by William Ray
The hub ahead was no minor stop off, but a center of much of the city’s urban congress. A recent arrival was unloading streams of foot traffic, with men and the occasional woman filling the platform and spilling out into the sidewalks. The men wore suits of dark khakis to hide the stains of travel, and the women were either accompanying them in frilly dresses or else traveling alone in the white blouses and straight dark blue skirts of the modern career girl.
The women drew glares from some of the men lining the streets; newcomers to the job market, single women often took jobs as low paid typists and receptionists, stealing the work from men who would presumably want more money to support their families. Very few of those loitering would likely have been well suited to that sort of work regardless, but that fact did little to stem their resentment of losing the position to a woman. Of course, many of those women were likely similarly unemployed and were just in this part of town to knock on doors, asking for work, but that wouldn’t make them any more welcome among the fellows leaning.
Phand dismounted his bicycle, laid it aside in a nearby alley, and pushed through the crowd to the platform beyond. Slipping from the cab, Gus made his way through the press to follow him towards the track. As soon as they stopped, Louis was once again set upon by passengers making bids for rides in his cheaper looking cab, and as he walked away, Gus grinned as he heard his married driver chatting with a woman trying to flirt her way into a cheap fare.
A fat man going against traffic was easy to follow, and Gus found himself merrily humming ‘White Parasol’ and wondering how he should spend the money Missus Phand was paying. He briefly worried that Phand would hop aboard the train, but then it occurred to him that Phand likely wouldn’t have left the bicycle like that unless he planned on returning to it soon.
Phand stopped as he sighted two gentlemen awaiting him on the platform, and distracted by fantasies of easy success, Gus very nearly ran into him. The engineer called out a hearty greeting that was less breathless than Gus would have imagined the man capable of after his ride here, and Gus hovered back, conspicuously reading from the latest fare postings as he surreptitiously worked out what train the two men had arrived on.
There was a cheerful man in his middle-thirties and a scowling old vulture who walked with a cane. Both gentlemen were accompanied by suitcases, borne along by liveried railway men. From the luggage, Gus knew they must have come from farther off than just across town, but if they lived here and were simply returning, it would be odd to greet them on the platform like this, rather than letting them settle in at home first.
The one near Gus’s age was fashionable enough, but the older wore a stiff black suit that looked thirty or forty years out of style. Their train was westbound, but from their initial words of greeting back to Phand, their accents seemed Verin, so they weren’t foreigners. Gus could tell they must be very well-to-do and generous tippers, given how attentively the railway men were looking after them. They could be wealthy landed gentry, but he couldn’t imagine why two country lords would be visiting an engineer.
All the major cities in Verinde proper were west of Gemmen, and remembering his own long trips to the colonies in Rakhasin, he knew they didn’t have enough luggage to last the voyage from the colonies. From all that, Gus guessed they were arriving from somewhere in Aelfua—Khanom perhaps, given what Emily had said about the exposition.
He was briefly proud of himself for working that out and had half composed a smug speech about the encounter he could deliver to Emily when he returned, but then it occurred to him that the meeting almost certainly had nothing to do with Doctor Phand’s affair.
Gus considered the outside chance one of the two men might be Phand’s lover, but then dismissed it. He had been around a few of that particular persuasion when untangling a blackmail case a few years back—the younger one seemed too relaxed for someone arriving to a secret tryst of that sort, and the vulture looked entirely too unhappy to be here.
If they were here about the tower Phand was supposed to building out east, then that might be useful to Missus Phand. It probably meant a lot of new money for Doctor Phand, and Gus wondered if that sort of intelligence about incoming wealth would be worth something to his client. He wasn’t sure how that would work with divorce proceedings, but with a tidbit like that, he might impress her enough to tell her friends about him, which could bring in more work like this later.
