Chapter 31
CHARY
The door to the northwest balcony room was open just a little; the lamplight peeking through the crack gave the slightest sliver of glowing welcome. August was there. He was safe, even with Laurie knowing every secret, the whole tapestry.
Was it too much to assume he and Laurie would share a room across the hall? The stuff mattress on the library floor was not going to be sufficient long-term. Did Laurie want to stay in New York? Was that why he’d asked about it? Would Chary stay in New York for him?
Perhaps, one day, August could have his sunsets on the west-facing balcony; Laurie, his sunrises to the east. The primary bedroom—always too vast for Chary alone—had a balcony too. The room would fit two men. It even had a hidden door heading to the turret library.
A pretty dream.
He knocked.
The response, this time, was immediate: an inhale, then a thick, hitching “Come in.”
Chary’s heart sank. He’d heard that tone before, though not for some time. He pushed in. “August? What happened? Have you been ill?”
“He’s a little bit indisposed.”
Tjofabier Raberding, from the left side of the bed, almost hidden from view against the wallpaper.
Chary was too shocked to startle. Tight in his arms, Raberding held hostage a paper-white Sarah, her maid’s cap askew; against her temple was the barrel of a pistol.
In the four-poster, August was seated—had been placed, rather—upright against a mass of pillows.
“What—”
“Not a word,” Raberding hissed. He nodded to the door. “Shut that behind you. Quietly. For the sake of your maid, it’d better not make a sound.”
Chary carefully complied. Raberding’s gun existed this time, plain as day, and was not likely full of blanks. He put up his hands.
“What have you done? Let her go at once.”
Raberding tsked. “I’m afraid I can’t. We made a bargain, August and I.” He nodded to the bed. “He’s just fulfilled his end of it.”
Then Chary only had eyes for August. His head was tossing, his eyes closed but fighting to open, like he was being dragged out of a dream feet-first. A glass hypodermic syringe fell from his twitching hand.
“What did you make him do?”
Raberding rolled his eyes. “Don’t worry. He’s having the time of his life.”
It didn’t look like fun. But then August made a gurgling noise, throat-bound, and it took Chary several seconds to realize it was, in fact, laughter.
“Diacetylmorphine,” Raberding went on, self-satisfied.
He hauled Sarah closer. “All the way from Germany, and as yet quite hard to acquire if one isn’t Bellevue Hospital.
I could pull the trigger on him now and he’d go out giggling.
” He chuckled. It was the evilest thing Chary had ever heard.
“Best medicine in the world, unless you’re a fiend like this one.
Industry hasn’t the only innovation happening. ”
August’s gurgle stopped abruptly. “Morpheus?” he said, eerily clear, then slurred morosely, “H-Hiram shhhhall be ssso angry.” His head fell forward, chin on his chest, and stayed there.
Sarah gasped in surprise. Raberding snorted.
Chary stepped forward, instinctive. “No, no, he’d understand—”
“Ah-ah,” Raberding scolded. “Stay.”
Sarah whimpered. Chary stayed. “But can he breathe?”
“Oh, yes. Trust that I’ve seen him through greater impediment than this.”
“You didn’t see him through a thing. You left him h-hurt and bleeding.”
August groaned out what was formerly his sharp cackle. “He… w-wishhh.” Saliva strung down from his teeth onto his lap. “Let ’er go, Tjo. Promised.”
Raberding lowered the gun in exasperation.
“How are you still lucid, you mad bull? It’s supposed to be instantaneous.
” Reaching, not letting go of Sarah, he pushed August’s chin up and back.
“Ugh. Drooling mad, indeed.” He wiped his hand on Sarah’s maid’s uniform, grimacing.
“If he told you he’s free of it, well, I hope this does to enlighten you. He isn’t.”
August, mouth dropped open again, eyes shut, appeared to have finally succumbed, lost to oblivion.
But he did still breathe: his chest rose slowly, with heart-stopping pauses between.
Maybe Raberding was right and it was pleasant where he was.
Now that he couldn’t do anything about his being there, Chary hoped it was.
“Let her go, he said.”
Raberding sighed. “But I am a man of my word. Sarah, my dear.”
He widened his arms, shifting the barrel of the pistol to face August, at the same time releasing Sarah. “Better?” he taunted Chary. Then to Sarah: “Get his keys.”
Chary inhaled. “What?”
Sarah regained her footing on her heels, teetering; she reset her maid’s cap and stepped over.
“The keys, please.” She muttered, “Sorry.”
“You. It must’ve been you. You told him August was alive. When?” Chary marveled. He looked up to Raberding. “How long have you known?”
“The keys, Mr. Wright,” Raberding drawled. He gestured with the pistol. “He won’t even feel it. Easier than putting down a dog.”
