SCENE THIRTY EIGHT
the living space of the guest house at Singer's Mirandahl the same night and following morning.
Half an hour later most of the team was gathered in the Guest House, keeping their prisoner well away from the party that was just dying down. They were tired, they were ansty, and they were angry as hell. Because after his fright below stairs, Boudin clammed up tighter than any crustacean ever seen. He had nothing to say, in support or denial of anything he might have previously said. He asked for nothing but another dram or two of brandy, 'the Armagnac, if you please'. And he could not be moved from his stance of utter ignorance regarding their other questions, about Aynsley, about Liesl, about the Courier plot, or the false imprisonment of Jim West in a Baltimore madhouse. The team members huddled to discuss their next move, wondering if the one they'd planned would even turn a hair on Boudin's immaculately groomed head of thick stone grey hair. And then the Georgian surprised them all by gasping in evident terror and trying to escape them … or to escape something that really did frighten him.
Gideon, Gideon old friend. its not like you and not considerate at all to keep me waiting. We had an appointment over an hour ago, Gideon. But you chose instead to visit with James Randolph. And that seems to have accomplished nothing but your imminent incarceration. I am quite at a loss to understand you these days. And I am still waiting for you, Gideon, in the Realm of the Dove. Indeed I shall have to demand you attend me there, post haste. A booming, Viennese voice rolled through the room like thunder announcing a coming storm. Except that looking about, Boudin couldn't help noting that no one else remarked on the return of Aynsley's ghost!
"Stephan! Stephan, my very dear old friend." Boudin offered. "I've merely been temporarily detained here. I shall be with you immediately I am finally done with these Federal nincompoops. My word on that, Stephan! Only, will you be good enough to tell me where in that … realm I am to find you waiting for me?"
Waiting and watching for you, Gideon. Waiting and watching for you, just as I've long promised you I would. Aynsley's shade seemed to answer. But be not alarmed. If need be, I will be a good host and send someone to help you reach your proper destination. See to it you do not ignore or disrespect the personage I send for you, Gideon. That would be a lethal error on your part. One I would have no choice but to exact just recompense for, old friend.
Boudin turned ashen now and jumped off the chair he'd been carried to. Shaking badly he made for the open doorway and fell his full length on the thick carpets. Apparently he'd forgotten completely the wound to his leg. "Stephan, Stephan, please practice a bit of patience, won't you? I'm in some difficulty here, old friend! Stephan, Stephan!" The Georgian cried out, but this time he got no reply.
"Oh brother!" Artie suddenly exclaimed. " And I thought you were stubborn, Partner!"
"You don't think I'm… Artemus, what's that odd, scratching sound?" Jim demanded.
"That's our favorite King Spider over in the corner, trying to curl himself out of sight! He's practically crawling across the carpet, and throwing the odd glance back over his shoulder. But with that bum leg, thanks to Frank, he can't even try to sidle out of here the way he otherwise might." Artie replied, and gestured to Mairtin and Terry to prevent Boudin's 'flight'.
Jim waved to the younger agents to but Boudin on the chaise he'd abandoned for a favorite balloon chair. Then he turned towards where Boudin was busy protesting being cuffed to his new resting place at ankles and wrists.
"You truly shouldn't have done that, Remy. You shouldn't have even tried. You're only bein' restrained now because you've made two tries already t'night to get on out of here, when you know that's purely not gonna happen now. So now, you set there and don't move so much as one muscle so much as one inch. So, you just settle back, boy, and settle in." Jim said leaning back in the round topped chair, as he once more did a pitch perfect impression of Jimmy Randolph's voice.
"Jimmy? Jimmy, have you come back to see your old Remy? Jimmy, are you here? And does that mean we … we can leave? I don't much care for this … party, after all." Boudin called out, sounding thoroughly confused and exhauste by now.
"No, Remy, not yet. Not quite yet." Jim as his namesake answered. "We're expecting another group of friends who've come a long way, a very long way to see you, once more."
