DIRTY CASH (MONEY TALKS)

When In Doubt

This morning I visited the widow who lived on Threadneedle Street, a pale creature whose eyes seemed older than her years. Her house leaned upon the lane like a weary man at his crutch, the plaster streaked from rain, the shutters swollen from damp. The neighbors crossed themselves when I asked after her. None wished to linger at her threshold.

She met me with trembling hands, though she spoke softly. “You wish to hear about the window,” she said. She had not been told of my purpose, yet she knew. I asked her to explain.

She led me to the parlor. The air was stale with mildew and the sweet rot of forgotten flowers. She touched the pane of glass as one might touch a child’s face. “It was last night. The rain spelled my name.” Her voice cracked. “Again and again. I knew it was mine, yet it ceased to be. It became something older, something that had been waiting.”

The glass bore no mark now, only the dull reflection of my own haggard face. I pressed her for detail. Did she see a man? Did she hear steps? She shook her head, clutching her shawl. “It was not a man. It was the city itself, peering in.”

I thanked her and stepped out into the lane. The fog there clung like wool to the skin. Every window seemed alive, every shutter an eyelid. I could not shake the feeling of being observed.

Inspector Dray joined me, his boots splashing in the gutter. “She is touched,” he said. “Too long alone, too much grief.” Yet he would not meet the windows. He looked only at the ground as we walked.

I returned to my rooms and laid the iron keys upon the desk. Three of them now: Colgrave’s, Ellory’s, Rendell’s. Each bore the sigil. I traced one with my finger and felt a pressure against my chest. It was not pain, not yet, but a weight. As though something within me was being tested.

I poured myself brandy, though it did not warm me. My pen scratched across the page, recording facts, and yet I cannot keep my mind from wandering. I see corridors when I close my eyes, corridors lined with doors, each locked, each marked with that impossible design. The sound of water echoes in those passages, louder with each dream.

I begin to suspect that Grathok is not merely punishing the corrupt. He is cataloging them. Each death is not an end but an entry, as if London itself were a ledger. And the sigil, I fear, is not a signature but a command.

I asked myself tonight: why me? Why was I chosen for this task? The coin is too convenient, the patron too silent. There are many agents who could have been called, yet the task fell to me. Was it chance, or was it design?

When I sleep, I hear footsteps in my rooms. When I wake, there is nothing. Yet the floorboards bear damp prints, too large for any man.

I write these words by candlelight, and even as I write I feel the silence pressing upon me, the same silence that filled the counting-house, the church, the judge’s chamber. It is not the silence of peace. It is the silence of a city holding its breath.

If this continues, I will not only investigate Grathok. I will understand him. And that, I fear, may be the greater danger.

—Nathaniel Harrow

Chapter VIII: Journal — The Widow on Threadneedle

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