Skavenger's Hunt

by Mike Rich

  The same went for Henry, courtesy of another set of hands.

  The Dark Men!

  “No, no, no, no. Don’t even think about yelling,” a deep, familiar voice whispered into his ear.

  Henry glanced over at Mattie. She was struggling to break free, her muffled protests silent and useless on the now empty bridge.

  Even before he and Mattie had started to cross the bridge, Henry noticed that the Pont d’Lena was just like the streets surrounding the Vanderbilt Mansion: thin, infrequent triangles of dim light surrounded by massive areas of pitch-black darkness. The couple that had passed by them only a few moments earlier hadn’t traveled far before disappearing into the gloom.

  Henry felt himself being pushed toward the side of the bridge. Mattie’s legs furiously churned to keep her own Dark Man from forcing her to the same destination—and for good reason.

  Oh no. She doesn’t know how to swim.

  The concrete side of the bridge, even for someone as small as Mattie, barely rose higher than her waist. The River Seine swept past twenty feet below.

  “Where’s the clue?” the man behind Henry snarled to him.

  “I told you! We didn’t find it!” Henry managed to yell, digging and pushing his heels into the lower bricks of the bridge. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the man holding Mattie; he was dressed black as midnight.

  “Lemme GO!!!” she managed to scream, wrenching her head free from her attacker’s grasp for a second. The Dark Man, who was easily twice her size, quickly covered her mouth again with his hand. She wriggled and kicked, but it was hopeless.

  The voice behind Henry, which had sounded so eerily familiar, leaned close to his ear once more. “Should have told us what you knew back in New York. We gave you the chance, remember?”

  What?! The Colton Brothers?!

  “This one here could have told us too.” Clifford Colton twisted Mattie around to face him. She kneed him hard in the stomach, knocking some of the wind out of him, but it only made him angrier.

  “You tell us NOW!” he roared. And with a surge of fury, he pushed Mattie up against the concrete siding.

  “She doesn’t know! We haven’t found it!” Henry yelled a second time, only to have Clyde whip him around as well.

  “You’re lying to us, Henry! Just like before!”

  Mattie had clearly decided she was done with all of this. She ripped one of her arms free from Clifford’s lock-fingered grip and hammered at him in the hope of breaking free.

  But Clifford squeezed tighter. And with a single unimaginable motion he lifted Mattie with both of his hands and . . .

  . . . held her out over the flowing Seine River. She hung from his hands, hovering there on the wrong side of the Pont d’Lena’s concrete wall, her feet dangling and kicking in midair.

  “NOOOO!” Henry screamed as loudly as he could. Loud enough that the twin brothers could tell they’d be out of time any second.

  “CLIFFORD!” Clyde looked at his brother with slack-jawed disbelief. “What . . . what are you doing?! Pull her back!”

  “Not until she tells us,” Clifford hissed through clenched teeth, not even bothering to shake his head.

  The unsettling calm on his face was the opposite of the panic taking root in Mattie’s expression. Her legs flailed even faster than before; the cloth of her already old and weakened shirt had ripped slightly; and the threatening water, only a scant distance below, moved along at an ominous pace.

  “Last chance, little girl.” Clifford gave her one more furious shake, somehow finding a way to hold her out a few inches farther.

  “I don’t . . .” Mattie gasped. “I don’t . . . know!”

  Henry could hear a rush of running footsteps finally thundering their way, but he could tell they were coming from the far edge of the bridge.

  They’re not gonna get here in time!

  “Pull her back!” Clyde shouted again.

  “Don’t worry, brother,” Clifford replied. “We’ll get it out of ’em somehow.”

  Slowly he began to ease her back, but then he stopped, taunting her one last time. So close and absolutely so far. Silently terrorizing her for one last moment . . .

  Riiiiippppp . . .

  Suddenly he found himself holding nothing more than a handful of fabric as her frayed and battered shirt tore and gave way—

  And Mattie McGillin fell toward the Seine River.