After a round of handshaking and enthusiastic welcomes, Phand led them out to the street, and Gus left his study of the rate board and blended with the thinning crowd working its way towards the street as he followed the trio out. He ventured as close as he dared, hoping to hear whatever the three were discussing, but couldn’t catch much. It looked like they were just sharing the usual sort of remarks on rail travel—suits rumpled, things passed by, food endured, that sort of thing.
When they reached the curb, they looked over at Louis’s taxi, and Gus had a moment of panic. Phand wouldn’t leave his bicycle, so he probably wasn’t taking the cab with them, which would stick Gus with trying to explain to some center town cabbie how to discretely follow someone. If Louis made a show of waving them off, it would make him memorable and thus conspicuous if Phand spotted the cab behind him later in the day.
After a moment’s reflection and a slight pucker of distaste from the younger man, they passed it up for a cleaner, newer carriage parked just behind. The differences seemed negligible to Gus, but Phand’s associates seemed to find it an acceptable improvement. The engineer made a show of helping them with their luggage, although he did little more than direct the railway men to do the obvious, and then packed the two visitors into the black carriage with a friendly smile.
Leaning from the cab, the younger man said a few more words Gus couldn’t quite hear, and the older just scowled down at Phand and then wrapped himself more tightly in his coat. Once their cab rolled away, Doctor Phand gave a relieved looking sigh and then went to retrieve his bicycle. Gus hurried to hop back into Louis’s cab, and when the engineer emerged with his bicycle, a simple nod to the cabbie’s questioning glance set them on his trail once more.
Weaving through the streets on his safety bicycle, Phand swerved around pedestrians, street garbage, and manure as he wobbled down the lane. Louis had no trouble keeping up, but Gus was still impressed to see an out-of-shape businessman make such good time on the thing and briefly wondered if he should try one of these new models himself. He laughed as he tried to imagine returning home on it in his usual drunken stupor and decided to stick with cabs.
Four blocks later, Phand pulled up to a fancy gentleman’s club, and Louis pulled to a stop half a block back while Gus peered out the window of the cab. A valet stepped forward to take the bicycle with a distasteful frown, and the engineer began to lecture him on its proper disposition. Unable to hear their discussion from across the street, Gus supplied his own dialogue for them.
“It’s important you keep my bi-cycle-mobile someplace warm and dry,” he said, giving Phand a deeper voice than his own and giving it an effected warble he felt sounded particularly snooty. The valet looked skeptically down at the contraption but took the bicycle from Phand and responded. Gus gave the valet a nasally snivel that went, “Very good, sir. Right away, sir. I know just the place, sir, if you would be so kind as to bend ov—”
The valet’s reply fell far short of Gus’s hopes for his improvised little play. Both men stepped through into the club proper. Phand took a moment to remove his hat, fanning himself with it as he glanced around the street, almost as if expecting he were followed. His eyes passed over Louis’s cab without any spark of recognition. Finally seeming to catch his breath, Phand settled the hat back on his head and stepped inside.
Gus thought he might be able to slip in, posing as a guest or perhaps even a prospectus, but something wasn’t quite right, and he watched the club door pensively while he tried to figure out what it was. Finally, Louis asked, “You going in, or are we sitting
out here a bit? I could park closer to the door.”
As soon as Doctor Phand pressed inside, the valet stepped back out with the bicycle, presumably to store it someplace other than inside the club as requested. Then the details clicked, and Gus called up, “No! Go around! Get around to the other side of the building, fast!”
Louis shrugged and whistled at his horses, eliciting several curses as he wedged them over through the bustling lane of traffic to circle the block. Sure enough, as they reached the other side, Phand was exiting from an alley behind his club, looking around the building suspiciously as he stepped out onto the sidewalk and hailed a cab.
“Clever, sir! How’d you work that one out?”
Gus grinned at his driver and replied, “When he went inside, he kept on his hat. Keep following!”
Phand climbed into an expensive-looking downtown remise – a posh leather-lined cart of the sort that only worked the nicer parts of town. With one horse and only one axle, it could weave in and out of traffic with greater ease than the traditional four-wheeled cabs, and worse still, the passengers faced rear, which made following them a riskier proposition.
