Gilded Needles (Valancourt 20th Century Classics) Read Free Page B

nodded.
    “How did she die?” The four men behind the questioner listened intently to the exchange.
    “Don’t know, but she’s dead.”
    “How much do you want?”
    “Seven dollars.”
    The medical student nodded. “She’s on your cart?”
    “Yes, sir. Just outside. My sister’s there. She’s wrapped in burlap.”
    The medical student turned to his friends and called for a collection. The seven dollars was quickly made up in change and gold. While counting it over, he said, “John, you and Dick, go out there and bring it in. And for God’s sake, don’t let yourselves be seen!” Two of the men slipped into the passageway, and hastened toward the street door.
    The medical student poured the money from one hand into the other while he waited for his friends to return. Rob stood patiently by.
    In another moment the two friends appeared again in the doorway, furtively supporting the burlap bag between them. Once inside they hurried down the hallway and into the medical student’s chamber. One of them loosened the string at the top of the bag and the shorn head of the dead girl flopped out onto the threadbare carpet.
    The coins dropped into Rob’s outstretched hands and in another second, he was gone. The door of the medical student’s room closed softly, and the key was turned in the lock.

Chapter 2
    In the first hour of the new year, Lena Shanks sat alone in the parlor of the house on West Houston Street. Occasionally someone passing along the brick walk outside rapped an insolent greeting on the glass of the barred windows, but the thick layers of drapery were always closed to prevent the curious from peering in. The parlor was sumptuously but curiously decorated. All the fine furniture, all the upholstery, all the papering and paint and decoration were but a single color: gold.
    The walls were covered in flocked gold paper, and the moldings and the plasterwork in the ceiling had been painted in gold leaf. The draperies and hangings, the lambrequins and the pillows, the hearth and the hardware were all the same color. The carpet on the floor was a dull gold wool squared with thin black lines, with funereal rosettes of black flowers in each gold square. The furniture had been painted gold and covered in gold-and-white striped damask. The ornaments on the mantel were of gold, and the paintings that hung upon the walls were encased in ornate gold frames. One of a pair of gold-painted curio cabinets contained books with gold-tooled leather bindings and the other displayed a motley collection of gold plate, jewelry, and gimcracks. The mirror above the mantel and the pier glass between the two windows had been sprayed with a fine layer of gold, so that the little in the room that was not gold was reflected in the one pervasive color. The furnishing of the oppressive chamber had not only an identity of hue, but of origin as well—everything had been stolen.
    Lena Shanks sat bolt upright on a small gold chair drawn up before the gold-tiled hearth, with a basket of fine linens in her lap. By the light of the fire she worked with a pair of delicate scissors, pricking out the monogram that had been stitched into the corner of each piece.
    Lena Shanks was five feet three inches tall and weighed about two hundred pounds. She possessed a face that was wide, common, and obviously Germanic. Her large nose was flat, her dull eyes were heavy-lidded, her wide lips were dull brown, cracked and generally parted—for the drawing of breath in so large a woman was ever a difficulty. Her fine brown hair was always pulled tight into a dense bun at the nape of her neck. This was to conceal the fact that she was missing her left ear, which had been bitten off in 1869 during a fight with Gallus Meg of the Hole-in-the-Wall; that ear was still to be seen, preserved with several others, in a jar of alcohol behind the bar of that low-down but flourishing establishment.
    Lena wore dark voluminous skirts, white blouses, and tight black