  “HEEEENNNNNNRRRRYYYYY!!!”

  “NOOOOOOO!!!” Henry yelled, hearing her splash into the water a half second later.

  Clyde let go of him, stunned, rushing to the bridge’s concrete barrier to look down.

  “I didn’t want . . . I didn’t mean to . . .” Clifford was now in his own private panic, staring at the fluttering piece of cloth in his hand, then glancing down toward the river. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry . . .”

  Without a twinge of hesitation, Henry pressed his hands against the top of the barrier and vaulted over, spiraling down and smacking into the cold water.

  The next few seconds turned dark and hazy.

  Gray water surrounded him as he scrambled to kick his way back up to the surface. He’d landed in the water on his side, and the ringing in his ears was nothing but a steady hum until he burst through the surface of the river and into the night air.

  “MATTIE!!”

  He shouted blindly, frantically rubbing his eyes, looking all around. “MATTIE, WHERE ARE YOU!!” he tried again, but heard and saw nothing.

  Whereareyouwhereareyouwhereareyou!

  “MATTTTTIE!!” Henry started swimming in the direction the water was taking him, which had to be the same direction it was taking Mattie. He could hear shouting coming from the bridge above, but none of it made sense—every word, every shout coming from a stranger.

  But there was nothing from Mattie.

  Until . . .

  “HENR—”

  Finally. Mattie’s cry—cut short by the river—didn’t seem far away, but it was hard to tell from which direction it came.

  “HENRY!!!” Another cry, this one farther away and to the south of him.

  Henry paddled in that direction, but his wool coat was beginning to soak up the water of the Seine and weigh him down. He’d jumped in without even thinking about it.

  “MATTIE!”

  This time, there was no reply. Only the steady lapping sound of the River Seine’s current.

  His arms were getting heavier with each desperate stroke. Heavier and heavier. He was still whipping his head around, looking in every direction.

  Henry yelled as loudly as he could.

  “WHERE ARE Y—”

  The first rush of water spilled into his mouth as his drenched coat decided it was time to start pulling him down. He threw his head back to take in as much air as he could . . .

  . . . but each breath was coming faster and faster. Too fast. The sky above him . . .

  Gray.

  Darker than gray.

  All except for the sliver of bright moon directly overhead. The same moon he and Mattie had danced underneath last night. The night she told him, with the smile and the words that somehow now filled his mind in the middle of this unimaginable horror:

  “We made it to France, Henry! Can you believe it?”

  He heard more shouting coming from up on the bridge. Distant now, but it sounded like a lot of people.

  Fading, though.

  Fading, fading, fading.

  Another cold funnel of water found its way into Henry’s mouth. His coat pulled him down even more, until the last thing left for him to see was . . .

  Gray. Nothing.

  NINETEEN

  Au Revoir

  “JEUNE HOMME, AVEZ-VOUS toute autre chose que vous vous inquiétez pour ajouter?”

  Henry blinked as he looked up at the old, steady-voiced police detective, who’d introduced himself as Francois DeLacorte only two hours earlier.

  “I’m sorry. What?”

  DeLacorte sighed. The sixty-yea
r-old veteran of the Police de Paris—a short, amply built, gray-bearded man with a more-than-patient countenance—sat in a simple chair in front of an uncluttered desk.

  “Is there anything else we should know, Henry?” he asked. His questions had gone back and forth between seamless French and heavily accented but more-than-passable English, having already learned that Henry could speak both languages well.

  The old policeman had made a point of speaking to him in the most welcoming room of the medical clinic, where Henry had been taken after being rescued from the river. In addition to the simple chair and tidy desk, the physician’s office where they were speaking also had a sofa and a set of high-backed chairs, rather than the steel chairs and benches in the exam rooms.

  “No,” Henry finally answered him with a tired and wrecked voice. “I, uh . . . I think that’s everything I can remember.”

  Juliet’s hand rested on his shoulder. She’d been crying ever since she arrived, Henry having told DeLacorte that she and Jack and Ernie would be at the train station waiting.

