“…if I’m not at my post when my replacement arrives, the agency will know that something is amiss.”
Jane-Helen looked hard at me. She hadn’t bought it, either.
Still, in the short term, my story would be hard to dis-prove. I had introduced a notion that I knew would snag, and grow. The notion that I was to be relieved, that confederates would be arriving soon.
Lassiter’s sensitive ears would be twitching.
Every cat padding over a garden wall or tile falling off an ill-made roof would sound like evidence of a surrounding force to our rider of the purple sage.
“Algy wants to see Rache ’utterflee dance now,” announced the girl.
She fluttered dramatically about the room, trailing ribbons, inflating sleeves, and lifting skirts. One of her stockings was bagged around her ankle.
“’Utterflee ’utterfly, meee oh myyy,” she sang.
Lassiter’s face was dark and heavy. I was quite pleased with myself.
I snuck a peek at the clock on the mantel and made sure I was noticed doing it.
“’Utterfly ’utterflee, look at meee…”
Lassiter chewed his moustache. Jane-Helen seemed greyer. And I was almost starting to enjoy myself again.
Then the front window smashed in and something black and fizzing burst through the curtains.
I saw a burning fuse.
* * * *
Lassiter got his boot on the fuse, killing the flame.
“That’s not dynamite,” I said, helpfully. “It’s a smoke charge. They want you to run out the front door. Into the line of fire.”
I didn’t mention that I’d thought of something very similar.
“Jim, they’re out there,” said Jane.
“’Asty mans,” said Rache, peeved by the interruption.
There was a crack. More glass broke behind the curtains. A ragged hole appeared in the velvet. I’d not heard the shot. Another shattering, and the curtain whipped with the impact. And again.
“Untie me and I can help,” I said.
Lassiter wasn’t sure but Jane fell for it. She did my hands while Rache unpicked the knots at my ankles. I took my Webley from the floor, shaking off the flakes of plaster. Of course, it was empty. The curtain-rail, with rope still attached, fell off the wall as another silent fusillade came. Cold wind blew through the ruined window. More panes were shot out.
The neighbours would be around again soon. This was not the thing for a respectable street.
Bullets ploughed into the floor, rucking the carpet, and the opposite wall. Our sniper had an elevated position.
I waved my gun, to attract Lassiter’s attention.
He dug into his pocket and brought out a handful of bullets, which he poured into my palm. I loaded and closed the revolver. I noticed Lassiter noticing how practiced I was at the procedure. But Algy Arbuthnot, V.C., was an old soldier and daring detective so that shouldn”t be too much of a surprise.
“Where is the gun-man? Top floor of the house across the street?”
Lassiter shook his head.
“Tree in the front garden?”
Lassiter nodded.
I’d been behind that tree earlier. How long ago? I didn’t know if I’d been unconscious for minutes or hours. It had been twilight when Lassiter conked me, and was full dark now. I’d have sworn no one was about when I took my watching spot, but now there were armed hostiles.
“How many?”
Lassiter held up four fingers, steadily. Then another three, with a wriggle at the wrist. He knew there were four men—Danites?—out there, and felt there might be another three besides.
I’ve come through scrapes with worse odds. From Moriarty’s background check, I knew Jim Lassiter had, too.
“This might be a moment for one of your famous rockslides,” I ventured.
Lassiter cracked a near-smile.
“Yup,” he said.
As Drebber had mentioned, Lassiter was once chased up a mountain by an angry mob and had precipitated a rocky avalanche to sweep them away. His history was studded with such dime novel exploits.
Was Drebber out there? And Stangerson? And with other guns?
My nasty suspicion was that, weighing up their contract with Moriarty & Co., the Danites had decided £205,000 was a mite steep for an evening’s work. They had come to us in the first place not because they were leery of doing their own murdering but because this wasn’t their city and they didn”t have any idea how to track Lassiter and his women to their hole. The Professor had come straight out and announced where they were to be found, to show off how bloody clever he was. No thought as to whether Basher might get caught ’twixt the guns. My only consolation was that Moriarty undoubtedly meant what he said about Higher Law. For breaking the deal, he’d probably exterminate the Danite Band to the last man (killing their horses and dogs, too), then arrange a cholera outbreak in Salt Lake City to scythe through the Latter-Day Saints.
I, of course, would still be dead.
Lassiter and I were either side of the window, just peeking out at a sliver of night.
Another shot.
I heard a rattling-about from one of the nearby houses. A spill of light lay on the street as a front door opened angrily. In that illumination, I glimpsed a figure, in rough work-clothes but with a pointed red hood over his entire head, gathered at the neck by a drawstring, with big circles cut out for the eyes. He held a pistol, and was drawing a bead. Our shy soul froze a moment in the light and stepped back, but Lassiter had already plugged him, reddening one of his eyeholes. He collapsed like an unstrung puppet.
An irritated, bald man in a quilted dressing-gown came out of his house, urged to make further complaint about the infernal racket. He was surprised to find a masked gunman lying dead over his front gate, obscuring the “no hawkers or circulars” sign. The neighbour looked around, astonished and even more annoyed.
“What the devil…”
Someone shot him, and he fell over the dead. Danite.
