He wasn’t letting himself consider the possibility that Ashbless might be unable, or unwilling, to help him.
“My God, Stanley, will you look at that poor creature!” said a lady as she stepped to the pavement from a hackney cab. “Give him a shilling.”
Acting as if he hadn’t heard, Doyle resumed gnawing the piece of dirty bread Captain Jack had equipped him with six days ago; Stanley was complaining that if he gave Doyle a shilling he wouldn’t have enough for a drink before the show.
“You value your filthy liquor more than the salvation of your soul, is that it? You make me sick. Here, you with the bread or whatever that thing is! Buy yourself a decent dinner with this.”
Doyle was careful to wait until she’d approached closer, and then he looked up sharply as if startled, and touched his mouth and ear. She was holding a bracelet out toward him.
“Oh, will you look at that, Stanley, on top of it all he can’t hear nor speak. Low as a dog the poor fellow is.”
She waved the bracelet at Doyle, and he took it with a grateful smile. The couple moved on toward the theater, Stanley grumbling, as Doyle dropped the heavy bracelet into his pocket.
And then, he thought as he shambled on, once Ashbless has helped me get on my feet in this damned century, if I decide—as I imagine I will—that I’d rather go home to the time when there are paramedics and anesthetics and health inspectors and movies and flush toilets and telephones, I’ll cautiously get in touch with the fearsome Doctor Romany and work out some sort of a deal whereby he’ll tell me the location of one of the upcoming time gaps. Hell, I could probably trick him into letting me be within the field when the gap closed! I’d have to be sure he wouldn’t find and take away the mobile hook, though. I wonder if it’s too big to swallow.
The tickling itch had been building in his throat over the last few minutes, and an elegantly dressed couple was approaching at an unhurried pace, so he unleashed his much admired cough; he tried not to let himself do it too often because it tended quickly to change from a simulated ordeal into a genuine lung-wrenching paroxysm, and in the last few days it had been getting worse. He supposed glumly that he had picked it up from his midnight dip in the chilly Chelsea Creek a week ago.
“Holy Mother of God, James, that walking corpse is about to cough his livers right out onto the pavement. Give him something to buy himself a drink with.”
“Be wasted on that sod. He’ll be dead before dawn.”
“Well… perhaps you’re right. Yes, you certainly seem to be right.”
* * *
Two men leaned against the iron palings of the fence that flanked the wings of the theatre. One of them tapped ash from a cigar and then drew on it, making a glowing red dot in the shadows. “I asked somebody,” he said softly to his partner, “and this boy is a deaf-mute called Dumb Tom. You’re sure it’s him?”
“The boss is sure.”
The first man stared across the street at Doyle, who had pulled himself together and was lurching away, again pretending to gnaw the bread. “He sure doesn’t look like a menace.”
“Just the fact of him is a menace, Kaggs. He’s not supposed to be here.”
“I guess so.” Kaggs slipped a long, slim knife from his sleeve, absently tested the edge with his thumb and then slipped it away again. “How do you want to do it?”
The other man thought for a moment. “Shouldn’t be hard. I’ll bump him and knock him down, and you can act like you’re helping him up. Let your coat hang forward so nobody’ll see, and then slip the knife all the way in just behind his collarbone, blade perpendicular to the bone, and rock it back and forth a little. There’s a big artery down there that you can’t miss, and he ought to be dead in a few seconds.”
“All right. Let’s go.” He tossed his cigar onto the street and they both pushed away from the fence and strode after Doyle.
* * *
Red-rimmed eyes peered out of the face colorful with grease paint, and Horrabin took two knocking steps forward. “They were watching him, and now they’re going after him,” he said in a growling whisper quite different from his fluty voice. “You’re certain they’re not ours?”
“I’ve never clapped eyes on ‘em before, yer Honor,” said one of the men standing on the pavement below him.
“Then never mind waiting until this crowd’s inside,” hissed the clown. “Get Dumb Tom now.” As the three men sprinted away after Doyle and his two pursuers, Horrabin pounded a white-gloved fist against the brick wall of the alley and whispered, “Damn you, Fairchild, why couldn’t you have remembered yesterday?”
