Longarm #396 : Longarm and the Castle of the Damned (9781101545249) (15 page)

Of course then there would be the small problem of the four guards. They would not stand idly by and allow it to happen.

Longarm had no intention of offering himself as a sacrifice. His moment would come. But not now.

“Bring me a brandy,” Lyon said, looking at Adams.

Longarm doubted that the man particularly wanted a brandy. What he did want was to demonstrate his control over Bunny Adams. He had the killer on a leash and wanted this deputy marshal to know it and be cowed by it.

Bunny dutifully went to the sideboard and poured his master the requested drink.

“I'll take one of those too, Bunny.”

Adams merely scowled, but Lyon accepted the brandy and said, “Do pour one for him, Bunny. And one for yourself if you like.” He smiled, although there was no trace of warmth or friendliness in the expression. “We do try to be hospitable here, Mr. Long.”

“Very kind of you, I'm sure,” Longarm said dryly.

Bunny poured another brandy and brought it to Longarm. He did not take one for himself.

“Thanks,” Longarm said, raising the glass and inhaling the aroma of the brandy. Brandy was not his preferred tipple, but even he could tell that this was an exceptionally good one. He tasted it and found it to be smooth and pleasant on the tongue. “Very nice,” he said.

“I am so glad you approve. Would you care to sit?”

“I'll stand, thanks.”

“That is all right. What I have to say will not take long.”

Longarm took another small sip of the brandy.

“There are things I would like you to tell me. If you do talk to me, openly and honestly, I will grant you your life. You will be allowed to work for me in my gold mine. That may be a difficult life for you, but you will be allowed to live.”

“And the alternative?” Longarm asked.

“If you fail to answer my questions, Mr. Adams here will have the pleasure of using that whip of his. He is very good with it. He can hit the same spot. Over and over again. He can cut limbs off that way. I have seen him do it. Why, he can practically dismember a person before they have the relief of death to free them from the agony. Believe me, Marshal, you do not want to experience that. It will be much better for you to tell me what I want to know. And my questions are really very simple. Basically it boils down to what you have reported back to Marshal Vail . . . a very good man, by the way; I know him well from my work in the capital . . . and who else you may have told about my little . . . my fiefdom, you might call it.” The mirthless smile flickered onto his face again. “That will be easy enough, will it not?”

Lyon took a sip of his brandy and said, “Well?”

“Well fuck you very much, but I think not,” Longarm responded.

“I rather suspected you would feel that way, so Bunny will give you a small foretaste of what you can expect. Then tomorrow morning you will be asked again. If you still refuse to cooperate with me, I will have you taken down below so all my slaves can witness your pain. Your pain will serve as an example to them, you see. It is good for a slave to understand the price of disobedience, so you will serve me whether you wish to or not.

“I will have you tied in place, and Bunny here will use his blacksnake to very slowly cut you apart, one small piece at a time while the slaves all watch. And listen.

“But it needn't come to that, Long. You can choose to preserve your life by simply telling me all I want to know. That will undoubtedly anger Bunny, but it will save your life. Think about it tonight, Long. I shall ask you again tomorrow.” He nodded toward Adams.

While Longarm's attention was on the madman Lyon, Bunny had taken the blacksnake from his shoulder and shaken it out. Now he took a step forward and suddenly lashed out with the whip.

The rawhide popper found its mark just above Longarm's left knee. It cut through his corduroy trousers as cleanly as a knife. And almost as deep. Longarm felt like a hot branding iron had just been laid across his flesh.

“Jeez!” he cried out. He tried to back away from the whip, only to discover the guards' hands clamped like iron on his upper arms, keeping him in place where he was.

The whip snaked out again, but this time the tip cut only cloth, leaving the skin beneath that cloth untouched.

“You see, Long, I can cut wherever I wish, and it will be my pleasure tomorrow to show you just how much pain a man can stand,” Adams said. He sounded eager for the chance to kill with that long and deadly bullwhip.

“Go to hell, Adams.”