Trembling, Chary handed them over. Without looking at him, Sarah snatched them, slipped through the door, and ran.
“You put a spy in my house,” Chary gritted out.
Raberding laughed. “No, I put out a press bounty. ‘Five hundred dollars silver to the man who can print the mystery of August Wright.’” Of course, this, Chary had known about; this was what Laurie hadn’t taken.
“Sarah merely took initiative to spy on you all on her own. She’s some kind of, let’s see…
first printing of Lawrence Tulley. A predecessor. ”
“Sarah’s a reporter?”
“Yes, although she, like your Tulley, found August’s story unrelentingly boring.” He brightened. “My money, less so. Thankfully for her.”
“I won’t believe a word you say. What do you have on her?”
“It doesn’t matter, does it? An investigative reporter probably shouldn’t have ready exploitables, should they? Tulley did very well with that until you came along.” He smiled at Chary’s glare. “What? I am supposed to leave the five-dollar bill lying upon the pavement?”
“What will you have her do, then?”
“She has a little hundred-dollar Kodak I’ve lent her.
They’re so small; it’s marvelous. She’ll get photographs of August’s machine, and you’ll give the patent over to me, and in the end, it won’t matter to whose head or which I’ve put this pistol, because if I get what I want, nobody need die.
” He paused. “Did you hear me about the patent application?”
“You can have it,” Chary said coldly. “Just as soon as I have it myself. I’m afraid I don’t know where it is.”
“Hm. I suppose we will see, then, how strong this medicine is. Will delirium withstand seven millimeters to the leg?” He pulled back the hammer.
“I don’t know where it is,” Chary hissed frantically. “And you’ve incapacitated the only man who does.” August was hardly breathing now. The pauses between his deep, soft breaths stretched longer and longer. “You may have k-killed him. In f-fact.”
Raberding believed him, at least. His handsome face worked for a moment, through a scowl, a sneer, disbelief, the set jaw of resignation.
“Fine. One last play, August.” His arm came down; the gun pointed to the floor.
The click of the hammer resetting was very loud.
“Safety’s not set,” he warned. “Let us search. August was never particularly original… Do you have a lib—”
He screamed: a short, sharp, high scream. August had launched up from the bed like the dead, snarling, sober, feral; he tackled Raberding down, straddled him flat onto the floor in his surprise. Metal thunked down, heavy-sounding, and there was a scraping, scrabbling noise.
August rose up on his knees, his shoulders bunched oddly, contracting: horror suffused Chary just as it seemed to do Raberding.
“Wait,” Raberding gasped, “no—”
Three shots cracked, in succession so close, they blurred, smacking Chary with brain-splitting sound, waves of pressure he felt from his skull down to his toes.
He scrabbled to the floor. Two more shots spat—one last one, after a beat.
The waves came through the floor, through the wall against which Chary’d crouched, clutching his ears.
“Enh.” August grunted. “Semiautomatic. Excessive.” He was breathing hard, chest heaving; to Chary’s shell-shocked ears, he sounded a floor away. He looked down at the gun. “Trust you to have a fucking expensive gun, Tjo.”
Chary pulled up to his knees. He could barely hear his own breathing, but surely, it must’ve been loud. He looked over August’s shoulder.
Even with holes blown into his gilt vest, Tjofabier Raberding still looked surprised.
“Oh, dear Lord.”
“Nobody need die.” August leaned forward and spat. “Think again.”
“Oh, God. August. Stop.” Chary clawed at his shoulder, trying to pry him off the body, away from the pooling blood. “August. Come on. Come on.”
August fell free of the body more than he successfully dismounted it; Chary clutched at him, and both of them crab-crawled backward until they hit the wall.
“Chary!” The door burst open, nearly hitting the body; Laurie’s repeated blasphemy filled the room, and then came his pale, scared face. “Chary—Jesus Christ. Chary!”
“Here,” Chary whispered, though Laurie’s observant eyes, wider than ever, had already found him.
Laurie shut the door fast, locked it. Something Sarah hadn’t done. He neatly sidestepped the body, blood, and gun as though it were so much New York City refuse, then slid down to his knees before them.
“Are you all right? Whole? Whole and all right?” He was shaking so violently, his teeth chattered with his speech; either that or Chary was, and he couldn’t tell the difference.
“I’m all right. We’re all right.” He swallowed. “Raberding’s dead, though.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I see that. The shots went clear through the ceiling, I think. Holy shit, Chary, my knees gave out absolutely when I heard ’em; I didn’t think I’d make it. Thought—thought he’d done it. You or August. You’re sure you’re all right?”
Numbly, Chary nodded. “August?”