Herald of Ruin, page 2
part #2 of The Sanford Files Series
“They know I like my privacy here. And you know why I don’t like to go to the Lodge.”
“Tut, tut,” Sanford said. “You were hardly locked up in the basements for any length of time at all. You escaped almost immediately.”
“My brief imprisonment aside, I was pursued through those basements by a monster. I have unpleasant associations with the place.” She made a face, which was, in fact, less revolting than the monster in question.
You should see the creature now, Sanford thought. “‘Monster’ is a bit much,” he said. “It was merely a guardian, and you were trespassing. But, yes, I take your point.” Sanford’s relationship with Ruby was, historically, rather fraught. She was a professional thief who’d robbed his vault below the Lodge of priceless relics some years ago, and he’d even arranged a trap to lure her back to Arkham so he could take his revenge on her. But she’d become entangled in all that business with the Cult of Asterias, and in the process, the two of them had become necessary allies, fighting back-to-back against a common enemy. He’d agreed to forget her transgressions in light of her service, and they now had a reliable (if never totally comfortable) working relationship. She was very good at what she did. She must be, if she’d managed to steal something from him.
“Why did you want to see me?” she asked.
Right to business. She seldom spent any of her charm on him, which was fine since he was immune to such blandishments. “Oh, I have a job for you. But before we get into all that… have you heard of a man named Randall Tillinghast?” Sanford had myriad connections all over Arkham, since many of the city’s most prominent and influential citizens were members of the Order of the Silver Twilight (known universally, informally, and erroneously as the Silver Twilight Lodge), the social organization and esoteric order that he ruled absolutely. But Ruby had a different set of connections: bartenders, small-time thugs, dock workers, housemaids. The little people who kept the city humming along. Sometimes she knew things he didn’t.
He wasn’t expecting a reaction like this, though. “Tillinghast?” She put her glass down, carefully, but her hand was shaking, and gin sloshed over the rim. “You don’t mean… Tall, thin, white hair, in his sixties? Likes to wear expensive Italian suits?”
Sanford cocked his head. “I haven’t met the man myself, but that fits the descriptions I’ve received. You mean to say you know the man? Personally?”
Ruby stared at the tabletop. “I can’t… he was… I did some work for him. A while back. I shouldn’t talk about it. I have to be discreet, in my business, you know.” A tremble crept into her voice.
“You needn’t give me details about your business relationship,” Sanford said. “I mainly want to know: is he the genuine article, in terms of his association with the occult? There are a lot of charlatans in his business–”
She laughed, the sound as short and harsh as a crow’s caw. “Tillinghast is the real thing. The… item… I procured for him… It belonged to very serious people, and they wanted it back. Badly. There was this policeman, too, who came after the relic afterward, and it was a lot of work to shake him. To be honest, I still look over my shoulder sometimes.” Ruby narrowed her eyes. “Is Tillinghast here? In Arkham?”
“That is the rumor, yes. You hadn’t heard anything about a newcomer?”
“No! And you’d think I would have…” She chewed her lip, clearly vexed. “Do you know what he’s doing here?”
“Business,” Sanford said. “He’s opened a curio shop, though I’ve had trouble finding out exactly where it’s located. He should fire whoever does his advertisements. Miss Standish… Ruby… does this man frighten you?” He’d seldom seen her react so strongly, even in the face of imminent peril.
“Frighten?” She seemed to take the question seriously, rolling the glass between her hands as she pondered. “No, that’s not quite right. He unsettles me. Tillinghast can be very friendly, solicitous even, and he paid me fairly, plus extra to make up for the trouble I encountered down in the swamps. But… I can’t explain it. Have you ever stood on a bridge at night, looking down at the water all dark beneath you, and for a moment it feels like you’re just suspended in the void? Like you’re surrounded by nothing? A kind of… active nothing?”
Sanford nodded. He’d glimpsed the emptiness at the heart of reality on more than one occasion.
She nodded back. “That’s how I felt, sometimes, when he’d look into my eyes. Like I was staring into the abyss… and the abyss was staring back at me.”
