The Illusionists. Rosie Thomas
I will kill you,’ Devil growled.
Grady’s eyes were watering. He coughed, ‘Is that what you are, Wix? A killer?’
Through the fog of his rage Devil glimpsed the dark figure again. He blinked and it was gone, drawing his strength with it. His hands fell to his sides.
‘Pay him,’ he muttered.
‘You can get out of here, as well. You and the dwarf. And stay out.’
The same voice muttered. ‘It’s them as are bringing in what audiences you do get, Mr Grady. Knock ’em out and you’re done for.’
Grady cursed. He caught sight of Eliza at Heinrich’s side.
‘Who are you?’
‘A friend of Herr Bayer’s.’
‘A living woman? Indeed? Backstage is for artistes only, madam.’
Jacko Grady adjusted his straining waistcoat and stalked away.
‘Let’s go,’ Devil muttered to Heinrich Bayer and Eliza chose to believe that she was included in the command. As they left the room there was no sign of the dishevelled girl although Eliza believed she heard an accusatory jingle.
‘Where d’you live?’ Devil demanded of Heinrich when they reached the Strand. The Swiss gave an address not far from the coffin maker’s workshop.
‘It’s a fair step, but I’ll walk back there with you,’ Devil sighed. ‘Miss Dunlop, how did you come here? May I find you a cab, perhaps?’
She gave him a look. ‘I will come with you. As a matter of fact the idea I hoped to discuss with you was originally Herr Bayer’s, so this is quite opportune.’
Devil sighed again. He was disgusted by his failure to get the better of Jacko Grady over Heinrich’s money. Getting the better of Jacko Grady was becoming as important to him as the success of Boldoni and Wix, and it was infuriating that the success of Boldoni and Wix was dependent for now on staying with Grady and the Palmyra.
Heinrich Bayer was already walking, trundling ahead of him the cart with Lucie’s trunk strapped to it, seeming too unhappy to care whether or not he was alone. He looked utterly beaten, his shabby coat overlarge for his thin body. Devil and Eliza flanked him and they moved through the late evening crowds of swells and revellers and street hawkers that surged to the steps of theatres and saloons. London seemed all glitter and celebration, with poor Heinrich Bayer the frayed figure at its brass heart.
They walked in silence, occupied with their separate thoughts. Devil’s pace was purposeful and Eliza could only reflect on the differences between this journey and the earlier stroll though Hyde Park. Jasper was forever holding back and taking her arm, asking questions as if he was trying to work his way into her head. Devil was bracingly indifferent to her presence. Eliza was excited to find herself out in these vivid streets with the crowds washing past her, not knowing where she was going or what lay in store.
Beyond St Clement Danes there were fewer people. Street lamps shone on empty stretches of cobbled road and the wheels of Lucie’s cart clattered in the sudden stillness. The dome of St Paul’s was pasted black against the sky as they turned to the north of it, skirted the heaving city within the city of the meat market, and headed deep into the warren of Clerkenwell. When they finally reached a recessed doorway Heinrich looked at them as if surprised to find that he had company. But he nudged the door open and led them down an internal alleyway to unlock another door, a low entrance leading into a darkened mews at the rear of some forbidding building. They stepped over the threshold in his wake and waited as he lit a candle.
‘Oh,’ Eliza said in astonishment.
The room was little more than a barn, but it was not a barn that either she or Devil could have imagined. It seemed as much a charnel house as a laboratory. On a bench lay the lower portion of a leg, the limp flaps of its rubber skin partially peeled back to expose bright metal rods within. On a clean square of cloth a row of silvery instruments, small tweezers, pliers and screw clamps was neatly laid out. A brass microscope occupied the end of the bench, and next to that stood a metalworker’s lathe with coils like tiny locks of metal hair littering the floor beside its clawed iron feet. A foot and a hand, each with a piston shaft protruding from the severed joint, rested on a smaller table. This much the light of the single candle revealed as Devil and Eliza silently stared around them. The recesses of the room were hidden in shadow but there was an impression of other implements, tall cupboards, and more strange work in progress.
The centre of the room, where the candle glow was brightest, was occupied by two chairs. In one sat a female doll, wide-eyed, her hands resting in her lap. Her flaxen hair was tied back from her slender neck. Her lower body was clothed in petticoats but she was naked from the waist up. Her breasts were unmodelled protrusions of pallid rubber. Next to her sat a manikin on a square pedestal, an expressionless Chinaman with a round black hat and long, drooping moustaches. With his triangular yellow face he looked like an illustration in a child’s picture book.
‘Excuse me, Miss Dunlop. My work …’ Heinrich murmured. He wrapped a shroud of cloth around the torso of the female doll.
‘I believe Miss Dunlop did mention that she is employed as an artists’ model,’ Devil put in.
Heinrich frowned, evidently distracted. The candle flame flickered.
‘We need more light,’ he said. He pressed a bell push and Eliza thought she heard a distant peal. Heinrich busied himself with Lucie’s trunk and a moment later a knock announced the arrival of a servant, in this strange room a surprisingly conventional figure in a dark dress and white apron. She brought in a lamp and placed it on the bench.
‘Good evening, Herr Bayer. Shall I light a fire? Will you be wanting some dinner?’
Eliza’s eyes met Devil’s. His eyebrows rose in black circumflexes but she could see that he was intrigued rather than repelled by this macabre place. The shadows of the room were barely dispelled by the lamp, and dread seemed to linger just out of her sight. A tremor of fear ran down her spine.
Heinrich laid Lucie on a cushioned surface that appeared to Eliza something between a bed and a catafalque. She shivered at the spectacle.
‘Yes. Some dinner,’ Heinrich said vaguely. He shook out a fine paisley shawl and let the folds drift over Lucie’s face and body. The resemblance to a catafalque was heightened.
‘Shall I lay up a table over in the house, sir?’
‘Perhaps we could stay here.’ Devil put in. ‘I think this is where our business will lie.’ He sounded quite at ease, with a purposeful note under his light tone, and Eliza wondered how he achieved this in so bizarre a setting.
Heinrich waved his hand. Whenever his attention returned to them he seemed startled to discover that he still had company.
When the servant had withdrawn Devil strolled to the bench. He picked up a watchmaker’s glass and screwed it into his eye, then examined the dismembered leg. Next he inquisitively turned the bezels of the microscope.
‘Whose place is this, Heinrich? Do you work here?’
Heinrich sat down on a stool, then jumped up again and offered the seat to Eliza.
‘Thank you,’ she said, and sat. She was beginning to feel weary.
‘I work here, yes.’
‘For whom?’ Devil persisted.
‘What? For myself, of course. My interests are not so usual. I am a maker of automata.’ He gestured towards the flaxen doll and the Chinese manikin. ‘But you know that much, Mr Wix. You are acquainted with my beautiful Lucie.’
There was a small silence.
‘I thought you were a poor man, Heinrich, like me. If you are rich, as it seems you are, why have you and Lucie danced every night for Jacko Grady and his audience of barbarians?’
Heinrich was still wearing his ruined coat, with his frayed