"A group of my friends, Jimmy? A group of my friends, coming here? Well, wherever are they and … when will they arrive and … Jimmy, I don't understand, who did you say these friends of mine are?"
'' Long lost friends, Remy, scores and dozens of them, all told. We're just now beginning to call them into the room, so just keep shut a while, if you possibly can. And when it's over, you can purely … rest, I suppose." Jim was tired too, and found himself shaking with frustration as Boudin seemed to be trying his not-all-there-routine again.
'' Jim, your blood pressure's higher than his, right now if he has any at all..'' Artemus warned. ''Take it back a peg or two. C'mon now, we're going to read him the roster, the one he helped write in blood himself!''
'' Alright 'm alright, Artemus But if everything we've already done hasn't gotten to him…" Jim sighed.
'' It just goes to show he's got nothing inside to be touched much less any kind of human heart. Okay, one more script revision: I'll call this roster, you go ahead and rest a minute. James, will you please? Because, if you don't, Jacques will come looking for MY hide, not yours''
''He purely will, won't he?.'' Jim chuckled.
''Mais certainment I will, mon enfant.'' Jacques agreed, joining them.
'' Alright, I give, Mon docteur d'ami. Go ahead, Artemus.'' the younger man agreed.
''Go ahead? Go ahead with exactly WHAT?'' Boudin abruptly asked.
''With this, Mr. Boudin.'' Artemus answered, holding out a sheaf of papers. '' These are the names of former Confederate soldiers, men who were murdered between the beginning of November, 1868, and the middle of December, 1869. And this list was not originated by anyone on this team. No, Mr. Boudin, this list I'm about to read off was kept with great exactitude by those who ran a torture chamber, and a death factory in an old house a quarter mile south of Baltimore on the Old Washington Road. I'm referring to Stephan Johannes Sebastian Aynsley, who as far as we know now, died four years back, when that house went up in flames, Reinhard-Peder Branoch who helped conceive the means of torture used on the men there, but who died at Vicksburg in June, 1863, Liesl Marguerite Amalie Branoch, who went mad when her family died in Atlanta, and who died herself on September 19th, 1870, and to you, Gideon Alexander Remiel Boudin. So, as you can readily see, you're the only survivor of that lethal band.
The total of soldiers you murdered in those thirteen months, stands at sixty one. Eleven were found in Washington and Baltimore's poorer districts, with their throats cut, as if to suggest they died in a brawl. Twenty three more of those former Confederates were found during the same period, shot or stabbed or beaten to death, some of them mutilated in ways too atrocious to describe. And another twenty seven Conferate veterans were discovered where they were dumped in a mass grave behind the burnt out remains of Aynsley's house and lab. That last group, when they were found, nearly a year on, still showed evidence of torture, of degredation and nightmarish abuse like the worst examples from Andersonville and Elmira Prisons, during the War.
Here are the names of those murdered men and boys:
Rafael Cooper, Paul Madison, Jimmy Madison, Andrew Pierce, Gabriel Pierce, Samuel Pierce, Benjy Cooper, Robby Munroe, Nathan Spencer, Alec Munroe, Julian Spencer, Benjamin Pierce, Louis Spencer, Richard Henry Morrissey, Zachary Taylor Lee, Toby Zimmer, Sammy Randolph, Charlie Randolph, Jed Munroe, Spencer Lee, Denny Pierce, Danny Pierce, Jake Harrison, Matthew Singer, Michael Torrance, Tad Alexander. Neddy Ashton, Timothy Stacy,Jack Ashford, Tom Harper, Jr.
Matt Deveraux, Tim Ashton, Joel Stacy, Jimmy Ashford, Lee Deveraux, Ben Harper, Nicholas Cooper, Danny Lawrence, Liam Tiernan, Lucas Powell, Sean Ryan Mcbain, Martin Cooper, Owen Williamson, Joel Paine, Peter Lowell, James Allan Stacey, Seth Elias, Noah Elias, Phillip McCullough, Rob McCullough, Jesse Mohler, Timothy Albright, Benjamin Rowan, Kyle Phillips, David Bryant, Albert Jensen, Peder Jorgensen, Eugene Corbett, Daniel Pedersen Morrissey, Christian Daniels, and last of all… my friend from Augusta, Shimon Danielson." Artie read.
