Page 12 of The Journal of a Thousand Years (The Glass Library #6)

CHAPTER 12

“ W ho?” Cyclops pressed. “Who could have picked up your key, Willie?”

“I was drinking with three others: Stanley Greville, Juan Martinez and Francis Stray.”

I gasped. “Gabe’s friends? Surely not.” Yet even as I said it, doubt crept in.

Alex shook his head. “Why were the three of them drinking together without Gabe? He’s the mutual connection between them.” He was right—Juan and Stanley had fought alongside Gabe in the Grenadier Guards, but Francis was an old school chum.

“Gabe had been at The Flying Duck with them earlier,” Willie said. “He left before I got there.”

Alex was still shaking his head, over and over, as if trying to dislodge an insidious thought. “It can’t be one of them. It must have been someone else, Willie. Think.”

“If I lost the key when I tripped, it was one of them. I’m sure of it.”

Alex began to pace the floor, striding back and forth between bookshelves.

I edged closer to one of the shelves, too, seeking a measure of comfort from the paper in the books. This time, it offered none. The direction of my thoughts was awful. Almost too awful to say out loud, but someone had to. I suspected we were all thinking the same thing anyway. “Stanley Greville spent time in Rosebank Gardens after the war. He knew Frank Alcott. I remember seeing them talking in the hospital grounds.”

Alex continued to pace. Willie’s head didn’t rise from where she’d lowered it, her fingers buried in her tangled hair. Only Cyclops was capable of acting. It was he who rallied Alex and Willie by taking the decision-making out of their hands.

“We’ll visit him now. If we present him with our evidence, hopefully he’ll give in and release Gabe.”

“And if he doesn’t?” I asked.

Cyclops didn’t answer. He placed his hat on his head and strode out of the library.

None of us were particularly surprised to find that Stanley Greville no longer lived in the small flat where we’d visited him before. According to the new tenant, he’d moved out only two days prior and not left a forwarding address. Stanley’s disappearance all but confirmed his guilt.

Willie slumped against the wall beside the flat’s door and leaned forward, her hands on her knees. Her breaths came in shallow gasps.

“It’s not your fault,” Cyclops told her. “You had no reason to distrust Greville.”

Alex leaned against the wall beside her. “None of us did.” He tipped his head back and stared at the ceiling. “Now what do we do?”

“We call on Francis Stray and Juan Martinez,” I said. “They might have a new address for Stanley.”

Alex pushed off from the wall. He and his father strode ahead and quickly descended the stairs. Willie hadn’t moved. Her breathing was more even, but she was still bent over.

“Alex is right,” I told her. “Don’t blame yourself. The only one at fault is Stanley.”

She slowly straightened. I thought my words had got through to her, but the haunted look in her eyes told another story. It reminded me of the look I’d seen in so many men’s eyes since the war ended. I’d seen it in Gabe’s, too, when we first met. It was guilt. In their case, it was the guilt of having survived when so many perished. In Willie’s, it was the guilt of playing a role in Gabe’s abduction.

Her mouth twitched and twisted with the effort not to succumb to her emotions. “Gabe’s my family. He’s like a son to me. Not only did I fail to protect him, I gave his abductor the means to enter the house. If it weren’t for me… If I hadn’t gone out that night… If I hadn’t got drunk, I wouldn’t have tripped…” She buried her face in her hands.

I put my arm around her shoulders. “Don’t think like that, Willie.” I gave her shoulders a little shake in an attempt to rally her. “Anyway, it’s quite possible Stanley deliberately tripped you up and picked the key out of your pocket when he went to your aid.”

She lowered her hands and fixed me with a wide-eyed stare. At least it was no longer haunted. “He did help me up. I reckon I didn’t drop the key. He stole it from my pocket.” She threw her arms around me. It was the most affection she’d ever shown me.

I patted her back, but she suddenly drew away.

She raced to the staircase, her movements quicker than a woman half her age. “Come on, Sylv, we got to interrogate Francis and Juan.”

Gabe’s mathematician friend, Francis Stray, was a literal man who found social interactions both confusing and taxing, so he tended to avoid people, particularly if he didn’t know them well. Added to that, he wasn’t very adept at reading a person’s emotions, so when he immediately invited us inside upon seeing us on his doorstep, it was a testament to how worried and desperate we appeared. We were all finding it difficult to mask our anxiety.

