The Night of the Well of Fire A Wild, Wild West tale by Roniyah Gabrielle Caitrin Bhaer
[from Sistema Sombrio… by Pablo Neruda]
Así pues, como un vigía tornado insensible y ciego,
incrédulo y condenado a un doloroso acecho,
frente a la pared en que cada día del tiempo se une,
mis rostros diferentes se arriman y encadenan como grandes flores
pálidas y pesadas tenazmente substituidas y difuntas.
So that's how, like a lookout gone blind and senseless,
incredulous and condemned to a painful watch,
facing the wall where each day's time congeals,
my different faces gather and are bound in chains
like large, heavy, faded flowers
stubbornly temporary, dead already.
Author's Notes:
I first wrote The Night of the Blind Beggar which precedes the action of TNOT Well of Fire in 1979-80, and sent it to a fanzine of sorts, being published by the Clarion Writing Workshop at that time "housed' at Michigan State University. I checked last year and found that Clarion has moved to a new home at University of California at San Diego. Theirs is a wonderful program, encouraging writers or Science Fiction and Fantasy, including, luckily for me, writers of fanfiction, too. In any case, I was greatly honored to have TNOT Blind Beggar accepted by Clarion that year. And a wonderful artist named Signe Landon did some spectacular artwork for it, too. That story and that artwork was republished later, in 'spies in the Old West #2", still available from Live Oak Manor Press, Gail M. Paradis, 237 Simmonsville Avenue, Johnston, Rhode Island, 02919-5823. Blind Beggar is also online at . And Well of Fire will be posted there, after the New Year.
Now, "warnings' for the kindly reader:
ONE
TNOT Well of Fire and its prequel may need to be considered as Alternative Universe Wild, Wild West fanfiction, for several changes in back story and several inventions and other elements of creative license are to be found in these pages. First of all, you may see the suggestion of some sort of psychic abilities or connections between the good guys here, and that was not seen or heard on screen in W3. Secondly, Jim, Artie and their partners all know and use what we call today "American Sign Language or Ameslan'. Again this was not seen on the show.
In a substantial shift away from W3 "canon', this version of James T West was born in 1840, not 1842. Those two years give him the chance to be a West Point graduate, just when the Civil War was underway. Otherwise, he'd still be in school somewhere… nope, doesn't work for me. So, my version of James West's life has him attending and graduating from West Point, as one of the members of the May, 1861 class. And I've given Jim a backstory in which he actually grew up in northern Virginia, with a large, extended family near Norfolk. This gives Jim the choice of fighting for the Union or the Confederacy from a very personal standpoint, and of course he stays loyal to the Union. And besides, this means Doctor Loveless, seen here as Miguel de Cervantes ACTUALLY got some information on our hero WRONG. LOL
This backstory also gives Jim three of his four grandparents as first generation immigrants to this country, his father's parents from Wales, his mother's father from Ireland, that being the case, my version of the character James T West speaks Irish Gaelic learned from his maternal grandfather Jaimey Randolph, as well as Welsh and North American Spanish, learned from his paternal grandmother, Meredydd Jennet Howlys West, who settled with her husband Daffyd Arthur West near San Antonio, Texas. And Jim speaks the Quebecois French he learned from Jacques D'eglisier, and some of the Yiddish he learned from other agent-friends. The fact that Jim's portrayer, Robert Conrad is himself multilingual speaking French and Spanish with native fluency, as well as German, only goes to support that capacity in his alter ego.
On a different character note, I've given Jeremy Pike an M.D. There were scenes that needed more than one doctor around and others that needed our hero to feel over-doctored. So, since there was nothing in canon about Jeremy's education prior to the War and the Secret Service, we now have Jeremy Tobias Pike, MD. J
And lastly, I've given Artemus Gordon a backstory of growing up in San Francisco as Adam Gorniak, the son of a chemist and a violinist who immigrated from Poland. Ross Martin, of course, was born in Grodek, Poland, and came as an infant with his parents to live and grow up in New York City's famous lower east side. So this is in a certain way a shout out to that gifted actor's heritage. 'Artemus Gordon' then, is a stage name the character later adopted, in my "alternative W3 Universe". This backstory gives a lot of support to Artie's scientific and musical genius that being a working actor would not.
