by Dan Willis
“Have you called his home?” Alex asked. “Maybe family or friends?”
Dr. Kellin shook her head.
“I don’t know where he lives,” she admitted. “And he doesn’t have any family that I know of. If you could just make sure he’s okay, I’d rest easier.”
Alex gave her his warmest smile and nodded. He owed Dr. Kellin a lot. She made the rejuvenation potion for him, something he understood was quite expensive to make. She did it as part of a trade agreement with Iggy, where he put runes on some of her equipment to make it more efficient, but Alex suspected the rejuvenator cost more than any benefit she got from Iggy’s runes.
“Of course I will, Doc,” he said, handing her his notebook. “Just put down the address of Mr. Grier’s shop and I’ll see what I can find.”
She took the notebook with a grateful smile.
“Thank you,” she said.
Alex checked the address as she handed the notepad back; it was down on the South Side mid-ring, past the core.
“I’ve got to grab something to eat,” he said. “But I’ll go take a look right after that. I’ll call you as soon as I know anything.”
Dr. Kellin nodded and rose. She started to turn but stopped and looked back, casting an appraising eye over him.
“How is your rejuvenation elixir holding up?”
Alex chuckled. Not much got past Dr. Kellin. He opened the middle drawer of his desk and pulled out the silver flask.
“I am running a bit low,” he said, shaking it.
Dr. Kellin took the flask, weighing it in her hand.
“That should have lasted longer,” she observed. “I’ll make up some more, but it will take a few days. Come by the house once this is empty,” she said, handing the flask back. “I know Jessica would love to see you.”
Alex returned the flask to the drawer and closed it.
“Say hi for me,” he said, then walked Dr. Kellin out.
The address Dr. Kellin gave him led Alex to a row of neat shops on a fairly busy street. Nestled between an upscale haberdasher and a millinery shop, he found Grier’s shop, The Philosopher’s Stone. As Doc had said, the closed sign was in the window, and the front door was locked.
Peering through the window, Alex saw an orderly-looking shop with shelves lining the back wall behind a long counter. A display case along the side wall held bins full of colored powders, along with pre-packaged tins. Nothing looked out of place or unusual.
Undaunted, Alex visited the neighboring shop. Mr. Kensington, who ran the haberdasher, had noticed that Grier’s shop had been closed, but knew nothing about the man or his habits. The millinery shop was owned by Mrs. Osbourne, a plump woman of middle years with an affable disposition. She told Alex about Charles Grier in great detail, including his habits and how he only closed his shop if he were ill or out of town.
“Did he go out of town regularly?” Alex asked.
“No,” Mrs. Osbourne answered. “He went to Europe last year to speak at an alchemy conference, and the year before that, he was looking for some rare mineral in South America. Something to do with a potion he’d been working on.”
“So is it possible Mr. Grier went on one of his trips?”
“Oh, no,” Mrs. Osbourne said, shaking her head emphatically. “He always puts up a notice in his window the week before he leaves, explaining how long he’ll be gone.”
“Does Grier have an assistant or someone that helps him out around the shop?”
“Not that I know of.”
Mrs. Osbourne looked like she was going to continue when the bell over her door rang and two ladies came in.
“I must be going,” she said with a warm smile.
Alex thanked her and returned to the street. He didn’t know much more than he had before, but he was convinced that Dr. Kellin had been right to be worried. Neither of Grier’s neighbors knew where he might be or where he lived, so Alex would have to take more drastic measures to find him.
Walking down to the end of the block, Alex turned the corner and made his way along the alley behind the shops until he reached Grier’s. The Philosopher’s Stone had a single door set into the brick wall with no windows or other means of entry.
“Why is nothing ever simple?” he asked, glancing up and down the alley. With the fog still thick in the city, he was relatively sure no one could see him.
Pulling a piece of chalk from his pocket, Alex drew a doorway on the plain wall that made up the back of The Philosopher’s Stone. Pulling a vault rune from his red book, he stuck it to the wall, inside the chalk outline, and lit it with his cigarette lighter. A moment later, a heavy steel door appeared inside the chalk outline. Alex fished a large brass key from his pocket and inserted it into the keyhole in the center of the door, then pulled it open.