“Gabe’s been abducted by Stanley Greville,” Willie said before I could think of a less confronting way to inform Francis of the reason for our visit. “Do you know where Stanley is?”

Francis blinked at her. “At his flat, I assume.”

“He no longer lives there.”

Willie looked around, as if she wanted to destroy something in frustration. Fortunately, she refrained. Francis’s flat wasn’t large, but it was neat and tidy, like the man himself. Nothing was out of place, not a single book or hair on his head. The only evidence he’d just arrived home from work was the steam rising from the spout of the kettle on the portable stove.

Francis’s gaze shifted between each of us, but it settled on me. Perhaps he thought of me as the least intimidating. “I don’t understand. Gabe is strong and capable. How could someone simply take him? Why would Stanley?”

I directed him to sit down, then sat opposite. Francis didn’t like to be touched, so I kept my distance when usually I’d offer a comforting hand. “We’re sorry to barge in like this, Francis, but it’s important to act quickly. As Willie said, Gabe was abducted. It appears chloroform was used to subdue him.”

He nodded. “That makes sense.”

“We’ve uncovered a number of clues that point to Stanley’s involvement.”

“None of which we have time to go through now,” Willie added.

Alex nudged her with his elbow.

I continued. “Stanley has vacated his flat and left no forwarding address. Do you know where he may have gone?”

“No.” Francis’s voice was small, thin.

He seemed to be trying to make sense of the situation but failing. Gabe had been a rock for Francis over many years. It had started when Gabe protected the weaker boy from school bullies. Recently, Gabe sheltered Francis from Thurlow when the bookmaker sought to employ him.

Gabe was a rock for many of us. It was only now that he was gone that I realized how easily I’d settled into London life thanks to him. I’d met new friends through him. I’d found my father and aunts because of his help. I’d emerged from my shell because his attentions made me feel beautiful, interesting, and worthy. He made me feel brave.

The tears that were never far away welled again. I looked down at the floor, not wanting to worry Francis.

Cyclops thanked Francis for his time. “If you think of anything, telephone or visit Gabe’s house. It’s acting as our hub for the time being.”

Francis stood and crossed the floor to the tightly packed bookshelves. He removed a folio-sized book from the bottom shelf and placed it on the table. It was a street atlas, I realized when he opened it. “If Stanley moved out of his flat specifically because he knew he was about to kidnap Gabe and he didn’t want to be discovered, he would have moved into a new place that met his specific purposes.”

Willie leaned both hands on the table beside the atlas. “I don’t understand. What purposes? To keep Gabe hidden while he performed his tests?”

Alex, Cyclops and I crowded around, too. Like Willie, I didn’t quite follow.

Francis scanned the double-page key map at the front of the book. “Yes, but also the nature of those tests is important.”

“We don’t know what tests he’ll perform,” Alex said.

“While I would never advocate guessing, we can make some valid assumptions based on what we know of Stanley.”

I tried to think of what we knew about our main suspect, but aside from picturing the nervous shell-shocked former soldier, I came up with nothing. Where my panic after learning Gabe’s fate had scattered my thoughts and made it difficult to concentrate, Francis had set aside his worry after the initial shock wore off. It was as if he’d made a conscious decision to place it in a box and deal with it another time when he wasn’t so busy. His practical brain got to work in a methodical manner, whereas mine was all over the place.

“What do you know about him?” Cyclops asked. “I don’t know him well myself.”

“He was a medical student before the war,” Francis said.

Willie looked up from the atlas. “I’d forgotten about that.”

“He never returned to his studies. His nerves were too wrecked, so he said, although he did plan to return one day when he was better.”

Something occurred to me. “Do you recall the Medici Manuscript? We all worked together to decipher its codes.”

Willie’s features set hard. “Stanley helped us. Gabe trusted him enough to ask him to work alongside us to decipher the manuscript’s secrets. But that dog had already tried abducting Gabe at that point, and he continued trying after, too. Traitor.”

“He identified the medical symbols in the book,” I reminded them.

Alex rested a hand on my arm and looked at me as though I may have lost my mind entirely. “You can’t blame us for not anticipating that he was going to perform tests on Gabe. Not all the way back then.”

“That’s true,” I said, “but there was other evidence that he was interested in Gabe’s magic from a medical point of view. He was reading up on testing blood for diseases. I remember seeing a medical journal in his flat, opened to a page about blood carrying disease.”

