Justin Richards - The Death Collector

George did not pause to answer. He heaved open the door and dragged Liz through. They did not stop running until they reached the end of the street.

‘Theatre?’ The surprise was evident in George’s tone.

‘What’s wrong with that?’ Liz demanded, at once on the defensive.

‘Nothing. I was surprised, that’s all. Though …’ He shrugged and walked on.

‘Though what?’ she asked suspiciously.

‘Though, I suppose I shouldn’t be. Not after tonight’s performance.’ He paused under a lamp-post, grinning in the diffuse light. ‘I was quite taken in by that table routine, you know.’

Liz glanced back as they walked on. Just for a second she had thought there was someone behind them. Someone following. But she could see no one, and hear nothing save the distant chimes of a clock and the clatter of a carriage in a nearby street.

‘I’ve never really been interested in the theatre,’ George was saying. ‘Well, not really. Not the plays anyway. I’m interested in the mechanisms.’

‘Mechanisms?’

‘The way the curtains are operated. The manner in which scenery is changed, backcloths dropped in. Trap doors. That sort of thing. I am an engineer, after all.’

‘You might be able to help with a theatrical mechanism of ours, actually,’ Liz realised. ‘Mr Jessop, our producer, is having some trouble with an ashtray.’

‘An ashtray?’

‘A silver ashtray. It has to fly across the stage from a table and land in a person’s lap several yards away. It is presenting something of a problem.’

George thought about this for several moments. ‘I would need to know the size and weight of the ashtray,’ he decided. ‘And the distance it must travel. But I imagine a simple spring and a hair trigger release would do the trick.’

At some point during their conversation, Liz had taken George’s arm. She was not sure exactly when this had been. She squeezed it to be sure that he had noticed.

George stiffened. ‘What was that?’ He pulled his arm gently free from hers and held up his hand to silence her. ‘I heard something. Behind us.’

‘I did think we were being followed earlier,’ Liz admitted.

‘Yes. There’s someone there, in the shadows, look.’ He raised his voice, calling: ‘Come on out, whoever you are.’

‘We know you’re there,’ Liz added, trying to keep the nerves out of her voice.

A small dark figure detached itself from a different shadow to the one Liz had been shouting at. ‘Cor blimey!’ it exclaimed. ‘It’s taken you long enough, ain’t it?’

‘I thought you promised not to leave the room,’ George spluttered.

‘I promised not to go out the door,’ Eddie corrected him. ‘And I didn’t. I climbed out the window,’ he explained, as if this was completely reasonable. ‘How was the seance then? Did you talk to the spirit of Mr Wilkes?’

‘I’m not really sure,’ George admitted. ‘It was most peculiar.’

‘The business with the glass did seem genuine somehow,’ Liz agreed, ‘though the rest of the show was trickery and illusion.’

Eddie nodded. ‘Lot of it about. So what’s this glass business, then?’

‘It spelled out letters,’ George explained. ‘Though they don’t make much sense.’

‘O R I M O,’ Liz told him.

‘Well, that’s something, innit?’

‘Hardly,’ George said, ‘we were lucky to escape an unfortunate situation.’

‘Luck was it? Eddie asked. He seemed to be trying not to laugh.

‘Yes,’ Liz told him. ‘A rather unpleasant gentleman was keen to know how to contact the spirit world. Luckily there was a fire somewhere in the house, and he was distracted.’

‘There weren’t no fire,’ Eddie said.

‘How do you know?’ George asked. ‘You weren’t there.’

Eddie coughed. ‘There weren’t no fire,’ he repeated. ‘Someone shouted fire as a distraction.’

Liz frowned. ‘But who would …’ She stopped as she realised what Eddie was telling them.

‘You were there?’ George had realised too. ‘After all we said, after what we agreed? How can we ever trust you again after this?’

‘There’s gratitude,’ Eddie complained.

Eddie had a point, Liz thought. She was angry with him too, but it was lucky that he had been there with his wits about him. She sighed, trying to explain. ‘Look, we’re grateful for the help, really we are.’

‘Don’t sound it. You never do. If Blade finds you he’s going to want his bit of paper. If he finds me, he’ll likely cut my throat. Now it seems like we got a clue from this seance and I get not a word of thanks for the idea nor for saving you at the end of it. You don’t believe I can do anything to help, though I’m in just as deep as you are. Don’t even believe I saw a monster either, do you?’

‘You were scared,’ Liz said gently. ‘It could have been a tree or anything.’

‘I know what I saw,’ Eddie said. ‘You weren’t there. But I was. You just don’t trust me.’

‘Leave him be,’ George told Liz. ‘If he’s got it into his head there’s a monster, we won’t talk him out of it.’ They continued down the street in uneasy silence.

The moon was a pale sliver of light that danced in and out of the scudding clouds. Crouched in amongst the trees, Eddie began to wonder if this was a good idea after all.

He had been angry with George and Liz when they laughed at his story about the monster. George had told him it was all his imagination. Although Liz had been sympathetic, she had agreed with George. But Eddie knew what he had seen.

Yet Liz and George weren’t interested. George had offered to walk Liz home and they had agreed to meet again tomorrow when George had a day off from the Museum. There was a mystery here that he could solve, Eddie was certain, but they just weren’t seeing it. There was a monster, and it lived near where Albert Wilkes had disappeared — in the grounds of the house where those men had taken him. That wasn’t just by chance, there had to be some connection. Well, he’d show them. He would go back, he had decided, and get proof. He didn’t know what sort of proof, but he’d find it.

That had been the plan. Now he was not so sure. He had to climb over the wall because there was a man on guard at the gate. Now he found there were more men patrolling the grounds. Eddie was shivering in the cold, hiding behind a tree and hoping the moon stayed hidden until the second man, the one guarding the house, had gone.

Eddie had seen him walking first one way then the other. The man paused to stamp his feet in the cold or to light a cigarette. In the brief flashes of thin moonlight, Eddie could see him clearly on the gravel pathway. He was stocky, his bulk emphasised by his heavy coat. A cap was pulled down low over his eyes, and over his shoulder was slung what Eddie had at first thought was a fishing rod.

But as he crept closer, he saw that it was a shotgun. Eddie quickly slunk back into the trees and wondered if he had been foolish to come here. Perhaps he should have waited until morning and tried to convince George and Liz to come with him.

‘They didn’t believe me before, they wouldn’t believe me then,’ he murmured to himself. No, it was up to Eddie to investigate on his own. He held his breath as the guard walked close in front of him and didn’t exhale again until the guard was long gone. He watched the guard disappear into the mist, waited until he could no longer hear the crunch of the man’s feet on the gravel. Then Eddie ran quickly and quietly in the opposite direction. Towards the place where he had seen the monster.

The more he thought about it, the more he thought that maybe George was right, about the monster at least. What had he really seen? A tree blowing in the breeze, its branches clutching like claws? Dark clouds hurrying across the sky?