* * *
I’ve got to get back to 1983 before this cough kills me, Doyle thought unhappily. A shot of penicillin or something would clear it up in a couple of days, but if I went to a doctor here the bastard would probably prescribe leeches. He felt the throat tickle building up again, but resolutely resisted it. I wonder if it’s developed into full-blown pneumonia yet. Hell, it doesn’t even seem to be good for business anymore. Nobody wants to give anything to a beggar who looks like he’ll be dead in ten minutes. Maybe the captain would—
Someone thrust a leg in his way and before he could step aside he was heavily shoulder-bumped, and he pitched straight forward onto the cobblestones, abrading the palms of his hands. The person who’d tripped him walked on, but someone else crouched beside him. “Are you all right?” the newcomer asked.
Dizzily Doyle started to make his deaf-mute gesture, but all in an instant the man slapped one hand over Doyle’s face, holding his jaw shut with the heel of his hand, and with the other drove a blade down at Doyle’s shoulder. Doyle caught a glimpse of the knife and thrashed backward, so that it cut through his coat and skin but was deflected outward by his collarbone. He tried to yell but could only produce a sort of loud hum with his mouth still held shut; his assailant knelt on Doyle’s free arm and drew the knife up for another try.
Suddenly something from behind collided hard with the man and he oomphed! and did a quick forward somersault as his knife clattered away across the cobbles. Three men now stood above Doyle, and two of them quickly hooked hands under his arms and hoisted him up. “Saved yer life. Tommy,” panted one. “Now you come with us.”
Doyle allowed himself to be marched at a trot back the way he’d come, for he assumed these were some of Copenhagen Jack’s beggars who had come to his rescue; then he saw the upright grasshopper figure of Horrabin waiting in the alley ahead, and realized that Doctor Romany had found him.
He extended one arm and then slammed the elbow back into the stomach of the man who held his left arm, and as the man crumpled Doyle drove his left fist into the throat of the man on his right. He too went down and then Doyle was running south with the boundless energy of pure panic, for he remembered Romany’s cigar so well that he could almost feel the heat of it on his eye. He could hear the footsteps of the third man pounding close behind him.
He was off the main street and pelting down an alley now, and the racing pursuer’s footsteps echoed terrifyingly close, so when he saw a stack of boxes full of vegetable peelings against one wall he reached out as he ran past and yanked the stack out; Doyle spun with the momentum of the action, lost his footing and fell heavily, skidding on his hip and then on his cut shoulder, but the boxes had toppled directly into the path of Horrabin’s man and he had tangled his feet in them and done a resounding belly-flop onto the round stones of the pavement. He lay motionless face down, the wind and maybe the life knocked out of him, and Doyle got to his feet, whimpering, and limped as fast as he could on down the alley.
He crossed two narrow streets and followed his alley through one more block and then found himself on the brightly lamplit sidewalk of the Strand, only a few blocks east of the Crown and Anchor. All the running had started him coughing again, and he made a shilling and fourpence from the awed passersby before he got it under control. When he could get a breath again he began walking west on the Strand, for it had suddenly occurred to him that this was t
he Saturday night Coleridge had been scheduled to speak, and that Coleridge, while not now in any position to grant substantial aid to anyone, might at least be able to help Doyle get back to Captain Jack’s house unseen. Hell, Doyle thought, he might even remember me from a week ago.
Oblivious to the bright store and restaurant windows he passed, he hurried down the sidewalk, hunched over to relieve the pain of the stitch in his side, limping, and breathing with fast asthmatic wheezes. He saw a woman recoil from him in actual fear, and it came to him how grotesque he must look with his make-up, tattered clothes and crippled cockroach gait; abruptly self-conscious, he straightened up and walked more slowly.
The crowd that parted hastily in front of him seemed no more composed of individuals than a plywood theatrical flat representing a bus-line, but he did notice when a startlingly tall figure stepped out of an alley into his path. A white conical hat topped a head like a decorated Easter egg, and Doyle gasped, spun around and ran, hearing the knocking of the pursuing stilts on the pavement.