“It’s an exciting field of study,” Francis said. “The war spurred major advancements in research into diseases transferred between men who received blood transfusions.” He seemed to cut himself short, perhaps realizing it was inappropriate to be so enthusiastic about scientific breakthroughs that only came about because of war.

“You reckon Stanley believes Gabe’s magic is blood-borne?” Willie asked.

“Given Sylvia saw him researching hematology, there’s a high probability he does.”

“But why would he want Gabe’s magic anyway? I don’t reckon he cares much about money, so he probably won’t sell his research if he could prove he’s right.”

“To cure his shell shock,” I said.

From the lack of surprise on Alex, Cyclops, and Francis’s faces, they’d already reached the same conclusion as me. It was the only conclusion that explained why a man would turn against his friend. Stanley probably didn’t want to harm Gabe, but he wanted so desperately to cure himself of his shell shock that he’d stooped to an unfathomable low.

Stanley, and other former soldiers whose nerves had been shredded by their wartime experiences, had found the world unsympathetic when they returned. They were stigmatized, labeled pathetic, cowardly, and told to “just get on with it.” Following demobilization and a stint at Rosebank Gardens hospital, Stanley was deemed well enough to be discharged. Although the government funded hospitals to treat some patients, there was no financial assistance once they left. Few could find work, let alone keep a job for any length of time. Stanley had taken a position at a pharmacy, but we’d recently learned he’d resigned. He’d retreated from the world again. It was a warning sign that all was not well with him. We shouldn’t have ignored it.

But none of us could have guessed how unwell he was. None of us could have guessed that one of Gabe’s closest friends would betray him in the most dreadful way.

Francis pointed to various locations on the key map. “Stanley will need access to laboratories to test Gabe’s blood once he extracts it. The main hospitals have modern facilities, so I think his new digs will be near one of those.”

Cyclops circled his finger on the eastern section of the city’s key map. “He’d get a place somewhere where folk don’t ask questions when they see an unconscious man being carried by two others. Somewhere Gabe would be just another drunk helped home by friends. The East End.”

Willie whipped out the envelope she’d found under the dresser in Frank Alcott’s room. She slapped it down on the table beside the atlas. “The postmark shows it was posted from the E1 district. That’s the East End. It’s dated last Tuesday. It could have been sent by Stanley from his new digs.”

Alex flipped the pages until he reached the maps focusing on the East End. “There are a few hospitals in the area, the Royal London being the largest.” He pointed to it, as well as another four. “There are a lot of buildings in the vicinity, each with many rooms. The search will take time.”

“It’s a start,” Cyclops said. “I’ll contact my men.”

They sounded grimly determined. I held out much less hope of success, however. Scotland Yard could put as many resources into the search as they wanted, but I doubted it would yield results. The residents of the East End would be unwilling to tattle on their neighbors. The East End also covered a sizeable area. It had a lot of densely packed buildings crammed into its maze of streets, alleys and courts. The task of going through each room in each house and tenement was enormous.

We still thought it worth visiting Juan. He’d been closer to Stanley than Francis, having served alongside him in the same company, with Gabe as their captain. Perhaps he even had a new address for Stanley.

We thanked Francis and headed off. Cyclops took a taxi to Scotland Yard to redirect all available resources to searching the East End. Alex, Willie and I drove to Juan’s flat.

Fortunately, we caught Gabe’s Catalonian-born friend as he was locking up. A few minutes later and we would have missed him.

“We need to speak to you,” Alex told him.

Juan checked his wristwatch. “Can we talk while I walk? I have to go to work.”

Willie blocked his path. “At this hour?” It wasn’t yet evening, but most men were returning home from working in an office, not leaving.

“I am part-owner of a new nightclub. There is much to do before we open at ten. You should come one night, all of you. It is fun. The music is jazzy, and I will give you a free drink.” He looked past us to the lift cage. “Where is Gabe?”

“That’s what we need to speak to you about,” Alex said. The neighboring door opened, and a couple emerged, arm in arm and laughing. “May we go inside? It’s important.”

Juan seemed to notice our grim faces for the first time. He unlocked the door and invited us in. His flat resembled Francis’s, but without the books. He wasn’t quite as neat as Francis either, but few people were.

He removed a newspaper from the table and put away a dirty cup before inviting us to sit. No one did. “Something is the matter, no? Where is Gabe?”