And in a scene similar to another time and another roll call, as he read each name, a ragged, half starved, scarred, limping or otherwise maimed young man or boy entered the room and lined up at the center, standing, albeit wearily at attention, until every name was called. They were ashen and painfully thin, some were blinded, some missing an arm, a foot or an ear. They were all ages soldiers could be in their time, from nearly forty to nearly fourteen. All their faces bore a heart-rendingly similar expression, of being forever cut off from the hearts and lives they loved. And there was something ephemral to their appearance, as if every one in this band was only partly in the living world with those watching them now, and partly in another place entirely.
"What? What in hell have you… what are you trying to …" Gideon Boudin stammered and stumbled and nearly fell off the chaise, as he tried to pull back, to pull away from the figures who'd wordlessly 'answered' the roll. "You only just said all of them died! You only just said all of them were murdered … starting … five years ago! What… what exactly are you up to now, Actor? What game is this? I have no idea what you're talking about, nor who these scarecrows truly are. However I'm as aware as any logically thinking person that dead men do not walk, do not stand and certainly do not answer to their names any longer! They don't! They can't!"
"Try to calm down, Remy. You really should calm down, now." Jim insisted, dropping his characterization of Jimmy Randolph for now. "We're just trying to make a point here, one any logically thinking person could surely comprehend. I know that only makes it harder for you. But give it a go, just to please me. How about that?"
"Tor… Torry, dearest boy, you must… you simply must make them stop this appalling charade!" Boudin demanded, but without much strength behind his plea. "I have nothing to do … nothing at all to do with … any such ragamuffins as these! Clearly they've been culled from the streets and out of the almshouses of Raleigh to take up just this sort of macabre display. I am … I am not in any way, shape or form connected to whatever your associates seem to believe Stephan guilty of. I knew nothing of his odd theories or practices. I knew only that he was always in need of more funds for his beakers and bottles and vials, for his chambers and cubbies and … other odd devices…"
Jim sighed and shrugged, genuinely laughing now. "Alright. Alright, fellows, you can stand down now and go hit the chow line. Sari and Ani have one set up just in the next room over. You did really well, by the way, gentlemen. You did a grand job tonight. Companies, Dismissed!"
The soldiers started laughing and cheering, dropping their gear and their morose demeanor in an instant. "Thanks, Torry!" "That was grand fun!" "Yeah, that was a grand joke on him, warn't it?" They chorused on their way out the far door.
"Satisfied now, Remy?" Jim asked, turning back towards the Georgian. "We were, like I said, just trying to make a point. You know as well as I do that sixty one men and boys were murdered in thirteen months time while Stephan thought he was searching for a new Courier Candidate, and you were only waiting the chance to abduct me for that job! You know as well as I do that it was by the merest chance that Artemus Gordon wasn't on that roster as number sixty two! And you would have been just as well pleased to find him on that particular roll call, wouldn't you? Well, wouldn't you, Remy?"
" I am not in a court of law here. I am not properly arraigned or indicted. I am not legally sworn in or correctly charged with any crimes whatever." Boudin insisted. But he was still shaking after that last demonstration. The men and boys who'd lined up before him had such a ghostly demeanor, such an other worldly affect that he couldn't grasp what he'd seen at all. "I have done nothing criminally liable, ever in my long life. I am an officer of the court. Such behavior is totally outside my … my abilities or my wont."
"Nothing… criminally liable… ever?" Jim echoed. "Well, alright, if that's your story."
Gideon, this eternal prevarication, this ceaseless mendacity of yours serves nothing now and will not carry the Work forward by so much as a single step! The voice of Aynsley's ghost called out, but once more Boudin could see he was the only one to hear it. You are delaying the Work now, you and you alone. Delay it no longer than you possibly can, Gideon. Such matters as we have to resolve will not wait on your dalliance forever!
