The Pale Thin Man: The Legend of a Shadow with Ears

By R. M. Dalton

The downward spiral of a tormented soul. A young man working his way through medical college long ago seems drawn into the darkness against his will… or maybe not? His life becomes one of stealing hope, not giving it.

This is a tale of that time and that country, of families that his path crossed; a tale of unrelated lives stitched together only by a dark thread made of his elusive shadow.

The Pale Thin Man is a tapestry of light and dark, of hope and despair, of love and loss, with a host of humorous, beautiful, droll, and sinister characters.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Aug 13, 2021
• ISBN: 9781984507488

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Copyright © 2021 by R. M. Dalton.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 08/09/2021

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Contents

Authors Introduction

Prologue

Chapter 1 The Shadow

Chapter 2 The Cab Driver – Ten Years Earlier

Chapter 3 The Lawyer

Chapter 4 Doctor Whitloff

Chapter 5 The Cabbie

Chapter 6 Doctor Whitloff

Chapter 7 Mr Donald

Chapter 8 Chantille

Chapter 9 The Cabbie

Chapter 10 The Pale Thin Man

Chapter 11 Barbara and Spikon

Chapter 12 Boot and Clog

Chapter 13 Jasmina and Peter

Chapter 14 The Clog

Chapter 15 The Vicar

Chapter 16 Grace

Chapter 17 The Man - About a Year Earlier

Chapter 18 Grace and the Rev Boag

Chapter 19 The Man

Chapter 20 Chantille and Peter

Chapter 21 Nemesis

Chapter 22 The Cabbie

Chapter 23 Grace

Chapter 24 The Cabbie

Chapter 25 Grace and Stewart

Chapter 26 Grace

Chapter 27 Anthony

Chapter 28 The Lovers

Chapter 29 Barbara, Spike and Bram

Chapter 30 Grace and Weatherly

Chapter 31 The Cabbie

Chapter 32 The Man

Chapter 33 Grace and Weatherly

Chapter 34 Nemesis and The Man

Chapter 35 Jasmina and Chantille

Chapter 36 Spikon

Chapter 37 The Victims

Chapter 38 Nemesis and The Man

Chapter 39 Peter and Grace

Chapter 40 The Harbourmaster

Chapter 41 The Kompt

Chapter 42 Victor

Chapter 43 The Mailman

Chapter 44 Kratzpur and The Man

Chapter 45 The Lovers

Chapter 46 Montkirk

Epilogue

Ever down the ages

Doth this one question cry,

From human hearts

To heaven,

Why, why?

And ever from

The throne of love

Returneth this reply,

Silence.

Authors Introduction

I write this introduction to forestall my critics. Whatever they may say, I probably know it already; and if I don’t, so what?

The first book, The Sisters’ Story, was written in the style of a classic fairy-tale. There is the lost princess, the quest, finding Prince Charming, the poor but good girl becoming queen and all that… but twisted. The heroine marries her prince not even half-way through, and the story keeps going. There is also the element of the two sisters and the bond between them – don’t criticise that; the story was composed well before Frozen, and this theme was not borrowed.

The language was meant to be courtly as of an old romantic poem. I think now, that sometimes this is too self-conscious, but the work is finished, and I am not going back to edit it. Where would that end?

The second book, The Boy’s Story, is different in tone. It was intended to be in the mould of the boys’ adventure story, like a Ransome or Stevenson. It has links to the first story that I enjoyed writing. Readers of Sisters will, I hope, enjoy seeing some scenes retold from another person’s viewpoint.

The geography does not match anywhere on this earth, and that notwithstanding mentions of real cities and countries occasionally. You will look in vain on the globe for a land that could be Persicia. This is a fictional place and a fictional time.

The books were written with my own children in mind, for their amusement (and my own), not particularly for publication. They were aimed at a progressively older reader. By the time the PTM was done, they were adults.

The third story - this one - is even looser from history and geography than the first two. There are elements of many places and times borrowed and stirred into the mix as the story required. To find and list all the anachronisms and anomalies could be clever: it would also be pointless. Hopefully, so long as you are immersed in the books you will be content to accept the author’s reality.

Book three attempts to match its general timeframe with the previous books, for this is a story woven around a sinister, but minor, character in book two. Even I admit I cannot line up everything neatly, so let’s not try, and let’s not criticise. The books do not match each other exactly. They were written a goodly time apart from each other; and when I wrote Sisters I did not envisage other follow-up stories, therefore I was not concerned then at creating a stage that could host other dramas. Take each book on its own merits.

