I nodded to that; and as I proceeded to think the rest of the matter over, I really couldn’t see any reason why we shouldn’t go home and celebrate. “So why are we standing around here?” I asked. “And how come it doesn’t feel like we can just cut loose?”
Miss Howard turned to me. “Remember those men in Stillwater, Stevie?” she said. “You wouldn’t have thought they’d have had anything to fear, either—it’s been years since the Muhlenbergs’ house burned down. But the feeling never went away …”
“Oh, fiddle-faddle, as my grandmother used to say,” was Mr. Moore’s answer to that. “We’ve got the woman caged, and her fate is sealed. Come on, all of you, let’s get back home and start patting ourselves on the back!”
“Yes,” Mr. Picton finally agreed with a nod. “I do think we owe ourselves at least one evening free of anxiety. Why don’t you all go along and get started? I just want to review a few things and get my proposal to Judge Brown ready—and I’ll thank you not to dispose of all the champagne before I join you, John.”
So the rest of us departed, passing out into the warm night and starting the walk home at a good clip. Our spirits continued to pick up as we moved down High Street, and though I can’t say that we were exactly ecstatic when we reached Mr. Picton’s house, we were feeling sound enough to break into general cheers when we discovered that our host had called ahead and had Mrs. Hastings bring a few bottles of the champagne up from the cellar and put them on ice. Dinner was laid out and waiting, and the amiable old housekeeper’s handiwork had never looked so inviting: there was roast capon, cold curried lamb with raisins, a variety of delicious potatoes (included salty fried ones for me), and a positive bounty of young vegetables what had come in just that day from local farms. Add to that fresh strawberry shortcake and homemade ices, and you had a feast what we simply couldn’t wait for our host before diving into. Laughter and high spirits filled the dining room in ever-greater amounts as we ate and drank; and though I was only downing root beer, my behavior, before long, was just as loose as that of the wine-swilling adults. Caught up in this mood, I don’t think any of us were really conscious of how much time was slipping by: we might’ve stayed at that table all night, so powerful was the general feeling of relief at knowing that we were finally on the verge of what looked to be a happy conclusion to the case of Libby Hatch.
Then, just before midnight, we began to hear a bell tolling in the distance.
Marcus was the first to take note of it: in the middle of laughing at a story what Mr. Moore was relating about being chased around Abingdon Square by a bunch of Hudson Dusters during his recent trip to New York, the detective sergeant suddenly cocked his head and looked toward the front of the house. He didn’t stop smiling, but his laughter died down pretty quickly.
“What the hell,” he mumbled. “Do you hear that?”
“Hear what?” Mr. Moore answered, going for more champagne. “You’re delusional, Marcus—”
“No, listen,” the detective sergeant replied, taking his napkin from his lap and standing up. “It’s a bell…”
Out of the corner of my eye I saw the Doctor’s head jerk up: in an instant he, too, had registered the noise, and the rest of us soon did likewise.
“What in the world?” Lucius said.
El Niño moved quickly to the screen door out front. “It comes from one of the churches!” he called back to us.
“Services?” Cyrus said. “A midnight mass in August?”
Feeling suddenly uneasy, I looked to the Doctor, who was holding out a hand in an effort to get the rest of us to be quiet. As we followed his instruction, another sound began to rise over the pulsing chirp of the crickets and grasshoppers outside:
It was a man’s voice, calling desperately for help.
“Picton,” the Doctor whispered.
“That’s not Rupert’s voice,” Mr. Moore answered quickly.
“I know,” the Doctor said. “And that is precisely what frightens me.” With that he raced for the front door, while the rest of us followed close behind.
CHAPTER 51
Moving with a sense of purpose what wiped out all the growing joy we’d felt during dinner (and also seemed to sober the adults up at a quick pace), we ran back up High Street toward the court house. About halfway there it became pretty clear that the bell we were hearing was the one in the steeple of the Presbyterian church: not a good sign. As we ran along the sidewalk, lights came on and lamps were lit in various houses along the way, though only a few daring souls came outside in their nightclothes to try to find out what was going on. The whole thing remained very mysterious until we’d almost gotten to the court house, when I suddenly realized that I recognized the voice what was screaming for help.