“In due time perhaps, but not until you're dead, Long.”

“That is enough, Bunny,” Lyon put in. “You made your point. Long, think about what I have told you. We will speak again in the morning. You have until then to make up your mind.” With a curt nod to his guards, he sent Longarm staggering out of the room, his left leg still afire and his arms secured by the guards.

That whip was awfully damned persuasive; the son of a bitch
hurt
!

There was no ladder this time. The guards merely walked him to the rim of the pit and gave him a shove. Longarm fell the eight or nine feet to the bottom of the pit and landed with a thump. The air rushed out of him, and he was left writhing in pain and gasping for breath while the heavy iron grate was again laid over his underground cell.

“Bastards,” he snarled when he again had breath enough to speak, but by then the guards—and their lantern—had returned to whatever hole they crawled into.

“Are you all right, Long?” Sam Childers asked from the other side of the bars.

“No. That son of a bitch Adams tagged me one with his fuckin' bullwhip.”

“Just once?”

“Yeah, but that was enough. Teachin' me a lesson, they said.”

“Believe it,” Childers said. “I saw him kill a man with that whip once. Killed him slow and deliberate. Poor son of a bitch died hard, I can tell you, and the worst of it was that Adams enjoyed it. You could see it on his face. He liked killing that way. Liked it. Jesus!”

“That man is evil,” the girl put in from her end of the dark pit. “He gives me the creeps. I don't think Henry Lyon knows it, but when Henry is done with me and they are bringing me back here, Adams likes to feel me up. He touches me, and when I try to pull away, he laughs. He likes for people to be afraid of him, and I think he likes it that he disgusts everyone. I think I hate him even more than I hate Henry.”

“With any kinda luck, missy, we won't none of us have to worry about Bunny Adams or Henry Lyon either one. We're fixing to get outa here.”

“Do you really think so?” the girl asked.

“Yeah, kid, I do.”

“I'm scared.”

“Good. You should be. Sam, d'you think you're strong enough to get outa here if I can get these grates pushed off of us?”

“I'll make it,” Childers said, determination steeling his voice. “If you can do that, Long, I'll do my part.”

“Good. Give me back my derringer then. You keep the knife. Girl. Are you up to this?”

“Just give me a chance. I'm ready.”

Longarm stood. He put his back against the bars that separated him from Childers's cell and jumped up to grab hold of the grate that covered his part of the pit.

He hung there for a moment, then shifted his hands through the bars so that he was holding onto the grate above Sam's cell, leaving the grate over his own free of his weight.

Longarm jackknifed his body, planted his feet onto the grate, and pushed. The heavy grate barely moved.

He tried again. Pushed harder. There was a little more movement this time.

“Son of a bitch!” he said as, his arms tiring, he dropped away from the grate and once again hung straight down.

Longarm dropped down and landed on the floor.

“You can't do it?” Childers asked. “Is it hopeless?”

“Hell, no, it ain't hopeless, Sam. I told you we're gonna get outa here, and we will. Just give me a minute to rest my arms. We'll do it. If not this next time, then the time after that. Or the time after that one. However long it takes, we'll get it done.”

“Can I help?” the girl asked.

“Yeah. Pray,” Longarm said.

“I've been doing that, Marshal.”

“Good. Keep it up.” Longarm swung his arms around a bit to loosen his muscles, then repeated his movements: jumped up to hang from the grate, moved his hands to cling to Sam's grate instead of his own, swung his boots up to contact the iron grate above his cell, and . . . pushed.

He gave the grate all the power he could muster.

It moved. Not more than six inches perhaps, but it was pushed aside.

Longarm was smiling when he pushed again. And again after that. In a few minutes he had his cell partially uncovered. Enough for him to fit through.

Then it was only a matter of climbing the steel bars between his cell and Sam's until he stood free in the cool night air with nothing but a few distant stars above him.

Sam Childers was weak. He managed to climb halfway up the cell bars. Longarm helped him the rest of the way from there. There was enough pale light from the stars for Longarm to see the broad grin on Childers's face.

