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eerie—she didn’t even know he was out of jail, yet it seemed as if she’d known exactly when he’d appear, where he’d be standing. He felt her stare and looked at her, blinked. She was no one, just some girl, but she met his gaze. It almost seemed to him she was going to say something, and he smiled. She was pretty, despite the way she stared. But then she turned, and he felt ashamed of the loneliness that made him hope to turn every onlooker into a friend. He never heard the signal she gave to her friend, standing on the opposite side of the street, to keep him in her sights. He never saw the two detectives who had recognized him while combing through the rubble for evidence and taken note of his appearance—another bit of circumstantial evidence for the file.
    He walked around the block to the back of the building and saw that the area where his room had been was largely gone, eliminating any hope of salvaging his few possessions. The only one worth saving was the
Stranger’s Guide,
and that mostly because of the postcard from his mother. He certainly didn’t care about the figurines. There was a tintype picture of himself he’d had taken at a photo studio on a whim on his day off. It was a novelty to be able to have a picture made so quickly and inexpensively, but the likeness had been poor, he’d thought, comparing it in his mind to the vivid daguerreotype of his mother that once sat on the mantel of his parents’ house. And anyway, what need could he have for a picture of himself? It was really only the postcard he’d miss. He noticed the mare Alice, struggling to budge her load—the charred, frozen carcass of a camel—and seeing her alive made him feel slightly better. He wondered about his goat. He heard the slightly off-key strains of a hymn being sung by a high male voice, a tenor, and watched the singer emerge from the blackened interior. It was a fellow he recognized, a man who’d never driven a coach, curried a horse or lifted a pitchfork but had always seemed to think he was in charge. Now he was dragging a beam and carrying a hatchet over his shoulder. It looked like he’d been chipping in for once. Then he stepped into the winter sunlight, looked straight across the street and fixed the stableman in a glare.
    It hadn’t occurred to the stableman till then that people might know he’d been detained as a suspect. Now he wondered if it was possible that people who knew him believed he was guilty. Of course they did. Rumors would be flying. What he didn’t guess was that this was the man who had spread the rumors and given the tip that had landed him in jail rather than the charity ward. The stableman felt a chill crawl down his back. He had an awful feeling that everyone in the vicinity recognized him and held him to blame. He turned and walked quickly away.
    What he needed now was some dinner and a warm place to spend the night. Then a job, a plan for building his life back up from nothing. A few blocks north of the museum, he stopped to count his money. He had less now than when he’d stepped off the boat. Fewer possessions and less hope, too. He was sore, lonely and worried about what would happen next.
    He had no idea, of course, just how much he had to fear—and from how many other people, in addition to the police. Beatrice, the hot-corn con girl, for one, was on her way, even then, to tell her boss of the stableman’s release from the Tombs and his visit to the scene of the crime; the capstone of her story would be the meaningful glance he’d exchanged with his countryman, the one everyone called the Undertaker, who was supposedly one of Barnum’s security guards. And the Undertaker, too, would be a problem for our man. No, he hadn’t a clue, yet, about the underworld of the metropolis.

4.
    WILL
    H e slumped on the bench in the hiring office and sighed; it hadn’t been his name called after all.
    The clerk at the desk gazed out in another direction, and another man across the