Dead water - Barbara Hambly [57]
But when the shapes of trees and houses began to emerge from the blackness of night—when, as Ayasha quoted the blessed Koran, “a white thread could be told from a black one”—January began to wonder whether his friend had made it through the noisome alleys of the district Under-The-Hill in safety. They'd passed through a little after midnight coming here, but they'd been two men together, Hannibal's whiteness protecting January from molestation and January's size protecting Hannibal. Though Hannibal wasn't visibly wealthy, January was well aware that the men who haunted such dockside establishments would kill a man for his watch and boots.
Even worse, the thought crossed his mind that Rose might have come on Hannibal resting on deck and said, “I'll go instead. . . .”
The thought brought him out in a cold sweat. Had she tried to come up here sometime during the small hours? Tried to pass through those filthy alleyways that were darker than the inside of a black cow?
He looked back at the nearest house. Servants were waking up. At certain times of the day a black man could idle unremarked, but early dawn wasn't one of them, not across the street from the best hotel in town. He moved off to loiter behind the corner of a closed-up wine-merchant's store halfway down the block.
A porter came out of the hotel and began sweeping the steps. A cab drew up, depositing the stumpy black forms of Mr. Rosenfeld and Mr. Goldblatt from the Silver Moon, with more luggage than January could have imagined possible. He wondered how much of their money Byrne the gambler had managed to lift.
All over town, cocks shrilled the coming morning, above a rising, insistent twitter of lesser birds. Wagons passed on the street, heading to the wharves. A burly-bearded gentleman emerged from the hotel, nearly dragging his dainty wife into the waiting cab.
The grass went from indistinct gray to clearest emerald, and a cart rattled up the street with cans of morning milk for the patrons of the hotel. Smells wafted from the hotel kitchen and that of the house across the way, first smoke, then bacon. A dog barked.
Do I go back to the boat and risk losing them? January wondered. If by some chance they weren't returning—if they'd had other trunks delivered to another location in Vicksburg, for instance . . .
Chambermaids threw open the hotel windows and hung bedding out to air.
When one did so in the room where Weems and/or Fischer had passed the night, January realized, with sinking heart, that the burning lamp had been no guarantee that the room was occupied.
He scrawled a quick penciled note in his memorandum-book—I shall be at the American Hotel in Memphis on the 7th, but it didn't really matter what the message was—and hastened across the street with it, entering the side door of the lobby and hurrying to the desk with the air of one who has strode fast and far. The clerk was just polishing the smooth oak counter, black instead of white and an older man than had admitted Weems and Fischer last night but just as smart-looking.
“May I help you?”
“I have a message here for Mr. Weems, that come in last night.” January held up the note. “Weems may not be the name he signed under,” he added as the clerk frowned over the register. “He travelin' with a lady, taller'n him. . . .”
“Must be Mr. and Mrs. Gordon,” said the clerk. “They're the only ones signed in last night. Charlie, the night man, signed 'em in, and there's a note here