HE LOOKED LIKE Charlie Chaplin. Not the handsome actor she’d glimpsed at Essanay but the Tramp, the weird little fellow Chaplin played in the movies. Though this man wore a boater, not a bowler. Apart from his straw hat, his clothes were all blue. Indigo pants, a heavy cambric work shirt, canvas jacket, everything well worn. A grimy bow tie. He’d wrapped twine around one battered shoe, tying it in a filthy knot. He had very pale, round blue eyes—bug eyes—and ruddy skin. His ears stuck out. He was even shorter than she’d first thought, not much over five feet. Barely taller than she was. She could knock him down, easy.

She waited for him to speak; he looked away uneasily, his gaze sliding sideways. She continued to stare at him, but still he wouldn’t meet her eyes. Annoyed, she finally demanded, “What do you want?”

“She’s gone.” He still wouldn’t look at her.

“Who?” He moved his hand, drawing a strange pattern in the air, and Pin felt her neck prickle. “You mean the girl?”

He nodded, gaze fixed on the Hell Gate pavilion. Pin expected him to go on, but he said nothing. Maybe he wasn’t just dingbatty but a moron.

Or perhaps he’d been the man who’d taken the girl into Hell Gate. She stared at his hands, which were big, the skin chapped raw, the fingernails broken and dirty. He smelled strongly of sweat and Bon Ami soap. She tried to determine if there were any bloodstains on his cuffs, but the blue fabric was too dark.

It could be him.

She took a deep breath. “At Hell Gate. There was a girl, I saw a girl go in with…someone. A man,” she added, watching to see how he reacted.

And yes, one of his eyelids fluttered. He blinked rapidly before nodding. “I saw her, too.”

He grunted, like he was imitating a frog. He was much younger than she’d first thought: not more than twenty-two or twenty-three. The scruffy mustache was to make him appear older, but close up it had the opposite effect. He seemed unaware of how odd he appeared: flapping his hand in the air, making those weird noises.

Was he a jackroller? She glanced down to see if he had a blackjack in his pocket. He lifted his head and, for the first time, met her gaze.

“I’ve been watching you,” he said.

She edged backward as he slid his hand into a pocket. But instead of a knife or a blackjack, he withdrew a handmade cardboard wallet, bound with more twine. He opened it with great care and sorted through a wad of news clippings, cigarette cards, scraps of dirty paper. At last he pulled out a small card and handed it to her:

GEMINI CHILD PROTECTIVE SOCIETY

BLACK BROTHERS LODGE

HENRICO DARGERO, PRES.

She read it, puzzled. “Gemini? Are you with the freak show?”