  The detective solemnly nodded and reviewed his investigative notepad, flipping through page after page, while Henry stared straight ahead with the blankest of expressions.

  Mattie.

  He choked back a sudden heaving sob, just one of many so far. There’d be many more to come, of course. He’d learned that from his father’s death. Ernie gave him a pat on the back, inconsolable himself.

  “There was nothing you coulda done, Henry,” he told him. “You did your best.”

  Jack had been in his own silent daze since showing up, saying little to anyone. All of his fury from that morning was gone, and right now he looked like nothing more than what Henry knew all three of them were: young boys who just wanted to get out of France.

  “So . . . Henry, to summarize,” DeLacorte said, still busy reviewing his notes. “You and Miss McGillin were walking the Pont d’Lena in search of clues to Monsieur Skavenger’s Hunt, oui?”

  “Yes, I mean . . . oui, sorry,” Henry haltingly replied through eyes brimming with tears.

  “Oui, of course,” DeLacorte said as he patiently turned to the next page. “You were at the center span, overlooking the river, when the two of you were attacked by two young men. American twin brothers you’d encountered before, back in New York City. Clyde and Cleeford Colton, yes?”

  Henry nodded. DeLacorte’s strong accent had mangled the name every time he said it. “The latter of whom,” the portly detective continued reading from his notes, “dropped Miss McGillin into the River Seine.”

  Henry lowered his head and said nothing, his shoulders shaking.

  The detective compassionately closed his notebook, having now reached the most difficult part.

  “We, of course, regret very, very much that we’ve not been able to locate your friend, young Matilda,” the detective said with as much empathy as he could muster. “Fortunately, these two brothers have been found and taken into custody. I assure you all that proper justice will be served.”

  Juliet wiped her nose with her now-damp kerchief. “Mis leur en prison pour toujours,” she angrily told DeLacorte, before offering an equally angry translation for the boys. “Put them in prison forever. For what they did to our poor Mateelda.”

  The detective offered his own handkerchief to Juliet. She took it and nodded her thanks.

  “I am . . . quite certain,” DeLacorte grimly added, “that Monsieur Skavenger would be appalled by what happened here tonight. Such a joyful enterprise, these hunts of his. Only to come to this.”

  The detective turned to Juliet and asked her in perfect French, “You’ll make certain these three are on the first available vessel back to the United States?”

  Juliet nodded. “Yes, I, uh, I know a family that’s emigrating. They’re leaving tomorrow morning. I’m confident they’ll agree to accompany them back home.”

  Home. What home?

  Henry shook his head.

  “Very good.” DeLacorte sighed again and stood, putting a hand on Henry’s shoulder. “Young man, you have my deepest sympathy.” He looked toward the others in the room. “All of you do.”

  The detective smiled sadly and made a quiet, respectful exit from the room.

  Juliet quickly gathered up their things. “All right, boys,” she said, wiping the current round of tears from her cheeks, “Marguerite will have something for you to eat, I’m sure. You’ll all need your strength for tomorrow.”

  She headed through the door to the main exit, not wanting them to see her next round of sobs. Jack and Ernie stayed behind for the moment, silently waiting for Henry.

  The twelve-year-old sat motionless in the same high-backed chair he’d been in for the past two hours, his forehead resting heavily on one hand.

  “Hey, Jack? Ern?” he asked with a weary voice.

  “What is it, pal?” Ernie answered him.

  “I’m sorry.”

  Neither of them answered right away, until Jack quietly replied:

  “C’mon. Let’s go home, Henry.”

  The two of them headed through the same door Juliet had cried her way through a moment earlier, which meant that Henry Babbitt once again was, as he had been at so many important times in his young life . . .

  Alone.

  He shook his head, not ready to stand quite yet. He’d already come to terms with the knowledge that today was one of the two worst days of his life—no matter what century he was in.

  One day for Dad. Now one day for Mattie.