"Stephan! Stephan! I am not … Stephan, your patience is required in this situation. Your monumental patience, the kind you showed with so many … subjects, show to me a little longer!" Boudin cried out and once more found no answer forthcoming. Turning back to West, he found the younger man shaking his head as if to say the Georgian had finally come unhinged.
"Torry, Stephan was, as you may not know, an EXTREMELY SECRETIVE SOUL! Why, why he even wrote his journals and his letters using the most bizarre ciphers known to science. No one understood a syllable he put down, certainly not… that is, as far as I ever heard. Why, I never set foot in his rambling old domicile! Why, he'd never permit any one inside there, save his tragic niece, of course, and his… his patients, and some…some few … house maids, as far as I ever knew. I never knew what he did in that attic, no one truly did!"
Jim stood with his face in the direction of Boudin's abruptly whining voice and almost laughed. But he contained that urge and merely rolled his eyes towards the high ceiling of the parlour they'd taken over. "Remy, sometimes you… you're really… amazing to listen to, you know? You can make more things up out of whole cloth more easily than half the con men I've ever known. Seems to me you may have missed a real vocation there. But, on the other hand, they have a pretty tough union, don't they Artemus? They probably wouldn't let ol' Remy in the door."
"That's a safe bet, I'd say." Artie agreed. "Also, his memory seems to be failing him by leaps and bounds tonight. Didn't you tell me, some months ago that Boudin was up in Stephan's attic so often he had his own leather Windsor chair and pipe stand set aside that no one else dared even touch?"
"Sounds about right, yeah." Jim nodded. Remy, the point here isn't so much where you were or weren't. The point really is what you did or didn't do. And I'm only one witness to the latter, even more than to the former. And just because sixty one men died before they could testify against you, that doesn't mean my friends and I can't stage a very similar 'demonstration' to this one, in front of any Federal judge and jury you're gonna face.
Now I can't really see these fellows. But there won't be anything wrong with the eyesight of the people in that courtroom. Nothing at all. And some of the fellows these guys are standing in for actually were very bright. And a lot more of them than you might think, could read and write. So, although it may surprise you, some of the men you murdered or ordered murdered wrote letters to their surviving families before they up and disappeared. Artemus, why don't you page through your papers there and find just a sampling for Remy to hear?"
"Glad to, James m'boy. Glad to." Artie grinned coldly and pulled out the sheets he wanted. "We have at this point a total of twenty letters, four journals, and seven journal pages in the documented handwriting of the decedents in this case. Additionally we have nine more letters others in that group signed with their personal marks, once a literate friend took their words down. And the stories told in each of these documents are … heartbreakingly alike.
Each man wrote his kinfolk or friends with what he believed was his first good news in several years. Each man said he'd been contacted by a 'charitable and scientific organization' with operations in Baltimore, Frederick, Silver Spring and in Washington as well, an organizatioin calling itself The Society for Loyal Confederates and their Survivors. Each man said he'd been promised a warm, dry shelter for several months time, especially needful in the winter as you might guess. Each man was likewise promised decent food, hard liquor, medicine as needed, new boots, warm coats, and finally some cash if they would take part in a 'scientific study' meant to determine what could reasonably be done for the veteran population of the District and the general region there.
They wrote of hoping to be able to send some of their much needed cash earnings home. They wrote of hoping for some medical care, or assistance in finding long term work. They wrote that they expected at the least to be able to afford a flying trip home, when the 'study' was done. And as we now know without question, none of them were ever seen alive again, outside the walls of Stephan Aynsley's 'rambling old domecile'.
But there was no study done there. There was no genuine experimentation, there was no knowledge being gathered there. Instead they entered into a 'study' of how much useless cruelty, brutal depravation, bitter isolation from all forms of human contact and insane torment one already troubled mind and weary body could undergo. Instead they entered that attic laboratory, or the dungeon like cellars beneath the house and stables, only to be tortured like souls in hell, without benefit of clergy or any sort of relief, until they died.
