they considered him a threat? Had there even been a reason? Had it just been an officer’s lust for heroism, satisfied at last against the wildest beast ever let loose on a New York street? A fear seized the stableman then that he and Raj were two of a kind—foreigners in this land, misfits who’d managed to escape the blaze but only after sustaining injuries that rendered them useless and possibly dangerous.
The authorities had dispatched the tiger. A man in a uniform laid a blanket over the stableman and pulled it across his face, as if he were a corpse, and he read the word POLICE woven into its border. He groaned and struggled to paw it from his eyes. Was the officer there to help him, to arrest him or just to cart him off to die? He looked for an answer in the eyes of the man standing above him, but the man’s eyes looked away.
And so began his career as a suspect, a man on the edge of the law, for a second time—despite all his intentions. It was why he’d fled Germany. Now here he was in a city he’d thought was big enough to get lost in, big enough to need innumerable builders to help make it bigger yet, and he found himself in a different boat of the exact same class. How had it happened, and so fast? Was there something about him? A curse? Did his face look felonious, threatening? That’s certainly not what Beatrice thought when she peered into the back of the wagon while he watched the tiger being shot.
She’d already heard the rumor flying through the crowd that the man she’d seen and saved was a disgruntled worker from the museum, that he was the one who had set the fire. Maybe, she thought, but who had ever heard of an arsonist sticking around long enough nearly to die in the fire? Barnum had enemies enough that it hardly seemed likely this stableman was responsible, at least not by himself. He looked a little too honest, too stunned. What she was thinking was that this fellow had gotten himself in over his head. Someone had set him up to take a fall.
She scanned the crowd to see if she could guess whom he was working for. When she had her answer, she began to formulate her plan. She needed a story to take back to Johnny, her boss. He would certainly want to know all about it.
3.
THE SCENE OF THE CRIME
H e woke up in the Tombs, but he had no sense of being in jail. No, at first it rather seemed as if he’d died and gone to Versailles. He was lying in a soft bed, and the first thing he saw was a wheeled metal bathtub full of steaming water. His head was heavy. His eyes burned, and so did his lungs. He took account of his limbs and digits and found them all there, but they hurt. His hands and feet were scabbed and blistery and had stuck in several places to the fine Egyptian sheeting. He wondered if this was a hospital. Then a strange, grinning little man materialized from a corner and helped him soak the blisters free in a basin of water from the tub.
“What is this place?” he asked when they were done.
“Why, the Hall of Justice, sir.”
He’d heard the name, but it didn’t make sense. “Sir?” he said. “You mean the Tombs?”
“The very same.” And then the fellow—less jailer than manservant—helped him stand and undress. He laid out a black woolen robe and directed the stableman’s attention to a decanter of port, a tumbler and a tub of anesthetic salve on a small side table. Then he disappeared. Sore and coughing and still half delirious, the stableman helped himself to several glasses of port while he soaked. It was spicy and delicious. He tried not to think, because when he did, he kept seeing burning horses, the flight of the tiger, the stagger and jerk, the blood steaming red against the ice. Eventually, when the water had cooled, he rose from the tub, smeared himself with the soothing cream, crawled back under the covers and fell deeply asleep.
He dreamed. He was in the dripping marble chambers of the Roman Baths at Baden-Baden, where his father had introduced him