Chapter 37
Maggie stood on the corner of Sixty-Third and Wallace, across from Holmes’ Drugstore, which now sported a rather garish sign advertising “The World’s Fair Hotel.
” It had been three days since the Exposition’s opening, and she had deliberated whether she should travel to Englewood and see for herself what was going on.
No matter what promises she might have made to Brendan, she was still concerned—and anxious.
Her own affairs were concluding in a decidedly dismal fashion.
The shop and apartment were both completely empty, save for her own few belongings, everything else sold or returned, and she was due to vacate the premises in just a few days.
She still didn’t know what she would do with herself then, and that was part of her reason for coming there today.
How could she possibly decide the direction of the rest of her life, without speaking to Danny or knowing what was troubling with Brendan?
And so here she was, steeling herself to see for herself just what was going on.
Determinedly, Maggie stepped into the street, crossing its wide stretch to the drugstore. She opened the door with a jangle of bells, stepping inside with a sense of both anxiety and anticipation.
“Miss O’Halloran. To what do I owe the pleasure of your company?”
The sound of Dr. Holmes’ unctuous voice made Maggie stiffen. She’d been expecting Brendan, not Dr. Holmes, who stood behind the counter in his dark suit and white coat, his pale blue eyes narrowed shrewdly.
“I was looking for Mr. O’Donaghue,” she told him.
“Sadly, he’s been unwell today,” Dr. Holmes replied smoothly. “I told him to have some rest.” He cocked his head. “It has been some months since you’ve been in this neighborhood, Miss O’Halloran. You’d ascended to much loftier heights, or so I’d heard.”
Maggie tightened her grip on her handbag as she stared at him coolly. “Good day to you, sir,” she said as cordially as she could make herself. “I’ll see myself out and look for Brendan upstairs.”
“You mean Mr. O’Donaghue? Of course, you are on familiar terms with quite a few gentlemen, aren’t you?
” There was a sneer to his voice that Maggie chose to ignore.
Let him think what he would. Perhaps he’d read the newspaper or heard the gossip about her fall from grace.
“But you mustn’t leave so quickly,” he continued as he came from behind the counter.
“I’ve always wanted to give you a tour of the building.
It has so many interesting elements that I’m sure you’ll find quite…
intriguing.” The gleeful anticipation in his tone made a shiver run down her spine.
“Thank you, sir, but I—” Maggie began, only to have him cut her off.
“I won’t take no for answer.” He wagged a finger at her playfully, but there was steel in his voice.
Maggie stared at him, taking in his cold blue eyes, his set expression, and she realized they were completely alone in the store.
She glanced behind her, wondering if she should try to run for the door, half-thinking she was being ridiculously hysterical, and then Dr. Holmes’ hand clamped down hard on her arm.
“I’ll close up the store, it’s been a quiet day,” he said into her ear.
“Everyone’s at the fair, I suppose.” Still holding her arm, he went to the door and flipped the sign to closed before locking it with an audible click.
“There we are,” he said cheerfully. “All done. And now, Miss O’Halloran… come this way.”
A silent scream bottled in Maggie’s throat as Dr. Holmes frogmarched her toward the back of the store, and the door that led into the building itself.
She felt as if she’d stumbled into a nightmare, the everyday ordinariness of a moment turned into something ghastly and strange.
Or was she being ridiculous? Perhaps he simply liked to toy with her, frighten her with his obvious theatrics.
He seemed the sort of man who would enjoy such things.
He couldn’t be planning to hurt her, surely… ?
Then she thought of O’Malley’s attack and realized that of course Holmes could. Whatever Brendan had been warning her against when he had told her not to come to Englewood… Maggie feared she was going to find out what it was.
“Of course you know what all the apartments look like,” Holmes told her as they started down the dark and dismal hallway, a sputtering gas jet the only source of light. “But I don’t believe you’ve been to the basement?”
“The basement…” Maggie repeated faintly.
Why on earth would he want to show her that dank place?
Now that they were in the building itself, she was aware of a strange smell, caustic and chemical, that tickled her nose and throat.
She glanced at him, noting the strange, expectant gleam in his eyes.
He was so clearly enjoying her discomfort, her fear.
Desperately but with determination, Maggie tried to yank her arm from Holmes’ grip, futilely, for he held her fast. “I have no desire to see the basement,” she told him as sternly as she dared. His expression did not even flicker.