With the change to that sort of cab after passing through the club and now the rear-facing ride, Gus began to worry Phand might be a trickier tail than he had first imagined. He was a little heartened that at least it was all the sort of thing a man might do to avoid being followed; someone only did that if there was something interesting to be seen doing.
The agility of the dog-cart proved little use in the late morning’s traffic, so Louis had no problem staying behind them, but Gus nervously leaned back in his seat, hoping the shadow of the overhang would make him less conspicuous. Trusting in Louis’s expertise, Gus held up the paper, scanning the top story over and over as he pretended to read between uneasy glances over the top edge.
Phand watched the road behind him, but his attention didn’t seem fixed on Louis’s trailing cab. Despite the blatantly clandestine nature of his rendezvous, Doctor Phand did not lead them into seedier districts but merely transitioned from the opulent centers of commerce to the equally opulent neighboring Palace District, which was usually occupied by more idle wealth, although ironically not the Imperial Palace itself. The lack of mercantile bustle, not to mention the presence of a much more diligent police force, meant that once they passed under the rail bridge that divided this district from the next, the loitering masses were gone.
Near the boundary to the Government District, where the Imperial palace actually stood, Phand’s cab pulled up to the Hotel Harrison. Stopping a bit before they reached the elegant covered porch that marked the hotel’s entrance, Gus hopped out of Louis’s cab and hurried forward to see where Phand went next. The famous engineer dismounted, paid his cabbie, and then took a moment to straighten his suit and fuss with his clothes.
The muck on Phand’s pants proved stubborn, and Gus did not doubt the smell of it would linger until he changed, but the engineer took so long in his grooming that Gus had to slow down or risk catching up with him. He worried a moment that perhaps that was Doctor Phand’s plan, so when the engineer finished and took another glance around, Gus approached one of the nearby cabs as if he were only there to hail down a ride. Looking nervous, Doctor Phand stepped through the decorated portico into the luxurious lobby beyond.
Offering an apologetic smile to the hopeful cabbie he’d begun to approach, Gus waited a moment, then turned and slipped through the door shortly after Doctor Phand. Attentive stewards rushed to his service the moment as he stepped inside, and Gus waved them off and murmured something about being there to meet an associate. The chief concierge overseeing the stewards frowned at him from across the room but did not intervene as Gus joined a handful of others waiting in the lobby.
There were chairs scattered about, divided in a few separate sitting areas set atop expensive Mazhal rugs. The seating areas surrounded a wide staircase that led to the floors above, letting guests descend in regal majesty to whoever happened to be waiting upon them below. The men waiting in the lobby were dressed in nicer suits, more like Doctor Phand, and while Gus’s plainer attire might not be quite up to the chief concierge’s standards, it was nice enough to let him keep their company without seeming too out of place.
Pulling out his paper, Gus found a chair set against the wall and sat there as he peered over its pages, observing his quarry. Doctor Phand paced awkwardly between faux-marble columns near the foot of a sweeping staircase with gilded rails. When he suddenly froze, Gus knew the man’s appointment had arrived, and looking up, he could see why Phand had been so anxious.
Her black curls were bound back but loosely enough to give the illusion of the intimacy of naked tresses. She wore a form-fitting silken dress in the far-eastern style, black but patterned with a silver serpent design that wrapped around her, highlighting the woman’s sinuous curves. The serpent’s scales glittered in the light as she descended the stair into the lobby, and she gracefully extended a long-gloved arm, directing the older, overweight engineer towards a curtained alcove.
Both of them slipped inside, and the lobby instantly resumed its former bustle as if embarrassed by their collective distraction. It was no wonder his wife knew about the affair—even with all the sneaking around to get here, the woman he was meeting was far too ostentatious to keep secret for long. Still, it meant Gus was likely to wrap this job up even more quickly than he had hoped.
