If he had only seconds, he was going to make them count.
He picked up the candleholder with numbed fingers and hurled it. Not at Ripley, but through the glass of the windows. The crash echoed along Stone Street and made a dog start barking. His only chance, he'd realized, was to bring the nearest constable to his aid. If no one heard the noise, he was dead. And he might well be dead, anyway.
He retreated. His legs were cold and trembling; everything seemed to be in slow-motion, and he was aware that his heart-when it should be pounding in his chest-was also slowing. When he drew in a breath, his lungs creaked. They felt as if they were filling up with icy water. Even the workings of his mind were running down: Ripley may have shadowed him from the Trot come ahead and picked the lock relocked the door waiting for him in the dark his method of a needle through his eye into the brain for resolution of this matter of
Matthew picked up Greathouse's chair and held it before him, as he backed toward the wall.
In the flickering light cast by the candles on Greathouse's desk, Ripley glided forward step after step.
"Hello?" someone called from the street. "Hello, up there!"
Matthew opened his mouth to shout for help, but his voice was gone. It came to him to throw the chair at Ripley and take his chances on getting down the steps. As soon as this thought registered in his brain, his hands spasmed. He lost hold of the chair. His legs gave way and he fell to his knees.
A fist hit the door at the bottom of the stairs. Matthew fell onto his face. He was shivering, his muscles jumping as if the venom had birthed frogs beneath his skin. Still, he tried to push himself across the floor. Within another five seconds both his strength and power of will had abandoned him.
Ripley stood over Matthew, who lay frozen on his stomach, his eyes open and his mouth gasping.
"Corbett?" shouted another voice. There came the sound of the doorhandle being worked back and forth.
Ripley reached down and began to turn Matthew over.
Something slammed against the door.
Ripley succeeded in his task. In his prison of ice, Matthew thought he should get his hands up before his eyes. He tried this also, but nothing happened. I'm drowning, he thought. My God I can't breathe
Again, something smashed into the door. There came the noise of wood ripping asunder. Matthew felt the floor shake underneath him.
Ripley grasped a handful of Matthew's hair. Candlelight jumped off the needle's tip as it hovered over the center of Matthew's right eye. Ripley had become a blur, a white shape, truly ghostly. The needle's tip descended, and looked to be burning with blue fire.
Matthew saw Ripley's head turn.
A dark shape enveloped the assassin.
Ripley's mouth opened, and suddenly a huge black fist hit him in the face and his jaw crumpled and teeth and blood flew out. For a second the blurred Ripley gave a hideous rictus of a grin with his ruined mouth, the single good eye wide and staring, the other fish-belly white, and then his face disappeared again beneath the fist. This time Ripley fell out of Matthew's line-of-sight, leaving what Matthew saw to be a streak of spirit image across the air.
Matthew's lungs hitched. He was gulping breath down, swallowing it from where he lay at the center of an ice pond.
"Corbett!" Someone was above him. He couldn't make out the face. "Corbett!" "Is he dyin'?" another voice asked. A green lamp floated over Matthew.
The face went away. There was a silence, during which Matthew continued to gulp small mouthfuls of breath, for it was all he could manage. His heartbeat was slowing slowing
"Christ!" came a shout. "Zed, pick him up! Peterson, do you know where Dr. Mallory lives? On Nassau Street? "Yes sir, I know."
"Run there as fast as you can! Tell him we're bringing in a poison victim! Go!"
Thirty-Four
"Drink this."
Matthew recoiled; he couldn't recoil very far, however, for he was swaddled in damp beddings with his arms down by his sides. A cup of steaming liquid was tilted to his lips, which Matthew even in his humid haze kept tightly pressed together.
"It's just tea. English tea, that is. With honey and a dash of rum. Go ahead, drink it."
Matthew accepted it, and Jason Mallory held the cup to his mouth until the tea was gone.
"There," said Dr. Mallory. "Wasn't so bad, was it?"
Matthew's swollen eyes took in the doctor sitting in a chair beside his bed. On an octagonal table next to the chair was a single candle with a polished tin reflector behind it, and by that light Matthew made out Mallory's face. The rest of the room was shrouded by darkness.
Matthew felt as if his mind had been shattered like a mirror and pieced together again by a stranger who was not quite sure how the memories fit. Had Rachel Howarth ever stood beautiful and defiant before a mocking throng of Indians in a Seneca longhouse? Had Magistrate Woodward ever nocked an arrow and fired it into the night-black forest? Or Berry ever leaned her head against his shoulder under the stars and wept heartbroken tears? He was all messed up.
More than that, his bones ached, his very teeth ached, he couldn't have gotten up from this bed or in reality lifted his arms from his sides for eight times eighty pounds, and he had the awful impression of a woman sliding a chamberpot under him and saying, "There you are, now do your business like a good boy."
He remembered sweating. But he remembered freezing, as well. Then burning up. At some point, had cold water been poured repeatedly over his back? He remembered someone pushing down on his chest, again and again, hard enough to had he wept, like Berry had? And someone saying close to his ear, "Breathe, Matthew! Breathe!"
Ah, yes. He remembered drinking the tea. Not English tea, certainly. This had been thick, sharp-tasting, and Again, Matthew/ Drink it, now You can do it. All down.
His heart. He remembered how his heart was pounding, as if about to tear itself from his chest and tumble across the floor spewing blood. He was sweating, he was lying in a sodden mass of linens, and
One more cup, Matthew. Come on, Greathouse, get his mouth open.
"How are you feeling?" Mallory asked.
Matthew made a noise between a fart and a whistle.
"Do you know where you are?"
Matthew could see nothing but the doctor's face, illuminated by the reflected candle. Mallory was a lean, handsome man who appeared to possess features part angel, in his long, graceful Roman nose and luminous sea-green eyes, and part devil, in his arched, thick dark brown eyebrows and a wide mouth that seemed to be on the constant verge of a cruel burst of laughter. He had a weathered face that spoke of the harsh fire of tropic suns. His hair was dark brown, pulled back and tied into a queue. His chin was square and noble, his demeanor calm, his teeth all in their places. His voice was low and smoky, like the rumble of distant guns.
"The treatment room in my house," he said, when Matthew didn't respond. "Do you know how long you've been here?"
"No." Matthew was shocked at the weakness of his own voice. How time flew: one day a young man, the next ready for Paradise.
"This is your third morning."
"It's day, then?" But where was the sunlight? Surely there were windows in here. "When I last checked the clock, it was just after two. In the morning." "A night owl," Matthew rasped.
"You might give praise for night owls. Owing to a particular night owl named Ashton McCaggers, you were brought promptly to me."
"I remember " What? A one-eyed ghost, sliding out of the wall? A sting in the side of his neck? Oh, yes. That. His heart was beating hard again, and suddenly he was wet with perspiration. The bed already felt like a sinking boat. "Ripley," Matthew said. "What happened to him?"