CHAPTER SIXTEEN

"Bince! Where the devil are you in this murk!" Greeley peered into the darkness of the brick elephant house. A strong smell of elephant droppings compounded his nausea and headache from all the champagne at Lady Tewksbury's the night before. He fought to keep from vomiting and wondered briefly if it was cholera. No headache with cholera, he remembered with relief. Just alcohol poisoning.

"Bince!" Damn the boy. What was he, Greeley, doing in a foul place like this? No other prominent scientist would be caught dead in the elephant exhibit of Regent's Park Zoo. Self-pity, habitual to him as a nun's rosary, filled his mind. Almost sixty and not much to show for it. No knighthood in sight. Hadn't published an article in almost five years. Everyone else made all the discoveries, got all the credit.

Greeley stepped back into the intolerable sun, squinting, and spotted Henry on the other side of the elephants' enclosure, talking to an Indian man who must have been the elephant keeper. He made his way over and caught their words before they realized he was there.

"Ah, sir," the keeper was saying to Henry, "I see you wait for me. I am so very glad you have received me to your home to ask after my worthy and humble information. All my apologies and grief for the lateness of this my reply."

"All right, quit groveling."

They didn't seem to notice him. Greeley decided to wait behind a brick pillar and listen.

"Tell me what you have, fast," Henry continued to the keeper. "And don't expect too much pay, either. Things have been short."

"With certainty, oh worthy one. Here is my news. The boy you ask after, or a boy just like him, has been found. The boy lives. Ten years in age, all the description you asked about."

"Where? Where is he, you fool?"

Greeley didn't try to make sense out of what he heard, but stored it carefully for later thought.

He hadn't seen Henry since the boy's arrival in London, four months earlier. Not a boy anymore, he remembered. Man, then. The man didn't look well. Haggard, with some streaks of gray in his once flaming red hair.

"Please, sir, lose no distress over this matter. You may see the boy this very night if you wish. Here in London, England. He is here." He handed to Henry a scrap of clean and carefully folded paper.

Henry glanced at it and stuffed it into his pocket. He dug into another pocket, and threw a few coins on the ground. Then he caught sight of Greeley. "Ah, you've finally found me!" The keeper backed away and disappeared behind the elephant house.

Greeley waved and picked his way over elephant droppings to where Henry stood. It was a complete mystery to him what Olympia's son was doing here. Greeley should have refused to come; he had never liked the boy. But he had limited choices. Twelve years ago, when Henry was here reading for the bar at Lincoln's Inn, the two had spent time together. Out of bad luck Henry had walked in on Greeley one night, while the doctor entertained one of his more aristocratic patients. She had been just to the old doctor's taste; blonde, obese, a loud laugh, and naked except for a pair of gloves. A modest sum had kept Henry silent, but now Greeley was afraid to refuse this bizarre request to meet him here at the zoo.

Just as he joined Henry, the elephant finally appeared from behind the building and slowly lumbered toward them.

"I say, Bince, hadn't we better —" Greeley headed for the gate in alarm, but Henry put an arm around his shoulders and steered him to a small building in the enclosure. They went through a low door into a spartan room.

The room held a camp bed, two cages of nervously chattering monkeys, and a rough table.

"Not exactly Grosvenor Square, is it, Doctor?"

"I can't understand why you won't contact your family, Bince."

"Absolutely not. They know I'm alive, and that's enough. They'll see plenty of me one day."

"Perhaps if I could give some assistance..." Greeley reached into his pocket, trying to decide how to make it clear that this would be a loan, not a gift.

"No. All I want from you is this: let me know if my mother and stepsister leave London. Or if they're planning any other major changes. And keep my whereabouts a secret."

"What kind of changes do you mean?"

"Oh, anything. Marriage, perhaps." Henry fiddled with some papers on his table.

Greeley flushed. He had been thinking the very same thing himself. Lillian, close to thirty, would make a perfect older man's wife. Her fortune was just the thing he needed to boost what remained of his career. She was too thin and her looks were faded, but he didn't care about that.

"Have your eye on the old girl, eh, Doctor? The merry widow? My mother didn't inherit the estate, you know."

Greeley didn't answer.

"Our Miss Lily has every penny." Henry tossed a packet of papers into the air and caught it without looking. "Just let us know, Doctor. I'll be contacting you again soon."

Greeley, no less nauseated, made his way out of the zoo. He took a hansom cab home, where he lay down in his darkened bedroom with a cold cloth on his head for the rest of the day.