood seeped from a series of deep stab wounds up and down his torso. As Day watched, the flow of blood slowed to a trickle. He closed his eyes and said a short and silent prayer for the soul of the slain guard. A moment later, he was on his feet and running. There was a trail of blood, small dots that glistened yellow in the light of the lantern. They grew smaller as the trail lengthened, and Day guessed that the killer had not been wounded. The blood was dripping from his scissors.