Thriller (33 page)

bashed in at all. For all his wild swinging, it don’t seem that Farting Dan done very much damage.

What I need to do is get Phillip back to my rooms and tend

to him until I can ask him to get my box open. That’s as much

as anyone would conclude.

Farting Dan’s been gone for a bit longer than perhaps he ought

to’ve been, so I glance about, and see nothing. Then, with pistols held steady, I take a fleeting look behind me. If those two

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had been of a mind to overpower me, they could have done

then, for I gazed at the scene longer than a wise prig ought.

What was it that so caught my attention? It was Farting Dan.

He was behind me, all right. Behind me, and tied to a tree. His

eyes were open, his mouth was open. And though I was a good

hundred feet away, it looked to me for all the world like his throat

was open, for it was much streaked with blood, as was his shirt

and jacket.

Such cruelty. Such malice. Anyone casting his eyes to it would

see that this weren’t meant to hurt Farting Dan, though it appeared to have done that plenty, but to put the scare into those

gazing ’pon it. It felt a whole lot like someone getting even, and

in that moment I knew full well that there could only be one man

behind it all. Benjamin Weaver, and he meant to even things up.

“Why didn’t you open your gob?” I demanded the fat man.

“I didn’t see it,” he whimpered. “I was too busy collecting the

articles for you.”

“Then you’ll die for it,” I said, for this was the sort of outrage

that demanded someone die, even if it were not the person what

done it. My hand was calmed, however, by a voice.

“Leave him be, Fisher,” I heard. “Face me like a man, if you dare.”

I turned and there he was, astride a horse, about halfway between Farting Dan’s body and myself. I was far away, and it had

been more than a year, but I recognized the face all the same. Sure

’nough, ’twas Weaver, the man what had struck down Ruddy Dick.

He held pistols in both hands, and they was trained upon me.

At that distance the guns should be entirely worthless, so he

prods his horse forward. “It’s time for you to pay for what you

did to Thomas Lane,” he says.

I was determined to show no fear, though I was fearful plenty.

“What about Farting Dan there? He didn’t have nothing to do

with your precious pretty fellow.”

“I see the damage you’ve done,” he answered, arrogant as a

lord. “He deserved to die, and so do you.”

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He had his pistols trained on me, and I had mine on him. He

had two, and I had one, but mine had been tended to and loaded

by the great and deceased Farting Dan, and that gave the advantage to me. I would be able to fire before he dared, and lucky

shot would do the business.

He was about five feet short of what he must have considered being in range when I fired my pistol. He fired his in almost instant response, but my shot had been true, his false.

Not so true as a man in my state should have liked, for it only

hit his shoulder, but he lurched backward, and his pistols fired

upward.

Weaver tumbled backward off his horse, and this, I knew, was

my moment. “You!” I shouted at the fat man. “Get him on my

horse.” I gestured with a fresh pistol toward the still, slumped

body of Phillip.

The fat man obliged, and in less than thirty seconds, I had him

on the horse, and myself besides. Weaver was still struggling to

get to his feet. He clutched at his shoulder, and there appeared

to be a great deal of blood. It seemed I had hit him in his blood

tubes, a wound that would make my escape all but certain, but

I would take no chances.

I passed him quickly on my horse, emptied a pistol shot into

him and rode on, my still prisoner balanced on the horse like a

big bloody sack of shite.

It was a hard three-hour ride to my rooms in London. I could

have not have planned this better had I tried, for it was full dark

by the time I arrived, though not so dark that my presence on

the street should draw attention from. And London, though it

has many faults, at least enjoys the marvelous trait of being a city

where no one will wonder why you ride about with a slumped

man over your horse. There were, after all, too many other distractions. The cries of women selling shrimp and oysters, the pie

men, the whores and traders in nefarious goods. Fools ran their

coaches down the narrow streets too fast, farmers led their pigs

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this way and that. The streets were full of emptied chamber pots

and kennel and dead horses carved up by beggars for their dinner. The skies in London were full of smoke and coal, the people rushed and angry and afraid. I may as well have been a

buzzing fly for aught anyone gazed upon me.

I kept my rooms in Hockley in the Hole, and in that maze of

makeshift buildings without addresses, sometimes without

streets, no one could find me who was not led there by myself.

And my landlord, who observed me dragging Phillip upstairs—

he would say nothing. I paid him for his silence. He even helped

get Phillip to my rooms, where we dropped him on the floor. To

best make sure all went as it should, I gave the landlord a coin

and sent him on his way.

I didn’t live richly in my home, for it were only a place to rest;

I lived in taverns and bagnios and with the ladies of the streets.

Here I had my poor bed, a few furnishings upon which to sit and

rest my food when there I ate. I hung nothing on the walls, covered the splintering floor with no rugs, put no dressings ’pon the

cracked windows.

On our journey home, I had observed that this Phillip’s head

was no longer bleeding, and his breathing appeared to me fairly

normal, all of which gave me hope. I lit a few oil lamps to allow

me as much light as I needed. Then I took a bucket of water, what

I used for washing that morning, and threw it upon Phillip. He

stirred at once. He groaned and coughed and sputtered. He

opened his eyes.

I trained a pistol on him. “Sit up.”

He done it and put a hand to his head and then drew it away

sharply.

“I hears you can open a Domal box.”

He nodded, and it looked to me like the effort almost made

him tumble over, and for all the world it seemed like it should

take a miracle for this hurt bastard to open the box tonight.

With some difficulty, for I was very tired, I pushed aside a large

and uncommon heavy chair I kept by the wall, and then opened

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the secret compartment in which I stored my most precious

valuables. Included among these, and indeed almost alone

among these, for I had little of value at the moment, was the box.