Giving 'Artie' that Eastern European background led me to add another note to my backstory, which again is only my opinion as expressed in my own W3 stories. And it's a more personal one. I chose to make Artie and his parents Jewish. In my opinion it adds color and dimension to the character, rather than detracting them. It also allows me to paint some of that culture and very, very small part of that religion into these stories. Being Jewish myself, it's an added means of self expression, never meant to detract from anyone else's view of Artemus Gordon.
To say that Artemus Gordon is a linguistic genius is a gross understatement, and another reason for him to grow up in San Francisco, which has always been a polyglot city and a goal for immigrants coming across the Isthmus of Panama, across the western plains, or around Cape Horn. So it is very likely that Artie speaks at least a dozen languages, some of which we heard on the show and some we did not. My version of the character like his portrayer Ross Martin speaks and or reads Polish, German, Yiddish, Russian, French, Spanish, and Italian. To which just to cover what we saw and heard on the show we'd have to add Farsi/Persian, Arabic, Mandarin, Aramaic, Japanese,Syriac, Hawaiian, Hebrew, and, Dutch, Portugese, Sioux, and a number of other AmerIndian lauguages and dialects.
TWO
Okay, this story and Blind Beggar should both probably come with "high angst warnings'. The guys are really put throught the mill in both. But Imho, neither story would carry a 'rating" higher than PG-13 That being said,. Well of Fire deals in detail with painful events from Jim's childhood that were discussed in general in Blind Beggar. Those details are core elements of the plot and of what our hero-agents have to overcome.
Disclaimer:
I don't own rights of any kind to the characters or storylines of the classic series The Wild, Wild, West, and that's a darned shame. James T West, Artemus Gordon, Colonel Richmond, Jeremy Pike, Frank Harper and "Miguelito" Loveless do not belong to me. Dang it anyway. Those rights belong to the late Michael Garrison's estate, to Leonard Katzman, Bruce Lansbury, the other producers of W3 and possibly still to the Columbia Broadcasting System [CBS]. No copyright infringement or profit taking of any kind is intended by this work of fiction. So please, don't sue me, it would be a huge waste of attorney-billing hours.
On the other hand; Jacques D'eglisier, Thomas Macquillan, Stephen Arthur West, Liesl Branoch, Stephan Aynsley, Jean Stuart, Jimmy Randolph, Joanna Randolph, Ori Hoynes and the younger team members, as well as Gideon Remiel Boudin, Saul Lawson, Aubrey Lanier, Ezra Smith and Percy Mahann, as well as their supernumeraries herein, are my thought-children. So I will ask the gentle reader to ask their 'mother" [me] before inviting them to play in your sandbox [ fanfiction ] thanx.
This story would simply not be in pixels, much less finished if not for the generous advice and help of some very special fellow W3 fans so I must thank them here or be terribly remiss: Sambev, Pet, Apple and Qohart, you're absolutely the best of readers and the most excellent of friends. Merci, mille fois que merci, mes bon amis!
This story is dedicated to three gifted actors, [in alphabetical order] Michael Dunn, Robert Conrad and Ross Martin who, with their incredible creative talents of contributed so very much to the series which inspired this story; Michael Dunn, Robert Conrad and Ross Martin. It is my thank you to them all for the fun, the fantasy and the terrific 'ride" they gave so many others and me, by letting us come onboard the Wanderer, and share their adventures.
Sadly, Michael Dunn and Ross Martin are no longer with us, so I can't thank them in person, now. Nevertheless I want to say that W3 would never have been the marvelous show it was, without both of them and their boundless talents. What they shared with all of us was manifestly their great passion for acting, for characters, and for story-telling on a grand scale. We were and we still are very lucky to have shared the world with them. And if the opportunity arose I would want to say this to Robert Conrad, thanks so very much for bringing James T. West so vividly to life, and for all of your other incomparable work. That is a tremendous gift of yourself, which we can never repay.
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Synopsis: The Night of the Blind Beggar [ prequel to The Night of the Well of Fire ]
After the election of Ulysses Grant to his first term as President:
Former Confederate soldiers, enlisted men and junior officers now indigent and living in and around Washington, DC are being found dead: 11 are found with their throats cut, 23 others are found violently killed, but by other means, confusing the connection to the 11, during the same period; and another 27 are eventually found in a mass grave - giving a total of 61 men murdered as part of what will become known as 'the Courier Conspiracy'
James Richmond, Director of the Secret Service and his agents are called in on this case when several of the murdered men's families, raise the issue with their connections in the District of Washington, and the Grant Administration realizes it doesn't exactly look good for the new President to ignore the murders of former Confederates. Richmond puts his top team of agents on this case, the team led by Thomas Macquillan, and consisting of Frank Harper, Jeremy Pike, Jacques D'eglisier, Ori Hoynes, Jim West and Artemus Gordon. A top-flight analyst team led by Rhodes Scholar PhD, Danielle Hoffner backs up this team.