“The thief who quoted Nietzsche!” Sanford scoffed.
Ruby managed half a smile. “I’m an educated woman, Sanford. It just wasn’t a typical education.” She turned serious, her eyes fixed on his. “What do you want with Tillinghast?”
“I want to meet him, first of all,” Sanford said. “I want to peruse his wares and see if there’s anything worth acquiring, especially now that you’ve told me he might have objects of real value. I wish to take the measure of the man and see if he could be useful to me.” Or dangerous to me, but he’d hardly admit that concern out loud. Sanford leaned forward. “Can you give me any other impressions of him, apart from his voidlike gaze?”
“Not really,” Ruby said. “He hired me, I did the job, he paid me, we parted ways. I only met him face-to-face a few times. He definitely has the manners of a gentleman, and he probably has the soul of a shark.”
It was Sanford’s turn to grin. “I’ve been told I can be a trifle sharklike myself. I’m sure in my presence this Tillinghast will become like unto a minnow. Would you please make some inquiries for me, and see if you can find the location of his shop? A surprise visit could be in order.”
She shrugged. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“Excellent. Once you’ve found him, perhaps you could offer to… renew your association? I’m sure he could use someone with your skills, whatever his precise intentions are. And in the process, if you pick up any useful tidbits of information about his plans here in Arkham, you can pass them on to me.”
“You want me to be your spy, Sanford?” Ruby shook her head. “That’s going to cost you.”
“I would expect nothing less. You know the depths of my purse. I’m sure we can reach a satisfactory arrangement.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” she repeated. “No promises, but if the opportunity to renew my acquaintance with Tillinghast comes up, I won’t let it pass me by.”
Sanford nodded. “Fair enough. On to our main business, then. There’s a certain shipment arriving from South America this week, bound for the university, and I’d appreciate it if you could intercept something for me.”
Chapter Two
Dark Deeds on the Docks
The Arkham River Docks were never a particularly cheerful place to visit, even in the bright morning with the birds singing and the sun shining, and so much less so deep into the evening with the mists rising and the only songs the swearing of the toiling stevedores.
Skulking around this area in skirts at night wasn’t a safe proposition, so Ruby was in one of her more seldom-used disguises, wearing patched trousers and battered boots, with a baggy old shirt to hide her figure, and her hair bundled up under a newsboy cap. A few smudges on her face in lieu of makeup made her resemble a boy prowling the docks in search of work or amusement or both. She was hardly immune to trouble in this guise, but it was a less troublesome sort of trouble than she could expect if she prowled around wearing a dress and kitten heels.
The docks rambled along a lengthy stretch of the river near the Merchant District, home to crumbling piers, rambling warehouses, unsteady stacks of cargo, cheap accommodations, booze that would blind you in time, and people desperate enough to drink it anyway. She saw Abner Weems, a local drunk who was occasionally lucid enough to pass messages or provide a useful tip, but not tonight; he was sprawled on his back beside a bottle at the mouth of a narrow alley, even his coat and shoes too worn for anyone to bother stealing.
A little farther along, Joey the Rat skulked past her, shoulders in a perpetual hunch, eyes darting everywhere; he was a small-time crook with an encyclopedic knowledge of the comings and goings of every ship, and she’d paid him for information before (and dislocated a couple of his fingers when he patted her bottom once). His peripatetic gaze didn’t even pause when it reached her, which meant her disguise was solid.
Still, she kept to the shadows, staying close to the warehouses and heaps of crates, trying not to catch the eye of any of the big-shouldered men shifting cargo. Walking near the water was, theoretically, more pleasant, since you could look at the river, but while the Miskatonic had a certain beauty in the daytime, at night, the river just made her uneasy: those murky depths could hide anything, and nowadays she knew too much about the foul things that sometimes lurked beneath the surface. Of the water, and of everything else.
