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Chapter Twenty-Two
Bombay Jail Infirmary
10:32 AM
If I ever find myself arrested in Bombay, Tom thought, I must remember to pretend to
be ill. For the infirmary was a far more agreeable setting than the jail, a bedroom in the warden’s
own home. In fact, propped as he was in a high bed with a fan lazily circulating overhead, Anthony
Weaver looked more like a family guest than an inmate.
Tom entered the room and introduced himself. Weaver was uninterested in the news he
was with Scotland Yard, but stirred when Tom added the fact he was also Geraldine Bainbridge’s
grand- nephew. And when Tom further explained that Gerry was waiting for Weaver only a few feet
away, in the parlor, the man visibly shivered with emotion.
“Help me wash my face and comb my hair, boy,” Weaver said. “I don’t have a proper
shirt, but I…”
“Yes, I will help you,” Tom said, surprised and a bit impressed the old man could still
muster a tone of authority after all he’d been through. “And I can also offer you a bit of laudanum if
you think it will help you compose your mind.”
Weaver’s gaze flitted wildly around the room. “A week ago…”
Tom nodded briskly. “I know. A week ago you would have sold your soul for such an
offer and the worst of the withdrawal is past you now. I assure you that my purpose is not to force you
back into the grip of addiction, merely to give you a very small dose of the drug. Just enough to help
you master your nerves. And only if you want it.”
“You are ensuring I will be pliable to any plan you have in mind.”
Tom hesitated. Judging by what Dr. Tufts had told him as well as the man’s
extraordinary pallor, Tom concluded that Weaver’s level of discomfort must be significant. But just
as he was preparing to withdraw his offer, the man looked at him with exhausted eyes and said, “Just
do not make me nonsensical, boy. For my sweet Gerry has come to me at last.”
“Not too much,” Tom promised. “Only enough to soften the edge.”
“The edge,” Weaver said softly and rolled up his sleeve, readying for the injection. By
the way he tightened his fist and rolled his arm toward Tom to expose the best veins, Tom knew he
was dealing with a veteran of the opiate wars.
Ten minutes later Weaver emerged from the room washed, combed, shaved, and wearing
a fresh shirt. Geraldine turned from where she was standing by a parlor window. For a moment,
neither of them spoke.
“Geraldine,” Weaver finally managed to croak. “You are exactly the same.”
“I most certainly am not,” she replied. “Although I will admit that I am less changed
than you are. That is the advantage of having been plain in one’s youth. The thief of time doesn’t find
quite so much to steal.”
Weaver brayed a bark of laughter. “And your spirit is as intact as your face.” He
gestured toward a small table and settee where the warden’s wife – the same romantic woman who
had readily surrendered one of her husband’s clean shirts for this early morning tryst between two
long-separated lovers – had placed a pot of breakfast tea and an assortment of biscuits. “Let us sit
and talk,” he said. “I have confessed first to your friend Welles and then to your friend Abrams,