The Night Circus(81)

Chandresh hesitates in the doorway. The tiny office is dark save for the pool of light spilling in from the hall and the dim haze from the streetlamps seeping in through the single window.

For a moment, Chandresh reconsiders. If there were any brandy left in the bottle he might close the door and wander away. But the bottle is empty, and it is his own house, after all. He fumbles for the switch on the sconce nearest the door and it flickers to life, illuminating the room in front of him.

The office is packed with too much furniture. Cabinets and trunks line the walls, boxes of files are stacked in tidy rows. The desk in the center that takes up nearly half the space is a smaller, more modest version of the one in the study, though its surface holds jars of ink and pens and a pile of notebooks, all in perfect order and not lost in a clutter of figurines and precious stones and antique weaponry.

Chandresh puts the empty brandy bottle down on the desk and begins searching the cabinets and files, opening drawers and flipping through papers without any clear idea of what it is exactly he is looking for. There does not seem to be a particular section for the circus; bits of it are mixed in with books of theater receipts and lists of box-office returns.

He is mildly surprised that there is no discernible filing system. No labels on boxes. The contents of the office are orderly, but not clearly organized.

In a cabinet, Chandresh finds piles of blueprints and sketches. Many bear Mr. Barris’s stamps and initials, but there are other diagrams written in different hands that Chandresh does not recognize. In some cases, he cannot even distinguish what language they are inscribed in, though each has “Le Cirque des Rêves” written carefully along the edge of the paper.

Pulling them closer to the light, spreading them out over what little available floor space he can find, he scrutinizes them, sheet after sheet, letting them roll and fall in piles as he moves on to each subsequent piece.

Even the prints that are clearly Mr. Barris’s work have been written over. Additions made in different handwriting, layers placed on top of original designs.

Leaving the papers on the floor, Chandresh returns to the desk, to the neat pile of notebooks next to the abandoned brandy bottle. They appear to be bank ledgers, rows upon rows of numbers and calculations with notations and totals and dates. Chandresh tosses these aside.

He turns his attention to the desk itself. He begins pulling open the heavy wooden drawers. Several are empty. One contains dozens of blank notebooks and unopened jars of ink. Another is full of old datebooks, the appointments filling the days written in some sort of shorthand in Marco’s neat, delicate handwriting.

The last drawer is locked.

Chandresh makes to turn to another box of files nearby, but something pulls him back to the locked drawer.

There is no key in the desk. There are no locks on the other drawers.

He cannot recall if there was a lock on the desk when it was placed here, years ago, when the office contained only the desk and a single cabinet and seemed almost spacious.

After a few minutes of looking for a key, he grows impatient and returns to his study to retrieve the silver knife that is embedded in the dartboard on the wall.

Lying on the floor behind the desk, he all but destroys the lock in his attempts to pry the mechanism open, but he is rewarded with the satisfying click of the latch as it relents to the blade.

Leaving the knife on the floor, he pulls open the drawer and finds only a book.

It is a large, leather-bound volume. Chandresh takes it from the drawer, startled by the weight of it, and drops it with a thump onto the desk.

The book is old and dusty. The leather is worn and the binding is fraying at the edges.

Hesitating only a moment, Chandresh lifts the cover.

The endpapers are covered in an exquisitely detailed drawing of a tree covered in symbols and markings. It is densely inscribed, more ink than blank page. Chandresh cannot decipher any of it, cannot even tell if the marks are broken into words or simply continuous strings of motifs. Here and there he spots a mark that looks familiar. Some are almost numbers. Some recall the shape of Egyptian hieroglyphs. It reminds him of the contortionist’s tattoo.

The pages of the book are covered with similar markings, though predominantly they hold other things. Bits of paper culled from other documents.

It takes Chandresh several pages to realize each bit of paper holds a signature.

It takes longer for him to realize that he knows the names.

Only when he finds the page with the matching, childish scrawls spelling out the names of the Murray twins is he certain that the book contains the names of each and every person involved with the circus.

And only upon closer scrutiny does he notice that they are accompanied by locks of hair.

The later pages hold the names of the original conspirators, though one name is conspicuously absent, and another has been removed.

The final page contains his own signature, a flourish of illegible C?’s, carefully snipped from a piece of paper that might have been an invoice or a letter. Beneath it there is a single lock of raven hair glued onto the page and surrounded by symbols and letters. Chandresh’s hand reaches up to touch the ends of his hair, curling around his collar.

A shadow passes over the desk and Chandresh jumps back in surprise. The book falls closed.

“Sir?”

Marco stands in the doorway, watching Chandresh with a curious expression.

“I … I thought you’d left for the evening,” Chandresh says. He looks down at the book and then back at Marco.