On word from another "informant' [a plant by the killers] Artemus Gordon rides into the countryside between Washington and Arlington, and finds a friend and informant, Shimon Danielson, from Athens, Georgia there, brutally murdered. Not only has Shimon been murdered, but his murderers have gone to the extreme of leaving a defaming, Anti-Semitic placard with his body. Outraged and furious, Artemus decides to go after the killers in the guise of another former 'down on his luck" Confederate.
According to the agents newest security procedures, set up by Macquillan, Artie would usually take Jim West along to the party as his backup. But, Jim is home in Norfolk, VA, because his maternal grandmother, Jean Randolph, who raised him, is dying. So, as he'd done many times before, but rarely in such a rage, Artie goes out alone. And that's exactly what the killers want. They abduct Artie's ex-Reb street beggar and put him through the mill. Artie sends one message back to the team, and then vanishes for nine days.
Getting word of Artie's disappearance while at his grandmother's funeral, Jim rushes back to Washington; and joins the search for the actor agent. Jim and Ori Hoynes, Artie's newest intern, from San Antonio by way of Dublin, find Artie beaten half to death in a vacant lot in Baltimore. And now Jim is just as enraged as Artie was, and insists he take over the "costume drill' and go out as a blind beggar under the cover name of an old acquaintance, Sergeant Travis Madsen from Norfolk, who was reported dead after the Crater.
Against the advice of all his partners, Jim does exactly that and gets nabbed by the bad guys. Jim vanishes in his turn and does not surface, except, it seems to send a few telegrams. While in Aynsley and Boudin's hands again, Jim is given the fullest extent of Aynsley's further developments in patterning. He emerges; or rather another disasociative persona re-emerges, called Courier. And Courier, to all intents and purposes, and to all appearances, is the assassin Aynsley and Boudin have been seeking since the middle of the War. Jim/Courier, does not reappear till September, in Baltimore, meeting Artie there.
Courier/Jim meets with Artie and with Grant. Jim stops Courier from assassinating the President. In the face of the man he knows and loves and reveres as a second father that is not possible to him. 19-year-old Liesl Branoch, Aynsley's deranged niece, is at the President's hotel, and makes her own attempt on Grant's life. The revolver she carries chain-fires and kills her, blinding Jim. Boudin, who secretly brought Liesl to Baltimore from her uncle's house waits behind the hotel for either or both of his would be assassins to emerge. When the blinded child-brother-self Torry Littlest appears, Boudin takes him to a dumping ground he owns otherwise known as the Baltimore State Asylum. Torry and his brothers remain hidden there, committed under a false name, for most of the next year.
After the team as a whole and Jim's cousins search on every point of the compass, for over a year, Artemus Gordon and Mac Macquillan find Jim West committed under the name Jimathan North West in the Baltimore State Asylum. But in fact, the person/s they find are Jim's first born but superficially youngest brothers, the Torrys. They have a number of attributes and a number of disabilities. All of these 'l Company brothers, or Littlers are blind, because Jim' Oldest Torry's eye injuries were only indifferently treated. Some of them do not know or do not remember Jim's friends and partners. Most of them believe their Poppa is still alive, but got very angry and left them there. All of them believe they must not leave the asylum, as Boudin, in the role of their Poppa, ordered them to wait for his return, if he ever decided to come back there for them at all. The other brother selves begin to emerge as well, and they are both angry and frightened, confusing the agent team badly. Jim himself is not heard from for some months after being found.
Jim West is amnesiac, in fact pretty much mute and nearly catatonic, and he's been not only neglected here but also abused not only by Boudin but by his hired criminals who run the place. Another major stumbling block, early on after Jim is found, is that he doesn't respond, he can't respond to being called Jim, or James or even Jimmy as Mac sometimes does. Those names mean next to nothing to the Torrys. They were also left with several post hypnotic compulsions one of which was only to respond to those who called them Torry. That baby-name or family name of Jim's is one Artie, Mac and the team probably are aware of but have either forgotten or discounted. Now, frustrated and afraid for Jim, Mac and Jacques D'eglisier go to California to ask Miguel de Cervantes [aka Miguelito Loveless] to make good an oath he made some years back. The small doctor swore he would come to West's aid and save his life,when no one else could help him.
