On a sudden impulse he turned left a block sooner than he usually did. I’ll walk halfway down this block, he thought, and then cross to St. James through the service alley. I’ll come out just across the street from my house, and if that loafer I’ve seen hanging about is still there I’ll shake an explanation out of him—and if he tries any funny business he’ll be the first man in history to be killed by a percussion cap pistol.
In the fog the street lamps were just shifting yellow blurs, and tiny drops of moisture began to collect on Dundee’s little moustache. He scratched it irritably. You’re awfully short-tempered these days, he told himself. That poor devil you shouted at in the conference room back there probably won’t do business with you now, and those patents and factories he has to sell will be damn useful in a decade or two. Oh hell—wait and buy ‘em from his heirs.
He paused when he turned into the service alley. Well, he thought, as long as you’re sneaking, you may as well do it right. He took off his boots, held them both in his left hand and then padded noiselessly down the dim alley. His right hand rested on the knob grip of one of the Egg pistols.
Suddenly Dundee froze—he’d heard whispering up ahead. He drew the pistol out of its little holster and tiptoed forward, probing the fog with the two-inch barrel.
Two floors overhead someone rattled a window latch and Dundee nearly fired—and then nearly dropped—the gun, for abruptly, totally and without any warning he had remembered the last part of his recurring nightmare, the part he’d never been able to recall after he woke up. With photographic clarity he’d seen the thing that in the dream had made the random knocking sound in the fog overhead, the thing the corpse-figure of Doyle had pointed up at.
It was the body of J. Cochran Darrow dangling from a rope tied around its neck, its booted feet knocking against the wall like the devil’s own wind chime, and its head, twisted into a posture exclusive to hanged men, staring down at him with a rictus grin that seemed to bare every single one of the yellow teeth.
His gun hand was shaking now, and he was more aware of the clammy chill of the air, as though he’d shed an overcoat. Ahead he could see a brightening stain of yellow light, for he was nearly through to the St. James sidewalk, and a street lamp stood only a few yards from the alley mouth.
There was more whispering from in front of him, and now he could see two vague silhouettes standing just inside the alley.
He raised the gun and said, clearly, “Don’t move, either of you.”
Both figures exclaimed in surprise and leaped out onto the sidewalk. As Dundee stepped forward out of the alley to keep them both covered he let his boots clop to the pavement and drew his other pistol. “Jump like that again and I’ll kill both of you,” he said calmly. “Now I want an explanation, fast, of what you’re doing here and why you’ve—”
He’d been looking at the younger of the two ragged lurkers, but now he glanced at the other.
And the color drained from his features and was instantly replaced by sweat as cold as the fog, for he recognized the man’s face. It was Brendan Doyle’s.
At the same instant Chinnie realized who it was behind the pistols. “Face to face at last,” he whispered through clenched teeth. “We’re going to change places, you and I…” He took a step toward Dundee.
The gunshot had a flat sound in the thick fog, like someone slapping a board against a brick wall. Dundee began sobbing as Adelbert Chinnie stepped back and then sat down on the sidewalk. “God, I’m sorry, Doyle!” Dundee wailed. “But you should stay dead!”
The other gun wobbled toward Jacky, but before it could train on her she lunged forward and brought the chopping edge of her hand down hard on Dundee’s wrist. The little gun clattered onto the pavement and she dove for it.
Dundee, jolted out of his hysteria by the sharp pain in his wrist, was right on top of her.
Jacky grabbed the gun just as Dundee’s weight slammed her onto her knees and his right forearm hooked around under her chin; his free hand was scrabbling at her wrist, but weakly—her blow must have numbed it. From the opposite side of the street came the sound of a window breaking, but both of the gasping combatants were too busy to look up; Jacky was fighting to get her legs under her and keep air passing through her constricted throat, and Dundee was striving with considerably more strength to prevent those things. Jacky couldn’t raise the gun without pitching face down onto the pavement. The pulse in her head sounded to her like labored strokes of a pickaxe through frozen topsoil.
“Lead the dead back to me, will you, boy?” Dundee was whispering harshly. “I’ll send you across that river yourself.”
In a last desperate gambit Jacky suddenly bent her arm and rolled hard to the left. For a moment her gun hand was free, and she swung the barrel toward Dundee, who had fallen back and now snatched for the gun, missed it, and instead grabbed her shirt collar and kneed her with all his strength; but the blow that he thought would jackknife his opponent in oblivious agony only jolted Jacky, and didn’t prevent her from pressing the stubby barrel of the pistol against the bridge of Dundee’s nose, and pulling the trigger.
The shot was even more muffled than the previous one had been. Dundee relaxed his hold on Jacky’s collar, evidently in order to give his full attention to doing a sort of gargled imitation of a rattlesnake. A moment later he was limp, staring at her with two bulging eyes, between which a neat round hole had been punched. A gleaming crescent of blood collected on the lower edge, then spilled in a line across the forehead.
“All of ye smug bastards!” came a loud cry from across the street. Jacky sat up. “Ye’ve won, ye heartless sons of bitches,” shouted the voice from the fog, and it seemed to Jacky to be coming from higher than street level. “Ye’ve driven old Joe to the point where he’d rather be dead than take yer smarmy ways any longer. May it trouble what shreds of conscience—”
“Joe!” called a quiet voice. “Are you drunk? What the devil are you shouting about? Stop it this instant!”
Jacky knew she should run away before the racket attracted a police officer, but besides being very shaky she was curious about the invisible drama across the street.
“I broke this here window. Miss Claire,” said the man’s voice. “And I reckon it’ll cost ye something to get the front walkway cleaned tomorrow. Write up a bill for it all and send it to me in hell, ye teasing bitch!”
“Joe,” said the lady’s voice, louder now. “I order you to—oh my God?”
Jacky wondered. Did he jump? an instant before she heard the solid crack and thudding of something impacting hard onto the pavement.
Then Jacky’s attention was distracted by Dundee’s corpse. It had sat up.
The blind eyes were blinking, and an expression of abysmal horror was forming on the blood-streaked face. One of Dundee’s hands wobbled up, awkward as a rusty hinge, and groped at his punctured face. For a moment it seemed to be trying to get up; then it shuddered and collapsed, and its last exhalation seemed to go on forever.
Jacky got up and ran.
CHAPTER 15
“He whispered, ‘And a river lies Between the dusk and dawning skies…’”
Though the lightermen and bargemen on the Thames had another half hour of April sunlight to work in, the inhabitants of the St. Giles rookery had seen the sun set an hour ago behind the tall, ragged old buildings that were their drab and stultifyingly close horizon, and nearly every one of the unmatched windows of Rat’s Castle glowed with light.