“Kidnapped by Stanley Greville,” Willie said in her usual direct manner.

Juan sat, muttering something in his native language. “Are you sure it is Stanley? No, it cannot be him,” he said before any of us could answer. “He and Gabe are friends. Gabe saved him in the war. He would not harm the captain.”

Alex outlined our reasons for suspecting Stanley and what we believed to be his motive. “We need to find his new address. If he’s not keeping Gabe there, we can still watch it in the hope Stanley will lead us to him. Did he inform you where he was moving to?”

Juan shrugged. “I did not know he moved at all.”

Then we were no closer to finding Gabe. As much as we told ourselves that Scotland Yard had a search of the East End in hand, the reality was quite different. It would take time. Time that Gabe may not have.

Juan clicked his fingers. “He owns a house. I remember, in the war, he told me this when we were up to our knees in a muddy trench, but he did not mention it since. If he still owns it, he could be there.”

“He owns a house!” Willie cried. “Then why was he renting a flat?”

“Because it is in a bad area, and he did not want to live there himself. He rented it to the poor. When he told me this, in the trench, he was feeling guilty. He said when the war ended, he would fix up the house, and make it better for the tenants. He wanted to be a better landlord.”

“What’s the address?” Willie asked.

Juan shrugged. “I do not know.”

Willie grabbed the front of his jacket. “Think!”

Juan put up his hands in surrender. “I am sorry, but I do not know.”

“My father can find out,” Alex said. “It shouldn’t be difficult.” He was already striding toward the door before he finished speaking. “I saw a telephone booth downstairs in the foyer.”

Willie raced after him. I took the seat she’d vacated and released a pent-up breath. “Thank you, Juan. This could be the breakthrough we need.”

He patted my hand. “You look very sad, Sylvia, but Gabe will be all right. Stanley will not hurt him.” He didn’t sound convinced, however. Like me, he knew Stanley was desperate enough to throw caution to the wind and take too much blood from Gabe.

Would Gabe’s magic save him if that happened? What if he lost consciousness? Would his magic still work then?

What if Stanley wanted answers to those questions, too? If Gabe’s magic failed because he was weakened through blood loss or unconsciousness, Stanley would have his answers—but perhaps at the expense of Gabe’s life.

Juan and I joined Willie and Alex at the telephone booth that was available for the use of the building’s occupants. Alex informed us that he was waiting for his father to telephone back with an address. The minutes ticked by interminably slowly. None of us spoke. Residents passed us, coming and going from the building as the late afternoon turned to dusk. Juan waited for a while then left to meet the co-owner of the nightclub before it opened. Time dragged.

The irony of the perception of how time seemed to slow wasn’t lost on me.

We all jumped when the telephone rang. Alex snatched up the receiver and gave an uncharacteristically brusque response to the operator on the other end. Finally, Cyclops must have been put through. Alex listened then repeated the address out loud. “Milsom Court, Whitechapel.”

“That’s not far,” Willie shouted into the mouthpiece. “We can be there in a few minutes if we drive real fast.”

I could hear Cyclops’s voice down the line, but not his words.

“We’ll do whatever is necessary,” Alex said into the receiver.

Before he hung it up, his father’s final word came down the line, as clear as a bell. “Alex!”

“He ordered us to let the police handle it.” Even as Alex said it, he was striding to the door. He had no intention of waiting.

Thanks to Alex’s driving skill, we reached the Royal London Hospital mere minutes later. We turned down one of the streets to the east of it, then another and another, each narrower than the last, until the motorcar wouldn’t fit if another vehicle passed in the opposite direction. We stopped at the entrance between two houses that had probably once been grand residences but had long ago been turned into lodgings that could be rented by the room. No wider than a doorway, we would have missed the entrance to Milsom Court if it wasn’t for the sign attached to the bricks above the arch. There was just enough light for us to read it. Soon, these streets would be as black as night, while the more open avenues in the better parts of London would still be bathed in twilight’s glow. I glanced at the nearest streetlamp, wondering if it worked.

Alex led the way through the passage into the court beyond. Buildings rose out of the gloom on all sides, suffocatingly close. The owner of the two houses must have built these dwellings in his backyard many decades ago, leaving just the oddly shaped courtyard in front of them. Hidden from the main street, the court appeared to serve as a laundry room, tavern, sleeping quarters, and meeting place for residents. Going by the scantily clad women lounging in doorways, it wasn’t much of a stretch of the imagination to assume the sort of meetings that were conducted were mostly of the prostitution kind.