Unlike the one I had in my loot bag, this one was near the size

of a man’s torso, and heavy, though from its frame or contents I

knew not.

I set it down on the floor next to him, and he gazed ’pon it

groggily.

“Open it,” I told him.

“No,” he said in a voice surprisingly steady.

I trained my pistol on him. “Do it.”

“Killing me won’t get it open,” he said.

“True,” I agreed. “But lead in your leg might encourage some

cooperation.”

Then he did something most unlike a man with a bashed

head. He pushed himself to his feet and stood facing me, gazing

at me with unclouded eyes, standing steadily and strong. His injuries were perhaps not so severe as they appeared, not so severe

as he’d led me to believe.

Not ten feet from him, however, with a loaded pistol, I was

the master, and if he would not believe it, I would be forced to

explain it in terms he could not ignore.

“Open it,” I told him, “or you will regret it.”

He smiled at me, and it was a smile full of confidence and, yes,

pleasure. Here was a man enjoying himself not a little.

“I don’t know how,” he said.

“Then I will remind you,” I answered, and fired the pistol directly at his knee. An injury of that nature might cause him so

much pain that he would be unable to do his business, but I have

observed, and more than once, that a man with one knee shot

will go to great lengths to avoid having the other served with the

same sauce.

Through the smell of powder and cloud of smoke, I noted that

a man who ought to have collapsed remained still standing.

From so little a distance, I could not have missed. There were

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no marks upon the floor, yet he remained unscathed, and had

not even flinched during the firing.

“Your pistol is spent,” he said. “Mine, however, is not.” From

his pocket he withdrew an imposing piece, which he aimed at

my chest. “Sit.” He gestured to my great and heavy chair.

Make no mistake, I had my wits about me. I saw no reason to

lose heart, but with no choice but to obey, I sat. From his pockets he then withdrew a length of thick rope.

“Tie yourself to the chair,” he said. “And no deception, if

you please. I have my eye ’pon you, and I know a fine knot

from a poor.”

My hands fumbled with the rope. “Look here, Phillip. I have

a great deal of money about me, and rather than be enemies, let’s

come to what they call an understanding.”

He said nothing until I had secured myself tight to the chair. I

meant to create a loose knot, but his eyes never left me. I must now

operate under the belief that he could not kill me in cold blood—

and that I could buy my freedom with the promise of silver.

Once I was bound, he smiled at me, a devilish sort of smile.

“My name is not Phillip,” he said to me. “I presume you did not

see my face when you knocked me down a year and a half ago,

and so it is you who do not recognize me today.”

A sort of stillness overtook the room. It was the stillness that

came over the theater when a great revelation was made. Even

the rabble of the pits would pause in their nonsense to look up

and see what secrets were being said. Here it was, in my life, such

a moment. A moment of the theater as things that had been hidden revealed themselves.

“Thomas Lane,” I said. “I thought you was dead.”

“No, Thomas did not die, though I am not he. You mistook

the one for the other, as you were meant. I am Benjamin Weaver.”

“Then, the man I knocked down…” I began.

“That was me who you mistook for Thomas Lane during our

last encounter. Thomas had some unfortunate bounties upon

him, and he thought it useful to let the world believe he died by

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your hand. It was therefore spread about that you had killed him,

and to give the story the credibility Thomas required, it was also

spread that I sought revenge for a death that never was.”

I began to sputter, for now this story was all confusion. “If I

did not kill Lane, why all the trouble to take revenge upon me?”

He smiled again. “It is not revenge, Fisher. It is a matter of

business, as I have found a better way to earn my bread. I am no

longer a man of the highway, but a thief-taker. The owner of this

box employed me to retrieve it. As you would tell no one, not

your closest confederates, where you kept your goods, I had no

choice but to encourage you to bring me to it of your own free

will. Your attempt to rob us ’pon the highway was my scheme. I

permitted you to believe you manipulated me, when I was the

one who manipulated you.”

“You’re nothing but a double dealer, and a more ruthless bastard than ever I was,” I told him. “You let all those people die so

that you could retrieve this box?”

He laughed. “No one has died. No one has been hurt. Did

you not wonder how you missed me when you fired ’pon me?

Your companion neglected to include balls in the pistols. We

deceived you with empty firearms and false blood from the

stage.”

It was then, over the stench from the discharged pistol, that I

began to smell something else. A stench like rotted eggs—and

rotted meat and rotted teeth. Then, into the room walks Farting

Dan, Thomas Lane by his side.

“I knew you had the box in your rooms,” Farting Dan announces, “but as you would tell no one where your rooms were,

I could not sell that information. I knew the way you’d have to

pass, though, so Thomas and I rode ahead of you and waited for

you to glide by. You were so intent in getting home, so certain

you were now safe, you did not notice us behind you.”

“You’ve betrayed me,” I shouted at Farting Dan. “Why?”

“For money,” he said with a shrug.

“It’s a good reason,” I answered, “and I’ll not fault you for it.”

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“Now,” Dan says to Weaver, “take the box and be off with ye.

That was our bargain, and I expect you’ll honor it.”

Weaver nodded. “I should like to bring you to justice, Fisher,

but I will honor my word. You’d be wise not to cross my path in

the future, however.”

And so it was that he lifted the box in his arms, and he and

his companion left my rooms.

In silence we waited as we heard their heavy steps down the

stairs, then the slam of the front door. Farting Dan went to the

window and watched for some minutes, and I watched him.

Then at last he turned to me and broke the silence. “Not too tight,