Horrabin ran easily on the stilts, taking bobbing ten foot strides even as he wove through the sidewalk traffic, and as he ran he emitted a succession of piercing high-low-high-low whistles. To the terrified Doyle it sounded like the Nazi Gestapo sirens in old movies about World War Two.
The whistle was rousing certain beggars and drawing them out of alleys and doorways; they were silent, powerful-looking creatures, and two of them plodded toward Doyle while another was working his way over from across the street.
Looking over his shoulder, Doyle caught a freeze frame glimpse of Horrabin only a giant pace away, his face grinning maniacally like a Chinese dragon and one white claw extended. Doyle leaped sideways into the street; he tumbled, rolling with only inches to spare out from under the hammering hooves of a cab horse, and then he scrambled to his feet and sprang up onto the step of a carriage and braced himself there with one hand on the window sill and one on the roof rail.
The carriage’s occupants were an old man and a young girl. “Please speed up,” Doyle gasped, “I’m being chased by—”
The old man had angrily picked up and poised a lean walking stick, and now with all the force of the first breaking shot of a pool game drove the blunt end at Doyle’s chest. Doyle flew off his perch as if he’d been shot, and though he managed to land on his feet he instantly fell onto his hands and knees and then rolled over a couple of times.
The ruin-faced, one-eyed old creature huddled in a doorway giggled and clapped his papier-mache hands silently. “Ah, yes yes! Now into the river, Doyle—there’s something I want to show you on the other side,” chittered the Luck of the Surrey-side beggars.
“God save us, he’s been shot!” shouted Horrabin. “Get him while he’s still got any breath in him, you dung beetles!”
Doyle was on his feet now, but every breath seemed to spread a crack in his chest, and he thought that if he started coughing now he’d die of it. One of his pursuers was only a few paces away, advancing with a confident smile, so Doyle dug into his pocket, fetched out the heavy bracelet and pitched it with all his strength into the man’s face, then without pausing to see what effect it had he turned and hobbled to the far curb, crossed the sidewalk and disappeared into an alley.
“Tomorrow night’s dinner you all are unless you bring him to me!” shrilled Horrabin, froth flying from his vermillioned lips as he did a woodpecker tap dance of fury on the north sidewalk.
One of his beggars hurried forward but had misjudged the velocity of a Chaplin Company coach and went down under the hooves, and one of the front wheels had cut across his middle before the driver was able to wrench the horses and vehicle to a halt. By now all traffic had come to a stop in this section of the Strand, and drivers were shouting at each other and, in a few cases, lashing at one another with their whips.
Horrabin stepped off the curb and began poling his way through the confusion toward the opposite side of the street.
* * *
Doyle emerged from between two buildings and clattered down an ancient set of wooden stairs to a sort of boardwalk that ran along the top of the glistening riverbank. He hurried down to the end of one of the piers and crouched behind a high wooden box, and his breathing gradually slowed to the point where he could close his mouth. The river air was cold, and he was glad Copenhagen Jack didn’t insist that his beggars appear half-clad in cold weather—though it was an effective touch. He pulled his jacket and shirt away from his collar-bone—the knife cut was still bleeding pretty freely, though it wasn’t deep.
I wonder who the hell that was, he thought. It couldn’t have been one of Doctor Romany’s people, or Horrabin’s, for Jacky told me they definitely want me alive. Maybe it was some rival of theirs… or even just a solo lunatic hobo-killer, some prototype Jack the Ripper. Doyle gingerly touched the long cut. Thank God, he thought, that Horrabin’s man arrived when he did.
He rubbed his chest and then inhaled experimentally, filling his lungs. Though his breastbone stung, and he was doubtlessly developing the major bruise of his life—so far—there was no grating sensation; the vicious old man’s cane had probably not broken anything. He exhaled and leaned wearily against the box, letting his feet dangle over the water.