Grinning as he resumed the pretense of reading the paper, Gus murmured, “Well done, old boy. Quite impressed.” A gentleman nearby chuckled in agreement, and they sat there amiably for a while, occasionally interrupted by a lobby steward asking if there were anything they might need. All Gus needed was to sort out when and where they might be meeting again, and then to collect his money.
As he waited, Gus peered discreetly over the top of his paper, trying to catch a glimpse of whatever was going on behind the curtain across the lobby. He doubted they would be waving around a social calendar, but he did not consider himself above enjoying a lascivious glance at the goings on behind the curtain, if such a thing was made available. Unfortunately, the curtain hung still, and nothing interesting was revealed.
Eventually, Doctor Phand slipped out again, grinning and cheerful as he made his way outside again. Gus was tempted to check on the engineer’s companion but after a moment’s hesitation decided to stick with his quarry.
Phand did not hail another cab at the entrance and instead leisurely strolled down along the avenue, humming cheerfully, and smiling to all passersby. Gus trailed along behind, trying to look inconspicuous, but Phand never glanced back. Eventually, Phand made his way to a theater situated down the street and approached the box office.
Gus queued up behind him.
“Two tickets for the opener this weekend, good sir,” Phand requested, smiling brightly at the man behind the counter.
“Is it a good show?” Gus piped in from behind. It was a risk if the engineer recognized him from earlier in the day, but he hoped the good mood would make his target chatty, and it did.
“Oh, I’ve no idea, but I’d planned dinner at Marley’s down the block, and we’ve just enough time for a leisurely stroll here before the curtain.” Collecting his tickets, Doctor Phand tipped his hat and then moved to the street to hail another cab. Close enough to hear the directions, Gus knew Phand was headed back to his office and decided not to further risk exposure by hurrying to follow. Ignoring the polite inquiries of the ticket seller, Gus walked back to the Harrison.
Welcomed inside once more, he saw that the curtain before the alcove of Doctor Phand’s rendezvous had already been pulled back, and the alcove was now empty; he had missed the paramour’s grand exit. Approaching one of the idle stewards, he murmured with a lascivious edge, “Who was that woman in the snake dress?”
The man by the door grinned and replied, “That was Miss Aliyah Gale, sir. She’s—” Whatever revelation was to come never happened; there was a hars
h click of shoes on the marble floor as the chief concierge saw their chatter and quickly made his way over. Seeing his boss’s approach, the steward stiffened and fell silent.
Under the chief concierge’s suspicious gaze, Gus declined any further offer of aid and made some lame excuse about having apparently missed his party. He stepped back out and returned to Louis’s cab, which amidst this high-class crowd was having no trouble at all discouraging additional fare.
Unless it turned out she was being invited to the theater, Gus felt like he had enough information for Missus Phand to act upon, but having resolved this in one morning for an exceptionally generous flat fee, he felt it would be rude to send Louis off so soon. He hated to appear charitable, but he figured if they followed Doctor Phand around a bit more, then Louis could collect a full day’s fee. Besides, an early return would just encourage Emily to find more work for them.
Their quarry already gone, Gus invited Louis to join him for a quick bite before returning to haunt the front of Phand & Saucier’s building. Gemmen’s newest culinary fad was street vendors who fried potted sausages over a portable stove, sometimes with onions or a bit of bread.
Canned meat had been the usual fare in his military service, and while Gus had not appreciated it at the time, he had developed a discerning palate for the stuff. There were a few competing varieties, but his favorites were Thomas’s, followed by Pittman’s, with the distant third place difficult to assign.
Early in their association, he and Louis had bonded over their shared appreciation of the stuff, so whenever they were on a job together, Gus tried to work out a way to get them. There was no regular place to get a cheap lunch in White Parasol’s part of town, but Louis knew a Thomas’s sausage cart that traveled through a nearby district, and they found it in short order.
