“With that accent,” I said, “you’re the one who should move away.”
I said this in my own voice. He straightened, looking hard at me in the darkness.
“That’s right,” I said, ripping my left arm out of the cloth sling. I figured it was only fair that he knew who I was and what was at stake in the fight to come. “I’m Cobb,” I said.
His knife hand started to move and I had an easier path. My right hand was trigger-ready and I drew up the cane as the knife was coming out and I grabbed the shaft of the cane with my left hand as well, gripping it hard halfway down like a rifle and this was the basic bayonet move. I took a forward step to leverage the thrust of the cane aimed now for the middle of his forehead even as the knife blade glinted as it came free, even in the darkness catching the tiniest fragment of light, but I had to focus on the target and my arms were rushing and my torso powered forward behind this strike and his head was moving off center, he was quick and trying to dodge away but the metal tip of the cane caught him just at the curve of his right temple and his head jerked at the blow but I couldn’t drive through, the hit didn’t feel solid, and yet his knife hand did jerk away from the striking arc he’d begun, and I was pulling the cane back quick to strike again but his head was hard and the blow had glanced and he grabbed the shaft of my cane with his left hand even as he reeled, as he stumbled deeper into the doorway, and so I couldn’t simply pound him unconscious and I was happy now to play the chess game, sacrificing the cane for both my hands to be free to use on his knife arm, so I let go of the cane handle and it flopped away in his wrenching grip and both his hands were suddenly occupied, which also gave that knife an extra beat of distraction. I grabbed his right wrist in both my hands just as he was beginning a new thrust and in these moments when it was two arms straining against one I twisted the knife sharply from its rush and forced it inward, toward the center of his own chest because he would not stop coming for me, the Germans wanted me dead, and he was strong and his left hand clapped over mine at his wrist and it was both his arms and both mine, both his hands and both mine, and the knife stopped its plunge and we strained hard and we came to a quaking suspension and the knife quivered only a few inches before his chest and he was backed against the door and it was all darkness around us in this tiny place, in this upright casket which echoed with our heavy grunting, and the knife quaked and I strained against this terrible force beneath my hands, squeezed all my body into that knot of hands and he was braced against the door but I was leaning a little downward and my left leg was pressed hard against his right leg and I figured I might have the tiniest fragment of a second to divide my energy, and the leaning would help and our hands trembled and our arms trembled and I took a quick breath and I began to lift my trailing leg and I felt his hands gain strength and felt my own begin to yield, but only for the briefest moment as I flexed my right leg and thrust it hard forward into his crotch and he grunted and I felt the strength in him waver and instantly I redirected my own energy to the knife even as I was falling into him and I drove the blade forward and into his chest.
I let go and leaped back at once. The blade had gone in deep, I knew. I wanted no part of him now. I straightened upright and from inside the shadows before me came a tightly squeezed cry, remarkably low, remarkably soft, compressed as intensely as our fists had been moments ago, and I felt a sharp pain at my ankle and I jumped back a little. He’d kicked me. But it had not been a conscious blow. The Hun’s feet were shuffling hard, from the pain and the panic and from something like the reflex of a dog struck down by an automobile in the street and lying on its side with its legs still moving as if it could run away from this thing that had happened, run from the pain. It was like that with the Hun: his feet ran and ran and he went nowhere; he could not escape what was happening in the center of his chest. And then the feet stopped running, and they slid a ways toward me as his legs went slack, and the sounds from the shadows stopped, and everything stopped, and he was dead.
25
I looked left and right. No one was near. This had all happened quickly. He seemed not to have any confederates out here or they likely would have been arriving. I could see the Hun in the deep shadows. He was sitting upright with his back against the door, his head angled to the side. I looked down at his legs. They were stretched onto the sidewalk. I kneeled beside them. I caught his legs at the backs of the knees and raised them so they were out of the way, so that he was in a hunched sitting position in the doorway. He was a drunk sleeping one off. He was bothering nobody. There were plenty of drunks and beggars sitting in the darkened doorways of London. Until an actual bobby came along and decided to poke him, he’d be ignored. I would have a little time.
I picked up the sling from the sidewalk and stuffed it in my pocket. I reached into the darkness beside the dead man and retrieved my cane.
I crossed the street and stood before the window of the booksellers Metzger and Strauss.
The shop was dark and seemingly empty. I moved to the front door. A shade was drawn but I put my eye to the very edge of the pane of glass, and in the narrow gap I could see along the main corridor to the rear of the shop. The stairwell was dark; the office door was closed but its bottom was edged in electric light.
My only question now was how to get in. My lock picks were in my inside pocket. I racked my memory for a crucial detaiclass="underline" was there a bell on the door? I’d gone through only this morning but I could not bring that one sense detail back. I was very good at noticing things and I cursed myself softly at this little slip. I didn’t know if there was a bell. But I had to assume there was. Many shops had bells and no shop in London had a more acute need to be alerted if someone entered than Metzger & Strauss. I did not know how to deal with a doorbell from the outside, especially if it was wired to ring in the back of the shop.
I’d been along this block of St. Martin’s twice. A detail I did remember was a null observation: I saw no passageway back to the courtyard or whatever sat behind these buildings. The whole four-street cincture was likely the same, a monolithic frontage of shops. The way to the rear of these storefronts was through one of them. So I stepped one doorway south, to the Friends Meeting House.
Through the double glass-paned doors there was only darkness. I picked the lock.
I closed the door quietly behind me but left it unlocked. I turned. Only darkness lay before me and I walked into it, the potted plants and wall-hugging furniture of the reception area fading at once from my sight. I lit a match and held it up.
I found the door into the Meeting Room immediately before me. I simply had to keep heading straight to the rear of the building. I opened the door and stepped in as my match flickered out.
But a light remained.
I could see the dim forms of bench seats in rows facing the far platform, where a dozen wooden chairs were lined up. Upon one of the chairs burned a candle. It gave me enough light to find my way to the center aisle and I went down, and as I moved, I saw, in the penumbra of the candle glow, the door out the back of this sanctuary, leading in the direction I wanted. Focused as I was on this, I pulled up with a start at the hunched back and bowed head of a man on the aisle seat of the second row. I was nearly upon him and he’d heard my approach, and now that I’d stopped, he straightened up, but he did not turn.