Oops, it might have been me. I was always one to blaze away without too much forethought.
Lassiter looked disapproval at me.
A great many curtains fell from fingers in nearby houses, and the neighbours all decided to mind their own business for the duration.
The neighbour was only winged, but made a noise about it. The fellows who had accompanied him on his earlier deputation put cotton in their ears and went back to bed.
So my shot had accomplished something.
Lassiter looked out the window, searching for another target.
From where I was, I could easily shoot him in the stomach and try to hold Drebber to coughing up the agreed fee.
Evidently he could hear the wheels turning in my head.
“Algy,” he drawled, gun casually aimed my way, “how’d you like to go through the winder, and draw their fire?”
“Not very much.”
“What I reckoned.”
Another bomb sailed through the window, without meeting any obstruction, and rolled on the carpet, pouring thick, nasty smoke. They’d let the fuse burn down before lobbing this one.
“Is there a back door?” I asked.
Lassiter looked at me, pitying.
Upwards of four men could surround a villa, easily.
Jane looked at Lassiter, like a pioneer wife who trusts her man to save the last three bullets to keep the family out of the clutches of Injuns. I always wondered why the average covered wagon bint didn’t backshoot pious Pa and learn to sew blankets and pop out papooses, but I’m well-known for my shaky grasp of morality.
“This is London, England,” she said. “We left all this behind. Things don’t happen like this here.”
A bullet struck a framed pic
ture of Queen Victoria, which fell onto the lid of an upright piano. More bullets drove into the instrument, making horrid sounds that Rache seemed inclined to dance to until Jane held her down.
Lassiter looked at me.
We both knew everywhere was like this, herbaceous border in the back garden and “Goodbye, Little Yellow Bird” sheet music propped on the piano in the parlour or no. He’d have done better going to ground in the Old Jago or Seven Dials, where life was more obviously like this—those rookeries had well-traveled rat-runs and escape routes.
The smoke was getting thick and the carpet was on fire.
I saw an empty bucket lying by the grate. The water had been used earlier to douse the fire. That was my fault.
Lassiter chewed his moustache. That was his “tell,” the sign that he was about to take action.
“I”m goin’ out the front door,” he said.
“You’ll be killed for sure,” pleaded Jane.
“Yup. Maybe I can take enough of ’em with me so’s you and Little Fay can get away clean. You’re a rich woman, Jane. Buy this man, and men like him, and keep buyin’ them. Ring yourself with guns and detectives. The Danites will run dry afore the gold.”
I peeked into the road again. The groaning neighbour was doubled over on the pavement, but the dead man in the hood had been dragged off. Fire was coming from at least two points. Just harrying, not trying to hit anyone.There was someone on the roof. We could tell by the creaking ceiling.
Lassiter was filling his guns. He had two Colts with fancy-dan handles. He ought to have had holsters to draw from, but he’d have to carry them both. Twelve shots. Maybe seven men. He’d certainly get hit several times, no matter how good he was. I might even be able to put a couple in his spine as he strode manfully down the path of the Laurels and claim it was a fumble-fingered accident.
He was an idiot. If it’d been me, I’d have picked up Jane and tossed her, in a froth of skirts, through the window. She was the one they wanted, heiress to the Withersteen property. At the very least, she’d be a tethered goat to draw the big game into range.
I was cold and clear and clever again. The Professor would have been proud.
“They can’t afford to kill the women,” I said. “That’s why they didn’t throw dynamite. They want someone alive to inherit, someone they can rob through Mormon marriage.”
Lassiter nodded. He didn’t see how that helped.
“Stop thinking of Jane and Rache as your family,” I said. “Start thinking of them as hostages.”
If he didn’t take umbrage and shoot me, we might have a chance.
* * * *
“We’re coming out,” I announced. “Hold your fire.”
Rache giggled. I held the baggage round the waist, gun in her ear, and stood in the doorway.
To the girl, it was a game. She had Missy Surprise hugged to her chest. Lassiter and Jane were more serious, but desperate enough to try. They had objected that the Danites would never believe their man would harm his beloved wife and daughter. I told them to stop thinking like their upright, moral, frankly tiresome selves and put themselves in the mind-skins of devious, murderous, greedy blighters. Of course they’d believe it—they’d do the same thing with their own wives or daughters. Unspoken but obvious was that I would, too.
Indeed, here I was—ready to spread a pretty little idiot’s brains on the road.It’d be a shame, but I’ve done worse things.
I took a step out into the garden. No one killed me, so I took another step down the path.
Lassiter and Jane came after me, backwards. The Danite perched on the roof wouldn’t have a shot that didn’t go through the woman.
Men came out of the shadows. Five of them, in hoods, carrying guns. All their weaponry was kitted out oddly. The barrels were as long again as they ought to be, and swelled into thick, ceramic Swiss roll shapes. Silencers. I’d heard of the things, but never seen them. Cut down the accuracy, I gathered. It was wonderful that the cat couldn’t hear you firing away, but less so that you’d probably miss him with all your silent shots. I’d rather use one of Moriarty’s bloody air-guns than a ridiculous contraption like that.
“Parlay,” I said.