Jim, as it turns out took an opportunity to save Antoinette from drowning, [on an occasion similar to that in Murderous Spring] and Miguel was both chagrined and furious at this and swore he would repay the inMatchless obligation. Antoinette, it seems was carrying their child and the child was born healthy later… So a great debt is clearly still in arrears. Miguel, among other things, knows Jim's family name and tells it to Mac, who uses it to get the Torrys talking again. Further, Miguel agrees, on several conditions, to come east and commit himself to the asylum, thus being there constantly, in order to help the Torrys and their Oldest brother.
On top of this, it develops that Aynsley did pattern Artie, to either assassinate Courier on the day of Grant's assassination, or failing that, to disbelieve anything and everything that could conceivably be seen as defending Jim's/Courier's actions. Artie vehemently objects to LoveleSsbeing involved in any way with helping Jim recover. He's out voted. In fact, he's out of town when the rest of the team, including Richmond, and with Grant's approval, officially bring Miguel de Cervantes in on the case. Miguel, Jacques, Jeremy and when he understands his patterned reaction, Artemus all work along with their colleagues to help Jim recover. Miguel forms a strong rapport with the Torrys, and some amazing progress is made.
Miguel even suggests to Jim's partners that procedures he's invented or at least theorized could restore Jim's sight. But they also have the problem of negating the fraudulent commitment of Jim West as Jonathan North West. Mac Macquillan was given Jim's power of attorney by his late father. And that should help, but Boudin's employees at the asylum are continually placing obstacles in the way of that process. Artie, who's had the most trouble with Miguel's involvement, begins to see how much the small doctor cares for the Torrys and admits to a growing affection of his own for the 'schoolhouse full of little boys inside my best friend'.
END, NIGHT OF THE BLIND BEGGAR
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PROLOGUE Baltimore State Asylum, Baltimore MD, the 1870s
"Keep your voice down, if you please, sir! Indeed, you will keep your voice down, as befits a gentleman addressing his betters, while addressing me, at all times and under all circumstances, whether you please to do so or not, sir!" Gideon Alexander Remiel Boudin whispered harshly, glaring at his tall, long limbed, black haired cohort.
"Just as you say, sir." Henry Percy Meriwether Mahann answered, lowering his tone and nodding stiffly to the iron grey haired, grey eyed, powerfully built older man. " I am quite well aware, sir, of the proper way in which a gentleman treats his betters. I am also familiar, sir, with the correct manner with which a gentleman speaks to his peers, as opposed to the way one speaks to or otherwise treats a menial, sir!"
"As I am, Mr. Mahann, and as I do, whenever I find myself in the company of my equals, sir." Boudin replied, and hid a smile at the younger man's flash of temper. " Nor would I have thought it necessary to remind you, that you are nothing of the kind, being in my employ, as you are now these several years, my good sir."
Mahann's icy eyes almost twitched with anger now, as Boudin's amusement began to wane. "I am merely enduring temporarily reduced circumstances, my good sir!" Mahan answered. "That is an unfortunate fact following the losses my family suffered during the Conflict, of which you are quite well aware, Mr. Boudin, sir."
"Following the losses your family suffered?" Boudin echoed, laughing. He was furiously angry with Mahann just now, and that only made goading the hot tempered fool all the more pleasant.
"And just what family of yours would that be, Mr. Mahann? Do you have reference now to the Charleston street peddler who became your maternal grandfather, no doubt through no planning of his own? Or are you referring to the Richmond Cyprian who gave you life, doubtless with even less intention? Or perhaps you are in fact speaking of the Atlanta family you invented, during the Conflict, to conceal the truth about your ignoble forebears? In any case, it's something over nine years now, since our Glorious Cause, and our Noble Confederacy fell to the Unionist rampaging hordes of unschooled, unwashed, homicidal know-nothings, scrounged up from all the sewers and pits of Europe! That being so, one might have thought any gentleman worth his salt might have recovered his assets in good measure from the even the devastation of the damn Yankee juggernaut!"
