Elephant Man - Christine Sparks [92]
The blowsy redhead he’d addressed gave him a knowing look. “I really couldn’t say, Jim Renshaw. But I know what gets into me afterward—and so do you.”
He gave her a chuck under the chin. “Not tonight, Sal. I’ve got me ’ands full. Hop it now. Go and earn an honest penny.”
Turning away from her Renshaw found himself confronting a man in a twisted stove-pipe hat, and a five-day growth of greying beard. Renshaw regarded him curiously, conscious that this stranger had been studying him silently from a seat by the bar all evening. Several times he had looked over to the bar, and always the man had been sitting there, drinking gin and never moving his pale eyes. He never spoke, and amid the racket of the other customers the silence that surrounded him had been almost tangible. Renshaw would have died rather than admit he’d been unnerved by it, but he did not, as he would otherwise have done, tell the stranger briskly to get out of his way. There was something about Bytes that killed such words on his lips.
“Room for one more?” Bytes inquired in a soft voice, which mysteriously reached Renshaw easily despite the row going on around him.
Only a moment earlier Renshaw had declared “full house,” yet now he found himself saying, as though hypnotized, “At the right price …”
Bytes held out a hand that contained several coins, but his gaze never left Renshaw’s face. With difficulty Renshaw dragged his eyes away and looked at the money. He stiffened with shock when he saw the amount. Whoever this cove was he wanted to see the Elephant Man badly—badly.
“There’s room,” he said.
“Well, let’s be off then,” said Bytes.
The little giggling procession moved on its way. They might have been a party of cheerful holiday makers, enjoying a well-earned day out. Renshaw had already slipped an arm round the waist of the blonde whore, whose name turned out to be Jess. Her male companion seemed disposed to resent this, until a closer look at Renshaw made him think better of it, and turn his attention to Beattie, the other whore. But he still nursed a sense of grievance. He’d paid for all three of them.
Bytes wandered out alone at the back, and followed the gaudy crowd quietly at a distance. As he walked he was considering his position.
The money he had handed over was almost the last of a dwindling stock. Much of the rest had gone on the hire of the horse and cart that Tony was now minding in a back street near the hospital. He had offered Renshaw a purposely generous contribution to ensure that he would be included in the party this very night. Otherwise the hire of the cart would be wasted, and Bytes’ money was fast running out.
His fortunes over the last few weeks had fluctuated wildly. Destitution had threatened, following the loss of his prize possession, and Bytes had been forced to ease his financial circumstances by a little quiet burglary.
Burglary had once been his trade in an on-and-off sort of way. He had never really taken to it, preferring less-energetic forms of roguery when they presented themselves. He was forced back to it only by the most pressing need.
Alas, his professional judgment had failed him. He had fallen foul, not of the law but of the competition. The shop he had chosen to rob lay in the heart of a well-defined “patch” that was considered the exclusive preserve of the local criminal fraternity. Bytes got away with enough cash to tide him over comfortably for a few weeks, but found himself a hunted man. His only protection was that his pursuers did not know for certain that he was their quarry. Just the same, Bytes deemed it wise to retire from London for a while—for his health.
He had vanished from the metropolis, never knowing that Tony was searching for him with news of the Elephant Man. When he returned a month later, hoping the dust might have settled as his pockets were again nearly empty, he found Tony still waiting impatiently to deliver the message.
Bytes, a superstitious man, considered that Providence had smiled on him. As he walked on through the