And there was no real expectation of finding among those young men the assassin-automaton you, Mr. Boudin, still wanted to send against Ulysses Grant all the more as he was now President. Of course there wasn't, since you, Mr. Boudin already knew what Courier Candidate you would insist on using for your plot, none of those sixty one men were ever genuinely considered for that role. The late Professor Aynsley apparently believed he was testing for a Courier Candidate all that time. But you knew better already, Mr Boudin.
You knew already that the best Candidate, as you thought him, was still alive and in the District: You knew the man you were determined to place in that role, the man you were obssessed with turning into a walking weapon, a barely alive automaton was living and working in the District: James Torrance Kieran West. Which means all the suffering, all the terror and all the madness those men and boys went through, as bad or worse than anything they'd bravely faced during the War, and all their families' despair, went for nothing, nothing at all! That whole nightmare circus went for nothing until now, Mr. Boudin, when the records left by those sixty one will finally bring them justice at long last, bringing you either to a life long prison term, or a gallows' tree."
Gideon! Gideon Boudin! Gideon Alexander Remiel Boudin! Aynsley's ghost once more thundered out. You had me once more wade to my upper extremities in blood and horror, for nothing? You discarded, disallowed and disregarded every one of those former Southron heroes, so that you could bring West in as the only Courier you wanted from the start? Sixty one boys and men, we took in during that time: starvelings from the gutters, drunkards from the taverns, some half mad already, some half dead by that time, but all still as brave as they had been from First Manassas to Gettysburg and back down to Appomattox Courthouse!
You had my only family, Liesl Marguerite Amalie expose herself to the Work and to the means Reinhard-Peder and I invented for tormenting the living hearts and minds out of their owners for no cause whatever? I almost cannot believe it of you! Perhaps the most horrific part of all is that I can! And that it deprived my beloved sister's cherished only remaining child of both her sanity and her life? And why you have this lunatic passion for destroying orphans, Gideon I will never, never comprehend!
Boudin twisted madly on the chaise and struggled wildly against his bonds, his eyes fixed on a stern, dark eyed figure only he could see or hear.
"Stephan, that's not so, not so at all, old friend!" Boudin shrilled. "That's another of these damned Yankees damnable lies! They've been trying one antic or another all evening with me, as if something of this grave import was nothing more than a game of twenty questions liberally mixed with musical chairs! The girl was never to be a part of the matter at all, Stephan, never! The girl was, and you know this is true, because you said as much yourself, the girl was already unbalanced by the tragety of Atlanta and her family there!"
Abruptly, one of the cuffs on one of Boudin's ankles cracked, and then one on his left wrist broke, causing every agent in the room to groan, and mutter for one fraction of an instant about the Service' budget cuts. The Georgian leapt to his feet, but amazing them all again, only stood and held out his arms imploringly to his delusion of the Austrian scientist.
"Stephan, the girl was terribly ill before you ever brought her to Baltimore. You know that's the case. You know it, my dear old friend. She was always fragile, as I recall both you and Reinhard noting. She was often ill as a child, you told me that yourself! She was the delicate flower of young Southron womanhood, brutally crushed beneath the boot of a conqueror who boasted he would 'make Georgia howl'! What was there to do? What was I to do, Stephan? The girl was patently insane! Whatever was I to do?" Boudin asked, and then seemed to partly recall himself, only to look more frightened than before in the next instant.
Now every sighted person in the room could see the reason the Georgian had turned his gaze to the same doorway all those ragged 'Confederates' exited by. A broad shouldered male figure stood there, with a mane of coarse, grizzled hair that had once been midnight black, and deepset, clear, dark brown-hazel eyes that flashed fire. He wore a cashmere suit of fine European styling in a well known Scot's plaid blend, over a gleaming silk shirt, under a spotless linen duster. He bore around his neck a stethyscope, of recent European model, and carried a sheaf of documents and leather bound notebooks under his powerful left arm.