"The Pale Thin Man" attempts a Dickensian style, with many colourful scenes and a host of lovingly crafted characters, in an ambitious mix of light and dark, of amusing, sad and romantic elements. Enjoy!

R.M. Dalton

Prologue

I t was done; or nearly done at least. The gold and the ledger were secure in his saddle bags.

It had been a time-consuming diversion getting them; wasting time he would much rather have had for himself. The Squire had been very mistaken thinking the gold and the coded list would be safer concealed at his country holding, having no idea how simply information was extracted from hapless servants or surfs or gamekeepers, so he retrieved them.

It would not matter if their whereabouts were known if that place was a Baron’s keep.

He had been plainly told that after this last task he could go anywhere he wanted. When we want you again, we will fetch you again, he was told.

Shall you, indeed? he thought. This time I will make it harder for you! But the task was unfinished. What he carried must be made safe. After that however….

The black arrow felt like a heavy punch. It pierced his shoulder blade, pinning it to his rib cage. Pain did not begin at once. He found his breathing getting laboured; a lung was punctured. His arm would not move and his back felt oddly warm as if from a sunbeam breaking through the ragged clouds, rather than a run of his lifeblood.

His vision blurred as he groggily wondered what was happening. Truth dawned when, with a hiss like a snake, a second arrow passed his ear, almost grazing his horse’s head and vanishing into the shrubs. He knew he was hit, but the words seemed unable to form themselves. He leaned forward low over his horse’s neck, kicking his ribs for speed but darkness gathered in his head. Despite a struggle to keep in the saddle he rolled to the side and tumbled onto the wet and muddy grass while plunging hooves thudded around his head as his horse galloped on.

The fall winded him badly. Something twisted, something cracked – a collar bone or a rib. The darkness closed in. Pain grew. Gasping, he opened his eyes. Lying face down and scarcely able to lift his head anymore, he could only see some legs and feet: two persons or three it seemed, but they were out of focus. One pair of boots stood at his head, their owner looking at his spreadeagled body. He did not know whether to cry Help or Mercy, but no sound came out anyway. Air was getting too hard to breathe. There was none to spare to make a cry with.

But they spared him. Or rather they just left him to die if he would. He saw the feet walk out of the sphere of his seeing. Their voices, already muffled and incomprehensible to him, faded….

Chapter 1

The Shadow

H e stepped up to a cab that was standing there where a little moonlight broke through the street trees. There was a jingle of chain and the clop of a hoof as the horse fidgeted before it lapsed into stillness again. The man opened the door. The latch clicked and the hinge squeaked. The cab swayed with a creak of leather springing as he climbed in and sat. The cabbie must have been dozing, but he stirred now and looked around. The face of his passenger could not be seen. Where too, sir? he inquired.

A destination was named in a sibilant voice. Not another word did he utter on the journey, or when he got out afterwards.

The cabbie named his fee. Here we are, sir. One and four pennies, thank-ye. The amount was counted and handed over in old, small copper coins. There was no tip, no thanks, no good night. The man was wearing gloves - not kid or pigskin gloves as was usual, but black velvet. A lady’s soft hands in velvet gloves reminded the cabbie somewhat of a kitten’s fur, but these hands, although small were wiry, and the brush of velvet felt more like the back of a tarantula.

The street was empty. The disembarked passenger stood in the dark of a shadow, not moving. The cabbie flicked his reins and they rolled off heading back for a town square where there was a better prospect of a hail. As soon as the cab was gone, the thin man moved on.

Chapter 2

The Cab Driver –

Ten Years Earlier

"C ome on Gingervitus, be home soon, said the cabdriver to his horse. Gettin’ late. Let’s get us one last customer, then home and bed."

Gingervitus, the horse, was orange coloured except where he was bald. He was sway-backed, bony-rumped and knock-kneed and he had a pendulous bottom lip. He was perhaps the ugliest cab horse in the city. His owner got him cheap. But the fact of the matter was, Ginger worked well enough, and his owner made the best of it. He could not afford a better one.

He once dreamed of owning a fleet of cabs, including a glass coach and matched pair of white horses he could hire out for weddings. And it was not that Bramble Thorn was lazy, but he was no entrepreneur and had not the drive nor the imagination to build a business. So here he was with one aging cab and one ugly horse, one wife named Rose Thorn, and two children.