Rather than going through to the shop beyond the wall, this door led to Alex’s vault, an extra-dimensional workspace all his own. He entered quickly, moving to a secretary cabinet just inside the door and opening the top part. Inside were several leather doctor’s valises, but he chose the battered one on the right. This was his kit, the bag that held his investigative tools for examining crime scenes. It also held the ornate pencil box where he kept the various rune writing pens and pencils he might need in the field.
Stepping back outside, Alex closed the steel door and let it vanish back into the brick wall from whence it had come. Setting the kit bag down, he pulled out the pencil case and, after turning it upside down, pushed the flat bottom sideways to reveal a hidden space. Inside were his lock picks, and he selected two before setting the pencil case down and turning to the back door of Grier’s shop.
It took Alex almost two minutes to get the lock open. Iggy would have been appalled by such a showing. Clearly he needed to practice more.
Returning his tools and the pencil box to his kit, Alex took one more look up and down the alley, then opened the door and quickly stepped inside. Fortunately the lock didn’t have a keyhole on the back, just a mechanical knob, so Alex gave it a twist once he had the door shut.
It was still early afternoon, but the interior of The Philosopher’s Stone was dark nonetheless. With the fog outside, and the magelights turned off, the shop had an almost ghostly quality to it. Rather than turning the lights on, Alex waited for his eyes to adjust before moving.
When at last he could see, Alex found the shop just as orderly and neat as he had seen it from outside. Nothing seemed out of place and even the floor had been swept. A thick apron hung on a peg by the door that connected the back room to the storefront and the waste baskets were all empty.
Clearly whatever had happened to Charles Grier, it hadn’t happened here. It looked to Alex like he tidied and cleaned the shop before heading home...and just never came back.
Alex thought about using the apron to cast a finding rune, but it looked relatively new. He’d needs something with a definite connection to Grier, something he would be much more likely to find in the man’s home.
As he inspected the room, something bothered Alex.
“Where is he brewing his potions?” he asked aloud.
A quick check of the back room revealed a sturdy door that must lead down to a basement. Remembering Jessica and the booby-trapped door to Dr. Kellin’s lab, Alex turned the knob with the tips of his fingers until the door popped open. An acrid, chemical odor assaulted him and Alex gagged, stepping back.
Retreating to his kit, Alex opened it and pulled out a small gas mask from under the left lid. Fixing it firmly over his face, he returned to the door and found a stairwell leading down into blackness. Even with the mask on, Alex could taste a chemical tang in the air.
Moving carefully, he descended the stairs, turning the corner at the bottom. The room below the store was laid out almost exactly like the one at Dr. Kellin’s house, with rows of tables containing impressive arrays of glasswork. Beakers and jars were hooked up to distillers, evaporators, and condensers, each with multiple inputs for chemicals and solutions to be added. Seve
ral of the tables had burners on them that were still lit, but the jars above them were empty. Clearly these potions hadn’t been attended in several days and whatever they’d been heating had boiled away.
Alex moved through the room, checking under the benches and turning off burners. Other than the neglected burners, there was no sign that anything was amiss. Nothing had been disturbed or knocked over. At the back of the room there was a vent pipe with an electric fan to push air. Alex turned it on and, after a few minutes, the fumes in the basement lab dissipated.
Pulling off his mask, Alex went over the lab again, looking for anything that might be out of place. He was tempted to go get his oculus and multi-lamp, but the lab would be full of the residue of hundreds of chemicals. He would be lucky to find anything among all that.
