Mystery

“I’m sure that we can come to an arrangement.” He came down the last two steps, and reached the walkway immediately above them. The wood groaned as he stepped forward on the walkway and looked down. “The original papers were written in 1925. The matter they referred to is no longer of any importance.” Tom heard him panting from exertion—it had been a long time since his grandfather had had to cope with stairs. He chuckled. “In fact, it was not of much importance at the time. Are you going to come out and let me see your face?”

Natchez tapped Tom’s shoulder and pointed to the topmost walkway of the tenement on the other side of the court. Deep in the shadow, a pale shape that might have been a man in a white shirt and a pair of tan trousers moved with foglike slowness toward the nearest staircase.

“You’re being foolish,” Upshaw said. “You cannot frighten me—you just came here to sell what you have.”

Tom and Natchez waited in the passage. The man in the white shirt reached the staircase and began noiselessly to move down.

“All right, I’ll do it your way,” Upshaw said. He turned away from them and stumped along the walkway to the staircase at the opposite end. “How much do you think those notes are worth? A thousand dollars apiece?” He chuckled, and reached the stairs on the other side of the next tenement and began coming down. Tom saw his white hand sliding along the railing. The vague shape of his shoulder, his white hair, came into view. He reached the bottom of the stairs and turned around. “If so, you’re sadly mistaken. They aren’t worth a hundred each to me.”

He stepped forward, and moved under the walkway. His body lost definition in the darkness and became only a black shape coming down the front of the tenement toward the passage. Tom glanced across the court and saw that the man in the white shirt had stopped on the next walkway down.

“Send the other man away,” Natchez said.

“If you like.” Upshaw stopped moving and called across the court, “Go out and wait on the street.”

The man said, “Sir?”

“Do it,” Upshaw called to him.

The man came out of the shadows and trotted down all the flights of steps and slipped into the long tunnel that led to the street.

“All right?” asked Tom’s grandfather.

“I’m going out,” Natchez whispered.

“No, he has to see me,” Tom whispered back, and moved out of the passage and stepped backward in the shadow of the walkway.

“Who is that?” Upshaw shifted forward, now letting more of his anger show itself. “Who are you?”

Tom moved an inch nearer the lighter darkness of the court. His grandfather would be able to see his body, but not his face.

Glendenning Upshaw stopped moving. Tom felt the air around him tighten, like the pressure inside his head. The black cloud of his grandfather’s body sent out a wave of shock like a flash of lightning. Two loud breaths came from him. Tom’s own chest heaved.

“To hell with you,” his grandfather said. “Von Heilitz is dead.”

Tom moved backwards away from the passage.

“What the hell is this, a charade? Some babyish trick?”

Tom moved backwards in the darkness, and saw the black cloud of his grandfather’s heavy body surge forward toward the passage where Natchez stood concealed. Another arrow had flown into his haunch, but for Tom there was none of the confusion and depression of yesterday, only a bleak satisfaction. A slanting black line of absolute shadow obliterated the top half of the old man’s body from shoulder to hip, and what was visible was only half-visible, but pain and outrage boomed toward him as his grandfather shouted, “Stand still!” and moved closer to the passage.

“I know what you are,” Tom said. He stepped backwards again, and heard doors opening in the tenements above him.

His grandfather moved past the open passage, and his head came free of the shadows of the walkway. Shadowy light fell on his white hair. His face was savage. Almost instantly, the shadow of the next walkway obliterated all but the impression of relentless moving force.

“You murdered Jeanine Thielman,” Tom said. A door slammed above him, but neither he nor the man coming toward him noticed.

“That’s very interesting,” his grandfather said.

Tom saw David Natchez slide out of the passage with his pistol upraised.

“The way I saw it,” his grandfather said, “she chose to commit suicide. Weak people do that with a terrible frequency. I’ve been surrounded by them all my life.”

“Blue Rose,” Tom said.

His grandfather sighed heavily.

“All you were was a flunky for the Redwings,” Tom said.

His grandfather stopped moving. He was a foot or two short of the point where he and Tom would see enough of each other’s faces to be recognized. “I know you, by God,” Upshaw said, and again Tom felt the moment of shock that was like an arrow piercing his grandfather’s hide.

“No, you don’t,” Tom said. “You never knew anybody at all.” He stepped out from under the walkway into the murky courtyard.