Beyond the Rails 3: Slayer of Darkness

Chapter 16

Kisumu Thursday morning

          Mutala had found Smith easily enough in the long, narrow town along the inlet. He knew him from his ride on the Kestrel, of course, but he was in the company of one of the women Mutala had never seen. She was young, light-skinned, but not fully white. He knew Patience Hobbs, and this wasn’t her, so here was the first mystery to be solved.
          He had three of Reinhard’s men with him, and he set them to alternately going into the businesses that Smith and the woman entered shortly after they had gone in, and eavesdropping. It was hardly sophisticated, but neither were the men he had available, and he used them as best he could; he could hardly stand in a store pretending to shop behind a man who knew him quite well. Fortunately, he discovered that the low-level workers he had been provided had enough sense to remain unobtrusive and keep their ears open. Less fortunately, Smith and the woman gave away very little about themselves. All his watchers were able to glean was that they were still looking for Reinhard, and that the woman did most of the talking. Smith appeared to be a passive follower, no more, a bodyguard if even that.
          Was she police? A competitor? Seeking vengeance, perhaps? Who was she, and why was a simple airship crewman involving himself in her activities? Mr. Reinhard would want to know these things sooner rather than later, and he would be depending on Mutala to provide the answers. He mustn’t fail.

Kisumu 10:30 AM

          Jinx and Smith turned off the sidewalk through the double doors of Cavanaugh’s Outfitters, a shop with shelves, stands, and counters laden with hand tools and accessories for the mining trade. A few men, mostly Europeans, were in the shop, selecting equipment to place in the small carts the shop provided. They stepped to the counter where a burly man with curly red hair stood checking over a ledger.
          “Help you, folks?” he asked without looking up.
          “We’re looking for a friend,” Jinx said, “thought he might have come through here.”
          “What’s his name?”
          “Reinhard.”
          “First name?”
          Caught out, Jinx hesitated; she didn’t know Reinhard’s first name, just his initial.
          “Albert,” she said, “but he always goes by Reinhard.”
          “Never heard the name, lass. What’s he look like?”
          “That’s the easy bit. He wears a metal mask that covers the bottom half of his face and one eye.”
          She made the same hand motion the hotel clark in Nairobi had made.
          “Bloody odd. Why would a fellow do that?”
          “Burns,” she replied. “Have you seen him?”
          “No, a lad would remember a sight like that. Sorry.”
          “It’s all right,” she replied with a sigh. “if he’s in town, we'll find him.”
          “Shouldn’t be hard to spot,” the man said. “You gonna buy anything?”
          “Would have,” she said, “but you don’t have what we need.”
          With a wink, she turned and led Smith out of the shop.
          “Dammit,” she said when they were away from the door, “it’s like this ‘gentleman’ has disappeared from the face of the earth. I’m starting to wonder if he even came here.”
          “He had to,” Smith said, “unless he knew you were coming to Zanzibar, and left a fake telegram where he knew you’d find it.”
          “See now, David, you’re beginning to understand how Kraken thinks.”
          “You can’t be serious!”
          “No, but not by much. There’s a farrier up at the corner. Let’s try there.”
          “You think he needed horseshoes?”
          “No, but he needed something, he had to have, and if he was here, somebody saw him.”
          “Lead on, Milady.”

Kisumu 10:50 AM

          Mutala sat on a public bench outside a bar watching Smith and the strange woman work their way from shop to shop two blocks up the street. He waited for them to come out of Cavanaugh’s, where he knew that Gervais had left a contact, and when they entered the farrier’s shop across the next street, he rose and walked quickly to the Irishman’s shop. Stepping up to the counter, he laid a shilling in front of the big redhead.
          “I need a moment with a friend who is in your employ,” he said.
          Cavanaugh picked up the coin and looked at both sides of it.
          “I don't know...”
          Mutala laid a second shilling in front of him.
          “A moment is all.”
          Before the man could reply, Mutala walked to the back of the store where a young Indian, Ranjit by name, was sweeping the aisle.
          “Do you remember me?” Mutala asked.
          “You are the friend of Mr. Gervais,” Ranjit replied.
          “Good. Two people were just here, a man and a woman. Did you see them?”
          “Oh, yes. The woman, very pretty.”
          “The woman likely very dangerous,” Mutala countered. “They talked with Mr. Cavanaugh?”
          “Yes.”
          “And what did they say?”
          “They search for Mr. Reinhard. They say he wears a metal mask, and will be very easy to recognize because of this.”
          “What did Mr. Cavanaugh tell them?”
          “He knew no one like that.”
          “That’s good. Who did the talking?”
          “The woman.”
          “Did she say why she wanted Mr. Reinhard?”
          “She said he was her friend.”
          “That’s all?”
          “Yes, nothing more.”
          “All right, Ranjit, you’ve done well. Mr. Gervais has left town. I have taken his place, and we can continue the same arrangement if you wish.”
          Mutala slipped a shilling from his pocket and passed it to him.
          “You listen for things, and I’ll come by from time to time to pay you for your efforts. Is there a back door?”
          “Yes, sir, straight through the stockroom.”
          He indicated an open door behind him.
          Mutala slipped through the dim and dusty storage room and out into the back alley. A pair of toughs eyed him from up the alley, but being fine judges of victims, rose from their slouches and slinked off the other way. Mutala walked to the end away from the farrier shop, and stopped at the street to put it all together. These people were having no luck finding Reinhard, and wouldn’t, since it was likely that no one in town had seen him. Merely passengers, they had passed through the aerodrome without being scrutinized by the local officials, and it had been dark when Mutala made the carriage arrangements as Reinhard had climbed into the closed conveyance. He had ridden in the closed carriage to the meeting with Gervais, and had gone into the warehouse then back to the carriage with minimum exposure to prying eyes. Gervais’ people understood secrecy, so he needn’t be concerned with them.
          So, in all likelihood, no one in town was likely to have seen this mysterious man in the metal mask. All Reinhard would have to do would be to lay low at the big house until these fools became frustrated enough to try another town. He idly wondered what clue had led them here in the first place, whose carelessness, who should be punished, but that wouldn’t be a major factor as long as Mr. Reinhard stayed out of view until they gave up and left. He needed to get this information to Reinhard, and of course, to call off his assistants before this mysterious woman noticed them. That would be the work of a few moments, and then they would ride back to the house and all have a good laugh at these people’s frustration.
          Mr. Reinhard could continue planning for the next phase of the operation; Mutala would make it his business to uncover the identity of this woman, and who it was she worked for.