"Mr. Boudin, I am not accustomed to being called a fraud, or a liar, sir." Mahann almost hissed in answer. "Nor have I ever needed to invent anything regarding my own deep-rooted Southron kinship and lineage! I would add that I do not, as a True-born Southron Gentleman, find it acceptable practice to stand in the presence of menials or in such a public venue as this and hear my entirely honorable forebears libeled, my good sir! Indeed, it seems clear if you truly had such a low, despicable opinion of my origins, and myself, you would never have sought to associate with me in the first place, sir!"
" Do you now claim that I sought your association, sir?" Boudin demanded, his pleasure in the exchange paling. "Well, I am more than willing to rid you of that notion, my man! However, I concur on one point you make and one only. This matter, and the others I have to discuss with you now, should never be bandied about on a public street. You were summoned here to meet with me in the administrator's office. Therefore you will accompany me , Mr. Mahann, and immediately, sir!"
Mahann stopped glaring at his supremely infuriating employer long enough to look at the gateway behind him. The two very tall, very elegantly tailored, very proper seeming gentlemen stood arguing, surrounded by a quartet of Boudin's armed bodyguards at the entrance to the Baltimore State Asylum, where they had been for nearly three quarters of an hour. The street, which was more of an unusually wide alleyway, full of noise, wagons, carts, draymen, and warehousemen, was close to the port in Lord Baltimore's City. The street, the buildings, and the people there all seemed on the verge of ruin. After more than a century and a quarter, this oldest part of one of the oldest towns in the middle states was simply showing its age, and a certain less than genteel neglect by its neighboring districts. The port itself pre-dated the city by twenty three years, and these alleys and paths, these crowding warehouses, taverns and auction platforms had been here almost as long and looked it.
The asylum complex had often been used, by many tradesmen and seamen coming into Baltimore harbor, to warehouse goods from around the globe. But for the past dozen years and a little more, it had been used exclusively by Boudin to warehouse men the Georgian took an especial aversion to. Thinking on that, just as he was about to argue whether or not he'd come here at Boudin's summons, Mahann felt chilled to his core. He swept a bow to the older man and held his tongue. Up a rickety staircase to the second floor, and then down one dank, dingy corridor after another, Mahann followed Boudin
There were only two saving graces to be found here today, he considered as he just barely kept up with Boudin's purposeful, long limbed strides. First, the chill, rainy winter weather of the past few days had forced the evacuation of the open courtyard that normally served as the main ward here. Second, the Administrator's office was placed in the farthest corner from the stench that even the worst winter downpours couldn't overcome. Four hundred and seventy three men, more than three times the number of inmates the complex originally held made up the inmate population there, now. During some periods of the asylum's operation, Mahann knew, even larger numbers of Gideon Boudin's vast number of suspected or known enemies had been "housed' in the complex the Georgian owned. What no one knew was the precise percentage of that inmate population who sickened, went mad, died, or disappeared within those crumbling walls. After more than a decade, the only certainty was that scores of men entered the asylum complex and never left again. Mahann knew, from the asylum records that Boudin's contract with local health officials provided substantial compensation, per capita for each inmate admitted here.
So it was hardly surprising to those who knew Boudin's business practices, as Mahann and a few others did, that this 'asylum' was never at a loss for empty cots or corners to fill. Without accounting for sieges of quartan fevers, diphtheria, influenza, pneumonia, and other diseases, the men brought here died in great enough numbers, and on such a regular basis to make room for more. And those who didn't die from those processes were those who starved, those who fought their keepers, or those who simply willed themselves to die there. The remaining inmates, were either so far gone in madness that they had to be isolated, or so profoundly lost in nightmares that nothing could reach them any longer.
"Mr. Mahann, are you going to attend this meeting, or stand there wool-gathering for the entire afternoon, sir?" Boudin demanded harshly. "Mr. Mahann, are you attending to me at all, sir? MR. MAHANN!" Boudin finally shouted.
Startled out of his thoughts, and nearly out of his wits by the dangerously sharp tone the Athens Georgia millionaire was using. Mahann swallowed hard. While he'd been wool gathering they'd reached the over-crowded, over furnished, Administrator's office. Looking inside, the Richmond native wasn't surprised to see the fatuous fool who presently ran the complex for Boudin, and his equally unctuous assistant already busily groveling. Mahann was surprised in the next instant, though, when he saw two more of Boudin's associates in business Ezra Smith and Saul Lawson, neither of whom had any respect for Mahann or any other 'true born Southron Gentleman', so far as he knew. Smith, a dark haired, light eyed, compactly built fellow was a well-known gun hand, and a paid enforcer for all of Boudin's operations. Lawson was nearly as tall as Mahann but dark-eyed, whip thin and sharp featured. He owned a reputation as a callous killer too, and as someone Boudin only sent on the most lethal assignments.