  He’d revealed to Jack, back there in the cold lower quarters of entrepont days ago, back before the now meaningless encounter with Doubt and Grace, that he hadn’t been there the day he lost his dad. That he hadn’t seen what had happened, but that he’d imagined the moment in his head more times than he could count.

  This moment he had seen.

  The sound of her voice in the river, the look on her face as Clifford dropped her—those awful, awful details that he’d now remember forever.

  He was sure of that, just as he was sure of one other detail. A detail that felt so incredibly trivial after Mattie’s death:

  Skavenger’s Hunt was over.

  The churning Atlantic, which had been temperamental enough between New York and Le Havre, was in an even nastier mood for their returning voyage. Appropriate, it seemed.

  It had been seven days since the SS Le Chasseur obeyed its captain’s orders and pointed her bow into the stronger-than-usual prevailing current. And while the weather had gotten better over the last two days, the first five had been rough enough to cause problems for a lot of the passengers.

  None of which mattered in the least to Henry.

  Even had the ocean been as calm as a summer lake, he would have wallowed in the same grief and despair he’d lived with the past week.

  The haunting image of Mattie falling. Her calling his name. His failure to find her. Those were things his brain simply refused to put away into storage. It simply would not do it, nor should it, as Henry had already convinced himself countless times.

  It was his fault she was even in Paris at all. He was the one who’d mistakenly said a tower was waiting for them there. If he hadn’t said it, they wouldn’t have gone. And if they hadn’t gone . . .

  Mattie wouldn’t be gone either.

  Henry squeezed his eyes closed a little tighter, lying on his side on the sagging green cot that had been designated for him—the one Juliet’s friend Phillippe made a point of checking in on every couple of hours to make sure Henry was okay.

  The twelve-year-old reached into his coat pocket, a habit he’d retained even after his jump into the Seine.

  There was nothing there anymore, of course.

  Absolutely nothing.

  That was the other staggering loss from what happened the night on the Pont d’Lena—something Henry hadn’t realized right away.

  The ledger page was gone too.

  The sheet that included Skavenger’s instructions for Henry and the dest
inations he’d visited: lost in the Seine.

  There had been only six boxes left on the ledger page—a half dozen precious date and destination slots that had told Henry how many chances he had left to meet Skavenger. As long as there was an empty box on the sheet, Henry could at least hope for a path to get back home.

  No way back now.

  Even if he somehow won the hunt and found himself face-to-face with Skavenger, he’d still need the ledger sheet to go back. It was written right up there, clear as could be, at the top.

  Or had been.

  Henry opened his eyes and glumly stared at the ship’s rivet-filled wall, having decided days ago there would be no winning anything. How could there be? They were stuck in the middle of the Atlantic while Hiram Doubt and his men were still back in Paris, drawing closer to Skavenger’s prize.

  Henry blinked back the morning’s first set of tears, staring hard at the ship’s miserable coloring. When they’d left Le Havre for New York, which seemed like months ago now, Juliet had managed a sad smile for Henry as she pointed to the name of their sea-crossing vessel.

  “Le Chasseur, Henri,” she’d said to him. “You know what that means, oui?”

  “‘The hunter,’” he’d answered her.

  She had then hugged him, tightly through her own tears. “May your next hunt bring you peace, young friend,” she said, before sending him on his way.

  That had been a week ago. And the chill of Le Chasseur—the hunter—had yet to warm.

  Most hours of the day he’d spent on his cot, doing nothing aside from staring numbly at the wall while Jack and Ernie played cards on the main deck with two young men from Bulgaria. It was their way of dealing with what had happened.

  Henry didn’t get up there too much. The last place he wanted to venture on the ship was the railing overlooking the pounding ocean, black and forbidding, even on the one day the sun had come out.

  He’d glanced at the waves once, but his recollections of water had gotten the best of him. Remembering the sight of Mattie slipping from Clifford Colton’s hands into the Seine. Trying to rescue her himself; unable to even find her.