That was where his resemblance to Artemus' earlier 'audition' ended. This newcomer leaned heavily on a heavy metal crutch, propped under that same left arm. His right arm hung uselessly elbow bent, as if in an unseen sling, and his right hand was thickly scarred as only direct exposure to burning chemicals could scar flesh. His right leg was apparently not as damaged, but his left foot wore a leather boot with a thickly built up sole. And this man's face was etched with scars similar to Jim's, indicating they occurred in an explosion, but showing signs of better, earlier treatment.
"STEPHAN!" Gideon Boudin called out, his face as grey as the ash-colored silk gloves he favored. "Stephan, old friend, that is, I mean to say, My very dear Herr Professor Doctor Aynsley… I … had no… no idea… I had no … idea whatever that you might … even possibly have … have lived."
"SCHWEIGEN! SEIN DURCHAUS UND ABSOLUT STUMM, ALT BEKANNTER!" The figure addressed as Stephan Aynsley bellowed. " Ich wirst erzahlen Sie wenn ICH WUNSCH zu heraushoren mehr uber ihrer albern unerhort selbst-portion ansspruche! Ich habe menge verdachtig dieses anhalten, hochst wust verkehrt kann sein legte direkt am ihrer turstufe, Gideon, alt, bekannter. Aber nun jetzt sie haben alle aber beichtete zu Liesly's ermorden! Genug, ich stehen! Genug sie blutig reichte, blutig gewilt Architekt uber nichts al vernichtung! Ich wille aufhalten mein stummheit null langer!"
Gideon Boudin now emitted a sound somewhere between a frog's croak and a cartwheel's squealing. Then he swayed on his long legs and fell face down in the deep piled carpets, unconscious.
The whole group viewed this 'tableau' for another half a minute. Then Artie snapped his fingers like a maitre d', and sighed. "Will somebody please come over here and get this poor shlemil up off the Persian carpets?"
Ori and Mairtin immediately complied with their mentor and once more Gideon Boudin lay on the chaise, bound hand and foot with ropes this time and with everything in place if a gag was called for.
"Wow, Eli, that was something else!" Jim laughed, turning in the direction of the speaker in the far doorway. "I can't even see you but I can surely feel your theatrical presence across the room, my friend. Artie, why haven't you recruited your cousin into the Service, yet? I must have a dozen of mine already in the line by now!"
"Umm, James, my friend, I appreciate the compliments …and the offer of steady work. Any working actor would." Eli Morgan answered, but from the opposite corner of the room. "I did some of the shout outs… like the one that got Boudin to go 'ghost hunting' earlier. But that's not me. I pulled out all the stops when Boudin came upstairs. But now, I'm whooped, I'm just over here playing pinochle with Thomas… and losing."
"No, no, no you're not. Mac's cheating. He can never win a single hand if he…" Jim started to argue, shaking his head and then stopped stock still.
"Your pardon, Colonel West." The figure in the doorway said. "And my profound congratulations on your promotion, and your apparent recovery, sir. Ich bein… I am Stephan Johannes Sebastian Aynsley, of Vienna, Newport News, Baltimore, and more recently, the Pennsylvania State Penitentiary. Perhaps that last address will explain my tardiness in reaching you and offering what I may to your investigation of the Courier Conspiracy. I've just completed a two year sentence there for practicing medicine without the proper license, I'm afraid."
"You're … " Jim said and fell silent again, blinking and shaking his head in pure bewilderment. "Somebody want to … check this out? I'm … I'm not fully equipped here." The Virginia raised agent noted and sat down hard.
"Will you come and sit here, Herr Doctor?" Miguel asked the Austrian, plainly fascinated to meet this particular mirror of his old life, before Micah was born well and whole.
"Danke, Herr Doctor. Danke." Aysnley nodded and sat on a wide divan halfway across the room from where Boudin still lay unmoving.
"You will understand that we have more than a few questions to ask you, Doctor Aynsley." Thomas Macqullan added, leaving his pinochle game behind to study this newcomer.
"Naturally you do. And I have more than a few answers. Hopefully the matching ones we can find, in concert, mein gut Herren." Aynsley agreed.
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