“It’s the other guard!” I called to the Doctor. “The one what was on the front door when we left!”
“Are you certain?” the Doctor called back to me.
“I talked to him before they brought Libby up from her cell!” I answered, listening to the voice again. “Yeah, that’s him, all right!”
Peering into the near darkness ahead of us—there were only two or three streetlamps between Mr. Picton’s place and the court house—I tried to make out any signs of activity; then I noted that the bell had stopped ringing. When we got near the court house lawn, I caught sight of a figure on the front steps of the building, one whose arms were frantically waving to us.
“There he is!” I called out, when I could see for sure that it was in fact the guard what I’d had words with earlier.
The Doctor’s face opened wide with horror when he saw that I was right, but he never let up his pace; and soon we were face to face with the panic-stricken man.
“For God’s sake!” the guard said, pointing. “Get downstairs! Try to help them, Doctor! I’ve got to go for Sheriff Dunning!”
“But what’s—” the Doctor started to ask; the guard, though, was already shooting away.
“Help them, Doctor, please!” he cried as he left.
Marcus watched him go, wondering, “Why the hell didn’t he use the telephone?”
“He’s terrified past reason,” the Doctor answered quickly, catching his breath. “And I can only think of one reason why—come!”
Leading the way again, the Doctor entered the court house, shooting over to the doorway behind the guard station. It opened onto a set of stone stairs what the Doctor had no trouble negotiating, given the many times he’d been down them during his interviews with Libby Hatch. As his feet danced quickly along, leading us into the bowels of the building, he kept muttering to himself, over and over again, “Stupidity—stupidity!”
Bursting into a central room in the basement what was the receiving area for the various jail cells beyond, the Doctor suddenly stopped—as did the rest of us, when we followed him to take in the scene in that dimly lit stone chamber:
Propped up against one wall was the guard Henry. His eyes were open wide, and his jaw was hanging away from his head at an awkward sort of angle. His throat had been cut from ear to ear, and there were a few other stab wounds in his chest. He wasn’t bleeding, though—at least, not anymore. Every drop of blood in his body, it seemed, had oozed out to drench his clothes and create a huge, dark pool on the floor under and around his body.
Across from him, also propped up against a wall, was Mr. Picton. He, too, had a few ugly wounds in his chest, and a nasty cut on one side of his neck; but unlike Henry’s, his open eyes held a faint glimmer of life, while his mouth seemed to be taking air in, even if it was only in fitful little gasps.
The pool of blood what surrounded him, though, was near as big as the one what the dead guard lay in.
While the rest of us were studying this scene in shock, the Doctor got straight over to Mr. Picton and made a quick examination of his wounds. “Cyrus!” he called. “I’ll need my medical bag from the house!” Without a word, Cyrus vanished back into and up the staircase. “Detective Sergeant!” the Doctor went on, looking to Lucius. ?
??You, too, Sara—help me! John, Marcus, we’ll need bandages—shred your shirts, both of you!”
As everybody else moved to do what they were told, El Niño and I wandered slowly over to stand behind them. It was an awful sight, so awful as to be past immediate comprehending, at least for me. El Niño, on the other hand—who’d seen a lot of brutal bloodshed in his life—seemed to grasp it all right away: he fell helplessly to his knees, hung his head for a moment, then raised it to stare at the ceiling with wide, despairing eyes. All of a sudden he let out a long, terrible wail, one what cut through the night like a wolf’s howl and made me realize, for the first time, the true meaning of what I was looking at.
“Jefe!” the aborigine wailed, beginning to weep. “Señor Picton, no! No!”
The sound of El Nino’s grief caused Mr. Picton to turn his head ever so slightly, a movement what appeared to cause him great pain. As he glanced up to see the Doctor, Lucius, and Miss Howard working on his wounds, he tried to get enough spit into his mouth to speak.
