"Good lord," Goran said as the two men stood outside the Red Lion pub, "I'm glad I changed." Goran was now dressed in a pair of black wool slacks, and he wore a double-breasted waistcoat made of patterned gold satin. He tipped back his black satin derby hat to get a better look at the black and gold trim of the pub's exterior. "This place looks way too fancy for the likes of me."
"It is too fancy for the likes of you—hell, it's too fancy for the likes of me, too." Joseph was similarly clad, although his waistcoat was single-breasted and high-necked, and made of red and black silk jacquard. He'd decided against his top hat, and most of his shoulder-length hair was pulled back with a black satin ribbon. He held up Henry's card. "But we've got Lord Henry Choughton's bona fide here," he waved the card, "and that will get us places we've never dreamed of going to."
"We never dreamed of being in Piccadilly, did we," Goran pointed out with a smile, "but here we are. And we did it without an earl's bonny fiddle."
"Bon-ah fie-dee, you idiot," Joseph said, drawing out the pronunciation. "It proves that we're his friends, and it's not just my say-so."
Goran shrugged. "We keep having shows like tonight's, mate, and they'll need a boney fidey from us."
Joseph laughed. "I like the way you think, Mister Stone," he said, and he pushed the door open and went inside, Goran close behind him.
The interior took his breath away. Gleaming, dark cherry wood panels ran along the lower half of the walls, while the upper half boasted ornately carved and etched mirrors set in carved wood frames. The glass of the dozens of mirrors caught the light from the lamps that hung from the patterned plaster ceiling and scattered it like diamonds on the parqueted floor.
"Crikey," he heard Goran murmur behind him, "it's beautiful."
"Can I help you, gentlemen?"
Joseph looked over to see the bartender eyeing them, and he marveled at the difference success and some money made; a few years ago he—and Goran—would have been tossed out within moments of setting foot in the pub, and now the bartender's scrutiny was more seeing them as new customers, and not undesirables. He handed the card to the man. "My friends, Lord Choughton and Doctor Sansom, are expecting us upstairs."
The man glanced at the card and handed it back. "Certainly, sir, if you'll both follow me I'll take you to them."
Joseph and Goran exchanged amused glances as they followed the man up the stairs and down a narrow, carpeted corridor.
The bartender opened the door at the end. "Lord Choughton, your friends are here."
"Thank you, Peter," Henry said. "We're ready for our meal now, and could you please bring up a few more bottles of your best red?"
Joseph pressed a few pence into the man's waiting palm, and then he and Goran went inside. This room was not nearly as overwhelming as the downstairs; it had the same rich wood paneling and patterned ceiling, but it lacked the distraction of all the mirrors, having instead a number of framed artworks on the wall. A large dining table dominated the room, and Henry and Gilbert were already seated at the far end. Henry waved them over.
"Come, sit," Henry said. "I ordered a few things for us to enjoy now, our supper will be up shortly."
They nibbled on an assortment of cheeses and smoked meats, and made small-talk while they waited for their meal.
"So, Goran, you have a very unusual name," Henry said. "'Stoenescu, is that Hungarian?"
"Very close, Lord Choughton," Goran said. "My people are Roma—Gypsies—from Bohemia, although I was born here, in England. I've been been very lucky, working with Joseph—many Rom are not treated very well, but since I work in the theater, people assume that my real name is my stage name, and that I am not really a Gypsy."
"Hiding in plain sight," Gilbert said from across the table. "Clever."
"It was Joseph's idea," Goran said. "We were trying to come up with our nicknames, because any magician of note has one, and Joseph picked 'Baffler of the Senses—"
Gilbert snorted.
"Hey now," Joseph said.
"—and we needed something like that for me, but different," Goran went on, ignoring the other two. "He said, 'You're really a Gypsy, let's make you 'The Gypsy Prince,' and you won't have to worry about your name.' He's right, though, 'Stoenescu' is too much, so we went with Stone."
The waitstaff showed up with their food, and to Joseph his plate looked like a small feast, laden with three different kinds of fish, a thick-cut chop, and a large steak. Another server set common bowls of potatoes, peas, and a platter piled high with bread on the table. He sneaked a glance at Goran, and chuckled at the amazed delight on his friend's face as he took in the bounty in front of him.
