Strike in the Shining City: Chapter II

In which our heroine receives sound exercise and is thoroughly mystified.

Ilon Harkley was a ginger-haired scoundrel.

Wherever he went, strikes and sedition were sure to follow. He snuck into communities – invariably those belonging to the working class – extolled the virtues of unionisation, pushed the workers to do so, distributed inflammatory pamphlets, and made merry hell for those who owned or managed the mines, the factories, the city services, etc. A city or township could shut down for weeks at a time as a result of his influence.

They’d recently run him out of Englin – ‘they’ being the watch and militia under the direction of the civil authorities – with rumours that he’d been shot in the escape. Rumours also said that he was headed east. Towards Lafontaine.

But weeks went by, more than enough time for Harkley to make the journey several times over, with not a whisper of pamphlets or unlawful gatherings. And as the citizenry decided not to oblige us by not committing any crimes and no one was about to give us the funds to hire more constables, well... We stopped being so diligent. We stopped checking every train, every cart, coming into the city. Which I suppose was what he was waiting for.

I was the one to discover him.

It’d been a long day. I’d been backing up Inspector Horace as he made his inquiries about the suspicious death of a brothel owner, drussed up in my uniform in the stifling heat brought by the Chinook, sweating and aching in my feet. To switch out for my civvies at the watch house at the end of the shift was a special sort of gratifying – taking so much pleasure from walking in the night air with rolled up shirtsleeves had to be breaking a law somewhere.

I’d even let my hair down. It was that sort of night.

But I stopped when I reached the corner of Lark and Hammersmith.

Outwardly, there was nothing that special about that intersection. Just a selection of shops and groceries, with flats to fill out the edges. The people living and working there went about their business as normal. The crime rate wasn’t unusual in either direction. The neighbourhood wasn't poor nor rich.

Here’s the thing: this was the exact geographic centre of Lafontaine, a fact easily checked by the large, detailed, and crisp map hanging in the watch house’s lobby. And for ten minutes after ten, every night, not one body could be seen on the streets. Except for me. It was on my route home, see, so I’d plenty of chances to see the pattern.

Plenty of chances to remember my duty, too.

I reached the corner at just the right time. Men, women, children, entirely naturally, just found that their business took them indoors or away and decided to let the cobbles cool. Ten o’clock sharp, the street cleared completely. I hunkered by bakery and took out my pocket watch.

But wait. Someone still walked outside!

Wearing the traditional hood of a master chemist and a long grey jacket, goggles on his brow, he walked with a self-conscious confidence. Hard to see his features clearly, given the light and the hood, but he was tall, lanky, and there was something wrong with his arm.

Rumours did say that Harkley got shot in the arm.

“Nice night for a walk, isn’t it?” I called out, waving at him.

“Too true, too true,” he said, not quite turning his face to me. “Is it usually this quiet?”

I shook my head. “Not so. Come here and wait. You’ll see.”

So he did. He settled in beside me, a small shaft of light from the bakery’s shuttered windows falling on his shoulders. He tried to speak a couple of times, but I shushed him. We stood and waited. And as the second hand made its final path along the circumference and the minute hand pushed to the ‘II’...

A door opened. Another. Another. People wandered off and around, naturally, and without any sense that anything odd occurred.

Then the man finally met my gaze, eyes wide. I grinned in triumph. I’d finally had a chance to prove my observation to someone else. And I’d finally seen his face up close. Oh, he was Harkley, all right. Those freckles were unmistakeable. Hell, the eyes!

“How on earth...” But he spotted my free hand moving – to bring out the cuffs, see – and the bastard broke out in a run.

“Godsdamnit!” I swore, tying the sleeves of my uniform jacket around my waist as my legs pumped after him. The chase began.

And, oh, could that scoundrel run.

Down Hammersmith we ran, dodging those with genuine business and the occasional drunk alike, but we didn’t stay there long. Two blocks, turn. Three blocks, turn. So on and so on. Ah, but you know what the great thing is about chasing someone who’s unfamiliar with the city? He doesn’t know where the hell he’s going.

Do you know that the maddening thing is? That makes him utterly unpredictable.

Suddenly, being seen by the public was no longer anathema to him. He pulled down his hood and called out cheerfully to passersby, waving, giving out compliments like he was a charity. They stood clear. Not because they didn’t wish to interfere, I gathered, but because they were baffled. Did they recognise him? Probably not, at that speed.

He pivoted on his heel, dashing down an alleyway and leaping over a wooden fence with frustrating grace. I managed it myself. I smacked my shin on the way, but I managed it. Only to find myself faced with a chicken coop, and flying feathers as Harkley wreaked merry turmoil within.

Chickens! If I didn’t know better, I’d think the nickelodeon producers of years to come owed me royalties. I narrowly avoided taking one in the face, but kept moving so that the feathered ones wouldn’t avenge themselves on my ankles. Out through to the other side, up over the fence! Dodge the gardens, leap, oh look, another alley. And the back door to a pub.