The river docks never entirely shut down, though they were a lot busier in the afternoon than they were in the dark of night. There were certain visitors who preferred to arrive in the wee hours, and certain cargo better unloaded in the dark – whisky sent down from Canada, for example. The most corrupt cops patrolled the docks overnight, and the skeleton crew of officials weren’t averse to bribes, either.
Ruby had dealt with the harbormaster, “Tick” Scanlon, before, and figured he was her best bet. She was a cat burglar by training and preference, but she couldn’t move a crate that took two men to carry all by herself, and while it was possible to just filch the contents, it was hard to be quiet with a crowbar. Nails tended to squeal when you wrenched them out.
Tick was sitting in his office, a shack of wood and corrugated metal positioned to give him a good view of the busiest berths on the dock. The upper half of the river-facing wall of his shack was hinged, and when that panel was open and propped up, he had a giant window and an awning to keep the rain off, unless the wind was blowing from the north, of course. On those days, he shut the window, and to hell with keeping a close eye on things.
Tonight was mild, though, and the wall was open. Tick lounged in a swivel chair with his feet up on the counter, with one of his ever-present pulp magazines propped open on his belly. He usually tended toward two-fisted detectives and bold explorers, but tonight he was reading that new scientifiction magazine, Amazing Stories. She’d read the same issue when it came out. Maybe Tick liked it because it had sailing ships on the cover, though they were run aground, and there was a big ringed planet looming over them in the background sky. No wonder he spent as much time as possible in imaginary worlds when the docks were his main habitation in the real one.
She sidled up to the counter and muttered a gruff, “How are ya?”
Tick’s eyes flicked up briefly, then went back down to the magazine. He was reading slowly – she hadn’t seen him flip a page during her whole approach, and usually he went through two or three of those magazines in a night. “No work for you tonight, kid. Run on home before a crate falls on you or something.”
Ruby leaned over the counter and tipped her cap back. “Come on, Tick, be a pal. There’s always work for me. I make work wherever I go.”
He looked again, squinted, and grunted. He usually smoked a nasty cigar to cover the smells of tar and river stench, but not tonight. “It’s you. Nice get-up. You trying out for the Vienna Boys’ Choir?” His eyes drifted back down to the page. Must be riveting stuff, though as Ruby recalled, that issue was all reprints of old stories by Wells and Poe and Verne, which you’d think a bloated bookworm like Tick would have read a hundred times already.
“You know me and fashion. What do you think of the magazine?” Ruby leaned over the counter to get a look at which story he was reading and blinked. Were the images on the page moving? Almost like a movie projected on a screen… but no, it must be a trick of shadows from the lantern hanging behind him–
Tick slammed the magazine closed and lowered his feet, slipping the pulp – reverently, Ruby thought – under the counter. He glared at her. “Whaddya want? I’m busy.”
Ruby didn’t mind getting straight to business, though Tick was usually chattier, since shooting the breeze broke up the boredom. “A ship came in about an hour ago, bringing in a load of finds from an archaeological expedition down south, headed for the university. I’d like a chance to nip on board, take a look around, maybe carry off anything that appeals to me. What do you say?”
Tick sighed. “And how am I supposed to explain the missing whatever it is?”
“Come on, Tick. You know all the tricks. Mix-ups on the manifest, cargo lost overboard, breakage during travel. This stuff came all the way up from the Amazon or someplace – the eggheads at the university can’t expect it all to arrive intact.”
“Yeah, yeah.” He sounded sour about the whole idea, but that was just his way. He liked making deals like this. They made him think he was a criminal mastermind in a story, probably. “Usual rates?”
“Why not? I’m feeling generous tonight.” She slid an envelope across the counter, and he made it disappear. Normally Ruby didn’t pay up front, but Tick had proven himself reliable and unambitious often enough.
“Gimme a second.” He glanced down, reached under the counter, and gazed at something Ruby couldn’t see. Did he have a flashlight under there? For a second, she could have sworn there was light flickering across his face, from underneath…
The light vanished, and he rose, holding a battered leather folder. “All right, let’s go inspect the cargo.” He emerged from the side door of the shack and set off swaggering, walking with the rolling gait of a lifelong sailor, though as far as Ruby knew, the closest he got to sea was visiting the cargo holds of the boats at his dock.