The leader of the band nodded, silly hood-point flopping. The funny thing was that the hood was useless as disguise. Most masks are. You remember faces first of all, but people are a lot more than their eyes and noses—hands and legs and stomachs and the way they stand or hold a gun or light a cigar.
I was facing Elder Enoch J Drebber.
I assumed our agreement was voided. “You don’t want these lovely ladies harmed,” I said.
“I only need one,” responded Drebber, raising his gun.
At this range, he could plug Rache in the breast and the shot would plough through her and me, killing us both.
“Rache not like mans,” she said. “Rache poo on you!”
Drebber’s eyes widened in his hood-holes. Rache held up Missy Surprise, and angled the rag-doll, her fingers working the hard metal inside the soft toy.
Lassiter’s second gun went off and Missy Surprise’s head flew apart. The Danite on Drebber’s right fell dead.
“You’re next,” I told Drebber.
I was sure she had been aiming at him in the first place, but he wasn’t to know that.
The man on the roof decided it was time to take his shot. His finger had probably been itching all evening. I’ve had trouble with fools like that on safari, so keen on not coming home without having cleaned the barrel that they need to fire an elephant-gun at the regimental water-bearer just so they could say they’d killed something.
Lassiter was quicker than a bhisti, and not struggling with a ridiculously over-weighted yard-and-a-half of rifle. The overly keen rifleman tumbled dead into the flowery bower around the front door of the Laurels.
Seven, minus three. Four.
“Drop the ironmongery, Elder,” I ordered.
Rache blew a loud raspberry.
Drebber was shaking. He nodded, and guns fell onto the road.
“All of them,” I said.
Hands went to belts and inside pockets and boots and special compartments and a variety of hold-out single-shots or throwing knives rattled down as well.
“Now, I think you might take your dead folks, and scarper.”
The four surviving Danites did as they were told. The fellow in the bower was a good sixteen-stone lump of his many wives’ fat cooking and it took two to lift him.
They had a carriage down the road, and it trundled off.
Not a bad night’s work, I thought. Providing it was over.
Rache was dancing around, and I thought it a good idea to relieve Missy Surprise of her .45 calibre insides. I gave the doll back, and the girl loved it none the less for not having a head.
Jane was looking at me with something like rapt gratitude. Usually a good moment to make a proposition, but I doubted my currency with Jim Lassiter stood as high as that.
“Colonel Arbuthnot, what can we ever do to repay you?”
“You can die,” said a voice I recognised. “Yes, die.”
* * * *
I was fuming.
Moriarty didn’t deign to explain, but I had caught up on it.
Of course, he knew the Danites would try to save the fee and go for the kills on their own.
Of course, he had mentioned the Laurence address deliberately, to prompt fast action.
Of course, he had followed me and watched my travails all evening long, not intervening until the danger was over.
Of course, he had found a way to profit.
He strolled up the street, head bobbing. He was dressed all in black, for the night-time. He also had a carriage parked nearby, with Chop, his silent Chinese coachman, perched up on t
he box. He enquired solicitously after the neighbour, who was still making a performance of being slightly shot. Somehow, the man got the notion that he had been saved by my intervention from a conspiracy of high-ranking Masons who wanted him dead over some imagined slight. It would be a risky proposition to complain officially about such well-connected villains since they owned the police. He bustled inside and drew his curtains, hoping to hide from inescapable doom under his coverlets.
Then Moriarty applied himself to the murders.
I was not privy to the arrangements the Professor Moriarty made with Lassiter and Jane. I had to be in the still-smoky parlour, while Rache—excited to be up long past her bed-time—banged at the gunshot piano while singing more verses of her Butterfly Song.
At the conclusion of negotiations, Moriarty was the proud owner, through hard-to-trace holding companies, of the Surprise Valley Gold Mine. A source of fabulous wealth that would flow for years to come. Amusingly, he was now a major employer in Amber Springs, Utah. Most of the toilers in his mine were Mormons of a more respectable and less bloodthirsty bent than the Danite Band.
Jim Lassiter-Jonathan Laurence, Jane Withersteen-Helen Laurence and Little Fay Larkin-Rachel Laurence were dead, burned-to-crackling in the smoking ruins of the Laurels, Streatham. It was the gas-mains, apparently. And the neighbours had some stories to tell.
What amazed me the most was that the Professor had the corpses ready. Chop and I had to wrestle them into beds before the fatal match was struck. I suspected that Moriarty had earlier had three strangers of the right ages “Burked,” but he assured Jane that the substitutes were “natural causes” paupers rescued from the anatomists’ tables. She believed him, and I assume that’s what counts with women like her.
He had a satchel with him, full of documents: passports, birth certificates, twenty-year-old letters, used steamer tickets, bank-books, even photographs. If the Lassiter-Laurences had wanted to assume other identities, they should have come to him in the first place, when it would have cost a lot less than a gold mine. He let Mr and Mrs Ronald Lembo of Ottawa keep a private fortune of, amusingly enough, £205,000, deposited at Coutt’s. It wasn’t unlimited wealth, but most people should be able to live comfortably. I’d run through it inside a week.
Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine #3 Page 12