Kisumu 5:15 PM

          Hobbs and Darweshi, having started at the south end of town, had reached an open square with a singularly uninteresting fountain dribbling water at its center. Having seen Smith and Jinx approaching from the north, they sat down on one of the benches to wait for them. Their wait wasn’t long, as Jinx, tired and frustrated, made her way over as soon as she saw them.
          “You lot find out anything?” she asked without preamble.
          “Good evening to you, as well,” Hobbs replied. “We found out that your Mr. Reinhard has had no dealings with the southern end of town.”
          “Damn. The north, either. All right, it gets more industrial toward the southwest. We’ll need to divide the ground down there—”
          “That’s fine for you,” Hobbs interrupted. “We mortals have to eat on occasion, rest our legs, that sort of thing. Did you see any decent restaurants in your travels?”
          “Couple of blocks back,” Smith said. “Sign out front had a good variety on offer.”
          “Sounds good to me,” Hobbs said, standing up. “Lead on.”
          “Hang on,” Jinx said. “We have a job here.”
          “Yes,” Hobbs agreed, “that of keeping body and soul together. Anyone coming?”
          As Smith and Darweshi rose to follow her, Jinx’s body language expressed her irritation unmistakably.
          “Come on,” Hobbs said to her. “We can compare notes and maybe make some sense out of what we’ve found.”
          “What we haven’t found, you mean,” Jinx replied, but joined them, nonetheless.
          They were shortly installed at a table in the Feeding Pride, a large eatery in the middle of town, orders placed, and nothing to do but wait.
          “All right,” Hobbs said, “we’ve scoured this town from pillar to post. Why have we found no one who has seen this most recognizable of men? What are the logical reasons?”
          “The most obvious is that he was never here,” Smith said.
          “But Jinx found that telegram in his office,” she replied. “If he isn’t here, then that was a ruse, which means she, or someone, was expected to break in and find it, thus being sent off on a wild monkey chase.”
          “That makes no sense,” Jinx said. “There’s no possibility they could have expected that.”
          “Gotta agree,” Smith said. “That means he’s here somewhere. So, what other reason is there that no one has seen him?”
          “He is hiding,” Darweshi said. “He does not come out in public, or when he must, he finds a way to conceal his face so that he will not be remembered.”
          “Why?” Smith asked. “He doesn’t know anyone’s looking for him.”
          “He does now,” Hobbs replied. “We’ve put it all over town. We might as well have tacked up wanted posters.”
          “That explains his actions going forward, but why hide up ’til now?” Jinx asked. “He has business to conduct here. He should be out conducting it.”
          “Suppose the mask is part of a disguise,” Smith said, “and having arrived here, he’s abandoned it. “We're looking for a guy with a mask, who we’re never going to find, because nobody’s ever seen it.”
          “You’ve a nasty, devious mind, Mr. Smith,” Jinx told him. “If he’s removed the mask and changed the name he’s using, why, we don’t know what he looks like or even who to ask for. We could spend weeks just finding that basic information, weeks he can use to complete his plans. It suddenly becomes hopeless.”
          “We have to assume that that hasn’t happened,” Smith said.
          “Why?” Jinx asked. “It’s what I’d do, assuming I didn’t have any gross disfigurements. It quite simply defeats any form of pursuit.”
          “We don’t know that the mask is unnecessary,” he said. “If he really needs it, he’ll still be wearing it, and someone will see him in it. That was just speculation on my part.”
          “A very chilling bit of speculation,” Jinx allowed. “You should be a writer for the penny dreadfuls.”
          “Don’t give it another thought,” Smith said. “I’m sure he really needs the mask. Why would anyone wear that in this heat if they didn’t really need to?”
          “It isn’t all that hot, Mr. Smith,” Jinx pointed out.
          “No, not here, but he was presumably wearing it down in Zanzibar, which is a place I hear makes Mombasa look positively temperate.”
          “We don’t know that. We only heard about the mask in Nairobi.”
          “We didn’t ask until Nairobi. Why would he suddenly start there?”
          “To throw us off,” Jinx said, voice rising.
          “He didn’t know we were after him in Nairobi,” Smith retorted, voice climbing even louder.
          “Calm down,” Hobbs admonished them. “People are starting to stare. Until we have good evidence to the contrary, we should keep looking for the man in the mask.”
          “I will consult with Ifa,” Darweshi said calmly. “Perhaps he will choose to guide us.”
          “What?” Jinx asked, completely halted by this declaration.
          “The god Ifa knows all,” Darweshi said. “Sometimes he can be persuaded to share.”
          “We have no time for mysticism,” Jinx dismissed with her tone. “We have to find a dangerous man before he causes some irreversible trouble.”
          “We’re still making repairs from the time Darweshi consulted her weather gods,” Smith informed her. “Don’t be too quick to dismiss what you don’t understand.”
          “Amen,” Hobbs added solemnly.