Shutting off the vent fan, Alex went back upstairs to the little office in the back room. It was just a desk, a filing cabinet, and a worn chair. On the back wall were pictures of a tall, slightly plump man Alex took to be Charles Grier, standing with various groups of smiling people. Each picture was labeled with a place and a date, and Alex saw images of Grier in France, Brazil, the Congo, Nepal, and even Japan. Souvenirs of his travels hung beneath each picture, ranging from a carved lion head to a beautiful watercolor painting. The most interesting to Alex was a big, wicked-looking, bent dagger in a glass-covered frame. According to the label, it was a kukri knife he’d received from someone named Gurkha, in Nepal in 1922.
Alex turned back to the desk, switched on the lamp, and sat down. A stack of thin, leather-bound accounting books sat neatly on the back edge of the desk. Picking up the one on top, Alex turned to the first page and read a neat list of materials ordered, amounts paid, and to whom. Two hours later he set the last book aside and rubbed his eyes. According to the books, Grier had enough orders for rare and expensive concoctions to keep him working through the rest of the decade, and his accounts showed a thriving business.
“So you’re not on the run from creditors,” he said with a sigh. “You’re just gone.”
Alex stood up and went to the filing cabinet. Clearly there wasn’t anything here in the shop relating to Charles Grier’s whereabouts. All that was left was his home, and unfortunately Alex had no idea where that was. Unlike Dr. Kellin’s shop, there was no place to live above The Philosopher’s Stone.
The first drawer was filled with invoices from Grier’s various chemical suppliers, and Alex pulled them out, checking them one by one, then dropped them on the desk. All of them had the shop address on them. Picking up the stack of folders, Alex began returning them to the drawer. He was about to move on to the next drawer, but stopped, his eyes resting on the telephone on the desk. He’d seen it before, no doubt where Grier placed and took orders, but if there was a phone…
“There we go,” Alex said, picking up the phone. Underneath it was a slim address book bound in green leather. He flipped it open and read the first entry, Abernathy Glassware, followed by a phone number. There were no actual addresses in the book, but Alex hadn’t expected any. Most people knew where the people they called regularly lived.
Paging through the book he scanned through the A’s, B’s, M’s, and eventually the S’s. He stopped when he found an entry marked, Superintendent. Alex didn’t know if this was the owner of the shop or the building where Grier lived, but either one would know Grier’s home address.
“Hello,” a gruff voice came at Alex when he dialed the number.
“Yes, I’m Bartholomew Franklin with Manhattan Gas,” Alex said, putting on his best Jersey accent. “We got a report of a gas leak from this number, was it you that called it in?”
There was a brief stunned pause, then the voice came on again.
“No, but it might have been someone in my building, I’m the superintendent,” there was a note of panic in the man’s voice and Alex smirked. People were always more willing to tell you things they shouldn’t when they were under stress.
“What’s the address of the building?” Alex asked.
The superintendent rattled off an address only a few blocks away.
“Oh, well then it’s not you,” Alex said. “The guy who called said he lived over on the East Side. Sorry to bother you.”
“Are you sure?” the super pressed.
“Well,” Alex said, drawing the word out. “We could send one of our investigators over to take a look if you want.”
“Thank you, I do.”
“What’s your name,” Alex said. “I’ll tell him to ask for you.”
“Henry Travis,” the man said.
“Ok, Mr. Travis, we’ll send somebody over just to check things out. Sit tight.”
Alex chuckled as he hung up the phone. He returned Charles Grier’s desk to the way he’d found it, then let himself out through the back. He hadn’t found any keys inside, so he had to re-lock the door with his picks, but he needed to give himself some time before he showed up at Grier’s building anyway.
Alex’s watch told him it was just before four in the afternoon, but the fog had gotten so thick that the city had turned the streetlights on. Since he was walking, the fog didn’t slow Alex down much, and ten minutes later he found himself outside a well-kept apartment building with a covered entrance. It looked like it might have had a doorman during better times, but that kind of luxury was only found in the inner-ring and the core these days.
A short, broad-shouldered man in a button-up shirt and tie stood waiting in the foyer when Alex entered. A bank of mailboxes lined the wall to his left and he spotted the name Charles Grier on a box marked 404.
“You Mr. Travis?” Alex said, sticking out his hand. “I’m Charlie Miller from Manhattan Gas.”