“I think you do,” he replied equably. “Especially when you see it. It’s not your ordinary cellar, you see.
Quite the opposite. I designed it myself, with the help of some discreet builders for the particularly challenging aspects.
” He chuckled and Maggie’s stomach swooped.
Whatever was in the basement, she knew she didn’t want to see it. At all.
They’d reached the door to the stairs leading down, and she had the sense, urgent and awful, that if she went down those stairs with Dr. Holmes, she might never come back up again.
She was being fanciful, she told herself yet again, horribly so. Dr. Holmes was simply playing with her, teasing and tormenting her because he must have always sensed how she disliked him. That’s all this could be, and yet… she balked at the door, digging in her heels.
“No thank you, sir,” she said, her voice shaking, and in an instant the druggist’s face turned ugly and twisted.
“I don’t believe I’m giving you a choice,” he informed her, just as Maggie opened her mouth to scream and she heard, to her great relief, Brendan’s voice bellowing down the hallway.
“Holmes, let go of her!”
In an instant, the druggist dropped his hand from her arm and stepped aside, the picture of charming gentility once more. So swift was the change that Maggie felt as if she must have imagined the ugliness, the threat as well as the terror, except for the way her whole body was trembling.
“Why, Brendan, you’re feeling better,” Holmes remarked genially. “How glad I am to see it! I was just showing Miss O’Halloran the building. She’d requested a tour.”
“Get away from her!” Brendan said in something close to a growl.
Holmes’ genial expression narrowed, his mouth twisting. “I’d be careful, if I were you, O’Donaghue,” he said softly, the words so clearly a warning.
Brendan just shook his head. “Maggie, what are you doing here?” he demanded, before shaking his head again, grabbing her arm, and pulling her down the hallway, away from Holmes.
They didn’t speak until they were upstairs in Brendan’s apartment, the door firmly locked. Brendan whirled away from it as soon as he’d turned the key, raking both his hands through his hair.
“I told you not to come,” he said in a voice that was close to a moan and full of despair. “I told you.”
“Brendan, what…” Maggie’s throat was dry and she had to swallow convulsively several times before she was able to continue. “What in heaven’s name is going on?”
He shook his head, a wild back and forth, as he sank into a chair, his shoulders slumped, his head falling into his hands. “I don’t even know… I don’t know…” he mumbled into his hands. “It’s only what I suspect. What I fear.”
Maggie’s hand fluttered toward her throat. “Dr. Holmes was insistent on giving me a tour of the building,” she said in a low voice. “His hand was on my arm. He… he wasn’t going to take no for an answer. And he wanted me to see the basement in particular.”
Brendan closed his eyes, his head still in his hands, and said nothing.
“Brendan, I must have been fanciful, taking fright so, but… I felt almost as if my very life was in danger.”
Still he made no reply, and Maggie took a step toward him.
“Tell me I’m being fanciful,” she said in a low voice. “Ridiculous. Hysterical, even—”
“I don’t know,” Brendan replied in a voice so low Maggie strained to hear it, “whether you are or not.”
The breath rushed out of her, and she lowered herself into a chair opposite him on legs that trembled. “What,” she asked quietly, “could you possibly mean by that?”
“I don’t know what I mean,” Brendan replied in the same low voice. He looked up, his bloodshot eyes full of misery. “For weeks now, maybe months, I’ve been wondering. Worried. Fearing the worst…”
“The worst…”
“People disappear,” he stated bluntly. “Women, young women. First Emeline—”
“The woman who worked behind the counter?”
Brendan nodded. “I thought she’d just moved on, but then Holmes said she’d gotten married, but Mrs. Lawrence insisted she wouldn’t have gone without telling her—”
“Mrs. Lawrence?”
“She lived on the first floor. She’s left though, now. So many people have left.” He shook his head despairingly. “So many.”
In her short time there, Maggie realized she had not gotten to know any of the other tenants. People had kept to themselves, and she’d been too caught up in her own troubles. Now she wondered what she’d missed. What she hadn’t seen, that Brendan had.
“What do you mean, they disappear?” she asked. “What do you think happened to them? To Emeline?”