There seemed to be far more people about than could possibly be housed in the tenements, all of them watching us with the interest of a fighter sizing up his opponent before a bout. The buildings themselves didn’t seem old, yet their roofs were missing tiles, some of the windows were missing glass panes and, in the case of one rotting wall, missing nails altogether. It seemed to be held up by nothing more than dirt and cobwebs. The landlords who built or owned cheap dwellings in their yards were called slumlords for a reason.

To think, Stanley was one of them.

It was in a court like this, not far from here, that the infamous Ripper had committed some of his murders decades ago. I could imagine a shadowy figure prowling the night, hunting for his next victim. The whores were easy prey, exhausted, drunk, and desperate as they were.

Whores beckoned Alex with a crook of a finger, not shy in their promises as they competed for the custom of the well-dressed newcomer who’d arrived in a flash motorcar. Some tried to lure Willie, too, but none bothered with me. The men, however, couldn’t take their gazes off me. Fortunately, most seemed too drunk to be of any harm, but I kept a wary eye on them, nevertheless.

There was no sign of the police. Scotland Yard was some distance away, but Cyclops would have telephoned the closest station to Milsom Court and ordered men to be dispatched immediately. Neither Willie nor Alex suggested we wait for them. Nor did I. Every moment mattered and I wasn’t going to waste a single second.

Alex bypassed a glassy-eyed man drinking from a tin cup and approached the most sober-looking woman. I stayed back with Willie and gazed up at the windows, searching for the face of Stanley Greville. Several residents stared down at us, but he wasn’t one of them.

Moments later, Alex returned. Behind him, the woman’s skirt pocket now bulged. He must have paid her a considerable sum. “Stanley owns this entire court and every building in it. Apparently he inherited it from his father before the war, but rarely came here. She recognized him, though. He’s in there, first floor, at the back.” He nodded at the building to our right.

“It could be a trap,” Willie said, eyeing the door.

“He couldn’t have known we’d find him.”

“It’s too easy.”

Alex indicated a man slumped forward over a broken crate, an empty bottle lying on the cobblestones beside him. “We knew Stanley would take Gabe to a place where an unconscious figure is a common enough sight. But he hadn’t factored in his tenants’ dislike and distrust of their landlord. Add a healthy bribe into the mix and she gave him up without hesitation.”

We could take Stanley by surprise if we acted quickly. He could look out of a window at any moment, or one of the other residents could alert him. “There’s no reason to wait,” I urged.

Alex grabbed my elbow and directed me deeper into the shadows. “We still need a plan.”

Behind him, Willie withdrew her gun and marched toward the tenement. When he realized, Alex swore and ran after her.

She was already heading up the staircase, gun at the ready, when I entered the dingy house. Dampness and the stench of urine seemed to ooze from the very floor and walls. Fortunately, it was too dark to identify the stains. Carnal sounds coming from a nearby room covered the creak of floorboards beneath our feet as we crept up the staircase.

Then Willie tripped on a broken step. She fell to her knees but managed to quickly pick herself up and continue. She’d not let go of her gun.

Only one of the doors on the landing was closed. She checked the other rooms, but all were empty. Alex stood to the side of the closed door, clutching his own gun. He signaled for me to stand back, then indicated that Willie should enter behind him.

She didn’t refuse, but she didn’t obey, either. She tested the doorknob. Finding it unlocked, she gently pushed open the door and peered through the gap.

“Gabe!” She shoved the door open and barged into the room.

Her loud cuss was like a punch to my heart.

Alex went to follow her, but got no further than the doorway. He put his hands in the air and swore, just as loudly as Willie. I turned to flee, but the click of a cocking gun stopped me dead in my tracks.

“You too, miss,” came a voice I’d never heard before. “Hands in the air where I can see them.”

I turned around to see Frank Alcott holding Willie and Alex at gunpoint. Behind him, a barely conscious Gabe sat on a rickety bed, strapped to the bedhead to keep him upright. His eyes were closed, and his face was as pale as his shirt, thrown over the back of a chair. A dented tin bowl was placed under his arm at the elbow. Blood dripped from a deep incision in his inner elbow into the bowl.

I ached to see him so vulnerable. But what truly scared me was his rapid breathing, and the fact the bowl was almost full. He didn’t have long.