Travis looked up at him and smiled. Alarm bells went off in Alex’s head. People worried that their building was about to explode didn’t smile. Before Alex could react, Travis balled up a fist and slugged him in the gut.
Air whooshed out of Alex’s lungs while Travis followed up with a left hook across the side of Alex’s face. Stumbling back, away from the unexpected assault, Alex struggled to catch his breath.
“I don’t know what game you’re playing,” Travis growled, advancing on Alex. “But I called the gas company and they didn’t send you.”
He took another swing at Alex, but this time Alex caught the blow on his arm.
“I also called the police.” Travis swung again, driving Alex back. “It’ll take them time to get here on account of the fog, so that means I get first crack at you.”
Alex held up his left hand, pressing his thumb against the plain bronze ring he wore on his middle finger. Last year a bad guy gave him a concussion with a force rune tattooed on the palm of his hand. Alex stole the idea and improved it. The ring had a series of five runes engraved around the outside. It had taken him weeks to make with a stylus and a magnifier, but he’d finally managed it. As his thumb touched the ring, he willed one of the runes to activate.
Frustrated that Alex’s much longer legs kept him out of his reach, Travis chose that moment to bull rush his opponent. Alex closed his eyes and turned his head as a blinding white light flared up from his palm. The flash rune pulsed twice and then died.
Henry Travis bellowed as he came on. The light had blinded him, but being only light, it had no effect on his mad rush forward. He slammed into Alex, trying to bowl him over. Alex twisted with the blow, grabbing a handful of Travis’ shirt and using the man’s own momentum to throw him forward into the wall of mailboxes. He hit hard, sliding down to the floor in a daze.
“Good news, Mr. Travis,” Alex said as he made his way to the door. “Looks like your building is safe from gas leaks.”
A police siren was wailing in the distance as Alex left the apartment building. He buttoned his coat, turned in the opposite direction, and began walking slowly, as if nothing were happening. He now knew where Charles Grier lived, but he’d need a way to get inside that didn’t involve tangling with the manager. Since Travis had seen his face, that was goi
ng to be tricky.
Alex lit a cigarette as he headed for the nearest crawler station. With everything moving at a snail’s pace on account of the fog, he’d have plenty of time on the way back to his office to figure it out.
6
Cold Reception
By the time Alex got back to his office it was after four. He probably shouldn’t have bothered, but he wanted to call Dr. Kellin and update her on his progress. If he’d been thinking, he’d have just stopped by her place on his way home, but it had been hours since he’d had a swig of the rejuvenator and he was a bit fuzzy. Not to mention the superintendent’s fairly solid left hook.
When he reached the third floor, he was surprised to see light shining out through the frosted glass panel of his office door. It had been lunchtime when he left, with plenty of light despite the fog so the lights had been off.
He reached into his pocket and felt the lump of chalk he always carried. He hadn’t bothered to strap on his 1911 when he went out. Looking for a missing alchemist didn’t seem that dangerous, his fight with the superintendent of Charles Grier’s building notwithstanding. It would have been simple to go back down to the second-floor landing and open his vault. His pistol and shoulder holster hung in a gun cabinet just inside the door, along with his enchanted brass knuckles and a few new toys. He could have them in less than a minute.
Alex hesitated. Whoever had turned on his office light hadn’t broken the door getting in; maybe he’d simply left it unlocked. Also, with the light on, they weren’t exactly lying in wait for him.
Making up his mind, Alex hefted his kit bag and walked quietly to the door. With a quick motion, he turned the handle and pushed it open. The office was as he had left it with two exceptions. Now a man and a woman, both wearing suits, sat on the couch opposite the door. The man was older than Alex, probably in his late forties with jet black hair and a thin, clean-shaven face. He wore spectacles that made his blue eyes look larger than normal and he sat easily, with his legs crossed and his hat in his lap. His suit was clean and pressed and of sturdy quality, though not too expensive. Everything about the man screamed, “Cop.”
