Riley felt as though his caged heart had been set free.
“Ahem,” said Bob. “When you has finished with the far-off looks and the simpleton smiling, we should be doing a final run-through before I skedaddles.”
Riley affected a stern gaze. “You are cognizant of the fact that I am your boss, Master Winkle?”
Bob huffed and descended the three wooden steps to the backstage area. “I ain’t even cognizant of the meaning of the word cognizant.” He paused at the foot of the steps. “And Bob Winkle has a rule: if he don’t understand it, then sod it.”
Not a bad rule, thought Riley; then he followed his friend into the belly of the theater.
Our theater, he realized, and a jaunty spring introduced itself to his step. It was quite possible that Riley had never even formulated a sentence containing the word jaunty, not to mention contemplated becoming a living example of its definition.
Jaunty, thought Riley. Look at me, all jaunty and such. Jaunty Riley.
The stage was modest by the standards of London’s famous West End, barely fifteen feet from left to right, twenty if the wing nooks were added in; but Riley was proud of the old girl nonetheless, despite the fact that here he’d been punched, kicked, sliced, etherized, and on one occasion hung from a noose tied to a rafter.
He patted one of the proscenium arch’s pillars fondly. “That weren’t your fault, eh, girl? You were looking out for me.”
Still, the memory made Riley wince. “Tell me, Mr. Winkle, did I ever relate the story of how Garrick says to me one fine morning: ‘Riley,’ he says. ‘How’s about we re-create the hanging of Dick Turpin at York? And how’s about—’”
Bob groaned. “‘And how’s about you be Turpin?’ That worn-out tale. I heard that more times than I heard Great Tom a-bonging from St. Paul’s.”
This, Riley thought, would be the ideal time to check on Bob’s studies, while he was chock-full of his own hilariousness.
“Well then, Mr. Winkle, perhaps you would tell me something else? Seven somethings in fact.”
The cockiness gushed from Bob’s face, and had it been liquid, it would have filled his boots.
“Bob is busy,” he said. “Bob has duties.”
Riley tugged a slim leather-bound volume from his pants pocket. He had destroyed many of Garrick’s possessions, but this handwritten Guide to Magicks & Illusion was a priceless inheritance of daily practical use.
Also, it cheered Riley to think that Garrick’s ghost would shrivel with horror at the notion of his notebook’s being consulted by the one who had banished him from this earth.
“‘Chapter one,’” he read. “‘Magic of the theatrical kind, being very separate from actual conjuring, has seven basic elements.’ Seven, Robert Winkle. Trot them out, if you please.”
“Seven,” repeated Bob. “You said no testing today, guv, on account of the grand reopening.”
“No, I never did. Seven.”
“Seven.” Bob was currently Riley’s assistant, but his dearest wish was to twirl his own wand. However, to do this, he would have to step up his rote learning, and rote learning was not Bob’s strong suit. He put his fingers to his temples and stared out into the seats, the very picture of a mentalist.
“Well, misdirection is first. The bones in the cemetery know that much.”
“Misdirection,” said Riley. “We don’t want the punters peeping where we don’t want them peeping.”
“Then the ditch. Dumping what we doesn’t need the marks spying, like the Rams do with corpses at Caversham Lock.”
“Disposal,” corrected Riley. “We ain’t a criminal gang dealing in dead bodies, just doves and the like. Next?”
Bob chewed a thumbnail. “I know this, bossman. It’s the conceal, ain’t it?”
Riley rubbed his hands together until a rose sprouted from the fingertips. “The conceal, or the palm. Hiding an object in an apparently empty hand.”
Bob’s jaw dropped so far you might think Riley had pulled an elephant from a tulip bulb. “Well, I never seen such smooth finger work. You is wasted, guv. Up on the lawn in Leicester Square you should be, dipping for wallets.”
Riley was not about to be distracted by such brazen bootlicking, but he gave himself a moment to smile at his apprentice’s efforts nonetheless. “Four to go, Bob, regardless of where I should or should not be.”
Bob made a great show of checking an invisible pocket watch.
“Oh Lord, lookee at the time, how she flies,” he said. “And I too must fly if I’m to make the Brighton train.”
Bob buttoned his new jacket to the neck and pumped Riley’s hand.
“Break a leg, O Great Savano. I will cable you from the seaside.”
Riley knew that it was pointless to quiz Bob any further. In young Winkle’s head, he was already halfway to Brighton.
“Very well, Bob. Off with you. Cable as soon as you have news.”
“And that will be right soon, or my name ain’t Handsome Bob Winkle.”
Handsome Bob?
That was a new one.
And with no more delay, in case Riley would squeeze in another question, Bob was down the aisle and out the front door, leaving Riley alone in a place where he was determined to forge brand-new memories.
Riley’s preparations were interrupted by a clatter coming from the front of the house, tumbling down the center aisle, and mounting the stage itself. It was the stir of men entering the building and being none too genteel about it. These were men who cared not about such things as busted hinges or broken locks. It was in they wanted; and in they were coming, regardless of barriers.
Riley had initially smiled, thinking the Trips were back and famished, but his grin soured when he saw what was barreling down the aisle toward him.
“Rams,” he said. “With the king himself at the head of the bunch.”
Riley fought his instinct to run and hide. Instead he squared his shoulders, threw back the specially tailored folds of his black fur-trimmed velvet cloak, and bowed dramatically.
“Your Majesty,” he said, and confetti showered from the rafters, as though Otto Malarkey and his gang of thugs, bludgers, cads, nobblers, and all-around ne’er-do-wells had been expected.
The Battering Rams were London’s premier gang of organized criminals, a title that had previously belonged to the Hooligan Boys, a bunch who had forfeited any claim to the term organized when they dynamited the eastern wall of Newgate Prison while the majority of their imprisoned war council was leaning against the other side. It was said that the bluebottles were shoveling Hooligan parts for weeks. The Battering Rams were an altogether cannier bunch. No rowdy, gin-soaked men of the moment, these. No, the Rams were more your seasoned criminals, in it for the long haul. Veterans, most of them, who had been blooded in the Transvaal or Chin
a. They appreciated a tidy battle plan, and they were prepared to follow a man with a bit of flair. And in Otto Malarkey they had found a tactical genius who had flair flowing out of his beloved pirate boots.
Otto had never been a pirate as such, but he had smuggled taxables into Whitby under the famous smuggler clergyman Reverend John Pine, who had gifted Otto the boots from his deathbed. Malarkey learned the classics at Reverend Pine’s desk. He took strategy from Caesar and politicking from Cicero. For his renowned skill with the sword he had to wait till he was dumped into the island prison of Little Saltee, where he learned the gentleman’s art from a fellow inmate. When the Rams’ previous king, one of Otto’s brothers, perished in an ignoble wrestling match with a mountain gorilla, Otto inherited the Battering Rams’ horned crown. He had steered the gang to realms of ill-gotten gains they could never have dreamed of under previous Ram kings. Lately, though, it had to be said, the power had gone a little to Otto’s head and his trademark flair had taken a turn for the flamboyant.
He was plowing his own fashion furrow and bringing quite a few of his hardened mates along with him.
So now, when Riley unfurled from his theatrical bow, he was greeted by a front row half full of snorting, bristling coves who sounded and smelled like the Battering Rams he knew so well. But they looked like dandies from some ancient royal court, resplendent in powdered wigs and rouged cheeks, and in their midst sat Otto Malarkey himself, the most powdered of the lot.