"Yes, of course, sir." Mahann answered, glancing at the unexpected pair. "Gentlemen, good afternoon, I had not expected to have the honor of your attendance, here today. And if I may ask …"
"You may not." Boudin answered, offering a taut, half smile. "Mr. Administrator, your instructions in preparation for this meeting were eminently simple. Have they been carried out in full, my good man?"
"Oh, why y-yes, y-yes of course, Sir!" the reed-thin, reedy voiced official agreed. " Oh, why y-yes, absolutely they have, Sir!"
"Then where are the files you were ordered to make available to myself and my cohort here, today?" Boudin demanded, thoroughly enjoying the way the pathetic dolt jumped and jittered at his every word.
" Why, they're…they're… Why they were … " the putative official sputtered in terror, and then turned to scowl in turn at his own subordinate.
"Well, where are those records, my man? What in the world have you managed to do with them, now?"
"Sir!" His assistant, a plump, over anxious young man shrilled." I placed all the files requested by Mr… by Mr… that is, by the older… "
"You do not even possibly have reference to myself, do you, young sir?" Boudin hissed, rounding on the recently promoted clerk. "You are not possibly trying to identify me with the request your superior received by wire from one of these gentlemen, here? You were surely not about to utter my name, were you, young man, when the possibility cannot even exist that you know who I am?"
Now, the assistant froze, trapped in Boudin's coldly outraged gaze. Every man there knew the Georgian obsessed over his privacy, his anonymity, in any and all business affairs. Not once in nearly forty years had he permitted his family name to be bruited about in any such dealings. Not once in fifty years time had he allowed his subordinates the free use of his name. He much preferred keeping to and pulling other's strings from the shadows. He relentlessly chose a depth of secrecy that kept other men in the limelight, while he played director off the world-stage. He had sent men to their deaths on the least inference that they'd damaged his utter concealment. Wholly terrified, the assistant barely managed to shake his head in answer. Then he shakily pointed to a small desk in a cubby just outside the crammed office.
Boudin barely glanced in the direction indicated. He was too busy enjoying the young man's evident terror. He was too occupied keeping his ice-grey eyes fixed on the assistant's profusely sweating, round face. He was far too engaged, just at the moment with contemplating how he would make his displeasure fully known. "You removed those files? You removed the very files these gentlemen requested, from this office, young sir?" Boudin demanded. "And on whose instructions could you possibly do any such thing?"
Once more the frightened assistant answered wordlessly, nodding to the first two questions and pointing to the Administrator in answer to the third. Boudin, and his surrogates here, Lawson, Smith and Mahann all turned to look at the Administrator, while that functionary stepped back further and further, until he stood against the row of bulging file drawers against one wall.
A feral smile spread from one of the visitor's faces to the next then, as Boudin's focus once more shifted to another target. "Explain yourself, my man." Boudin ordered the official, his tone cold enough to freeze a wildfire.
"Sir!" The Administrator shrilled, looking as if he'd be glad to jump out the small window behind him. "Sir, I …I was only thinking of your … of your comfort, sir. My, my office is in no state, no state at all to receive a gentleman of your standing. Why, one can hardly turn around in here without … causing an avalanche, sir. One can hardly take two steps without… without falling over …something. I would point out, my good sir that this meeting, according to the instructions I received, was to be held promptly at two of the clock, this afternoon, sir. Whereas it is now no more than three quarters of an hour past eleven in the morning. Unfortunately you have arrived to find preparations for this meeting still underway, sir. My … my own chair, sir was to be placed alongside my subordinate's desk, for you to take your ease and… more readily … umm… peruse the records… sir."
"Oh, indeed?" Boudin asked. "Well, sir, if it were not for matters that have nearly gone out of control here, I would no more set foot in this establishment than I would walk into any other such cesspool! And since this place has nearly gone to wrack and to ruin under your purported administration such that even my most trusted associates could not prevent imminent disaster, if I were you, sir, I would not now seek to cast blame elsewhere! Is it or is it not the fact of the matter that you have somehow allowed these premises to come under damn Yankee Federal investigation, sir? Is it, or is not the case that you have permitted agents of the damned to Perdition Unionist-Federal oligarchy in Washington's City to begin inspections here?"