While they ate, Joseph told Henry and Gilbert some stories about their early shows, as well as their trip to Europe, and he managed to get Gilbert to talk about his medical training.
"So, you're both a physician and a surgeon?" he asked in between bites of his excellent steak.
"Yes," Gilbert said. "There aren't many of us yet—my classmates out of the University of Edinburgh are the first—but we are called 'General Practitioners' because we have a wider set of skills in treating patients. I can treat illnesses as a physician, but also injuries and other serious ailments that would normally have to be done by a surgeon. I originally went to Edinburgh thinking I would be a surgeon, but my father convinced me to try the new courses instead. I'm glad I did, it's far more fulfilling than spending my days in a hospital, up to my elbows in blood."
"Henry told me about your father," Joseph said. "I'm very sorry for your loss. He was a good man, I owe my life to him."
"You had a funny—" Gilbert stopped, wincing as if he'd been kicked, and then he said instead, "Thank you."
You had a funny way of thanking him. Joseph knew that what was Gilbert's intended response, and he also knew that Henry must have kicked him under the table.
"Do you still have the country house in Hertfordshire?" Joseph asked, "'River's End'?" He saw Henry shoot him a grateful glance.
Gilbert took a long drink of his wine. "Yes," he said, "I inherited both the townhouse on Arlington Street and River's End, as well as a small place in Edinburgh. Fortunately, my annuity takes care of the upkeep on all three properties, and the orchards at River's End keep it mostly self-supporting."
"The house in the country has orchards," Joseph told Goran, "apples, peaches, cherries—and in the summers Sir Corman would invite Henry and me to spend the summer holiday there. The three of us would go out every day and pick fruit with the workers, it was great fun." Although the better fun, in his opinion, was stealing kisses high up in the apple trees, and moving his mouth over Gilbert's naked body at night, tasting the summer sweat on his skin, and the bitter-sharp tang of his hard cock.
"Don't forget when we went out on the lake that one summer, and you fell in and convinced us you were drowning." Henry said, and he turned to Goran. "The water came up to our waists."
Goran giggled, and Joseph kicked him under the table.
"It was the best time in my life," Joseph said, in all seriousness. He met Gilbert's gaze. "I wouldn't trade that time for all the money in the world."
"I wouldn't either," Henry said, and he raised his glass. "To Sir Corman."
"To Sir Corman," Joseph repeated, and he touched his glass to Henry's, and then Gilbert's. He drained the glass, refilled it, and, emboldened by Gilbert's storm-cloud gaze, leaned back in his chair and said, "So, tell me about this 'matter' you're seeking help for."
Gilbert told them about the so-called 'spiritual surgeon,' the session that they'd attended, and the concerns of Janning and the Fellows. "The man is obviously faking everything," Gilbert said, "and not only is he raking in good money for his deceptions, but he is claiming to heal people with this bogus surgery. But for the life of me, I can't figure out how it's done, and in order to convince people of his fakery, I need to be able to show them how Lee is doing it."
Joseph sat forward in his chair, his curiosity piqued. "So he's claiming to remove tissue from a person's body, without cutting them?"
"I watched him do it, albeit from a good twenty some-odd feet away," Gilbert said, "and I examined the man who'd been operated on—there wasn't a mark on him. If we hadn't seen the procedure a half hour earlier, you would never know that Lee had put his hand in that man's body and removed something."
"Don't forget the ghosts, Joseph," Henry said.
Goran waved his hand. "That's easy," he said. "There's a handful of ways to make apparitions appear, we'd just need to figure out which one. And it's easy to make things look like they're floating in the air. That's why you need us, right? Because we know how to do all those tricks."
Gilbert nodded.
Goran looked over at Joseph, a frown furrowing his brow. "But I never heard of a trick like that surgery one."
"I haven't either," Joseph said, "but that doesn't mean it's not a trick. Everyone is always amazed the very first time a trick is performed, but usually, sooner or later, people learn how it's done. And then it's a question of losing the trick or changing it. Like the champagne last night," he said, reaching for one of the empty bottles of wine. "That trick's been done for two hundred years, in one form or another. People know it's not magic, and they know I've probably got a barrel of wine under the stage. What makes it work for us is that we make it fun, everyone gets a treat, and we're not trying to make people believe it's real."
