Ghostly Echoes by William Ritter Page A

vaudeville production about depressing old factories. There’s nothing there.”
    â€œSounds like somewhere we might find a few more questions,” I said.
    Jackaby grinned.
    â€œSeriously,” said Marlowe. “It’s cobwebs and rats.”
    â€œWe’ll have a look around anyway,” Jackaby declared, rising to his feet. “Miss Rook loves cobwebs and rats.”

Chapter Seven
    The sun beat down on us as we made our way across what felt like the entire length of the city before we came to the Inkling District. The Inkling was a channel that wound lazily eastward through New Fiddleham, looping north and south in wide arcs as though it were dodging the buildings that had grown up around it. When all of this had been farmland, the Inkling might have provided irrigation for row after row of healthy vegetables. Today it served the far less noble duty of rushing the city’s waste out of sight and out of mind, and the townspeople had affectionately dubbed it the Inky—not an imprecise descriptor on its worst days. The Inkling District was a collection of businesses and factories tucked into the widest loop of the snake.
    The air was thick and heavy, and it tasted like wet clay and coal fires. The sky was cut with streaks of black from the smokestacks of the factories around us. It was already past noon by the time we had marched through the rows and rows of tall brick buildings and finally approached our destination. The Buhmann building had a gothic façade, broad and imposing with black spires running along the rooftop. Billowing steam from a street vent puffed whirling clouds into the air in front of it, giving the building a haunted atmosphere.
    â€œThat sewer line runs directly under the building,” Jackaby observed as we passed through the steam cloud, “and I would wager it empties out very near to where the professor’s body was found.”
    â€œI wouldn’t bet against you, sir,” I said, not feeling any better about entering the ominous building. It looked like precisely the sort of place where a living body might go if it wanted to become a dead one.
    A fence ran along the perimeter, but the front gate hung ajar, and Jackaby and I stepped through without obstacle. The Buhmann building’s double doors were ten feet tall and set with big brass handles in the shape of a double B. They were unlocked and weighted, swinging open with only a low creak at Jackaby’s tug.
    The inside of the structure was less than abandoned; it was barren. There were no old bookshelves or deserted desks. Granite floors lay bare from the front door to the far end of the building. Where one might have expected a broad foyer to give way to hallways and offices, the whole structure was simply hollow. Windows ran along the exterior at about the height one might expect a second floor to sit, but there was not so much as a landing to reach them. Through their dusty glass the afternoon sunlight seeped in, sickly and sallow by the time it spilled onto the floor below.
    More eerie than its jaundiced light or staggering emptiness was the building’s familiarity. “This is it!” I said, with a sudden realization. “Pavel was here, and Carson and all the rest. This is where they took that tintype of the pale man. ‘For posterity,’ it said. This is it, I’m sure of it! Look at those pillars against the wall, and the shape of the windows.” I had pored over Jenny’s file enough times to commit the photograph to memory.
    â€œInteresting,” said Jackaby.
    â€œWell, sir?” I said. “Do you see anything I can’t?”
    â€œConstantly,” said Jackaby. It wasn’t exactly arrogance—but by the same token, it wasn’t
not
arrogance. I waited for my employer to explain his paranormal perception of the cavernous room.
    â€œAnything . . . supernatural?” I asked.
    â€œNo. Yes.” Jackaby rubbed his eyes.