To separate the trick from the illusion is the very centre of the bullet-catcher’s art.
The Bullet-Catcher’s Handbook
Within the span of a month, two people had discovered the secret of my double identity. First it was the Duchess of Bletchley and now this boy – a horse minder in a travelling show. But whereas the Duchess had caught sight of me changing, Tinker had seen through the disguise.
He walked with me. And when we came upon other members of the troupe out searching, he told them he had been paid a penny to guide this young gentleman to the Lincoln Road. They swallowed the story and hurried on past without a second look. It happened twice. Each time, I felt a pang. In the few days I had lived among them, I’d come to feel as if I belonged. Now none of them would own me as a friend.
When at last we reached the junction where Joe had dropped me off, I began to breathe more easily. Tinker watched as I reversed the transformation, shaking out my dark hair, turning the long coat inside out, removing whiskers from my face and wiping away the makeup. The top hat, he found especially fascinating, making me change it into a bag and then letting it spring back several times. Had his hands been cleaner, I would have allowed him to try it for himself.
“I won’t tell,” he said, unasked.
“Thank you.”
“Can keep a secret.”
“I know. You’re a good boy, Tinker.”
He squirmed in his shoes for a moment, then asked, “Why d’you want to find Mr Orville?”
“I’m searching on behalf of one who loves him. She’s afraid for his life.”
“Does Mr Orville love her back?”
“I...” The question had not occurred to me before. “I imagine he does.”
“Then why don’t he find her?”
“He’s running with the machine. Running from the Patent Office.”
Tinker scratched a line in the mud with the toe of his shoe, a deep frown on his young forehead. “He didn’t know ’bout you, when he told me not to tell.”
“No,” I said.
“I suppose...”
He wavered, on the brink it seemed, ready to fall one way or the other.
“If you don’t tell me where Mr Orville has gone, I’ll have failed. There’re no more clues to be had. I can’t ever go back to Harry Timpson. He wouldn’t let me escape a second time. But if you do tell me – and if I manage to find him – it’ll be him that chooses the path. If he wants to run once more, I won’t stop him.”
“Promise?”
“I promise.”
Tinker nodded solemnly. “Mr Orville crossed south,” he said.
I stood frozen. “South...”
“Yes miss. London town.”
At that moment I knew my quest was over. The one place I could not go was the only place where my freedom could be regained. It was an impossible paradox. For this, I had played dice with the hangmen of the Patent Office. For the dream of returning home, I’d frittered away days which could have been spent earning money for my payment on Bessie.
The only sensation I could feel was a yawning hollow somewhere deep within me.
“Where in London?” I asked, my voice flat.
He shrugged. “Ever been there,miss?”
“When I was a child.”
“Will you take me there?”
“I can’t,” I said. “And even if I could, we’d never find Mr Orville among all those millions.”
“Don’t know where he’s gone,” said Tinker. “But I do know why. Said he needs to make the box work. So he’s getting help from a Jew.”
Tinker’s words were the cruellest twist, for they made perfect sense to me. Orville must have run to Spitalfields, home to a colony of Jewish scientists and doctors. I now had all the information I needed to find him. But it could never be.
• • •
Tinker didn’t want to leave me, but I sent him back with a penny clutched in his hand as proof he’d been helping a young man find his way. Then I waited, ready to jump behind the low wall at the edge of the lane should anyone approach. But no one did.
The spot proved so remote that no traffic passed in all the time I waited. It was so quiet that, when dusk eventually fell, I could hear the sound of the approaching steamcar long before it came into view. I’d had no fear that Joe would renege on the deal we’d made, to drive past that spot every evening at dusk for ten days, his heavy stick by his side in case of trouble.
I stepped out from the shadow as he drew close and was up into the back with the door closed behind me before the car had properly stopped.
“Glad to see you, miss,” he said.
He spun the wheel, setting the steamcar around in a tight circle and off back the way he had come. I heard a clank and noticed for the first time a large, black blunderbuss propped next to him, which had shifted as we turned, coming to rest against the door.
“Best be prepared,” he said, seeing the direction of my gaze. “Can’t be too careful with circus types about.”
“They’re not all a bad sort,” I said.
“Tell that to the constables! Been more houses burgled and more since that lot turned up than ever was before.”
“Burglary?”
“A plague of it.”
“And did the burglars steal jewellery?”
“With a passion, miss.”
And there it was, like all illusions, trivially simple once I knew where to look. How could Timpson pretend to create gold and then afford to sell it at half its market value? Because he was merely selling back to the local population what his men had recently stolen from them. In spite of the bleak future that lay ahead of me, I found myself laughing.