“My God …” he gasped, “that’s a hell of a noise, for such a little man to make …”
“You’ve got to keep quiet, Rupert,” Mr. Moore said, as he and Marcus frantically tore their shirts into bandage strips. The sight of his old friend lying there so badly wounded seemed to move our journalist friend to the point of tears; but he ground the reaction away with his teeth and just kept ripping. “You’re going to be all right, but for once in your life, please keep quiet!”
Mr. Picton choked out a small chuckle, at that, then winced once hard. “I’m sorry, John,” he breathed. “I’m sorry I always talked too much…. I know it embarrassed you sometimes …”
“Don’t be an idiot,” Mr. Moore said, having a harder time, now, keeping the tears back.
“And the Doctor …” Mr. Picton went on, glancing at the man who was feverishly trying to bind his wounds and stop his bleeding. “You always wanted to … to know, Doctor … why I was that way … my context …” A sudden cough brought a splatter of blood up and onto the Doctor’s chest, but he kept working on his patient. “I was going to tell you …” Mr. Picton went on. “I meant to tell you …”
“Mr. Picton, you must listen to John,” the Doctor answered. “It’s imperative that you remain quiet.”
“Heard that before …” Mr. Picton breathed. Then he took in one or two desperate gulps of air, his chest going into some kind of a spasm; it seemed to subside, though, and as it did, he let his eyes drift over to the guard Henry’s body. “I’ve … been lying here … watching him …” Another small laugh got out. “The idiot… how many stories … true and fictitious, Doctor … would you imagine involve jailers being … seduced by their captives …?”
“Please, Rupert,” Miss Howard said, herself seeming close to tears. She reached up to put two bloody fingers to his lips, then smiled weakly. “Do try to lie still. I know it’s difficult for you—”
Mr. Picton pulled his head away from her fingers, then smiled back at her. “Sara … I would prefer … as little interference … with my death scene … as possible …” Looking at Henry again and taking another difficult, wheezing breath, Mr. Picton went on, “I… would calculate that there are hundreds … of such stories…. It’s a measure … of the man’s illiteracy, you see…. That’s what’s so interesting…” He began to cough up blood again, and this time the action caused him much more agony: he grabbed at the lapel of the Doctor’s jacket, eyes bulging wide, and pulled hard. “It wasn’t… her …” he gasped, blood now pouring from his mouth and drenching his ginger beard. “She told him … to kill me…. But the pinheaded fool… couldn’t even manage that properly …” Sitting back as his face went terribly pale, Mr. Picton added, “Then she killed him… over an hour ago…. She’s got the jump on you, Doctor…. You’ve got to go… go …”
“Rupert, in the name of heaven, shut up!” Mr. Moore said, the tears now out of his eyes and streaming down his cheeks.
Mr. Picton smiled over at him once more, then tried to look around to the rest of us. “You’ve all… I want to thank you …” Taking hold of the Doctor’s lapel again, he whispered, “When they bury me, Doctor… look at the graves … my family … a clue …”
Then his head fell to one side, and all the silvery spark of recognition slipped out of his eyes.
The Doctor put his fingers to Mr. Picton’s throat, then pulled out his watch and, opening it, held the shiny cover under the man’s bloody nostrils. “He’s still breathing,” the Doctor announced, going back to work. “But just.”
The sound of footsteps came echoing down the stone stairs, and then Cyrus reappeared, carrying the Doctor’s black medical bag. Mrs. Hastings followed along behind him in a few seconds, and when she saw the bloody scene on the floor her hands flew up to cover her mouth.
“Oh, Your Honor!” she cried quietly, rushing over to stand by the Doctor. “Oh, Your Honor, no!”
“Mrs. Hastings,” the Doctor said, trying hard to keep everybody on track. “Mrs. Hastings!” he repeated, grabbing the woman’s arm and getting her attention. “Do you know if Dr. Lawrence has any sort of surgical equipment in his office? Mr. Picton cannot be moved as far as Saratoga, but we can’t give him the help he needs here.”
Trying to stifle her own weeping, Mrs. Hastings nodded. “Yes—I think so—that is, we took my husband there when he—oh, Your Honor, I can’t bear it!”