I tell you, that poor cook did not deserve us interrupting his rhythm like that. Or toppling his pot of soup.

Nor did the bartender deserve us bursting out behind him before scaling the bar and spilling half a dozen of innocent pints. There were so many curses laid upon us then that I wonder if every bad thing that’s happened to me since then wasn’t due to the forces of justice summoned by that red-faced bartender.

Here is where bystanders finally caught wise and tried to block him. Or us, let’s face it. Before, the chase was just inexplicable to their brethren, but damnit, the beer that’d been wasted! Lesser souls died for lesser offenses.

A woman with massive biceps and a leather apron with a worrying smell made a grab for my neck, her dirty fingernails scraping my neck as I dodged. Another fist, a man’s fist, came at me from side my body was leaning. I twisted back in response and tripped onto my ass.

My assailants’ hands reached for my shirt. I spiralled about, barely missing them, and managed to trip them over in turn with my own legs. Victory! I shimmied away, pushing myself up as I heard a fight break out between the two of them behind me.

I hammered my way through the rest of the crowd, reaching the door shortly behind Harkley, but not shortly enough. Whatever. I kept the chase up. And up. And up. Even I, an old hat at this, wanted a chance to take a breather.

But first, there were more barrels and pedestrians and carts to dodge around, and piles of horse apples to step in to hilarious effect.

It was that sort of a chase.

~

But it came full circle, eventually.

We were back on Lark and Hammersmith. His chest moved hugely in and out, his bad arm close to his side. I inched towards him, expecting him to bolt at any moment. And the bastard looked down. Again.

A bloody open manhole lay just beside him and without the slightest hesitation, he jumped in. “Idiot!” I yelled, clambering in after him. “Does he want to break his legs?” Although that didn’t stop me from leaping the last few feet myself.

I landed on the stones with a thud. But Harkley just stood there, back towards me. I reached out to him, only to stop when I saw where we were.

It wasn’t the sewers.

We were in a room, a large one, perfectly round with four doors placed in the four cardinal directions. It was illuminated by a pale blue light, the source of which I couldn’t see no matter where I turned. No stench, either. It smelled sterile.

Of course, when you’re in a large, mysterious room with four doors, you must absolutely try to open them. I don’t care how many years have passed – I know I’d do the same thing now as then. Metal doors, too, with knobs in their precise middle, keyholes to the right, with no other embellishment.

But they were all locked. But they had to open somehow. Hmmm.

So distracted I was, that I didn’t even register Harkley’s boots finding purchase on the ladder steps and moving up, up, away. Only after I exhausted the then-available methods of defeating the locks – forcing the door, picking the lock, knocking – did I notice he was gone.

I cursed, mightily. I could’ve sworn that the air tinged bluer for the briefest moment in time.

~

Defeated, I clambered back up to the surface, got my bearings, and turned to home. What would I tell Captain Copeler tomorrow? What should I tell? And who moved that wretched manhole cover? Should I salute or throttle them? The downing of a pint in a pub – the very pub where I had that talk with Lark, as it happens – didn’t offer up any additional wisdom. Nor did the second. All my mind could do was berate my body for not bothering to check under the intersection beforehand.

My course resumed.

~

Two men sat at the kitchen table, illuminated by oil lamp.

One of them was my husband, Frederick. The very image of the gentleman scholar he appeared, which was good, because that’s what he was. Neatly pressed trousers, waistcoat and shirt, buttoned up to the last button, topped with a tweed jacket with patches on the elbow. (Madness, in that weather.) Neatly parted black hair with the faintest smidgen of wave. Neatly groomed moustache, coming up to curls at its points. I loved that moustache. But then, I also loved cheap beer and patriotism in my youth.

A black bow completed the outfit, neatly tied. Honestly, everything about him was neat.

The second was Ilon Harkley. Hood and goggles gone, revealing a shock of red hair, grey jacket draped on the back of the chair. His remaining clothes still had the dust of the road on them, not to mention the sweat of the run. There were the freckles, there were the mad brown eyes, there was the rest of the face – frankly, a rather average one. I don’t think he could’ve got anyone to follow him were the eyes blue or green – they’d be too spooked.

They passed a lighted marijuana joint back and forth, taking long, relaxed puffs in turn. The scene looked so positively serene that I longed to ruin it with damage and noise – but we lived on the first floor of a three floor house. There was no way the ‘neighbours’ wouldn’t hear.

“You boys having fun?” I asked as I moved into the light of the kitchen, hands very much on hips.

“Oh!” said Harkley. “She’s the one who chased me.”

Frederick smiled, sweetly. “So we can save the trouble of introductions then?”

“Hard to catch a name, when you’re outrunning a madwoman with handcuffs. I think you’d better give them.”

He gestured to me with a flourish. “This is my handsome wife, Jane Calvin. Jane, this is Ilon Harkley. You may have heard of him.”

Harkley presented the joint to me. “Please to make your acquaintance. Want a puff?”

What else could I do but take him up on it? Think of the neighbours!