Ruby walked beside him. “Good magazine?” she asked.
He glanced at her with surprise. “Yeah, the greatest.” He sounded strangely sincere. She would have bet that Tick and sincerity hadn’t been acquainted since childhood.
Take interesting conversation wherever you could find it – that was her philosophy. “It’s got ‘The New Accelerator’ in it, right? That old HG Wells story? I always liked that one. I wish I could take a potion to make myself flit around like a hummingbird, the people around me standing still as statues – that would come in handy, in my line of work.” He didn’t say anything, which wasn’t like him. “But I guess you’d rather use the other potion, the one that slows you down, and makes the people around you seem to zip around at super-speed, so an hour passes in a second. You could get through those long boring nights in a blink that way, right?”
“Huh?” Tick seemed distracted, glancing over his shoulder at the shack, like he’d left something important behind. “Right, yeah, Wells. That’s a good one.” He led her around a heap of moldering crates that had been piled there for so long they seemed like part of the infrastructure, over to a beat-up little river barge. “Here you go.”
“This thing didn’t come up from the Amazon,” Ruby said.
“Nah, they shifted the cargo a few times along the way.”
Ruby grinned. “Easy to see how something might get lost in transit then, huh?”
He grunted again and stepped onto the ship. “We’re not unloading this one until morning. The university is sending somebody to pick things up before lunch. Come on.” He led her to the back of the ship, then folded back a tarp, revealing a dozen crates, varying in size from steamer trunk to casket. “Do you know what you’re looking for? I’d rather not have to open all of these.”
“What do you take me for, an amateur? Give me that flashlight, would you?”
Tick handed it over, and she scanned the crates in the weak yellow beam. Most of the crates were made of the same dark wood, stained and splintered, held together with nails gone rusty from long exposure to the elements. She checked the letters and numbers painted on the sides until she found the one Sanford had told her to look out for, A-24. That designation marked an unassuming crate that looked just big enough to hold a case of wine. That should be the one, but better to be safe. “Ticky, what’s the manifest say about this box here?”
He flipped open his folder, and she shone the light on the pages for him. “Crate A-24, contents: one cup, stone.”
“That’s the one. Do you want to do the honors?”
“I don’t open crates, Rube. I’m a harbormaster.” He picked up a short-handled crowbar leaning against the wall and handed it over. “Help yourself, and hurry up about it, I want to get back to my magazine.”
“It’s not like a movie, Tick. You aren’t going to miss the action if you spend too long in the bathroom during intermission.” She took the crowbar and jammed the edge under the lip of the crate while Tick pointed the light in vaguely the right direction. Ruby levered up a corner of the crate, then moved down, popping the other corner, and worked her way around until the whole top panel was loose. She picked up the lid and set it upside down on the crate beside her, shiny steel nails gleaming in the flashlight beam, then turned her attention to the contents.
The crate was packed with straw, and it was always a little harrowing to stick your hands in that stuff – she imagined bear traps, set to snap on the hands of innocent hardworking thieves like her – but plunge she did. She made contact and lifted out the object nestled inside.
“I was expecting like a wine glass, but that’s more of a loving cup,” Tick said. “What’s it supposed to be, the holy grail?”
“Unholy grail, knowing my luck.” The goblet was nearly a foot high from rim to base, and when she held it up to the light, it glittered. The cup was made of shiny black stone, something like onyx but not, and it was elaborately faceted, twinkling in the flashlight beam. It looked like the thing Sanford had described, anyway. Something niggled at her, made her uneasy and uncertain, but she couldn’t trace the sensation to its source. Probably she was just suspicious because this had gone so smoothly, but sometimes jobs were easy, right?
“I’m satisfied, Tick. Nice doing business with you.” She wrapped the cup in a burlap sack and stuffed it into the leather bag dangling over her shoulder.