“Listen to me!” the Doctor said. “Take the detective sergeant with you.” With a nod of his head he indicated Marcus, who had put his jacket back on over his undershirt. “Telephone Dr. Lawrence, and tell him to prepare. Then get over to Mr. Wooley, at the stables. Have him ready his gentlest wagon, and fit it out with whatever padding he can. Mrs. Hastings!” The Doctor grasped the grief-stricken woman’s arm harder. “Can you do this?”
“I—” She began to nod, and tried to pull herself together. “Yes, Doctor. If the detective sergeant will help me.”
“Come on, Mrs. Hastings,” Marcus said, guiding her to the door. “If we move quickly enough, everything will be fine.”
As the pair left the room, the Doctor went back to work bandaging Mr. Picton’s wounds. “Yes—if they move quickly enough …” he said quietly, in a voice what didn’t contain much hope.
Hearing those words, I considered for the first time the possibility that Mr. Picton might die; and along with the terrible sadness of that thought came the full realization of who had attacked him, and what that attack meant: Libby Hatch was loose, and on her way, almost certainly, back to New York.
“What about the woman, Doctor?” Lucius asked, as he continued to help with the bandaging. “Mr. Picton’s right—she’s got a good jump on us.”
“That can’t be helped,” the Doctor answered quickly. “We owe this man too much—whatever can be done must be done. We need to talk to Sheriff Dunning, as well. I want it to be absolutely clear what happened here, so that when we go after her this time we can do it openly.”
Hearing all this talk, and struck cold by the sight of all the blood in the room, I could think of only one thing: What would happen to Kat when Libby got back to New York? It was past midnight—a tough, maybe impossible, hour to get a message through to Betty in time for her to get over to the Dusters’ and warn Kat who was coming. What would happen? I wondered with mounting fear, my hands going cold and my feet shifting nervously. If the woman could do this to poor Mr. Picton, not to mention the big, dead man lying against the wall across the room, what would happen when she—
I felt a tug at the back of my shirt. Turning, I saw El Niño, who seemed to have put his bout of grief aside, at least as much as he could: instead of tears, there was now a glaring fire in his dark eyes, and his face, for the first time since I’d known him, seemed to show what kind of violence he was capable of once his blood was up. At that moment I wasn’t looking at an amiable little aborigine; I was looking at a man who’d been violently torn away from his people at an early age, sold into bondage, and then esca
ped to become a wandering mercenary.
“Señorito Stevie,” he whispered, urging me into the stairway while the others continued to fix their attention on Mr. Picton. I followed him in, keeping my own eyes on the Doctor’s fast-moving hands.
“Señorito Stevie,” El Niño repeated, once we were out of earshot of the others. “I must go.”
“Go?” I said, glancing at him quickly to see his face setting even harder. “Go where?”
“The jefe will die,” El Niño said, in a matter-of-fact way what still betrayed much of his grief. “I have seen such wounds before. And I have read it in the Señor Doctor’s eyes. He will try to save Señor Picton—but he will fail. And his failure will take hours. My future here will die with the jefe. I must go.” Suddenly his gleaming kris appeared from under the dinner jacket. “Before the trail of the woman becomes lost. I owe this to Señor Picton. He was to give me a life—I shall avenge his.”
“Why are you telling me this?” I asked, turning fully to him.
“They will not let me go,” he said, nodding at the others. “They will try to stop me—and they will try to stop you, too.”
“Me?” I said.
“You cannot wait for the jefe to die,” the aborigine said. “Not if you are to save your friend, and baby Ana. It is for us to do this thing, Señorito Stevie, and we must do it now. You know the places we must go. And I have the skills”—he glanced down at the knife in his hand—“to do what must be done. But they will not permit it, if they know.”
I turned again to look at the Doctor, knowing just what El Niño meant. If I’d even suggested that I be allowed to go ahead on my own and see to Kat’s safety, the Doctor would never have agreed. He’d let me stay involved in the case from the beginning because I’d promised not to put myself in danger unnecessarily—and there was every chance that he’d view me bolting off to New York on my own to try to protect Kat as too high of a risk. He’d probably be right, too.