"Is it, or is it not the plain, unalterable fact here that these investigators, these inspectors have made a raft of egregiously expensive and utterly superfluous changes here? Have you, or have you not almost constantly for nearly the past year now, applied to these gentlemen for increased funding? And have you not make those applications because you acquiesced to the point of sheer extravagance, with those damnable beaureaucrats bizarre and completely pointless demands as regards operations here? Have you or have you not spent extraordinary sums on this compound simply to appease their absurd ideas?"
"Have you not exhausted the perfectly reasonable financial constraints you have been given? Have you not exceeded, in just this past half year, all expenses and all accounts by which this institution has been quite efficiently run for over a decade? No, remain still, say nothing! I have no need of your verbalized response, my man! I have all the records I need ever see to tell me that you have become a squanderer, a spendthrift and a complete and utter wastrel, sir! And I would only add, you have done so with funds that never belonged to you, sir!"
"These gentlemen have with mind numbing repetition supplied you with funding you had no right to ask for! These gentlemen have forwarded monies to the accounts for this institution in excess of those required to run all other such facilities in the region! Yes, you have pointlessly plundered the accounts set up years ago for the smoothly economical operation of this place, sir! But that is not the worst of your transgressions, is it? No!"
"You have caused this establishment to come under suspicion, sir. You have, as I said, created a situation here that invited Federal inspection and investigation! And you have done far worse! Due to your lacksidaisical, slipshod, careless regime, you have allowed city, county, state and Federal officials to get their grasping hands on your records! This, now, today, this idea that confidential records of the inmates here should be stacked like cordwood in an open corridor, sir, is only one egregious example of your negligence! And in allowing open acceSsto just such records, my man, you made it not only possible, not only potential but absolutely real that the finances of this institution have been examined, have been audited! Do you have any idea what measures were in place, you pathetic cretin, to shield this establishment from just such a purportedly legal incursion?"
"Do you even know the consequences of your folly in this matter, sir? Well, be assured I am about to tell you: These gentlemen's legal representatives have received notice, which I would have thought you might have heard of, yourself. They have received notice of considerable arrears in the property taxes supposedly due on this complex! And with those notices came word that these grasping, greedy, avaricious officials have declared this asylum will be sold at the county's next tax auction! Well, did you or did you not, my man know that this very property is about to be stolen from me by means of this Federally sponsored legal fiction?"
"S-si-sir, I received precisely the same notice from the county assessor, nearly three months past." The Administrator gasped out, shaking like a willow. "But sir, I have reported that and all these matters to your … to these gentlemen, as they happened, over the past ten months and more! Sir, I communicated these problems to your … to at least one of these gentlemen here, sir. I made these things fully known, I do assure you! I acted in complete good faith as regards these issues. I recounted every single pertinent detail in the reports I sent, sir!"
"Reports you sent to at least one of these gentlemen, you say?" Boudin asked, with an icy smile. There was no room for doubt in his eyes or his voice that he already knew the answer to his next question. There was no doubt he'd been driving the floundering official towards just this point. "And to precisely which of these three gentlemen, my man, did you send your reports on these matters. Please do not prevaricate for even an instant, sir. I am all too well aware no such accounts of the situation ever came to me."
"N-n-no, sir! Nothing of the kind, sir!" The Administrator answered, terrified to have Boudin's ice-grey gaze still fixed on him. "I have always followed any instructions I received here to the letter, sir, to the very letter! And from the first instance of my… posting here, sir, my main instruction was never to send any communiqués whatever to you, sir, or to anyone other than whichever of yo… of these good gentlemen … ummm… communicated with me. And during my tenure here, my good sir, I have kept with the utmost strictneSsto that dictum. Therefore, in some instances I have sent my reports regularly to Mr. Lawson, and when I received new instructions from him, to Mr. Smith. And when I was once more given a change in instructions, that last time nearly a year past, sir, I began at once remitting all my reports, just as requested, on a monthly basis, to our Mr. Mahann."
"You most certainly did not, sir!" Mahann shouted, looking far more frightened than angry. "That is patently a falsehood, which I will have you retract on the instant!"