“Free,” he said.

“Yeah. But keep your voice down,” Longarm cautioned. “Come on now. Help me get the girl out.”

With both of them pulling, they were able to get the grate over that pit out of the way in no time at all, then both men leaned down at the edge of her pit.

“Jump,” Longarm whispered. “Reach high as you can and jump. Me and Sam will grab your wrists and pull you up.”

“All right. Here I come.”

Longarm missed his first attempt to reach her. Childers caught her left wrist but was not strong enough to hold her. He let go and she fell back into the pit.

“Are you all right?” Sam asked.

“I'm fine.”

“Jump again,” Longarm said. “Quick now. We don't want to be out here in the middle of this damn courtyard any longer than we got to.”

The girl jumped, and this time Longarm caught her wrist. Sam missed his hold on her, but she weighed little and Longarm was able to lift her out of the pit by himself.

“Look, uh, I don't know if you've noticed this, young lady, but you ain't wearing any clothes,” Longarm said.

“You know, I did notice that,” she returned, “but thank you for mentioning it.”

As a matter of fact she had a lovely body. Which Longarm could not help noticing. She was slim, with long, blond hair, delicate features, and firm, perky breasts. He could understand why any man would want her. But to hold on her terms, not as chattel.

“Are you all right?” he asked, pulling off his tweed coat and giving it to her.

“Better now that I'm out of that hellhole,” she said. She put Longarm's coat on. It did not cover her completely, but it was better than nothing. She rolled the sleeves up and bobbed her head. “I'm ready.”

“Come on,” Longarm said. “Let's get outa this place.”

With Longarm leading the way, the three headed for the tunnel that led to the outside world and to freedom.

“Wait here,” Longarm whispered.

A pale yellow beam of light spread for several yards into the courtyard, coming from an open doorway beside the entry. That would be where the guards had come out behind him when he first arrived at Senator Lyon's damned castle. Senator Lyon's castle of the damned would be more appropriate, Longarm thought.

Derringer in hand, he peered around the doorjamb. A single guard sat at a table with a newspaper spread out before him and a lamp burning nearby. His lips were moving as he sounded out the words.

The man was imposingly large but probably not very bright. Perfect material for this kind of work. He would do what he was told, whatever that happened to be, and if it caused pain to some other human being, well, that was not his problem, was it?

It was for this fellow and others like him that Lyon intended to make the girl a plaything if she did not agree to serve as his slave. In Longarm's opinion it would be criminal—criminal both morally and in law—for her delicate beauty and spunk to be broken on the shoals of thugs like this son of a bitch.

He was already pissed off at the unsuspecting guard when he silently slipped into the small guard room.

A rack containing two repeating rifles and a sawed-off shotgun sat beside the adobe outer wall, and the guard was wearing a revolver on his belt. Longarm saw his own gunbelt lying on a low side table. With that much armament he figured he could take on Henry Lyon's entire damned army.

Which was a good thing because he very likely would have to do exactly that.

“What the fuck?” the huge guard mumbled at Longarm's approach.

“Time to pay the piper, asshole,” Longarm snarled.

He thrust the derringer hard against the center of the guard's chest. “Stay where you are an' don't move,” he ordered. “You got some handcuffs or heavy manacles around here, I'm sure o' that. Where are they?”

“Little man, you just fucked up. Now I am gonna break you in two.” The guard stood. He towered over Longarm, and Longarm was well over six feet tall himself. This guard was huge.

Ignoring the revolver at his belt, the fellow reached for Longarm's throat.

Longarm had no intention of letting that ape get his hands on him. He pulled the trigger of the derringer, and a .41-caliber slug along with a spray of fiery gases burst inside the man's chest, shattering his heart and dropping him instantly to the floor. The walls of his chest cavity contained both the sound and the fury of the gunshot, so there was only a muffled pop to be heard. Longarm doubted the sound traveled any farther than the doorway.