Time Out of Mind (58 page)
Authors: John R. Maxim
Tags: #Horror, #General, #Psychological, #Suspense, #Memory, #Thrillers, #Fiction, #Time Travel
first, that it is he whom you must ask for an accommoda
tion. I am asked to remind you that Mr. Gould cherishes
nothing more than the hope that you will be his friend.”
“
And my alternative is to read about myself in your
newspaper.”
“
You have two weeks' grace, young Tilden, before an
other eye is cast upon your activities.”
”
I see.” Tilden rubbed his hands. “Can you and I make
some arrangement in the meantime that would restrict your
reportage to me exclusively?”
“
I'm afraid not. Mr. Gould was quite specific. I do have something else to sell you, however. It is beyond the scope
of my understanding with Gould, and you are sure to find
it useful. The price is two thousand.”
“‘
Might I have some clue as to the subject matter?’'
“
Ansel Carling.”
Tilden snorted. “Nothing that man might have done
would surprise anyone.”
“
It's worth the money, I promise. It will surely give you
a card to play against Gould.”
Tilden thought for a long moment, finally concluding that one card might be better than none at all.
“
Two thousand, you say?”
“
And a bargain.”
Done. Unless it's a thing I already know, or unless it's
something I find to be false, you will have your money by
close of business tomorrow.”
“
He's a Jew.”
”
I beg your pardon?”
He's a Jew. Named Asa Koenig. Never been closer to
India than an inkwell. He grew up in England, true enough,
but as the son of a valet who came from Germany with one
of Prince Albert's retainers. Arrested for forgery and de
ported to Botany Bay. Learned his railroading there, first
in a work gang and then apprenticed to the surveyors. Letters of recommendation are forgeries, of course.” The col
onel looked with satisfaction at the dazed expression on
Tilden Beckwith's face. “It's a honey, isn't it.”
“
Does Jay Gould know this?”
“
He's known for some time,” Mann said cheerfully. “It
was your doing, indirectly. Back when everyone was talk
ing about what a coward you made Carling to be, and talk
ing about Carling himself, the talk eventually reached
another Englishman who knew the family Carling was sup
posed to come from except this fellow said the only Ansel
Carling he could recall went to India sure enough but he
died there of the cholera. That got back to Gould and Gould
commenced checking up and in time he found out the truth.
He never confronted Carling, or Koenig, with
it, just got
him far away out of his sight.”
“
What use is this to me?” Tilden asked coldly.
“
Why, for trading, of course.”
‘‘
Trading?”
“
Gould is not a man who wants it known he's been
fooled. He's also a man who's gone out of his way to con
vince people with whom he does business that he's not a
Jew himself.”
“
You are suggesting that I blackmail him. I will keep
quiet about this if he will keep quiet about me. May I ask
why an accomplished blackmailer such as yourself has not
taken more direct advantage of this intelligence?’'
No one gets his name in Jay Gould's book if he can
help it.”
The hack turned left onto Canal Street. Ahead of him, Tilden saw the Sixth Avenue Elevated, which could have
him at the Osborne in twenty-five minutes or the Claremont
in forty-five. He had not planned on seeing Margaret to
night. Charlotte, that is.. It would be well if he got into the habit
of saying Charlotte, although the name had not the same
music for him that it had for her. He had intended to see
to certain affairs at home and to dutifully look in upon the
child and his nurse. But now that prospect seemed less at
tractive than ever. Bad enough that he was raising the son
of Ansel Carling, the sneak and coward. It now seems,
given that this other devil's story is true, that he has given his name to the son of a confidence man and convict. The
business of his being a Jew meant little to Tilden. The Jews
in his acquaintance shared a sense of tradition and of family
and of industry. Would that Carling, or Koenig, shared any
of these qualities. He was more like an Irish Catholic.
“
I'll get off here,” Tilden said.
”
I can expect your draft tomorrow?”
station stairs. ”I will pray, Colonel Mann, that a special
corner of hell is being prepared for you. Good day, sir.”
At Central Park, he found a flower stall where he bought
a bouquet of yellow asters. With these he boarded the Ninth
Avenue train and carried them to the warm and welcome
smile of Margaret Barrie. He spent the night in her arms.
It was scarcely a week later that Tilden’ s lawyer, Mr.