"I liked that about your show," Gilbert said. "You were entertaining the audience, not trying to convince them that it was anything other than clever tricks."
Joseph blinked at the unexpected praise. "Thank you," he said. "We decided early on to not be serious about the 'magic.'
"Chicken guts," Goran said.
The three men gaped at him.
"What?" Joseph said. "Did you have too much to drink?"
Goran shook his head. "When I was a kid, my ma would pick dinner from the chickens that we kept in a pen near our caravan. She would kill it and gut it, and she would throw some bits to the dogs and then cook the rest. I asked her why we didn't eat that, too, and she told me it was marime, unclean, and we weren't to eat it. Later, when I came to London, I worked for a butcher for awhile, and I learned that those bits were the chicken's heart, liver and kidneys. The heart and kidneys are about this big," he pointed at the top part of his thumb, "and the liver is about this big," he held up his pointer and middle fingers, close together."
"What I saw was thumb-sized," Gilbert said, and Henry nodded in agreement.
"Easy enough to palm something that size," Joseph said. "And it would be easy to get an almost endless supply of chicken gizzards."He leaned back in the chair again, holding his glass of wine. "I'll admit, I'm curious. But I need to know something, Gilbert; why are you doing this? For Nigel Janning? For those high-society physicians who charge an obscene amount of money to just write a prescription to the chemist's? I remember Janning from when he would visit your father's house; he was a nasty piece of work, and I never understood how he got to be your father's friend. Don't know that I want to help him."
"I have been promised a Fellowship in the Royal College of Physicians if I can expose Lee as a fraud," Gilbert said. "Normally only physicians who have studied at Oxford or Cambridge can become a Fellow, but they are willing to make an exception if I am successful in this task."
Joseph had an idea of how Gilbert would benefit, but he wanted him to say it. "And what does being a Fellow do for you?
"It will give me sufficient status to be able to have my own practice, and will give me privileges in any hospital in London," Gilbert said. "And both of those things will enable me to leave Nigel Janning's employ."
Joseph decided to push a little harder. "So, are you asking me to help the Fellows, or are you asking me to help you?" He ignored Goran's puzzled look, and focused his gaze on Gilbert, watching the way Gilbert's jaw tightened, the way the little pulse jumped at his temple, and the way his eyes darkened to a lovely shade of amethyst.
After a moment, Gilbert met his gaze squarely and said, "I'm asking you to help me."
God, he's lovely when he's angry.
Joseph held out his hand. "Always happy to help a friend," he said, and this time the hesitation was shorter before Gilbert's hand clasped his.
"Thank you," Gilbert said, while Henry applauded.
Joseph drained his glass. "I think the best thing is for me and Goran to try and watch a session, and do a bit of espionage. I'll get in touch when we have some more information."
"Here's my card," Gilbert said, "it has my London address. I'll ask my aunt to contact you, since she knows almost everyone who's gotten taken in by this nonsense."
Joseph took it and tucked it into his waistcoat pocket, and then he stood, prompting the others to rise as well. "Henry, thank you for an excellent meal."
"Yes, thank you, Lord Choughton," Goran said.
Henry waved a hand, "Do call me Henry," he said, "we're co-conspirators now, are we not? Besides, you are Joseph's friend, which makes you my friend." He gestured to Gilbert. "And call him Gilbert, for it will annoy him and give Joseph and me some amusement."
"You're sounding dangerously like my aunt, Henry," Gilbert said, and he held out a hand to Goran. "I appreciate your help as well, Goran, and you may call me Gilbert."
After bidding their farewells, Joseph and Goran made their way downstairs and out to the street, where Joseph hailed a hansom cab to take him and Goran back to their rented rooms on Warwick Street.
"I like them," Goran declared, as the cab bounced its way along the narrow city streets. "It'll be fun, figuring out the tricks, and maybe we can even learn something that we can add to our show. I'm glad you decided to help, even though you gave your Gilbert a hard time about it."
"I gave him a hard time because he hates asking for help," Joseph said, "and he's not 'my Gilbert.'"
Goran's teeth flashed white in the semi-dark as he smiled. "Maybe he wants to be."