A reasonable supposition: this place was a gambling club, and since it was illegal to keep a faro bank, hiding it in a cellar would be more than possible. Yet my clenched innards were telling me to walk away from those stairs. Too closed in, only one way out.

“I vaguely remember being down here,” Evan said.

“You were here? You remember it?” I tried to contain my anticipation. If he could recollect something, it might help us in our search for the truth about the duel, but I did not want my excitement to overwhelm any gossamer thread of memory.

He squinted in the effort to recall. “Not really. It is just a sense that I have been here before.” He shook his head. “No, too long ago, and no doubt I was in my cups at the time. Or I might even have been chasing the dragon.” He saw the question on my face. “Opium.”

Ah. Something I had never tried, although Charlotte smoked it on occasion. She had reported that it brought a feeling of great sensuous delight, although it could also plunge one into rather disturbing hallucinations.

“I say we do a quick search of every floor starting down here,” he said. “We should be able to keep out of the caretaker’s way.”

I put aside my disappointment at the stalled memory and, since that had been my own search plan, nodded my agreement.

We started down the steps, the treads creaking loudly under our feet. Evan glanced back at me with a resigned grimace; not much we could do about old wood. If anyone was still down there, they would definitely know we were on our way.

15

“So, it is not a faro bank,” Evan said dryly.

We both stood on the bottom step of the staircase, the large room before us an assault upon the soul. A number of silver candelabra supplied enough light to see the lurid wall frescoes that depicted life-sized people and animals in acts that I had not considered possible. Strange contraptions made of wood and metal and leather stood at various intervals around the room. At first, I could not quite make sense of them, but that primal part of me that recognized threat certainly understood. I grasped the banister for support, my sight too full of straps, buckles, spikes, and a leather helmet that enclosed the whole head.

“Good God,” I managed. How would someone breathe in it?

One machine I recognized from my history studies—a medieval-type rack—and another from the abolitionist pamphlets—a flogging frame.

“Go upstairs, Gus. Wait for me in the basement,” Evan said, his eyes fixed upon the flogging frame. There was a new hollowness—a bleakness—to his voice that I had never heard before. Was he remembering the men he had doctored, or had he been upon such a frame himself? A ghastly thought. “Go upstairs, Gus,” he repeated. “Please. You should not be tainted by this devilry.”