Smithberg, in a state of considerable excitement, tracked
Tilden down at the Athletic Club. Taking Tilden to a private room, he spread out several papers, one of which was
an issue of the
New York Times,
then six days old. Its mast
head date was October 11. He directed Tilden’s attention
to an item on the first page which described a terrible train
wreck that had occurred on the Lehigh Valley Railroad at
a place called Mud Run in Pennsylvania. Tilden, like many New Yorkers, had seen the article, but Smithberg brushed
aside his attempt to say so. An excursion train, Smithberg
recounted, had been carrying members of the Total Absti
nence Union to a rally in the town of Hazleton. It seemed,
however, that neither the union's members nor the train's
crew were totally abstemious. Their intake of beverages led
to an unplanned relief stop, and in the course of it the train was struck from behind by another. The last two cars were telescoped, and sixty-four men, women, and children were killed outright. Smithberg read aloud an account by a local
correspondent. “Oh, what tongue could tell,” the anony
mous author had written, “or what pen picture this most
dreadful calamity? The roasting, scalding engine under
which were crushed those poor young children, and the car
ahead being ground to splinters and the lives crushed out
of those who but a few moments since were full of life.
Oh, God, why visit upon your unhappy children such a
death.”
The breast-beating tone of that selection carried over into
a listing of the dead, continued on page 12. On that list,
Tilden saw, a number of names had been underscored. One
of them, Hiram Forsythe Corbin of Wilkes-Barre, said to
have left a wife heavy with child, was followed by two
check marks.
“
There you have it, sir.” The lawyer slapped the newspaper with his palm.
“
There I have what, Mr. Smithberg?”
“
It was a mistake. There is no wife, no child, no known
relatives in point of fact. The man's body was unclaimed.
The city of Wilkes-Barre interred him this morning.”
“
He had no friends? No position in the community?”
Andrew Smithberg beamed. “Young Hiram had only j
ust arrived in town two months before. The story is that
he'd been a second mate aboard a China clipper these past four years and had a yen to settle on land. He was drifting
west from Baltimore with a wagonload of Chinese silks
when he passed through Wilkes-Barre and saw a dry goods
store up for lease. The papers he signed list no next of kin. The attorney who drew them up tells me that Hiram Corbin
was hardly a teetotaler, but he went on that excursion in
the hope of meeting the townspeople a bit more quickly.”
“
You are about to suggest,” Tilden mused, “that he
would serve nicely as Margaret's late husband and that Margaret would serve equally well as the wife left heavy
with child.”
“
Not Margaret.” Smithberg shook his head. “Charlotte. The name Charlotte Whitney Corbin gives her one more
remove from Margaret Barrie. It is perfect, Mr. Beckwith.”
Tilden hesitated. He was finding, to his mild surprise,
that he did not care for the notion of another man's name
attached to Margaret's, even a man she'd never known,
even at one more remove, as Smithberg put it. An invented ghost would have been more to his liking. Still, Smithberg
was right It did seem ideal.
“
You can provide any other documents she might
need?” he asked.
”
A simple matter. She'll already have the
New York
Times
clipping. And I can create a paper past dating all the
way back to her birth. She'll have been born on a farm. Or
in a town whose records are no longer extant for one reason or another. Thousands of people are living without evidence
of their existence because a church or a town hall has
burned to the ground. As for evidence of Hiram Corbin, photographs of young seamen are obtainable among the
samples of any waterfront studio. A few yards of Chinese silk, an ivory fan, a piece or two of carved ebony furniture, and she'll have all the artifacts necessary to satisfy the cu
rious who might visit her Greenwich home.”
“
The stage props will not be necessary.” Tilden made a
face. “Only the papers.”
“
They would lend great credibility. It would be very
natural for a young wife to keep mementos of her dear departed husband.”
“
Only the papers, Mr. Smithberg.”
‘
'Corbin,” Margaret repeated, trying on the name as she
would a gown. “It has an honest sound, Tilden. Charlotte
Whitney Corbin.”
It crossed Tilden's mind, not for the first time, that Mar
garet Barrie might not have been the name she was born with, either. But it did not much matter to him. The name
of any girl had always seemed to him a temporary thing, having little significance as an identity if it were so easily surrendered upon an exchange of wedding vows. Wedding
vows.
“
Tilden, dearest, you seem troubled,” she said to him.
“
No.” He shook his head. “Not at all. Just some office
business I have neglected.”
If she had said, /
despise this new name, Tilden.
If she
had said,
I feel as you, Tilden. It seems like another man's
body against mine and I want no body but yours and no
name but yours.
If she had said,
Be not fearful for me or
fearful of Gould and Carling and Colonel Mann or of the
women who whisper sly stories over cups of tea, but let me
and our child be an adornment to you and to the name
Beckcwith,
he might have swept her into his arms and driven
her to the nearest magistrate. But she did not because she
had made a bargain. And he did not, as he was beginning to know, because he was a fool.
Two more weeks passed, as did another scurrilous mention in
Town Topics,
which Tilden kept from her, before Andrew Smithberg appeared with all the papers needed for the purchase of a Greenwich property by a young widow
named Charlotte Corbin. The furnishings were now in
place, and true to Tilden’ s word, the house had been electrified and a telephone installed and a glistening bathroom
was inside the house and a shiny new carriage and sled
awaited in the barn. Everyone knew there was profit
in
the
China trade. Margaret moved in just before Thanksgiving.