“I don’t know,” Brendan admitted, driving his hands through his hair once more. “I don’t know. But it’s strange, Maggie, it’s very strange. I hear Holmes walking out in the hallway late at night, standing by doors, as if he’s waiting. And the smell… have you noticed it?”
She frowned. “In the hall? It smelled… like chemicals.”
He nodded grimly. “And Holmes won’t let anyone go down into the basement.
I didn’t think all that much of it at first, but then when he hired Danny—one of his first jobs was to take a bunch of clothes to charity.
Women’s clothes.” He paused. “I happened to see them, and I recognized one of the dresses as belonging to Emeline. Pink with blue stripes. One of her favorites. I remembered it from even before I started working here.”
Maggie shook her head slowly, not understanding, or maybe, she recognized, not wanting to understand. “Maybe she left them…?” she suggested hesitantly.
“That’s what I thought. Hoped,” Brendan agreed grimly. “But then there were more disappearances… always young women. Just gone, overnight, leaving their things behind. And that smell… always after.”
Maggie bolted upright, horrified by what Brendan seemed to be suggesting.
“Brendan, dear God, you’re not saying… you can’t possibly be saying…
” She dropped her voice to a whisper. “That he… killed them?” It was like something she might have read in one of the lurid story magazines one could buy on the street, filled with all manner of hapless women and nameless horrors.
The idea that it might be real, that it was happening here…
“He’s right downstairs!” she hissed. “And you’re saying you think he’s a murderer? ”
“I don’t have any proof,” Brendan hissed right back at her, his face full of anguish.
“I went to the police with my concerns about the disappearances, but they didn’t want to know about it.
Said they were too busy dealing with all the dignitaries around the fair.
A cop came around to ask questions, but Holmes charmed him with cigars and brandy the way he always does.
And, meanwhile, people keep disappearing.
” He scrubbed his hands with his face, clearly in anguish.
“I’ve started warning them. Telling the young women they ought to leave, that there are better places to stay—”
“Why don’t you leave?” Maggie demanded. “And Danny? You could both be in danger. Terrible danger.”
“Holmes is only interested in women. Young, pretty women. And if I go…” He shook his head. “Who will protect them then?”
“Surely that’s a job for the police,” Maggie protested.
“If Dr. Holmes really is doing these terrible things…” Her stomach heaved as she remembered his hand so heavy on her arm, his insistence on showing her the basement.
Dear God, had he been going to murder her down there?
Even now, she could hardly believe such a dastardly thing.
“We’ll both go to the police,” she urged him.
“Someone will have to investigate then.”
“And if they don’t?” Brendan asked bleakly.
Maggie shook her head, helpless. “You can’t risk your life.
Danny’s life.” She glanced nervously toward the door.
What if Holmes was listening to them? “Let’s leave this place,” she whispered.
“We’ll think of a plan, some way to help, but if Holmes suspects you of knowing what he’s up to, you surely won’t be able to do anything anyway.
” She reached for his arm. “Please, Brendan. We need to get away from here. Quickly.” She felt an urgency take hold of her, crawl up her skin and seize her soul.
She didn’t think she could stand to be in this building for a second longer without screaming.
Slowly, resignedly, Brendan nodded his acceptance. “But where do we go?”
“My apartment,” Maggie suggested quickly. “I have it for a few more days. We’ll bring Danny, too. And then we’ll think of what to do. Something… But where is he?”
“Running an errand for Holmes, no doubt. He keeps him busy. He’s turning Danny into his little protégé. I’ve tried to talk sense to him, but…” He shrugged hopelessly.
Maggie’s stomach cramped at the thought. She couldn’t possibly leave her brother here, not even for a moment. “Then we have to find him,” she stated.
Brendan simply stared at her from his slumped position, abject. He seemed like an utterly broken man, so different from the man she remembered, the man she knew and, yes, loved, and she absolutely hated to see him like this.
“Come on,” she told him gently. “We need to get out of this place.”
Taking him by the hand as if he were a little child, she led him to the door. If Holmes was out there… But he was only one man, and there were two of them. Surely he could not attack them in broad daylight.
Taking a deep breath, Maggie unlocked the door. As she opened it, a shocked breath left her in a rush. Dr. Holmes was standing right in front of them, blocking any possible exit.
“And where,” he asked, his voice pleasant yet his mouth twisted in an ugly smile, “do you think you two are going?”