The yellow dots of lanterns on passing boats, and their reflections, stippled the blackness of the river like a Monet painting, and the lights of Lambeth were a glowing chain on the close horizon. The moon, a faint orange crescent, seemed to be balanced on the railing of Blackfriars Bridge half a mile east. Behind and above him to his right were the lights of the Adelphi Terrace, looking like some fantastic pleasure ship viewed from water level, and he could hear faint music from there when the breeze slackened.
He could feel another coughing fit building up in his throat and chest, but fear gave him the strength to suppress it when he heard a slow, heavy knocking coming his way along the boardwalk behind him.
* * *
Jacky was glad the water was flowing fast enough in the subterranean canal to make the rudder useless in downstream travel, for if it was swung very far to port it would hit her in the head; and if the people in the boat had been exerting any more control over the craft than just using barge poles to push it away from the walls whenever the current swung it too close, they’d have felt the drag of their secret passenger. The water swirling around her neck was becoming even colder as they approached the river, and it was all she could do to keep her teeth from chattering. She was careful to keep her head out of the water, for she had a small flintlock pistol wrapped up in her turban, and she wanted to keep the flashpan dry. The torches at bow and stern of the boat flickered in the sulphury breeze, sometimes casting only a dim red glow and at others flaring up to illuminate starkly every stone of the arched ceiling passing by close overhead.
Five minutes ago she had been dry and warm, cooking a panful of sausages over the fire in the kitchen of Horrabin’s Rat’s Castle on Maynard Street. She’d been dressed in her Ahmed the Hindoo Beggar outfit, with a turban, sandals, and a robe made from a chintz bedspread, with walnut stain on her face and hands and a false beard supplementing her customary false moustache, for she’d seen the exiled Fairchild at the Rat’s Castle, and didn’t want to be recognized as one of Copenhagen Jack’s people. Doctor Romany had arrived a half hour earlier, and had perched in one of Horrabin’s swings, taken his weird shoes off and absorbed himself with a stack of shipping reports.
Then one of Horrabin’s beggars, a sturdy red-faced old fellow, had burst in, out of breath from running but gasping out a message almost before he was in the room. “Doctor Romany… hurry … the Strand, and moving south toward the river… a man’s been shot… “
“Who? Who’s been shot?” Romany hopped down from the swing without putting his spring-shoes back on, and his old face twisted with agony; quickly he climbed back into the swing and pulled the shoes on. “Who, damn you?” he rasped.
“I don’t know… Simmons saw it and… sent me to fetch you. He said it’s
the man you’ve… offered a reward for.”
Romany had his shoes on and laced by this time, and he had again jumped down from the swing, and was bobbing agilely now on the powerful springs. “Which one? But it must be Dog-Face Joe. They’d never dare to shoot the American. Well, where is he? The Strand, you say?”
“Yes, sir. And moving south, by the Adelphi. It’d be quickest, yer Honor, to take a boat down the underground canal straight to the Adelphi Arches. All the waterways are running strong, what with the rains… “
“Lead the way—and hurry. I knew old Joe for years, and if they haven’t outright killed him he’ll get away from them.”
When the two men hurried down the cellar stairs Ahmed the Hindoo Beggar was only a few paces behind, the sausages forgotten. This sounds like it, Jacky had thought, her heart pounding as she forced herself to hang back far enough so they wouldn’t see or hear her following. God, let him be still alive; and let me get close enough to put a pistol ball through his brain. And if I could somehow have a moment to whisper to him first, explain who I am and why I’m going to kill him… and then at last, she had thought longingly, I could go home.
When they had reached the old stone dock in the under basement there came a moment when two beggars were untying the boat and lighting the torches, and Doctor Romany was staring impatiently down the dark tunnel, and Jacky had been able to pad across the stone floor and slip noiselessly into the cold black water. The boat, which the two men dragged and bumped alongside the dock for Doctor Romany to get into, had rings along the outside of the gunwale so that a tarpaulin could be lashed over it, and Jacky looped two fingers through one of them and let herself be towed along when the boat was poled out into the strong current.