“I know they came in here,” Bantle said. “There’s Chink whore blood all over your hands and the floor here.”
Oh, I knowed the answer to that one. I’d heard Madame Damnable say it often enough. “It’s not the house’s policy to discuss anyone whom we may or may not be entertaining.”
“Mr. Bantle,” that Horaz Standish said, “if you give these ladies a little room to negotiate, you know they might be reasonable. Nobody’s at her best when her back’s up against the wall.” He turned his attention to me. “Miss Memery, was it? Of course we’ll pay for the door—”
Bantle snorted. Then the thing happened that I ain’t been able to make head nor tail of. My head went all sort of sticky fuzzy, like your mouth when you wake up, and I started feeling like maybe Bantle had a point. That was one of his girls upstairs, and Merry Lee had brought her here — or vice versa maybe — without asking. And didn’t she owe him, that girl, for paying to have her brought over from India? And there was Effie pointing a gun at him.
And that Horaz was being right reasonable about affairs, the whole thing considered.
Bantle pointed that glove at me, finger and thumb cocked like he was making a “gun.” I had another skin flinch, this time as I wondered if Bantle could shoot electricity out of that thing. And if it were healthy for him or anyone else for him to do so when he was dripping on the rug. His eyes sort of … glittered, with the reflections moving across them. It was like what they say Mesmeric — I think Mr. Mesmer was the fellow’s name?
“Do it,” Bantle said, and God help me if I didn’t think it seemed a fine idea.
I was just about reaching over to grab the barrel of Effie’s shotgun when the library door eased open off to my left. Through the crack I could see Beatrice’s bright eyes peeping. Bantle saw her, too, because he snarled, “Get that Negra whore out here,” and one of his stand-over men started toward her.
I had just enough warning to snatch back my reaching hand and slap my palms over my ears before Effie jerked the gun up and sent a load of buckshot through the stained glass over the door panels that didn’t never get too much sun no more anyhow. The window burst out like a spray of glory and Bantle and his men all ducked and cringed like quirted hounds.
I just stood there, dumbfounded, useless, as full of shame for what I’d been thinking about doing to Effie and Madame Damnable as some folk think I ought to be for whoring.
I wondered what the trick up with Pollywog thought was going on down here, and if he’d hightailed it out the window yet. We’re not supposed to know, but one of Pollywog’s regulars is Dyer Stone, and he’s the mayor of Rapid City. He sneaks in the back and never sits in the parlor, of course.
“I got four more fucking shells,” Effie said. “Go on and get her.”
The bully who’d started moving couldn’t seem to make his feet work all of a sudden, like the floor’d gotten as sticky as my head had been. Without looking over at Beatrice, I said, “Bea sweetie, you go run get the constable. It seems these gentlemen have lost their way and need directions.”
It’d be better if we could call for help on that handsome mother-of-pearl example of Mr. Bell’s telephone sitting on the table beside the striped divan. But the city council hadn’t voted the constabulary money to install a set of their own, and honestly there was almost nobody in Rapid City we could even call, as yet. But we did have a line to the switchboard, and you could talk to the operator any time you liked.
When it was coming out of my mouth, I couldn’t believe it. The words sounded calm and smooth, the opposite of the sticky fuzz I’d been feeling a moment before. I even saw one of the bully boys take a half step back. It didn’t impress Peter Bantle, though, because while the library door was closing across Beatrice’s face he started forward. Effie worked the pump on the shotgun, but he looked right at her and sneered, “You don’t have the balls,” and then he was reaching for me with that awful glove.
Horaz Standish had his hand stretched out like he might try to stop Bantle, but also like he hadn’t made up his mind to do it yet. I didn’t know yet if I was going to scream or run or try to hit him, or if Effie was really going to have to learn to shoot a man dead that night.
But a big voice arrested him before I had to decide. “Peter goddamn Bantle, just what the pig-shitting hell do you think you’re doing in my house?”
Madame is quick to correct Effie’s mouth when it gets coarse. But I know where Effie done learned it.
Peter Bantle didn’t have the sense to turn around and run when he heard the ferrule of Madame Damnable’s cane clicking on the marble tile at the top of the stair, even though Horaz’s hand finally reached his sleeve and tugged him backward. He did let his hand fall, though, and stepped back smartly. Effie’s breath went out with a sound like surprise. I looked over at her pale, sweaty face and saw her move her finger off the trigger.
She really had been gonna shoot him.
I stepped back and half-turned so I could watch Madame Damnable coming down the stairs, her cane in one hand, the other clenching on the banister with each step.
She was a great battleship of a woman, her black hair gone all steel color at the temples. Her eyes hadn’t had to go steel color; they had started off that way. Miss Francina was behind her on the one side and Miss Bethel on the other, and they didn’t look like they was in any hurry, nor in any mood for conversation. “You got one of my girls in here, Alice,” Peter Bantle said.
She reached the bottom of the stairs and Miss Bethel fanned off left to come take the shotgun from Effie. “You speak with respect to Madame,” Miss Francina said.
Bantle turned his head and spat on the fireplace rug. “I’ll give a tart what respect she deserves. Now, you’re going to give me my whore back. Aren’t you.”
Madame Damnable kept coming, inexorable as a steam locomotive rolling through the yard. She was in her robe and slippers, like the rest of us, and it didn’t one whit make her less imposing. “I’ll give you your head back if you don’t step outside my parlor. You may think you can own folks, Peter Bantle, but this here Rapid City is a free city, where no letter of indenture signed overseas is going to hold water. The constable’s on his way, and if you’re not gone when he gets here I’m going to have him arrest you and your boys for trespass, breaking and entering, and malicious mischief. I pay more in taxes than you do, and most of the law would rather be with my happy girls than your broke-down sad and terrified ones. So you know how that’s going to end.”
That, I thought, and the mayor just slid out an upstairs window. Unless he’s still in bed with the covers over his head.
Well, I hadn’t seen Polly. Maybe the covers was over her head, instead.
Madame gestured to the broken door and the busted-out window. “The evidence is right there.”
“Your own girl shot out that window!” Outrage made his voice squeak.
I had to hide my laugh behind my hand. Effie squeezed the other one. She was shaking, but it was all right. Madame Damnable was here now and she was going to take care of everything.
Peter Bantle knowed it, too. He had already given way a step, and when you were faced with Madame Damnable there was no coming back from that. He drew himself up in the doorway as his bully boys collapsed around him. Madame Damnable kept walking forward, and all four of those thugs slid out the door like water running out a drain.
Their boots crunched in the glass outside. He couldn’t resist a parting shot, but he called it over his shoulder, and it didn’t so much as shift Madame Damnable’s nighttime braid against her shoulder. “You ain’t heard the last of this, Alice.”