Dan Simmons - The Fifth Heart

He found his hat and walking cane where he’d left them on the floor of the landing.

Remembering how steep and narrow the staircase was, James descended carefully in the darkness, taking each step with care, his arms extended so that he could touch the peeling wall on either side of the staircase, his cane finding each step in the darkness.

At each flickering landing, he expected to encounter someone waiting for him. No one was there. Still, when he reached the bottom of the last flight and was standing at the door through which he’d entered, it took him a minute or two to work up courage to open the door. A terrible thought made him grab the wall again for support: What if they’ve locked this door? Locked me in?

They hadn’t. He stepped out into twilight. The cul-de-sac was empty except for himself, standing there so incongruously, so obviously .

It was about sixty normal paces to the end of the dead-end alley and the beginning of the unpaved street but it felt like half a mile to the aching writer.

He turned right on the unnamed street, trying to remember a general direction back to the civilized parts of town. There were other people on the street—all men as far as he could tell—but most were clustered near the few lighted saloons. James stayed near the dark buildings across the street from these lighted buildings, walking where the sidewalk would be if the muddy lane had been a real street. At least there was less horse manure on the sides.

As he walked, James questioned himself about his reactions during his time clinging to a beam high above thieves, robbers, rapists, arsonists, and Professor James Moriarty in that old chicken warehouse. He had been frightened, to be sure—especially when the man had yelled “Rat!” and the shotgun blast had rattled all around him—but along with the fear had been something unexpected and rather new to Henry James—simple excitement? A sense of thrill? A strange, inexplicable joy at the wild strangeness of it all?

He wondered if his pounding heart and excited sense of everything slowing down during those tensest moments he’d spent above the mob, the moments when he thought he’d been discovered, the rifle shots, if he had been sharing something he thought he would never have the opportunity to experience after having avoided service in the Civil War. Had his brother Wilkie thrilled to such danger in the minutes or hours before receiving his terrible wounds? How else to explain Wilkie’s eagerness to return to his unit months after suffering such undignified, suppurating, and impossibly painful injuries?

And his brother Bob, who had said he’d “enjoyed” life in the army during the war. Could James’s experience that afternoon connect in any way to the simple joy of action that his brothers had written about? James thought of his cousin Gus—that beautiful pale, red-head’s naked body in the afternoon light on the day James had walked in on the life-drawing class—had Gus felt such a thrill of danger and the joy of risk in the months of service before being killed by a sniper, his body never recovered? Had Gus heard the sound of the shot that had taken his young life? The veterans insisted that one never did—never heard the fatal shot since science had shown that the ball or bullet was traveling faster than sound itself—but James remembered hearing the loud rifle shot just before the beam he was lying on reverberated like a struck bell. It had been . . . thrilling.

He walked for what seemed like hours as the last of the light left the skies. His sense of direction all but gone now, James headed for lights reflected from lowering clouds. That way lay street lamps. That way, whichever way it was, must be toward civilization.

Several times men broke off from some group and crossed the street toward him and each time James thought— This shall be it —but no one accosted him. No one even addressed him except for a bizarrely madeup lady of the night—what the Americans called a “crib doxie,” he felt certain, whose place of business was one of the canvas-covered stalls in a reeking alley—whose chalk-white and crimson-rouged face opened to show yellow teeth when she called “Looking for a good time, are you, Mr. Gentleman, sir?”

James nodded toward the apparition and quickly crossed the street.

He had finally reached a cobblestone street—trolley tracks in the center!—with gas lamps at each corner and allowed himself a sigh of satisfaction. There would be street signs here. The slums were behind him.

And just at that moment, three men stepped out of an alley and blocked his way.

“Lost, pal?” asked the tallest one, bearded and filthy. The second man was equally as tall but heavier and had short whiskers rather than a beard. James glimpsed a gold tooth when the light from the corner street lamp briefly touched the first man’s face. Both tall men wore wide-rimmed hats that were soiled with sweat and grime and looked to have been gnawed upon by rats. The third man blocking James’s way could hardly be called a man yet: a boy of sixteen or seventeen, almost as tall as his two mates but infinitely thinner. The boy’s face was mostly nose and with his hair hanging greasily over his eyes and his oversized teeth catching the light, James thought of the rat the gang members had shot off the rafters.

“Let me pass, please,” said James and stepped straight toward the bearded man with the gold tooth.

That man stepped aside but the second big man moved to block James’s way. The three stepped closer, encircling him. James looked over their shoulders but could see no police officers, no pedestrians, no decent folk he might call out to.

“Nice spats,” said the ruffians’ leader. And then he hawked and spit, quite deliberately, a gob of brown tobacco onto James’s left foot.

The second man touched James’s torn right sleeve. “You’re bleedin’, pal. Better come with us so we’s can bandage you up right.”

James tried to step to his left, into the street, but the boy and the first man blocked his way again. They stepped forward aggressively and James realized that he was giving way, backing toward the darkness of the alley from whence they’d stepped. He stopped.

The leader stepped so close that James could smell the whiskey and garlic on his breath when the tall man ran his ragged fingers over James’s jacket and waistcoat front. “Fucking spats, fucking top hat, fucking silver-headed walking stick,” the bearded leader said, “but no fucking watch in your vest. Where is it?”

“I . . . I lost it,” said James.

“Careless sod, ain’t you?” said the second man. “But I bet you didn’t lose your fucking billfold, did you, Mr. Spats?”

James drew himself to his full height, his right hand gripping the cane tightly even though he knew they would be on him before he could lift it in his own defense.

He felt something sharp touch his belly and looked down to see that the youngest man had set a knife point there.

“James!” cried a familiar voice from just across the street.

James and the three thieves turned their heads at the same instant. James had to suppress a giggle—possibly a hysterical one—since the two men he least imagined running into were now hurrying across the empty street toward him. It had been Theodore Roosevelt who had called out and with him, in a finer suit than James had last seen him in, was Clarence King.

As the two men trotted up to the sidewalk, the bearded thief—well over six feet in height—looked at the five-foot-eight Roosevelt and King, two inches shorter than Roosevelt, and said, “I bet you a bottle that they got watches.”

“Not for fucking long,” said his equally tall, brawny, and filthy partner.