They got to the square and parked near the lamp. They were the second cab on the rank. A chilly twenty minutes passed before a couple, a portly, tipsy man and a companion that was certainly female and certainly not his wife, took the first cab. There was a high-pitched, but forced giggle as they got in. The cab clattered away into the darkness. Thorn waited. The horse stood with his head hanging. He stamped at rare intervals. Bram blew on his hands and turned up his cloak collar. His eyelids drooped, but it was too cold for sleep.

And at last, a small child of the streets, running a message, called to him, Cab wanted. The lad climbed on the step as Bramble Thorn roused himself and drove the cab left, right and just down here as he was directed. The boy took his farthing commission and returned to whatever den he called home.

They were in a mews of plain but not-too-poor houses of the sort rented by those with some but not a lot of income. It took Thorn a bit of backing and filling to turn around to come to rest opposite the place where the fare was waiting. It was a woman with a cloth bag. A child of four or so stood close to her. Both were silent and still. The cab stopped and its lamp vaguely lit their faces. She was white and serious, the child looked sleepy, but it was clinging tight to the woman’s hand and looking at her face.

She lifted her bundle into the cab. Then she took the child under its arms and lifted it in too. Neither spoke.

Where too, mam?

Just get out of here! she demanded in a low voice. The house door opened, and a man’s head looked out. But he said nothing, and she did not turn. The head withdrew and the door closed. Bramble walked the cab out of the mews and headed back to the square but there he slowed to an almost standstill and inquired again as to a destination. She named the Boar, a hotel that was not very far, but in the wrong direction if Mr Thorn were going home- a hotel of the cheapest sort that might still be considered decent.

They approached the Boar; the woman and child in the cab sat close. She stared stonily ahead; the child looked around and would follow with her eyes a light as it went past. A man, swaying on a corner raised his arm at Thorn, but he had a fare already and he drove past. The man swore and shouted, Cab here, dammit! Thorn saw him stamp his foot. The man glared about but there was no other cab in sight. Then the road curved, and the man was lost to view, and there ahead was the dark unassuming front of the Boar with a white pig painted on a signboard swinging from a projecting pole. There were few lights showing.

The woman said something in a whisper to the child who climbed out and held her arms up to receive the bundle that the woman handed down.

Arf a shilling and a penny that is, mam, thank-ye.

She had some coins in her hand and rather slowly counted the fare. She did not have a lot left in her hand after that. She said, Thank you, and he said, Good night which seemed inappropriate and inadequate somehow. She then took up her bag, and with her arm on the child’s shoulder headed to the hotel door.

Bram Thorn knew he was witnessing a domestic tragedy; and such is a cabbie’s life. They share for their ten or fifteen minutes a sliver of someone’s life- and they do not often hear what preceded it, and they scarcely ever know how it turned out after.

Earlier Bram had seen a man with a woman of the night, and now he saw a mother fleeing from home. Unless she had some family to go to, she would have little choice but to soon be where that other woman was, and earn her living off other women’s husbands, and maybe even be the cause of yet more broken marriages in the future.

Bram was not a literary sort of man and did not put his thoughts into so many words. He did admit it was sad and he said A pity… to himself. And then he turned about and went back to find the angry man he had passed. He could put up with a bit of drunken abuse in exchange for a fare. He had before and surely would again.

When he got back to the spot the man was gone, the street was empty.

Both Thorn and the horse were tired. It was getting very late, the mist was descending, the streets were deserted, and it was a couple of kilometres back home. And after that Gingervitus had to be rubbed and stalled and the cab put away before there was any chance of sleep.

He drove home, taking not the shortest route through back streets but a longer way that passed two of the plazas of the city and passed some of the other hotels in case there might be a straggler somewhere and a late fare, but his luck was out.

They passed under a dark and echoing archway into a lane where he and a couple of other cabbies resided. There were stables there, for the cab horses and for the horses of gentry that lived in the street adjacent, whose grooms and footmen lived over the stables.

Ginger was backed into his stall and after a rub he was given a forkful of hay tipped into the manger, his water bucket was checked, his blanket was thrown over him and the slip rail was put up. The harness had to be hung on pegs and the cab had to be manhandled under a roof out of the night dew where it was secured by a chain and padlock. The other cabs were already in.