"Hey, now, Percy, are you callin' this poor fellow a liar?" Lawson asked, laughing harshly. "Because if so, you'd best think that over, you see first me and then Ezra here were getting all his reports, for the past four, five years, mebbee a little more. We got his reports and the ones our paid guards gave as well. Then, starting up, just about the time he said, just about eleven months back, two things changed, an'not for the better."
"First, these same Feds who've been making all the trouble here for more than a years time, made yet more trouble for us. Those damn Yankee bastards pushed an' prodded an' screamed bloody murder about the treatments being handed out to a lot of these here lunatics. An' they wouldn't quit till the guards we'd had on payroll longest all got canned! Seems like they decided to take a handful of these poor wretches on as their very own pet crazies! So there was purely nothin' to be done, nobody really t' blame, so it seemed, back then. An'we got th' word on that out to those who needed t' know it, Ez an' me, just as soon as the thing happened."
"An'after that, neither Ez nor me got any reports, or got any word of what was goin'on here, all these months. Why, t' find out what those Fed cops have been up to, we've had to send some of our own pet crazies inside here! An'come t' find out through them, with no small trouble, as they're pretty damn fuddled for real, that every single one of these danged changes here were goin' inta reports that never got t' me, and never once got t' Ezra either! No, sir, not word th' first came from this fellow or this office to either of us. That's when I figured the folks that might take the most hurt from all these troubles oughta hear about them. That's when Ez also figured where all the news outa here was goin'."
"An' that's when we put our heads together and made damn sure word of this got where it was needed. An' come t' find out, that one of the three of us, you, Percy, me an' ol' Ezra, had a secret nest-egg growin', only one of the three of us has money stashed in a dozen accounts in half a dozen banks 'round Baltimore, these days! Now, it ain't ol' Ezra who's got all that money, cause he ain't never held much with banks, you see. An' it surely ain't me who's got anything like a nest-egg, cause I never had any sort of use for a nest!"
"I have no such thing!" Mahann shrilled, panicking now as the Administrator and his clerk took their first real chance and left the office on the double-quick. Then he nearly fainted, as Smith locked the office door and Lawson shut the window behind him. There was no leaving here, now. There would be no exit for Henry Percy Mahann. They'd made that plain. "I… I may have some minimal, miniscule savings, but nothing akin to what you suggest, Saul. What could possibly make you think I was hoarding funds? What could possibly make you believe I was doing anything against … our mutual benefactor? Surely you can't think, Ezra, Saul, neither of you could begin to think me capable of such double-dealing! Why, you may as well suggest I'd connived with those ludicrous Federals! Why, you might as well say I've betrayed…" Mahann stopped, and froze where he stood, suddenly hearing what he had said.
" And have you? Have you betrayed our friendly little Society, Mr. Mahann?" Boudin asked so quietly his tone could have been merely curious. "Have you betrayed your oaths to The One, Henry Percy? Have you broken your most solemn vow never to betray me? Have you so far forgotten your vaunted honor, sir? Are you the traitor in our midst, these days?"
"Is, is that what you called me here to find out?" Mahann demanded, his voice cracking with the strain. "Is that the true reason you called this meeting, sir?"
" Meeting?" Boudin chuckled, noting how the Virginian hadn't answered his questions. 'did I call a meeting here? Did I send you any sort of summons? Did I communicate with you before I saw you downstairs, in any fashion, Henry Percy Meriwether?"
"N-no! Of course you didn't! You never put pen to paper to so much as write a laundry list, if you think it would imperil you for even a minute, Gideon Alexander Remiel!" Mahann cried out, brazenly using the Georgian's name. "You sent one of your usual third-party lackeys to me! You sent one of those boys who currently have your favor! I don't remember which one it was, just now. I can't tell them from one another, these days, sir, indeed, I wonder that you can!"
"But we are not here to discuss me or my …activities, sir." Boudin told him, scowling. "We are here, as you've surely guessed by now, to discuss and resolve the matter of you, and yours. And you have yet to answer my questions, sir. And I will have your answers, Mahann. I will have the truth of the matter from you. Nor can you blame myself or our two colleagues for coming to this point so early on, it was you, yourself, sir, who mentioned betrayal, here. So you will now answer me, on that question, fully and truthfully. Have you betrayed us all? Have you betrayed The Work we do, The Great Work we have labored at since the Conflict, sir? And in doing that, have you betrayed me, sir?"
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