Bramble Thorn the cabbie dug his thumbs into his loins and leaned back un-kinking his aching back. He stretched and yawned and made his way to a dim stair where he ascended three levels to his home. It was pitch black, but he knew his way. His door was unlocked with a faint glow of light coming through the gap under it. Rose and his son, Spikon must have been in bed. His daughter, Barbara was sitting in a chair waiting for him. There was a small fire in the hearth but no other light. She lit a candle as he came in. Lo, papa, she said. Good night?

No, said he, slim pickings tonight. Hope it gets better soon. ‘Ow’s Spike ’n your mother?

Mummy made some fish head soup tonight. Sort of, said Barbara Thorn.

That sounds nice. Any left over? Ahm feelin’ a bit peckish. That bit of bread for me dinner didn’t go so far somehow.

She strained it through the colander. Forgot what she was doing, like, thought she was straining the cabbage. So we got a colander full of fish head bones, and the soup into the slop bucket with the blood and muck…. I can get you a cup of hot water if you like, dad.

Mr Thorn sighed. Ay. I’ll take that cuppa hot water. It’s cold inside, I am. Then get to bed, there’s a good girl.

He looked at the coalscuttle beside the fire, but he decided they could not afford to add any to the fire. He took his mug of water and sipped at it between dipping a face cloth into a washbasin and rubbing his face and neck. He had washed his hands at the pump before coming up.

Then he went into the only other room in their house. Barb Thorn slept in a tiny alcove off the main room. Thorn undressed by the light of the candle and pulled on a nightshirt. Rose turned over in the larger bed - there was a child’s cot in the corner too- and said Get in quietly now. And don’t kiss me or you’ll wake me up.

Aren’t you awake already, then?

No, I aint! Nor is Spike awake neither, she retorted.

Thorn climbed in and wriggled around to settle the lumps in the mattress somewhat, sighed and waited for the warmth to steal over him. Then he got up because he had forgotten to blow out the candle, and he got back in as cold as before and had to wait over again. Then silence descended on that home, punctuated by breathing, the odd snore, an occasional fart, and the small scratchy noises of rodents in the walls.

Chapter 3

The Lawyer

L eggings was a practicing lawyer, not unsuccessful. Sometime before our story’s real beginning, he was seated behind his great shiny desk looking earnestly across steepled fingers at a prospective client, a pale thin student. The mention of a successful industrialist he had heard of, and the word embezzlement had earned his attention and this interview. If there was a possibility of a rich retainer, he would consider taking the case.

Let us begin at the beginning, prompted Mr Leggings. Your father is Chairman of the Three Fates mining company?

Yes, replied the young man. He was a shrewd self-made man. Started in the mines himself and rose to be an owner. He is in tin. He made the acquaintance of this Tennison Janstome who was an owner of copper mining interests. They hit it off initially and between them decided to build a smelter to produce their own bronze.

That seems sensible, mused Leggings. If they had the raw materials between them, producing the metal themselves should have been profitable.

That was the idea, yes. Janstome had the contacts to get the smelter operating. My father was to be the sleeping partner in the venture. He borrowed heavily on the house and mine to raise the capital.

Go on, said lawyer Leggings.

Let me think. I want to get this story in the right order for you. Janstome had two sons, both older than me. The older one was an ordinary sort of man. The other was just nasty. A bully. His brother said nothing- he was too weak.

And you were an only child?

Yes. Well, the younger Janstome boy took after his father and was fixing up to run the business and get rich. That’s what my father wanted for me. But I didn’t want that.

There was a period of silence while the memories assaulted him, until he composed himself.

Father was bitter, he resumed. "Janstome Junior was scornful and contemptuous. Janstome didn’t care… more for him in the end I suppose. Father did his duty as he saw it, though, and let me go study, with a skimpy allowance. He never wrote letters or visited. He virtually disowned me.

Janstome Junior tried to pick a fight with me before I left home. Called me a traitor and threatened to beat me. I told him I was not interested in a fight. I also told him a few truths about himself, and that did it; he flew at me kicking and punching. What could I do? I took a few knocks, but I gave him a bloody nose. He was too mad and stupid to feel it. In the end I gave him a prick with my knife – that got his attention and I put the edge to his throat. That ended it. He swore at me good. Called me a lousy cheat who couldn’t fight fair. Fair? I laughed! The only fair I know is winning. Told him to stay out of dark corners in case I came to finish what he started."

Interesting, said Leggings. But is it to the point?